H G Wells Omnibus, page 165
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….
§ 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.
§ 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….”
§ 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.
