Marriage
by H. G. Wells · English · Gutenberg #35338 · 876,878 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Marriage
Author: H. G. Wells
Release date: February 20, 2011 [eBook #35338]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIAGE ***
Produced by Eleni Christofaki, Juliet Sutherland and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
|=================================================|
| MR. WELLS HAS ALSO WRITTEN |
| The following Novels: |
| |
| TONO BUNGAY |
| LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM |
| KIPPS ANN VERONICA |
| THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY |
| and THE NEW MACHIAVELLI |
| |
| Numerous short stories now published |
| in a single volume under the title. |
| THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND |
| |
| The following fantastic Romances: |
| |
| THE TIME MACHINE |
| THE WONDERFUL VISIT |
| THE INVISIBLE MAN |
| THE WAR OF THE WORLDS |
| THE SEA LADY |
| IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET |
| THE SLEEPER AWAKES |
| THE FOOD OF THE GODS |
| THE WAR IN THE AIR |
| THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON |
| and THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU |
| |
| And a series of books upon social and political |
| questions of which |
| |
| A MODERN UTOPIA |
| FIRST AND LAST THINGS (RELIGION) |
| NEW WORLDS FOR OLD |
| THE FUTURE IN AMERICA |
| and ANTICIPATIONS |
| are the chief. |
|=================================================|
MARRIAGE
BY
H. G. WELLS
"And the Poor Dears haven't the shadow of a doubt they will live
happily ever afterwards."--_From a Private Letter_.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
_FRATERNALLY
TO
ARNOLD BENNETT_
BOOK THE FIRST
MARJORIE MARRIES
MARRIAGE
CHAPTER THE FIRST
A DAY WITH THE POPES
Sec. 1
An extremely pretty girl occupied a second-class compartment in one of
those trains which percolate through the rural tranquillities of middle
England from Ganford in Oxfordshire to Rumbold Junction in Kent. She was
going to join her family at Buryhamstreet after a visit to some
Gloucestershire friends. Her father, Mr. Pope, once a leader in the
coach-building world and now by retirement a gentleman, had taken the
Buryhamstreet vicarage furnished for two months (beginning on the
fifteenth of July) at his maximum summer rental of seven guineas a week.
His daughter was on her way to this retreat.
At first she had been an animated traveller, erect and keenly regardful
of every detail upon the platforms of the stations at which her
conveyance lingered, but the tedium of the journey and the warmth of the
sunny afternoon had relaxed her pose by imperceptible degrees, and she
sat now comfortably in the corner, with her neat toes upon the seat
before her, ready to drop them primly at the first sign of a
fellow-traveller. Her expression lapsed more and more towards an almost
somnolent reverie. She wished she had not taken a second-class ticket,
because then she might have afforded a cup of tea at Reading, and so
fortified herself against this insinuating indolence.
She was travelling second class, instead of third as she ought to have
done, through one of those lapses so inevitable to young people in her
position. The two Carmel boys and a cousin, two greyhounds and a chow
had come to see her off; they had made a brilliant and prosperous group
on the platform and extorted the manifest admiration of two youthful
porters, and it had been altogether too much for Marjorie Pope to admit
it was the family custom--except when her father's nerves had to be
considered--to go third class. So she had made a hasty calculation--she
knew her balance to a penny because of the recent tipping--and found it
would just run to it. Fourpence remained,--and there would be a porter
at Buryhamstreet!
Her mother had said: "You will have Ample." Well, opinions of amplitude
vary. With numerous details fresh in her mind, Marjorie decided it would
be wiser to avoid financial discussion during her first few days at
Buryhamstreet.
There was much in Marjorie's equipment in the key of travelling second
class at the sacrifice of afternoon tea. There was, for example, a
certain quiet goodness of style about her clothes, though the skirt
betrayed age, and an entire absence of style about her luggage, which
was all in the compartment with her, and which consisted of a distended
hold-all, a very good tennis racquet in a stretcher, a portmanteau of
cheap white basketwork held together by straps, and a very new,
expensive-looking and meretricious dressing-bag of imitation morocco,
which had been one of her chief financial errors at Oxbridge. The
collection was eloquent indeed of incompatible standards....
Marjorie had a chin that was small in size if resolute in form, and a
mouth that was not noticeably soft and weak because it was conspicuously
soft and pretty. Her nose was delicately aquiline and very subtly and
finely modelled, and she looked out upon the world with steady,
grey-blue eyes beneath broad, level brows that contradicted in a large
measure the hint of weakness below. She had an abundance of copper-red
hair, which flowed back very prettily from her broad, low forehead and
over her delicate ears, and she had that warm-tinted clear skin that
goes so well with reddish hair. She had a very dainty neck, and the long
slender lines of her body were full of the promise of a riper beauty.
She had the good open shoulders of a tennis-player and a swimmer. Some
day she was to be a tall, ruddy, beautiful woman. She wore simple
clothes of silvery grey and soft green, and about her waist was a belt
of grey leather in which there now wilted two creamy-petalled roses.
That was the visible Marjorie. Somewhere out of time and space was an
invisible Marjorie who looked out on the world with those steady eyes,
and smiled or drooped with the soft red lips, and dreamt, and wondered,
and desired.
Sec. 2
What a queer thing the invisible human being would appear if, by some
discovery as yet inconceivable, some spiritual X-ray photography, we
could flash it into sight! Long ago I read a book called "Soul Shapes"
that was full of ingenious ideas, but I doubt very much if the thing so
revealed would have any shape, any abiding solid outline at all. It is
something more fluctuating and discursive than that--at any rate, for
every one young enough not to have set and hardened. Things come into
it and become it, things drift out of it and cease to be it, things turn
upside down in it and change and colour and dissolve, and grow and eddy
about and blend into each other. One might figure it, I suppose, as a
preposterous jumble animated by a will; a floundering disconnectedness
through which an old hump of impulse rises and thrusts unaccountably; a
river beast of purpose wallowing in a back eddy of mud and weeds and
floating objects and creatures drowned. Now the sunshine of gladness
makes it all vivid, now it is sombre and grimly insistent under the sky
of some darkling mood, now an emotional gale sweeps across it and it is
one confused agitation....
And surely these invisible selves of men were never so jumbled, so
crowded, complicated, and stirred about as they are at the present time.
Once I am told they had a sort of order, were sphered in religious
beliefs, crystal clear, were arranged in a cosmogony that fitted them as
hand fits glove, were separated by definite standards of right and wrong
which presented life as planned in all its essential aspects from the
cradle to the grave. Things are so no longer. That sphere is broken for
most of us; even if it is tied about and mended again, it is burst like
a seed case; things have fallen out and things have fallen in....
Can I convey in any measure how it was with Marjorie?
What was her religion?
In college forms and returns, and suchlike documents, she would describe
herself as "Church of England." She had been baptized according to the
usages of that body, but she had hitherto evaded confirmation into it,
and although it is a large, wealthy, and powerful organization with
many minds to serve it, it had never succeeded in getting into her quick
and apprehensive intelligence any lucid and persuasive conception of
what it considered God and the universe were up to with her. It had
failed to catch her attention and state itself to her. A number of
humorous and other writers and the general trend of talk around her, and
perhaps her own shrewd little observation of superficial things, had, on
the other hand, created a fairly definite belief in her that it wasn't
as a matter of fact up to very much at all, that what it said wasn't
said with that absolute honesty which is a logical necessity in every
religious authority, and that its hierarchy had all sorts of political
and social considerations confusing its treatment of her immortal
soul....
Marjorie followed her father in abstaining from church. He too professed
himself "Church of England," but he was, if we are to set aside merely
superficial classifications, an irascible atheist with a respect for
usage and Good Taste, and an abject fear of the disapproval of other
gentlemen of his class. For the rest he secretly disliked clergymen on
account of the peculiarity of their collars, and a certain influence
they had with women. When Marjorie at the age of fourteen had displayed
a hankering after ecclesiastical ceremony and emotional religion, he had
declared: "We don't want any of _that_ nonsense," and sent her into the
country to a farm where there were young calves and a bottle-fed lamb
and kittens. At times her mother went to church and displayed
considerable orthodoxy and punctilio, at times the good lady didn't, and
at times she thought in a broad-minded way that there was a Lot in
Christian Science, and subjected herself to the ministrations of an
American named Silas Root. But his ministrations were too expensive for
continuous use, and so the old faith did not lose its hold upon the
family altogether.
* * * * *
At school Marjorie had been taught what I may best describe as Muffled
Christianity--a temperate and discreet system designed primarily not to
irritate parents, in which the painful symbol of the crucifixion and the
riddle of what Salvation was to save her from, and, indeed, the coarser
aspects of religion generally, were entirely subordinate to images of
amiable perambulations, and a rich mist of finer feelings. She had been
shielded, not only from arguments against her religion, but from
arguments for it--the two things go together--and I do not think it was
particularly her fault if she was now growing up like the great majority
of respectable English people, with her religious faculty as it were,
artificially faded, and an acquired disposition to regard any
speculation of why she was, and whence and whither, as rather foolish,
not very important, and in the very worst possible taste.
And so, the crystal globe being broken which once held souls together,
you may expect to find her a little dispersed and inconsistent in her
motives, and with none of that assurance a simpler age possessed of the
exact specification of goodness or badness, the exact delimitation of
right and wrong. Indeed, she did not live in a world of right and wrong,
or anything so stern; "horrid" and "jolly" had replaced these archaic
orientations. In a world where a mercantile gentility has conquered
passion and God is neither blasphemed nor adored, there necessarily
arises this generation of young people, a little perplexed, indeed, and
with a sense of something missing, but feeling their way inevitably at
last to the great releasing question, "Then why shouldn't we have a
good time?"
Yet there was something in Marjorie, as in most human beings, that
demanded some general idea, some aim, to hold her life together. A girl
upon the borders of her set at college was fond of the phrase "living
for the moment," and Marjorie associated with it the speaker's lax
mouth, sloe-like eyes, soft, quick-flushing, boneless face, and a habit
of squawking and bouncing in a forced and graceless manner. Marjorie's
natural disposition was to deal with life in a steadier spirit than
that. Yet all sorts of powers and forces were at work in her, some
exalted, some elvish, some vulgar, some subtle. She felt keenly and
desired strongly, and in effect she came perhaps nearer the realization
of that offending phrase than its original exponent. She had a clean
intensity of feeling that made her delight in a thousand various things,
in sunlight and textures, and the vividly quick acts of animals, in
landscape, and the beauty of other girls, in wit, and people's voices,
and good strong reasoning, and the desire and skill of art. She had a
clear, rapid memory that made her excel perhaps a little too easily at
school and college, an eagerness of sympathetic interest that won people
very quickly and led to disappointments, and a very strong sense of the
primary importance of Miss Marjorie Pope in the world. And when any very
definite dream of what she would like to be and what she would like to
do, such as being the principal of a ladies' college, or the first woman
member of Parliament, or the wife of a barbaric chief in Borneo, or a
great explorer, or the wife of a millionaire and a great social leader,
or George Sand, or Saint Teresa, had had possession of her imagination
for a few weeks, an entirely contrasted and equally attractive dream
would presently arise beside it and compete with it and replace it. It
wasn't so much that she turned against the old one as that she was
attracted by the new, and she forgot the old dream rather than abandoned
it, simply because she was only one person, and hadn't therefore the
possibility of realizing both.
In certain types Marjorie's impressionability aroused a passion of
proselytism. People of the most diverse kinds sought to influence her,
and they invariably did so. Quite a number of people, including her
mother and the principal of her college, believed themselves to be the
leading influence in her life. And this was particularly the case with
her aunt Plessington. Her aunt Plessington was devoted to social and
political work of an austere and aggressive sort (in which Mr.
Plessington participated); she was childless, and had a Movement of her
own, the Good Habits Movement, a progressive movement of the utmost
scope and benevolence which aimed at extensive interferences with the
food and domestic intimacies of the more defenceless lower classes by
means ultimately of legislation, and she had Marjorie up to see her,
took her for long walks while she influenced with earnestness and
vigour, and at times had an air of bequeathing her mantle, movement and
everything, quite definitely to her "little Madge." She spoke of
training her niece to succeed her, and bought all the novels of Mrs.
Humphry Ward for her as they appeared, in the hope of quickening in her
that flame of politico-social ambition, that insatiable craving for
dinner-parties with important guests, which is so distinctive of the
more influential variety of English womanhood. It was due rather to her
own habit of monologue than to any reserve on the part of Marjorie that
she entertained the belief that her niece was entirely acquiescent in
these projects. They went into Marjorie's mind and passed. For nearly a
week, it is true, she had dramatized herself as the angel and
inspiration of some great modern statesman, but this had been ousted by
a far more insistent dream, begotten by a picture she had seen in some
exhibition, of a life of careless savagery, whose central and constantly
recurrent incident was the riding of barebacked horses out of
deep-shadowed forest into a foamy sunlit sea--in a costume that would
certainly have struck Aunt Plessington as a mistake.
If you could have seen Marjorie in her railway compartment, with the
sunshine, sunshine mottled by the dirty window, tangled in her hair and
creeping to and fro over her face as the train followed the curves of
the line, you would certainly have agreed with me that she was pretty,
and you might even have thought her beautiful. But it was necessary to
fall in love with Marjorie before you could find her absolutely
beautiful. You might have speculated just what business was going on
behind those drowsily thoughtful eyes. If you are--as people
say--"Victorian," you might even have whispered "Day Dreams," at the
sight of her....
She _was_ dreaming, and in a sense she was thinking of beautiful things.
But only mediately. She was thinking how very much she would enjoy
spending freely and vigorously, quite a considerable amount of
money,--heaps of money.
You see, the Carmels, with whom she had just been staying, were
shockingly well off. They had two motor cars with them in the country,
and the boys had the use of the second one as though it was just an old
bicycle. Marjorie had had a cheap white dinner-dress, made the year
before by a Chelsea French girl, a happy find of her mother's, and it
was shapely and simple and not at all bad, and she had worn her green
beads and her Egyptian necklace of jade; but Kitty Carmel and her sister
had had a new costume nearly every night, and pretty bracelets, and
rubies, big pearls, and woven gold, and half a score of delightful and
precious things for neck and hair. Everything in the place was bright
and good and abundant, the servants were easy and well-mannered, without
a trace of hurry or resentment, and one didn't have to be sharp about
the eggs and things at breakfast in the morning, or go without. All
through the day, and even when they had gone to bathe from the smart
little white and green shed on the upper lake, Marjorie had been made to
feel the insufficiency of her equipment. Kitty Carmel, being twenty-one,
possessed her own cheque-book and had accounts running at half a dozen
West-end shops; and both sisters had furnished their own rooms according
to their taste, with a sense of obvious effect that had set Marjorie
speculating just how a room might be done by a girl with a real eye for
colour and a real brain behind it....
The train slowed down for the seventeenth time. Marjorie looked up and
read "Buryhamstreet."
Sec. 3
Her reverie vanished, and by a complex but almost instantaneous movement
she had her basket off the rack and the carriage door open. She became
teeming anticipations. There, advancing in a string, were Daffy, her
elder sister, Theodore, her younger brother, and the dog Toupee. Sydney
and Rom hadn't come. Daffy was not copper red like her sister, but
really quite coarsely red-haired; she was bigger than Marjorie, and with
irregular teeth instead of Marjorie's neat row; she confessed them in a
broad simple smile of welcome. Theodore was hatless, rustily
fuzzy-headed, and now a wealth of quasi-humorous gesture. The dog Toupee
was straining at a leash, and doing its best in a yapping, confused
manner, to welcome the wrong people by getting its lead round their
legs.
"Toupee!" cried Marjorie, waving the basket. "Toupee!"
They all called it Toupee because it was like one, but the name was
forbidden in her father's hearing. Her father had decided that the
proper name for a family dog in England is Towser, and did his utmost to
suppress a sobriquet that was at once unprecedented and not in the best
possible taste. Which was why the whole family, with the exception of
Mrs. Pope, of course, stuck to Toupee....
Marjorie flashed a second's contrast with the Carmel splendours.
"Hullo, old Daffy. What's it like?" she asked, handing out the basket as
her sister came up.
"It's a lark," said Daffy. "Where's the dressing-bag?"
"Thoddy," said Marjorie, following up the dressing-bag with the
hold-all. "Lend a hand."
"Stow it, Toupee," said Theodore, and caught the hold-all in time.
In another moment Marjorie was out of the train, had done the swift
kissing proper to the occasion, and rolled a hand over Toupee's
head--Toupee, who, after a passionate lunge at a particularly savoury
drover from the next compartment, was now frantically trying to indicate
that Marjorie was the one human being he had ever cared for. Brother and
sister were both sketching out the state of affairs at Buryhamstreet
Vicarage in rapid competitive jerks, each eager to tell things
first--and the whole party moved confusedly towards the station exit.
Things pelted into Marjorie's mind.
"We've got an old donkey-cart. I thought we shouldn't get here--ever....
Madge, we can go up the church tower whenever we like, only old Daffy
won't let me shin up the flagstaff. It's _perfectly_ safe--you couldn't
fall off if you tried.... Had positively to get out at the level
crossing and _pull_ him over.... There's a sort of moat in the
garden.... You never saw such furniture, Madge! And the study! It's hung
with texts, and stuffed with books about the Scarlet Woman.... Piano's
rather good, it's a Broadwood.... The Dad's got a war on about the
tennis net. Oh, frightful! You'll see. It won't keep up. He's had a
letter kept waiting by the _Times_ for a fortnight, and it's a terror at
breakfast. Says the motor people have used influence to silence him.
Says that's a game two can play at.... Old Sid got herself upset
stuffing windfalls. Rather a sell for old Sid, considering how refined
she's getting...."
There was a brief lull as the party got into the waiting governess cart.
Toupee, after a preliminary refusal to enter, made a determined attempt
on the best seat, from which he would be able to bark in a persistent,
official manner at anything that passed. That suppressed, and Theodore's
proposal to drive refused, they were able to start, and attention was
concentrated upon Daffy's negotiation of the station approach. Marjorie
turned on her brother with a smile of warm affection.
"How are you, old Theodore?"
"I'm all right, old Madge."
"Mummy?"
"Every one's all right," said Theodore; "if it wasn't for that damned
infernal net----"
"Ssssh!" cried both sisters together.
"_He_ says it," said Theodore.
Both sisters conveyed a grave and relentless disapproval.
"Pretty bit of road," said Marjorie. "I like that little house at the
corner."
A pause and the eyes of the sisters met.
"_He's_ here," said Daffy.
Marjorie affected ignorance.
"Who's here?"
"_Il vostro senior Miraculoso_."
"Just as though a fellow couldn't understand your kiddy little Italian,"
said Theodore, pulling Toupee's ear.
"Oh well, I thought he might be," said Marjorie, regardless of her
brother.
"Oh!" said Daffy. "I didn't know----"
Both sisters looked at each other, and then both glanced at Theodore. He
met Marjorie's eyes with a grimace of profound solemnity.
"Little brothers," he said, "shouldn't know. Just as though they didn't!
Rot! But let's change the subject, my dears, all the same. Lemme see.
There are a new sort of flea on Toupee, Madge, that he gets from the
hens."
"_Is_ a new sort," corrected Daffy. "He's horrider than ever, Madge. He
leaves his soap in soak now to make us think he has used it. This is the
village High Street. Isn't it jolly?"
"Corners don't _bite_ people," said Theodore, with a critical eye to the
driving.
Marjorie surveyed the High Street, while Daffy devoted a few moments to
Theodore.
The particular success of the village was its brace of chestnut trees
which, with that noble disregard of triteness which is one of the charms
of villages the whole world over, shadowed the village smithy. On either
side of the roadway between it and the paths was a careless width of
vivid grass protected by white posts, which gave way to admit a generous
access on either hand to a jolly public house, leering over red blinds,
and swinging a painted sign against its competitor. Several of the
cottages had real thatch and most had porches; they had creepers nailed
to their faces, and their gardens, crowded now with flowers, marigolds,
begonias, snapdragon, delphiniums, white foxgloves, and monkshood,
seemed almost too good to be true. The doctor's house was pleasantly
Georgian, and the village shop, which was also a post and telegraph
office, lay back with a slight air of repletion, keeping its bulging
double shop-windows wide open in a manifest attempt not to fall asleep.
Two score of shock-headed boys and pinafored girls were drilling upon a
bald space of ground before the village school, and near by, the
national emotion at the ever-memorable Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria
had evoked an artistic drinking-fountain of grey stone. Beyond the
subsequent green--there were the correctest geese thereon--the village
narrowed almost to a normal road again, and then, recalling itself with
a start, lifted a little to the churchyard wall about the grey and ample
church. "It's just like all the villages that ever were," said Marjorie,
and gave a cry of delight when Daffy, pointing to the white gate between
two elm trees that led to the vicarage, remarked: "That's us."
In confirmation of which statement, Sydney and Rom, the two sisters next
in succession to Marjorie, and with a strong tendency to be twins in
spite of the year between them, appeared in a state of vociferous
incivility opening the way for the donkey-carriage. Sydney was Sydney,
and Rom was just short for Romola--one of her mother's favourite
heroines in fiction.
"Old Madge," they said; and then throwing respect to the winds, "Old
Gargoo!" which was Marjorie's forbidden nickname, and short for gargoyle
(though surely only Victorian Gothic, ever produced a gargoyle that had
the remotest right to be associated with the neat brightness of
Marjorie's face).
She overlooked the offence, and the pseudo-twins boarded the cart from
behind, whereupon the already overburthened donkey, being old and in a
manner wise, quickened his pace for the house to get the whole thing
over.
"It's really an avenue," said Daffy; but Marjorie, with her mind strung
up to the Carmel standards, couldn't agree. It was like calling a row of
boy-scouts Potsdam grenadiers. The trees were at irregular distances, of
various ages, and mostly on one side. Still it was a shady, pleasant
approach.
And the vicarage was truly very interesting and amusing. To these
Londoners accustomed to live in a state of compression, elbows
practically touching, in a tall, narrow fore-and-aft stucco house, all
window and staircase, in a despondent Brompton square, there was an
effect of maundering freedom about the place, of enlargement almost to
the pitch of adventure and sunlight to the pitch of intoxication. The
house itself was long and low, as if a London house holidaying in the
country had flung itself asprawl; it had two disconnected and roomy
staircases, and when it had exhausted itself completely as a house, it
turned to the right and began again as rambling, empty stables, coach
house, cart sheds, men's bedrooms up ladders, and outhouses of the most
various kinds. On one hand was a neglected orchard, in the front of the
house was a bald, worried-looking lawn area capable of simultaneous
tennis and croquet, and at the other side a copious and confused
vegetable and flower garden full of roses, honesty, hollyhocks, and
suchlike herbaceous biennials and perennials, lapsed at last into
shrubbery, where a sickle-shaped, weedy lagoon of uncertain aims, which
had evidently, as a rustic bridge and a weeping willow confessed,
aspired to be an "ornamental water," declined at last to ducks. And
there was access to the church, and the key of the church tower, and one
went across the corner of the lawn, and by a little iron gate into the
churchyard to decipher inscriptions, as if the tombs of all
Buryhamstreet were no more than a part of the accommodation relinquished
by the vicar's household.
Marjorie was hurried over the chief points of all this at a breakneck
pace by Sydney and Rom, and when Sydney was called away to the horrors
of practice--for Sydney in spite of considerable reluctance was destined
by her father to be "the musical one"--Rom developed a copious
affection, due apparently to some occult aesthetic influence in
Marjorie's silvery-grey and green, and led her into the unlocked vestry,
and there prayed in a whisper that she might be given "one good hug,
just _one_"--and so they came out with their arms about each other very
affectionately to visit the lagoon again. And then Rom remembered that
Marjorie hadn't seen either the walnut-tree in the orchard, or the hen
with nine chicks....
Somewhere among all these interests came tea and Mrs. Pope.
Mrs. Pope kissed her daughter with an air of having really wanted to
kiss her half an hour ago, but of having been distracted since. She was
a fine-featured, anxious-looking little woman, with a close resemblance
to all her children, in spite of the fact that they were markedly
dissimilar one to the other, except only that they took their ruddy
colourings from their father. She was dressed in a neat blue dress that
had perhaps been hurriedly chosen, and her method of doing her hair was
a manifest compromise between duty and pleasure. She embarked at once
upon an exposition of the bedroom arrangements, which evidently involved
difficult issues. Marjorie was to share a room with Daffy--that was the
gist of it--as the only other available apartment, originally promised
to Marjorie, had been secured by Mr. Pope for what he called his
"matutinal ablutions, _videlicet_ tub."
"Then, when your Aunt Plessington comes, you won't have to move," said
Mrs. Pope with an air of a special concession. "Your father's looking
forward to seeing you, but he mustn't be disturbed just yet. He's in the
vicar's study. He's had his tea in there. He's writing a letter to the
_Times_ answering something they said in a leader, and also a private
note calling attention to their delay in printing his previous
communication, and he wants to be delicately ironical without being in
any way offensive. He wants to hint without actually threatening that
very probably he will go over to the _Spectator_ altogether if they do
not become more attentive. The _Times_ used to print his letters
punctually, but latterly these automobile people seem to have got hold
of it.... He has the window on the lawn open, so that I think, perhaps,
we'd better not stay out here--for fear our voices might disturb him."
"Better get right round the other side of the church," said Daffy.
"He'd hear far less of us if we went indoors," said Mrs. Pope.
Sec. 4
The vicarage seemed tight packed with human interest for Marjorie and
her mother and sisters. Going over houses is one of the amusements
proper to her sex, and she and all three sisters and her mother, as soon
as they had finished an inaudible tea, went to see the bedroom she was
to share with Daffy, and then examined, carefully and in order, the
furniture and decoration of the other bedrooms, went through the rooms
downstairs, always excepting and avoiding very carefully and closing as
many doors as possible on, and hushing their voices whenever they
approached the study in which her father was being delicately ironical
without being offensive to the _Times_. None of them had seen any of the
vicarage people at all--Mr. Pope had come on a bicycle and managed all
the negotiations--and it was curious to speculate about the individuals
whose personalities pervaded the worn and faded furnishings of the
place.
The Popes' keen-eyed inspection came at times, I think, dangerously near
prying. The ideals of decoration and interests of the vanished family
were so absolutely dissimilar to the London standards as to arouse a
sort of astonished wonder in their minds. Some of the things they
decided were perfectly hideous, some quaint, some were simply and weakly
silly. Everything was different from Hartstone Square. Daffy was perhaps
more inclined to contempt, and Mrs. Pope to refined amusement and witty
appreciation than Marjorie. Marjorie felt there was something in these
people that she didn't begin to understand, she needed some missing
clue that would unlock the secret of their confused peculiarity. She was
one of those people who have an almost instinctive turn for decoration
in costume and furniture; she had already had a taste of how to do
things in arranging her rooms at Bennett College, Oxbridge, where also
she was in great demand among the richer girls as an adviser. She knew
what it was to try and fail as well as to try and succeed, and these
people, she felt, hadn't tried for anything she comprehended. She
couldn't quite see why it was that there was at the same time an attempt
at ornament and a disregard of beauty, she couldn't quite do as her
mother did and dismiss it as an absurdity and have done with it. She
couldn't understand, too, why everything should be as if it were faded
and weakened from something originally bright and clear.
All the rooms were thick with queer little objects that indicated a
quite beaver-like industry in the production of "work." There were
embroidered covers for nearly every article on the wash-hand-stand, and
mats of wool and crochet wherever anything stood on anything; there were
"tidies" everywhere, and odd little brackets covered with gilded and
varnished fir cones and bearing framed photographs and little jars and
all sorts of colourless, dusty little objects, and everywhere on the
walls tacks sustained crossed fans with badly painted flowers or
transfer pictures. There was a jar on the bedroom mantel covered with
varnished postage stamps and containing grey-haired dried grasses. There
seemed to be a moral element in all this, for in the room Sydney shared
with Rom there was a decorative piece of lettering which declared that--
"Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose."
There were a great number of texts that set Marjorie's mind stirring
dimly with intimations of a missed significance. Over her own bed,
within the lattice of an Oxford frame, was the photograph of a picture
of an extremely composed young woman in a trailing robe, clinging to the
Rock of Ages in the midst of histrionically aggressive waves, and she
had a feeling, rather than a thought, that perhaps for all the oddity of
the presentation it did convey something acutely desirable, that she
herself had had moods when she would have found something very
comforting in just such an impassioned grip. And on a framed,
floriferous card, these incomprehensible words:
|================================|
|THY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR ME. |
|================================|
seemed to be saying something to her tantalizingly just outside her
range of apprehension.
Did all these things light up somehow to those dispossessed people--from
some angle she didn't attain? Were they living and moving realities when
those others were at home again?
The drawing-room had no texts; it was altogether more pretentious and
less haunted by the faint and faded flavour of religion that pervaded
the bedrooms. It had, however, evidences of travel in Switzerland and
the Mediterranean. There was a piano in black and gold, a little out of
tune, and surmounted by a Benares brass jar, enveloping a scarlet
geranium in a pot. There was a Japanese screen of gold wrought upon
black, that screened nothing. There was a framed chromo-lithograph of
Jerusalem hot in the sunset, and another of Jerusalem cold under a
sub-tropical moon, and there were gourds, roses of Jericho, sandalwood
rosaries and kindred trash from the Holy Land in no little profusion
upon a what-not. Such books as the room had contained had been arranged
as symmetrically as possible about a large, pink-shaded lamp upon the
claret-coloured cloth of a round table, and were to be replaced, Mrs.
Pope said, at their departure. At present they were piled on a
side-table. The girls had been through them all, and were ready with the
choicer morsels for Marjorie's amusement. There was "Black Beauty," the
sympathetic story of a soundly Anglican horse, and a large Bible
extra-illustrated with photographs of every well-known scriptural
picture from Michael Angelo to Dore, and a book of injunctions to young
ladies upon their behaviour and deportment that Rom and Sydney found
particularly entertaining. Marjorie discovered that Sydney had picked up
a new favourite phrase. "I'm afraid we're all dreadfully cynical," said
Sydney, several times.
A more advanced note was struck by a copy of "Aurora Leigh," richly
underlined in pencil, but with exclamation marks at some of the bolder
passages....
And presently, still avoiding the open study window very elaborately,
this little group of twentieth century people went again into the
church--the church whose foundations were laid in A.D. 912--foundations
of rubble and cement that included flat Roman bricks from a still
remoter basilica. Their voices dropped instinctively, as they came into
its shaded quiet from the exterior sunshine. Marjorie went a little
apart and sat in a pew that gave her a glimpse of the one good
stained-glass window. Rom followed her, and perceiving her mood to be
restful, sat a yard away. Syd began a whispered dispute with her mother
whether it wasn't possible to try the organ, and whether Theodore might
not be bribed to blow. Daffy discovered relics of a lepers' squint and a
holy-water stoup, and then went to scrutinize the lettering of the ten
commandments of the Mosaic law that shone black and red on gold on
either side of the I.H.S. monogram behind the white-clothed communion
table that had once been the altar. Upon a notice board hung about the
waist of the portly pulpit were the numbers of hymns that had been sung
three days ago. The sound Protestantism of the vicar had banished
superfluous crosses from the building; the Bible reposed upon the wings
of a great brass eagle; shining blue and crimson in the window, Saint
Christopher carried his Lord. What a harmonized synthesis of conflicts a
country church presents! What invisible mysteries of filiation spread
between these ancient ornaments and symbols and the new young minds from
the whirlpool of the town that looked upon them now with such bright,
keen eyes, wondering a little, feeling a little, missing so much?
It was all so very cool and quiet now--with something of the immobile
serenity of death.
Sec. 5
When Mr. Pope had finished his letter to the _Times_, he got out of the
window of the study, treading on a flower-bed as he did so--he was the
sort of man who treads on flower-beds--partly with the purpose of
reading his composition aloud to as many members of his family as he
could assemble for the purpose, and so giving them a chance of
appreciating the nuances of his irony more fully than if they saw it
just in cold print without the advantage of his intonation, and partly
with the belated idea of welcoming Marjorie. The law presented a rather
discouraging desolation. Then he became aware that the church tower
frothed with his daughters. In view of his need of an audience, he
decided after a brief doubt that their presence there was
unobjectionable, and waved his MS. amiably. Marjorie flapped a
handkerchief in reply....
The subsequent hour was just the sort of hour that gave Mr. Pope an
almost meteorological importance to his family. He began with an
amiability that had no fault, except, perhaps, that it was a little
forced after the epistolary strain in the study, and his welcome to
Marjorie was more than cordial. "Well, little Madge-cat!" he said,
giving her an affectionate but sound and heavy thump on the left
shoulder-blade, "got a kiss for the old daddy?"
Marjorie submitted a cheek.
"That's right," said Mr. Pope; "and now I just want you all to advise
me----"
He led the way to a group of wicker garden chairs. "You're coming,
mummy?" he said, and seated himself comfortably and drew out a spectacle
case, while his family grouped itself dutifully. It made a charming
little picture of a Man and his Womankind. "I don't often flatter
myself," he said, "but this time I think I've been neat--neat's the word
for it."
He cleared his throat, put on his spectacles, and emitted a long, flat
preliminary note, rather like the sound of a child's trumpet. "Er--'Dear
Sir!'"
"Rom," said Mrs. Pope, "don't creak your chair."
"It's Daffy, mother," said Rom.
"Oh, _Rom!_" said Daffy.
Mr. Pope paused, and looked with a warning eye over his left
spectacle-glass at Rom.
"Don't creak your chair, Rom," he said, "when your mother tells you."
"I was _not_ creaking my chair," said Rom.
"I heard it," said Mr. Pope, suavely.
"It was Daffy."
"Your mother does not think so," said Mr. Pope.
"Oh, all right! I'll sit on the ground," said Rom, crimson to the roots
of her hair.
"Me too," said Daffy. "I'd rather."
Mr. Pope watched the transfer gravely. Then he readjusted his glasses,
cleared his throat again, trumpeted, and began. "Er--'Dear Sir,'"
"Oughtn't it to be simply 'Sir,' father, for an editor?" said Marjorie.
"Perhaps I didn't explain, Marjorie," said her father, with the calm of
great self-restraint, and dabbing his left hand on the manuscript in his
right, "that this is a _private_ letter--a private letter."
"I didn't understand," said Marjorie.
"It would have been evident as I went on," said Mr. Pope, and prepared
to read again.
This time he was allowed to proceed, but the interruptions had ruffled
him, and the gentle stresses that should have lifted the subtleties of
his irony into prominence missed the words, and he had to go back and do
his sentences again. Then Rom suddenly, horribly, uncontrollably, was
seized with hiccups. At the second hiccup Mr. Pope paused, and looked
very hard at his daughter with magnified eyes; as he was about to
resume, the third burst its way through the unhappy child's utmost
effort.
Mr. Pope rose with an awful resignation. "That's enough," he said. He
regarded the pseudo-twin vindictively. "You haven't the self-control of
a child of six," he said. Then very touchingly to Mrs. Pope: "Mummy,
shall we try a game of tennis with the New Generation?"
"Can't you read it after supper?" asked Mrs. Pope.
"It must go by the eight o'clock post," said Mr. Pope, putting the
masterpiece into his breast pocket, the little masterpiece that would
now perhaps never be read aloud to any human being. "Daffy, dear, do you
mind going in for the racquets and balls?"
The social atmosphere was now sultry, and overcast, and Mr. Pope's
decision to spend the interval before Daffy returned in seeing whether
he couldn't do something to the net, which was certainly very
unsatisfactory, did not improve matters. Then, unhappily, Marjorie, who
had got rather keen upon tennis at the Carmels', claimed her father's
first two services as faults, contrary to the etiquette of the family.
It happened that Mr. Pope had a really very good, hard, difficult,
smart-looking serve, whose only defect was that it always went either
too far or else into the net, and so a feeling had been fostered and
established by his wife that, on the whole, it was advisable to regard
the former variety as a legitimate extension of a father's authority.
Naturally, therefore, Mr. Pope was nettled at Marjorie's ruling, and his
irritation increased when his next two services to Daffy perished in the
net. ("Damn that net! Puts one's eye out.") Then Marjorie gave him an
unexpected soft return which he somehow muffed, and then Daffy just
dropped a return over the top of the net. (Love-game.) It was then
Marjorie's turn to serve, which she did with a new twist acquired from
the eldest Carmel boy that struck Mr. Pope as un-English. "Go on," he
said concisely. "Fifteen love."
She was gentle with her mother and they got their first rally, and when
it was over Mr. Pope had to explain to Marjorie that if she returned
right up into his corner of the court he would have to run backwards
very fast and might fall over down the silly slope at that end. She
would have to consider him and the court. One didn't get everything out
of a game by playing merely to win. She said "All right, Daddy," rather
off-handedly, and immediately served to him again, and he, taken a
little unawares, hit the ball with the edge of his racquet and sent it
out, and then he changed racquets with Daffy--it seemed he had known all
along she had taken his, but he had preferred to say nothing--uttered a
word of advice to his wife just on her stroke, and she, failing to grasp
his intention as quickly as she ought to have done, left the score
forty-fifteen. He felt better when he returned Marjorie's serve, and
then before she could control herself she repeated her new unpleasant
trick of playing into the corner again, whereupon, leaping back with an
agility that would have shamed many a younger man, Mr. Pope came upon
disaster. He went spinning down the treacherous slope behind, twisted
his ankle painfully and collapsed against the iron railings of the
shrubbery. It was too much, and he lost control of himself. His
daughters had one instant's glimpse of the linguistic possibilities of a
strong man's agony. "I told her," he went on as if he had said nothing.
"_Tennis!_"
For a second perhaps he seemed to hesitate upon a course of action. Then
as if by a great effort he took his coat from the net post and addressed
himself houseward, incarnate Grand Dudgeon--limping.
"Had enough of it, Mummy," he said, and added some happily inaudible
comment on Marjorie's new style of play.
The evening's exercise was at an end.
The three ladies regarded one another in silence for some moments.
"I will take in the racquets, dear," said Mrs. Pope.
"I think the other ball is at your end," said Daffy....
The apparatus put away, Marjorie and her sister strolled thoughtfully
away from the house.
"There's croquet here too," said Daffy. "We've not had the things out
yet!"....
"He'll play, I suppose."
"He wants to play."...
"Of course," said Marjorie after a long pause, "there's no _reasoning_
with Dad!"
Sec. 6
Character is one of England's noblest and most deliberate products, but
some Englishmen have it to excess. Mr. Pope had.
He was one of that large and representative class which imparts a
dignity to national commerce by inheriting big businesses from its
ancestors. He was a coach-builder by birth, and a gentleman by education
and training. He had been to City Merchant's and Cambridge.
Throughout the earlier half of the nineteenth century the Popes had been
the princes of the coach-building world. Mr. Pope's great-grandfather
had been a North London wheelwright of conspicuous dexterity and
integrity, who had founded the family business; his son, Mr. Pope's
grandfather, had made that business the occupation of his life and
brought it to the pinnacle of pre-eminence; his son, who was Marjorie's
grandfather, had displayed a lesser enthusiasm, left the house at the
works for a home ten miles away and sent a second son into the Church.
It was in the days of the third Pope that the business ceased to expand,
and began to suffer severely from the competition of an enterprising
person who had originally supplied the firm with varnish, gradually
picked up the trade in most other materials and accessories needed in
coach-building, and passed on by almost imperceptible stages to
delivering the article complete--dispensing at last altogether with the
intervention of Pope and Son--to the customer. Marjorie's father had
succeeded in the fulness of time to the inheritance this insurgent had
damaged.
Mr. Pope was a man of firm and resentful temper, with an admiration for
Cato, Brutus, Cincinnatus, Cromwell, Washington, and the sterner heroes
generally, and by nature a little ill-used and offended at things. He
suffered from indigestion and extreme irritability. He found himself in
control of a business where more flexible virtues were needed. The Popes
based their fame on a heavy, proud type of vehicle, which the increasing
luxury and triviality of the age tended to replace by lighter forms of
carriage, carriages with diminutive and apologetic names. As these
lighter forms were not only lighter but less expensive, Mr. Pope with a
pathetic confidence in the loyalty of the better class of West End
customer, determined to "make a stand" against them. He was the sort of
man to whom making a stand is in itself a sombre joy. If he had had to
choose his pose for a portrait, he would certainly have decided to have
one foot advanced, the other planted like a British oak behind, the arms
folded and the brows corrugated,--making a stand.
Unhappily the stars in their courses and the general improvement of
roads throughout the country fought against him. The lighter carriages,
and especially the lighter carriages of that varnish-selling firm, which
was now absorbing businesses right and left, prevailed over Mr. Pope's
resistance. For crossing a mountain pass or fording a river, for driving
over the scene of a recent earthquake or following a retreating army,
for being run away with by frantic horses or crushing a personal enemy,
there can be no doubt the Pope carriages remained to the very last the
best possible ones and fully worth the inflexible price demanded.
Unhappily all carriages in a civilization essentially decadent are not
subjected to these tests, and the manufactures of his rivals were not
only much cheaper, but had a sort of meretricious smartness, a
disingenuous elasticity, above all a levity, hateful indeed to the
spirit of Mr. Pope yet attractive to the wanton customer. Business
dwindled. Nevertheless the habitual element in the good class customer
did keep things going, albeit on a shrinking scale, until Mr. Pope came
to the unfortunate decision that he would make a stand against
automobiles. He regarded them as an intrusive nuisance which had to be
seen only to be disowned by the landed gentry of England. Rather than
build a car he said he would go out of business. He went out of
business. Within five years of this determination he sold out the name,
good will, and other vestiges of his concern to a mysterious buyer who
turned out to be no more than an agent for these persistently expanding
varnish makers, and he retired with a genuine grievance upon the family
accumulations--chiefly in Consols and Home Railways.
He refused however to regard his defeat as final, put great faith in the
approaching exhaustion of the petrol supply, and talked in a manner that
should have made the Automobile Association uneasy, of devoting the
rest of his days to the purification of England from these aggressive
mechanisms. "It was a mistake," he said, "to let them in." He became
more frequent at his excellent West End club, and directed a certain
portion of his capital to largely indecisive but on the whole
unprofitable speculations in South African and South American
enterprises. He mingled a little in affairs. He was a tough conventional
speaker, rich in established phrases and never abashed by hearing
himself say commonplace things, and in addition to his campaign against
automobiles he found time to engage also in quasi-political activities,
taking chairs, saying a few words and so on, cherishing a fluctuating
hope that his eloquence might ultimately win him an invitation to
contest a constituency in the interests of reaction and the sounder
elements in the Liberal party.
He had a public-spirited side, and he was particularly attracted by that
mass of modern legislative proposals which aims at a more systematic
control of the lives of lower class persons for their own good by their
betters. Indeed, in the first enthusiasm of his proprietorship of the
Pope works at East Purblow, he had organized one of those benevolent
industrial experiments that are now so common. He felt strongly against
the drink evil, that is to say, the unrestricted liberty of common
people to drink what they prefer, and he was acutely impressed by the
fact that working-class families do not spend their money in the way
that seems most desirable to upper middle-class critics. Accordingly he
did his best to replace the dangerous freedoms of money by that ideal of
the social reformer, Payment in Kind. To use his invariable phrase, the
East Purblow experiment did "no mean service" to the cause of social
reform. Unhappily it came to an end through a prosecution under the
Truck Act, that blot upon the Statute Book, designed, it would appear,
even deliberately to vitiate man's benevolent control of his fellow man.
The lessons to be drawn from that experience, however, grew if anything
with the years. He rarely spoke without an allusion to it, and it was
quite remarkable how readily it could be adapted to illuminate a hundred
different issues in the hospitable columns of the _Spectator_....
Sec. 7
At seven o'clock Marjorie found herself upstairs changing into her
apple-green frock. She had had a good refreshing wash in cold soft
water, and it was pleasant to change into thinner silk stockings and
dainty satin slippers and let down and at last brush her hair and dress
loiteringly after the fatigues of her journey and the activities of her
arrival. She looked out on the big church and the big trees behind it
against the golden quiet of a summer evening with extreme approval.
"I suppose those birds are rooks," she said.
But Daffy had gone to see that the pseudo-twins had done themselves
justice in their muslin frocks and pink sashes; they were apt to be a
little sketchy with their less accessible buttons.
Marjorie became aware of two gentlemen with her mother on the lawn
below.
One was her almost affianced lover, Will Magnet, the humorous writer.
She had been doing her best not to think about him all day, but now he
became an unavoidable central fact. She regarded him with an almost
perplexed scrutiny, and wondered vividly why she had been so excited and
pleased by his attentions during the previous summer.
Mr. Magnet was one of those quiet, deliberately unassuming people who do
not even attempt to be beautiful. Not for him was it to pretend, but to
prick the bladder of pretence. He was a fairish man of forty, pale, with
a large protuberant, observant grey eye--I speak particularly of the
left--and a face of quiet animation warily alert for the wit's
opportunity. His nose and chin were pointed, and his lips thin and
quaintly pressed together. He was dressed in grey, with a low-collared
silken shirt showing a thin neck, and a flowing black tie, and he
carried a grey felt hat in his joined hands behind his back. She could
hear the insinuating cadences of his voice as he talked in her mother's
ear. The other gentleman, silent on her mother's right, must, she knew,
be Mr. Wintersloan, whom Mr. Magnet had proposed to bring over. His
dress betrayed that modest gaiety of disposition becoming in an artist,
and indeed he was one of Mr. Magnet's favourite illustrators. He was in
a dark bluish-grey suit; a black tie that was quite unusually broad went
twice around his neck before succumbing to the bow, and his waistcoat
appeared to be of some gaily-patterned orange silk. Marjorie's eyes
returned to Mr. Magnet. Hitherto she had never had an opportunity of
remarking that his hair was more than a little attenuated towards the
crown. It was funny how his tie came out under his chin to the right.
What an odd thing men's dress had become, she thought. Why did they wear
those ridiculous collars and ties? Why didn't they always dress in
flannels and look as fine and slender and active as the elder Carmel boy
for example? Mr. Magnet couldn't be such an ill-shaped man. Why didn't
every one dress to be just as beautiful and splendid as
possible?--instead of wearing queer things!
"Coming down?" said Daffy, a vision of sulphur-yellow, appearing in the
doorway.
"Let _them_ go first," said Marjorie, with a finer sense of effect. "And
Theodore. We don't want to make part of a comic entry with Theodore,
Daffy."
Accordingly, the two sisters watched discreetly--they had to be wary on
account of Mr. Magnet's increasingly frequent glances at the
windows--and when at last all the rest of the family had appeared below,
they decided their cue had come. Mr. Pope strolled into the group, with
no trace of his recent debacle except a slight limp. He was wearing a
jacket of damson-coloured velvet, which he affected in the country, and
all traces of his Grand Dudgeon were gone. But then he rarely had Grand
Dudgeon except in the sanctities of family life, and hardly ever when
any other man was about.
"Well," his daughters heard him say, with a witty allusiveness that was
difficult to follow, "so the Magnet has come to the Mountain again--eh?"
"Come on, Madge," said Daffy, and the two sisters emerged harmoniously
together from the house.
It would have been manifest to a meaner capacity than any present that
evening that Mr. Magnet regarded Marjorie with a distinguished
significance. He had two eyes, but he had that mysterious quality so
frequently associated with a bluish-grey iris which gives the effect of
looking hard with one large orb, a sort of grey searchlight effect, and
he used this eye ray now to convey a respectful but firm admiration in
the most unequivocal manner. He saluted Daffy courteously, and then
allowed himself to retain Marjorie's hand for just a second longer than
was necessary as he said--very simply--"I am very pleased indeed to meet
you again--very."
A slight embarrassment fell between them.
"You are staying near here, Mr. Magnet?"
"At the inn," said Mr. Magnet, and then, "I chose it because it would be
near you."
His eye pressed upon her again for a moment.
"Is it comfortable?" said Marjorie.
"So charmingly simple," said Mr. Magnet. "I love it."
A tinkling bell announced the preparedness of supper, and roused the
others to the consciousness that they were silently watching Mr. Magnet
and Marjorie.
"It's quite a simple farmhouse supper," said Mrs. Pope.
Sec. 8
There were ducks, green peas, and adolescent new potatoes for supper,
and afterwards stewed fruit and cream and junket and cheese, bottled
beer, Gilbey's Burgundy, and home-made lemonade. Mrs. Pope carved,
because Mr. Pope splashed too much, and bones upset him and made him
want to show up chicken in the _Times_. So he sat at the other end and
rallied his guests while Mrs. Pope distributed the viands. He showed not
a trace of his recent umbrage. Theodore sat between Daffy and his mother
because of his table manners, and Marjorie was on her father's right
hand and next to Mr. Wintersloan, while Mr. Magnet was in the middle of
the table on the opposite side in a position convenient for looking at
her. Both maids waited.
The presence of Magnet invariably stirred the latent humorist in Mr.
Pope. He felt that he who talks to humorists should himself be humorous,
and it was his private persuasion that with more attention he might have
been, to use a favourite form of expression, "no mean jester." Quite a
lot of little things of his were cherished as "Good" both by himself
and, with occasional inaccuracies, by Mrs. Pope. He opened out now in a
strain of rich allusiveness.
"What will you drink, Mr. Wintersloan?" he said. "Wine of the country,
yclept beer, red wine from France, or my wife's potent brew from the
golden lemon?"
Mr. Wintersloan thought he would take Burgundy. Mr. Magnet preferred
beer.
"I've heard there's iron in the Beer,
And I believe it,"
misquoted Mr. Pope, and nodded as it were to the marker to score. "Daffy
and Marjorie are still in the lemonade stage. Will you take a little
Burgundy to-night, Mummy?"
Mrs. Pope decided she would, and was inspired to ask Mr. Wintersloan if
he had been in that part of the country before. Topography ensued. Mr.
Wintersloan had a style of his own, and spoke of the Buryhamstreet
district as a "pooty little country--pooty little hills, with a swirl in
them."
This pleased Daffy and Marjorie, and their eyes met for a moment.
Then Mr. Magnet, with a ray full on Marjorie, said he had always been
fond of Surrey. "I think if ever I made a home in the country I should
like it to be here."
Mr. Wintersloan said Surrey would tire him, it was too bossy and curly,
too flocculent; he would prefer to look on broader, simpler lines, with
just a sudden catch in the breath in them--if you understand me?
Marjorie did, and said so.
"A sob--such as you get at the break of a pinewood on a hill."
This baffled Mr. Pope, but Marjorie took it. "Or the short dry cough of
a cliff," she said.
"Exactly," said Mr. Wintersloan, and having turned a little deliberate
close-lipped smile on her for a moment, resumed his wing.
"So long as a landscape doesn't _sneeze_" said Mr. Magnet, in that
irresistible dry way of his, and Rom and Sydney, at any rate, choked.
"Now is the hour when Landscapes yawn," mused Mr. Pope, coming in all
right at the end.
Then Mrs. Pope asked Mr. Wintersloan, about his route to Buryhamstreet,
and then Mr. Pope asked Mr. Magnet whether he was playing at a new work
or working at a new play.
Mr. Magnet said he was dreaming over a play. He wanted to bring out the
more serious side of his humour, go a little deeper into things than he
had hitherto done.
"Mingling smiles and tears," said Mr. Pope approvingly.
Mr. Magnet said very quietly that all true humour did that.
Then Mrs. Pope asked what the play was to be about, and Mr. Magnet, who
seemed disinclined to give an answer, turned the subject by saying he
had to prepare an address on humour for the next dinner of the
_Literati_. "It's to be a humourist's dinner, and they've made me the
guest of the evening--by way of a joke to begin with," he said with that
dry smile again.
Mrs. Pope said he shouldn't say things like that. She then said "Syd!"
quietly but sharply to Sydney, who was making a disdainful, squinting
face at Theodore, and told the parlourmaid to clear the plates for
sweets. Mr. Magnet professed great horror of public speaking. He said
that whenever he rose to make an after-dinner speech all the ices he had
ever eaten seemed to come out of the past, and sit on his backbone.
The talk centered for awhile on Mr. Magnet's address, and apropos of
Tests of Humour Mr. Pope, who in his way was "no mean raconteur,"
related the story of the man who took the salad dressing with his hand,
and when his host asked why he did that, replied: "Oh! I thought it was
spinach!"
"Many people," added Mr. Pope, "wouldn't see the point of that. And if
they don't see the point they can't--and the more they try the less they
do."
All four girls hoped secretly and not too confidently that their
laughter had not sounded hollow.
And then for a time the men told stories as they came into their heads
in an easy, irresponsible way. Mr. Magnet spoke of the humour of the
omnibus-driver who always dangled and twiddled his badge "by way of a
joke" when he passed the conductor whose father had been hanged, and Mr.
Pope, perhaps, a little irrelevantly, told the story of the little boy
who was asked his father's last words, and said "mother was with him to
the end," which particularly amused Mrs. Pope. Mr. Wintersloan gave the
story of the woman who was taking her son to the hospital with his head
jammed into a saucepan, and explained to the other people in the
omnibus: "You see, what makes it so annoying, it's me only saucepan!"
Then they came back to the Sense of Humour with the dentist who shouted
with laughter, and when asked the reason by his patient, choked out:
"Wrong tooth!" and then Mr. Pope reminded them of the heartless husband
who, suddenly informed that his mother-in-law was dead, exclaimed "Oh,
don't make me laugh, please, I've got a split lip...."
Sec. 9
The conversation assumed a less anecdotal quality with the removal to
the drawing-room. On Mr. Magnet's initiative the gentlemen followed the
ladies almost immediately, and it was Mr. Magnet who remembered that
Marjorie could sing.
Both the elder sisters indeed had sweet clear voices, and they had
learnt a number of those jolly songs the English made before the dull
Hanoverians came. Syd accompanied, and Rom sat back in the low chair in
the corner and fell deeply in love with Mr. Wintersloan. The three
musicians in their green and sulphur-yellow and white made a pretty
group in the light of the shaded lamp against the black and gold
Broadwood, the tawdry screen, its pattern thin glittering upon darkness,
and the deep shadows behind. Marjorie loved singing, and forgot herself
as she sang.
"I love, and he loves me again,
Yet dare I not tell who;
For if the nymphs should know my swain,
I fear they'd love him too,"
she sang, and Mr. Magnet could not conceal the intensity of his
admiration.
Mr. Pope had fallen into a pleasant musing; several other ripe old
yarns, dear delicious old things, had come into his mind that he felt he
might presently recall when this unavoidable display of accomplishments
was overpast, and it was with one of them almost on his lips that he
glanced across at his guest. He was surprised to see Mr. Magnet's face
transfigured. He was sitting forward, looking up at Marjorie, and he had
caught something of the expression of those blessed boys who froth at
the feet of an Assumption. For an instant Mr. Pope did not understand.
Then he understood. It was Marjorie! He had a twinge of surprise, and
glanced at his own daughter as though he had never seen her before. He
perceived in a flash for the first time that this troublesome, clever,
disrespectful child was tall and shapely and sweet, and indeed quite a
beautiful young woman. He forgot his anecdotes. His being was suffused
with pride and responsibility and the sense of virtue rewarded. He did
not reflect for a moment that Marjorie embodied in almost equal
proportions the very best points in his mother and his mother-in-law,
and avoided his own more salient characteristics with so neat a
dexterity that from top to toe, except for the one matter of colour, not
only did she not resemble him but she scarcely even alluded to him. He
thought simply that she was his daughter, that she derived from him,
that her beauty was his. She was the outcome of his meritorious
preparations. He recalled all the moments when he had been kind and
indulgent to her, all the bills he had paid for her; all the stresses
and trials of the coach-building collapse, all the fluctuations of his
speculative adventures, became things he had faced patiently and
valiantly for her sake. He forgot the endless times when he had been
viciously cross with her, all the times when he had pished and tushed
and sworn in her hearing. He had on provocation and in spite of her
mother's protests slapped her pretty vigorously, but such things are
better forgotten; nor did he recall how bitterly he had opposed the
college education which had made her now so clear in eye and thought,
nor the frightful shindy, only three months since, about that identical
green dress in which she now stood delightful. He forgot these petty
details, as an idealist should. There she was, his daughter. An immense
benevolence irradiated his soul--for Marjorie--for Magnet. His eyes were
suffused with a not ignoble tenderness. The man, he knew, was worth at
least thirty-five thousand pounds, a discussion of investments had made
that clear, and he must be making at least five thousand a year! A
beautiful girl, a worthy man! A good fellow, a sound good fellow, a
careful fellow too--as these fellows went!
Old Daddy would lose his treasure of course.
Well, a father must learn resignation, and he for one would not stand in
the way of his girl's happiness. A day would come when, very beautifully
and tenderly, he would hand her over to Magnet, his favourite daughter
to his trusted friend. "Well, my boy, there's no one in all the
world----" he would begin.
It would be a touching parting. "Don't forget your old father, Maggots,"
he would say. At such a moment that quaint nickname would surely not be
resented....
He reflected how much he had always preferred Marjorie to Daffy. She was
brighter--more like him. Daffy was unresponsive, with a touch of
bitterness under her tongue....
He was already dreaming he was a widower, rather infirm, the object of
Magnet's and Marjorie's devoted care, when the song ceased, and the wife
he had for the purpose of reveries just consigned so carelessly to the
cemetery proposed that they should have a little game that every one
could play at. A number of pencils and slips of paper appeared in her
hands. She did not want the girls to exhaust their repertory on this
first occasion--and besides, Mr. Pope liked games in which one did
things with pencils and strips of paper. Mr. Magnet wished the singing
to go on, he said, but he was overruled.
So for a time every one played a little game in which Mr. Pope was
particularly proficient. Indeed, it was rare that any one won but Mr.
Pope. It was called "The Great Departed," and it had such considerable
educational value that all the children had to play at it whenever he
wished.
It was played in this manner; one of the pseudo twins opened a book and
dabbed a finger on the page, and read out the letter immediately at the
tip of her finger, then all of them began to write as hard as they
could, writing down the names of every great person they could think of,
whose name began with that letter. At the end of five minutes Mr. Pope
said Stop! and then began to read his list out, beginning with the first
name. Everybody who had that name crossed it out and scored one, and
after his list was exhausted all the surviving names on the next list
were read over in the same way, and so on. The names had to be the names
of dead celebrated people, only one monarch of the same name of the same
dynasty was allowed, and Mr. Pope adjudicated on all doubtful cases. It
was great fun.
The first two games were won as usual by Mr. Pope, and then Mr.
Wintersloan, who had been a little distraught in his manner, brightened
up and scribbled furiously.
The letter was _D_, and after Mr. Pope had rehearsed a tale of nine and
twenty names, Mr. Wintersloan read out his list in that curious voice of
his which suggested nothing so much as some mobile drink glucking out of
the neck of a bottle held upside down.
"Dahl," he began.
"Who was Dahl?" asked Mr. Pope.
"'Vented dahlias," said Mr. Wintersloan, with a sigh. "Danton."
"Forgot him," said Mr. Pope.
"Davis."
"Davis?"
"Davis Straits. Doe."
"Who?"
"John Doe, Richard Roe."
"Legal fiction, I'm afraid," said Mr. Pope.
"Dam," said Mr. Wintersloan, and added after a slight pause: "Anthony
van."
Mr. Pope made an interrogative noise.
"Painter--eighteenth century--Dutch. Dam, Jan van, his son. Dam,
Frederich van. Dam, Wilhelm van. Dam, Diedrich van. Dam, Wilhelmina,
wood engraver, gifted woman. Diehl."
"Who?"
"Painter--dead--famous. See Duesseldorf. It's all painters now--all
guaranteed dead, all good men. Deeds of Norfolk, the aquarellist,
Denton, Dibbs."
"Er?" said Mr. Pope.
"The Warwick Claude, _you_ know. Died 1823."
"Dickson, Dunting, John Dickery. Peter Dickery, William Dock--I beg your
pardon?"
Mr. Pope was making a protesting gesture, but Mr. Wintersloan's bearing
was invincible, and he proceeded.
In the end he emerged triumphant with forty-nine names, mostly painters
for whose fame he answered, but whose reputations were certainly new to
every one else present. "I can go on like that," said Mr. Wintersloan,
"with any letter," and turned that hard little smile full on Marjorie.
"I didn't see how to do it at first. I just cast about. But I know a
frightful lot of painters. No end. Shall we try again?"
Marjorie glanced at her father. Mr. Wintersloan's methods were all too
evident to her. A curious feeling pervaded the room that Mr. Pope didn't
think Mr. Wintersloan's conduct honourable, and that he might even go
some way towards saying so.
So Mrs. Pope became very brisk and stirring, and said she thought that
now perhaps a charade would be more amusing. It didn't do to keep on at
a game too long. She asked Rom and Daphne and Theodore and Mr.
Wintersloan to go out, and they all agreed readily, particularly Rom.
"Come on!" said Rom to Mr. Wintersloan. Everybody else shifted into an
audience-like group between the piano and the what-not. Mr. Magnet sat
at Marjorie's feet, while Syd played a kind of voluntary, and Mr. Pope
leant back in his chair, with his brows knit and lips moving, trying to
remember something.
The charade _was_ very amusing. The word was Catarrh, and Mr.
Wintersloan, as the patient in the last act being given gruel, surpassed
even the children's very high expectations. Rom, as his nurse, couldn't
keep her hands off him. Then the younger people kissed round and were
packed off to bed, and the rest of the party went to the door upon the
lawn and admired the night. It was a glorious summer night, deep blue,
and rimmed warmly by the afterglow, moonless, and with a few big
lamp-like stars above the black still shapes of trees.
Mrs. Pope said they would all accompany their guests to the gate at the
end of the avenue--in spite of the cockchafers.
Mr. Pope's ankle, however, excused him; the cordiality of his parting
from Mr. Wintersloan seemed a trifle forced, and he limped thoughtfully
and a little sombrely towards the study to see if he could find an
Encyclopaedia or some such book of reference that would give the names of
the lesser lights of Dutch, Italian, and English painting during the
last two centuries.
He felt that Mr. Wintersloan had established an extraordinarily bad
precedent.
Sec. 10
Marjorie discovered that she and Mr. Magnet had fallen a little behind
the others. She would have quickened her pace, but Mr. Magnet stopped
short and said: "Marjorie!"
"When I saw you standing there and singing," said Mr. Magnet, and was
short of breath for a moment.
Marjorie's natural gift for interruption failed her altogether.
"I felt I would rather be able to call you mine--than win an empire."
The pause seemed to lengthen, between them, and Marjorie's remark when
she made it at last struck her even as she made it as being but poorly
conceived. She had some weak idea of being self-depreciatory.
"I think you had better win an empire, Mr. Magnet," she said meekly.
Then, before anything more was possible, they had come up to Daffy and
Mr. Wintersloan and her mother at the gate....
As they returned Mrs. Pope was loud in the praises of Will Magnet. She
had a little clear-cut voice, very carefully and very skilfully
controlled, and she dilated on his modesty, his quiet helpfulness at
table, his ready presence of mind. She pointed out instances of those
admirable traits, incidents small in themselves but charming in their
implications. When somebody wanted junket, he had made no fuss, he had
just helped them to junket. "So modest and unassuming," sang Mrs. Pope.
"You'd never dream he was quite rich and famous. Yet every book he
writes is translated into Russian and German and all sorts of languages.
I suppose he's almost the greatest humorist we have. That play of his;
what is it called?--_Our Owd Woman_--has been performed nearly twelve
hundred times! I think that is the most wonderful of gifts. Think of the
people it has made happy."
The conversation was mainly monologue. Both Marjorie and Daffy were
unusually thoughtful.
Sec. 11
Marjorie ended the long day in a worldly mood.
"Penny for your thoughts," said Daffy abruptly, brushing the long
firelit rapids of her hair.
"Not for sale," said Marjorie, and roused herself. "I've had a long
day."
"It's always just the time I particularly wish I was a man," she
remarked after a brief return to meditation. "Fancy, no hair-pins, no
brushing, no tie-up to get lost about, no strings. I suppose they
haven't strings?"
"They haven't," said Daffy with conviction.
She met Marjorie's interrogative eye. "Father would swear at them," she
explained. "He'd naturally tie himself up--and we should hear of it."
"I didn't think of that," said Marjorie, and stuck out her chin upon her
fists. "Sound induction."
She forgot this transitory curiosity.
"Suppose one had a maid, Daffy--a real maid ... a maid who mended your
things ... did your hair while you read...."
"Oh! here goes," and she stood up and grappled with the task of
undressing.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE TWO PROPOSALS OF MR. MAGNET
Sec. 1
It was presently quite evident to Marjorie that Mr. Magnet intended to
propose marriage to her, and she did not even know whether she wanted
him to do so.
She had met him first the previous summer while she had been staying
with the Petley-Cresthams at High Windower, and it had been evident that
he found her extremely attractive. She had never had a real grown man at
her feet before, and she had found it amazingly entertaining. She had
gone for a walk with him the morning before she came away--a frank and
ingenuous proceeding that made Mrs. Petley-Crestham say the girl knew
what she was about, and she had certainly coquetted with him in an
extraordinary manner at golf-croquet. After that Oxbridge had swallowed
her up, and though he had called once on her mother while Marjorie was
in London during the Christmas vacation, he hadn't seen her again. He
had written--which was exciting--a long friendly humorous letter about
nothing in particular, with an air of its being quite the correct thing
for him to do, and she had answered, and there had been other exchanges.
But all sorts of things had happened in the interval, and Marjorie had
let him get into quite a back place in her thoughts--the fact that he
was a member of her father's club had seemed somehow to remove him from
a great range of possibilities--until a drift in her mother's talk
towards him and a letter from him with an indefinable change in tone
towards intimacy, had restored him to importance. Now here he was in the
foreground of her world again, evidently more ardent than ever, and with
a portentous air of being about to do something decisive at the very
first opportunity. What was he going to do? What had her mother been
hinting at? And what, in fact, did the whole thing amount to?
Marjorie was beginning to realize that this was going to be a very
serious affair indeed for her--and that she was totally unprepared to
meet it.
It had been very amusing, very amusing indeed, at the Petley-Cresthams',
but there were moments now when she felt towards Mr. Magnet exactly as
she would have felt if he had been one of the Oxbridge tradesmen
hovering about her with a "little account," full of apparently
exaggerated items....
Her thoughts and feelings were all in confusion about this business. Her
mind was full of scraps, every sort of idea, every sort of attitude
contributed something to that Twentieth Century jumble. For example, and
so far as its value went among motives, it was by no means a trivial
consideration; she wanted a proposal for its own sake. Daffy had had a
proposal last year, and although it wasn't any sort of eligible
proposal, still there it was, and she had given herself tremendous airs.
But Marjorie would certainly have preferred some lighter kind of
proposal than that which now threatened her. She felt that behind Mr.
Magnet were sanctions; that she wasn't free to deal with this proposal
as she liked. He was at Buryhamstreet almost with the air of being her
parents' guest.
Less clear and more instinctive than her desire for a proposal was her
inclination to see just all that Mr. Magnet was disposed to do, and hear
all that he was disposed to say. She was curious. He didn't behave in
the least as she had expected a lover to behave. But then none of the
boys, the "others" with whom she had at times stretched a hand towards
the hem of emotion, had ever done that. She had an obscure feeling that
perhaps presently Mr. Magnet must light up, be stirred and stirring.
Even now his voice changed very interestingly when he was alone with
her. His breath seemed to go--as though something had pricked his lung.
If it hadn't been for that new, disconcerting realization of an official
pressure behind him, I think she would have been quite ready to
experiment extensively with his emotions....
But she perceived as she lay awake next morning that she wasn't free for
experiments any longer. What she might say or do now would be taken up
very conclusively. And she had no idea what she wanted to say or do.
Marriage regarded in the abstract--that is to say, with Mr. Magnet out
of focus--was by no means an unattractive proposal to her. It was very
much at the back of Marjorie's mind that after Oxbridge, unless she was
prepared to face a very serious row indeed and go to teach in a
school--and she didn't feel any call whatever to teach in a school--she
would probably have to return to Hartstone Square and share Daffy's room
again, and assist in the old collective, wearisome task of propitiating
her father. The freedoms of Oxbridge had enlarged her imagination until
that seemed an almost unendurably irksome prospect. She had tasted life
as it could be in her father's absence, and she was beginning to realize
just what an impossible person he was. Marriage was escape from all
that; it meant not only respectful parents but a house of her very own,
furniture of her choice, great freedom of movement, an authority, an
importance. She had seen what it meant to be a prosperously married
young woman in the person of one or two resplendent old girls revisiting
Bennett College, scattering invitations, offering protections and
opportunities....
Of course there is love.
Marjorie told herself, as she had been trained to tell herself, to be
sensible, but something within her repeated: _there is love_.
Of course she liked Mr. Magnet. She really did like Mr. Magnet very
much. She had had her girlish dreams, had fallen in love with pictures
of men and actors and a music master and a man who used to ride by as
she went to school; but wasn't this desolating desire for
self-abandonment rather silly?--something that one left behind with much
else when it came to putting up one's hair and sensible living,
something to blush secretly about and hide from every eye?
Among other discrepant views that lived together in her mind as cats and
rats and parrots and squirrels and so forth used to live together in
those Happy Family cages unseemly men in less well-regulated days were
wont to steer about our streets, was one instilled by quite a large
proportion of the novels she had read, that a girl was a sort of
self-giving prize for high moral worth. Mr. Magnet she knew was good,
was kind, was brave with that truer courage, moral courage, which goes
with his type of physique; he was modest, unassuming, well off and
famous, and very much in love with her. His True Self, as Mrs. Pope had
pointed out several times, must be really very beautiful, and in some
odd way a line of Shakespeare had washed up in her consciousness as
being somehow effectual on his behalf:
"Love looks not with the eye but with the mind."
She felt she ought to look with the mind. Nice people surely never
looked in any other way. It seemed from this angle almost her duty to
love him....
Perhaps she did love him, and mistook the symptoms. She did her best to
mistake the symptoms. But if she did truly love him, would it seem so
queer and important and antagonistic as it did that his hair was rather
thin upon the crown of his head?
She wished she hadn't looked down on him....
Poor Marjorie! She was doing her best to be sensible, and she felt
herself adrift above a clamorous abyss of feared and forbidden thoughts.
Down there she knew well enough it wasn't thus that love must come. Deep
in her soul, the richest thing in her life indeed and the best thing she
had to give humanity, was a craving for beauty that at times became
almost intolerable, a craving for something other than beauty and yet
inseparably allied with it, a craving for deep excitement, for a sort of
glory in adventure, for passion--for things akin to great music and
heroic poems and bannered traditions of romance. She had hidden away in
her an immense tumultuous appetite for life, an immense tumultuous
capacity for living. To be loved beautifully was surely the crown and
climax of her being.
She did not dare to listen to these deeps, yet these insurgent voices
filled her. Even while she drove her little crocodile of primly sensible
thoughts to their sane appointed conclusion, her blood and nerves and
all her being were protesting that Mr. Magnet would not do, that
whatever other worthiness was in him, regarded as a lover he was
preposterous and flat and foolish and middle-aged, and that it were
better never to have lived than to put the treasure of her life to his
meagre lips and into his hungry, unattractive arms. "The ugliness of
it! The spiritless horror of it!" so dumbly and formlessly the rebel
voices urged.
"One has to be sensible," said Marjorie to herself, suddenly putting
down Shaw's book on Municipal Trading, which she imagined she had been
reading....
(Perhaps all marriage was horrid, and one had to get over it.)
That was rather what her mother had conveyed to her.
Sec. 2
Mr. Magnet made his first proposal in form three days later, after
coming twice to tea and staying on to supper. He had played croquet with
Mr. Pope, he had been beaten twelve times in spite of twinges in the
sprained ankle--heroically borne--had had three victories lucidly
explained away, and heard all the particulars of the East Purblow
experiment three times over, first in relation to the new Labour
Exchanges, then regarded at rather a different angle in relation to
female betting, tally-men, and the sanctities of the home generally, and
finally in a more exhaustive style, to show its full importance from
every side and more particularly as demonstrating the gross injustice
done to Mr. Pope by the neglect of its lessons, a neglect too systematic
to be accidental, in the social reform literature of the time. Moreover,
Mr. Magnet had been made to understand thoroughly how several later
quasi-charitable attempts of a similar character had already become, or
must inevitably become, unsatisfactory through their failure to follow
exactly in the lines laid down by Mr. Pope.
Mr. Pope was really very anxious to be pleasant and agreeable to Mr.
Magnet, and he could think of no surer way of doing so than by giving
him an unrestrained intimacy of conversation that prevented anything
more than momentary intercourse between his daughter and her admirer.
And not only did Mr. Magnet find it difficult to get away from Mr. Pope
without offence, but whenever by any chance Mr. Pope was detached for a
moment Mr. Magnet discovered that Marjorie either wasn't to be seen, or
if she was she wasn't to be isolated by any device he could contrive,
before the unappeasable return of Mr. Pope.
Mr. Magnet did not get his chance therefore until Lady Petchworth's
little gathering at Summerhay Park.
Lady Petchworth was Mrs. Pope's oldest friend, and one of those brighter
influences which save our English country-side from lassitude. She had
been more fortunate than Mrs. Pope, for while Mr. Pope with that
aptitude for disadvantage natural to his temperament had, he said, been
tied to a business that never gave him a chance, Lady Petchworth's
husband had been a reckless investor of exceptional good-luck. In
particular, led by a dream, he had put most of his money into a series
of nitrate deposits in caves in Saghalien haunted by benevolent
penguins, and had been rewarded beyond the dreams of avarice. His
foresight had received the fitting reward of a knighthood, and Sir
Thomas, after restoring the Parish Church at Summerhay in a costly and
destructive manner, spent his declining years in an enviable contentment
with Lady Petchworth and the world at large, and died long before
infirmity made him really troublesome.
Good fortune had brought out Lady Petchworth's social aptitudes.
Summerhay Park was everything that a clever woman, inspired by that
gardening literature which has been so abundant in the opening years of
the twentieth century, could make it. It had rosaries and rock gardens,
sundials and yew hedges, pools and ponds, lead figures and stone urns,
box borderings and wilderness corners and hundreds and hundreds of feet
of prematurely-aged red-brick wall with broad herbaceous borders; the
walks had primroses, primulas and cowslips in a quite disingenuous
abundance, and in spring the whole extent of the park was gay, here with
thousands of this sort of daffodil just bursting out and here with
thousands of that sort of narcissus just past its prime, and every patch
ready to pass itself off in its naturalized way as the accidental native
flower of the field, if only it hadn't been for all the other different
varieties coming on or wilting-off in adjacent patches....
Her garden was only the beginning of Lady Petchworth's activities. She
had a model dairy, and all her poultry was white, and so far as she was
able to manage it she made Summerhay a model village. She overflowed
with activities, it was astonishing in one so plump and blonde, and
meeting followed meeting in the artistic little red-brick and
green-stained timber village hall she had erected. Now it was the
National Theatre and now it was the National Mourning; now it was the
Break Up of the Poor Law, and now the Majority Report, now the Mothers'
Union, and now Socialism, and now Individualism, but always something
progressive and beneficial. She did her best to revive the old village
life, and brought her very considerable powers of compulsion to make the
men dance in simple old Morris dances, dressed up in costumes they
secretly abominated, and to induce the mothers to dress their children
in art-coloured smocks instead of the prints and blue serge frocks they
preferred. She did not despair, she said, of creating a spontaneous
peasant art movement in the district, springing from the people and
expressing the people, but so far it had been necessary to import not
only instructors and material, but workers to keep the thing going, so
sluggish had the spontaneity of our English countryside become.
Her little gatherings were quite distinctive of her. They were a sort of
garden party extending from mid-day to six or seven; there would be a
nucleus of house guests, and the highways and byeways on every hand
would be raided to supply persons and interests. She had told her friend
to "bring the girls over for the day," and flung an invitation to Mr.
Pope, who had at once excused himself on the score of his ankle. Mr.
Pope was one of those men who shun social gatherings--ostensibly because
of a sterling simplicity of taste, but really because his intolerable
egotism made him feel slighted and neglected on these occasions. He told
his wife he would be far happier with a book at home, exhorted her not
to be late, and was seen composing himself to read the "Vicar of
Wakefield"--whenever they published a new book Mr. Pope pretended to
read an old one--as the hired waggonette took the rest of his
family--Theodore very unhappy in buff silk and a wide Stuart
collar--down the avenue.
They found a long lunch table laid on the lawn beneath the chestnuts,
and in full view of the poppies and forget-me-nots around the stone
obelisk, a butler and three men servants with brass buttons and red and
white striped waistcoats gave dignity to the scene, and beyond, on the
terrace amidst abundance of deckchairs, cane chairs, rugs, and cushions,
a miscellaneous and increasing company seethed under Lady Petchworth's
plump but entertaining hand. There were, of course, Mr. Magnet, and his
friend Mr. Wintersloan--Lady Petchworth had been given to understand
how the land lay; and there was Mr. Bunford Paradise the musician, who
was doing his best to teach a sullen holiday class in the village
schoolroom to sing the artless old folk songs of Surrey again, in spite
of the invincible persuasion of everybody in the class that the songs
were rather indelicate and extremely silly; there were the Rev. Jopling
Baynes, and two Cambridge undergraduates in flannels, and a Doctor
something or other from London. There was also the Hon. Charles Muskett,
Lord Pottinger's cousin and estate agent, in tweeds and very helpful.
The ladies included Mrs. Raff, the well-known fashion writer, in a
wonderful costume, the anonymous doctor's wife, three or four
neighbouring mothers with an undistinguished daughter or so, and two
quiet-mannered middle-aged ladies, whose names Marjorie could not catch,
and whom Lady Petchworth, in that well-controlled voice of hers,
addressed as Kate and Julia, and seemed on the whole disposed to treat
as humorous. There was also Fraulein Schmidt in charge of Lady
Petchworth's three tall and already abundant children, Prunella,
Prudence, and Mary, and a young, newly-married couple of cousins, who
addressed each other in soft undertones and sat apart. These were the
chief items that became distinctive in Marjorie's survey; but there were
a number of other people who seemed to come and go, split up, fuse,
change their appearance slightly, and behave in the way inadequately
apprehended people do behave on these occasions.
Marjorie very speedily found her disposition to take a detached and
amused view of the entertainment in conflict with more urgent demands.
From the outset Mr. Magnet loomed upon her--he loomed nearer and nearer.
He turned his eye upon her as she came up to the wealthy expanse of
Lady Petchworth's presence, like some sort of obsolescent iron-clad
turning a dull-grey, respectful, loving searchlight upon a fugitive
torpedo boat, and thereafter he seemed to her to be looking at her
without intermission, relentlessly, and urging himself towards her. She
wished he wouldn't. She hadn't at all thought he would on this occasion.
At first she relied upon her natural powers of evasion, and the presence
of a large company. Then gradually it became apparent that Lady
Petchworth and her mother, yes--and the party generally, and the gardens
and the weather and the stars in their courses were of a mind to
co-operate in giving opportunity for Mr. Magnet's unmistakable
intentions.
And Marjorie with that instability of her sex which has been a theme for
masculine humour in all ages, suddenly and with an extraordinary
violence didn't want to make up her mind about Mr. Magnet. She didn't
want to accept him; and as distinctly she didn't want to refuse him. She
didn't even want to be thought about as making up her mind about
him--which was, so to speak, an enlargement of her previous
indisposition. She didn't even want to seem to avoid him, or to be
thinking about him, or aware of his existence.
After the greeting of Lady Petchworth she had succeeded very clumsily in
not seeing Mr. Magnet, and had addressed herself to Mr. Wintersloan, who
was standing a little apart, looking under his hand, with one eye shut,
at the view between the tree stems towards Buryhamstreet. He told her
that he thought he had found something "pooty" that hadn't been done,
and she did her best to share his artistic interests with a vivid sense
of Mr. Magnet's tentative incessant approach behind her.
He joined them, and she made a desperate attempt to entangle Mr.
Wintersloan in a three-cornered talk in vain. He turned away at the
first possible opportunity, and left her to an embarrassed and
eloquently silent _tete-a-tete_. Mr. Magnet's professional wit had
deserted him. "It's nice to see you again," he said after an immense
interval. "Shall we go and look at the aviary?"
"I hate to see birds in cages," said Marjorie, "and it's frightfully
jolly just here. Do you think Mr. Wintersloan will paint this? He does
paint, doesn't he?"
"I know him best in black and white," said Mr. Magnet.
Marjorie embarked on entirely insincere praises of Mr. Wintersloan's
manner and personal effect; Magnet replied tepidly, with an air of
reserving himself to grapple with the first conversational opportunity.
"It's a splendid day for tennis," said Marjorie. "I think I shall play
tennis all the afternoon."
"I don't play well enough for this publicity."
"It's glorious exercise," said Marjorie. "Almost as good as dancing,"
and she decided to stick to that resolution. "I never lose a chance of
tennis if I can help it."
She glanced round and detected a widening space between themselves and
the next adjacent group.
"They're looking at the goldfish," she said. "Let us join them."
Everyone moved away as they came up to the little round pond, but then
Marjorie had luck, and captured Prunella, and got her to hold hands and
talk, until Fraulein Schmidt called the child away. And then Marjorie
forced Mr. Magnet to introduce her to Mr. Bunford Paradise. She had a
bright idea of sitting between Prunella and Mary at the lunch table,
but a higher providence had assigned her to a seat at the end between
Julia--or was it Kate?--and Mr. Magnet. However, one of the
undergraduates was opposite, and she saved herself from undertones by
talking across to him boldly about Newnham, though she hadn't an idea of
his name or college. From that she came to tennis. To her inflamed
imagination he behaved as if she was under a Taboo, but she was
desperate, and had pledged him and his friend to a foursome before the
meal was over.
"Don't _you_ play?" said the undergraduate to Mr. Magnet.
"Very little," said Mr. Magnet. "Very little--"
At the end of an hour she was conspicuously and publicly shepherded from
the tennis court by Mrs. Pope.
"Other people want to play," said her mother in a clear little
undertone.
Mr. Magnet fielded her neatly as she came off the court.
"You play tennis like--a wild bird," he said, taking possession of her.
Only Marjorie's entire freedom from Irish blood saved him from a
vindictive repartee.
Sec. 3
"Shall we go and look at the aviary?" said Mr. Magnet, reverting to a
favourite idea of his, and then remembered she did not like to see caged
birds.
"Perhaps we might see the Water Garden?" he said. "The Water Garden is
really very delightful indeed--anyhow. You ought to see that."
On the spur of the moment, Marjorie could think of no objection to the
Water Garden, and he led her off.
"I often think of that jolly walk we had last summer," said Mr. Magnet,
"and how you talked about your work at Oxbridge."
Marjorie fell into a sudden rapture of admiration for a butterfly.
Twice more was Mr. Magnet baffled, and then they came to the little pool
of water lilies with its miniature cascade of escape at the head and
source of the Water Garden. "One of Lady Petchworth's great successes,"
said Mr. Magnet.
"I suppose the lotus is like the water-lily," said Marjorie, with no
hope of staving off the inevitable----
She stood very still by the little pool, and in spite of her pensive
regard of the floating blossoms, stiffly and intensely aware of his
relentless regard.
"Marjorie," came his voice at last, strangely softened. "There is
something I want to say to you."
She made no reply.
"Ever since we met last summer----"
A clear cold little resolution not to stand this, had established itself
in Marjorie's mind. If she must decide, she _would_ decide. He had
brought it upon himself.
"Marjorie," said Mr. Magnet, "I love you."
She lifted a clear unhesitating eye to his face. "I'm sorry, Mr.
Magnet," she said.
"I wanted to ask you to marry me," he said.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Magnet," she repeated.
They looked at one another. She felt a sort of scared exultation at
having done it; her mother might say what she liked.
"I love you very much," he said, at a loss.
"I'm sorry," she repeated obstinately.
"I thought you cared for me a little."
She left that unanswered. She had a curious feeling that there was no
getting away from this splashing, babbling pool, that she was fixed
there until Mr. Magnet chose to release her, and that he didn't mean to
release her yet. In which case she would go on refusing.
"I'm disappointed," he said.
Marjorie could only think that she was sorry again, but as she had
already said that three times, she remained awkwardly silent.
"Is it because----" he began and stopped.
"It isn't because of anything. Please let's go back to the others, Mr.
Magnet. I'm sorry if I'm disappointing."
And by a great effort she turned about.
Mr. Magnet remained regarding her--I can only compare it to the
searching preliminary gaze of an artistic photographer. For a crucial
minute in his life Marjorie hated him. "I don't understand," he said at
last.
Then with a sort of naturalness that ought to have touched her he said:
"Is it possible, Marjorie--that I might hope?--that I have been
inopportune?"
She answered at once with absolute conviction.
"I don't think so, Mr. Magnet."
"I'm sorry," he said, "to have bothered you."
"_I'm_ sorry," said Marjorie.
A long silence followed.
"I'm sorry too," he said.
They said no more, but began to retrace their steps. It was over.
Abruptly, Mr. Magnet's bearing had become despondent--conspicuously
despondent. "I had hoped," he said, and sighed.
With a thrill of horror Marjorie perceived he meant to _look_ rejected,
let every one see he had been rejected--after encouragement.
What would they think? How would they look? What conceivably might they
not say? Something of the importance of the thing she had done, became
manifest to her. She felt first intimations of regret. They would all be
watching, Mother, Daffy, Lady Petchworth. She would reappear with this
victim visibly suffering beside her. What could she say to straighten
his back and lift his chin? She could think of nothing. Ahead at the end
of the shaded path she could see the copious white form, the agitated
fair wig and red sunshade of Lady Petchworth----
Sec. 4
Mrs. Pope's eye was relentless; nothing seemed hidden from it; nothing
indeed was hidden from it; Mr. Magnet's back was diagrammatic. Marjorie
was a little flushed and bright-eyed, and professed herself eager, with
an unnatural enthusiasm, to play golf-croquet. It was eloquently
significant that Mr. Magnet did not share her eagerness, declined to
play, and yet when she had started with the Rev. Jopling Baynes as
partner, stood regarding the game with a sort of tender melancholy from
the shade of the big chestnut-tree.
Mrs. Pope joined him unobtrusively.
"You're not playing, Mr. Magnet," she remarked.
"I'm a looker-on, this time," he said with a sigh.
"Marjorie's winning, I think," said Mrs. Pope.
He made no answer for some seconds.
"She looks so charming in that blue dress," he remarked at last, and
sighed from the lowest deeps.
"That bird's-egg blue suits her," said Mrs. Pope, ignoring the sigh.
"She's clever in her girlish way, she chooses all her own
dresses,--colours, material, everything."
(And also, though Mrs. Pope had not remarked it, she concealed her
bills.)
There came a still longer interval, which Mrs. Pope ended with the
slightest of shivers. She perceived Mr. Magnet was heavy for sympathy
and ripe to confide. "I think," she said, "it's a little cool here.
Shall we walk to the Water Garden, and see if there are any white
lilies?"
"There are," said Mr. Magnet sorrowfully, "and they are very
beautiful--_quite_ beautiful."
He turned to the path along which he had so recently led Marjorie.
He glanced back as they went along between Lady Petchworth's herbaceous
border and the poppy beds. "She's so full of life," he said, with a sigh
in his voice.
Mrs. Pope knew she must keep silent.
"I asked her to marry me this afternoon," Mr. Magnet blurted out. "I
couldn't help it."
Mrs. Pope made her silence very impressive.
"I know I ought not to have done so without consulting you"--he went on
lamely; "I'm very much in love with her. It's----It's done no harm."
Mrs. Pope's voice was soft and low. "I had no idea, Mr. Magnet.... You
know she is very young. Twenty. A mother----"
"I know," said Magnet. "I can quite understand. But I've done no harm.
She refused me. I shall go away to-morrow. Go right away for ever....
I'm sorry."
Another long silence.
"To me, of course, she's just a child," Mrs. Pope said at last. "She
_is_ only a child, Mr. Magnet. She could have had no idea that anything
of the sort was in your mind----"
Her words floated away into the stillness.
For a time they said no more. The lilies came into sight, dreaming under
a rich green shade on a limpid pool of brown water, water that slept and
brimmed over as it were, unconsciously into a cool splash and ripple of
escape. "How beautiful!" cried Mrs. Pope, for a moment genuine.
"I spoke to her here," said Mr. Magnet.
The fountains of his confidence were unloosed.
"Now I've spoken to you about it, Mrs. Pope," he said, "I can tell you
just how I--oh, it's the only word--adore her. She seems so sweet and
easy--so graceful----"
Mrs. Pope turned on him abruptly, and grasped his hands; she was deeply
moved. "I can't tell you," she said, "what it means to a mother to hear
such things----"
Words failed her, and for some moments they engaged in a mutual
pressure.
"Ah!" said Mr. Magnet, and had a queer wish it was the mother he had to
deal with.
"Are you sure, Mr. Magnet," Mrs. Pope went on as their emotions
subsided, "that she really meant what she said? Girls are very strange
creatures----"
"She seems so clear and positive."
"Her manner is always clear and positive."
"Yes. I know."
"I know she _has_ cared for you."
"No!"
"A mother sees. When your name used to be mentioned----. But these are
not things to talk about. There is something--something sacred----"
"Yes," he said. "Yes. Only----Of course, one thing----"
Mrs. Pope seemed lost in the contemplation of water-lilies.
"I wondered," said Mr. Magnet, and paused again.
Then, almost breathlessly, "I wondered if there should be perhaps--some
one else?"
She shook her head slowly. "I should know," she said.
"Are you sure?"
"I know I should know."
"Perhaps recently?"
"I am sure I should know. A mother's intuition----"
Memories possessed her for awhile. "A girl of twenty is a mass of
contradictions. I can remember myself as if it was yesterday. Often one
says no, or yes--out of sheer nervousness.... I am sure there is no
other attachment----"
It occurred to her that she had said enough. "What a dignity that old
gold-fish has!" she remarked. "He waves his tail--as if he were a beadle
waving little boys out of church."
Sec. 5
Mrs. Pope astonished Marjorie by saying nothing about the all too
obvious event of the day for some time, but her manner to her second
daughter on their way home was strangely gentle. It was as if she had
realized for the first time that regret and unhappiness might come into
that young life. After supper, however, she spoke. They had all gone out
just before the children went to bed to look for the new moon; Daffy was
showing the pseudo-twins the old moon in the new moon's arms, and
Marjorie found herself standing by her mother's side. "I hope dear,"
said Mrs. Pope, "that it's all for the best--and that you've done
wisely, dear."
Marjorie was astonished and moved by her mother's tone.
"It's so difficult to know what _is_ for the best," Mrs. Pope went on.
"I had to do--as I did," said Marjorie.
"I only hope you may never find you have made a Great Mistake, dear. He
cares for you very, very much."
"Oh! we see it now!" cried Rom, "we see it now! Mummy, have you seen it?
Like a little old round ghost being nursed!"
When Marjorie said "Good-night," Mrs. Pope kissed her with an
unaccustomed effusion.
It occurred to Marjorie that after all her mother had no selfish end to
serve in this affair.
Sec. 6
The idea that perhaps after all she had made a Great Mistake, the
Mistake of her Life it might be, was quite firmly established in its
place among all the other ideas in Marjorie's mind by the time she had
dressed next morning. Subsequent events greatly intensified this
persuasion. A pair of new stockings she had trusted sprang a bad hole as
she put them on. She found two unmistakable bills from Oxbridge beside
her plate, and her father was "horrid" at breakfast.
Her father, it appeared, had bought the ordinary shares of a Cuban
railway very extensively, on the distinct understanding that they would
improve. In a decent universe, with a proper respect for meritorious
gentlemen, these shares would have improved accordingly, but the weather
had seen fit to shatter the wisdom of Mr. Pope altogether. The sugar
crop had collapsed, the bears were at work, and every morning now saw
his nominal capital diminished by a dozen pounds or so. I do not know
what Mr. Pope would have done if he had not had his family to help him
bear his trouble. As it was he relieved his tension by sending Theodore
from the table for dropping a knife, telling Rom when she turned the
plate round to pick the largest banana that she hadn't the self-respect
of a child of five, and remarking sharply from behind the _Times_ when
Daffy asked Marjorie if she was going to sketch: "Oh, for God's sake
don't _whisper!_" Then when Mrs. Pope came round the table and tried to
take his coffee cup softly to refill it without troubling him, he
snatched at it, wrenched it roughly out of her hand, and said with his
mouth full, and strangely in the manner of a snarling beast: "No' ready
yet. Half foo'."
Marjorie wanted to know why every one didn't get up and leave the room.
She glanced at her mother and came near to speaking.
And very soon she would have to come home and live in the midst of this
again--indefinitely!
After breakfast she went to the tumbledown summer-house by the duckpond,
and contemplated the bills she had not dared to open at table. One was
boots, nearly three pounds, the other books, over seven. "I _know_
that's wrong," said Marjorie, and rested her chin on her hand, knitted
her brows and tried to remember the details of orders and deliveries....
Marjorie had fallen into the net prepared for our sons and daughters by
the delicate modesty of the Oxbridge authorities in money matters, and
she was, for her circumstances, rather heavily in debt. But I must admit
that in Marjorie's nature the Oxbridge conditions had found an eager and
adventurous streak that rendered her particularly apt to these
temptations.
I doubt if reticence is really a virtue in a teacher. But this is a
fearful world, and the majority of those who instruct our youth have the
painful sensitiveness of the cloistered soul to this spirit of terror in
things. The young need particularly to be told truthfully and fully all
we know of three fundamental things: the first of which is God, the
next their duty towards their neighbours in the matter of work and
money, and the third Sex. These things, and the adequate why of them,
and some sort of adequate how, make all that matters in education. But
all three are obscure and deeply moving topics, topics for which the
donnish mind has a kind of special ineptitude, and which it evades with
the utmost skill and delicacy. The middle part of this evaded triad was
now being taken up in Marjorie's case by the Oxbridge tradespeople.
The Oxbridge shopkeeper is peculiar among shopkeepers in the fact that
he has to do very largely with shy and immature customers with an
extreme and distinctive ignorance of most commercial things. They are
for the most part short of cash, but with vague and often large
probabilities of credit behind them, for most people, even quite
straitened people, will pull their sons and daughters out of altogether
unreasonable debts at the end of their university career; and so the
Oxbridge shopkeeper becomes a sort of propagandist of the charms and
advantages of insolvency. Alone among retailers he dislikes the sight of
cash, declines it, affects to regard it as a coarse ignorant truncation
of a budding relationship, begs to be permitted to wait. So the
youngster just up from home discovers that money may stay in the pocket,
be used for cab and train fares and light refreshments; all the rest may
be had for the asking. Marjorie, with her innate hunger for good fine
things, with her quite insufficient pocket-money, and the irregular
habits of expenditure a spasmodically financed, hard-up home is apt to
engender, fell very readily into this new, delightful custom of having
it put down (whatever it happened to be). She had all sorts of things
put down. She and the elder Carmel girl used to go shopping together,
having things put down. She brightened her rooms with colour-prints and
engravings, got herself pretty and becoming clothes, acquired a fitted
dressing-bag already noted in this story, and one or two other trifles
of the sort, revised her foot-wear, created a very nice little
bookshelf, and although at times she felt a little astonished and scared
at herself, resolutely refused to estimate the total of accumulated debt
she had attained. Indeed until the bills came in it was impossible to do
that, because, following the splendid example of the Carmel girl, she
hadn't even inquired the price of quite a number of things....
She didn't dare think now of the total. She lied even to herself about
that. She had fixed on fifty pounds as the unendurable maximum. "It is
less than fifty pounds," she said, and added: "_must_ be." But something
in her below the threshold of consciousness knew that it was more.
And now she was in her third year, and the Oxbridge tradesman, generally
satisfied with the dimensions of her account, and no longer anxious to
see it grow, was displaying the less obsequious side of his character.
He wrote remarks at the bottom of his account, remarks about settlement,
about having a bill to meet, about having something to go on with. He
asked her to give the matter her "early attention." She had a
disagreeable persuasion that if she wanted many more things anywhere she
would have to pay ready money for them. She was particularly short of
stockings. She had overlooked stockings recently.
Daffy, unfortunately, was also short of stockings.
And now, back with her family again, everything conspired to remind
Marjorie of the old stringent habits from which she had had so
delightful an interlude. She saw Daffy eye her possessions, reflect.
This morning something of the awfulness of her position came to her....
At Oxbridge she had made rather a joke of her debts.
"I'd _swear_ I haven't had three pairs of house shoes," said Marjorie.
"But what can one do?"
And about the whole position the question was, "what can one do?"
She proceeded with tense nervous movements to tear these two distasteful
demands into very minute pieces. Then she collected them all together in
the hollow of her hand, and buried them in the loose mould in a corner
of the summer-house.
"Madge," said Theodore, appearing in the sunshine of the doorway. "Aunt
Plessington's coming! She's sent a wire. Someone's got to meet her by
the twelve-forty train."
Sec. 7
Aunt Plessington's descent was due to her sudden discovery that
Buryhamstreet was in close proximity to Summerhay Park, indeed only
three miles away. She had promised a lecture on her movement for Lady
Petchworth's village room in Summerhay, and she found that with a slight
readjustment of dates she could combine this engagement with her
promised visit to her husband's sister, and an evening or so of
influence for her little Madge. So she had sent Hubert to telegraph at
once, and "here," she said triumphantly on the platform, after a hard
kiss at Marjorie's cheek, "we are again."
There, at any rate, she was, and Uncle Hubert was up the platform seeing
after the luggage, in his small anxious way.
Aunt Plessington was a tall lean woman, with firm features, a high
colour and a bright eye, who wore hats to show she despised them, and
carefully dishevelled hair. Her dress was always good, but extremely old
and grubby, and she commanded respect chiefly by her voice. Her voice
was the true governing-class voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant
and authoritative; it made everything she said clear and important, so
that if she said it was a fine morning it was like leaded print in the
_Times_, and she had over her large front teeth lips that closed quietly
and with a slight effort after her speeches, as if the words she spoke
tasted well and left a peaceful, secure sensation in the mouth.
Uncle Hubert was a less distinguished figure, and just a little
reminiscent of the small attached husbands one finds among the lower
crustacea: he was much shorter and rounder than his wife, and if he had
been left to himself, he would probably have been comfortably fat in his
quiet little way. But Aunt Plessington had made him a Haigite, which is
one of the fiercer kinds of hygienist, just in the nick of time. He had
round shoulders, a large nose, and glasses that made him look
astonished--and she said he had a great gift for practical things, and
made him see after everything in that line while she did the lecturing.
His directions to the porter finished, he came up to his niece. "Hello,
Marjorie!" he said, in a peculiar voice that sounded as though his mouth
was full (though of course, poor dear, it wasn't), "how's the First
Class?"
"A second's good enough for me, Uncle Hubert," said Marjorie, and asked
if they would rather walk or go in the donkey cart, which was waiting
outside with Daffy. Aunt Plessington, with an air of great _bonhomie_
said she'd ride in the donkey cart, and they did. But no pseudo-twins or
Theodore came to meet this arrival, as both uncle and aunt had a way of
asking how the lessons were getting on that they found extremely
disagreeable. Also, their aunt measured them, and incited them with loud
encouraging noises to grow one against the other in an urgent,
disturbing fashion.
Aunt Plessington's being was consumed by thoughts of getting on. She was
like Bernard Shaw's life force, and she really did not seem to think
there was anything in existence but shoving. She had no idea what a lark
life can be, and occasionally how beautiful it can be when you do not
shove, if only, which becomes increasingly hard each year, you can get
away from the shovers. She was one of an energetic family of eight
sisters who had maintained themselves against a mutual pressure by the
use of their elbows from the cradle. They had all married against each
other, all sorts of people; two had driven their husbands into
bishoprics and made quite typical bishop's wives, one got a leading
barrister, one a high war-office official, and one a rich Jew, and Aunt
Plessington, after spending some years in just missing a rich and only
slightly demented baronet, had pounced--it's the only word for it--on
Uncle Hubert. "A woman is nothing without a husband," she said, and took
him. He was a fairly comfortable Oxford don in his furtive way, and
bringing him out and using him as a basis, she specialized in
intellectual philanthropy and evolved her Movement. It was quite
remarkable how rapidly she overhauled her sisters again.
What the Movement was, varied considerably from time to time, but it was
always aggressively beneficial towards the lower strata of the
community. Among its central ideas was her belief that these lower
strata can no more be trusted to eat than they can to drink, and that
the licensing monopoly which has made the poor man's beer thick,
lukewarm and discreditable, and so greatly minimized its consumption,
should be extended to the solid side of his dietary. She wanted to place
considerable restrictions upon the sale of all sorts of meat, upon
groceries and the less hygienic and more palatable forms of bread (which
do not sufficiently stimulate the coatings of the stomach), to increase
the present difficulties in the way of tobacco purchasers, and to put an
end to that wanton and deleterious consumption of sweets which has so
bad an effect upon the enamel of the teeth of the younger generation.
Closely interwoven with these proposals was an adoption of the principle
of the East Purblow Experiment, the principle of Payment in Kind. She
was quite in agreement with Mr. Pope that poor people, when they had
money, frittered it away, and so she proposed very extensive changes in
the Truck Act, which could enable employers, under suitable safeguards,
and with the advice of a small body of spinster inspectors, to supply
hygienic housing, approved clothing of moral and wholesome sort, various
forms of insurance, edifying rations, cuisine, medical aid and
educational facilities as circumstances seemed to justify, in lieu of
the wages the employees handled so ill....
As no people in England will ever admit they belong to the lower strata
of society, Aunt Plessington's Movement attracted adherents from every
class in the community.
She now, as they drove slowly to the vicarage, recounted to
Marjorie--she had the utmost contempt for Daffy because of her irregular
teeth and a general lack of progressive activity--the steady growth of
the Movement, and the increasing respect shown for her and Hubert in the
world of politico-social reform. Some of the meetings she had addressed
had been quite full, various people had made various remarks about her,
hostile for the most part and yet insidiously flattering, and everybody
seemed quite glad to come to the little dinners she gave in order, she
said, to gather social support for her reforms. She had been staying
with the Mastersteins, who were keenly interested, and after she had
polished off Lady Petchworth she was to visit Lady Rosenbaum. It was all
going on swimmingly, these newer English gentry were eager to learn all
she had to teach in the art of breaking in the Anglo-Saxon villagers,
and now, how was Marjorie going on, and what was _she_ going to do in
the world?
Marjorie said she was working for her final.
"And what then?" asked Aunt Plessington.
"Not very clear, Aunt, yet."
"Looking around for something to take up?"
"Yes, Aunt."
"Well, you've time yet. And it's just as well to see how the land lies
before you begin. It saves going back. You'll have to come up to London
with me for a little while, and see things, and be seen a little."
"I should love to."
"I'll give you a good time," said Aunt Plessington, nodding promisingly.
"Theodore getting on in school?"
"He's had his remove."
"And how's Sydney getting on with the music?"
"Excellently."
"And Rom. Rom getting on?"
Marjorie indicated a more restrained success.
"And what's Daffy doing?"
"Oh! _get_ on!" said Daffy and suddenly whacked the donkey rather hard.
"I beg your pardon, Aunt?"
"I asked what _you_ were up to, Daffy?"
"Dusting, Aunt--and the virtues," said Daffy.
"You ought to find something better than that."
"Father tells me a lot about the East Purblow Experiment," said Daffy
after a perceptible interval.
"Ah!" cried Aunt Plessington with a loud encouraging note, but evidently
making the best of it, "_that's_ better. Sociological observation."
"Yes, Aunt," said Daffy, and negotiated a corner with exceptional care.
Sec. 8
Mrs. Pope, who had an instinctive disposition to pad when Aunt
Plessington was about, had secured the presence at lunch of Mr. Magnet
(who was after all staying on in Buryhamstreet) and the Rev. Jopling
Baynes. Aunt Plessington liked to meet the clergy, and would always if
she could win them over to an interest in the Movement. She opened the
meal with a brisk attack upon him. "Come, Mr. Baynes," she said, "what
do your people eat here? Hubert and I are making a study of the
gluttonous side of village life, and we find that no one knows so much
of that as the vicar--not even the doctor."
The Reverend Jopling Baynes was a clergyman of the evasive type with a
quite distinguished voice. He pursed his lips and made his eyes round.
"Well, Mrs. Plessington," he said and fingered his glass, "it's the
usual dietary. The usual dietary."
"Too much and too rich, badly cooked and eaten too fast," said Aunt
Plessington. "And what do you think is the remedy?"
"We make an Effort," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes, "we make an Effort. A
Hint here, a Word there."
"Nothing organized?"
"No," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes, and shook his head with a kind of
resignation.
"We are going to alter all that," said Aunt Plessington briskly, and
went on to expound the Movement and the diverse way in which it might be
possible to control and improve the domestic expenditure of the working
classes.
The Rev. Jopling Baynes listened sympathetically across the table and
tried to satisfy a healthy appetite with as abstemious an air as
possible while he did so. Aunt Plessington passed rapidly from general
principles, to a sketch of the success of the movement, and Hubert, who
had hitherto been busy with his lunch, became audible from behind the
exceptionally large floral trophy that concealed him from his wife,
bubbling confirmatory details. She was very bright and convincing as she
told of this prominent man met and subdued, that leading antagonist
confuted, and how the Bishops were coming in. She made it clear in her
swift way that an intelligent cleric resolved to get on in this world
_en route_ for a better one hereafter, might do worse than take up her
Movement. And this touched in, she turned her mind to Mr. Magnet.
(That floral trophy, I should explain, by the by, was exceptionally
large because of Mrs. Pope's firm conviction that Aunt Plessington
starved her husband. Accordingly, she masked him, and so was able to
heap second and third helpings upon his plate without Aunt Plessington
discovering his lapse. The avidity with which Hubert ate confirmed her
worst suspicions and evinced, so far as anything ever did evince, his
gratitude.)
"Well, Mr. Magnet," she said, "I wish I had your sense of humour."
"I wish you had," said Mr. Magnet.
"I should write tracts," said Aunt Plessington.
"I knew it was good for something," said Mr. Magnet, and Daffy laughed
in a tentative way.
"I mean it," said Aunt Plessington brightly. "Think if we had a
Dickens--and you are the nearest man alive to Dickens--on the side of
social reform to-day!"
Mr. Magnet's light manner deserted him. "We do what we can, Mrs.
Plessington," he said.
"How much more might be done," said Aunt Plessington, "if humour could
be organized."
"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Pope.
"If all the humorists of England could be induced to laugh at something
together."
"They do--at times," said Mr. Magnet, but the atmosphere was too serious
for his light touch.
"They could laugh it out of existence," said Aunt Plessington.
It was evident Mr. Magnet was struck by the idea.
"Of course," he said, "in _Punch_, to which I happen to be an obscure
occasional contributor----"
Mrs. Pope was understood to protest that he should not say such things.
"We _do_ remember just what we can do either in the way of advertising
or injury. I don't think you'll find us up against any really _solid_
institutions."
"But do you think, Mr. Magnet, you are sufficiently kind to the New?"
Aunt Plessington persisted.
"I think we are all grateful to _Punch_," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes
suddenly and sonorously, "for its steady determination to direct our
mirth into the proper channels. I do not think that any one can accuse
its editor of being unmindful of his great responsibilities----"
Marjorie found it a very interesting conversation.
She always met her aunt again with a renewal of a kind of admiration.
That loud authoritative rudeness, that bold thrusting forward of the
Movement until it became the sole criterion of worth or success, this
annihilation by disregard of all that Aunt Plessington wasn't and didn't
and couldn't, always in the intervals seemed too good to be true. Of
course this really was the way people got on and made a mark, but she
felt it must be almost as trying to the nerves as aeronautics. Suppose,
somewhere up there your engine stopped! How Aunt Plessington dominated
the table! Marjorie tried not to catch Daffy's eye. Daffy was
unostentatiously keeping things going, watching the mustard, rescuing
the butter, restraining Theodore, and I am afraid not listening very
carefully to Aunt Plessington. The children were marvellously silent and
jumpily well-behaved, and Mr. Pope, in a very unusual state of subdued
amiability, sat at the end of the table with the East Purblow experiment
on the tip of his tongue. He liked Aunt Plessington, and she was good
for him. They had the same inherent distrust of the intelligence and
good intentions of their fellow creatures, and she had the knack of
making him feel that he too was getting on, that she was saying things
on his behalf in influential quarters, and in spite of the almost
universal conspiracy (based on jealousy) to ignore his stern old-world
virtues, he might still be able to battle his way to the floor of the
House of Commons and there deliver himself before he died of a few
sorely needed home-truths about motor cars, decadence and frivolity
generally....
Sec. 9
After lunch Aunt Plessington took her little Madge for an energetic
walk, and showed herself far more observant than the egotism of her
conversation at that meal might have led one to suppose. Or perhaps she
was only better informed. Aunt Plessington loved a good hard walk in the
afternoon; and if she could get any one else to accompany her, then
Hubert stayed at home, and curled up into a ball on a sofa somewhere,
and took a little siesta that made him all the brighter for the
intellectual activities of the evening. The thought of a young life,
new, untarnished, just at the outset, just addressing itself to the task
of getting on, always stimulated her mind extremely, and she talked to
Marjorie with a very real and effectual desire to help her to the utmost
of her ability.
She talked of a start in life, and the sort of start she had had. She
showed how many people who began with great advantages did not shove
sufficiently, and so dropped out of things and weren't seen and
mentioned. She defended herself for marrying Hubert, and showed what a
clever shoving thing it had been to do. It startled people a little, and
made them realize that here was a woman who wanted something more in a
man than a handsome organ-grinder. She made it clear that she thought a
clever marriage, if not a startlingly brilliant one, the first duty of a
girl. It was a girl's normal gambit. She branched off to the things
single women might do, in order to justify this view. She did not think
single women could do very much. They might perhaps shove as
suffragettes, but even there a husband helped tremendously--if only by
refusing to bail you out. She ran over the cases of a number of
prominent single women.
"And what," said Aunt Plessington, "do they all amount to? A girl is so
hampered and an old maid is so neglected," said Aunt Plessington.
She paused.
"Why don't you up and marry Mr. Magnet, Marjorie?" she said, with her
most brilliant flash.
"It takes two to make a marriage, aunt," said Marjorie after a slight
hesitation.
"My dear child! he worships the ground you tread on!" said Aunt
Plessington.
"He's rather--grown up," said Marjorie.
"Not a bit of it. He's not forty. He's just the age."
"I'm afraid it's a little impossible."
"Impossible?"
"You see I've refused him, aunt."
"Naturally--the first time! But I wouldn't send him packing the second."
There was an interval.
Marjorie decided on a blunt question. "Do you really think, aunt, I
should do well to marry Mr. Magnet?"
"He'd give you everything a clever woman needs," said Aunt Plessington.
"Everything."
With swift capable touches she indicated the sort of life the future
Mrs. Magnet might enjoy. "He's evidently a man who wants helping to a
position," she said. "Of course his farces and things, I'm told, make no
end of money, but he's just a crude gift by himself. Money like that is
nothing. With a clever wife he might be all sorts of things. Without one
he'll just subside--you know the sort of thing this sort of man does. A
rather eccentric humorous house in the country, golf, croquet,
horse-riding, rose-growing, queer hats."
"Isn't that rather what he would like to do, aunt?" said Marjorie.
"That's not _our_ business, Madge," said Aunt Plessington with humorous
emphasis.
She began to sketch out a different and altogether smarter future for
the fortunate humorist. There would be a house in a good central
position in London where Marjorie would have bright successful lunches
and dinners, very unpretending and very good, and tempt the clever smart
with the lure of the interestingly clever; there would be a bright
little country cottage in some pretty accessible place to which Aunt and
Uncle Plessington and able and influential people generally could be
invited for gaily recreative and yet extremely talkative and helpful
week-ends. Both places could be made centres of intrigue; conspiracies
for getting on and helping and exchanging help could be organized,
people could be warned against people whose getting-on was undesirable.
In the midst of it all, dressed with all the natural wit she had and an
enlarging experience, would be Marjorie, shining like a rising planet.
It wouldn't be long, if she did things well, before she had permanent
officials and young cabinet ministers mingling with her salad of writers
and humorists and the Plessington connexion.
"Then," said Aunt Plessington with a joyous lift in her voice, "you'll
begin to _weed_ a little."
For a time the girl's mind resisted her.
But Marjorie was of the impressionable sex at an impressionable age, and
there was something overwhelming in the undeviating conviction of her
aunt, in the clear assurance of her voice, that this life which
interested her was the real life, the only possible successful life. The
world reformed itself in Marjorie's fluent mind, until it was all a
scheme of influence and effort and ambition and triumphs. Dinner-parties
and receptions, men wearing orders, cabinet ministers more than a little
in love asking her advice, beautiful robes, a great blaze of lights;
why! she might be, said Aunt Plessington rising to enthusiasm, "another
Marcella." The life was not without its adventurous side; it wasn't in
any way dull. Aunt Plessington to illustrate that point told amusing
anecdotes of how two almost impudent invitations on her part had
succeeded, and how she had once scored off her elder sister by getting a
coveted celebrity through their close family resemblance. "After
accepting he couldn't very well refuse because I wasn't somebody else,"
she ended gleefully. "So he came--and stayed as long as anybody."
What else was there for Marjorie to contemplate? If she didn't take this
by no means unattractive line, what was the alternative? Some sort of
employment after a battle with her father, a parsimonious life, and even
then the Oxbridge tradesmen and their immortal bills....
Aunt Plessington was so intent upon her theme that she heeded nothing of
the delightful little flowers she trampled under foot across the down,
nor the jolly squirrel with an artistic temperament who saw fit to give
an uninvited opinion upon her personal appearance from the security of a
beech-tree in the wood. But Marjorie, noting quite a number of such
things with the corner of her mind, and being now well under the
Plessington sway, wished she had more concentration....
In the evening after supper the customary games were suspended, and Mr.
and Mrs. Plessington talked about getting on, and work and efficiency
generally, and explained how so-and-so had spoilt his chances in life,
and why so-and-so was sure to achieve nothing, and how this man ate too
much and that man drank too much, and on the contrary what promising and
capable people the latest adherents of and subscribers to the Movement
were, until two glasses of hot water came--Aunt Plessington had been
told it was good for her digestion and she thought it just as well that
Hubert should have some too--and it was time for every one to go to bed.
Sec. 10
Next morning an atmosphere of getting on and strenuosity generally
prevailed throughout the vicarage. The Plessingtons were preparing a
memorandum on their movement for the "Reformer's Year Book," every word
was of importance and might win or lose adherents and subscribers, and
they secured the undisturbed possession of the drawing-room, from which
the higher notes of Aunt Plessington's voice explaining the whole thing
to Hubert, who had to write it out, reached, a spur to effort, into
every part of the house.
Their influence touched every one.
Marjorie, struck by the idea that she was not perhaps getting on at
Oxbridge so fast as she ought to do, went into the summer-house with
Marshall's "Principles of Economics," read for two hours, and did not
think about her bills for more than a quarter of the time. Rom, who had
already got up early and read through about a third of "Aurora Leigh,"
now set herself with dogged determination to finish that great poem. Syd
practised an extra ten minutes--for Aunt Plessington didn't mind
practice so long as there wasn't a tune. Mrs. Pope went into the kitchen
and made a long-needed fuss about the waste of rice. Mr. Pope began the
pamphlet he had had in contemplation for some time upon the advantages
to public order of Payment in Kind. Theodore, who had washed behind his
ears and laced his boots in all the holes, went into the yard before
breakfast and hit a tennis ball against the wall and back, five hundred
and twenty-two times--a record. He would have resumed this after
breakfast, but his father came round the corner of the house with a pen
in his mouth, and asked him indistinctly, but fiercely, what the _devil_
he was doing. So he went away, and after a fretful interval set himself
to revise his Latin irregular verbs. By twelve he had done wonders.
Later in the day the widening circle of aggressive urgency reached the
kitchen, and at two the cook gave notice in order, she said, to better
herself.
Lunch, unconscious of this impending shadow, was characterized by a
virtuous cheerfulness, and Aunt Plessington told in detail how her seven
and twenty nephews and nieces, the children of her various sisters, were
all getting on. On the whole, they were not getting on so brilliantly as
they might have done (which indeed is apt to be the case with the
children of people who have loved not well but too wisely), and it was
borne in upon the mind of the respectfully listening Marjorie that, to
borrow an easy colloquialism of her aunt's, she might "take the shine
out of the lot of them" with a very little zeal and effort--and of
course Mr. Magnet.
The lecture in the evening at Summerhay was a great success.
The chair was taken by the Rev. Jopling Baynes, Lady Petchworth was
enthroned behind the table, Hubert was in charge of his wife's notes--if
notes should be needed--and Mr. Pope, expectant of an invitation at the
end to say a few words about the East Purblow experiment, also occupied
a chair on the platform. Lady Petchworth, with her abundant soft blond
hair, brightly blond still in spite of her fifty-five years, her
delicate features, her plump hands, her numerous chins and her entirely
inaudible voice, made a pleasing contrast with Aunt Plessington's
resolute personality. She had perhaps an even greater assurance of
authority, but it was a quiet assurance; you felt that she knew that if
she spoke in her sleep she would be obeyed, that it was quite
unnecessary to make herself heard. The two women, indeed, the one so
assertive, the other so established, were at the opposite poles of
authoritative British womanhood, and harmonized charmingly. The little
room struck the note of a well-regulated brightness at every point, it
had been decorated in a Keltic but entirely respectful style by one of
Lady Petchworth's artistic discoveries, it was lit by paraffin lamps
that smelt hardly at all, and it was gay with colour prints illustrating
the growth of the British Empire from the battle of Ethandune to the
surrender of Cronje. The hall was fairly full. Few could afford to
absent themselves from these brightening occasions, but there was a
tendency on the part of the younger and the less thoughtful section of
the village manhood to accumulate at the extreme back and rumble in what
appeared to be a slightly ironical spirit, so far as it had any spirit,
with its feet.
The Rev. Jopling Baynes opened proceedings with a few well-chosen
remarks, in which he complimented every one present either singly or
collectively according to their rank and importance, and then Aunt
Plessington came forward to the centre of the platform amidst a hectic
flush of applause, and said "Haw!" in a loud clear ringing tone.
She spoke without resorting to the notes in Hubert's little fist, very
freely and easily. Her strangulated contralto went into every corner of
the room and positively seemed to look for and challenge inattentive
auditors. She had come over, she said, and she had been very glad to
come over and talk to them that night, because it meant not only seeing
them but meeting her very dear delightful friend Lady Petchworth (loud
applause) and staying for a day or so with her brother-in-law Mr. Pope
(unsupported outburst of applause from Mr. Magnet), to whom she and
social reform generally owed so much. She had come to talk to them that
night about the National Good Habits Movement, which was attracting so
much attention and which bore so closely on our National Life and
Character; she happened to be--here Aunt Plessington smiled as she
spoke--a humble person connected with that movement, just a mere woman
connected with it; she was going to explain to them as well as she could
in her womanly way and in the time at her disposal just what it was and
just what it was for, and just what means it adopted and just what ends
it had in view. Well, they all knew what Habits were, and that there
were Good Habits and Bad Habits, and she supposed that the difference
between a good man and a bad man was just that the good man had good
habits and the bad one had bad habits. Everybody she supposed wanted to
get on. If a man had good habits he got on, and if he had bad habits he
didn't get on, and she supposed it was the same with a country, if its
people had good habits they got on, and if its people had bad habits
they didn't get on. For her own part she and her husband (Hubert gave a
little self-conscious jump) had always cultivated good habits, and she
had to thank him with all her heart for his help in doing so. (Applause
from the front seats.) Now, the whole idea of her movement was to ask,
how can we raise the standard of the national habits? how can we get rid
of bad habits and cultivate good ones?... (Here there was a slight
interruption due to some one being suddenly pushed off the end of a form
at the back, and coming to the floor with audible violence, after which
a choked and obstructed tittering continued intermittently for some
time.)
Some of her audience, she remarked, had not yet acquired the habit of
sitting still.
(Laughter, and a coarse vulgar voice: "Good old Billy Punt!")
Well, to resume, she and her husband had made a special and careful
study of habits; they had consulted all sorts of people and collected
all sorts of statistics, in fact they had devoted themselves to this
question, and the conclusion to which they came was this, that Good
Habits were acquired by Training and Bad Habits came from neglect and
carelessness and leaving people, who weren't fit for such freedom, to
run about and do just whatever they liked. And so, she went on with a
note of complete demonstration, the problem resolved itself into the
question of how far they could get more Training into the national life,
and how they could check extravagant and unruly and wasteful and unwise
ways of living. (Hear, hear! from Mr. Pope.) And this was the problem
she and her husband had set themselves to solve.
(Scuffle, and a boy's voice at the back, saying: "Oh, _shut_ it, Nuts!
SHUT it!")
Well, she and her husband had worked the thing out, and they had come to
the conclusion that what was the matter with the great mass of English
people was first that they had rather too much loose money, and secondly
that they had rather too much loose time. (A voice: "What O!" and the
Rev. Jopling Baynes suddenly extended his neck, knitted his brows, and
became observant of the interrupter.) She did not say they had too much
money (a second voice: "Not Arf!"), but too much _loose_ money. She did
not say they had too much time but too much loose time, that is to say,
they had money and time they did not know how to spend properly. And so
they got into mischief. A great number of people in this country, she
maintained, and this was especially true of the lower classes, did not
know how to spend either money or time; they bought themselves wasteful
things and injurious things, and they frittered away their hours in all
sorts of foolish, unprofitable ways. And, after the most careful and
scientific study of this problem, she and her husband had come to the
conclusion that two main principles must underlie any remedial measures
that were attempted, the first of which was the Principle of Payment in
Kind, which had already had so interesting a trial at the great carriage
works of East Purblow, and the second, the Principle of Continuous
Occupation, which had been recognized long ago in popular wisdom by that
admirable proverb--or rather quotation--she believed it was a quotation,
though she gave, she feared, very little time to poetry ("Better
employed," from Mr. Pope)--
"Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do."
(Irrepressible outbreak of wild and sustained applause from the back
seats, and in a sudden lull a female voice asking in a flattened,
thwarted tone: "Ain't there to be no lantern then?")
The lecturer went on to explain what was meant by either member of what
perhaps they would permit her to call this double-barrelled social
remedy.
It was an admirable piece of lucid exposition. Slowly the picture of a
better, happier, more disciplined England grew upon the minds of the
meeting. First she showed the new sort of employer her movement would
evoke, an employer paternal, philanthropic, vaguely responsible for the
social order of all his dependants. (Lady Petchworth was seen to nod her
head slowly at this.) Only in the last resort, and when he was satisfied
that his worker and his worker's family were properly housed,
hygienically clothed and fed, attending suitable courses of instruction
and free from any vicious inclinations, would he pay wages in cash. In
the discharge of the duties of payment he would have the assistance of
expert advice, and the stimulus of voluntary inspectors of his own
class. He would be the natural clan-master, the captain and leader,
adviser and caretaker of his banded employees. Responsibility would
stimulate him, and if responsibility did not stimulate him, inspectors
(both men and women inspectors) would. The worker, on the other hand,
would be enormously more healthy and efficient under the new regime. His
home, designed by qualified and officially recognized architects, would
be prettier as well as more convenient and elevating to his taste, his
children admirably trained and dressed in the new and more beautiful
clothing with which Lady Petchworth (applause) had done so much to make
them familiar, his vital statistics compared with current results would
be astonishingly good, his mind free from any anxiety but the proper
anxiety of a man in his position, to get his work done properly and earn
recognition from those competent and duly authorized to judge it. Of all
this she spoke with the inspiring note of absolute conviction. All this
would follow Payment in Kind and Continuous Occupation as days follow
sunrise. And there would always,--and here Aunt Plessington's voice
seemed to brighten--be something for the worker to get on with,
something for him to do; lectures, classes, reading-rooms, improving
entertainments. His time would be filled. The proper authorities would
see that it was filled--and filled in the right way. Never for a moment
need he be bored. He would never have an excuse for being bored. That
was the second great idea, the complementary idea to the first. "And
here it is," she said, turning a large encouraging smile on Lady
Petchworth, "that the work of a National Theatre, instructive,
stimulating, well regulated, and morally sustaining, would come in." He
wouldn't, of course, be _compelled_ to go, but there would be his seat,
part of his payment in kind, and the public-house would be shut, most
other temptations would be removed....
The lecture reached its end at last with only one other interruption.
Some would-be humorist suddenly inquired, _a propos_ of nothing: "What's
the fare to America, Billy?" and a voice, presumably Billy's, answered
him: "Mor'n _you'll_ ev 'av in _you'_ pocket."
The Rev. Jopling Baynes, before he called upon Mr. Pope for his promised
utterance about East Purblow, could not refrain from pointing out how
silly "in every sense of the word" these wanton interruptions were.
What, he asked, had English social reform to do with the fare to
America?--and having roused the meeting to an alert silence by the
length of his pause, answered in a voice of ringing contempt:
"Nothing--_whatsoever_." Then Mr. Pope made his few remarks about East
Purblow with the ease and finish that comes from long practice; much, he
said, had to be omitted "in view of" the restricted time at his
disposal, but he did not grudge that, the time had been better filled.
("No, no," from Aunt Plessington.) Yes, yes,--by the lucid and
delightful lecture they had all enjoyed, and he not least among them.
(Applause.)...
Sec. 11
They came out into a luminous blue night, with a crescent young moon
high overhead. It was so fine that the Popes and the Plessingtons and
Mr. Magnet declined Lady Petchworth's proffered car, and walked back to
Buryhamstreet across the park through a sleeping pallid cornfield, and
along by the edge of the pine woods. Mr. Pope would have liked to walk
with Mr. Magnet and explain all that the pressure on his time had caused
him to omit from his speech, and why it was he had seen fit to omit this
part and include that. Some occult power, however, baffled this
intention, and he found himself going home in the company of his
brother-in-law and Daffy, with Aunt Plessington and his wife like a
barrier between him and his desire. Marjorie, on the other hand, found
Mr. Magnet's proximity inevitable. They fell a little behind and were
together again for the first time since her refusal.
He behaved, she thought, with very great restraint, and indeed he left
her a little doubtful on that occasion whether he had not decided to
take her decision as final. He talked chiefly about the lecture, which
had impressed him very deeply. Mrs. Plessington, he said, was so
splendid--made him feel trivial. He felt stirred up by her, wanted to
help in this social work, this picking up of helpless people from the
muddle in which they wallowed.
He seemed not only extraordinarily modest but extraordinarily gentle
that night, and the warm moonshine gave his face a shadowed earnestness
it lacked in more emphatic lights. She felt the profound change in her
feelings towards him that had followed her rejection of him. It had
cleared away his effect of oppression upon her. She had no longer any
sense of entanglement and pursuit, and all the virtues his courtship had
obscured shone clear again. He was kindly, he was patient--and she felt
something about him a woman is said always to respect, he gave her an
impression of ability. After all, he could banish the trouble that
crushed and overwhelmed her with a movement of his little finger. Of all
her load of debt he could earn the payment in a day.
"Your aunt goes to-morrow?" he said.
Marjorie admitted it.
"I wish I could talk to her more. She's so inspiring."
"You know of our little excursion for Friday?" he asked after a pause.
She had not heard. Friday was Theodore's birthday; she knew it only too
well because she had had to part with her stamp collection--which very
luckily had chanced to get packed and come to Buryhamstreet--to meet its
demand. Mr. Magnet explained he had thought it might be fun to give a
picnic in honour of the anniversary.
"How jolly of you!" said Marjorie.
"There's a pretty bit of river between Wamping and Friston Hanger--I've
wanted you to see it for a long time, and Friston Hanger church has the
prettiest view. The tower gets the bend of the river."
He told her all he meant to do as if he submitted his plans for her
approval. They would drive to Wamping and get a very comfortable little
steam launch one could hire there. Wintersloan was coming down again; an
idle day of this kind just suited his temperament. Theodore would like
it, wouldn't he?
"Theodore will think he is King of Surrey!"
"I'll have a rod and line if he wants to fish. I don't want to forget
anything. I want it to be _his_ day really and truly."
The slightest touch upon the pathetic note? She could not tell.
But that evening brought Marjorie nearer to loving Magnet than she had
ever been. Before she went to sleep that night she had decided he was
quite a tolerable person again; she had been too nervous and unjust with
him. After all, his urgency and awkwardness had been just a part of his
sincerity. Perhaps the faint doubt whether he would make his request
again gave the zest of uncertainty to his devotion. Of course, she told
herself, he would ask again. And then the blissful air of limitless
means she might breathe. The blessed release....
She was suddenly fast asleep.
Sec. 12
Friday was after all not so much Theodore's day as Mr. Magnet's.
Until she found herself committed there was no shadow of doubt in
Marjorie's mind of what she meant to do. "Before I see you again," said
Aunt Plessington at the parting kiss, "I hope you'll have something to
tell me." She might have been Hymen thinly disguised as an aunt, waving
from the departing train. She continued by vigorous gestures and
unstinted display of teeth and a fluttering handkerchief to encourage
Marjorie to marry Mr. Magnet, until the curve of the cutting hid her
from view....
Fortune favoured Mr. Magnet with a beautiful day, and the excursion was
bright and successful from the outset. It was done well, and what
perhaps was more calculated to impress Marjorie, it was done with lavish
generosity. From the outset she turned a smiling countenance upon her
host. She did her utmost to suppress a reviving irrational qualm in her
being, to maintain clearly and simply her overnight decision, that he
should propose again and that she should accept him.
Yet the festival was just a little dreamlike in its quality to her
perceptions. She found she could not focus clearly on its details.
Two waggonettes came from Wamping; there was room for everybody and to
spare, and Wamping revealed itself a pleasant small country town with
stocks under the market hall, and just that tint of green paint and that
loafing touch the presence of a boating river gives.
The launch was brilliantly smart with abundant crimson cushions and a
tasselled awning, and away to the left was a fine old bridge that dated
in its essentials from Plantagenet times.
They started with much whistling and circling, and went away up river
under overhanging trees that sometimes swished the funnel, splashing the
meadow path and making the reeds and bulrushes dance with their wash.
They went through a reluctant lock, steamed up a long reach, they passed
the queerly painted Potwell Inn with its picturesque group of poplars
and its absurd new notice-board of "Omlets." ... Theodore was five stone
of active happiness; he and the pseudo-twins, strictly under his orders
as the universal etiquette of birthdays prescribes, clambered round and
round the boat, clutching the awning rail and hanging over the water in
an entirely secure and perilous looking manner. No one, unless his
father happened to be upset by something, would check him, he knew, on
this auspicious day. Mr. Magnet sat with the grey eye on Marjorie and
listened a little abstractedly to Mr. Pope, who was telling very fully
what he would say if the Liberal party were to ask his advice at the
present juncture. Mrs. Pope attended discreetly, and Daffy and Marjorie
with a less restrained interest, to Mr. Wintersloan, who showed them how
to make faces out of a fist tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, how to
ventriloquize, how to conjure with halfpence--which he did very
amusingly--and what the buttons on a man's sleeve were for; Theodore
clambering at his back discovered what he was at, and by right of
birthday made him do all the faces and tricks over again. Then Mr.
Wintersloan told stories of all the rivers along which, he said, he had
travelled in steamboats; the Rhine, the Danube, the Hoogly and the Fall
River, and particularly how he had been bitten by a very young
crocodile. "It's the smell of the oil brings it all back to me," he
said. "And the kind of sway it gives you."
He made sinuous movements of his hand, and looked at Marjorie with that
wooden yet expressive smile.
Friston Hanger proved to be even better than Wamping. It had a character
of its own because it was built very largely of a warm buff coloured
local rock instead of the usual brick, and the outhouses at least of the
little inn at which they landed were thatched. Most of the cottages had
casement windows with diamond panes, and the streets were cobbled and
very up-and-down hill. The place ran to high walls richly suggestive of
hidden gardens, overhung by big trees and pierced by secretive important
looking doors. And over it all rose an unusually big church, with a tall
buttressed tower surmounted by a lantern of pierced stone.
"We'll go through the town and look at the ruins of the old castle
beyond the church," said Mr. Magnet to Marjorie, "and then I want you to
see the view from the church tower."
And as they went through the street, he called her attention again to
the church tower in a voice that seemed to her to be inexplicably
charged with significance. "I want you to go up there," he said.
"How about something to eat, Mr. Magnet?" remarked Theodore suddenly,
and everybody felt a little surprised when Mr. Magnet answered: "Who
wants things to eat on your birthday, Theodore?"
But they saw the joke of that when they reached the castle ruins and
found in the old tilting yard, with its ivy-covered arch framing a view
of the town and stream, a table spread with a white cloth that shone in
the sunshine, glittering with glass and silver and gay with a bowl of
salad and flowers and cold pies and a jug of claret-cup and an ice
pail--a silver pail! containing two promising looking bottles, in the
charge of two real live waiters, in evening dress as waiters should be,
but with straw hats to protect them from the sun and weather. "Oh!"
cried Mrs. Pope, "what a _splendid_ idea, Mr. Magnet," when the
destination of the feast was perfectly clear, and even Theodore seemed a
little overawed--almost as if he felt his birthday was being carried too
far and might provoke a judgment later. Manifestly Mr. Magnet must have
ordered this in London, and have had it sent down, waiters and all!
Theodore knew he was a very wonderful little boy in spite of the acute
criticism of four devoted sisters, and Mr. Magnet had noticed him before
at times, but this was, well, rather immense! "Look at the pie-crusts,
old man!" And on the pie-crusts, and on the icing of the cake, their
munificent host had caused to be done in little raised letters of dough
and chocolate the word "Theodore."
"Oh, _Mr._ Magnet!" said Marjorie--his eye so obviously invited her to
say something. Mr. Pope tried a nebulous joke about "groaning boards of
Frisky Hanger," and only Mr. Wintersloan restrained his astonishment and
admiration. "You could have got those chaps in livery," he
said--unheeded. The lunch was as a matter of fact his idea; he had
refused to come unless it was provided, and he had somehow counted on
blue coats, brass buttons, and yellow waistcoats--but everybody else of
course ascribed the whole invention to Mr. Magnet.
"Well," said Mr. Pope with a fine air of epigram, "the only thing I can
say is--to eat it," and prepared to sit down.
"Melon," cried Mr. Magnet to the waiters, "we'll begin with the melon.
Have you ever tried melon with pepper and salt, Mrs. Pope?"
"You put salt in everything," admired Mr. Pope. "Salt from those attics
of yours--Attic salt."
"Or there's ginger!" said Mr. Magnet, after a whisper from the waiter.
Mr. Pope said something classical about "ginger hot in the mouth."
"Some of these days," said Mr. Wintersloan, "when I have exhausted all
other sensations, I mean to try melon and mustard."
Rom made a wonderful face at him.
"I can think of worse things than that," said Mr. Wintersloan with a
hard brightness.
"Not till after lunch, Mr. Wintersloan!" said Rom heartily.
"The claret cup's all right for Theodore, Mrs. Pope," said Magnet. "It's
a special twelve year old brand." (He thought of everything!)
"Mummy," said Mr. Pope. "You'd better carve this pie, I think."
"I want very much," said Mr. Magnet in Marjorie's ear and very
confidentially, "to show you the view from the church tower. I think--it
will appeal to you."
"Rom!" said Theodore, uncontrollably, in a tremendous stage whisper.
"There's peaches!... _There!_ on the hamper!"
"Champagne, m'am?" said the waiter suddenly in Mrs. Pope's ear, wiping
ice-water from the bottle.
(But what could it have cost him?)
Sec. 13
Marjorie would have preferred that Mr. Magnet should not have decided
with such relentless determination to make his second proposal on the
church tower. His purpose was luminously clear to her from the
beginning of lunch onward, and she could feel her nerves going under the
strain of that long expectation. She tried to pull herself together,
tried not to think about it, tried to be amused by the high spirits and
nonsense of Mr. Wintersloan and Syd and Rom and Theodore; but Mr. Magnet
was very pervasive, and her mother didn't ever look at her, looked past
her and away from her and all round her, in a profoundly observant
manner. Marjorie felt chiefly anxious to get to the top of that
predestinate tower and have the whole thing over, and it was with a
start that she was just able to prevent one of the assiduous waiters
filling her glass with champagne for the third time.
There was a little awkwardness in dispersing after lunch. Mr. Pope, his
heart warmed by the champagne and mellowed by a subsequent excellent
cigar, wanted very much to crack what he called a "postprandial jest" or
so with the great humorist, while Theodore also, deeply impressed with
the discovery that there was more in Mr. Magnet than he had supposed,
displayed a strong disposition to attach himself more closely than he
had hitherto done to this remarkable person, and study his quiet but
enormous possibilities with greater attention. Mrs. Pope with a still
alertness did her best to get people adjusted, but Syd and Rom had
conceived a base and unnatural desire to subjugate the affections of the
youngest waiter, and wouldn't listen to her proposal that they should
take Theodore away into the town; Mr. Wintersloan displayed
extraordinary cunning and resource in evading a _tete-a-tete_ with Mr.
Pope that would have released Mr. Magnet. Now Mrs. Pope came to think of
it, Mr. Wintersloan never had had the delights of a good talk with Mr.
Pope, he knew practically nothing about the East Purblow experiment
except for what Mr. Magnet might have retailed to him, and she was very
greatly puzzled to account for his almost manifest reluctance to go into
things thoroughly. Daffy remained on hand, available but useless, and
Mrs. Pope, smiling at the landscape and a prey to Management within, was
suddenly inspired to take her eldest daughter into her confidence.
"Daffy," she said, with a guileful finger extended and pointing to the
lower sky as though she was pointing out the less obvious and more
atmospheric beauties of Surrey, "get Theodore away from Mr. Magnet if
you can. He wants to talk to Marjorie."
Daffy looked round. "Shall I call him?" she said.
"No," said Mrs. Pope, "do it--just--quietly."
"I'll try," said Daffy and stared at her task, and Mrs. Pope, feeling
that this might or might not succeed but that anyhow she had done what
she could, strolled across to her husband and laid a connubial touch
upon his shoulder. "All the young people," she said, "are burning to
climb the church tower. I never _can_ understand this activity after
lunch."
"Not me," said Mr. Pope. "Eh, Magnet?"
"_I'm_ game," said Theodore. "Come along, Mr. Magnet."
"I think," said Mr. Magnet looking at Marjorie, "I shall go up. I want
to show Marjorie the view."
"We'll stay here, Mummy, eh?" said Mr. Pope, with a quite unusual
geniality, and suddenly put his arm round Mrs. Pope's waist. Her
motherly eye sought Daffy's, and indicated her mission. "I'll come with
you, Theodore," said Daffy. "There isn't room for everyone at once up
that tower."
"I'll go with Mr. Magnet," said Theodore, relying firmly on the
privileges of the day....
For a time they played for position, with the intentions of Mr. Magnet
showing more and more starkly through the moves of the game. At last
Theodore was lured down a side street by the sight of a huge dummy fish
dangling outside a tackle and bait shop, and Mr. Magnet and Marjorie,
already with a dreadful feeling of complicity, made a movement so rapid
it seemed to her almost a bolt for the church tower. Whatever Mr. Magnet
desired to say, and whatever elasticity his mind had once possessed with
regard to it, there can be no doubt that it had now become so rigid as
to be sayable only in that one precise position, and in the exact order
he had determined upon. But when at last they got to that high serenity,
Mr. Magnet was far too hot and far too much out of breath to say
anything at all for a time except an almost explosive gust or so of
approbation of the scenery. "Shor' breath!" he said, "win'ey stairs
always--that 'fect on me--buful sceny--Suwy--like it always."
Marjorie found herself violently disposed to laugh; indeed she had never
before been so near the verge of hysterics.
"It's a perfectly lovely view," she said. "No wonder you wanted me to
see it."
"Naturally," said Mr. Magnet, "wanted you to see it."
Marjorie, with a skill her mother might have envied, wriggled into a
half-sitting position in an embrasure and concentrated herself upon the
broad wooded undulations that went about the horizon, and Mr. Magnet
mopped his face with surreptitious gestures, and took deep restoring
breaths.
"I've always wanted to bring you here," he said, "ever since I found it
in the spring."
"It was very kind of you, Mr. Magnet," said Marjorie.
"You see," he explained, "whenever I see anything fine or rich or
splendid or beautiful now, I seem to want it for you." His voice
quickened as though he were repeating something that had been long in
his mind. "I wish I could give you all this country. I wish I could put
all that is beautiful in the world at your feet."
He watched the effect of this upon her for a moment.
"Marjorie," he said, "did you really mean what you told me the other
day, that there was indeed no hope for me? I have a sort of feeling I
bothered you that day, that perhaps you didn't mean all----"
He stopped short.
"I don't think I knew what I meant," said Marjorie, and Magnet gave a
queer sound of relief at her words. "I don't think I know what I mean
now. I don't think I can say I love you, Mr. Magnet. I would if I could.
I like you very much indeed, I think you are awfully kind, you're more
kind and generous than anyone I have ever known...."
Saying he was kind and generous made her through some obscure
association of ideas feel that he must have understanding. She had an
impulse to put her whole case before him frankly. "I wonder," she said,
"if you can understand what it is to be a girl."
Then she saw the absurdity of her idea, of any such miracle of sympathy.
He was entirely concentrated upon the appeal he had come prepared to
make.
"Marjorie," he said, "I don't ask you to love me yet. All I ask is that
you shouldn't decide _not_ to love me."
Marjorie became aware of Theodore, hotly followed by Daffy, in the
churchyard below. "I _know_ he's up there," Theodore was manifestly
saying.
Marjorie faced her lover gravely.
"Mr. Magnet," she said, "I will certainly promise you that."
"I would rather be your servant, rather live for your happiness, than do
anything else in all the world," said Mr. Magnet. "If you would trust
your life to me, if you would deign--." He paused to recover his thread.
"If you would deign to let me make life what it should be for you, take
every care from your shoulders, face every responsibility----"
Marjorie felt she had to hurry. She could almost feel the feet of
Theodore coming up that tower.
"Mr. Magnet," she said, "you don't understand. You don't realize what I
am. You don't know how unworthy I am--what a mere ignorant child----"
"Let me be judge of that!" cried Mr. Magnet.
They paused almost like two actors who listen for the prompter. It was
only too obvious that both were aware of a little medley of imperfectly
subdued noises below. Theodore had got to the ladder that made the last
part of the ascent, and there Daffy had collared him. "_My_ birthday,"
said Theodore. "Come down! You _shan't_ go up there!" said Daffy. "You
_mustn't_, Theodore!" "Why not?" There was something like a scuffle, and
whispers. Then it would seem Theodore went--reluctantly and with
protests. But the conflict receded.
"Marjorie!" said Mr. Magnet, as though there had been no pause, "if you
would consent only to make an experiment, if you would try to love me.
Suppose you _tried_ an engagement. I do not care how long I waited...."
He paused. "Will you try?" he urged upon her distressed silence.
She felt as though she forced the word. "_Yes!_" she said in a very low
voice.
Then it seemed to her that Mr. Magnet leapt upon her. She felt herself
pulled almost roughly from the embrasure, and he had kissed her. She
struggled in his embrace. "Mr. Magnet!" she said. He lifted her face and
kissed her lips. "Marjorie!" he said, and she had partly released
herself.
"Oh _don't_ kiss me," she cried, "don't kiss me yet!"
"But a kiss!"
"I don't like it."
"I beg your pardon!" he said. "I forgot----. But you.... You.... I
couldn't help it."
She was suddenly wildly sorry for what she had done. She felt she was
going to cry, to behave absurdly.
"I want to go down," she said.
"Marjorie, you have made me the happiest of men! All my life, all my
strength I will spend in showing you that you have made no mistake in
trusting me----"
"Yes," she said, "yes," and wondered what she could say or do. It seemed
to him that her shrinking pose was the most tenderly modest thing he had
ever seen.
"Oh my dear!" he said, and restrained himself and took her passive hand
and kissed it.
"I want to go down to them!" she insisted.
He paused on the topmost rungs of the ladder, looking unspeakable things
at her. Then he turned to go down, and for the second time in her life
she saw that incipient thinness....
"I am sure you will never be sorry," he said....
They found Mr. and Mrs. Pope in the churchyard. Mr. Pope was reading
with amusement for the third time an epitaph that had caught his fancy--
"Lands ever bright, days ever fair,
And yet we weep that _he_ is there."
he read. "You know that's really Good. That ought to be printed
somewhere."
Mrs. Pope glanced sharply at her daughter's white face, and found an
enigma. Then she looked at Mr. Magnet.
There was no mistake about Mr. Magnet. Marjorie had accepted him,
whatever else she had felt or done.
Sec. 14
Marjorie's feelings for the rest of the day are only to be accounted for
on the supposition that she was overwrought. She had a preposterous
reaction. She had done this thing with her eyes open after days of
deliberation, and now she felt as though she was caught in a trap. The
clearest thing in her mind was that Mr. Magnet had taken hold of her and
kissed her, kissed her on the lips, and that presently he would do it
again. And also she was asking herself with futile reiteration why she
had got into debt at Oxbridge? Why she had got into debt? For such silly
little things too!
Nothing definite was said in her hearing about the engagement, but
everybody seemed to understand. Mr. Pope was the most demonstrative, he
took occasion to rap her hard upon the back, his face crinkled with a
resolute kindliness. "Ah!" he said, "Sly Maggots!"
He also administered several resounding blows to Magnet's shoulder
blades, and irradiated the party with a glow of benevolent waggery.
Marjorie submitted without an answer to these paternal intimations. Mrs.
Pope did no more than watch her daughter. Invisible but overwhelming
forces were busy in bringing Marjorie and her glowing lover alone
together again. It happened at last, as he was departing; she was almost
to her inflamed imagination thrust out upon him, had to take him to the
gate; and there in the shadows of the trees he kissed her "good night"
with passionate effusion.
"Madge," he said, "Madge!"
She made no answer. She submitted passively to his embrace, and then
suddenly and dexterously disengaged herself from him, ran in, and
without saying good-night to anyone went to her room to bed.
Mr. Pope was greatly amused by this departure from the customary routine
of life, and noted it archly.
When Daffy came up Marjorie was ostentatiously going to sleep....
As she herself was dropping off Daffy became aware of an odd sound,
somehow familiar, and yet surprising and disconcerting.
Suddenly wide awake again, she started up. Yes there was no mistake
about it! And yet it was very odd.
"Madge, what's up?"
No answer.
"I say! you aren't crying, Madge, are you?"
Then after a long interval: "_Madge!_"
An answer came in a muffled voice, almost as if Marjorie had something
in her mouth. "Oh shut it, old Daffy."
"But Madge?" said Daffy after reflection.
"Shut it. _Do_ shut it! Leave me alone, I say! Can't you leave me alone?
Oh!"--and for a moment she let her sobs have way with her--"Daffy, don't
worry me. Old Daffy! _Please!_"
Daffy sat up for a long time in the stifled silence that ensued, and
then like a sensible sister gave it up, and composed herself again to
slumber....
Outside watching the window in a state of nebulous ecstasy, was Mr.
Magnet, moonlit and dewy. It was a high serene night with a growing moon
and a scattered company of major stars, and if no choir of nightingales
sang there was at least a very active nightjar. "More than I hoped,"
whispered Mr. Magnet, "more than I dared to hope." He was very sleepy,
but it seemed to him improper to go to bed on such a night--on such an
occasion.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
THE MAN WHO FELL OUT OF THE SKY
Sec. 1
For the next week Marjorie became more nearly introspective than she had
ever been in her life before. She began to doubt her hitherto unshaken
conviction that she was a single, consistent human being. She found such
discords and discrepancies between mood and mood, between the conviction
of this hour and the feeling of that, that it seemed to her she was
rather a collection of samples of emotion and attitude than anything so
simple as an individual.
For example, there can be no denying there was one Marjorie in the
bundle who was immensely set up by the fact that she was engaged, and
going to be at no very remote date mistress of a London house. She was
profoundly Plessingtonian, and quite the vulgarest of the lot. The new
status she had attained and the possibly beautiful house and the
probably successful dinner-parties and the arrangements and the
importance of such a life was the substance of this creature's thought.
She designed some queenly dresses. This was the Marjorie most in
evidence when it came to talking with her mother and Daphne. I am afraid
she patronized Daphne, and ignored the fact that Daphne, who had begun
with a resolute magnanimity, was becoming annoyed and resentful.
And she thought of things she might buy, and the jolly feeling of
putting them about and making fine effects with them. One thing she told
Daphne, she had clearly resolved upon; the house should be always full
and brimming over with beautiful flowers. "I've always wished mother
would have more flowers--and not keep them so long when she has
them...."
Another Marjorie in the confusion of her mind was doing her sincerest,
narrow best to appreciate and feel grateful for and return the devotion
of Mr. Magnet. This Marjorie accepted and even elaborated his views,
laid stress on his voluntary subjection, harped upon his goodness,
brought her to kiss him.
"I don't deserve all this love," this side of Marjorie told Magnet. "But
I mean to learn to love you----"
"My dear one!" cried Magnet, and pressed her hand....
A third Marjorie among the many was an altogether acuter and less
agreeable person. She was a sprite of pure criticism, and in spite of
the utmost efforts to suppress her, she declared night and day in the
inner confidences of Marjorie's soul that she did not believe in Mr.
Magnet's old devotion at all. She was anti-Magnet, a persistent
insurgent. She was dreadfully unsettling. It was surely this Marjorie
that wouldn't let the fact of his baldness alone, and who discovered and
insisted upon a curious unbeautiful flatness in his voice whenever he
was doing his best to speak from the heart. And as for this devotion,
what did it amount to? A persistent unimaginative besetting of Marjorie,
a growing air of ownership, an expansive, indulgent, smiling disposition
to thwart and control. And he was always touching her! Whenever he came
near her she would wince at the freedoms a large, kind hand might take
with her elbow or wrist, at a possible sudden, clumsy pat at some erring
strand of hair.
Then there was an appraising satisfaction in his eye.
On the third day of their engagement he began, quite abruptly, to call
her "Magsy." "We'll end this scandal of a Girl Pope," he said. "Magsy
Magnet, you'll be--M.M. No women M.P.'s for _us_, Magsy...."
She became acutely critical of his intellectual quality. She listened
with a new alertness to the conversations at the dinner-table, the bouts
of wit with her father. She carried off utterances and witticism for
maturer reflection. She was amazed to find how little they could
withstand the tests and acids of her mind. So many things, such wide and
interesting fields, he did not so much think about as cover with a large
enveloping shallowness....
He came strolling around the vicarage into the garden one morning about
eleven, though she had not expected him until lunch-time; and she was
sitting with her feet tucked up on the aged but still practicable
garden-seat reading Shaw's "Common Sense of Municipal Trading." He came
and leant over the back of the seat, and she looked up, said "Good
morning. Isn't it perfectly lovely?" and indicated by a book still open
that her interest in it remained alive.
"What's the book, Magsy?" he asked, took it out of her slightly
resisting hand, closed it and read the title. "Um," he said; "Isn't this
a bit stiff for little women's brains?"
All the rebel Marjories were up in arms at that.
"Dreadful word, 'Municipal.' I _don't_ like it." He shook his head with
a grimace of humorous distaste.
"I suppose women have as good brains as men," said Marjorie, "if it
comes to that."
"Better," said Magnet. "That's why they shouldn't trouble about horrid
things like Municipal and Trading.... On a day like this!"
"Don't you think this sort of thing is interesting?"
"Oh!" he said, and flourished the book. "Come! And besides--_Shaw!_"
"He makes a very good case."
"But he's such a--mountebank."
"Does that matter? He isn't a mountebank there."
"He's not sincere. I doubt if you had a serious book on Municipal
Trading, Magsy, whether you'd make head or tail of it. It's a stiff
subject. Shaw just gets his chance for a smart thing or so.... I'd
rather you read a good novel."
He really had the air of taking her reading in hand.
"You think I ought not to read an intelligent book."
"I think we ought to leave those things to the people who understand."
"But we ought to understand."
He smiled wisely. "There's a lot of things _you_ have to understand," he
said, "nearer home than this."
Marjorie was ablaze now. "What a silly thing to say!" she cried, with an
undergraduate's freedom. "Really, you are talking nonsense! I read that
book because it interests me. If I didn't, I should read something else.
Do you mean to suggest that I'm reading like a child, who holds a book
upside down?"
She was so plainly angry that he was taken aback. "I don't mean to
suggest--" he began, and turned to greet the welcome presence, the
interrogative eye of Mrs. Pope.
"Here we are!" he said, "having a quarrel!"
"Marjorie!" said Mrs. Pope.
"Oh, it's serious!" said Mr. Magnet, and added with a gleam: "It's about
Municipal Trading!"
Mrs. Pope knew the wicked little flicker in Marjorie's eye better than
Mr. Magnet. She had known it from the nursery, and yet she had never
quite mastered its meaning. She had never yet realized it was Marjorie,
she had always regarded it as something Marjorie, some other Marjorie,
ought to keep under control. So now she adopted a pacificatory tone.
"Oh! lovers' quarrels," she said, floating over the occasion. "Lovers'
quarrels. You mustn't ask _me_ to interfere!"
Marjorie, already a little ashamed of her heat, thought for an instant
she ought to stand that, and then decided abruptly with a return to
choler that she would not do so. She stood up, and held out her hand for
her book.
"Mr. Magnet," she said to her mother with remarkable force and freedom
as she took it, "has been talking unutterable nonsense. I don't call
that a lovers' quarrel--anyhow."
Then, confronted with a double astonishment, and having no more to say,
she picked up her skirt quite unnecessarily, and walked with a
heavenward chin indoors.
"I'm afraid," explained Mr. Magnet, "I was a little too free with one of
Magsy's favourite authors."
"Which is the favourite author now?" asked Mrs. Pope, after a reflective
pause, with a mother's indulgent smile.
"Shaw." He raised amused eyebrows. "It's just the age, I suppose."
"She's frightfully loyal while it lasts," said Mrs. Pope. "No one dare
say a word against them."
"I think it's adorable of her," said Mr. Magnet--with an answering
loyalty and gusto.
Sec. 2
The aviation accident occurred while Mrs. Pope, her two eldest
daughters, and Mr. Magnet were playing golf-croquet upon the vicarage
lawn. It was a serene, hot afternoon, a little too hot to take a game
seriously, and the four little figures moved slowly over the green and
grouped and dispersed as the game required. Mr. Magnet was very fond of
golf-croquet, he displayed a whimsical humour and much invention at this
game, it was not too exacting physically; and he could make his ball
jump into the air in the absurdest manner. Occasionally he won a laugh
from Marjorie or Daffy. No one else was in sight; the pseudo-twins and
Theodore and Toupee were in the barn, and Mr. Pope was six miles away at
Wamping, lying prone, nibbling grass blades and watching a county
cricket match, as every good Englishman, who knows what is expected of
him, loves to do.... Click went ball and mallet, and then after a long
interval, click. It seemed incredible that anything could possibly
happen before tea.
But this is no longer the world it was. Suddenly this tranquil scene was
slashed and rent by the sound and vision of a monoplane tearing across
the heavens.
A purring and popping arrested Mr. Magnet in mid jest, and the monster
came sliding up the sky over the trees beside the church to the east,
already near enough to look big, a great stiff shape, big buff sails
stayed with glittering wire, and with two odd little wheels beneath its
body. It drove up the sky, rising with a sort of upward heaving, until
the croquet players could see the driver and a passenger perched behind
him quite clearly. It passed a little to the right of the church tower
and only a few yards above the level of the flagstaff, there wasn't
fifty feet of clearance altogether, and as it did so Marjorie could see
both driver and passenger making hasty movements. It became immense and
over-shadowing, and every one stood rigid as it swept across the sun
above the vicarage chimneys. Then it seemed to drop twenty feet or so
abruptly, and then both the men cried out as it drove straight for the
line of poplars between the shrubbery and the meadow. "Oh, oh, OH!"
cried Mrs. Pope and Daffy. Evidently the aviator was trying to turn
sharply; the huge thing banked, but not enough, and came about and
slipped away until its wing was slashing into the tree tops with a
thrilling swish of leaves and the snapping of branches and stays.
"Run!" cried Magnet, and danced about the lawn, and the three ladies
rushed sideways as the whole affair slouched down on them. It came on
its edge, hesitated whether to turn over as a whole, then crumpled, and
amidst a volley of smashing and snapping came to rest amidst ploughed-up
turf, a clamorous stench of petrol, and a cloud of dust and blue smoke
within twenty yards of them. The two men had jumped to clear the engine,
had fallen headlong, and were now both covered by the fabric of the
shattered wing.
It was all too spectacular for word or speech until the thing lay still.
Even then the croquet players stood passive for awhile waiting for
something to happen. It took some seconds to reconcile their minds to
this sudden loss of initiative in a monster that had been so recently
and threateningly full of go. It seemed quite a long time before it came
into Marjorie's head that she ought perhaps to act in some way. She saw
a tall young man wriggling on all fours from underneath the wreckage of
fabric. He stared at her rather blankly. She went forward with a vague
idea of helping him. He stood up, swayed doubtfully on his legs, turned,
and became energetic, struggling mysteriously with the edge of the left
wing. He gasped and turned fierce blue eyes over his shoulder.
"Help me to hold the confounded thing up!" he cried, with a touch of
irritation in his voice at her attitude.
Marjorie at once seized the edge of the plane and pushed. The second
man, in a peculiar button-shaped head-dress, was lying crumpled up
underneath, his ear and cheek were bright with blood, and there was a
streak of blood on the ground near his head.
"That's right. Can you hold it if I use only one hand?"
Marjorie gasped "Yes," with a terrific weight as it seemed suddenly on
her wrists.
"Right O," and the tall young man had thrust himself backwards under the
plane until it rested on his back, and collared the prostrate man. "Keep
it up!" he said fiercely when Marjorie threatened to give way. He seemed
to assume that she was there to obey orders, and with much grunting and
effort he had dragged his companion clear of the wreckage.
The man's face was a mass of blood, and he was sickeningly inert to his
companion's lugging.
"Let it go," said the tall young man, and Marjorie thanked heaven as the
broken wing flapped down again.
She came helpfully to his side, and became aware of Daffy and her mother
a few paces off. Magnet--it astonished her--was retreating hastily. But
he had to go away because the sight of blood upset him--so much that it
was always wiser for him to go away.
"Is he hurt?" cried Mrs. Pope.
"We both are," said the tall young man, and then as though these other
people didn't matter and he and Marjorie were old friends, he said: "Can
we turn him over?"
"I think so." Marjorie grasped the damaged man's shoulder and got him
over skilfully.
"Will you get some water?" said the tall young man to Daffy and Mrs.
Pope, in a way that sent Daffy off at once for a pail.
"He wants water," she said to the parlourmaid who was hurrying out of
the house.
The tall young man had gone down on his knees by his companion,
releasing his neck, and making a hasty first examination of his
condition. "The pneumatic cap must have saved his head," he said,
throwing the thing aside. "Lucky he had it. He can't be badly hurt. Just
rubbed his face along the ground. Silly thing to have come as we did."
He felt the heart, and tried the flexibility of an arm.
"_That's_ all right," he said.
He became judicial and absorbed over the problems of his friend's side.
"Um," he remarked. He knelt back and regarded Marjorie for the first
time. "Thundering smash," he said. His face relaxed into an agreeable
smile. "He only bought it last week."
"Is he hurt?"
"Rib, I think--or two ribs perhaps. Stunned rather. All _this_--just his
nose."
He regarded Marjorie and Marjorie him for a brief space. He became aware
of Mrs. Pope on his right hand. Then at a clank behind, he turned round
to see Daphne advancing with a pail of water. The two servants were now
on the spot, and the odd-job man, and the old lady who did out the
church, and Magnet hovered doubtfully in the distance. Suddenly with
shouts and barks of sympathetic glee the pseudo-twins, Theodore and
Toupee shot out of the house. New thoughts were stirring in the young
aviator. He rose, wincing a little as he did so. "I'm afraid I'm a
little rude," he said.
"I do hope your friend isn't hurt," said Mrs. Pope, feeling the duty of
a hostess.
"He's not hurt _much_--so far as I can see. Haven't we made rather a
mess of your lawn?"
"Oh, not at all!" said Mrs. Pope.
"We have. If that is your gardener over there, it would be nice if he
kept back the people who seem to be hesitating beyond those trees. There
will be more presently. I'm afraid I must throw myself on your hands."
He broke into a chuckle for a moment. "I have, you know. Is it possible
to get a doctor? My friend's not hurt so very much, but still he wants
expert handling. He's Sir Rupert Solomonson, from"--he jerked his head
back--"over beyond Tunbridge Wells. My name's Trafford."
"I'm Mrs. Pope and these are my daughters."
Trafford bowed. "We just took the thing out for a lark," he said.
Marjorie had been regarding the prostrate man. His mouth was a little
open, and he showed beautiful teeth. Apart from the dry blood upon him
he was not an ill-looking man. He was manifestly a Jew, a square-rigged
Jew (you have remarked of course that there are square-rigged Jews,
whose noses are within bounds, and fore-and-aft Jews, whose noses
aren't), with not so much a bullet-head as a round-shot, cropped like
the head of a Capuchin monkey. Suddenly she was down and had his head on
her knee, with a quick movement that caught Trafford's eye. "He's
better," she said. "His eyelids flickered. Daffy, bring the water."
She had felt a queer little repugnance at first with this helpless man,
but now that professional nurse who lurks in the composition of so many
women, was uppermost. "Give me your handkerchief," she said to Trafford,
and with Daffy kneeling beside her and also interested, and Mrs. Pope a
belated but more experienced and authoritative third, Sir Rupert was
soon getting the best of attention.
"Wathall ..." said Sir Rupert suddenly, and tried again: "Wathall." A
third effort gave "Wathall about, eh?"
"If we could get him into the shade," said Marjorie.
"Woosh," cried Sir Rupert. "Weeeooo!"
"That's all right," said Trafford. "It's only a rib or two."
"Eeeeeyoooo!" said Sir Rupert.
"Exactly. We're going to carry you out of the glare."
"Don't touch me," said Sir Rupert. "Gooo."
It took some little persuasion before Sir Rupert would consent to be
moved, and even then he was for a time--oh! crusty. But presently
Trafford and the two girls had got him into the shade of a large bush
close to where in a circle of rugs and cushions the tea things lay
prepared. There they camped. The helpful odd-job man was ordered to
stave off intruders from the village; water, towels, pillows were
forthcoming. Mr. Magnet reappeared as tentative assistance, and
Solomonson became articulate and brave and said he'd nothing but a
stitch in his side. In his present position he wasn't at all
uncomfortable. Only he didn't want any one near him. He enforced that by
an appealing smile. The twins, invited to fetch the doctor, declined,
proffering Theodore. They had conceived juvenile passions for the tall
young man, and did not want to leave him. He certainly had a very nice
face. So Theodore after walking twice round the wreckage, tore himself
away and departed on Rom's bicycle. Enquiry centred on Solomonson for a
time. His face, hair and neck were wet but no longer bloody, and he
professed perfect comfort so long as he wasn't moved, and no one came
too near him. He was very clear about that though perfectly polite, and
scrutinized their faces to see if they were equally clear. Satisfied
upon this point he closed his eyes and spoke no more. He looked then
like a Capuchin monkey lost in pride. There came a pause. Every one was
conscious of having risen to an emergency and behaved well under unusual
circumstances. The young man's eye rested on the adjacent tea-things,
lacking nothing but the coronation of the teapot.
"Why not," he remarked, "have tea?"
"If you think your friend----" began Mrs. Pope.
"Oh! _he's_ all right. Aren't you, Solomonson? There's nothing more now
until the doctor."
"Only want to be left alone," said Solomonson, and closed his heavy
eyelids again.
Mrs. Pope told the maids, with an air of dismissal, to get tea.
"We can keep an eye on him," said Trafford.
Marjorie surveyed her first patient with a pretty unconscious mixture of
maternal gravity and girlish interest, and the twins to avoid too openly
gloating upon the good looks of Trafford, chose places and secured
cushions round the tea-things, calculating to the best of their ability
how they might secure the closest proximity to him. Mr. Magnet and
Toupee had gone to stare at the monoplane; they were presently joined by
the odd-job man in an interrogative mood. "Pretty complete smash, sir!"
said the odd-job man, and then perceiving heads over the hedge by the
churchyard, turned back to his duty of sentinel. Daffy thought of the
need of more cups and plates and went in to get them, and Mrs. Pope
remarked that she did hope Sir Rupert was not badly hurt....
"Extraordinary all this is," remarked Mr. Trafford. "Now, here we were
after lunch, twenty miles away--smoking cigars and with no more idea of
having tea with you than--I was going to say--flying. But that's out of
date now. Then we just thought we'd try the thing.... Like a dream."
He addressed himself to Marjorie: "I never feel that life is quite real
until about three days after things have happened. Never. Two hours ago
I had not the slightest intention of ever flying again."
"But haven't you flown before?" asked Mrs. Pope.
"Not much. I did a little at Sheppey, but it's so hard for a poor man to
get his hands on a machine. And here was Solomonson, with this thing in
his hangar, eating its head off. Let's take it out," I said, "and go
once round the park. And here we are.... I thought it wasn't wise for
him to come...."
Sir Rupert, without opening his eyes, was understood to assent.
"Do you know," said Trafford, "The sight of your tea makes me feel
frightfully hungry."
"I don't think the engine's damaged?" he said cheerfully, "do you?" as
Magnet joined them. "The ailerons are in splinters, and the left wing's
not much better. But that's about all except the wheels. One falls so
much lighter than you might suppose--from the smash.... Lucky it didn't
turn over. Then, you know, the engine comes on the top of you, and
you're done."
Sec. 3
The doctor arrived after tea, with a bag and a stethoscope in a small
coffin-like box, and the Popes and Mr. Magnet withdrew while Sir Rupert
was carefully sounded, tested, scrutinized, questioned, watched and
examined in every way known to medical science. The outcome of the
conference was presently communicated to the Popes by Mr. Trafford and
the doctor. Sir Rupert was not very seriously injured, but he was
suffering from concussion and shock, two of his ribs were broken and his
wrist sprained, unless perhaps one of the small bones was displaced. He
ought to be bandaged up and put to bed....
"Couldn't we--" said Mrs. Pope, but the doctor assured her his own house
was quite the best place. There Sir Rupert could stay for some days. At
present the cross-country journey over the Downs or by the South Eastern
Railway would be needlessly trying and painful. He would with the Popes'
permission lie quietly where he was for an hour or so, and then the
doctor would come with a couple of men and a carrying bed he had, and
take him off to his own house. There he would be, as Mr. Trafford said,
"as right as ninepence," and Mr. Trafford could put up either at the Red
Lion with Mr. Magnet or in the little cottage next door to the doctor.
(Mr. Trafford elected for the latter as closer to his friend.) As for
the smashed aeroplane, telegrams would be sent at once to Sir Rupert's
engineers at Chesilbury, and they would have all that cleared away by
mid-day to-morrow....
The doctor departed; Sir Rupert, after stimulants, closed his eyes, and
Mr. Trafford seated himself at the tea-things for some more cake, as
though introduction by aeroplane was the most regular thing in the
world.
He had very pleasant and easy manners, an entire absence of
self-consciousness, and a quick talkative disposition that made him very
rapidly at home with everybody. He described all the sensations of
flight, his early lessons and experiments, and in the utmost detail the
events of the
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