Part 5

And Marjorie with that instability of her sex which has been a theme for masculine humour in all ages, suddenly and with an extraordinary violence didn't want to make up her mind about Mr. Magnet. She didn't want to accept him; and as distinctly she didn't want to refuse him. She didn't even want to be thought about as making up her mind about him--which was, so to speak, an enlargement of her previous indisposition. She didn't even want to seem to avoid him, or to be thinking about him, or aware of his existence.

After the greeting of Lady Petchworth she had succeeded very clumsily in not seeing Mr. Magnet, and had addressed herself to Mr. Wintersloan, who was standing a little apart, looking under his hand, with one eye shut, at the view between the tree stems towards Buryhamstreet. He told her that he thought he had found something "pooty" that hadn't been done, and she did her best to share his artistic interests with a vivid sense of Mr. Magnet's tentative incessant approach behind her.

He joined them, and she made a desperate attempt to entangle Mr. Wintersloan in a three-cornered talk in vain. He turned away at the first possible opportunity, and left her to an embarrassed and eloquently silent _tete-a-tete_. Mr. Magnet's professional wit had deserted him. "It's nice to see you again," he said after an immense interval. "Shall we go and look at the aviary?"

"I hate to see birds in cages," said Marjorie, "and it's frightfully jolly just here. Do you think Mr. Wintersloan will paint this? He does paint, doesn't he?"

"I know him best in black and white," said Mr. Magnet.

Marjorie embarked on entirely insincere praises of Mr. Wintersloan's manner and personal effect; Magnet replied tepidly, with an air of reserving himself to grapple with the first conversational opportunity.

"It's a splendid day for tennis," said Marjorie. "I think I shall play tennis all the afternoon."

"I don't play well enough for this publicity."

"It's glorious exercise," said Marjorie. "Almost as good as dancing," and she decided to stick to that resolution. "I never lose a chance of tennis if I can help it."

She glanced round and detected a widening space between themselves and the next adjacent group.

"They're looking at the goldfish," she said. "Let us join them."

Everyone moved away as they came up to the little round pond, but then Marjorie had luck, and captured Prunella, and got her to hold hands and talk, until Fraulein Schmidt called the child away. And then Marjorie forced Mr. Magnet to introduce her to Mr. Bunford Paradise. She had a bright idea of sitting between Prunella and Mary at the lunch table, but a higher providence had assigned her to a seat at the end between Julia--or was it Kate?--and Mr. Magnet. However, one of the undergraduates was opposite, and she saved herself from undertones by talking across to him boldly about Newnham, though she hadn't an idea of his name or college. From that she came to tennis. To her inflamed imagination he behaved as if she was under a Taboo, but she was desperate, and had pledged him and his friend to a foursome before the meal was over.

"Don't _you_ play?" said the undergraduate to Mr. Magnet.

"Very little," said Mr. Magnet. "Very little--"

At the end of an hour she was conspicuously and publicly shepherded from the tennis court by Mrs. Pope.

"Other people want to play," said her mother in a clear little undertone.

Mr. Magnet fielded her neatly as she came off the court.

"You play tennis like--a wild bird," he said, taking possession of her.

Only Marjorie's entire freedom from Irish blood saved him from a vindictive repartee.

Sec. 3

"Shall we go and look at the aviary?" said Mr. Magnet, reverting to a favourite idea of his, and then remembered she did not like to see caged birds.

"Perhaps we might see the Water Garden?" he said. "The Water Garden is really very delightful indeed--anyhow. You ought to see that."

On the spur of the moment, Marjorie could think of no objection to the Water Garden, and he led her off.

"I often think of that jolly walk we had last summer," said Mr. Magnet, "and how you talked about your work at Oxbridge."

Marjorie fell into a sudden rapture of admiration for a butterfly.

Twice more was Mr. Magnet baffled, and then they came to the little pool of water lilies with its miniature cascade of escape at the head and source of the Water Garden. "One of Lady Petchworth's great successes," said Mr. Magnet.

"I suppose the lotus is like the water-lily," said Marjorie, with no hope of staving off the inevitable----

She stood very still by the little pool, and in spite of her pensive regard of the floating blossoms, stiffly and intensely aware of his relentless regard.

"Marjorie," came his voice at last, strangely softened. "There is something I want to say to you."

She made no reply.

"Ever since we met last summer----"

A clear cold little resolution not to stand this, had established itself in Marjorie's mind. If she must decide, she _would_ decide. He had brought it upon himself.

"Marjorie," said Mr. Magnet, "I love you."

She lifted a clear unhesitating eye to his face. "I'm sorry, Mr. Magnet," she said.

"I wanted to ask you to marry me," he said.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Magnet," she repeated.

They looked at one another. She felt a sort of scared exultation at having done it; her mother might say what she liked.

"I love you very much," he said, at a loss.

"I'm sorry," she repeated obstinately.

"I thought you cared for me a little."

She left that unanswered. She had a curious feeling that there was no getting away from this splashing, babbling pool, that she was fixed there until Mr. Magnet chose to release her, and that he didn't mean to release her yet. In which case she would go on refusing.

"I'm disappointed," he said.

Marjorie could only think that she was sorry again, but as she had already said that three times, she remained awkwardly silent.

"Is it because----" he began and stopped.

"It isn't because of anything. Please let's go back to the others, Mr. Magnet. I'm sorry if I'm disappointing."

And by a great effort she turned about.

Mr. Magnet remained regarding her--I can only compare it to the searching preliminary gaze of an artistic photographer. For a crucial minute in his life Marjorie hated him. "I don't understand," he said at last.

Then with a sort of naturalness that ought to have touched her he said: "Is it possible, Marjorie--that I might hope?--that I have been inopportune?"

She answered at once with absolute conviction.

"I don't think so, Mr. Magnet."

"I'm sorry," he said, "to have bothered you."

"_I'm_ sorry," said Marjorie.

A long silence followed.

"I'm sorry too," he said.

They said no more, but began to retrace their steps. It was over. Abruptly, Mr. Magnet's bearing had become despondent--conspicuously despondent. "I had hoped," he said, and sighed.

With a thrill of horror Marjorie perceived he meant to _look_ rejected, let every one see he had been rejected--after encouragement.

What would they think? How would they look? What conceivably might they not say? Something of the importance of the thing she had done, became manifest to her. She felt first intimations of regret. They would all be watching, Mother, Daffy, Lady Petchworth. She would reappear with this victim visibly suffering beside her. What could she say to straighten his back and lift his chin? She could think of nothing. Ahead at the end of the shaded path she could see the copious white form, the agitated fair wig and red sunshade of Lady Petchworth----

Sec. 4

Mrs. Pope's eye was relentless; nothing seemed hidden from it; nothing indeed was hidden from it; Mr. Magnet's back was diagrammatic. Marjorie was a little flushed and bright-eyed, and professed herself eager, with an unnatural enthusiasm, to play golf-croquet. It was eloquently significant that Mr. Magnet did not share her eagerness, declined to play, and yet when she had started with the Rev. Jopling Baynes as partner, stood regarding the game with a sort of tender melancholy from the shade of the big chestnut-tree.

Mrs. Pope joined him unobtrusively.

"You're not playing, Mr. Magnet," she remarked.

"I'm a looker-on, this time," he said with a sigh.

"Marjorie's winning, I think," said Mrs. Pope.

He made no answer for some seconds.

"She looks so charming in that blue dress," he remarked at last, and sighed from the lowest deeps.

"That bird's-egg blue suits her," said Mrs. Pope, ignoring the sigh. "She's clever in her girlish way, she chooses all her own dresses,--colours, material, everything."

(And also, though Mrs. Pope had not remarked it, she concealed her bills.)

There came a still longer interval, which Mrs. Pope ended with the slightest of shivers. She perceived Mr. Magnet was heavy for sympathy and ripe to confide. "I think," she said, "it's a little cool here. Shall we walk to the Water Garden, and see if there are any white lilies?"

"There are," said Mr. Magnet sorrowfully, "and they are very beautiful--_quite_ beautiful."

He turned to the path along which he had so recently led Marjorie.

He glanced back as they went along between Lady Petchworth's herbaceous border and the poppy beds. "She's so full of life," he said, with a sigh in his voice.

Mrs. Pope knew she must keep silent.

"I asked her to marry me this afternoon," Mr. Magnet blurted out. "I couldn't help it."

Mrs. Pope made her silence very impressive.

"I know I ought not to have done so without consulting you"--he went on lamely; "I'm very much in love with her. It's----It's done no harm."

Mrs. Pope's voice was soft and low. "I had no idea, Mr. Magnet.... You know she is very young. Twenty. A mother----"

"I know," said Magnet. "I can quite understand. But I've done no harm. She refused me. I shall go away to-morrow. Go right away for ever.... I'm sorry."

Another long silence.

"To me, of course, she's just a child," Mrs. Pope said at last. "She _is_ only a child, Mr. Magnet. She could have had no idea that anything of the sort was in your mind----"

Her words floated away into the stillness.

For a time they said no more. The lilies came into sight, dreaming under a rich green shade on a limpid pool of brown water, water that slept and brimmed over as it were, unconsciously into a cool splash and ripple of escape. "How beautiful!" cried Mrs. Pope, for a moment genuine.

"I spoke to her here," said Mr. Magnet.

The fountains of his confidence were unloosed.

"Now I've spoken to you about it, Mrs. Pope," he said, "I can tell you just how I--oh, it's the only word--adore her. She seems so sweet and easy--so graceful----"

Mrs. Pope turned on him abruptly, and grasped his hands; she was deeply moved. "I can't tell you," she said, "what it means to a mother to hear such things----"

Words failed her, and for some moments they engaged in a mutual pressure.

"Ah!" said Mr. Magnet, and had a queer wish it was the mother he had to deal with.

"Are you sure, Mr. Magnet," Mrs. Pope went on as their emotions subsided, "that she really meant what she said? Girls are very strange creatures----"

"She seems so clear and positive."

"Her manner is always clear and positive."

"Yes. I know."

"I know she _has_ cared for you."

"No!"

"A mother sees. When your name used to be mentioned----. But these are not things to talk about. There is something--something sacred----"

"Yes," he said. "Yes. Only----Of course, one thing----"

Mrs. Pope seemed lost in the contemplation of water-lilies.

"I wondered," said Mr. Magnet, and paused again.

Then, almost breathlessly, "I wondered if there should be perhaps--some one else?"

She shook her head slowly. "I should know," she said.

"Are you sure?"

"I know I should know."

"Perhaps recently?"

"I am sure I should know. A mother's intuition----"

Memories possessed her for awhile. "A girl of twenty is a mass of contradictions. I can remember myself as if it was yesterday. Often one says no, or yes--out of sheer nervousness.... I am sure there is no other attachment----"

It occurred to her that she had said enough. "What a dignity that old gold-fish has!" she remarked. "He waves his tail--as if he were a beadle waving little boys out of church."

Sec. 5

Mrs. Pope astonished Marjorie by saying nothing about the all too obvious event of the day for some time, but her manner to her second daughter on their way home was strangely gentle. It was as if she had realized for the first time that regret and unhappiness might come into that young life. After supper, however, she spoke. They had all gone out just before the children went to bed to look for the new moon; Daffy was showing the pseudo-twins the old moon in the new moon's arms, and Marjorie found herself standing by her mother's side. "I hope dear," said Mrs. Pope, "that it's all for the best--and that you've done wisely, dear."

Marjorie was astonished and moved by her mother's tone.

"It's so difficult to know what _is_ for the best," Mrs. Pope went on.

"I had to do--as I did," said Marjorie.

"I only hope you may never find you have made a Great Mistake, dear. He cares for you very, very much."

"Oh! we see it now!" cried Rom, "we see it now! Mummy, have you seen it? Like a little old round ghost being nursed!"

When Marjorie said "Good-night," Mrs. Pope kissed her with an unaccustomed effusion.

It occurred to Marjorie that after all her mother had no selfish end to serve in this affair.

Sec. 6

The idea that perhaps after all she had made a Great Mistake, the Mistake of her Life it might be, was quite firmly established in its place among all the other ideas in Marjorie's mind by the time she had dressed next morning. Subsequent events greatly intensified this persuasion. A pair of new stockings she had trusted sprang a bad hole as she put them on. She found two unmistakable bills from Oxbridge beside her plate, and her father was "horrid" at breakfast.

Her father, it appeared, had bought the ordinary shares of a Cuban railway very extensively, on the distinct understanding that they would improve. In a decent universe, with a proper respect for meritorious gentlemen, these shares would have improved accordingly, but the weather had seen fit to shatter the wisdom of Mr. Pope altogether. The sugar crop had collapsed, the bears were at work, and every morning now saw his nominal capital diminished by a dozen pounds or so. I do not know what Mr. Pope would have done if he had not had his family to help him bear his trouble. As it was he relieved his tension by sending Theodore from the table for dropping a knife, telling Rom when she turned the plate round to pick the largest banana that she hadn't the self-respect of a child of five, and remarking sharply from behind the _Times_ when Daffy asked Marjorie if she was going to sketch: "Oh, for God's sake don't _whisper!_" Then when Mrs. Pope came round the table and tried to take his coffee cup softly to refill it without troubling him, he snatched at it, wrenched it roughly out of her hand, and said with his mouth full, and strangely in the manner of a snarling beast: "No' ready yet. Half foo'."

Marjorie wanted to know why every one didn't get up and leave the room. She glanced at her mother and came near to speaking.

And very soon she would have to come home and live in the midst of this again--indefinitely!

After breakfast she went to the tumbledown summer-house by the duckpond, and contemplated the bills she had not dared to open at table. One was boots, nearly three pounds, the other books, over seven. "I _know_ that's wrong," said Marjorie, and rested her chin on her hand, knitted her brows and tried to remember the details of orders and deliveries....

Marjorie had fallen into the net prepared for our sons and daughters by the delicate modesty of the Oxbridge authorities in money matters, and she was, for her circumstances, rather heavily in debt. But I must admit that in Marjorie's nature the Oxbridge conditions had found an eager and adventurous streak that rendered her particularly apt to these temptations.

I doubt if reticence is really a virtue in a teacher. But this is a fearful world, and the majority of those who instruct our youth have the painful sensitiveness of the cloistered soul to this spirit of terror in things. The young need particularly to be told truthfully and fully all we know of three fundamental things: the first of which is God, the next their duty towards their neighbours in the matter of work and money, and the third Sex. These things, and the adequate why of them, and some sort of adequate how, make all that matters in education. But all three are obscure and deeply moving topics, topics for which the donnish mind has a kind of special ineptitude, and which it evades with the utmost skill and delicacy. The middle part of this evaded triad was now being taken up in Marjorie's case by the Oxbridge tradespeople.

The Oxbridge shopkeeper is peculiar among shopkeepers in the fact that he has to do very largely with shy and immature customers with an extreme and distinctive ignorance of most commercial things. They are for the most part short of cash, but with vague and often large probabilities of credit behind them, for most people, even quite straitened people, will pull their sons and daughters out of altogether unreasonable debts at the end of their university career; and so the Oxbridge shopkeeper becomes a sort of propagandist of the charms and advantages of insolvency. Alone among retailers he dislikes the sight of cash, declines it, affects to regard it as a coarse ignorant truncation of a budding relationship, begs to be permitted to wait. So the youngster just up from home discovers that money may stay in the pocket, be used for cab and train fares and light refreshments; all the rest may be had for the asking. Marjorie, with her innate hunger for good fine things, with her quite insufficient pocket-money, and the irregular habits of expenditure a spasmodically financed, hard-up home is apt to engender, fell very readily into this new, delightful custom of having it put down (whatever it happened to be). She had all sorts of things put down. She and the elder Carmel girl used to go shopping together, having things put down. She brightened her rooms with colour-prints and engravings, got herself pretty and becoming clothes, acquired a fitted dressing-bag already noted in this story, and one or two other trifles of the sort, revised her foot-wear, created a very nice little bookshelf, and although at times she felt a little astonished and scared at herself, resolutely refused to estimate the total of accumulated debt she had attained. Indeed until the bills came in it was impossible to do that, because, following the splendid example of the Carmel girl, she hadn't even inquired the price of quite a number of things....

She didn't dare think now of the total. She lied even to herself about that. She had fixed on fifty pounds as the unendurable maximum. "It is less than fifty pounds," she said, and added: "_must_ be." But something in her below the threshold of consciousness knew that it was more.

And now she was in her third year, and the Oxbridge tradesman, generally satisfied with the dimensions of her account, and no longer anxious to see it grow, was displaying the less obsequious side of his character. He wrote remarks at the bottom of his account, remarks about settlement, about having a bill to meet, about having something to go on with. He asked her to give the matter her "early attention." She had a disagreeable persuasion that if she wanted many more things anywhere she would have to pay ready money for them. She was particularly short of stockings. She had overlooked stockings recently.

Daffy, unfortunately, was also short of stockings.

And now, back with her family again, everything conspired to remind Marjorie of the old stringent habits from which she had had so delightful an interlude. She saw Daffy eye her possessions, reflect. This morning something of the awfulness of her position came to her....

At Oxbridge she had made rather a joke of her debts.

"I'd _swear_ I haven't had three pairs of house shoes," said Marjorie. "But what can one do?"

And about the whole position the question was, "what can one do?"

She proceeded with tense nervous movements to tear these two distasteful demands into very minute pieces. Then she collected them all together in the hollow of her hand, and buried them in the loose mould in a corner of the summer-house.

"Madge," said Theodore, appearing in the sunshine of the doorway. "Aunt Plessington's coming! She's sent a wire. Someone's got to meet her by the twelve-forty train."

Sec. 7

Aunt Plessington's descent was due to her sudden discovery that Buryhamstreet was in close proximity to Summerhay Park, indeed only three miles away. She had promised a lecture on her movement for Lady Petchworth's village room in Summerhay, and she found that with a slight readjustment of dates she could combine this engagement with her promised visit to her husband's sister, and an evening or so of influence for her little Madge. So she had sent Hubert to telegraph at once, and "here," she said triumphantly on the platform, after a hard kiss at Marjorie's cheek, "we are again."

There, at any rate, she was, and Uncle Hubert was up the platform seeing after the luggage, in his small anxious way.

Aunt Plessington was a tall lean woman, with firm features, a high colour and a bright eye, who wore hats to show she despised them, and carefully dishevelled hair. Her dress was always good, but extremely old and grubby, and she commanded respect chiefly by her voice. Her voice was the true governing-class voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant and authoritative; it made everything she said clear and important, so that if she said it was a fine morning it was like leaded print in the _Times_, and she had over her large front teeth lips that closed quietly and with a slight effort after her speeches, as if the words she spoke tasted well and left a peaceful, secure sensation in the mouth.

Uncle Hubert was a less distinguished figure, and just a little reminiscent of the small attached husbands one finds among the lower crustacea: he was much shorter and rounder than his wife, and if he had been left to himself, he would probably have been comfortably fat in his quiet little way. But Aunt Plessington had made him a Haigite, which is one of the fiercer kinds of hygienist, just in the nick of time. He had round shoulders, a large nose, and glasses that made him look astonished--and she said he had a great gift for practical things, and made him see after everything in that line while she did the lecturing. His directions to the porter finished, he came up to his niece. "Hello, Marjorie!" he said, in a peculiar voice that sounded as though his mouth was full (though of course, poor dear, it wasn't), "how's the First Class?"

"A second's good enough for me, Uncle Hubert," said Marjorie, and asked if they would rather walk or go in the donkey cart, which was waiting outside with Daffy. Aunt Plessington, with an air of great _bonhomie_ said she'd ride in the donkey cart, and they did. But no pseudo-twins or Theodore came to meet this arrival, as both uncle and aunt had a way of asking how the lessons were getting on that they found extremely disagreeable. Also, their aunt measured them, and incited them with loud encouraging noises to grow one against the other in an urgent, disturbing fashion.