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."
He really had the air of taking her reading in hand.
"You think I ought not to read an intelligent book."
"I think we ought to leave those things to the people who understand."
"But we ought to understand."
He smiled wisely. "There's a lot of things _you_ have to understand," he
said, "nearer home than this."
Marjorie was ablaze now. "What a silly thing to say!" she cried, with an
undergraduate's freedom. "Really, you are talking nonsense! I read that
book because it interests me. If I didn't, I should read something else.
Do you mean to suggest that I'm reading like a child, who holds a book
upside down?"
She was so plainly angry that he was taken aback. "I don't mean to
suggest--" he began, and turned to greet the welcome presence, the
interrogative eye of Mrs. Pope.
"Here we are!" he said, "having a quarrel!"
"Marjorie!" said Mrs. Pope.
"Oh, it's serious!" said Mr. Magnet, and added with a gleam: "It's about
Municipal Trading!"
Mrs. Pope knew the wicked little flicker in Marjorie's eye better than
Mr. Magnet. She had known it from the nursery, and yet she had never
quite mastered its meaning. She had never yet realized it was Marjorie,
she had always regarded it as something Marjorie, some other Marjorie,
ought to keep under control. So now she adopted a pacificatory tone.
"Oh! lovers' quarrels," she said, floating over the occasion. "Lovers'
quarrels. You mustn't ask _me_ to interfere!"
Marjorie, already a little ashamed of her heat, thought for an instant
she ought to stand that, and then decided abruptly with a return to
choler that she would not do so. She stood up, and held out her hand for
her book.
"Mr. Magnet," she said to her mother with remarkable force and freedom
as she took it, "has been talking unutterable nonsense. I don't call
that a lovers' quarrel--anyhow."
Then, confronted with a double astonishment, and having no more to say,
she picked up her skirt quite unnecessarily, and walked with a
heavenward chin indoors.
"I'm afraid," explained Mr. Magnet, "I was a little too free with one of
Magsy's favourite authors."
"Which is the favourite author now?" asked Mrs. Pope, after a reflective
pause, with a mother's indulgent smile.
"Shaw." He raised amused eyebrows. "It's just the age, I suppose."
"She's frightfully loyal while it lasts," said Mrs. Pope. "No one dare
say a word against them."
"I think it's adorable of her," said Mr. Magnet--with an answering
loyalty and gusto.