Herbert Wells - Marriage

She had a curious and rather morbid indisposition to go after lunch to the station and meet Mr. Magnet as her mother wished her to do, in order to bring him straight to the vicarage to early tea, but here again reason prevailed and she went.

Mr. Magnet arrived by the 2.27, and to Marjorie's eye his alighting presence had an effect of being not so much covered with laurels as distended by them. His face seemed whiter and larger than ever. He waved a great handful of newspapers.

"Hullo, Magsy!" he said. "They've given me a thumping Press. I'm nearer swelled head than I've ever been, so mind how you touch me!"

"We'll take it down at croquet," said Marjorie.

"They've cleared that thing away?"

"And made up the lawn like a billiard table," she said.

"That makes for skill," he said waggishly. "I shall save my head after all."

For a moment he seemed to loom towards kissing her, but she averted this danger by a business-like concern for his bag. He entrusted this to a porter, and reverted to the triumph of overnight so soon as they were clear of the station. He was overflowing with kindliness towards his fellow humorists, who had appeared in force and very generously at the banquet, and had said the most charming things—some of which were in one report and some in another, and some the reporters had missed altogether—some of the kindliest.

"It's a pleasant feeling to think that a lot of good fellows think you are a good fellow," said Mr. Magnet.

He became solicitous for her. How had she got on while he was away? She asked him how one was likely to get on at Buryhamstreet; monoplanes didn't fall every day, and as she said that it occurred to her she was behaving meanly. But he was going on to his next topic before she could qualify.

"I've got something in my pocket," he remarked, and playfully: "Guess."

She did, but she wouldn't. She had a curious sinking of the heart.

"I want you to see it before anyone else," he said. "Then if you don't like it, it can go back. It's a sapphire."

He was feeling nervously in his pockets and then the little box was in her hand.

She hesitated to open it. It made everything so dreadfully concrete. And this time the sense of meanness was altogether acuter. He'd bought this in London; he'd brought it down, hoping for her approval. Yes, it was—horrid. But what was she to do?

"It's—awfully pretty," she said with the glittering symbol in her hand, and indeed he had gone to one of those artistic women who are reviving and improving upon the rich old Roman designs. "It's so beautifully made."

"I'm so glad you like it. You really do like it?"

"I don't deserve it."

"Oh! But you do like it?"

"Enormously."

"Ah! I spent an hour in choosing it."

She could see him. She felt as though she had picked his pocket.

"Only I don't deserve it, Mr. Magnet. Indeed I don't. I feel I am taking it on false pretences."

"Nonsense, Magsy. Nonsense! Slip it on your finger, girl."

"But I don't," she insisted.

He took the box from her, pocketed it and seized her hand. She drew it away from him.

"No!" she said. "I feel like a cheat. You know, I don't—I'm sure I don't love——"

"I'll love enough for two," he said, and got her hand again. "No!" he said at her gesture, "you'll wear it. Why shouldn't you?"

And so Marjorie came back along the vicarage avenue with his ring upon her hand. And Mr. Pope was evidently very glad to see him....

The family was still seated at tea upon rugs and wraps, and still discussing humorists at play, when Professor Trafford appeared, leaning on a large stick and limping, but resolute, by the church gate. "Pish!" said Mr. Pope. Marjorie tried not to reveal a certain dismay, there was dumb, rich approval in Daphne's eyes, and the pleasure of Theodore and the pseudo-twins was only too scandalously evident. "Hoo-Ray!" said Theodore, with ill-concealed relief.

Mrs. Pope was the incarnate invocation of tact as Trafford drew near.

"I hope," he said, with obvious insincerity, "I don't invade you. But Solomonson is frightfully concerned and anxious about your lawn, and whether his men cleared it up properly and put things right." His eye went about the party and rested on Marjorie. "How are you?" he said, in a friendly voice.

"Well, we seem to have got our croquet lawn back," said Mr. Pope. "And our nerves are recovering. How is Sir Rupert?"

"A little fractious," said Trafford, with the ghost of a smile.

"You'll take some tea?" said Mrs. Pope in the pause that followed.

"Thank you," said Trafford and sat down instantly.

"I saw your jolly address in the Standard ," he said to Magnet. "I haven't read anything so amusing for some time."

"Rom dear," said Mrs. Pope, "will you take the pot in and get some fresh tea?"

Mr. Trafford addressed himself to the flattery of Magnet with considerable skill. He had detected a lurking hostility in the eyes of the two gentlemen that counselled him to propitiate them if he meant to maintain his footing in the vicarage, and now he talked to them almost exclusively and ignored the ladies modestly but politely in the way that seems natural and proper in a British middle-class house of the better sort. But as he talked chiefly of the improvement of motor machinery that had recently been shown at the Engineering Exhibition, he did not make that headway with Marjorie's father that he had perhaps anticipated. Mr. Pope fumed quietly for a time, and then suddenly spoke out.

"I'm no lover of machines," he said abruptly, slashing across Mr. Trafford's description. "All our troubles began with villainous saltpetre. I'm an old-fashioned man with a nose—and a neck, and I don't want the one offended or the other broken. No, don't ask me to be interested in your valves and cylinders. What do you say, Magnet? It starts machinery in my head to hear about them...."

On such occasions as this when Mr. Pope spoke out, his horror of an anti-climax or any sort of contradiction was apt to bring the utterance to a culmination not always to be distinguished from a flight. And now he rose to his feet as he delivered himself.

"Who's for a game of tennis?" he said, "in this last uncontaminated patch of air? I and Marjorie will give you a match, Daffy—if Magnet isn't too tired to join you."

Daffy looked at Marjorie for an instant.

"We'll want you, Theodore, to look after the balls in the potatoes," said Mr. Pope lest that ingenuous mind should be corrupted behind his back....

Mrs. Pope found herself left to entertain a slightly disgruntled Trafford. Rom and Syd hovered on the off chance of notice, at the corner of the croquet lawn nearest the tea things. Mrs. Pope had already determined to make certain little matters clearer than they appeared to be to this agreeable but superfluous person, and she was greatly assisted by his opening upon the subject of her daughters. "Jolly tennis looks," he said.

"Don't they?" said Mrs. Pope. "I think it is such a graceful game for a girl."

Mr. Trafford glanced at Mrs. Pope's face, but her expression was impenetrable.

"They both like it and play it so well," she said. "Their father is so skillful and interested in games. Marjorie tells me you were her examiner a year or so ago."

"Yes. She struck my memory—her work stood out."

"Of course she is clever," said Mrs. Pope. "Or we shouldn't have sent her to Oxbridge. There she's doing quite well—quite well. Everyone says so. I don't know, of course, if Mr. Magnet will let her finish there."

"Mr. Magnet?"

"She's just engaged to him. Of course she's frightfully excited about it, and naturally he wants her to come away and marry. There's very little excuse for a long engagement. No."

Her voice died in a musical little note, and she seemed to be scrutinizing the tennis with an absorbed interest. "They've got new balls," she said, as if to herself.