GEORGE SHAW: Collected Works

“I hope it’s all right,” said Jane, looking suspiciously at Agatha. “However, there can’t be any harm in it; for it’s the simple truth. Anyhow, if you are playing one of your jokes on me, you are a nasty mean thing, and I don’t care. Now, Gertrude, it’s your turn. Please look at mine, and see whether the spelling is right.”

“It is not my business to teach you to spell,” said Gertrude, taking the pen. And, while Jane was murmuring at her churlishness, she wrote in a bold hand:

“I have broken the rules by sliding down the banisters to-day with Miss Carpenter and Miss Wylie. Miss Wylie went first.”

“You wretch!” exclaimed Agatha, reading over her shoulder. “And your father is an admiral!”

“I think it is only fair,” said Miss Lindsay, quailing, but assuming the tone of a moralist. “It is perfectly true.”

“All my money was made in trade,” said Agatha; “but I should be ashamed to save myself by shifting blame to your aristocratic shoulders. You pitiful thing! Here: give me the pen.”

“I will strike it out if you wish; but I think—”

“No: it shall stay there to witness against you. Now see how I confess my faults.” And she wrote, in a fine, rapid hand:

“This evening Gertrude Lindsay and Jane Carpenter met me at the top of the stairs, and said they wanted to slide down the banisters and would do it if I went first. I told them that it was against the rules, but they said that did not matter; and as they are older than I am, I allowed myself to be persuaded, and did.”

“What do you think of that?” said Agatha, displaying the page.

They read it, and protested clamorously.

“It is perfectly true,” said Agatha, solemnly.

“It’s beastly mean,” said Jane energetically. “The idea of your finding fault with Gertrude, and then going and being twice as bad yourself! I never heard of such a thing in my life.”

“‘Thus bad begins; but worse remains behind,’ as the Standard Elocutionist says,” said Agatha, adding another sentence to her confession.

“But it was all my fault. Also I was rude to Miss Wilson, and refused to leave the room when she bade me. I was not wilfully wrong except in sliding down the banisters. I am so fond of a slide that I could not resist the temptation.”

“Be warned by me, Agatha,” said Jane impressively. “If you write cheeky things in that book, you will be expelled.”

“Indeed!” replied Agatha significantly. “Wait until Miss Wilson sees what you have written.”

“Gertrude,” cried Jane, with sudden misgiving, “has she made me write anything improper? Agatha, do tell me if—”

Here a gong sounded; and the three girls simultaneously exclaimed “Grub!” and rushed from the room.

One sunny afternoon, a hansom drove at great speed along Belsize Avenue, St. John’s Wood, and stopped before a large mansion. A young lady sprang out; ran up the steps, and rang the bell impatiently. She was of the olive complexion, with a sharp profile: dark eyes with long lashes; narrow mouth with delicately sensuous lips; small head, feet, and hands, with long taper fingers; lithe and very slender figure moving with serpent-like grace. Oriental taste was displayed in the colors of her costume, which consisted of a white dress, close-fitting, and printed with an elaborate china blue pattern; a yellow straw hat covered with artificial hawthorn and scarlet berries; and tan-colored gloves reaching beyond the elbow, and decorated with a profusion of gold bangles.

The door not being opened immediately, she rang again, violently, and was presently admitted by a maid, who seemed surprised to see her. Without making any inquiry, she darted upstairs into a drawing-room, where a matron of good presence, with features of the finest Jewish type, sat reading. With her was a handsome boy in black velvet, who said:

“Mamma, here’s Henrietta!”

“Arthur,” said the young lady excitedly, “leave the room this instant; and don’t dare to come back until you get leave.”

The boy’s countenance fell, and he sulkily went out without a word.

“Is anything wrong?” said the matron, putting away her book with the unconcerned resignation of an experienced person who foresees a storm in a teacup. “Where is Sidney?”

“Gone! Gone! Deserted me! I—” The young lady’s utterance failed, and she threw herself upon an ottoman, sobbing with passionate spite.

“Nonsense! I thought Sidney had more sense. There, Henrietta, don’t be silly. I suppose you have quarrelled.”

“No! No!! No!!!” cried Henrietta, stamping on the carpet. “We had not a word. I have not lost my temper since we were married, mamma; I solemnly swear I have not. I will kill myself; there is no other way. There’s a curse on me. I am marked out to be miserable. He—”

“Tut, tut! What has happened, Henrietta? As you have been married now nearly six weeks, you can hardly be surprised at a little tiff arising. You are so excitable! You cannot expect the sky to be always cloudless. Most likely you are to blame; for Sidney is far more reasonable than you. Stop crying, and behave like a woman of sense, and I will go to Sidney and make everything right.”

“But he’s gone, and I can’t find out where. Oh, what shall I do?”

“What has happened?”

Henrietta writhed with impatience. Then, forcing herself to tell her story, she answered:

“We arranged on Monday that I should spend two days with Aunt Judith instead of going with him to Birmingham to that horrid Trade Congress. We parted on the best of terms. He couldn’t have been more affectionate. I will kill myself; I don’t care about anything or anybody. And when I came back on Wednesday he was gone, and there was this letter.” She produced a letter, and wept more bitterly than before.

“Let me see it.”

Henrietta hesitated, but her mother took the letter from her, sat down near the window, and composed herself to read without the least regard to her daughter’s vehement distress. The letter ran thus:

“Monday night.

“My Dearest: I am off—surfeited with endearment—to live my own life and do my own work. I could only have prepared you for this by coldness or neglect, which are wholly impossible to me when the spell of your presence is upon me. I find that I must fly if I am to save myself.

“I am afraid that I cannot give you satisfactory and intelligible reasons for this step. You are a beautiful and luxurious creature: life is to you full and complete only when it is a carnival of love. My case is just the reverse. Before three soft speeches have escaped me I rebuke myself for folly and insincerity. Before a caress has had time to cool, a strenuous revulsion seizes me: I long to return to my old lonely ascetic hermit life; to my dry books; my Socialist propagandism; my voyage of discovery through the wilderness of thought. I married in an insane fit of belief that I had a share of the natural affection which carries other men through lifetimes of matrimony. Already I am undeceived. You are to me the loveliest woman in the world. Well, for five weeks I have walked and tallied and dallied with the loveliest woman in the world, and the upshot is that I am flying from her, and am for a hermit’s cave until I die. Love cannot keep possession of me: all my strongest powers rise up against it and will not endure it. Forgive me for writing nonsense that you won’t understand, and do not think too hardly of me. I have been as good to you as my selfish nature allowed. Do not seek to disturb me in the obscurity which I desire and deserve. My solicitor will call on your father to arrange business matters, and you shall be as happy as wealth and liberty can make you. We shall meet again—some day.