When Poppy and Vivian had been married and gone to Brittany, I went back
to Daphne's. Daphne was very discouraging about them. I remember her
standing by the fire and orating, with her tea cup in her hand.
"There's a loss somewhere--bound to be," she said. Daphne is short and
stout, and wears her hair short and curled over her head with an iron.
"Either Suffrage loses her, or she loses a husband. I've watched it. It
doesn't do, Maggie," which is her pet name for me. "A Suffragist as
valuable as Poppy should not marry. You remember what Jane Willoughby's
husband said to her, that he expected The Cause for his wife to be
himself, and that if she'd rather raise votes for women than a family of
children she would have to choose at once. When she asked him why she
couldn't do both, he went to Africa!"
"Without giving her an answer?"
"Bless the child, there isn't any answer! It isn't wisdom that takes
refuge in silence. It's silly, besotted, dumbheaded idiocy."
"Viv isn't an imbecile," I said feebly.
"He's a male," she snapped, and ran her fingers up through her fringe,
so that she appeared to stand in a gale of wind.
The first blow fell about a week after. Poppy and Vivian came home from
their wedding trip. They were settled in Viv's house in Lancaster Gate,
and one part of the wings was being turned into a studio for Poppy, with
a glass roof. Vivian is the playwright, you know, and his study was to
be beneath her work shop, with a private staircase connecting. She was
most awfully happy. She'd brought home some stunning sketches, and her
first work was going to be his study walls.
Basil and I were asked to dinner. Poppy wanted to talk over her plans
with us, and there was no one else. Poppy was radiant. We drank to the
pony at Tintagel, and to the key at Guildford, and to the new play and
the new paintings. The thing was a great success until half way through
the dinner, when suddenly Poppy said:
"By the way, Viv, the income tax man was here to-day."