H G Wells Omnibus, page 177
She left the sentence incomplete.
She made her declaration abruptly. “I love Mr. Trafford,” she said, with a catch in her voice, “and I don’t love Mr. Magnet.”
Mrs. Pope received this like one who is suddenly stabbed. She sat still as if overwhelmed, one hand pressed to her side and her eyes closed. Then she said, as if she gasped involuntarily—
“It’s too dreadful! Marjorie,” she said, “I want to ask you to do something. After all, a mother has some claim. Will you wait just a little. Will you promise me to do nothing—nothing, I mean, to commit you—until your father has been able to make inquiries. Don’t see him for a little while. Very soon you’ll be one-and-twenty, and then perhaps things may be different. If he cares for you, and you for him, a little separation won’t matter…. Until your father has inquired….”
“Mother,” said Marjorie, “I can’t——”
Mrs. Pope drew in the air sharply between her teeth, as if in agony.
“But, mother——Mother, I must let Mr. Trafford know that I’m not to see him. I can’t suddenly cease…. If I could see him once——”
“Don’t!” said Mrs. Pope, in a hollow voice.
Marjorie began weeping. “He’d not understand,” she said. “If I might just speak to him!”
“Not alone, Marjorie.”
Marjorie stood still. “Well—before you.”
Mrs. Pope conceded the point. “And then, Marjorie——” she said.
“I’d keep my word, mother,” said Marjorie, and began to sob in a manner she felt to be absurdly childish—“until—until I am one-and-twenty. I’d promise that.”
Mrs. Pope did a brief calculation. “Marjorie,” she said, “it’s only your happiness I think of.”
“I know,” said Marjorie, and added in a low voice, “and father.”
“My dear, you don’t understand your father…. I believe—I do firmly believe—if anything happened to any of you girls—anything bad—he would kill himself…. And I know he means that you aren’t to go about so much as you used to do, unless we have the most definite promises. Of course, your father’s ideas aren’t always my ideas, Marjorie; but it’s your duty—You know how hasty he is and—quick. Just as you know how good and generous and kind he is”—she caught Marjorie’s eye, and added a little lamely—“at bottom.” … She thought. “I think I could get him to let you say just one word with Mr. Trafford. It would be very difficult, but——”
She paused for a few seconds, and seemed to be thinking deeply.
“Marjorie,” she said, “Mr. Magnet must never know anything of this.”
“But, mother——!”
“Nothing!”
“I can’t go on with my engagement!”
Mrs. Pope shook her head inscrutably.
“But how can I, mother?”
“You need not tell him why, Marjorie.”
“But——”
“Just think how it would humiliate and distress him! You can’t, Marjorie. You must find some excuse—oh, any excuse! But not the truth—not the truth, Marjorie. It would be too dreadful.”
Marjorie thought. “Look here, mother, I may see Mr. Trafford again? I may really speak to him?”
“Haven’t I promised?”
“Then, I’ll do as you say,” said Marjorie.
§ 5
Mrs. Pope found her husband seated at the desk in the ultra-Protestant study, meditating gloomily.
“I’ve been talking to her,” she said, “She’s in a state of terrible distress.”
“She ought to be,” said Mr. Pope.
“Philip, you don’t understand Marjorie.”
“I don’t.”
“You think she was kissing that man.”
“Well, she was.”
“You can think that of her!”
Mr. Pope turned his chair to her. “But I saw!”
Mrs. Pope shook her head. “She wasn’t; she was struggling to get away from him. She told me so herself. I’ve been into it with her. You don’t understand, Philip. A man like that has a sort of fascination for a girl. He dazzles her. It’s the way with girls. But you’re quite mistaken…. Quite. It’s a sort of hypnotism. She’ll grow out of it. Of course, she loves Mr. Magnet. She does indeed. I’ve not a doubt of it. But——”
“You’re sure she wasn’t kissing him?”
“Positive.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?”
“A girl’s so complex. You didn’t give her a chance. She’s fearfully ashamed of herself—fearfully! but it’s just because she is ashamed that she won’t admit it.”
“I’ll make her admit it.”
“You ought to have had all boys,” said Mrs. Pope. “Oh! she’ll admit it some day—readily enough. But I believe a girl of her spirit would rather die than begin explaining. You can’t expect it of her. Really you can’t.”
He grunted and shook his head slowly from side to side.
She sat down in the arm-chair beside the desk.
“I want to know just exactly what we are to do about the girl, Philip. I can’t bear to think of her—up there.”
“How?” he asked. “Up there?”
“Yes,” she answered with that skilful inconsecutiveness of hers, and let a brief silence touch his imagination. “Do you think that man means to come here again?” she asked.
“Chuck him out if he does,” said Mr. Pope, grimly.
She pressed her lips together firmly. She seemed to be weighing things painfully. “I wouldn’t,” she said at last.
“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Pope.
“I do not want you to make an open quarrel with Mr. Trafford.”
“Not quarrel!”
“Not an open one,” said Mrs. Pope. “Of course I know how nice it would be if you could use a horsewhip, dear. There’s such a lot of things—if we only just slash. But—it won’t help. Get him to go away. She’s consented never to see him again—practically. She’s ready to tell him so herself. Part them against their will—oh! and the thing may go on for no end of time. But treat it as it ought to be treated—She’ll be very tragic for a week or so, and then she’ll forget him like a dream. He is a dream—a girl’s dream…. If only we leave it alone, she’ll leave it alone.”
§ 6
Things were getting straight, Mrs. Pope felt. She had now merely to add a few touches to the tranquillization of Daphne, and the misdirection of the twin’s curiosity. These touches accomplished, it seemed that everything was done. After a brief reflection, she dismissed the idea of putting things to Theodore. She ran over the possibilities of the servants eavesdropping, and found them negligible. Yes, everything was done—everything. And yet….
The queer string in her nature between religiosity and superstition began to vibrate. She hesitated. Then she slipped upstairs, fastened the door, fell on her knees beside the bed and put the whole thing as acceptably as possible to Heaven in a silent, simple, but lucidly explanatory prayer….
She came out of her chamber brighter and braver than she had been for eighteen long hours. She could now, she felt, await the developments that threatened with the serenity of one who is prepared at every point. She went almost happily to the kitchen, only about forty-five minutes behind her usual time, to order the day’s meals and see with her own eyes that economies prevailed. And it seemed to her, on the whole, consoling, and at any rate a distraction, when the cook informed her that after all she had meant to give notice on the day of aunt Plessington’s visit.
§ 7
The unsuspecting Magnet, fatigued but happy—for three hours of solid humorous writing (omitting every unpleasant suggestion and mingling in the most acceptable and saleable proportions smiles and tears) had added its quota to the intellectual heritage of England, made a simple light lunch cooked in homely village-inn fashion, lit a well merited cigar, and turned his steps towards the vicarage. He was preceded at some distance along the avenuesque drive by the back of Mr. Trafford, which he made no attempt to overtake.
Mr. Trafford was admitted and disappeared, and a minute afterwards Magnet reached the door.
Mrs. Pope appeared radiant—about the weather. A rather tiresome man had just called upon Mr. Pope about business matters, she said, and he might be detained five or ten minutes. Marjorie and Daffy were upstairs—resting. They had been disturbed by bats in the night.
“Isn’t it charmingly rural?” said Mrs. Pope. “Bats!”
She talked about bats and the fear she had of their getting in her hair, and as she talked she led the way brightly but firmly as far as possible out of earshot of the windows of the ultra Protestant study in which Mr. Pope was now (she did so hope temperately) interviewing Mr. Trafford.
§ 8
Directly Mr. Trafford had reached the front door it had opened for him, and closed behind him at once. He had found himself with Mrs. Pope. “You wish to see my husband?” she had said, and had led him to the study forthwith. She had returned at once to intercept Mr. Magnet….
Trafford found Mr. Pope seated sternly at the centre of the writing desk, regarding him with a threatening brow.
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Pope breaking the silence, “you have come to offer some explanation——”
While awaiting this encounter Mr. Pope had not been insensitive to the tactical and scenic possibilities of the occasion. In fact, he had spent the latter half of the morning in intermittent preparations, arranging desks, books, hassocks in advantageous positions, and not even neglecting such small details as the stamp tray, the articles of interest from Jerusalem, and the rock-crystal cenotaph, which he had exhibited in such a manner as was most calculated to damp, chill and subjugate an antagonist in the exposed area towards the window. He had also arranged the chairs in a highly favourable pattern.
Mr. Trafford was greatly taken aback by Mr. Pope’s juridical manner and by this form of address, and he was further put out by Mr. Pope saying with a regal gesture to the best illuminated and most isolated chair: “Be seated, sir.”
Mr. Trafford’s exordium vanished from his mind, he was at a loss for words until spurred to speech by Mr. Pope’s almost truculent: “Well?”
“I am in love sir, with your daughter.”
“I am not aware of it,” said Mr. Pope, and lifted and dropped the paper-weight. “My daughter, sir, is engaged to marry Mr. Magnet. If you had approached me in a proper fashion before presuming to attempt—to attempt——” His voice thickened with indignation,—“Liberties with her, you would have been duly informed of her position—and everyone would have been saved”—he lifted the paper-weight. “Everything that has happened.” (Bump.)
Mr. Trafford had to adjust himself to the unexpected elements in this encounter. “Oh!” he said.
“Yes,” said Mr. Pope, and there was a distinct interval.
“Is your daughter in love with Mr. Magnet?” asked Mr. Trafford in an almost colloquial tone.
Mr. Pope smiled gravely. “I presume so, sir.”
“She never gave me that impression, anyhow,” said the young man.
“It was neither her duty to give nor yours to receive that impression,” said Mr. Pope.
Again Mr. Trafford was at a loss.
“Have you come here, sir, merely to bandy words?” asked Mr. Pope, drumming with ten fingers on the table.
Mr. Trafford thrust his hands into his pockets and assumed a fictitious pose of ease. He had never found any one in his life before quite so provocative of colloquialism as Mr. Pope.
“Look here, sir, this is all very well,” he began, “but why can’t I fall in love with your daughter? I’m a Doctor of Science and all that sort of thing. I’ve a perfectly decent outlook. My father was rather a swell in his science. I’m an entirely decent and respectable person.”
“I beg to differ,” said Mr. Pope.
“But I am.”
“Again,” said Mr. Pope, with great patience, and a slight forward bowing of the head, “I beg to differ.”
“Well—differ. But all the same——”
He paused and began again, and for a time they argued to no purpose. They generalized about the position of an engaged girl and the rights and privileges of a father. Then Mr. Pope, “to cut all this short,” told him frankly he wasn’t wanted, his daughter did not want him, nobody wanted him; he was an invader, he had to be got rid of—“if possible by peaceful means.” Trafford disputed these propositions, and asked to see Marjorie. Mr. Pope had been leading up to this, and at once closed with that request.
“She is as anxious as any one to end this intolerable siege,” he said. He went to the door and called for Marjorie, who appeared with conspicuous promptitude. She was in a dress of green linen that made her seem very cool as well as very dignified to Trafford; she was tense with restrained excitement, and either—for these things shade into each other—entirely without a disposition to act her part or acting with consummate ability. Trafford rose at the sight of her, and remained standing. Mr. Pope closed the door and walked back to the desk. “Mr. Trafford has to be told,” he said, “that you don’t want him in Buryhamstreet.” He arrested Marjorie’s forward movement towards Trafford by a gesture of the hand, seated himself, and resumed his drumming on the table. “Well?” he said.
“I don’t think you ought to stay in Buryhamstreet, Mr. Trafford,” said Marjorie.
“You don’t want me to?”
“It will only cause trouble—and scenes.”
“You want me to go?”
“Away from here.”
“You really mean that?”
Marjorie did not answer for a little time; she seemed to be weighing the exact force of all she was going to say.
“Mr. Trafford,” she answered, “everything I’ve ever said to you—everything—I’ve meant, more than I’ve ever meant anything. Everything!”
A little flush of colour came into Trafford’s cheeks. He regarded Marjorie with a brightening eye.
“Oh well,” he said, “I don’t understand. But I’m entirely in your hands, of course.”
Marjorie’s pose and expression altered. For an instant she was a miracle of instinctive expression, she shone at him, she conveyed herself to him, she assured him. Her eyes met his, she stood warmly flushed and quite unconquered—visibly, magnificently his. She poured into him just that riotous pride and admiration that gives a man altogether to a woman…. Then it seemed as if a light passed, and she was just an everyday Marjorie standing there.
“I’ll do anything you want me to,” said Trafford.
“Then I want you to go.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Pope.
“Yes,” said Trafford, with his eyes on her self-possession.
“I’ve promised not to write or send to you, or—think more than I can help of you, until I’m twenty-one—nearly two months from now.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know. How can I?”
“You hear, sir?” from Mr. Pope, in the pause of mutual scrutiny that followed.
“One question,” said Mr. Trafford.
“You’ve surely asked enough, sir,” said Mr. Pope.
“Are you still engaged to Magnet?”
“Sir!”
“Please, father;” said Marjorie, with unusual daring and in her mother’s voice. “Mr. Trafford, after what I’ve told you—you must leave that to me.”
“She is engaged to Mr. Magnet,” said Mr. Pope. “Tell him outright, Marjorie. Make it clear.”
“I think I understand,” said Trafford, with his eyes on Marjorie.
“I’ve not seen Mr. Magnet since last night,” said Marjorie. “And so—naturally—I’m still engaged to him.”
“Precisely!” said Mr. Pope, and turned with a face of harsh interrogation to his importunate caller. Mr. Trafford seemed disposed for further questions. “I don’t think we need detain you, Madge,” said Mr. Pope, over his shoulder.
The two young people stood facing one another for a moment, and I am afraid that they were both extremely happy and satisfied with each other. It was all right, they were quite sure—all right. Their lips were almost smiling. Then Marjorie made an entirely dignified exit. She closed the door very softly, and Mr. Pope turned to his visitor again with a bleak politeness. “I hope that satisfies you,” he said.
“There is nothing more to be said at present, I admit,” said Mr. Trafford.
“Nothing,” said Mr. Pope.
Both gentlemen bowed. Mr. Pope rose ceremoniously, and Mr. Trafford walked doorward. He had a sense of latent absurdities in these tremendous attitudes. They passed through the hall—processionally. But just at the end some lower strain in Mr. Trafford’s nature touched the fine dignity of the occasion with an inappropriate remark.
“Good-bye, sir,” said Mr. Pope, holding the housedoor wide.
“Good-bye, sir,” said Mr. Trafford, and then added with a note of untimely intimacy in his voice, with an inexcusable levity upon his lips: “You know—there’s nobody—no man in the world—I’d sooner have for a father-in-law than you.”
Mr. Pope, caught unprepared on the spur of the moment, bowed in a cold and distant manner, and then almost immediately closed the door to save himself from violence….
From first to last neither gentleman had made the slightest allusion to a considerable bruise upon Mr. Trafford’s left cheek, and a large abrasion above his ear.
§ 9
That afternoon Marjorie began her difficult task of getting disengaged from Mr. Magnet. It was difficult because she was pledged not to tell him of the one thing that made this line of action not only explicable, but necessary. Magnet, perplexed, and disconcerted, and secretly sustained by her mother’s glancing sidelights on the feminine character and the instability of “girlish whims,” remained at Buryhamstreet until the family returned to Hartstone Square. The engagement was ended—formally—but in such a manner that Magnet was left a rather pathetic and invincibly assiduous besieger. He lavished little presents upon both sisters, he devised little treats for the entire family, he enriched Theodore beyond the dreams of avarice, and he discussed his love and admiration for Marjorie, and the perplexities and delicacies of the situation not only with Mrs. Pope, but with Daphne. At first he had thought very little of Daphne, but now he was beginning to experience the subtle pleasures of a confidential friendship. She understood, he felt; it was quite wonderful how she understood. He found Daffy much richer in response than Marjorie, and far less disconcerting in reply….
