IN WHICH WE FIND OURSELVES IN THE BOSOM OF AN ENGLISH FAMILY AND
WATCH A UTOPIAN IN LOVE
For some obscure reason Spanton has taken a fancy to me, and I must
admit in return that I find something rather likeable in the
scientific coolness of his mind and his dominating desire to see
straight. Having taken a fancy to me, it follows that he wanted me
to meet his betrothed, for although it naturally goes against his
grain to do anything so conventional and banal as to be engaged, with
the prospect of a legalized union in the future, human nature has
been too much for him, and rather than lose his Nancy he has agreed
to her father's very moderate wishes as regards an engagement and a
registrar. But I need hardly say that he has given her no ring. In
fact, his only presents to her so far, I understand, are a
typewrriter and a pair of sandals.
Nancy is a Miss Freeland, one of a family of girls who live a few
miles out of London in a roomy Georgian house, with a large untidy
garden, near Richmond.
The first words that I heard on entering the Freelands' hall told me
instantly that I was among a twentieth-century household: "Oh,
father, don't be such an ass!"
The speaker--Jocelyn, a pretty girl in a soft Liberty dress--at once
broke away to welcome her prospective brother-in-law, who was there
humanized to Bob, and his friend; and Mr. Freeland laid his hard case
before us.
"Tell me," he said, "is a man and a father an ass because he thinks
that one visit to the theatre a week is enough for a growing girl of
fifteen?"
I was hesitating in my reply when another of the daughters came to
the rescue.
"I know what Mr. Falconer will say," she said: "he will say that he
has always made it a point never to interfere in disputes between
relations. But Bob's not like that. Bob's never so happy as when he
can set relatives disputing; aren't you, Bob?"
Nancy here entered the room, bringing the number of the unmarried
sisters to seven. She is the only one who is engaged, and is
twenty-two. Jocelyn is older; the rest younger. Nancy is pretty
too, but less pretty than Jocelyn. The married daughter is a Mrs.
Gosling, of whom Jocelyn wickedly says that her husband is the only
one of her suitors who has not married well.
At lunch-time Mrs. Freeland appeared, an easy-going, smiling lady,
and we all sat down to a vast table covered with food and noisy with
chatter. The great joke of the day--and in such families as these,
where chaff is the grain of life (if I may so express it), each day
produces its new joke--was their father's recent cleverness in the
matter of the garden-party costume.
"Have you heard," Jocelyn asked me, "father's absolutely topping
idea?" and entered upon the history; but beneath the Freeland roof no
narrator is permitted to get to the end of anything unaided. Every
story is composite. This one ran something like this.
"You see," Jocelyn began, "we all had an invitation to Lady Sydney's
garden-party; and father wanted to go, but didn't know what to wear."
"Because," Mona explained, "it wasn't an ordinary garden-party. It
was in connection with father's great educational scheme."
"Yes," said Mr. Freeland, "if there had been a nice little word like
Tennis in the corner I should have had no qualms, but have gone in
flannels, swinging a racket. But there wasn't, and a number of
influential people were going to be there, largely to talk to me."
"Swank!" whispered Joan.
"So father turned on his wisdom-of-the-serpent tap," said Jocelyn,
"with a vengeance. He began by dressing in tweeds with a straw hat."
"Don't forget the white slip and spats," said Phillida.
"Yes, and white spats. They're so white that beetles and other
creeping things are blinded. It's like flashes of lightning down
there."
"Oh, get on!" said Mona. "Let me tell Mr. Falconer."
"I assure you," said Mr. Freeland to me, "it's the tamest story you
ever heard. The only chance of its being made attractive is for me
to tell it."
"Well," said Jocelyn, "that was what he wore. But he also put into
the car a complete suit of the tail-coat and top-hat variety, and
then Harris and he drove off. The rest of us had to get there as
best we could in a fleet of cabs. Well, Harris and he drove off and
pulled up outside the party gates to see the others go in and count
the straw hats and the top hats."
"It was very awkward," Mr. Freeland put in, "at first, because they
came out equal. But then the toppers began to make the running, and
when they were about six lengths ahead I decided that that was good
enough, and so we turned into a narrow lane close by----"
"Where"--Jocelyn took it up again--"father changed."
"You see," Mona explained, "he'd started with his tweeds and straw
hat."
"Mr. Falconer knows that," said Jocelyn.
"You can't make it too clear," Mona replied. "The whole story
depends on that."
"Well," Jocelyn went on, her face kindling with excitement, "he had
no sooner changed and got nicely into his tail coat and things--and
he really can look quite decent, although to-day you wouldn't think
it--"
"My dear," said Mrs. Freeland, "you mustn't say things like that.
Your father always looks nice."
"Not in his green jodelling hat, anyway," said Mona. "No one can
defend that honestly."
"I like it very much," said Mrs. Freeland.
"Of course," said Janet, "but then you're his wife. We're not."
"Anyway," Jocelyn went on, "father and Harris----"
"Harris is the chauffeur," said Joan.
"--were patting each other on the back for being so jolly artful,
when what do you think happened?"
"Father, you tell," said Nancy, who has an eye for drama.
Mr. Freeland at once struck in. "This is what happened," he said.
"Another car turned into the same lane and pulled up just round the
corner, and, peeping through the trees, to our horror we observed a
gentleman in a tall hat and morning coat stand up in it and begin
changing into a straw hat and tweeds. I pass over the extraordinary
coincidence that two guests should have hit upon an identical device
to find out the correct thing to do----"
"And we pass over too," said Jocelyn, "father's terrible discovery
that the neighbourhood contained another man as brilliant as himself."
"--and simply ask you to conceive of Harris's and my feelings. For
if this other man was right we were wrong."
"Yes," said Mona; "but if he was wrong you were right."
"Exactly," I said.
"Very well, then," continued Mr. Freeland, "I instantly made up my
mind."
"Napoleon at six stone," said Janet.
"'There is only one thing to do,' I said. 'I can't change again.
We're too late as it is. We must therefore get there first. To
follow this man in, in his vulgar clothes, would be a serious
blunder.' So with infinite difficulty and the most perfect
tact--carefully turning our heads from his quaint occupation (as
though the lanes of England were meant to be dressing-rooms!)--we
scraped past him, taking, I am pleased to say, a little varnish off
his mudguard, and were away before his braces were properly fastened."
"There," said Jocelyn, "don't you think that a masterly move?"
"I do," I said.
"All brain work," said Mona.
"And when you were among the people," I said, "did you find that tall
hats prevailed?"
"Absolutely," said Mr. Freeland.
"I counted them," said Jocelyn. "There were eighty-five straws, with
tweeds or flannels; a hundred and ten tall hats; and forty-three
Homburgs. Some of the Homburgs were worn with tail coats, so father
could have taken his instead of his topper if he had liked."
"Thank Heaven he didn't!" said Janet.
"My dear Janet," said Mrs. Freeland, "how can you?"
There was also, I need hardly say, a joke against Mrs. Freeland.
Herself the most temperate of women, she had lately been presented
with an Aberdeen terrier named Whisky. Like all Aberdeens, he was
just a mass of original sin, and naturally the last thing he would do
on a walk was to keep near his mistress. The result was, as Jocelyn
informed me with the keenest zest, that the neighbourhood had
suddenly become painfully aware of Mrs. Freeland's repeated calls for
whisky, ranging from the pathetic to the urgent, and was drawing its
conclusions accordingly.
"Yes," said Joan, "poor father, the dipsomaniac's husband!"
I hope to see more of the Freelands, for life goes very easily among
them, and it is amusing to be among so many fresh, unsophisticated
young things, growing like grass upon the weir. It is one of those
families where the skeleton seems never to leave the cupboard, and it
is tonic to visit these now and then. Very different from the houses
where it is the family that lives in the cupboard and one meets only
the skeleton.
Spanton as a lover differs radically from Dollie Heathcote. Dollie
lets his Ann go her own way and rather admires her for it; but
Spanton is the influencing moulding type. The last infirmity of
modern man, some one has said, is to force women to give up their
sex; and Spanton is indulging it. His one idea is to make his Nancy
not only a man, but another Spanton. He controls her. He arranges
both her clothes and her reading. Being only an ordinary English
girl, with no experience and a great joy and pride in being engaged,
she has fallen in with his every suggestion, to the great disgust of
her sisters. Gradually and surely she is ceasing to have any common
ground with them; which is of course very foolish, for Spanton is not
making her better, but merely different. Her Spantonisms are only
veneer; the sound Freeland stock remains, and will remain underneath,
although for the time being it is invisible.
"When half-gods go the gods arrive," says the poet. But it isn't
generally true. More accurate would it be to say, "When gods arrive
the half-gods go." That is a phenomenon which most families have
witnessed and the Freeland family are witnessing now. Before the
advent of the god Spanton, Nancy had been loyal to her sisters' and
their friends' enthusiasms. She had had local heroes too--this
cricketer, that tennis-player. But Spanton, although he may not be
so proficient, has the only right way of behaving at these games, or
else he despises them; while when it comes to the arts, he leads by
lengths. Nancy used, for example, to be rather keen on musical
comedy; but Spanton being all for Shaw, farewell to Gertie Millar.
Nancy used to go to the Academy every May and revel in it; but
Spanton believing only in the New Englishmen, farewell to the Hon.
John Collier. And so it is, all over this little island.