Читать книгу Marriage - H. G. Wells - Страница 7

"I've heard there's iron in the Beer,

And I believe it,"

misquoted Mr. Pope, and nodded as it were to the marker to score. "Daffy and Marjorie are still in the lemonade stage. Will you take a little Burgundy to-night, Mummy?"

Mrs. Pope decided she would, and was inspired to ask Mr. Wintersloan if he had been in that part of the country before. Topography ensued. Mr. Wintersloan had a style of his own, and spoke of the Buryhamstreet district as a "pooty little country—pooty little hills, with a swirl in them."

This pleased Daffy and Marjorie, and their eyes met for a moment.

Then Mr. Magnet, with a ray full on Marjorie, said he had always been fond of Surrey. "I think if ever I made a home in the country I should like it to be here."

Mr. Wintersloan said Surrey would tire him, it was too bossy and curly, too flocculent; he would prefer to look on broader, simpler lines, with just a sudden catch in the breath in them—if you understand me?

Marjorie did, and said so.

"A sob—such as you get at the break of a pinewood on a hill."

This baffled Mr. Pope, but Marjorie took it. "Or the short dry cough of a cliff," she said.

"Exactly," said Mr. Wintersloan, and having turned a little deliberate close-lipped smile on her for a moment, resumed his wing.

"So long as a landscape doesn't sneeze" said Mr. Magnet, in that irresistible dry way of his, and Rom and Sydney, at any rate, choked.

"Now is the hour when Landscapes yawn," mused Mr. Pope, coming in all right at the end.

Then Mrs. Pope asked Mr. Wintersloan, about his route to Buryhamstreet, and then Mr. Pope asked Mr. Magnet whether he was playing at a new work or working at a new play.

Mr. Magnet said he was dreaming over a play. He wanted to bring out the more serious side of his humour, go a little deeper into things than he had hitherto done.

"Mingling smiles and tears," said Mr. Pope approvingly.

Mr. Magnet said very quietly that all true humour did that.

Then Mrs. Pope asked what the play was to be about, and Mr. Magnet, who seemed disinclined to give an answer, turned the subject by saying he had to prepare an address on humour for the next dinner of the Literati. "It's to be a humourist's dinner, and they've made me the guest of the evening—by way of a joke to begin with," he said with that dry smile again.

Mrs. Pope said he shouldn't say things like that. She then said "Syd!" quietly but sharply to Sydney, who was making a disdainful, squinting face at Theodore, and told the parlourmaid to clear the plates for sweets. Mr. Magnet professed great horror of public speaking. He said that whenever he rose to make an after-dinner speech all the ices he had ever eaten seemed to come out of the past, and sit on his backbone.

The talk centered for awhile on Mr. Magnet's address, and apropos of Tests of Humour Mr. Pope, who in his way was "no mean raconteur," related the story of the man who took the salad dressing with his hand, and when his host asked why he did that, replied: "Oh! I thought it was spinach!"

"Many people," added Mr. Pope, "wouldn't see the point of that. And if they don't see the point they can't—and the more they try the less they do."

All four girls hoped secretly and not too confidently that their laughter had not sounded hollow.

And then for a time the men told stories as they came into their heads in an easy, irresponsible way. Mr. Magnet spoke of the humour of the omnibus-driver who always dangled and twiddled his badge "by way of a joke" when he passed the conductor whose father had been hanged, and Mr. Pope, perhaps, a little irrelevantly, told the story of the little boy who was asked his father's last words, and said "mother was with him to the end," which particularly amused Mrs. Pope. Mr. Wintersloan gave the story of the woman who was taking her son to the hospital with his head jammed into a saucepan, and explained to the other people in the omnibus: "You see, what makes it so annoying, it's me only saucepan!" Then they came back to the Sense of Humour with the dentist who shouted with laughter, and when asked the reason by his patient, choked out: "Wrong tooth!" and then Mr. Pope reminded them of the heartless husband who, suddenly informed that his mother-in-law was dead, exclaimed "Oh, don't make me laugh, please, I've got a split lip...."

§ 9

The conversation assumed a less anecdotal quality with the removal to the drawing-room. On Mr. Magnet's initiative the gentlemen followed the ladies almost immediately, and it was Mr. Magnet who remembered that Marjorie could sing.

Both the elder sisters indeed had sweet clear voices, and they had learnt a number of those jolly songs the English made before the dull Hanoverians came. Syd accompanied, and Rom sat back in the low chair in the corner and fell deeply in love with Mr. Wintersloan. The three musicians in their green and sulphur-yellow and white made a pretty group in the light of the shaded lamp against the black and gold Broadwood, the tawdry screen, its pattern thin glittering upon darkness, and the deep shadows behind. Marjorie loved singing, and forgot herself as she sang.

"I love, and he loves me again,

Yet dare I not tell who;

For if the nymphs should know my swain,

I fear they'd love him too,"

she sang, and Mr. Magnet could not conceal the intensity of his admiration.

Mr. Pope had fallen into a pleasant musing; several other ripe old yarns, dear delicious old things, had come into his mind that he felt he might presently recall when this unavoidable display of accomplishments was overpast, and it was with one of them almost on his lips that he glanced across at his guest. He was surprised to see Mr. Magnet's face transfigured. He was sitting forward, looking up at Marjorie, and he had caught something of the expression of those blessed boys who froth at the feet of an Assumption. For an instant Mr. Pope did not understand.

Then he understood. It was Marjorie! He had a twinge of surprise, and glanced at his own daughter as though he had never seen her before. He perceived in a flash for the first time that this troublesome, clever, disrespectful child was tall and shapely and sweet, and indeed quite a beautiful young woman. He forgot his anecdotes. His being was suffused with pride and responsibility and the sense of virtue rewarded. He did not reflect for a moment that Marjorie embodied in almost equal proportions the very best points in his mother and his mother-in-law, and avoided his own more salient characteristics with so neat a dexterity that from top to toe, except for the one matter of colour, not only did she not resemble him but she scarcely even alluded to him. He thought simply that she was his daughter, that she derived from him, that her beauty was his. She was the outcome of his meritorious preparations. He recalled all the moments when he had been kind and indulgent to her, all the bills he had paid for her; all the stresses and trials of the coach-building collapse, all the fluctuations of his speculative adventures, became things he had faced patiently and valiantly for her sake. He forgot the endless times when he had been viciously cross with her, all the times when he had pished and tushed and sworn in her hearing. He had on provocation and in spite of her mother's protests slapped her pretty vigorously, but such things are better forgotten; nor did he recall how bitterly he had opposed the college education which had made her now so clear in eye and thought, nor the frightful shindy, only three months since, about that identical green dress in which she now stood delightful. He forgot these petty details, as an idealist should. There she was, his daughter. An immense benevolence irradiated his soul—for Marjorie—for Magnet. His eyes were suffused with a not ignoble tenderness. The man, he knew, was worth at least thirty-five thousand pounds, a discussion of investments had made that clear, and he must be making at least five thousand a year! A beautiful girl, a worthy man! A good fellow, a sound good fellow, a careful fellow too—as these fellows went!

Old Daddy would lose his treasure of course.

Well, a father must learn resignation, and he for one would not stand in the way of his girl's happiness. A day would come when, very beautifully and tenderly, he would hand her over to Magnet, his favourite daughter to his trusted friend. "Well, my boy, there's no one in all the world——" he would begin.

It would be a touching parting. "Don't forget your old father, Maggots," he would say. At such a moment that quaint nickname would surely not be resented....

He reflected how much he had always preferred Marjorie to Daffy. She was brighter—more like him. Daffy was unresponsive, with a touch of bitterness under her tongue....

He was already dreaming he was a widower, rather infirm, the object of Magnet's and Marjorie's devoted care, when the song ceased, and the wife he had for the purpose of reveries just consigned so carelessly to the cemetery proposed that they should have a little game that every one could play at. A number of pencils and slips of paper appeared in her hands. She did not want the girls to exhaust their repertory on this first occasion—and besides, Mr. Pope liked games in which one did things with pencils and strips of paper. Mr. Magnet wished the singing to go on, he said, but he was overruled.

So for a time every one played a little game in which Mr. Pope was particularly proficient. Indeed, it was rare that any one won but Mr. Pope. It was called "The Great Departed," and it had such considerable educational value that all the children had to play at it whenever he wished.

It was played in this manner; one of the pseudo twins opened a book and dabbed a finger on the page, and read out the letter immediately at the tip of her finger, then all of them began to write as hard as they could, writing down the names of every great person they could think of, whose name began with that letter. At the end of five minutes Mr. Pope said Stop! and then began to read his list out, beginning with the first name. Everybody who had that name crossed it out and scored one, and after his list was exhausted all the surviving names on the next list were read over in the same way, and so on. The names had to be the names of dead celebrated people, only one monarch of the same name of the same dynasty was allowed, and Mr. Pope adjudicated on all doubtful cases. It was great fun.

The first two games were won as usual by Mr. Pope, and then Mr. Wintersloan, who had been a little distraught in his manner, brightened up and scribbled furiously.

The letter was D, and after Mr. Pope had rehearsed a tale of nine and twenty names, Mr. Wintersloan read out his list in that curious voice of his which suggested nothing so much as some mobile drink glucking out of the neck of a bottle held upside down.

"Dahl," he began.

"Who was Dahl?" asked Mr. Pope.

"'Vented dahlias," said Mr. Wintersloan, with a sigh. "Danton."

"Forgot him," said Mr. Pope.

"Davis."

"Davis?"

"Davis Straits. Doe."

"Who?"

"John Doe, Richard Roe."

"Legal fiction, I'm afraid," said Mr. Pope.

"Dam," said Mr. Wintersloan, and added after a slight pause: "Anthony van."

Mr. Pope made an interrogative noise.

"Painter—eighteenth century—Dutch. Dam, Jan van, his son. Dam, Frederich van. Dam, Wilhelm van. Dam, Diedrich van. Dam, Wilhelmina, wood engraver, gifted woman. Diehl."

"Who?"

"Painter—dead—famous. See Düsseldorf. It's all painters now—all guaranteed dead, all good men. Deeds of Norfolk, the aquarellist, Denton, Dibbs."

"Er?" said Mr. Pope.

"The Warwick Claude, you know. Died 1823."

"Dickson, Dunting, John Dickery. Peter Dickery, William Dock—I beg your pardon?"

Mr. Pope was making a protesting gesture, but Mr. Wintersloan's bearing was invincible, and he proceeded.

In the end he emerged triumphant with forty-nine names, mostly painters for whose fame he answered, but whose reputations were certainly new to every one else present. "I can go on like that," said Mr. Wintersloan, "with any letter," and turned that hard little smile full on Marjorie. "I didn't see how to do it at first. I just cast about. But I know a frightful lot of painters. No end. Shall we try again?"

Marjorie glanced at her father. Mr. Wintersloan's methods were all too evident to her. A curious feeling pervaded the room that Mr. Pope didn't think Mr. Wintersloan's conduct honourable, and that he might even go some way towards saying so.

So Mrs. Pope became very brisk and stirring, and said she thought that now perhaps a charade would be more amusing. It didn't do to keep on at a game too long. She asked Rom and Daphne and Theodore and Mr. Wintersloan to go out, and they all agreed readily, particularly Rom. "Come on!" said Rom to Mr. Wintersloan. Everybody else shifted into an audience-like group between the piano and the what-not. Mr. Magnet sat at Marjorie's feet, while Syd played a kind of voluntary, and Mr. Pope leant back in his chair, with his brows knit and lips moving, trying to remember something.

The charade was very amusing. The word was Catarrh, and Mr. Wintersloan, as the patient in the last act being given gruel, surpassed even the children's very high expectations. Rom, as his nurse, couldn't keep her hands off him. Then the younger people kissed round and were packed off to bed, and the rest of the party went to the door upon the lawn and admired the night. It was a glorious summer night, deep blue, and rimmed warmly by the afterglow, moonless, and with a few big lamp-like stars above the black still shapes of trees.

Mrs. Pope said they would all accompany their guests to the gate at the end of the avenue—in spite of the cockchafers.

Mr. Pope's ankle, however, excused him; the cordiality of his parting from Mr. Wintersloan seemed a trifle forced, and he limped thoughtfully and a little sombrely towards the study to see if he could find an Encyclopædia or some such book of reference that would give the names of the lesser lights of Dutch, Italian, and English painting during the last two centuries.

He felt that Mr. Wintersloan had established an extraordinarily bad precedent.

§ 10

Marjorie discovered that she and Mr. Magnet had fallen a little behind the others. She would have quickened her pace, but Mr. Magnet stopped short and said: "Marjorie!"

"When I saw you standing there and singing," said Mr. Magnet, and was short of breath for a moment.

Marjorie's natural gift for interruption failed her altogether.

"I felt I would rather be able to call you mine—than win an empire."

The pause seemed to lengthen, between them, and Marjorie's remark when she made it at last struck her even as she made it as being but poorly conceived. She had some weak idea of being self-depreciatory.

"I think you had better win an empire, Mr. Magnet," she said meekly.

Then, before anything more was possible, they had come up to Daffy and Mr. Wintersloan and her mother at the gate....

As they returned Mrs. Pope was loud in the praises of Will Magnet. She had a little clear-cut voice, very carefully and very skilfully controlled, and she dilated on his modesty, his quiet helpfulness at table, his ready presence of mind. She pointed out instances of those admirable traits, incidents small in themselves but charming in their implications. When somebody wanted junket, he had made no fuss, he had just helped them to junket. "So modest and unassuming," sang Mrs. Pope. "You'd never dream he was quite rich and famous. Yet every book he writes is translated into Russian and German and all sorts of languages. I suppose he's almost the greatest humorist we have. That play of his; what is it called?—Our Owd Woman—has been performed nearly twelve hundred times! I think that is the most wonderful of gifts. Think of the people it has made happy."

The conversation was mainly monologue. Both Marjorie and Daffy were unusually thoughtful.

§ 11

Marjorie ended the long day in a worldly mood.

"Penny for your thoughts," said Daffy abruptly, brushing the long firelit rapids of her hair.

"Not for sale," said Marjorie, and roused herself. "I've had a long day."

"It's always just the time I particularly wish I was a man," she remarked after a brief return to meditation. "Fancy, no hair-pins, no brushing, no tie-up to get lost about, no strings. I suppose they haven't strings?"

"They haven't," said Daffy with conviction.

She met Marjorie's interrogative eye. "Father would swear at them," she explained. "He'd naturally tie himself up—and we should hear of it."

"I didn't think of that," said Marjorie, and stuck out her chin upon her fists. "Sound induction."

She forgot this transitory curiosity.

"Suppose one had a maid, Daffy—a real maid ... a maid who mended your things ... did your hair while you read...."

"Oh! here goes," and she stood up and grappled with the task of undressing.