Well, these general explanations will enable the reader to understand
the distressful times we two had together when presently I began to
feel on a footing with Marion and to fumble conversationally for the
mind and the wonderful passion I felt, obstinately and stupidity, must
be in her. I think she thought me the maddest of sane men; “clever,” in
fact, which at Smithie’s was, I suppose, the next thing to insanity, a
word intimating incomprehensible and incalculable motives.... She could
be shocked at anything, she misunderstood everything, and her weapon
was a sulky silence that knitted her brows, spoilt her mouth and robbed
her face of beauty. “Well, if we can’t agree, I don’t see why you
should go on talking,” she used to say. That would always enrage me
beyond measure. Or, “I’m afraid I’m not clever enough to understand
that.”
Silly little people! I see it all now, but then I was no older than she
and I couldn’t see anything but that Marion, for some inexplicable
reason, wouldn’t come alive.
We would contrive semi-surreptitious walks on Sunday, and part
speechless with the anger of indefinable offences. Poor Marion! The
things I tried to put before her, my fermenting ideas about theology,
about Socialism, about aesthetics—the very words appalled her, gave her
the faint chill of approaching impropriety, the terror of a very
present intellectual impossibility. Then by an enormous effort I would
suppress myself for a time and continue a talk that made her happy,
about Smithie’s brother, about the new girl who had come to the
workroom, about the house we would presently live in. But there we
differed a little. I wanted to be accessible to St. Paul’s or Cannon
Street Station, and she had set her mind quite resolutely upon
Ealing.... It wasn’t by any means quarreling all the time, you
understand. She liked me to play the lover “nicely”; she liked the
effect of going about—we had lunches, we went to Earl’s Court, to Kew,
to theatres and concerts, but not often to concerts, because, though
Marion “liked” music, she didn’t like “too much of it,” to picture
shows—and there was a nonsensical sort of babytalk I picked up—I forget
where now—that became a mighty peacemaker.
Her worst offence for me was an occasional excursion into the Smithie
style of dressing, debased West Kensington. For she had no sense at all
of her own beauty. She had no comprehension whatever of beauty of the
body, and she could slash her beautiful lines to rags with hat-brims
and trimmings. Thank Heaven! a natural refinement, a natural timidity,
and her extremely slender purse kept her from the real Smithie
efflorescence! Poor, simple, beautiful, kindly limited Marion! Now that
I am forty-five, I can look back at her with all my old admiration and
none of my old bitterness with a new affection and not a scrap of
passion, and take her part against the equally stupid,
drivingly-energetic, sensuous, intellectual sprawl I used to be. I was
a young beast for her to have married—a hound beast. With her it was my
business to understand and control—and I exacted fellowship,
passion....
We became engaged, as I have told; we broke it off and joined again. We
went through a succession of such phases. We had no sort of idea what
was wrong with us. Presently we were formally engaged. I had a
wonderful interview with her father, in which he was stupendously grave
and _h_—less, wanted to know about my origins and was tolerant
(exasperatingly tolerant) because my mother was a servant, and
afterwards her mother took to kissing me, and I bought a ring. But the
speechless aunt, I gathered, didn’t approve—having doubts of my
religiosity. Whenever we were estranged we could keep apart for days;
and to begin with, every such separation was a relief. And then I would
want her; a restless longing would come upon me. I would think of the
flow of her arms, of the soft, gracious bend of her body. I would lie
awake or dream of a transfigured Marion of light and fire. It was
indeed Dame Nature driving me on to womankind in her stupid, inexorable
way; but I thought it was the need of Marion that troubled me. So I
always went back to Marion at last and made it up and more or less
conceded or ignored whatever thing had parted us, and more and more I
urged her to marry me....
In the long run that became a fixed idea. It entangled my will and my
pride; I told myself I was not going to be beaten. I hardened to the
business. I think, as a matter of fact, my real passion for Marion had
waned enormously long before we were married, that she had lived it
down by sheer irresponsiveness. When I felt sure of my three hundred a
year she stipulated for delay, twelve months’ delay, “to see how things
would turn out.” There were times when she seemed simply an antagonist
holding out irritatingly against something I had to settle. Moreover, I
began to be greatly distracted by the interest and excitement of
Tono-Bungay’s success, by the change and movement in things, the going
to and fro. I would forget her for days together, and then desire her
with an irritating intensity at last, one Saturday afternoon, after a
brooding morning, I determined almost savagely that these delays must
end.
I went off to the little home at Walham Green, and made Marion come
with me to Putney Common. Marion wasn’t at home when I got there and I
had to fret for a time and talk to her father, who was just back from
his office, he explained, and enjoying himself in his own way in the
greenhouse.
“I’m going to ask your daughter to marry me!” I said. “I think we’ve
been waiting long enough.”
“I don’t approve of long engagements either,” said her father. “But
Marion will have her own way about it, anyhow. Seen this new powdered
fertiliser?”
I went in to talk to Mrs. Ramboat. “She’ll want time to get her
things,” said Mrs. Ramboat....
I and Marion sat down together on a little seat under some trees at the
top of Putney Hill, and I came to my point abruptly.
“Look here, Marion,” I said, “are you going to marry me or are you
not?”
She smiled at me. “Well,” she said, “we’re engaged—aren’t we?”
“That can’t go on for ever. Will you marry me next week?”
She looked me in the face. “We can’t,” she said.
“You promised to marry me when I had three hundred a year.”
She was silent for a space. “Can’t we go on for a time as we are? We
_could_ marry on three hundred a year. But it means a very little
house. There’s Smithie’s brother. They manage on two hundred and fifty,
but that’s very little. She says they have a semi-detached house almost
on the road, and hardly a bit of garden. And the wall to next-door is
so thin they hear everything. When her baby cries—they rap. And people
stand against the railings and talk.... Can’t we wait? You’re doing so
well.”
An extraordinary bitterness possessed me at this invasion of the
stupendous beautiful business of love by sordid necessity. I answered
her with immense restraint.
“If,” I said, “we could have a double-fronted, detached house—at
Ealing, say—with a square patch of lawn in front and a garden
behind—and—and a tiled bathroom.”
“That would be sixty pounds a year at least.”
“Which means five hundred a year.... Yes, well, you see, I told my
uncle I wanted that, and I’ve got it.”
“Got what?”
“Five hundred pounds a year.”
“Five hundred pounds!”