Crisis

§ 1

Crisis prevailed in Buryhamstreet that night. On-161- half a dozen sleepless pillows souls communed with the darkness, and two at least of those pillows were wet with tears.

Not one of those wakeful heads was perfectly clear about the origins and bearings of the trouble; not even Mr. Pope felt absolutely sure of himself. It had come as things come to people nowadays, because they will not think things out, much less talk things out, and are therefore in a hopeless tangle of values that tightens sooner or later to a knot....

What an uncharted perplexity, for example, was the mind of that excellent woman Mrs. Pope!

Poor lady! she hadn't a stable thing in her head. It is remarkable that some queer streak in her composition sympathized with Marjorie's passion for Trafford. But she thought it such a pity! She fought that sympathy down as if it were a wicked thing. And she fought too against other ideas that rose out of the deeps and did not so much come into her mind as cluster at the threshold, the idea that Marjorie was in effect grown up, a dozen queer criticisms of Magnet, and a dozen subtle doubts whether after all Marjorie was going to be happy with him as she assured herself the girl would be. (So far as any one knew Trafford might be an excellent match!) And behind these would-be invaders of her guarded mind prowled even worse ones, doubts, horrible disloyal doubts, about the wisdom and kindness of Mr. Pope.

Quite early in life Mrs. Pope had realized that it-162- is necessary to be very careful with one's thoughts. They lead to trouble. She had clipped the wings of her own mind therefore so successfully that all her conclusions had become evasions, all her decisions compromises. Her profoundest working conviction was a belief that nothing in the world was of value but "tact," and that the art of living was to "tide things over." But here it seemed almost beyond her strength to achieve any sort of tiding over....

(Why couldn't Mr. Pope lie quiet?)

Whatever she said or did had to be fitted to the exigencies of Mr. Pope.

Availing himself of the privileges of matrimony, her husband so soon as Mr. Magnet had gone and they were upstairs together, had explained the situation with vivid simplicity, and had gone on at considerable length and with great vivacity to enlarge upon his daughter's behaviour. He ascribed this moral disaster,—he presented it as a moral disaster of absolutely calamitous dimensions—entirely to Mrs. Pope's faults and negligences. Warming with his theme he had employed a number of homely expressions rarely heard by decent women except in these sacred intimacies, to express the deep indignation of a strong man moved to unbridled speech by the wickedness of those near and dear to him. Still warming, he raised his voice and at last shouted out his more forcible meanings, until she feared the servants and children might hear, waved a clenched fist at imaginary Traffords and scoundrels generally, and giving way completely to his outraged virtue, smote and kicked blameless articles of furniture in a manner deeply impressive to the feminine intelligence.

Finally he sat down in the little arm-chair between-163- her and the cupboard where she was accustomed to hang up her clothes, stuck out his legs very stiffly across the room, and despaired of his family in an obtrusive and impregnable silence for an enormous time.

All of which awakened a deep sense of guilt and unworthiness in Mrs. Pope's mind, and prevented her going to bed, but did not help her in the slightest degree to grasp the difficulties of the situation....

She would have lain awake anyhow, but she was greatly helped in this by Mr. Pope's restlessness. He was now turning over from left to right or from right to left at intervals of from four to seven minutes, and such remarks as "Damned scoundrel! Get out of this!" or "My daughter and degrade yourself in this way!" or "Never let me see your face again!" "Plight your troth to one man, and fling yourself shamelessly—I repeat it, Marjorie, shamelessly—into the arms of another!" kept Mrs. Pope closely in touch with the general trend of his thoughts.

She tried to get together her plans and perceptions rather as though she swept up dead leaves on a gusty day. She knew that the management of the whole situation rested finally on her, and that whatever she did or did not do, or whatever arose to thwart her arrangements, its entire tale of responsibility would ultimately fall upon her shoulders. She wondered what was to be done with Marjorie, with Mr. Magnet? Need he know? Could that situation be saved? Everything at present was raw in her mind. Except for her husband's informal communications she did not even know what had appeared, what Daffy had seen, what Magnet thought of Marjorie's failure to bid him good-night. For example, had Mr. Magnet noticed Mr. Pope's profound disturbance? She had to be ready to put a face on things-164- before morning, and it seemed impossible she could do so. In times of crisis, as every woman knows, it is always necessary to misrepresent everything to everybody, but how she was to dovetail her misrepresentations, get the best effect from them, extract a working system of rights and wrongs from them, she could not imagine....

(Oh! she did so wish Mr. Pope would lie quiet.)

But he had no doubts of what became him. He had to maintain a splendid and irrational rage—at any cost—to anybody.

§ 2

A few yards away, a wakeful Marjorie confronted a joyless universe. She had a baffling realization that her life was in a hopeless mess, that she really had behaved disgracefully, and that she couldn't for a moment understand how it had happened. She had intended to make quite sure of Trafford—and then put things straight.

Only her father had spoilt everything.

She regarded her father that night with a want of natural affection terrible to record. Why had he come just when he had, just as he had? Why had he been so violent, so impossible?

Of course, she had no business to be there....

She examined her character with a new unprecedented detachment. Wasn't she, after all, rather a mean human being? It had never occurred to her before to ask such a question. Now she asked it with only too clear a sense of the answer. She tried to trace how these multiplying threads of meanness had first come into the fabric of a life she had supposed herself to be weaving in extremely bright, honourable, and adventurous colours. She ought, of course,-165- never to have accepted Magnet....

She faced the disagreeable word; was she a liar?

At any rate, she told lies.

And she'd behaved with extraordinary meanness to Daphne. She realized that now. She had known, as precisely as if she had been told, how Daphne felt about Trafford, and she'd never given her an inkling of her own relations. She hadn't for a moment thought of Daphne. No wonder Daffy was sombre and bitter. Whatever she knew, she knew enough. She had heard Trafford's name in urgent whispers on the landing. "I suppose you couldn't leave him alone," Daffy had said, after a long hostile silence. That was all. Just a sentence without prelude or answer flung across the bedroom, revealing a perfect understanding—deeps of angry disillusionment. Marjorie had stared and gasped, and made no answer.

Would she ever see him again? After this horror of rowdy intervention? She didn't deserve to; she didn't deserve anything.... Oh, the tangle of it all! The tangle of it all! And those bills at Oxbridge! She was just dragging Trafford down into her own miserable morass of a life.

Her thoughts would take a new turn. "I love him," she whispered soundlessly. "I would die for him. I would like to lie under his feet—and him not know it."

Her mind hung on that for a long time. "Not know it until afterwards," she corrected.

She liked to be exact, even in despair....

And then in her memory he was struck again, and stood stiff and still. She wanted to kneel to him, imagined herself kneeling....

And so on, quite inconclusively, round and round through the interminable night hours.

§ 3

The young man in the village was, if possible,-166- more perplexed, round-eyed and generally inconclusive than anyone else in this series of nocturnal disturbances. He spent long intervals sitting on his window-sill regarding a world that was scented with nightstock, and seemed to be woven of moonshine and gossamer. Being an inexpert and infrequent soliloquist, his only audible comment on his difficulties was the repetition in varying intonations of his fervent, unalterable conviction that he was damned. But behind this simple verbal mask was a great fury of mental activity.

He had something of Marjorie's amazement at the position of affairs.

He had never properly realized that it was possible for any one to regard Marjorie as a daughter, to order her about and resent the research for her society as criminal. It was a new light in his world. Some day he was to learn the meaning of fatherhood, but in these night watches he regarded it as a hideous survival of mediæval darknesses.

"Of course," he said, entirely ignoring the actual quality of their conversation, "she had to explain about the Magnet affair. Can't one—converse?"

He reflected through great intervals.

"I will see her! Why on earth shouldn't I see her?"

"I suppose they can't lock her up!"

For a time he contemplated a writ of Habeas Corpus. He saw reason to regret the gaps in his legal knowledge.

"Can any one get a writ of Habeas Corpus for any one—it doesn't matter whom"—more especially if you are a young man of six-and-twenty, anxious to exchange a few richly charged words with-167- a girl of twenty who is engaged to someone else?

The night had no answer.

It was nearly dawn when he came to the entirely inadvisable conclusion—I use his own word's—to go and have it out with the old ruffian. He would sit down and ask him what he meant by it all—and reason with him. If he started flourishing that stick again, it would have to be taken away.

And having composed a peroration upon the institution of the family of a character which he fondly supposed to be extraordinarily tolerant, reasonable and convincing, but which was indeed calculated to madden Mr. Pope to frenzy, Mr. Trafford went very peacefully to sleep.

§ 4

Came dawn, with a noise of birds and afterwards a little sleep, and then day, and heavy eyes opened again, and the sound of frying and the smell of coffee recalled our actors to the stage. Mrs. Pope was past her worst despair; always the morning brings courage and a clearer grasp of things, and she could face the world with plans shaped subconsciously during those last healing moments of slumber.

Breakfast was difficult, but not impossible. Mr. Pope loomed like a thundercloud, but Marjorie pleaded a headache very wisely, and was taken a sympathetic cup of tea. The pseudo-twins scented trouble, but Theodore was heedless and over-full of an entertaining noise made by a moorhen as it dived in the ornamental water that morning. You could make it practically sotto voce, and it amused Syd. He seemed to think the Times opaque to such small sounds, and learnt better only to be dismissed underfed-168- and ignominiously from the table to meditate upon the imperfections of his soul in the schoolroom. There for a time he was silent, and then presently became audible again, playing with a ball and, presumably, Marjorie's tennis racquet.

Directly she could disentangle herself from breakfast Mrs. Pope, with all her plans acute, went up to the girls' room. She found her daughter dressing in a leisurely and meditative manner. She shut the door almost confidentially. "Marjorie," she said, "I want you to tell me all about this."

"I thought I heard father telling you," said Marjorie.

"He was too indignant," said Mrs. Pope, "to explain clearly. You see, Marjorie"—she paused before her effort—"he knows things—about this Professor Trafford."

"What things?" asked Marjorie, turning sharply.

"I don't know, my dear—and I can't imagine."

She looked out of the window, aware of Marjorie's entirely distrustful scrutiny.

"I don't believe it," said Marjorie.

"Don't believe what, dear?"

"Whatever he says."

"I wish I didn't," said Mrs. Pope, and turned. "Oh, Madge," she cried, "you cannot imagine how all this distresses me! I cannot—I cannot conceive how you came to be in such a position! Surely honour——! Think of Mr. Magnet, how good and patient he has been! You don't know that man. You don't know all he is, and all that it means to a girl. He is good and honourable and—pure. He is kindness itself. It seemed to me that you were to be so happy—rich, honoured."

She was overcome by a rush of emotion; she turned-169- to the bed and sat down.

"There!" she said desolately. "It's all ruined, shattered, gone."

Marjorie tried not to feel that her mother was right.

"If father hadn't interfered," she said weakly.

"Oh, don't, my dear, speak so coldly of your father! You don't know what he has to put up with. You don't know his troubles and anxieties—all this wretched business." She paused, and her face became portentous. "Marjorie, do you know if these railways go on as they are going he may have to eat into his capital this year. Just think of that, and the worry he has! And this last shame and anxiety!"

Her voice broke again. Marjorie listened with an expression that was almost sullen.

"But what is it," she asked, "that father knows about Mr. Trafford?"

"I don't know, dear. I don't know. But it's something that matters—that makes it all different."

"Well, may I speak to Mr. Trafford before he leaves Buryhamstreet?"

"My dear! Never see him, dear—never think of him again! Your father would not dream——Some day, Marjorie, you will rejoice—you will want to thank your father on your bended knees that he saved you from the clutches of this man...."

"I won't believe anything about Mr. Trafford," she said slowly, "until I know——"

She left the sentence incomplete.

She made her declaration abruptly. "I love Mr. Trafford," she said, with a catch in her voice, "and I don't love Mr. Magnet."

Mrs. Pope received this like one who is suddenly stabbed. She sat still as if overwhelmed, one hand pressed to her side and her eyes closed. Then she-170- said, as if she gasped involuntarily—

"It's too dreadful! Marjorie," she said, "I want to ask you to do something. After all, a mother has some claim. Will you wait just a little. Will you promise me to do nothing—nothing, I mean, to commit you—until your father has been able to make inquiries. Don't see him for a little while. Very soon you'll be one-and-twenty, and then perhaps things may be different. If he cares for you, and you for him, a little separation won't matter.... Until your father has inquired...."

"Mother," said Marjorie, "I can't——"

Mrs. Pope drew in the air sharply between her teeth, as if in agony.

"But, mother——Mother, I must let Mr. Trafford know that I'm not to see him. I can't suddenly cease.... If I could see him once——"

"Don't!" said Mrs. Pope, in a hollow voice.

Marjorie began weeping. "He'd not understand," she said. "If I might just speak to him!"

"Not alone, Marjorie."

Marjorie stood still. "Well—before you."

Mrs. Pope conceded the point. "And then, Marjorie——" she said.

"I'd keep my word, mother," said Marjorie, and began to sob in a manner she felt to be absurdly childish—"until—until I am one-and-twenty. I'd promise that."

Mrs. Pope did a brief calculation. "Marjorie," she said, "it's only your happiness I think of."

"I know," said Marjorie, and added in a low voice, "and father."

"My dear, you don't understand your father.... I believe—I do firmly believe—if anything happened to any of you girls—anything bad—he would kill himself.... And I know he means that you aren't-171- to go about so much as you used to do, unless we have the most definite promises. Of course, your father's ideas aren't always my ideas, Marjorie; but it's your duty—You know how hasty he is and—quick. Just as you know how good and generous and kind he is"—she caught Marjorie's eye, and added a little lamely—"at bottom." ... She thought. "I think I could get him to let you say just one word with Mr. Trafford. It would be very difficult, but——"

She paused for a few seconds, and seemed to be thinking deeply.

"Marjorie," she said, "Mr. Magnet must never know anything of this."

"But, mother——!"

"Nothing!"

"I can't go on with my engagement!"

Mrs. Pope shook her head inscrutably.

"But how can I, mother?"

"You need not tell him why, Marjorie."

"But——"

"Just think how it would humiliate and distress him! You can't, Marjorie. You must find some excuse—oh, any excuse! But not the truth—not the truth, Marjorie. It would be too dreadful."

Marjorie thought. "Look here, mother, I may see Mr. Trafford again? I may really speak to him?"

"Haven't I promised?"

"Then, I'll do as you say," said Marjorie.

§ 5

Mrs. Pope found her husband seated at the desk in the ultra-Protestant study, meditating gloomily.

"I've been talking to her," she said, "She's in a state of terrible distress."

"She ought to be," said Mr. Pope.-172-

"Philip, you don't understand Marjorie."

"I don't."

"You think she was kissing that man."

"Well, she was."

"You can think that of her!"

Mr. Pope turned his chair to her. "But I saw!"

Mrs. Pope shook her head. "She wasn't; she was struggling to get away from him. She told me so herself. I've been into it with her. You don't understand, Philip. A man like that has a sort of fascination for a girl. He dazzles her. It's the way with girls. But you're quite mistaken.... Quite. It's a sort of hypnotism. She'll grow out of it. Of course, she loves Mr. Magnet. She does indeed. I've not a doubt of it. But——"

"You're sure she wasn't kissing him?"

"Positive."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

"A girl's so complex. You didn't give her a chance. She's fearfully ashamed of herself—fearfully! but it's just because she is ashamed that she won't admit it."

"I'll make her admit it."

"You ought to have had all boys," said Mrs. Pope. "Oh! she'll admit it some day—readily enough. But I believe a girl of her spirit would rather die than begin explaining. You can't expect it of her. Really you can't."

He grunted and shook his head slowly from side to side.

She sat down in the arm-chair beside the desk.

"I want to know just exactly what we are to do about the girl, Philip. I can't bear to think of her—up there."

"How?" he asked. "Up there?"-173-

"Yes," she answered with that skilful inconsecutiveness of hers, and let a brief silence touch his imagination. "Do you think that man means to come here again?" she asked.

"Chuck him out if he does," said Mr. Pope, grimly.

She pressed her lips together firmly. She seemed to be weighing things painfully. "I wouldn't," she said at last.

"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Pope.

"I do not want you to make an open quarrel with Mr. Trafford."

"Not quarrel!"

"Not an open one," said Mrs. Pope. "Of course I know how nice it would be if you could use a horsewhip, dear. There's such a lot of things—if we only just slash. But—it won't help. Get him to go away. She's consented never to see him again—practically. She's ready to tell him so herself. Part them against their will—oh! and the thing may go on for no end of time. But treat it as it ought to be treated—She'll be very tragic for a week or so, and then she'll forget him like a dream. He is a dream—a girl's dream.... If only we leave it alone, she'll leave it alone."

§ 6

Things were getting straight, Mrs. Pope felt. She had now merely to add a few touches to the tranquillization of Daphne, and the misdirection of the twin's curiosity. These touches accomplished, it seemed that everything was done. After a brief reflection, she dismissed the idea of putting things to Theodore. She ran over the possibilities of the servants eavesdropping, and found them negligible. Yes, everything-174- was done—everything. And yet....

The queer string in her nature between religiosity and superstition began to vibrate. She hesitated. Then she slipped upstairs, fastened the door, fell on her knees beside the bed and put the whole thing as acceptably as possible to Heaven in a silent, simple, but lucidly explanatory prayer....

She came out of her chamber brighter and braver than she had been for eighteen long hours. She could now, she felt, await the developments that threatened with the serenity of one who is prepared at every point. She went almost happily to the kitchen, only about forty-five minutes behind her usual time, to order the day's meals and see with her own eyes that economies prevailed. And it seemed to her, on the whole, consoling, and at any rate a distraction, when the cook informed her that after all she had meant to give notice on the day of aunt Plessington's visit.

§ 7

The unsuspecting Magnet, fatigued but happy—for three hours of solid humorous writing (omitting every unpleasant suggestion and mingling in the most acceptable and saleable proportions smiles and tears) had added its quota to the intellectual heritage of England, made a simple light lunch cooked in homely village-inn fashion, lit a well merited cigar, and turned his steps towards the vicarage. He was preceded at some distance along the avenuesque drive by the back of Mr. Trafford, which he made no attempt to overtake.

Mr. Trafford was admitted and disappeared, and a minute afterwards Magnet reached the door.

Mrs. Pope appeared radiant—about the weather. A rather tiresome man had just called upon Mr. Pope about business matters, she said, and he might-175- be detained five or ten minutes. Marjorie and Daffy were upstairs—resting. They had been disturbed by bats in the night.

"Isn't it charmingly rural?" said Mrs. Pope. "Bats!"

She talked about bats and the fear she had of their getting in her hair, and as she talked she led the way brightly but firmly as far as possible out of earshot of the windows of the ultra Protestant study in which Mr. Pope was now (she did so hope temperately) interviewing Mr. Trafford.

§ 8

Directly Mr. Trafford had reached the front door it had opened for him, and closed behind him at once. He had found himself with Mrs. Pope. "You wish to see my husband?" she had said, and had led him to the study forthwith. She had returned at once to intercept Mr. Magnet....

Trafford found Mr. Pope seated sternly at the centre of the writing desk, regarding him with a threatening brow.

"Well, sir," said Mr. Pope breaking the silence, "you have come to offer some explanation——"

While awaiting this encounter Mr. Pope had not been insensitive to the tactical and scenic possibilities of the occasion. In fact, he had spent the latter half of the morning in intermittent preparations, arranging desks, books, hassocks in advantageous positions, and not even neglecting such small details as the stamp tray, the articles of interest from Jerusalem, and the rock-crystal cenotaph, which he had exhibited in such a manner as was most calculated to damp, chill and subjugate an antagonist in the exposed area-176- towards the window. He had also arranged the chairs in a highly favourable pattern.

Mr. Trafford was greatly taken aback by Mr. Pope's juridical manner and by this form of address, and he was further put out by Mr. Pope saying with a regal gesture to the best illuminated and most isolated chair: "Be seated, sir."

Mr. Trafford's exordium vanished from his mind, he was at a loss for words until spurred to speech by Mr. Pope's almost truculent: "Well?"

"I am in love sir, with your daughter."

"I am not aware of it," said Mr. Pope, and lifted and dropped the paper-weight. "My daughter, sir, is engaged to marry Mr. Magnet. If you had approached me in a proper fashion before presuming to attempt—to attempt——" His voice thickened with indignation,—"Liberties with her, you would have been duly informed of her position—and everyone would have been saved"—he lifted the paper-weight. "Everything that has happened." (Bump.)

Mr. Trafford had to adjust himself to the unexpected elements in this encounter. "Oh!" he said.

"Yes," said Mr. Pope, and there was a distinct interval.

"Is your daughter in love with Mr. Magnet?" asked Mr. Trafford in an almost colloquial tone.

Mr. Pope smiled gravely. "I presume so, sir."

"She never gave me that impression, anyhow," said the young man.

"It was neither her duty to give nor yours to receive that impression," said Mr. Pope.

Again Mr. Trafford was at a loss.

"Have you come here, sir, merely to bandy words?" asked Mr. Pope, drumming with ten fingers on the table.

Mr. Trafford thrust his hands into his pockets-177- and assumed a fictitious pose of ease. He had never found any one in his life before quite so provocative of colloquialism as Mr. Pope.

"Look here, sir, this is all very well," he began, "but why can't I fall in love with your daughter? I'm a Doctor of Science and all that sort of thing. I've a perfectly decent outlook. My father was rather a swell in his science. I'm an entirely decent and respectable person."

"I beg to differ," said Mr. Pope.

"But I am."

"Again," said Mr. Pope, with great patience, and a slight forward bowing of the head, "I beg to differ."

"Well—differ. But all the same——"

He paused and began again, and for a time they argued to no purpose. They generalized about the position of an engaged girl and the rights and privileges of a father. Then Mr. Pope, "to cut all this short," told him frankly he wasn't wanted, his daughter did not want him, nobody wanted him; he was an invader, he had to be got rid of—"if possible by peaceful means." Trafford disputed these propositions, and asked to see Marjorie. Mr. Pope had been leading up to this, and at once closed with that request.

"She is as anxious as any one to end this intolerable siege," he said. He went to the door and called for Marjorie, who appeared with conspicuous promptitude. She was in a dress of green linen that made her seem very cool as well as very dignified to Trafford; she was tense with restrained excitement, and either—for these things shade into each other—entirely without a disposition to act her part or acting with consummate ability. Trafford rose at the sight of her, and remained standing. Mr. Pope closed the door and walked back to the desk. "Mr.-178- Trafford has to be told," he said, "that you don't want him in Buryhamstreet." He arrested Marjorie's forward movement towards Trafford by a gesture of the hand, seated himself, and resumed his drumming on the table. "Well?" he said.

"I don't think you ought to stay in Buryhamstreet, Mr. Trafford," said Marjorie.

"You don't want me to?"

"It will only cause trouble—and scenes."

"You want me to go?"

"Away from here."

"You really mean that?"

Marjorie did not answer for a little time; she seemed to be weighing the exact force of all she was going to say.

"Mr. Trafford," she answered, "everything I've ever said to you—everything—I've meant, more than I've ever meant anything. Everything!"

A little flush of colour came into Trafford's cheeks. He regarded Marjorie with a brightening eye.

"Oh well," he said, "I don't understand. But I'm entirely in your hands, of course."

Marjorie's pose and expression altered. For an instant she was a miracle of instinctive expression, she shone at him, she conveyed herself to him, she assured him. Her eyes met his, she stood warmly flushed and quite unconquered—visibly, magnificently his. She poured into him just that riotous pride and admiration that gives a man altogether to a woman.... Then it seemed as if a light passed, and she was just an everyday Marjorie standing there.

"I'll do anything you want me to," said Trafford.

"Then I want you to go."

"Ah!" said Mr. Pope.

"Yes," said Trafford, with his eyes on her self-possession.-179-

"I've promised not to write or send to you, or—think more than I can help of you, until I'm twenty-one—nearly two months from now."

"And then?"

"I don't know. How can I?"

"You hear, sir?" from Mr. Pope, in the pause of mutual scrutiny that followed.

"One question," said Mr. Trafford.

"You've surely asked enough, sir," said Mr. Pope.

"Are you still engaged to Magnet?"

"Sir!"

"Please, father;" said Marjorie, with unusual daring and in her mother's voice. "Mr. Trafford, after what I've told you—you must leave that to me."

"She is engaged to Mr. Magnet," said Mr. Pope. "Tell him outright, Marjorie. Make it clear."

"I think I understand," said Trafford, with his eyes on Marjorie.

"I've not seen Mr. Magnet since last night," said Marjorie. "And so—naturally—I'm still engaged to him."

"Precisely!" said Mr. Pope, and turned with a face of harsh interrogation to his importunate caller. Mr. Trafford seemed disposed for further questions. "I don't think we need detain you, Madge," said Mr. Pope, over his shoulder.

The two young people stood facing one another for a moment, and I am afraid that they were both extremely happy and satisfied with each other. It was all right, they were quite sure—all right. Their lips were almost smiling. Then Marjorie made an entirely dignified exit. She closed the door very-180- softly, and Mr. Pope turned to his visitor again with a bleak politeness. "I hope that satisfies you," he said.

"There is nothing more to be said at present, I admit," said Mr. Trafford.

"Nothing," said Mr. Pope.

Both gentlemen bowed. Mr. Pope rose ceremoniously, and Mr. Trafford walked doorward. He had a sense of latent absurdities in these tremendous attitudes. They passed through the hall—processionally. But just at the end some lower strain in Mr. Trafford's nature touched the fine dignity of the occasion with an inappropriate remark.

"Good-bye, sir," said Mr. Pope, holding the housedoor wide.

"Good-bye, sir," said Mr. Trafford, and then added with a note of untimely intimacy in his voice, with an inexcusable levity upon his lips: "You know—there's nobody—no man in the world—I'd sooner have for a father-in-law than you."

Mr. Pope, caught unprepared on the spur of the moment, bowed in a cold and distant manner, and then almost immediately closed the door to save himself from violence....

From first to last neither gentleman had made the slightest allusion to a considerable bruise upon Mr. Trafford's left cheek, and a large abrasion above his ear.

§ 9

That afternoon Marjorie began her difficult task of getting disengaged from Mr. Magnet. It was difficult because she was pledged not to tell him of the one thing that made this line of action not only explicable, but necessary. Magnet, perplexed, and-181- disconcerted, and secretly sustained by her mother's glancing sidelights on the feminine character and the instability of "girlish whims," remained at Buryhamstreet until the family returned to Hartstone Square. The engagement was ended—formally—but in such a manner that Magnet was left a rather pathetic and invincibly assiduous besieger. He lavished little presents upon both sisters, he devised little treats for the entire family, he enriched Theodore beyond the dreams of avarice, and he discussed his love and admiration for Marjorie, and the perplexities and delicacies of the situation not only with Mrs. Pope, but with Daphne. At first he had thought very little of Daphne, but now he was beginning to experience the subtle pleasures of a confidential friendship. She understood, he felt; it was quite wonderful how she understood. He found Daffy much richer in response than Marjorie, and far less disconcerting in reply....

Mr. Pope, for all Marjorie's submission to his wishes, developed a Grand Dudgeon of exceptionally fine proportions when he heard of the breach of the engagement. He ceased to speak to his daughter or admit himself aware of her existence, and the Grand Dudgeon's blighting shadow threw a chill over the life of every one in the house. He made it clear that the Grand Dudgeon would only be lifted by Marjorie's re-engagement to Magnet, and that whatever blight or inconvenience fell on the others was due entirely to Marjorie's wicked obstinacy. Using Mrs. Pope as an intermediary, he also conveyed to Marjorie his decision to be no longer burthened with the charges of her education at Oxbridge, and he made it seem extremely doubtful whether he should remember her approaching twenty-first birthday.

Marjorie received the news of her severance from-182- Oxbridge, Mrs. Pope thought, with a certain hardness.

"I thought he would do that," said Marjorie. "He's always wanted to do that," and said no more.