Friday was after all not so much Theodore's day as Mr. Magnet's.
Until she found herself committed there was no shadow of doubt in
Marjorie's mind of what she meant to do. "Before I see you again," said
Aunt Plessington at the parting kiss, "I hope you'll have something to
tell me." She might have been Hymen thinly disguised as an aunt, waving
from the departing train. She continued by vigorous gestures and
unstinted display of teeth and a fluttering handkerchief to encourage
Marjorie to marry Mr. Magnet, until the curve of the cutting hid her
from view....
Fortune favoured Mr. Magnet with a beautiful day, and the excursion was
bright and successful from the outset. It was done well, and what
perhaps was more calculated to impress Marjorie, it was done with lavish
generosity. From the outset she turned a smiling countenance upon her
host. She did her utmost to suppress a reviving irrational qualm in her
being, to maintain clearly and simply her overnight decision, that he
should propose again and that she should accept him.
Yet the festival was just a little dreamlike in its quality to her
perceptions. She found she could not focus clearly on its details.
Two waggonettes came from Wamping; there was room for everybody and to
spare, and Wamping revealed itself a pleasant small country town with
stocks under the market hall, and just that tint of green paint and that
loafing touch the presence of a boating river gives.
The launch was brilliantly smart with abundant crimson cushions and a
tasselled awning, and away to the left was a fine old bridge that dated
in its essentials from Plantagenet times.
They started with much whistling and circling, and went away up river
under overhanging trees that sometimes swished the funnel, splashing the
meadow path and making the reeds and bulrushes dance with their wash.
They went through a reluctant lock, steamed up a long reach, they passed
the queerly painted Potwell Inn with its picturesque group of poplars
and its absurd new notice-board of "Omlets." ... Theodore was five stone
of active happiness; he and the pseudo-twins, strictly under his orders
as the universal etiquette of birthdays prescribes, clambered round and
round the boat, clutching the awning rail and hanging over the water in
an entirely secure and perilous looking manner. No one, unless his
father happened to be upset by something, would check him, he knew, on
this auspicious day. Mr. Magnet sat with the grey eye on Marjorie and
listened a little abstractedly to Mr. Pope, who was telling very fully
what he would say if the Liberal party were to ask his advice at the
present juncture. Mrs. Pope attended discreetly, and Daffy and Marjorie
with a less restrained interest, to Mr. Wintersloan, who showed them how
to make faces out of a fist tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, how to
ventriloquize, how to conjure with halfpence--which he did very
amusingly--and what the buttons on a man's sleeve were for; Theodore
clambering at his back discovered what he was at, and by right of
birthday made him do all the faces and tricks over again. Then Mr.
Wintersloan told stories of all the rivers along which, he said, he had
travelled in steamboats; the Rhine, the Danube, the Hoogly and the Fall
River, and particularly how he had been bitten by a very young
crocodile. "It's the smell of the oil brings it all back to me," he
said. "And the kind of sway it gives you."
He made sinuous movements of his hand, and looked at Marjorie with that
wooden yet expressive smile.
Friston Hanger proved to be even better than Wamping. It had a character
of its own because it was built very largely of a warm buff coloured
local rock instead of the usual brick, and the outhouses at least of the
little inn at which they landed were thatched. Most of the cottages had
casement windows with diamond panes, and the streets were cobbled and
very up-and-down hill. The place ran to high walls richly suggestive of
hidden gardens, overhung by big trees and pierced by secretive important
looking doors. And over it all rose an unusually big church, with a tall
buttressed tower surmounted by a lantern of pierced stone.
"We'll go through the town and look at the ruins of the old castle
beyond the church," said Mr. Magnet to Marjorie, "and then I want you to
see the view from the church tower."
And as they went through the street, he called her attention again to
the church tower in a voice that seemed to her to be inexplicably
charged with significance. "I want you to go up there," he said.
"How about something to eat, Mr. Magnet?" remarked Theodore suddenly,
and everybody felt a little surprised when Mr. Magnet answered: "Who
wants things to eat on your birthday, Theodore?"
But they saw the joke of that when they reached the castle ruins and
found in the old tilting yard, with its ivy-covered arch framing a view
of the town and stream, a table spread with a white cloth that shone in
the sunshine, glittering with glass and silver and gay with a bowl of
salad and flowers and cold pies and a jug of claret-cup and an ice
pail--a silver pail! containing two promising looking bottles, in the
charge of two real live waiters, in evening dress as waiters should be,
but with straw hats to protect them from the sun and weather. "Oh!"
cried Mrs. Pope, "what a _splendid_ idea, Mr. Magnet," when the
destination of the feast was perfectly clear, and even Theodore seemed a
little overawed--almost as if he felt his birthday was being carried too
far and might provoke a judgment later. Manifestly Mr. Magnet must have
ordered this in London, and have had it sent down, waiters and all!
Theodore knew he was a very wonderful little boy in spite of the acute
criticism of four devoted sisters, and Mr. Magnet had noticed him before
at times, but this was, well, rather immense! "Look at the pie-crusts,
old man!" And on the pie-crusts, and on the icing of the cake, their
munificent host had caused to be done in little raised letters of dough
and chocolate the word "Theodore."
"Oh, _Mr._ Magnet!" said Marjorie--his eye so obviously invited her to
say something. Mr. Pope tried a nebulous joke about "groaning boards of
Frisky Hanger," and only Mr. Wintersloan restrained his astonishment and
admiration. "You could have got those chaps in livery," he
said--unheeded. The lunch was as a matter of fact his idea; he had
refused to come unless it was provided, and he had somehow counted on
blue coats, brass buttons, and yellow waistcoats--but everybody else of
course ascribed the whole invention to Mr. Magnet.
"Well," said Mr. Pope with a fine air of epigram, "the only thing I can
say is--to eat it," and prepared to sit down.
"Melon," cried Mr. Magnet to the waiters, "we'll begin with the melon.
Have you ever tried melon with pepper and salt, Mrs. Pope?"
"You put salt in everything," admired Mr. Pope. "Salt from those attics
of yours--Attic salt."
"Or there's ginger!" said Mr. Magnet, after a whisper from the waiter.