Mr. Magnet's return next day was heralded by nearly two-thirds of a
column in the _Times_.
The Lecture on the Characteristics of Humour had evidently been quite a
serious affair, and a very imposing list of humorists and of prominent
people associated with their industry had accepted the hospitality of
the _Literati_.
Marjorie ran her eyes over the Chairman's flattering introduction, then
with a queer faint flavour of hostility she reached her destined
husband's utterance. She seemed to hear the flat full tones of his voice
as she read, and automatically the desiccated sentences of the reporter
filled out again into those rich quietly deliberate unfoldings of sound
that were already too familiar to her ear.
Mr. Magnet had begun with modest disavowals. "There was a story, he
said,"--so the report began--"whose hallowed antiquity ought to protect
it from further exploitation, but he was tempted to repeat it because it
offered certain analogies to the present situation. There were three
characters in the story, a bluebottle and two Scotsmen. (Laughter.) The
bluebottle buzzed on the pane, otherwise a profound silence reigned.
This was broken by one of the Scotsmen trying to locate the bluebottle
with zoological exactitude. Said this Scotsman: 'Sandy, I am thinking if
yon fly is a birdie or a beastie.' The other replied: 'Man, don't spoil
good whiskey with religious conversation.' (Laughter.) He was tempted,
Mr. Magnet resumed, to ask himself and them why it was that they should
spoil the aftereffects of a most excellent and admirably served dinner
by an academic discussion on British humour. At first he was pained by
the thought that they proposed to temper their hospitality with a demand
for a speech. A closer inspection showed that he was to introduce a
debate and that others were to speak, and that was a new element in
their hospitality. Further, he was permitted to choose the subject so
that he could bring their speeches within the range of his
comprehension. (Laughter.) His was an easy task. He could make it
easier; the best thing to do would be to say nothing at all.
(Laughter.)"
For a space the reporter seemed to have omitted largely--perhaps he was
changing places with his relief--and the next sentence showed Mr. Magnet
engaged as it were in revising a _hortus siccus_ of jokes. "There was
the humour of facts and situations," he was saying, "or that humour of
expression for which there was no human responsibility, as in the case
of Irish humour; he spoke of the humour of the soil which found its
noblest utterance in the bull. Humour depended largely on contrast.
There was a humour of form and expression which had many local
varieties. American humour had been characterized by exaggeration, the
suppression of some link in the chain of argument or narrative, and a
wealth of simile and metaphor which had been justly defined as the
poetry of a pioneer race."...
Marjorie's attention slipped its anchor, and caught lower down upon: "In
England there was a near kinship between laughter and tears; their
mental relations were as close as their physical. Abroad this did not
appear to be the case. It was different in France. But perhaps on the
whole it would be better to leave the humour of France and what some
people still unhappily chose to regard as matters open to
controversy--he referred to choice of subject--out of their discussion
altogether. ('Hear, hear,' and cheers.)"...
Attention wandered again. Then she remarked:--it reminded her in some
mysterious way of a dropped hairpin--"It was noticeable that the pun to
a great extent had become demode...."
At this point the flight of Marjorie's eyes down the column was arrested
by her father's hand gently but firmly taking possession of the _Times_.
She yielded it without reluctance, turned to the breakfast table, and
never resumed her study of the social relaxations of humorists....
Indeed she forgot it. Her mind was in a state of extreme perplexity. She
didn't know what to make of herself or anything or anybody. Her mind was
full of Trafford and all that he had said and done and all that he might
have said and done, and it was entirely characteristic that she could
not think of Magnet in any way at all except as a bar-like shadow that
lay across all her memories and all the bright possibilities of this
engaging person.
She thought particularly of the mobile animation of his face, the keen
flash of enthusiasm in his thoughts and expressions....
It was perhaps more characteristic of her time than of her that she did
not think she was dealing so much with a moral problem as an
embarrassment, and that she hadn't as yet felt the first stirrings of
self-reproach for the series of disingenuous proceedings that had
rendered the yesterday's encounter possible. But she was restless,
wildly restless as a bird whose nest is taken. She could abide nowhere.
She fretted through the morning, avoided Daffy in a marked manner, and
inflicted a stinging and only partially merited rebuke upon Theodore for
slouching, humping and--of all trite grievances!--not washing behind his
ears. As if any chap washed behind his ears! She thought tennis with the
pseudo-twins might assuage her, but she broke off after losing two sets;
and then she went into the garden to get fresh flowers, and picked a
large bunch and left them on the piano until her mother reminded her of
them. She tried a little Shaw. She struggled with an insane wish to walk
through the wood behind the village and have an accidental meeting with
someone who couldn't possibly appear but whom it would be quite adorable
to meet. Anyhow she conquered that.
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.
Trafford had rolled over, and she fancied she detected a change in his
voice when it came. "Isn't it rather a waste not to finish a university
career?" he said.
"Oh, it wouldn't be wasted. Of course a girl like that will be hand and
glove with her husband. She'll be able to help him with the scientific
side of his jokes and all that. I sometimes wish it had been Daffy who
had gone to college though. I sometimes think we've sacrificed Daffy a
little. She's not the bright quickness of Marjorie, but there's
something quietly solid about her mind--something _stable_. Perhaps I
didn't want her to go away from me.... Mr. Magnet is doing wonders at
the net. He's just begun to play--to please Marjorie. Don't you think
he's a dreadfully amusing man, Mr. Trafford? He says such _quiet_
things."