It was about a fortnight after this Sunday at Richmond that the list of
Birthday honours came out, and it was a surprise to nobody that Mr.
Brereton's name appeared as the recipient of a peerage. For
respectability and cash are things that in themselves confer such
nobility on their fortunate possessor that it is only right and proper
to stamp him with a coronet like writing-paper. Respectability no doubt
has been, and will again be, dispensed with, but cash cannot be replaced
except by exceptional achievements of some kind, of which Andrew was
hopelessly incapable. And as it would clearly be absurd to bar a man
from his birth from the possibility of attaining to the ranks of
hereditary legislators, custom, slowly broadening down, has brought it
about that since achievement in great deeds is within the reach but of
the few, plenty of good gold, bestowed on plenty of good or party
institutions, paves the way, so to speak, to what has been called by
politicians who wrangle hotly in another place "the upper snows."
Marie Alston, who had known of the impending honours some days before,
was talking it over with Jim Spencer.
"I don't say I like the principle," she was saying; "but, things being
as they are, I think it a most suitable thing. Oh, my dear Jim, you know
me sufficiently well to know that I think such a system all wrong from
top to bottom. But, after all, it is in a piece with the rest.
Plutocracy, not the King nor the Houses of Parliament, rules us, and
naturally plutocracy says, 'I will have all that is within reach.' Why
not? And peerages are certainly within reach. Of course the list is
rather pronounced. Mr. Maxwell, I see, has been made a Baronet. But,
after all, who else is there? Can you think of any eminent men whom one
would wish to see peers? I can't. And there are few people richer than
the Maxwells, I believe. It is no use screaming."
Jim shrugged his shoulders.
"At that rate, I could be made a peer," he said.
"Are you rich enough? How nice for you! And _vice versâ_, perhaps, Jack
should be made a commoner. No doubt that reform will follow next. At
least, perhaps Jack shouldn't because he really has the makings of an
eminent man, but half the House of Peers, anyhow, should be made
commoners. No doubt they would be if it were not for the innate
snobbishness of the average Englishman. The average Englishman knows
quite well that there is nothing whatever remarkable or admirable about
quantities of peers except their peerages; yet, because they are peers,
he loves and reverences them, and reserves them compartments, and
incidentally takes toll off them as well."
Jim Spencer raised his eyebrows.
"Of course you are right," he said, "but you say these things, and don't
take them seriously. You used to be serious, Marie."
"Ah, you do me an injustice," she said quickly. "I am just as serious as
ever I was, but I realize that it is no use being serious in public.
People have no time to spare from their amusements nowadays for anything
serious. But in private I am serious. I was serious in private to-day,
for instance."
"Well, be serious now, and tell me what you were serious about."
"Oh, nothing. I beg your pardon, this is not in public. Indeed, it was
something--something big, as it seems to me. I am not sure that I shall
tell you about it."
They were both silent a moment--he unwilling to ask a question on a
subject where she hesitated, she weighing in her mind whether or not she
should tell him. At last she spoke.
"It is about Maud Brereton," she said, "She came to me yesterday, calm
as a summer sea, to ask my advice as to whether she should marry Anthony
Maxwell, just as I might ask your advice as to whether I should have a
picture framed in gold or white. I did not ask her any questions as to
whether she loved him, because I believe that there are many girls who
have no idea what that means, and I think Maud is one of them."
Jim got up and began to walk up and down the room. He heard Marie with
his ear speaking of Maud, but his inward ear translated, so it seemed to
him, all she said of Maud into things she was saying about herself.
"Now, I am sufficiently modern," she went on, "not to wish all girls who
do not feel passion to abstain from marrying. I believe that quite
happy marriages often take place without it. Either the man or the woman
may not feel it, yet by marrying they are both happier than they would
have been if they had remained single. The ultimate sum of happiness is
a large factor, Jim. Do you not think so?"
Again she seemed to be talking of herself, but now he could not decide
whether she was speaking with complete sincerity. Her opinions, at any
rate, appeared to him monstrous.
"Finish the exposition first," he said. "After all, whether I agree with
you or not is a small matter. Maud Brereton asked your advice, not
mine."
Something in his tone startled her for a moment, and instinctively that
afternoon walk they had taken down by the river a fortnight ago came
into her mind; but she went on without a pause.
"I seem cold-blooded to you," she said; "and I dare say I am--it is
highly probable, in fact. Then, there is a further thing to be
considered: many girls, I feel sure, have their passion awakened by
marriage. Now, that constitutes a great danger, I admit, in passionless
marriages. Who can tell--well, that need not be discussed. But it
remains certain, I am afraid, that there are many women to whom the
becoming as one flesh with their husbands has not meant anything before
they married them."
"And less afterwards," remarked Jim.
"And less afterwards. Their physical nature is awakened, and-- But, and
here I am less modern than you at present are inclined to give me credit
for."
"Credit for?" asked Jim.
"Yes, because you are not modern at all. Oh, Jim, it is a great puzzle!
Supposing every girl had to feel that there was absolutely only one man
in the world for her, and supposing every man had to feel that here, and
here alone was his destiny, before he married, do you think we should
have an increase of the marriage returns? I am afraid not. And people
being what they are, do you think that this celibacy would have a good
effect on morals? It is no use advocating counsels of perfection when
you are dealing with the human race and its obvious imperfections. At
least, that, I suppose, may eventually come; but for practical purposes
the highest motive does not always secure such good results as a lower
one."
"So you advised her to marry him," said Jim slowly.
"No, I advised her not to. All the excellent reasons which I have given
you why she should marry him were present in my mind; I even told them
her. But at the back of my mind--mind or soul, call it what you
will--there was a great 'but.' I dare say it was unreasonable; it was
certainly not clear to me what it was. But whatever it was, it said
'No.' It wanted me not to impose what I called my experience of the
world on a girl. After all, what does one's experience amount to? The
recollection of one's mistakes."
She spoke the last words more to herself than him as she leaned back in
her low chair, her violet-coloured eyes looking "out and beyond,"
focused, not by the limit of her vision, but that of her thoughts.
Quick, uneven breaths disturbed the slow rise and fall of her bosom, and
the rose she had fastened in her dress shed half its fragrant petals on
her lap. And because he was a man, he looked at her with kindled eye;
and because he was a man who loved her, his blood also was kindled. More
than ever before he knew how idle had been his flight from her; the
_cælum non animum_ suddenly leaped in his mind from the dingy ranks of
truisms to the austere array of the things that are true. He drew his
chair a little closer to hers and laid his hand on its arm.
"Your mistakes, Marie?" he said.
It took her an appreciable fraction of time to recall herself, and
realize what was meant by his burning look; but it took her no time at
all, when once she had realized that, to answer him.
"Yes, one's mistakes," she said--"all the occasions on which one has
failed to grasp the true import of what one was doing, and, in
particular, all the mistakes one has seen other people making and their
consequences. I always think that one's experience means much more what
one has observed in other people than what one has done one's self. Of
course, all observation passes through the crucible of one's
personality, whether one observes things in one's self or other people,
and that certainly transforms it, crystallizes it, what you will. But if
one has a grain of imagination, other people's experiences are as vivid
to one's self as one's own, and as potentially profitable. Don't you
think so?"
She rose as she spoke, trembling slightly, and brushed the fallen petals
from her dress. She was just enough not to blame him for what he had
said; she was, indeed, just enough to commend him for his reticence,
since her words had necessarily for him such a significance, and the
need to stop him saying more was imperative. She could see what inward
excitement moved him, and in her soul she thanked him for the love he
bore her; but that any word of it should pass between them was
impossible--merely, it could not be. This being so, she desired with a
fervency of desire that she had not known for years not to lose her
friend, and words of such a kind as she knew were rising to his lips
would have meant this loss. Indeed, at this moment the world seemed to
hold for her nothing so desired as that friendship, which a word might
rob her of.
To him, her reply was both sobering and bracing. It showed him how close
he had been walking to the edge of a precipice. As Marie had just told
him, he was old-fashioned; he believed that "good" and "bad," "noble"
and "wicked," were not yet words of obsolete meaning, words like
"arquebus," which had no significance in the vocabulary of the day. A
temptation had come and gripped him by the throat--the temptation to
suggest to her that she should say that her marriage with Jack was,
among her experiences, a mistake. He knew also--and was honest enough to
confess that his desire to hear her say this was due to the fact that
her confession would necessarily open certain vistas--it would be the
first step, at any rate, down a path that a certain part of him had
during his past fortnight longed to tread with a fervour and a passion
that shook his whole nature, as a wind shakes and tosses a curtain. He
knew in what sort Jack had kept his marriage vow, and he had begun to
ask himself whether such conduct did not give emancipation, so to speak,
to the wife--had begun to tell himself that it was no use setting up
exceptional codes of morality. One lived in the world, the world did
this and that; but this douche of cold water was bracing. It recalled
him to sanity, to his better and his normal self, and he replied in a
voice still shaken with his own overwhelming though momentary tumult.
"So you advised her not to marry him?" he asked. "Do you think she will
take your advice?"
"Yes; because it showed her clearly what her own bias really was. One
often does not know what one really thinks till some one expresses a
strong opinion on one side or the other. Then one hears it with strong
repugnance or strong sympathy, which reveals to one's self what one's
true opinion is."
Jim smiled, a regurgitation of bitterness swelling up in his breast.
"Have you ever formulated to yourself what your own strongest passion
is?" he asked.
"No, never. It is the most difficult thing in the world to say what one
likes best until one is forty or thereabouts. All one's youth--which, I
take it, extends to about forty--is passed experimentally in determining
what one likes best, and one does not know till it is crystallized. By
then also it is probably unattainable."
Jim laughed again bitterly.
"Oh, you need not be afraid," he said, his rebuff now beginning to
sting. "I tell you that your chief passion is analysis. You do not care
so much what people do, as why they do it. If a Hooligan knocked you
down and began stamping on you, I can imagine you saying, 'Stop just a
moment to tell me why you are doing this. Does giving pain to me give
pleasure to you, or do you personally feel a grudge against me?' Then,
when he had told you, you would say, 'Thank you very much. Go on
stamping again.'"
Marie had detached the unpetalled rose from her dress, and had taken
another from the vase in her hand. But she did not pin it in, but, after
listening open-mouthed, sat down again with it in her fingers.
"I am egotistical, no doubt," she said, "and that must account for my
burning desire to know why you think that. I suppose you do think that,
Jim, or are you irritated with me for any cause?"
The question was unpremeditated, but as soon as she had spoken she could
have bitten out her tongue for having said it. Almost certainly, she
thought, in the moment's pause that ensued, he would tell her why he was
irritated with her. That she knew already, and, of all things in the
world, that was the one which she did not wish him to tell her. But his
answer came almost immediately.
"I don't think there is anything you could do which would irritate me,"
he said, "and I do think what I have said. I think you are bloodless,
Marie; I think you are like what you imagine Maud Brereton to be. And
bloodless people are disconcerting. One does not know how to make them
hear, how to make them feel the things that the majority of the race
feel."
Suddenly there rose in her mind a long, far-off, dusty memory. She had
been skating one day on a thinly frozen pond, and suddenly felt the ice
bend and sway under her, and had said to herself, "The ice is thinner
here." On that occasion she had put both feet down and gone straight for
the bank. On this occasion she did exactly the same.
"You are probably right," she said. "The things which many women do, and
find absorption in doing, I think stupid, and, what is worse, vulgar,
and what is worst, wicked. I am _bourgeoise_, I am _bonne femme_--that
is what you really mean, Jim. It is quite true; it is quite, quite true.
And, no doubt, if one is not in the habit of spending all one's energies
on--on matters of emotion, one disposes of them in other ways. If one
does not give one's self up to feeling, one probably has more time for
thinking, because one must do something if one has nerves and brains at
all. But the Hooligan business you describe is beyond me, I am afraid."
He got up abruptly.
"I must go," he said. "There are a hundred things I must--not do. I
must go and not do them."
At this moment, and for the first time during this interview, he had
touched and moved her. His struggle suddenly became pathetic to her--a
thing to pity and praise. Like a weir, he spouted at joints in the
strong doors of his determination not to speak, but the flood was
restrained. She rose also.
"That excuse has the charm of absolute sincerity," she said. "When
people say they have a hundred things to do, it seems to me a very bad
reason. Yours is better. When shall I see you again?"
"I don't know," said he, and for a moment left her awkwardly placed. But
his manliness once more came to his aid--for there could be but one
conclusion if he said no more--and he added: "I am away next Sunday; I
come back on Wednesday. That night I dine with the Ardinglys."
"I also. Till Wednesday, then, Jim--go and not do all these things you
spoke of! Not doing things takes longer than doing them. It takes all
the time, in fact. Good-bye!"