Herbert Wells - Marriage

Nothing definite was said in her hearing about the engagement, but everybody seemed to understand. Mr. Pope was the most demonstrative, he took occasion to rap her hard upon the back, his face crinkled with a resolute kindliness. "Ah!" he said, "Sly Maggots!"

He also administered several resounding blows to Magnet's shoulder blades, and irradiated the party with a glow of benevolent waggery. Marjorie submitted without an answer to these paternal intimations. Mrs. Pope did no more than watch her daughter. Invisible but overwhelming forces were busy in bringing Marjorie and her glowing lover alone together again. It happened at last, as he was departing; she was almost to her inflamed imagination thrust out upon him, had to take him to the gate; and there in the shadows of the trees he kissed her "good night" with passionate effusion.

"Madge," he said, "Madge!"

She made no answer. She submitted passively to his embrace, and then suddenly and dexterously disengaged herself from him, ran in, and without saying good-night to anyone went to her room to bed.

Mr. Pope was greatly amused by this departure from the customary routine of life, and noted it archly.

When Daffy came up Marjorie was ostentatiously going to sleep....

As she herself was dropping off Daffy became aware of an odd sound, somehow familiar, and yet surprising and disconcerting.

Suddenly wide awake again, she started up. Yes there was no mistake about it! And yet it was very odd.

"Madge, what's up?"

No answer.

"I say! you aren't crying, Madge, are you?"

Then after a long interval: " Madge! "

An answer came in a muffled voice, almost as if Marjorie had something in her mouth. "Oh shut it, old Daffy."

"But Madge?" said Daffy after reflection.

"Shut it. Do shut it! Leave me alone, I say! Can't you leave me alone? Oh!"—and for a moment she let her sobs have way with her—"Daffy, don't worry me. Old Daffy! Please! "

Daffy sat up for a long time in the stifled silence that ensued, and then like a sensible sister gave it up, and composed herself again to slumber....

Outside watching the window in a state of nebulous ecstasy, was Mr. Magnet, moonlit and dewy. It was a high serene night with a growing moon and a scattered company of major stars, and if no choir of nightingales sang there was at least a very active nightjar. "More than I hoped," whispered Mr. Magnet, "more than I dared to hope." He was very sleepy, but it seemed to him improper to go to bed on such a night—on such an occasion.

For the next week Marjorie became more nearly introspective than she had ever been in her life before. She began to doubt her hitherto unshaken conviction that she was a single, consistent human being. She found such discords and discrepancies between mood and mood, between the conviction of this hour and the feeling of that, that it seemed to her she was rather a collection of samples of emotion and attitude than anything so simple as an individual.

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

And she thought of things she might buy, and the jolly feeling of putting them about and making fine effects with them. One thing she told Daphne, she had clearly resolved upon; the house should be always full and brimming over with beautiful flowers. "I've always wished mother would have more flowers—and not keep them so long when she has them...."

Another Marjorie in the confusion of her mind was doing her sincerest, narrow best to appreciate and feel grateful for and return the devotion of 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. "But I 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 less agreeable person. She was a sprite of pure criticism, and in spite of the utmost efforts to suppress her, she declared night and day in the inner confidences of Marjorie's soul that she did not believe in Mr. Magnet's old devotion at all. She was anti-Magnet, a persistent insurgent. She was dreadfully unsettling. It was surely this Marjorie that wouldn't let the fact of his baldness alone, and who discovered and insisted upon a curious unbeautiful flatness in his voice whenever he was 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 disposition to thwart and control. And he was always touching her! Whenever he came near her she would wince at the freedoms a large, kind hand might take with her elbow or wrist, at a possible sudden, clumsy pat at some erring strand of hair.

Then there was an appraising satisfaction in his eye.

On the third day of their engagement he began, quite abruptly, to call her "Magsy." "We'll end this scandal of a Girl Pope," he said. "Magsy Magnet, you'll be—M.M. No women M.P.'s for us , Magsy...."

She became acutely critical of his intellectual quality. She listened with a new alertness to the conversations at the dinner-table, the bouts of wit with her father. She carried off utterances and witticism for maturer reflection. She was amazed to find how little they could withstand the tests and acids of her mind. So many things, such wide and interesting fields, he did not so much think about as cover with a large enveloping shallowness....

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

"What's the book, Magsy?" he asked, took it out of her slightly resisting hand, closed it and read the title. "Um," he said; "Isn't this a 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 with a grimace of humorous distaste.

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

"Better," said Magnet. "That's why they shouldn't trouble about horrid things 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 Municipal Trading, Magsy, whether you'd make head or tail of it. It's a stiff subject. Shaw just gets his chance for a smart thing or so.... I'd rather you read a good novel."