Marriage Read online

  CHAPTER THE FOURTH

  CRISIS

  Sec. 1

  Crisis prevailed in Buryhamstreet that night. On half a dozen sleeplesspillows souls communed with the darkness, and two at least of thosepillows were wet with tears.

  Not one of those wakeful heads was perfectly clear about the origins andbearings of the trouble; not even Mr. Pope felt absolutely sure ofhimself. It had come as things come to people nowadays, because theywill not think things out, much less talk things out, and are thereforein a hopeless tangle of values that tightens sooner or later to aknot....

  What an uncharted perplexity, for example, was the mind of thatexcellent woman Mrs. Pope!

  Poor lady! she hadn't a stable thing in her head. It is remarkable thatsome queer streak in her composition sympathized with Marjorie's passionfor Trafford. But she thought it such a pity! She fought that sympathydown as if it were a wicked thing. And she fought too against otherideas that rose out of the deeps and did not so much come into her mindas cluster at the threshold, the idea that Marjorie was in effect grownup, a dozen queer criticisms of Magnet, and a dozen subtle doubtswhether after all Marjorie was going to be happy with him as she assuredherself the girl would be. (So far as any one knew Trafford might be anexcellent match!) And behind these would-be invaders of her guarded mindprowled even worse ones, doubts, horrible disloyal doubts, about thewisdom and kindness of Mr. Pope.

  Quite early in life Mrs. Pope had realized that it is necessary to bevery careful with one's thoughts. They lead to trouble. She had clippedthe wings of her own mind therefore so successfully that all herconclusions had become evasions, all her decisions compromises. Herprofoundest working conviction was a belief that nothing in the worldwas of value but "tact," and that the art of living was to "tide thingsover." But here it seemed almost beyond her strength to achieve any sortof tiding over....

  (Why _couldn't_ Mr. Pope lie quiet?)

  Whatever she said or did had to be fitted to the exigencies of Mr. Pope.

  Availing himself of the privileges of matrimony, her husband so soon asMr. Magnet had gone and they were upstairs together, had explained thesituation with vivid simplicity, and had gone on at considerable lengthand with great vivacity to enlarge upon his daughter's behaviour. Heascribed this moral disaster,--he presented it as a moral disaster ofabsolutely calamitous dimensions--entirely to Mrs. Pope's faults andnegligences. Warming with his theme he had employed a number of homelyexpressions rarely heard by decent women except in these sacredintimacies, to express the deep indignation of a strong man moved tounbridled speech by the wickedness of those near and dear to him. Stillwarming, he raised his voice and at last shouted out his more forciblemeanings, until she feared the servants and children might hear, waved aclenched fist at imaginary Traffords and scoundrels generally, andgiving way completely to his outraged virtue, smote and kicked blamelessarticles of furniture in a manner deeply impressive to the feminineintelligence.

  Finally he sat down in the little arm-chair between her and the cupboardwhere she was accustomed to hang up her clothes, stuck out his legs verystiffly across the room, and despaired of his family in an obtrusive andimpregnable silence for an enormous time.

  All of which awakened a deep sense of guilt and unworthiness in Mrs.Pope's mind, and prevented her going to bed, but did not help her in theslightest degree to grasp the difficulties of the situation....

  She would have lain awake anyhow, but she was greatly helped in this byMr. Pope's restlessness. He was now turning over from left to right orfrom right to left at intervals of from four to seven minutes, and suchremarks as "Damned scoundrel! Get out of this!" or "_My_ daughter anddegrade yourself in this way!" or "Never let me see your face again!""Plight your troth to one man, and fling yourself shamelessly--I repeatit, Marjorie, shamelessly--into the arms of another!" kept Mrs. Popeclosely in touch with the general trend of his thoughts.

  She tried to get together her plans and perceptions rather as though sheswept up dead leaves on a gusty day. She knew that the management of thewhole situation rested finally on her, and that whatever she did or didnot do, or whatever arose to thwart her arrangements, its entire tale ofresponsibility would ultimately fall upon her shoulders. She wonderedwhat was to be done with Marjorie, with Mr. Magnet? Need he know? Couldthat situation be saved? Everything at present was raw in her mind.Except for her husband's informal communications she did not even knowwhat had appeared, what Daffy had seen, what Magnet thought ofMarjorie's failure to bid him good-night. For example, had Mr. Magnetnoticed Mr. Pope's profound disturbance? She had to be ready to put aface on things before morning, and it seemed impossible she could do so.In times of crisis, as every woman knows, it is always necessary tomisrepresent everything to everybody, but how she was to dovetail hermisrepresentations, get the best effect from them, extract a workingsystem of rights and wrongs from them, she could not imagine....

  (Oh! she did so wish Mr. Pope would lie quiet.)

  But he had no doubts of what became _him_. He had to maintain a splendidand irrational rage--at any cost--to anybody.

  Sec. 2

  A few yards away, a wakeful Marjorie confronted a joyless universe. Shehad a baffling realization that her life was in a hopeless mess, thatshe really had behaved disgracefully, and that she couldn't for a momentunderstand how it had happened. She had intended to make quite sure ofTrafford--and then put things straight.

  Only her father had spoilt everything.

  She regarded her father that night with a want of natural affectionterrible to record. Why had he come just when he had, just as he had?Why had he been so violent, so impossible?

  Of course, she had no business to be there....

  She examined her character with a new unprecedented detachment. Wasn'tshe, after all, rather a mean human being? It had never occurred to herbefore to ask such a question. Now she asked it with only too clear asense of the answer. She tried to trace how these multiplying threads ofmeanness had first come into the fabric of a life she had supposedherself to be weaving in extremely bright, honourable, and adventurouscolours. She ought, of course, never to have accepted Magnet....

  She faced the disagreeable word; was she a liar?

  At any rate, she told lies.

  And she'd behaved with extraordinary meanness to Daphne. She realizedthat now. She had known, as precisely as if she had been told, howDaphne felt about Trafford, and she'd never given her an inkling of herown relations. She hadn't for a moment thought of Daphne. No wonderDaffy was sombre and bitter. Whatever she knew, she knew enough. She hadheard Trafford's name in urgent whispers on the landing. "I suppose youcouldn't leave him alone," Daffy had said, after a long hostile silence.That was all. Just a sentence without prelude or answer flung across thebedroom, revealing a perfect understanding--deeps of angrydisillusionment. Marjorie had stared and gasped, and made no answer.

  Would she ever see him again? After this horror of rowdy intervention?She didn't deserve to; she didn't deserve anything.... Oh, the tangle ofit all! The tangle of it all! And those bills at Oxbridge! She was justdragging Trafford down into her own miserable morass of a life.

  Her thoughts would take a new turn. "I love him," she whisperedsoundlessly. "I would die for him. I would like to lie under hisfeet--and him not know it."

  Her mind hung on that for a long time. "Not know it until afterwards,"she corrected.

  She liked to be exact, even in despair....

  And then in her memory he was struck again, and stood stiff and still.She wanted to kneel to him, imagined herself kneeling....

  And so on, quite inconclusively, round and round through theinterminable night hours.

  Sec. 3

  The young man in the village was, if possible, more perplexed,round-eyed and generally inconclusive than anyone else in this series ofnocturnal disturbances. He spent long intervals sitting on hiswindow-sill regarding a world that was scented with nightstock, andseemed to be woven of moonshine and gossamer. Being an inexpert andinfrequent solil
oquist, his only audible comment on his difficulties wasthe repetition in varying intonations of his fervent, unalterableconviction that he was damned. But behind this simple verbal mask was agreat fury of mental activity.

  He had something of Marjorie's amazement at the position of affairs.

  He had never properly realized that it was possible for any one toregard Marjorie as a daughter, to order her about and resent theresearch for her society as criminal. It was a new light in his world.Some day he was to learn the meaning of fatherhood, but in these nightwatches he regarded it as a hideous survival of mediaeval darknesses.

  "Of course," he said, entirely ignoring the actual quality of theirconversation, "she had to explain about the Magnet affair. Can'tone--converse?"

  He reflected through great intervals.

  "I _will_ see her! Why on earth shouldn't I see her?"

  "I suppose they can't lock her up!"

  For a time he contemplated a writ of Habeas Corpus. He saw reason toregret the gaps in his legal knowledge.

  "Can any one get a writ of Habeas Corpus for any one--it doesn't matterwhom"--more especially if you are a young man of six-and-twenty,anxious to exchange a few richly charged words with a girl of twentywho is engaged to someone else?

  The night had no answer.

  It was nearly dawn when he came to the entirely inadvisableconclusion--I use his own word's--to go and have it out with the oldruffian. He would sit down and ask him what he meant by it all--andreason with him. If he started flourishing that stick again, it wouldhave to be taken away.

  And having composed a peroration upon the institution of the family of acharacter which he fondly supposed to be extraordinarily tolerant,reasonable and convincing, but which was indeed calculated to madden Mr.Pope to frenzy, Mr. Trafford went very peacefully to sleep.

  Sec. 4

  Came dawn, with a noise of birds and afterwards a little sleep, and thenday, and heavy eyes opened again, and the sound of frying and the smellof coffee recalled our actors to the stage. Mrs. Pope was past her worstdespair; always the morning brings courage and a clearer grasp ofthings, and she could face the world with plans shaped subconsciouslyduring those last healing moments of slumber.

  Breakfast was difficult, but not impossible. Mr. Pope loomed like athundercloud, but Marjorie pleaded a headache very wisely, and was takena sympathetic cup of tea. The pseudo-twins scented trouble, but Theodorewas heedless and over-full of an entertaining noise made by a moorhen asit dived in the ornamental water that morning. You could make itpractically _sotto voce_, and it amused Syd. He seemed to think the_Times_ opaque to such small sounds, and learnt better only to bedismissed underfed and ignominiously from the table to meditate upon theimperfections of his soul in the schoolroom. There for a time he wassilent, and then presently became audible again, playing with a balland, presumably, Marjorie's tennis racquet.

  Directly she could disentangle herself from breakfast Mrs. Pope, withall her plans acute, went up to the girls' room. She found her daughterdressing in a leisurely and meditative manner. She shut the door almostconfidentially. "Marjorie," she said, "I want you to tell me all aboutthis."

  "I thought I heard father telling you," said Marjorie.

  "He was too indignant," said Mrs. Pope, "to explain clearly. You see,Marjorie"--she paused before her effort--"he knows things--about thisProfessor Trafford."

  "What things?" asked Marjorie, turning sharply.

  "I don't know, my dear--and I can't imagine."

  She looked out of the window, aware of Marjorie's entirely distrustfulscrutiny.

  "I don't believe it," said Marjorie.

  "Don't believe what, dear?"

  "Whatever he says."

  "I wish I didn't," said Mrs. Pope, and turned. "Oh, Madge," she cried,"you cannot imagine how all this distresses me! I cannot--I cannotconceive how you came to be in such a position! Surely honour----! Thinkof Mr. Magnet, how good and patient he has been! You don't know thatman. You don't know all he is, and all that it means to a girl. He isgood and honourable and--pure. He is kindness itself. It seemed to methat you were to be so happy--rich, honoured."

  She was overcome by a rush of emotion; she turned to the bed and satdown.

  "_There!_" she said desolately. "It's all ruined, shattered, gone."

  Marjorie tried not to feel that her mother was right.

  "If father hadn't interfered," she said weakly.

  "Oh, don't, my dear, speak so coldly of your father! You don't know whathe has to put up with. You don't know his troubles and anxieties--allthis wretched business." She paused, and her face became portentous."Marjorie, do you know if these railways go on as they are going he mayhave to _eat into his capital_ this year. Just think of that, and theworry he has! And this last shame and anxiety!"

  Her voice broke again. Marjorie listened with an expression that wasalmost sullen.

  "But what is it," she asked, "that father knows about Mr. Trafford?"

  "I don't know, dear. I don't know. But it's something that matters--thatmakes it all different."

  "Well, may I speak to Mr. Trafford before he leaves Buryhamstreet?"

  "My dear! Never see him, dear--never think of him again! Your fatherwould not dream----Some day, Marjorie, you will rejoice--you will wantto thank your father on your bended knees that he saved you from theclutches of this man...."

  "I won't believe anything about Mr. Trafford," she said slowly, "until Iknow----"

  She left the sentence incomplete.

  She made her declaration abruptly. "I love Mr. Trafford," she said, witha catch in her voice, "and I don't love Mr. Magnet."

  Mrs. Pope received this like one who is suddenly stabbed. She sat stillas 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 dosomething. After all, a mother has _some_ claim. Will you wait just alittle. Will you promise me to do nothing--nothing, I mean, to commityou--until your father has been able to make inquiries. Don't _see_ himfor a little while. Very soon you'll be one-and-twenty, and then perhapsthings may be different. If he cares for you, and you for him, a littleseparation 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 tosee 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 mightjust 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 mannershe felt to be absurdly childish--"until--until I am one-and-twenty. I'dpromise that."

  Mrs. Pope did a brief calculation. "Marjorie," she said, "it's only yourhappiness 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 firmlybelieve--if anything happened to any of you girls--anything bad--hewould kill himself.... And I know he means that you aren't to go aboutso much as you used to do, unless we have the most definite promises. Ofcourse, your father's ideas aren't always my ideas, Marjorie; but it'syour duty--You know how hasty he is and--quick. Just as you know howgood and generous and kind he is"--she caught Marjorie's eye, and addeda little lamely--"at bottom." ... She thought. "I think I could get himto let you say just one word with Mr. Trafford. It would be verydifficult, 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 m
y 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 thetruth--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.

  Sec. 5

  Mrs. Pope found her husband seated at the desk in the ultra-Protestantstudy, meditating gloomily.

  "I've been talking to her," she said, "She's in a state of terribledistress."

  "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 awayfrom him. She told me so herself. I've been into it with her. You don'tunderstand, Philip. A man like that has a sort of fascination for agirl. He dazzles her. It's the way with girls. But you're quitemistaken.... Quite. It's a sort of hypnotism. She'll grow out of it. Ofcourse, 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 fearfullyashamed of herself--fearfully! but it's just because she _is_ ashamedthat 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 itsome day--readily enough. But I believe a girl of her spirit wouldrather _die_ than begin explaining. You can't expect it of her. Reallyyou 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. Ican't bear to think of her--up there."

  "How?" he asked. "Up there?"

  "Yes," she answered with that skilful inconsecutiveness of hers, and leta brief silence touch his imagination. "Do you think that man means tocome 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 thingspainfully. "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 wouldbe if you _could_ use a horsewhip, dear. There's such a lot ofthings--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 tellhim so herself. Part them against their will--oh! and the thing may goon for no end of time. But treat it as it ought to be treated--She'll bevery 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'llleave it alone."

  Sec. 6

  Things were getting straight, Mrs. Pope felt. She had now merely to adda few touches to the tranquillization of Daphne, and the misdirection ofthe twin's curiosity. These touches accomplished, it seemed thateverything was done. After a brief reflection, she dismissed the idea ofputting things to Theodore. She ran over the possibilities of theservants eavesdropping, and found them negligible. Yes, everything wasdone--everything. And yet....

  The queer string in her nature between religiosity and superstitionbegan to vibrate. She hesitated. Then she slipped upstairs, fastened thedoor, fell on her knees beside the bed and put the whole thing asacceptably as possible to Heaven in a silent, simple, but lucidlyexplanatory prayer....

  She came out of her chamber brighter and braver than she had been foreighteen long hours. She could now, she felt, await the developmentsthat threatened with the serenity of one who is prepared at every point.She went almost happily to the kitchen, only about forty-five minutesbehind her usual time, to order the day's meals and see with her owneyes that economies prevailed. And it seemed to her, on the whole,consoling, and at any rate a distraction, when the cook informed herthat after all she _had_ meant to give notice on the day of auntPlessington's visit.

  Sec. 7

  The unsuspecting Magnet, fatigued but happy--for three hours of solidhumorous writing (omitting every unpleasant suggestion and mingling inthe most acceptable and saleable proportions smiles and tears) had addedits quota to the intellectual heritage of England, made a simple lightlunch cooked in homely village-inn fashion, lit a well merited cigar,and turned his steps towards the vicarage. He was preceded at somedistance along the avenuesque drive by the back of Mr. Trafford, whichhe made no attempt to overtake.

  Mr. Trafford was admitted and disappeared, and a minute afterwardsMagnet reached the door.

  Mrs. Pope appeared radiant--about the weather. A rather tiresome man hadjust called upon Mr. Pope about business matters, she said, and hemight be detained five or ten minutes. Marjorie and Daffy wereupstairs--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 possibleout of earshot of the windows of the ultra Protestant study in which Mr.Pope was now (she did so hope temperately) interviewing Mr. Trafford.

  Sec. 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. "Youwish to see my husband?" she had said, and had led him to the studyforthwith. She had returned at once to intercept Mr. Magnet....

  Trafford found Mr. Pope seated sternly at the centre of the writingdesk, regarding him with a threatening brow.

  "Well, sir," said Mr. Pope breaking the silence, "you have come to offersome explanation----"

  While awaiting this encounter Mr. Pope had not been insensitive to thetactical and scenic possibilities of the occasion. In fact, he had spentthe latter half of the morning in intermittent preparations, arrangingdesks, books, hassocks in advantageous positions, and not evenneglecting such small details as the stamp tray, the articles ofinterest from Jerusalem, and the rock-crystal cenotaph, which he hadexhibited in such a manner as was most calculated to damp, chill andsubjugate an antagonist in the exposed area towards the window. He hadalso arranged the chairs in a highly favourable pattern.

  Mr. Trafford was greatly taken aback by Mr. Pope's juridical manner andby this form of address, and he was further put out by Mr. Pope sayingwith 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 forwords 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 thepaper-weight. "My daughter, sir, is engaged to marry Mr. Magnet. If youhad approached me in a proper fashion before presuming to attempt--toattempt----" His voice thickened with indignation,--"Liberties with her,you would have been duly informed of her position--and everyone wouldhave been saved"--he lifted the paper-weight. "Everything that hashappened." (Bump.)

  Mr. Trafford had to adjust himself to the unexpected elements in thisencounter. "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 analmost colloquial tone.

  Mr. Pope smiled gravely. "I presume so, sir."

  "She never gave me that impression, anyhow," said th
e 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 fictitiouspose of ease. He had never found any one in his life before quite soprovocative of colloquialism as Mr. Pope.

  "Look here, sir, this is all very well," he began, "but why can't I fallin love with your daughter? I'm a Doctor of Science and all that sort ofthing. I've a perfectly decent outlook. My father was rather a swell inhis 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 bowingof 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 rightsand privileges of a father. Then Mr. Pope, "to cut all this short," toldhim frankly he wasn't wanted, his daughter did not want him, nobodywanted him; he was an invader, he had to be got rid of--"if possible bypeaceful means." Trafford disputed these propositions, and asked to seeMarjorie. Mr. Pope had been leading up to this, and at once closed withthat 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 withconspicuous promptitude. She was in a dress of green linen that made herseem very cool as well as very dignified to Trafford; she was tense withrestrained excitement, and either--for these things shade into eachother--entirely without a disposition to act her part or acting withconsummate ability. Trafford rose at the sight of her, and remainedstanding. 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 inBuryhamstreet." He arrested Marjorie's forward movement towards Traffordby a gesture of the hand, seated himself, and resumed his drumming onthe table. "Well?" he said.

  "I don't think you ought to stay in Buryhamstreet, Mr. Trafford," saidMarjorie.

  "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 theexact force of all she was going to say.

  "Mr. Trafford," she answered, "everything I've ever said toyou--everything--I've _meant_, more than I've ever meant anything.Everything!"

  A little flush of colour came into Trafford's cheeks. He regardedMarjorie 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 miracleof instinctive expression, she shone at him, she conveyed herself tohim, she assured him. Her eyes met his, she stood warmly flushed andquite unconquered--visibly, magnificently _his_. She poured into himjust that riotous pride and admiration that gives a man altogether to awoman.... Then it seemed as if a light passed, and she was just aneveryday 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 canhelp 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 thatfollowed.

  "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'svoice. "Mr. Trafford, after what I've told you--you must leave that tome."

  "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. "Andso--naturally--I'm still engaged to him."

  "Precisely!" said Mr. Pope, and turned with a face of harshinterrogation to his importunate caller. Mr. Trafford seemed disposedfor further questions. "I don't think we need detain you, Madge," saidMr. Pope, over his shoulder.

  The two young people stood facing one another for a moment, and I amafraid that they were both extremely happy and satisfied with eachother. It was all right, they were quite sure--all right. Their lipswere almost smiling. Then Marjorie made an entirely dignified exit. Sheclosed the door very softly, and Mr. Pope turned to his visitor againwith 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. Traffordwalked doorward. He had a sense of latent absurdities in thesetremendous attitudes. They passed through the hall--processionally. Butjust at the end some lower strain in Mr. Trafford's nature touched thefine 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 ofuntimely intimacy in his voice, with an inexcusable levity upon hislips: "You know--there's nobody--no man in the world--I'd sooner havefor a father-in-law than you."

  Mr. Pope, caught unprepared on the spur of the moment, bowed in a coldand distant manner, and then almost immediately closed the door to savehimself from violence....

  From first to last neither gentleman had made the slightest allusion toa considerable bruise upon Mr. Trafford's left cheek, and a largeabrasion above his ear.

  Sec. 9

  That afternoon Marjorie began her difficult task of getting disengagedfrom Mr. Magnet. It was difficult because she was pledged not to tellhim of the one thing that made this line of action not only explicable,but necessary. Magnet, perplexed, and disconcerted, and secretlysustained by her mother's glancing sidelights on the feminine characterand the instability of "girlish whims," remained at Buryhamstreet untilthe family returned to Hartstone Square. The engagement wasended--formally--but in such a manner that Magnet was left a ratherpathetic and invincibly assiduous besieger. He lavished little presentsupon both sisters, he devised little treats for the entire family, heenriched Theodore beyond the dreams of avarice, and he discussed hislove and admiration for Marjorie, and the perplexities and delicacies ofthe situation not only with Mrs. Pope, but with Daphne. At first he hadthought very little of Daphne, but now he was beginning to experiencethe subtle pleasures of a confidential friendship. She understood, hefelt; it was quite wonderful how she understood. He found Daffy muchricher in response than Marjorie, and far less disconcerting inreply....

  Mr. Pope, for all Marjorie's submission to his wishes, developed a GrandDudgeon of exceptionally fine proportions when he heard of the breach ofthe engagement. He ceased to speak to his daughter or admit himselfaware of her existence, and the Grand Dudgeon's blighting shadow threw achill over the life of every one in the house. He made it clear that theGrand Dudgeon would only be lifted by Marjorie's re-engagement toMagnet, and that whatever blight or inconvenience fell on the others wasdue entirely to Marjorie's wicked obstinacy. Using Mrs. Pope as anintermediary, he also conveyed to Marjorie his decision to be no longerburthened with the charges of her education at Oxbridge, and he made itseem extremely doubtful whether he should remember her approachingtwenty-first birthday.

  Marjorie received the news of her severance from Oxbridge, Mrs. Popethought, with a certain hardness.

  "I thought he would do that," said Marjorie. "He's always wanted
to dothat," and said no more.