Marriage Read online

  CHAPTER THE THIRD

  THE MAN WHO FELL OUT OF THE SKY

  Sec. 1

  For the next week Marjorie became more nearly introspective than she hadever been in her life before. She began to doubt her hitherto unshakenconviction that she was a single, consistent human being. She found suchdiscords and discrepancies between mood and mood, between the convictionof this hour and the feeling of that, that it seemed to her she wasrather a collection of samples of emotion and attitude than anything sosimple as an individual.

  For example, there can be no denying there was one Marjorie in thebundle who was immensely set up by the fact that she was engaged, andgoing to be at no very remote date mistress of a London house. She wasprofoundly Plessingtonian, and quite the vulgarest of the lot. The newstatus she had attained and the possibly beautiful house and theprobably successful dinner-parties and the arrangements and theimportance of such a life was the substance of this creature's thought.She designed some queenly dresses. This was the Marjorie most inevidence when it came to talking with her mother and Daphne. I am afraidshe patronized Daphne, and ignored the fact that Daphne, who had begunwith a resolute magnanimity, was becoming annoyed and resentful.

  And she thought of things she might buy, and the jolly feeling ofputting them about and making fine effects with them. One thing she toldDaphne, she had clearly resolved upon; the house should be always fulland brimming over with beautiful flowers. "I've always wished motherwould have more flowers--and not keep them so long when she hasthem...."

  Another Marjorie in the confusion of her mind was doing her sincerest,narrow best to appreciate and feel grateful for and return the devotionof 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. "ButI 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 lessagreeable person. She was a sprite of pure criticism, and in spite ofthe utmost efforts to suppress her, she declared night and day in theinner confidences of Marjorie's soul that she did not believe in Mr.Magnet's old devotion at all. She was anti-Magnet, a persistentinsurgent. She was dreadfully unsettling. It was surely this Marjoriethat wouldn't let the fact of his baldness alone, and who discovered andinsisted upon a curious unbeautiful flatness in his voice whenever hewas 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 dispositionto thwart and control. And he was always touching her! Whenever he camenear her she would wince at the freedoms a large, kind hand might takewith her elbow or wrist, at a possible sudden, clumsy pat at some erringstrand of hair.

  Then there was an appraising satisfaction in his eye.

  On the third day of their engagement he began, quite abruptly, to callher "Magsy." "We'll end this scandal of a Girl Pope," he said. "MagsyMagnet, you'll be--M.M. No women M.P.'s for _us_, Magsy...."

  She became acutely critical of his intellectual quality. She listenedwith a new alertness to the conversations at the dinner-table, the boutsof wit with her father. She carried off utterances and witticism formaturer reflection. She was amazed to find how little they couldwithstand the tests and acids of her mind. So many things, such wide andinteresting fields, he did not so much think about as cover with a largeenveloping shallowness....

  He came strolling around the vicarage into the garden one morning abouteleven, though she had not expected him until lunch-time; and she wassitting with her feet tucked up on the aged but still practicablegarden-seat reading Shaw's "Common Sense of Municipal Trading." He cameand leant over the back of the seat, and she looked up, said "Goodmorning. Isn't it perfectly lovely?" and indicated by a book still openthat her interest in it remained alive.

  "What's the book, Magsy?" he asked, took it out of her slightlyresisting hand, closed it and read the title. "Um," he said; "Isn't thisa 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 witha grimace of humorous distaste.

  "I suppose women have as good brains as men," said Marjorie, "if itcomes to that."

  "Better," said Magnet. "That's why they shouldn't trouble about horridthings 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 MunicipalTrading, Magsy, whether you'd make head or tail of it. It's a stiffsubject. Shaw just gets his chance for a smart thing or so.... I'drather 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," hesaid, "nearer home than this."

  Marjorie was ablaze now. "What a silly thing to say!" she cried, with anundergraduate's freedom. "Really, you are talking nonsense! I read thatbook 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 bookupside down?"

  She was so plainly angry that he was taken aback. "I don't mean tosuggest--" he began, and turned to greet the welcome presence, theinterrogative 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 aboutMunicipal Trading!"

  Mrs. Pope knew the wicked little flicker in Marjorie's eye better thanMr. Magnet. She had known it from the nursery, and yet she had neverquite 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 instantshe ought to stand that, and then decided abruptly with a return tocholer that she would not do so. She stood up, and held out her hand forher book.

  "Mr. Magnet," she said to her mother with remarkable force and freedomas she took it, "has been talking unutterable nonsense. I don't callthat 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 aheavenward chin indoors.

  "I'm afraid," explained Mr. Magnet, "I was a little too free with one ofMagsy's favourite authors."

  "Which is the favourite author now?" asked Mrs. Pope, after a reflectivepause, 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 daresay a word against them."

  "I think it's adorable of her," said Mr. Magnet--with an answeringloyalty and gusto.

  Sec. 2

  The aviation accident occurred while Mrs. Pope, her two eldestdaughters, and Mr. Magnet were playing golf-croquet upon the vicaragelawn. It was a serene, hot afternoon, a little too hot to take a gameseriously, and the four little figures moved slowly over the green andgrouped and dispersed as the game required. Mr. Magnet was very fond ofgolf-croquet, he displayed a whimsical humour and much invention at thisgame, it was not too exacting physically; and he could make his balljump into the ai
r in the absurdest manner. Occasionally he won a laughfrom Marjorie or Daffy. No one else was in sight; the pseudo-twins andTheodore and Toupee were in the barn, and Mr. Pope was six miles away atWamping, lying prone, nibbling grass blades and watching a countycricket match, as every good Englishman, who knows what is expected ofhim, loves to do.... Click went ball and mallet, and then after a longinterval, click. It seemed incredible that anything could possiblyhappen before tea.

  But this is no longer the world it was. Suddenly this tranquil scene wasslashed and rent by the sound and vision of a monoplane tearing acrossthe heavens.

  A purring and popping arrested Mr. Magnet in mid jest, and the monstercame 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 sailsstayed with glittering wire, and with two odd little wheels beneath itsbody. It drove up the sky, rising with a sort of upward heaving, untilthe croquet players could see the driver and a passenger perched behindhim quite clearly. It passed a little to the right of the church towerand only a few yards above the level of the flagstaff, there wasn'tfifty feet of clearance altogether, and as it did so Marjorie could seeboth driver and passenger making hasty movements. It became immense andover-shadowing, and every one stood rigid as it swept across the sunabove the vicarage chimneys. Then it seemed to drop twenty feet or soabruptly, and then both the men cried out as it drove straight for theline of poplars between the shrubbery and the meadow. "Oh, oh, OH!"cried Mrs. Pope and Daffy. Evidently the aviator was trying to turnsharply; the huge thing banked, but not enough, and came about andslipped away until its wing was slashing into the tree tops with athrilling swish of leaves and the snapping of branches and stays.

  "Run!" cried Magnet, and danced about the lawn, and the three ladiesrushed sideways as the whole affair slouched down on them. It came onits edge, hesitated whether to turn over as a whole, then crumpled, andamidst a volley of smashing and snapping came to rest amidst ploughed-upturf, a clamorous stench of petrol, and a cloud of dust and blue smokewithin 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 theshattered 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 forsomething to happen. It took some seconds to reconcile their minds tothis sudden loss of initiative in a monster that had been so recentlyand threateningly full of go. It seemed quite a long time before it cameinto Marjorie's head that she ought perhaps to act in some way. She sawa tall young man wriggling on all fours from underneath the wreckage offabric. He stared at her rather blankly. She went forward with a vagueidea of helping him. He stood up, swayed doubtfully on his legs, turned,and became energetic, struggling mysteriously with the edge of the leftwing. He gasped and turned fierce blue eyes over his shoulder.

  "Help me to hold the confounded thing up!" he cried, with a touch ofirritation in his voice at her attitude.

  Marjorie at once seized the edge of the plane and pushed. The secondman, in a peculiar button-shaped head-dress, was lying crumpled upunderneath, his ear and cheek were bright with blood, and there was astreak 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 onher wrists.

  "Right O," and the tall young man had thrust himself backwards under theplane until it rested on his back, and collared the prostrate man. "Keepit up!" he said fiercely when Marjorie threatened to give way. He seemedto assume that she was there to obey orders, and with much grunting andeffort he had dragged his companion clear of the wreckage.

  The man's face was a mass of blood, and he was sickeningly inert to hiscompanion's lugging.

  "Let it go," said the tall young man, and Marjorie thanked heaven as thebroken wing flapped down again.

  She came helpfully to his side, and became aware of Daffy and her mothera few paces off. Magnet--it astonished her--was retreating hastily. Buthe had to go away because the sight of blood upset him--so much that itwas 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 otherpeople didn't matter and he and Marjorie were old friends, he said: "Canwe turn him over?"

  "I think so." Marjorie grasped the damaged man's shoulder and got himover 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 ofthe house.

  The tall young man had gone down on his knees by his companion,releasing his neck, and making a hasty first examination of hiscondition. "The pneumatic cap must have saved his head," he said,throwing the thing aside. "Lucky he had it. He can't be badly hurt. Justrubbed 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 firsttime. "Thundering smash," he said. His face relaxed into an agreeablesmile. "He only bought it last week."

  "Is he hurt?"

  "Rib, I think--or two ribs perhaps. Stunned rather. All _this_--just hisnose."

  He regarded Marjorie and Marjorie him for a brief space. He became awareof Mrs. Pope on his right hand. Then at a clank behind, he turned roundto see Daphne advancing with a pail of water. The two servants were nowon the spot, and the odd-job man, and the old lady who did out thechurch, and Magnet hovered doubtfully in the distance. Suddenly withshouts and barks of sympathetic glee the pseudo-twins, Theodore andToupee shot out of the house. New thoughts were stirring in the youngaviator. He rose, wincing a little as he did so. "I'm afraid I'm alittle rude," he said.

  "I do hope your friend isn't hurt," said Mrs. Pope, feeling the duty ofa hostess.

  "He's not hurt _much_--so far as I can see. Haven't we made rather amess of your lawn?"

  "Oh, not at all!" said Mrs. Pope.

  "We have. If that is your gardener over there, it would be nice if hekept back the people who seem to be hesitating beyond those trees. Therewill 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 possibleto get a doctor? My friend's not hurt so very much, but still he wantsexpert handling. He's Sir Rupert Solomonson, from"--he jerked his headback--"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 littleopen, and he showed beautiful teeth. Apart from the dry blood upon himhe was not an ill-looking man. He was manifestly a Jew, a square-riggedJew (you have remarked of course that there are square-rigged Jews,whose noses are within bounds, and fore-and-aft Jews, whose nosesaren't), with not so much a bullet-head as a round-shot, cropped likethe head of a Capuchin monkey. Suddenly she was down and had his head onher knee, with a quick movement that caught Trafford's eye. "He'sbetter," 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 manywomen, was uppermost. "Give me your handkerchief," she said to Trafford,and with Daffy kneeling beside her and also interested, and Mrs. Pope abelated but more experienced and authoritative third, Sir Rupert wassoon getting the best of attention.

  "Wathall ..." said Sir Rupert suddenly, and tried again: "Wathall." Athird 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 bemoved, and even then he was for a time--oh! crusty. But presentlyTrafford and the two girls had got him into the shade of a large bushclose to where in a circle of rugs and cushions the tea things layprepared. There they camped. The helpful odd-job man was ordered tostave off intruders from the village; water, towels, pillows wereforthcoming. Mr. Magnet reappeared as tentative assistance, andSolomonson became articulate and brave and said he'd nothing but astitch in his side. In his present position he wasn't at alluncomfortable. Only he didn't want any one near him. He enforced that byan appealing smile. The twins, invited to fetch the doctor, declined,proffering Theodore. They had conceived juvenile passions for the tallyoung man, and did not want to leave him. He certainly had a very niceface. So Theodore after walking twice round the wreckage, tore himselfaway and departed on Rom's bicycle. Enquiry centred on Solomonson for atime. His face, hair and neck were wet but no longer bloody, and heprofessed perfect comfort so long as he wasn't moved, and no one cametoo near him. He was very clear about that though perfectly polite, andscrutinized their faces to see if they were equally clear. Satisfiedupon this point he closed his eyes and spoke no more. He looked thenlike a Capuchin monkey lost in pride. There came a pause. Every one wasconscious of having risen to an emergency and behaved well under unusualcircumstances. 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 nowuntil the doctor."

  "Only want to be left alone," said Solomonson, and closed his heavyeyelids 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 ofmaternal gravity and girlish interest, and the twins to avoid too openlygloating upon the good looks of Trafford, chose places and securedcushions round the tea-things, calculating to the best of their abilityhow they might secure the closest proximity to him. Mr. Magnet andToupee had gone to stare at the monoplane; they were presently joined bythe odd-job man in an interrogative mood. "Pretty complete smash, sir!"said the odd-job man, and then perceiving heads over the hedge by thechurchyard, turned back to his duty of sentinel. Daffy thought of theneed of more cups and plates and went in to get them, and Mrs. Poperemarked that she did hope Sir Rupert was not badly hurt....

  "Extraordinary all this is," remarked Mr. Trafford. "Now, here we wereafter lunch, twenty miles away--smoking cigars and with no more idea ofhaving tea with you than--I was going to say--flying. But that's out ofdate 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 realuntil about three days after things have happened. Never. Two hours agoI 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 toget his hands on a machine. And here was Solomonson, with this thing inhis hangar, eating its head off. Let's take it out," I said, "and goonce round the park. And here we are.... I thought it wasn't wise forhim to come...."

  Sir Rupert, without opening his eyes, was understood to assent.

  "Do you know," said Trafford, "The sight of your tea makes me feelfrightfully hungry."

  "I don't think the engine's damaged?" he said cheerfully, "do you?" asMagnet joined them. "The ailerons are in splinters, and the left wing'snot much better. But that's about all except the wheels. One falls somuch lighter than you might suppose--from the smash.... Lucky it didn'tturn over. Then, you know, the engine comes on the top of you, andyou're done."

  Sec. 3

  The doctor arrived after tea, with a bag and a stethoscope in a smallcoffin-like box, and the Popes and Mr. Magnet withdrew while Sir Rupertwas carefully sounded, tested, scrutinized, questioned, watched andexamined in every way known to medical science. The outcome of theconference was presently communicated to the Popes by Mr. Trafford andthe doctor. Sir Rupert was not very seriously injured, but he wassuffering from concussion and shock, two of his ribs were broken and hiswrist sprained, unless perhaps one of the small bones was displaced. Heought to be bandaged up and put to bed....

  "Couldn't we--" said Mrs. Pope, but the doctor assured her his own housewas quite the best place. There Sir Rupert could stay for some days. Atpresent the cross-country journey over the Downs or by the South EasternRailway would be needlessly trying and painful. He would with the Popes'permission lie quietly where he was for an hour or so, and then thedoctor would come with a couple of men and a carrying bed he had, andtake 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 RedLion 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 forthe smashed aeroplane, telegrams would be sent at once to Sir Rupert'sengineers at Chesilbury, and they would have all that cleared away bymid-day to-morrow....

  The doctor departed; Sir Rupert, after stimulants, closed his eyes, andMr. Trafford seated himself at the tea-things for some more cake, asthough introduction by aeroplane was the most regular thing in theworld.

  He had very pleasant and easy manners, an entire absence ofself-consciousness, and a quick talkative disposition that made him veryrapidly at home with everybody. He described all the sensations offlight, his early lessons and experiments, and in the utmost detail theevents of the afternoon that had led to this disastrous adventure. Hemade his suggestion of "trying the thing" seem the most natural impulsein the world. The bulk of the conversation fell on him; Mr. Magnet, savefor the intervention of one or two jests, was quietly observant; therest were well disposed to listen. And as Mr. Trafford talked his eyerested ever and again on Marjorie with the faintest touch of scrutinyand perplexity, and she, too, found a curious little persuasion growingup in her mind that somewhere, somehow, she and he had met and hadtalked rather earnestly. But how and where eluded her altogether....

  They had sat for an hour--the men from the doctor's seemed nevercoming--when Mr. Pope returned unexpectedly from his cricket match,which had ended a little prematurely in a rot on an over-dry wicket. Hewas full of particulars of the day's play, and how Wiper had got a mostamazing catch and held it, though he fell; how Jenks had deliberatelybowled at a man's head, he believed, and little Gibbs thrown a man outfrom slip. He was burning to tell all this in the utmost detail toMagnet and his family, so that they might at least share the retrospectof his pleasure. He had thought out rather a good pun on Wiper, and hewas naturally a little thwarted to find all this good, rich talkcrowded out by a more engrossing topic.

  At the sight of a stranger grouped in a popular manner beside thetea-things, he displayed a slight acerbity, which was if anythingincreased by the discovery of a prostrate person with large brown eyesand an expression of Oriental patience and disdain, in the shade of abush near by. At first he seemed scarcely to grasp Mrs. Pope'sexplanations, and regarded Sir Rupert with an expression that borderedon malevolence. Then, when his attention was directed to the smashedmachine upon the lawn, he broke out into a loud indignant: "Good God!What next?"

  He walked towards the wreckage, disregarding Mr. Trafford beside him. "Aman can't go away from his house for an hour!" he complained.

  "I can assure you we did all we could to prevent it," said Trafford.

  "Ought never to have had it to prevent," said Mr. Pope. "Is your friendhurt?"

  "A rib--and shock," said Trafford.

  "Well--he deserves it," said Mr. Pope. "Rather than launch myself intothe ai
r in one of those infernal things, I'd be stood against a wall andshot."

  "Tastes differ, of course," said Trafford, with unruffled urbanity.

  "You'll have all this cleared away," said Mr. Pope.

  "Mechanics--oh! a complete break-down party--are speeding to us in fastmotors," said Trafford. "Thanks to the kindness of your domestic intaking a telegram for me."

  "Hope they won't kill any one," said Mr. Pope, and just for a moment theconversation hung fire. "And your friend?" he asked.

  "He goes in the next ten minutes--well, whenever the litter comes fromthe doctor's. Poor old Solomonson!"

  "Solomonson?"

  "Sir Rupert."

  "Oh!" said Mr. Pope. "Is that the Pigmentation Solomonson?"

  "I believe he does do some beastly company of that sort," said Trafford."Isn't it amazing we didn't smash our engine?"

  Sir Rupert Solomonson was indeed a familiar name to Mr. Pope. He hadorganized the exploitation of a number of pigment and bye-productpatents, and the ordinary and deferred shares of his syndicate has risento so high a price as to fill Mr. Pope with the utmost confidence intheir future; indeed he had bought considerably, withdrawing capital todo so from an Argentine railway whose stock had awakened his distasteand a sort of moral aversion by slumping heavily after a bad wheat andlinseed harvest. This discovery did much to mitigate his first asperity,his next remark to Trafford was almost neutral, and he was even askingSir Rupert whether he could do anything to make him comfortable, whenthe doctor returned with a litter, borne by four hastily compiledbearers.

  Sec. 4

  Some brightness seemed to vanish when the buoyant Mr. Trafford, stillundauntedly cheerful, limped off after his more injured friend, anddisappeared through the gate. Marjorie found herself in a world whoseremaining manhood declined to see anything but extreme annoyance in thisgay, exciting rupture of the afternoon. "Good God!" said Mr. Pope. "Whatnext? What next?"

  "Registration, I hope," said Mr. Magnet,--"and relegation to the desertof Sahara."

  "One good thing about it," said Mr. Pope--"it all wastes petrol. Andwhen the petrol supply gives out--they're done."

  "Certainly we might all have been killed!" said Mrs. Pope, feeling shehad to bear her witness against their visitors, and added: "If we hadn'tmoved out of the way, that is."

  There was a simultaneous movement towards the shattered apparatus, aboutwhich a small contingent of villagers, who had availed themselves of thewithdrawal of the sentinel, had now assembled.

  "Look at it!" said Mr. Pope, with bitter hostility. "Look at it!"

  Everyone had anticipated his command.

  "They'll never come to anything," said Mr. Pope, after a pause of silenthatred.

  "But they _have_ to come to something," said Marjorie.

  "They've come to smash!" said Mr. Magnet, with the true humorist's air.

  "But consider the impudence of this invasion, thewild--objectionableness of it!"

  "They're nasty things," said Mr. Magnet. "Nasty things!"

  A curious spirit of opposition stirred in Marjorie. It seemed to herthat men who play golf-croquet and watch cricket matches have nobusiness to contemn men who risk their lives in the air. She sought forsome controversial opening.

  "Isn't the engine rather wonderful?" she remarked.

  Mr. Magnet regarded the engine with his head a little on one side. "It'sthe usual sort," he said.

  "There weren't engines like that twenty years ago."

  "There weren't people like _you_ twenty years ago," said Mr. Magnet,smiling wisely and kindly, and turned his back on the thing.

  Mr. Pope followed suit. He was filled with the bitter thought that hewould never now be able to tell the history of the remarkable match hehad witnessed. It was all spoilt for him--spoilt for ever. Everythingwas disturbed and put out.

  "They've left us our tennis lawn," he said, with a not unnaturalresentment passing to invitation. "What do you say, Magnet? Now you'vebegun the game you must keep it up?"

  "If Marjorie, or Mrs. Pope, or Daffy...?" said Magnet.

  Mrs. Pope declared the house required her. And so with the gravestapprehensions, and an insincere compliment to their father's energy,Daffy and Marjorie made up a foursome for that healthy and invigoratinggame. But that evening Mr. Pope got his serve well into the bay of thesagging net almost at once, and with Marjorie in the background takinganything he left her, he won quite easily, and everything becamepleasant again. Magnet gloated upon Marjorie and served her like amissionary giving Bibles to heathen children, he seemed always lookingat her instead of the ball, and except for a slight disposition on thepart of Daffy to slash, nothing could have been more delightful. And atsupper Mr. Pope, rather crushing his wife's attempt to recapitulate themore characteristic sayings and doings of Sir Rupert and his friend, didafter all succeed in giving every one a very good idea indeed of themore remarkable incidents of the cricket match at Wamping, and made thepun he had been accustomed to use upon the name of Wiper in a new andimproved form. A general talk about cricket and the Immense Good ofcricket followed. Mr. Pope said he would make cricket-playing compulsoryfor every English boy.

  Everyone it seemed to Marjorie was forgetting that dark shape athwartthe lawn, and all the immense implication of its presence, with adeliberate and irrational skill, and she noted that the usual movetowards the garden at the end of the evening was not made.

  Sec. 5

  In the night time Marjorie had a dream that she was flying about in theworld on a monoplane with Mr. Trafford as a passenger.

  Then Mr. Trafford disappeared, and she was flying about alone with acurious uneasy feeling that in a minute or so she would be unable anylonger to manage the machine.

  Then her father and Mr. Magnet appeared very far below, walking aboutand disapproving of her. Mr. Magnet was shaking his head very, verysagely, and saying: "Rather a stiff job for little Marjorie," and herfather was saying she would be steadier when she married. And then, shewasn't clear how, the engine refused to work until her bills were paid,and she began to fall, and fall, and fall towards Mr. Magnet. She triedfrantically to pay her bills. She was falling down the fronts ofskyscrapers and precipices--and Mr. Magnet was waiting for her belowwith a quiet kindly smile that grew wider and wider and wider....

  She woke up palpitating.

  Sec. 6

  Next morning a curious restlessness came upon Marjorie. Conceivably itwas due to the absence of Magnet, who had gone to London to deliver hislong promised address on The Characteristics of English Humour to the_Literati_ Club. Conceivably she missed his attentions. But itcrystallized out in the early afternoon into the oddest form, a powerfulcraving to go to the little town of Pensting, five miles off, on theother side of Buryhamstreet, to buy silk shoelaces.

  She decided to go in the donkey cart. She communicated her intention toher mother, but she did not communicate an equally definite intention tobe reminded suddenly of Sir Rupert Solomonson as she was passing thesurgery, and make an inquiry on the spur of the moment--it wouldn'tsurely be anything but a kindly and justifiable impulse to do that. Shemight see Mr. Trafford perhaps, but there was no particular harm inthat.

  It is also to be remarked that finding Theodore a little disposed toencumber her vehicle with his presence she expressed her delight atbeing released from the need of going, and abandoned the wholeexpedition to him--knowing as she did perfectly well that if Theodorehated anything more than navigating the donkey cart alone, it was goingunprotected into a shop to buy articles of feminine apparel--until hechucked the whole project and went fishing--if one can call it fishingwhen there are no fish and the fisherman knows it--in the decadentornamental water.

  And it is also to be remarked that as Marjorie approached the surgeryshe was seized with an absurd and powerful shyness, so that not only didshe not call at the surgery, she did not even look at the surgery, shegazed almost rigidly straight ahead, telling herself, however, that shemerely deferred that kindly impulse until she had bought her laces. Andso i
t happened that about half a mile beyond the end of Buryhamstreetshe came round a corner upon Trafford, and by a singular fatality healso was driving a donkey, or, rather, was tracing a fan-like pattern onthe road with a donkey's hoofs. It was a very similar donkey toMarjorie's, but the vehicle was a governess cart, and much smarter thanMarjorie's turn-out. His ingenuous face displayed great animation at thesight of her, and as she drew alongside he hailed her with an almostunnatural ease of manner.

  "Hullo!" he cried. "I'm taking the air. You seem to be able to drivedonkeys forward. How do you do it? I can't. Never done anything sodangerous in my life before. I've just been missed by two motor cars,and hung for a terrible minute with my left wheel on the very verge ofan unfathomable ditch. I could hear the little ducklings far, far below,and bits of mould dropping. I tried to count before the splash. Aren'tyou--_white?_"

  "But why are you doing it?"

  "One must do something. I'm bandaged up and can't walk. It hurt my legmore than I knew--your doctor says. Solomonson won't talk of anythingbut how he feels, and _I_ don't care a rap how he feels. So I got thisthing and came out with it."

  Marjorie made her inquiries. There came a little pause.

  "Some day no one will believe that men were ever so foolish as to trustthemselves to draught animals," he remarked. "Hullo! Look out! Thehorror of it!"

  A large oil van--a huge drum on wheels--motor-driven, had come round thecorner, and after a preliminary and quite insufficient hoot, bore downupon them, and missing Trafford as it seemed by a miracle, swept past.Both drivers did wonderful things with whips and reins, and foundthemselves alone in the road again, with their wheels locked and anindefinite future.

  "I leave the situation to you," said Trafford. "Or shall we just sit andtalk until the next motor car kills us?"

  "We ought to make an effort," said Marjorie, cheerfully, and descendedto lead the two beasts.

  Assisted by an elderly hedger, who had been taking a disregardedinterest in them for some time, she separated the wheels and got the twodonkeys abreast. The old hedger's opinion of their safety on the king'shighway was expressed by his action rather than his words; he directedthe beasts towards a shady lane that opened at right angles to the road.He stood by their bridles while Marjorie resumed her seat.

  "It seems to me clearly a case for compromise," said Trafford. "You wantto go that way, I want to go that way. Let us both go _this_ way. It isby such arrangements that civilization becomes possible."

  He dismissed the hedger generously and resumed his reins.

  "Shall we race?" he asked.

  "With your leg?" she inquired.

  "No; with the donkeys. I say, this _is_ rather a lark. At first Ithought it was both dangerous and dull. But things have changed. I am inbeastly high spirits. I feel there will be a cry before night; butstill, I am----I wanted the companionship of an unbroken person. It'sso jolly to meet you again."

  "Again?"

  "After the year before last."

  "After the year before last?"

  "You didn't know," said Trafford, "I had met you before? How aggressiveI must have seemed! Well, _I_ wasn't quite clear. I spent the greaterpart of last night--my ankle being foolish in the small hours--intrying to remember how and where."

  "I don't remember," said Marjorie.

  "I remembered you very distinctly, and some things I thought about you,but not where it had happened. Then in the night I got it. It _is_ apuzzle, isn't it? You see, I was wearing a black gown, and I had beenout of the sunlight for some months--and my eye, I remember it acutely,was bandaged. I'm usually bandaged somewhere.

  'I was a King in Babylon And you were a Christian slave'

  --I mean a candidate."

  Marjorie remembered suddenly. "You're Professor Trafford."

  "Not in this atmosphere. But I am at the Romeike College. And as soon asI recalled examining you I remembered it--minutely. You wereintelligent, though unsound--about cryo-hydrates it was. Ah, youremember me now. As most young women are correct by rote andunintelligent in such questions, and as it doesn't matter a rap aboutanything of that sort, whether you are correct or not, as long as themental gesture is right----" He paused for a moment, as though tired ofhis sentence. "I remembered you."

  He proceeded in his easy and detached manner, that seemed to make everytopic possible, to tell her his first impressions of her, and show howvery distinctly indeed he remembered her.

  "You set me philosophizing. I'd never examined a girls' school before,and I was suddenly struck by the spectacle of the fifty of you. What'sgoing to become of them all?"

  "I thought," he went on, "how bright you were, and how keen and eageryou were--_you_, I mean, in particular--and just how certain it wasyour brightness and eagerness would be swallowed up by some sillyordinariness or other--stuffy marriage or stuffy domestic duties. Theold, old story--done over again with a sort of threadbare badness.(Nothing to say against it if it's done well.) I got quite sentimentaland pathetic about life's breach of faith with women. Odd, isn't it, howone's mind runs on. But that's what I thought. It's all come back tome."

  Marjorie's bright, clear eye came round to him. "I don't see very muchwrong with the lot of women," she reflected. "Things are differentnowadays. Anyhow----"

  She paused.

  "You don't want to be a man?"

  "_No!_"

  She was emphatic.

  "Some of us cut more sharply at life than you think," he said, plumbingher unspoken sense.

  She had never met a man before who understood just how a girl can feelthe slow obtuseness of his sex. It was almost as if he had found her outat something.

  "Oh," she said, "perhaps you do," and looked at him with an increasedinterest.

  "I'm half-feminine, I believe," he said. "For instance, I've got just awoman's joy in textures and little significant shapes. I know how youfeel about that. I can spend hours, even now, in crystal gazing--I don'tmean to see some silly revelation of some silly person's proceedingssomewhere, but just for the things themselves. I wonder if you have everbeen in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, and looked atRuskin's crystal collection? I saw it when I was a boy, and it became--Ican't help the word--an obsession. The inclusions like moss and liketrees, and all sorts of fantastic things, and the cleavages andenclosures with little bubbles, and the lights and shimmer--What were wetalking about? Oh, about the keen way your feminine perceptions cut intothings. And yet somehow I was throwing contempt on the feminineintelligence. I don't do justice to the order of my thoughts. Nevermind. We've lost the thread. But I wish you knew my mother."

  He went on while Marjorie was still considering the proper response tothis.

  "You see, I'm her only son and she brought me up, and we know eachother--oh! very well. She helps with my work. She understands nearly allof it. She makes suggestions. And to this day I don't know if she's themost original or the most parasitic of creatures. And that's the waywith all women and girls, it seems to me. You're as critical as light,and as undiscriminating.... I say, do I strike you as talking nonsense?"

  "Not a bit," said Marjorie. "But you do go rather fast."

  "I know," he admitted. "But somehow you excite me. I've been withSolomonson a week, and he's dull at all times. It was that made me takeout that monoplane of his. But it did him no good."

  He paused.

  "They told me after the exam.," said Marjorie, "you knew more aboutcrystallography--than anyone."

  "Does that strike you as a dull subject?"

  "No," said Marjorie, in a tone that invited justifications.

  "It isn't. I think--naturally, that the world one goes into when onestudies molecular physics is quite the most beautiful of Wonderlands....I can assure you I work sometimes like a man who is exploring a magicpalace.... Do you know anything of molecular physics?"

  "You examined me," said Marjorie.

  "The sense one has of exquisite and wonderful rhythms--just beyond soundand sight! And there's a taunting suggestion of its
being all there,displayed and confessed, if only one were quick enough to see it. Why,for instance, when you change the composition of a felspar almostimperceptibly, do the angles change? What's the correspondence betweenthe altered angle and the substituted atom? Why does this bit of clearstuff swing the ray of light so much out of its path, and that swing itmore? Then what happens when crystals gutter down, and go into solution.The endless launching of innumerable little craft. Think what a clearsolution must be if only one had ultra-microscopic eyes and could seeinto it, see the extraordinary patternings, the swimming circlingconstellations. And then the path of a ray of polarized light beatingthrough it! It takes me like music. Do you know anything of the effectsof polarized light, the sight of a slice of olivine-gabbro for instancebetween crossed Nicols?"

  "I've seen some rock sections," said Marjorie. "I forget the names ofthe rocks."

  "The colours?"

  "Oh yes, the colours."

  "Is there anything else so rich and beautiful in all the world? Andevery different mineral and every variety of that mineral has adifferent palette of colours, a different scheme of harmonies--and istelling you something."

  "If only you understood."

  "Exactly. All the ordinary stuff of life--you know--the carts and motorcars and dusty roads and--cinder sifting, seems so blank to me--withthat persuasion of swing and subtlety beneath it all. As if the wholeworld was fire and crystal and aquiver--with some sort of cottonwrappers thrown over it...."

  "Dust sheets," said Marjorie. "I know."

  "Or like a diamond painted over!"

  "With that sort of grey paint, very full of body--that lasts."

  "Yes." He smiled at her. "I can't help apologetics. Most people think aprofessor of science is just----"

  "A professor of science."

  "Yes. Something all pedantries and phrases. I want to clear mycharacter. As though it is foolish to follow a vortex ring into avacuum, and wise to whack at a dirty golf ball on a suburban railwaybank. Oh, their golf! Under high heaven!... You don't play golf, do you,by any chance?"

  "Only the woman's part," said Marjorie.

  "And they despise us," he said. "Solomonson can hardly hide how hedespises us. Nothing is more wonderful than the way these people go ondespising us who do research, who have this fever of curiosity, whowon't be content with--what did you call those wrappers?"

  "Dust sheets."

  "Yes, dust sheets. What a life! Swaddling bands, dust sheets and ashroud! You know, research and discovery aren't nearly so difficult aspeople think--if only you have the courage to say a thing or try a thingnow and then that it isn't usual to say or try. And after all----" hewent off at a tangent, "these confounded ordinary people aren'tjustified in their contempt. We keep on throwing them things over ourshoulders, electric bells, telephones, Marconigrams. Look at thebeautiful electric trains that come towering down the London streets atnightfall, ships of light in full sail! Twenty years ago they were asimpossible as immortality. We conquer the seas for these--golfers, putsarms in their hands that will certainly blow them all to bits if everthe idiots go to war with them, come sailing out of the air on them----"

  He caught Marjorie's eye and stopped.

  "_Falling_ out of the air on them," corrected Marjorie very softly.

  "That was only an accident," said Mr. Trafford....

  So they began a conversation in the lane where the trees met overheadthat went on and went on like a devious path in a shady wood, andtouched upon all manner of things....

  Sec. 7

  In the end quite a number of people were aggrieved by this dialogue, inthe lane that led nowhither....

  Sir Rupert Solomonson was the first to complain. Trafford had been away"three mortal hours." No one had come near him, not a soul, and therehadn't been even a passing car to cheer his ear.

  Sir Rupert admitted he had to be quiet. "But not so _damned_ quiet."

  "I'd have been glad," said Sir Rupert, "if a hen had laid an egg andclucked a bit. You might have thought there had been a Resurrection orsomethin', and cleared off everybody. Lord! it was deadly. I'd have sungout myself if it hadn't been for these infernal ribs...."

  Mrs. Pope came upon the affair quite by accident.

  "Well, Marjorie," she said as she poured tea for the family, "did youget your laces?"

  "Never got there, Mummy," said Marjorie, and paused fatally.

  "Didn't get there!" said Mrs. Pope. "That's worse than Theodore!Wouldn't the donkey go, poor dear?"

  There was nothing to colour about, and yet Marjorie felt the warm flowin neck and cheek and brow. She threw extraordinary quantities ofcandour into her manner. "I had a romantic adventure," she said ratherquietly. "I was going to tell you."

  (Sensation.)

  "You see it was like this," said Marjorie. "I ran against Mr.Trafford...."

  She drank tea, and pulled herself together for a lively description ofthe wheel-locking and the subsequent conversation, a bright ridiculousaccount which made the affair happen by implication on the high road andnot in a byeway, and was adorned with every facetious ornament thatseemed likely to get a laugh from the children. But she talked ratherfast, and she felt she forced the fun a little. However, it amused thechildren all right, and Theodore created a diversion by choking with histea. From first to last Marjorie was extremely careful to avoid theaffectionate scrutiny of her mother's eye. And had this lasted the_whole_ afternoon? asked Mrs. Pope. "Oh, they'd talked forhalf-an-hour," said Marjorie, or more, and had driven back very slowlytogether. "He did all the talking. You saw what he was yesterday. Andthe donkeys seemed too happy together to tear them away."

  "But what was it all about?" asked Daffy curious.

  "He asked after you, Daffy, most affectionately," said Marjorie, andadded, "several times." (Though Trafford had as a matter of factdisplayed a quite remarkable disregard of all her family.)

  "And," she went on, getting a plausible idea at last, "he explained allabout aeroplanes. And all that sort of thing. Has Daddy gone to Wampingfor some more cricket?..."

  (But none of this was lost on Mrs. Pope.)

  Sec. 8

  Mr. Magnet's return next day was heralded by nearly two-thirds of acolumn in the _Times_.

  The Lecture on the Characteristics of Humour had evidently been quite aserious affair, and a very imposing list of humorists and of prominentpeople associated with their industry had accepted the hospitality ofthe _Literati_.

  Marjorie ran her eyes over the Chairman's flattering introduction, thenwith a queer faint flavour of hostility she reached her destinedhusband's utterance. She seemed to hear the flat full tones of his voiceas she read, and automatically the desiccated sentences of the reporterfilled out again into those rich quietly deliberate unfoldings of soundthat were already too familiar to her ear.

  Mr. Magnet had begun with modest disavowals. "There was a story, hesaid,"--so the report began--"whose hallowed antiquity ought to protectit from further exploitation, but he was tempted to repeat it because itoffered certain analogies to the present situation. There were threecharacters in the story, a bluebottle and two Scotsmen. (Laughter.) Thebluebottle buzzed on the pane, otherwise a profound silence reigned.This was broken by one of the Scotsmen trying to locate the bluebottlewith zoological exactitude. Said this Scotsman: 'Sandy, I am thinking ifyon fly is a birdie or a beastie.' The other replied: 'Man, don't spoilgood whiskey with religious conversation.' (Laughter.) He was tempted,Mr. Magnet resumed, to ask himself and them why it was that they shouldspoil the aftereffects of a most excellent and admirably served dinnerby an academic discussion on British humour. At first he was pained bythe thought that they proposed to temper their hospitality with a demandfor a speech. A closer inspection showed that he was to introduce adebate and that others were to speak, and that was a new element intheir hospitality. Further, he was permitted to choose the subject sothat he could bring their speeches within the range of hiscomprehension. (Laughter.) His was an easy task. He could make iteasier; the best thin
g to do would be to say nothing at all.(Laughter.)"

  For a space the reporter seemed to have omitted largely--perhaps he waschanging places with his relief--and the next sentence showed Mr. Magnetengaged as it were in revising a _hortus siccus_ of jokes. "There wasthe humour of facts and situations," he was saying, "or that humour ofexpression for which there was no human responsibility, as in the caseof Irish humour; he spoke of the humour of the soil which found itsnoblest utterance in the bull. Humour depended largely on contrast.There was a humour of form and expression which had many localvarieties. American humour had been characterized by exaggeration, thesuppression of some link in the chain of argument or narrative, and awealth of simile and metaphor which had been justly defined as thepoetry of a pioneer race."...

  Marjorie's attention slipped its anchor, and caught lower down upon: "InEngland there was a near kinship between laughter and tears; theirmental relations were as close as their physical. Abroad this did notappear to be the case. It was different in France. But perhaps on thewhole it would be better to leave the humour of France and what somepeople still unhappily chose to regard as matters open tocontroversy--he referred to choice of subject--out of their discussionaltogether. ('Hear, hear,' and cheers.)"...

  Attention wandered again. Then she remarked:--it reminded her in somemysterious way of a dropped hairpin--"It was noticeable that the pun toa great extent had become demode...."

  At this point the flight of Marjorie's eyes down the column was arrestedby her father's hand gently but firmly taking possession of the _Times_.She yielded it without reluctance, turned to the breakfast table, andnever resumed her study of the social relaxations of humorists....

  Indeed she forgot it. Her mind was in a state of extreme perplexity. Shedidn't know what to make of herself or anything or anybody. Her mind wasfull of Trafford and all that he had said and done and all that he mighthave said and done, and it was entirely characteristic that she couldnot think of Magnet in any way at all except as a bar-like shadow thatlay across all her memories and all the bright possibilities of thisengaging person.

  She thought particularly of the mobile animation of his face, the keenflash of enthusiasm in his thoughts and expressions....

  It was perhaps more characteristic of her time than of her that she didnot think she was dealing so much with a moral problem as anembarrassment, and that she hadn't as yet felt the first stirrings ofself-reproach for the series of disingenuous proceedings that hadrendered the yesterday's encounter possible. But she was restless,wildly restless as a bird whose nest is taken. She could abide nowhere.She fretted through the morning, avoided Daffy in a marked manner, andinflicted a stinging and only partially merited rebuke upon Theodore forslouching, humping and--of all trite grievances!--not washing behind hisears. As if any chap washed behind his ears! She thought tennis with thepseudo-twins might assuage her, but she broke off after losing two sets;and then she went into the garden to get fresh flowers, and picked alarge bunch and left them on the piano until her mother reminded her ofthem. She tried a little Shaw. She struggled with an insane wish to walkthrough the wood behind the village and have an accidental meeting withsomeone who couldn't possibly appear but whom it would be quite adorableto meet. Anyhow she conquered that.

  She had a curious and rather morbid indisposition to go after lunch tothe station and meet Mr. Magnet as her mother wished her to do, in orderto bring him straight to the vicarage to early tea, but here againreason prevailed and she went.

  Mr. Magnet arrived by the 2.27, and to Marjorie's eye his alightingpresence had an effect of being not so much covered with laurels asdistended by them. His face seemed whiter and larger than ever. He waveda great handful of newspapers.

  "Hullo, Magsy!" he said. "They've given me a thumping Press. I'm nearerswelled head than I've ever been, so mind how you touch me!"

  "We'll take it down at croquet," said Marjorie.

  "They've cleared that thing away?"

  "And made up the lawn like a billiard table," she said.

  "That makes for skill," he said waggishly. "I shall save my head afterall."

  For a moment he seemed to loom towards kissing her, but she avertedthis danger by a business-like concern for his bag. He entrusted this toa porter, and reverted to the triumph of overnight so soon as they wereclear of the station. He was overflowing with kindliness towards hisfellow humorists, who had appeared in force and very generously at thebanquet, and had said the most charming things--some of which were inone report and some in another, and some the reporters had missedaltogether--some of the kindliest.

  "It's a pleasant feeling to think that a lot of good fellows think youare a good fellow," said Mr. Magnet.

  He became solicitous for her. How had she got on while he was away? Sheasked him how one was likely to get on at Buryhamstreet; monoplanesdidn't fall every day, and as she said that it occurred to her she wasbehaving meanly. But he was going on to his next topic before she couldqualify.

  "I've got something in my pocket," he remarked, and playfully: "Guess."

  She did, but she wouldn't. She had a curious sinking of the heart.

  "I want you to see it before anyone else," he said. "Then if you don'tlike it, it can go back. It's a sapphire."

  He was feeling nervously in his pockets and then the little box was inher hand.

  She hesitated to open it. It made everything so dreadfully concrete. Andthis time the sense of meanness was altogether acuter. He'd bought thisin London; he'd brought it down, hoping for her approval. Yes, itwas--horrid. But what was she to do?

  "It's--awfully pretty," she said with the glittering symbol in her hand,and indeed he had gone to one of those artistic women who are revivingand improving upon the rich old Roman designs. "It's so beautifullymade."

  "I'm so glad you like it. You really _do_ like it?"

  "I don't deserve it."

  "Oh! But you _do_ like it?"

  "Enormously."

  "Ah! I spent an hour in choosing it."

  She could see him. She felt as though she had picked his pocket.

  "Only I don't deserve it, Mr. Magnet. Indeed I don't. I feel I am takingit on false pretences."

  "Nonsense, Magsy. Nonsense! Slip it on your finger, girl."

  "But I don't," she insisted.

  He took the box from her, pocketed it and seized her hand. She drew itaway from him.

  "No!" she said. "I feel like a cheat. You know, I don't--I'm sure Idon't love----"

  "I'll love enough for two," he said, and got her hand again. "No!" hesaid at her gesture, "you'll wear it. Why shouldn't you?"

  And so Marjorie came back along the vicarage avenue with his ring uponher hand. And Mr. Pope was evidently very glad to see him....

  The family was still seated at tea upon rugs and wraps, and stilldiscussing humorists at play, when Professor Trafford appeared, leaningon a large stick and limping, but resolute, by the church gate. "Pish!"said Mr. Pope. Marjorie tried not to reveal a certain dismay, there wasdumb, rich approval in Daphne's eyes, and the pleasure of Theodore andthe pseudo-twins was only too scandalously evident. "Hoo-Ray!" saidTheodore, with ill-concealed relief.

  Mrs. Pope was the incarnate invocation of tact as Trafford drew near.

  "I hope," he said, with obvious insincerity, "I don't invade you. ButSolomonson is frightfully concerned and anxious about your lawn, andwhether his men cleared it up properly and put things right." His eyewent about the party and rested on Marjorie. "How are you?" he said, ina friendly voice.

  "Well, we seem to have got our croquet lawn back," said Mr. Pope. "Andour nerves are recovering. How is Sir Rupert?"

  "A little fractious," said Trafford, with the ghost of a smile.

  "You'll take some tea?" said Mrs. Pope in the pause that followed.

  "Thank you," said Trafford and sat down instantly.

  "I saw your jolly address in the _Standard_," he said to Magnet. "Ihaven't read anything so amusing for some time."

  "Rom dear," said Mrs. Pope, "wi
ll you take the pot in and get some freshtea?"

  Mr. Trafford addressed himself to the flattery of Magnet withconsiderable skill. He had detected a lurking hostility in the eyes ofthe two gentlemen that counselled him to propitiate them if he meant tomaintain his footing in the vicarage, and now he talked to them almostexclusively and ignored the ladies modestly but politely in the way thatseems natural and proper in a British middle-class house of the bettersort. But as he talked chiefly of the improvement of motor machinerythat had recently been shown at the Engineering Exhibition, he did notmake that headway with Marjorie's father that he had perhapsanticipated. Mr. Pope fumed quietly for a time, and then suddenly spokeout.

  "I'm no lover of machines," he said abruptly, slashing across Mr.Trafford's description. "All our troubles began with villainoussaltpetre. I'm an old-fashioned man with a nose--and a neck, and I don'twant the one offended or the other broken. No, don't ask me to beinterested in your valves and cylinders. What do you say, Magnet? Itstarts machinery in my head to hear about them...."

  On such occasions as this when Mr. Pope spoke out, his horror of ananti-climax or any sort of contradiction was apt to bring the utteranceto a culmination not always to be distinguished from a flight. And nowhe rose to his feet as he delivered himself.

  "Who's for a game of tennis?" he said, "in this last uncontaminatedpatch of air? I and Marjorie will give you a match, Daffy--if Magnetisn't too tired to join you."

  Daffy looked at Marjorie for an instant.

  "We'll want you, Theodore, to look after the balls in the potatoes,"said Mr. Pope lest that ingenuous mind should be corrupted behind hisback....

  Mrs. Pope found herself left to entertain a slightly disgruntledTrafford. Rom and Syd hovered on the off chance of notice, at the cornerof the croquet lawn nearest the tea things. Mrs. Pope had alreadydetermined to make certain little matters clearer than they appeared tobe to this agreeable but superfluous person, and she was greatlyassisted by his opening upon the subject of her daughters. "Jolly tennislooks," he said.

  "Don't they?" said Mrs. Pope. "I think it is such a graceful game for agirl."

  Mr. Trafford glanced at Mrs. Pope's face, but her expression wasimpenetrable.

  "They both like it and play it so well," she said. "Their father is soskillful and interested in games. Marjorie tells me you were herexaminer a year or so ago."

  "Yes. She struck my memory--her work stood out."

  "Of course she is clever," said Mrs. Pope. "Or we shouldn't have senther to Oxbridge. There she's doing quite well--quite well. Everyone saysso. I don't know, of course, if Mr. Magnet will let her finish there."

  "Mr. Magnet?"

  "She's just engaged to him. Of course she's frightfully excited aboutit, and naturally he wants her to come away and marry. There's verylittle excuse for a long engagement. No."

  Her voice died in a musical little note, and she seemed to bescrutinizing the tennis with an absorbed interest. "They've got newballs," she said, as if to herself.

  Trafford had rolled over, and she fancied she detected a change in hisvoice when it came. "Isn't it rather a waste not to finish a universitycareer?" he said.

  "Oh, it wouldn't be wasted. Of course a girl like that will be hand andglove with her husband. She'll be able to help him with the scientificside of his jokes and all that. I sometimes wish it had been Daffy whohad gone to college though. I sometimes think we've sacrificed Daffy alittle. She's not the bright quickness of Marjorie, but there'ssomething quietly solid about her mind--something _stable_. Perhaps Ididn't want her to go away from me.... Mr. Magnet is doing wonders atthe net. He's just begun to play--to please Marjorie. Don't you thinkhe's a dreadfully amusing man, Mr. Trafford? He says such _quiet_things."

  Sec. 9

  The effect of this _eclaircissement_ upon Mr. Trafford was not what itshould have been. Properly he ought to have realized at once thatMarjorie was for ever beyond his aspirations, and if he found it toodifficult to regard her with equanimity, then he ought to have shunnedher presence. But instead, after his first shock of incredulousastonishment, his spirit rose in a rebellion against arranged facts thatwas as un-English as it was ungentlemanly. He went back to Solomonsonwith a mood of thoughtful depression giving place to a growing passionof indignation. He presented it to himself in a generalized andaltruistic form. "What the deuce is the good of all this talk ofEugenics," he asked himself aloud, "if they are going to hand over thatshining girl to that beastly little area sneak?"

  He called Mr. Magnet a "beastly little area sneak!"

  Nothing could show more clearly just how much he had contrived to fallin love with Marjorie during his brief sojourn in Buryhamstreet and theacuteness of his disappointment, and nothing could be more eloquent ofhis forcible and undisciplined temperament. And out of ten thousandpossible abusive epithets with which his mind was no doubt stored, thisone, I think, had come into his head because of the alert watchfulnesswith which Mr. Magnet followed a conversation, as he waited his chancefor some neat but brilliant flash of comment....

  Trafford, like Marjorie, was another of those undisciplined young peopleour age has produced in such significant quantity. He was justsix-and-twenty, but the facts that he was big of build, had as an onlychild associated much with grown-up people, and was already aconspicuous success in the world of micro-chemical research, had givenhim the self-reliance and assurance of a much older man. He had still tocome his croppers and learn most of the important lessons in life, and,so far, he wasn't aware of it. He was naturally clean-minded, very busyand interested in his work, and on remarkably friendly and confidentialterms with his mother who kept house for him, and though he had hadseveral small love disturbances, this was the first occasion thatanything of the kind had ploughed deep into his feelings and desires.

  Trafford's father had died early in life. He had been a brilliantpathologist, one of that splendid group of scientific investigators inthe middle Victorian period which shines ever more brightly as ourcriticism dims their associated splendours, and he had died before hewas thirty through a momentary slip of the scalpel. His wife--she hadbeen his wife for five years--found his child and his memory and thequality of the life he had made about her too satisfying for the risksof a second marriage, and she had brought up her son with a passionatebelief in the high mission of research and the supreme duty of seekingout and expressing truth finely. And here he was, calling Mr. Magnet a"beastly little area sneak."

  The situation perplexed him. Marjorie perplexed him. It was, had heknown it, the beginning for him of a lifetime of problems andperplexities. He was absolutely certain she didn't love Magnet. Why,then, had she agreed to marry him? Such pressures and temptations as hecould see about her seemed light to him in comparison with such anundertaking.

  Were they greater than he supposed?

  His method of coming to the issue of that problem was entirely original.He presented himself next afternoon with the air of an invited guest,drove Mr. Pope who was suffering from liver, to expostulatory sulking inthe study, and expressed a passionate craving for golf-croquet, in spiteof Mrs. Pope's extreme solicitude for his still bandaged ankle. He waspartnered with Daffy, and for a long time he sought speech with Marjoriein vain. At last he was isolated in a corner of the lawn, and with thethinnest pretence of inadvertence, in spite of Daffy's despairing cry of"She plays next!" he laid up within two yards of her. He walked acrossto her as she addressed herself to her ball, and speaking in anincredulous tone and with the air of a comment on the game, he said: "Isay, are you engaged to that chap Magnet?"

  Marjorie was amazed, but remarkably not offended. Something in his toneset her trembling. She forgot to play, and stood with her mallet hangingin her hand.

  "Punish him!" came the voice of Magnet from afar.

  "Yes," she said faintly.

  His remark came low and clear. It had a note of angry protest. "_Why?_"

  Marjorie, by the way of answer, hit her ball so that it jumped andmissed his, ricochetted across the lawn and ou
t of the ground on thefurther side.

  "I'm sorry if I've annoyed you," said Trafford, as Marjorie went afterher ball, and Daffy thanked heaven aloud for the respite.

  They came together no more for a time, and Trafford, observant withevery sense, found no clue to the riddle of her grave, intent bearing.She played very badly, and with unusual care and deliberation. He felthe had made a mess of things altogether, and suddenly found his leg wastoo painful to go on. "Partner," he asked, "will you play out my ballfor me? I can't go on. I shall have to go."

  Marjorie surveyed him, while Daffy and Magnet expressed solicitude. Heturned to go, mallet in hand, and found Marjorie following him.

  "Is that the heavier mallet?" she asked, and stood before him lookinginto his eyes and weighing a mallet in either hand.

  "Mr. Trafford, you're one of the worst examiners I've ever met," shesaid.

  He looked puzzled.

  "I don't know _why_," said Marjorie, "I wonder as much as you. But Iam"; and seeing the light dawning in his eyes, she turned about, andwent back to the debacle of her game.

  Sec. 10

  After that Mr. Trafford had one clear desire in his being which ruledall his other desires. He wanted a long, frank, unembarrassed anduninterrupted conversation with Marjorie. He had a very strongimpression that Marjorie wanted exactly the same thing. For a week hebesieged the situation in vain. After the fourth day Solomonson was onlykept in Buryhamstreet by sheer will-power, exerted with a brutality thatthreatened to end that friendship abruptly. He went home on the sixthday in his largest car, but Trafford stayed on beyond the limits ofdecency to perform some incomprehensible service that he spoke of as"clearing up."

  "I want," he said, "to clear up."

  "But what _is_ there to clear up, my dear boy?"

  "Solomonson, you're a pampered plutocrat," said Trafford, as thougheverything was explained.

  "I don't see any sense in it at all," said Solomonson, and regarded hisfriend aslant with thick, black eyebrows raised.

  "I'm going to stay," said Trafford.

  And Solomonson said one of those unhappy and entirely disregarded thingsthat ought never to be said.

  "There's some girl in this," said Solomonson.

  "Your bedroom's always waiting for you at Riplings," he said, when atlast he was going off....

  Trafford's conviction that Marjorie also wanted, with an almost equaleagerness, the same opportunity for speech and explanations that hedesired, sustained him in a series of unjustifiable intrusions upon theseclusion of the Popes. But although the manner of Mr. and Mrs. Pope didchange considerably for the better after his next visit, it wasextraordinary how impossible it seemed for him and Marjorie to achievetheir common end of an encounter.

  Always something intervened.

  In the first place, Mrs. Pope's disposition to optimism had got thebetter of her earlier discretions, and a casual glance at Daphne's facewhen their visitor reappeared started quite a new thread ofinterpretations in her mind. She had taken the opportunity of hinting atthis when Mr. Pope asked over his shirt-stud that night, "What the devilthat--that chauffeur chap meant by always calling in the afternoon."

  "Now that Will Magnet monopolizes Marjorie," she said, after a littlepause and a rustle or so, "I don't see why Daffy shouldn't have a littlecompany of her own age."

  Mr. Pope turned round and stared at her. "I didn't think of that," hesaid. "But, anyhow, I don't like the fellow."

  "He seems to be rather clever," said Mrs. Pope, "though he certainlytalks too much. And after all it was Sir Rupert's aeroplane. _He_ wasonly driving it to oblige."

  "He'll think twice before he drives another," said Mr. Pope, wrenchingoff his collar....

  Once Mrs. Pope had turned her imagination in this more and moreagreeable direction, she was rather disposed, I am afraid, to let itbolt with her. And it was a deflection that certainly fell in veryharmoniously with certain secret speculations of Daphne's. Trafford,too, being quite unused to any sort of social furtiveness, did perhaps,in order to divert attention from his preoccupation with Marjorie,attend more markedly to Daphne than he would otherwise have done. And sopresently he found Daphne almost continuously on his hands. So far asshe was concerned, he might have told her the entire history of hislife, and every secret he had in the world, without let or hindrance.Mrs. Pope, too, showed a growing appreciation of his company, becamesympathetic and confidential in a way that invited confidence, and threwa lot of light on her family history and Daffy's character. She hadfound Daffy a wonderful study, she said. Mr. Pope, too, seemed partlyreconciled to him. The idea that, after all, both motor cars andmonoplane were Sir Rupert's, and not Trafford's, had produced a reactionin the latter gentleman's favour. Moreover, it had occurred to him thatTrafford's accident had perhaps disposed him towards a more thoughtfulview of mechanical traction, and that this tendency would be greatlyhelped by a little genial chaff. So that he ceased to go indoors whenTrafford was there, and hung about, meditating and delivering sly digsat this new victim of his ripe, old-fashioned humour.

  Nor did it help Trafford in his quest for Marjorie and a free, outspokendelivery that the pseudo-twins considered him a person of veryconsiderable charm, and that Theodore, though indisposed to "suck up" tohim publicly--I write here in Theodorese--did so desire intimate andsolitary communion with him, more particularly in view of the chances ofan adventitious aeroplane ride that seemed to hang about him--as tostalk him persistently--hovering on the verge of groups, playing awaiting game with a tennis ball and an old racquet, strolling artlesslytowards the gate of the avenue when the time seemed ripening for hisappearance or departure.

  On the other hand, Marjorie was greatly entangled by Magnet.

  Magnet was naturally an attentive lover; he was full of smallencumbering services, and it made him none the less assiduous toperceive that Marjorie seemed to find no sort of pleasure in all thelittle things he did. He seemed to think that if picking the very bestrose he could find for her did not cause a very perceptible brighteningin her, then it was all the more necessary quietly to force her racquetfrom her hand and carry it for her, or help her ineffectually to cross afoot-wide ditch, or offer to read her in a rich, abundant, wellmodulated voice, some choice passage from "The Forest Lovers" of Mr.Maurice Hewlett. And behind these devotions there was a streak ofjealousy. He knew as if by instinct that it was not wise to leave thesetwo handsome young people together; he had a queer little disagreeablesensation whenever they spoke to one another or looked at one another.Whenever Trafford and Marjorie found themselves in a group, there wasMagnet in the midst of them. He knew the value of his Marjorie, and didnot mean to lose her....

  Being jointly baffled in this way was oddly stimulating to Marjorie'sand Trafford's mutual predisposition. If you really want to throw peopletogether, the thing to do--thank God for Ireland!--is to keep themapart. By the fourth day of this emotional incubation, Marjorie wasthinking of Trafford to the exclusion of all her reading; and Traffordwas lying awake at nights--oh, for half an hour and more--thinking ofbold, decisive ways of getting at Marjorie, and bold, decisive things tosay to her when he did.

  (But why she should be engaged to Magnet continued, nevertheless, topuzzle him extremely. It was a puzzle to which no complete solution wasever to be forthcoming....)

  Sec. 11

  At last that opportunity came. Marjorie had come with her mother intothe village, and while Mrs. Pope made some purchases at the general shopshe walked on to speak to Mrs. Blythe the washerwoman. Trafford suddenlyemerged from the Red Lion with a soda syphon under each arm. She cameforward smiling.

  "I say," he said forthwith, "I want to talk with you--badly."

  "And I," she said unhesitatingly, "with you."

  "How can we?"

  "There's always people about. It's absurd."

  "We'll have to meet."

  "Yes."

  "I have to go away to-morrow. I ought to have gone two days ago. Where_can_ we meet?"

  She had it all prepared.


  "Listen," she said. "There is a path runs from our shrubbery through alittle wood to a stile on the main road." He nodded. "Either I will bethere at three or about half-past five or--there's one more chance.While father and Mr. Magnet are smoking at nine.... I might get away."

  "Couldn't I write?"

  "No. Impossible."

  "I've no end of things to say...."

  Mrs. Pope appeared outside her shop, and Trafford gesticulated agreeting with the syphons. "All right," he said to Marjorie. "I'mshopping," he cried as Mrs. Pope approached.

  Sec. 12

  All through the day Marjorie desired to go to Trafford and could not doso. It was some minutes past nine when at last with a swift rustle ofskirts that sounded louder than all the world to her, she crossed thedimly lit hall between dining-room and drawing-room and came into thedreamland of moonlight upon the lawn. She had told her mother she wasgoing upstairs; at any moment she might be missed, but she would havefled now to Trafford if an army pursued her. Her heart seemed beating inher throat, and every fibre of her being was aquiver. She flitted pastthe dining-room window like a ghost, she did not dare to glance aside atthe smokers within, and round the lawn to the shrubbery, and so under ablackness of trees to the gate where he stood waiting. And there he was,dim and mysterious and wonderful, holding the gate open for her, and shewas breathless, and speechless, and near sobbing. She stood before himfor a moment, her face moonlit and laced with the shadows of littletwigs, and then his arms came out to her.

  "My darling," he said, "Oh, my darling!"

  They had no doubt of one another or of anything in the world. They clungtogether; their lips came together fresh and untainted as those firstlovers' in the garden.

  "I will die for you," he said, "I will give all the world for you...."

  They had thought all through the day of a hundred statements andexplanations they would make when this moment came, and never a word ofit all was uttered. All their anticipations of a highly strung eventfulconversation vanished, phrases of the most striking sort went likephantom leaves before a gale. He held her and she clung to him betweenlaughing and sobbing, and both were swiftly and conclusively assuredtheir lives must never separate again.

  Sec. 13

  Marjorie never knew whether it was a moment or an age before her fathercame upon them. He had decided to take a turn in the garden when Magnetcould no longer restrain himself from joining the ladies, and he chancedto be stick in hand because that was his habit after twilight. So it washe found them. She heard his voice falling through love and moonlightlike something that comes out of an immense distance.

  "Good God!" he cried, "what next!"

  But he still hadn't realized the worst.

  "Daffy," he said, "what in the name of goodness----?"

  Marjorie put her hands before her face too late.

  "Good Lord!" he cried with a rising inflection, "it's Madge!"

  Trafford found the situation difficult. "I should explain----"

  But Mr. Pope was giving himself up to a towering rage. "You damnedscoundrel!" he said. "What the devil are you doing?" He seized Marjorieby the arm and drew her towards him. "My poor misguided girl!" he said,and suddenly she was tensely alive, a little cry of horror in herthroat, for her father, at a loss for words and full of heroic rage, hadsuddenly swung his stick with passionate force, and struck at Trafford'sface. She heard the thud, saw Trafford wince and stiffen. For aperfectly horrible moment it seemed to her these men, their facesqueerly distorted by the shadows of the branches in the slantingmoonlight, might fight. Then she heard Trafford's voice, sounding cooland hard, and she knew that he would do nothing of the kind. In thatinstant if there had remained anything to win in Marjorie it wasaltogether won. "I asked your daughter to meet me here," he said.

  "Be off with you, sir!" cried Mr. Pope. "Don't tempt me further, sir,"and swung his stick again. But now the force had gone out of him.Trafford stood with a hand out ready for him, and watched his face.

  "I asked your daughter to meet me here, and she came. I am prepared togive you any explanation----"

  "If you come near this place again----"

  For some moments Marjorie's heart had been held still, now it wasbeating violently. She felt this scene must end. "Mr. Trafford," shesaid, "will you go. Go now. Nothing shall keep us apart!"

  Mr. Pope turned on her. "Silence, girl!" he said.

  "I shall come to you to-morrow," said Trafford.

  "Yes," said Marjorie, "to-morrow."

  "Marjorie!" said Mr. Pope, "_will_ you go indoors."

  "I have done nothing----"

  "Be off, sir."

  "I have done nothing----"

  "Will you be off, sir? And you, Marjorie--will you go indoors?"

  He came round upon her, and after one still moment of regard forTrafford--and she looked very beautiful in the moonlight with her hair alittle disordered and her face alight--she turned to precede her fatherthrough the shrubbery.

  Mr. Pope hesitated whether he should remain with Trafford.

  A perfectly motionless man is very disconcerting.

  "Be off, sir," he said over his shoulder, lowered through a threateningsecond, and followed her.

  But Trafford remained stiffly with a tingling temple down which a littlethread of blood was running, until their retreating footsteps had dieddown into that confused stirring of little sounds which makes thestillness of an English wood at night.

  Then he roused himself with a profound sigh, and put a hand to his cutand bruised cheek.

  "_Well!_" he said.