I was always somewhat amazed when I came to think of it, but I hardly
ever did think of it, that my cousin, Jimmy Cross, should have married
Gertrude Bingham. There seemed no reason for such a desperate step on
his part. But if one is going to be taken aback by the alliances of
one's friends and relations one would journey through life in a
continual state of astonishment, and the marriage service especially
exhorts the married "not to be afraid with any amazement," which shows
that that is the natural emotion evoked by contemplation of the holy
estate, and that it is our duty not to give way to it.
I said there seemed no reason for the lethargic Jimmy to take this step,
especially as he had been married before, and had enjoyed a serene
widowhood for some years. But what I forgot was that he never did take
any step at all in either marriage. He just sat still.
The first time his Mother arranged everything, and the result, if dull,
was not actually unpleasant.
The second time Gertrude Bingham took all the necessary steps with
precision and determination. Now and then it certainly seemed as if he
would take alarm and run away, but he did not. He remained seated.
It is as impossible for a man rooted in inertia to achieve a marriage
which implies an effort, as it is for him to evade a marriage, the
avoidance of which requires an effort. He remains recumbent both when he
ought to pursue and when he ought to fly. He is the prey of energetic
kidnappers.
Gertrude was a great astrologer and conversed in astrological terms,
which I repeat, but which I don't pretend to understand. She told me
(after the wedding) that when she discovered that Jimmy's moon in the
house of marriage was semi-sextile to her Venus she had known from the
first that their union was inevitable. I think Jimmy felt it so too, and
that it was no use struggling. To put it mildly, she placed no obstacles
in the way of this inevitable union, and it took place amid a general
chorus of rather sarcastic approval from both families.
What a mother Gertrude would make to Joan, Jimmy's rather spoilt girl of
twelve, what a wife to Jimmy himself, what an excellent influence in the
parish, what an energetic addition to our sleepy neighbourhood. We were
told we were going to be stirred up. I never met the second Mrs. Cross
till Jimmy brought her down as a bride to call on me in my cottage near
his park gates. She at once inspired me with all the terror which very
well-dressed people with exactly the right hair and earrings always
arouse in me. She was good-looking, upright, had perfect health and
teeth and circulation, did breathing exercises, had always just finished
the book of the moment, and was ready with an opinion on it, not a
considered opinion--but an opinion. During her first call I discovered
that she had, for many years, held strong views about the necessity of
school life for only children, and was already on the look-out for a
seminary for Joan.
"It is in her horoscope," she said to me, as we walked in my orchard
garden, too much engrossed with Joan's future to notice my wonderful
yellow lupins. "Her Mercury and ruling planet are in Aquarius, and that
means the companionship of her own age. I shall not delay a day in
finding the best school that England can produce."
I need hardly say that such an establishment protruded itself on to Mrs.
Cross's notice, with the greatest celerity, and thither the long-legged
nail-biting, pimply, round-shouldered Joan repaired, and became a
reformed character, with a clear complexion and a back almost as flat as
her step-mother's.
"Wonderful woman," Jimmy used to say somewhat ruefully to me, sitting
on the low stone wall which divides my little velvet lawn from my bit of
woodland. "Gertrude has been the making of Joan."
"And of you, too, my dear Jimmy," I remarked.
He sighed.
It was perfectly true. She had been the making of him, just as she had
been the making of the Manor garden, of the boot and shoe club, the
boys' carving class, the Confirmation candidates' reading class, the
mothers' working parties, the coal club, the Church members' lending
library. The only misgiving that remained in one's mind after she had
been the making of all these things was that it seemed a pity that they
were all so obviously machine-made, turned out to pattern.
Personally, I should have preferred that they should have been treated
less conventionally, or let alone. My own course and Jimmy's would, of
course, have been to have left them alone. We left everything alone. But
Gertrude always had a ready-made scheme for everything and everybody.
She even had a scheme of salvation into which the Deity was believed to
be compressed. I did not mind much the industrious efforts she expended
on Jimmy, who was now an inattentive Magistrate and member of the County
Council, and wobbly chairman of his own Parish Council, writing an
entirely illegible hand, which perhaps did not matter much as he never
answered letters. But I felt acutely distressed when she reconstructed
the rambling old Manor garden entirely. All its former pleasant
characteristics were wrenched out of it. It was drawn and quartered, and
then put together anew in compartments. It contained everything; a
Japanese garden, a rock garden, a herb garden, a sunk garden, a
wilderness, a rose garden, a pergola, three pergolas, just as the
village now contained, a boot club, a coal club, a--but I think I have
said that before.
In the course of time she presented Jimmy with two most remarkable
children, at least she said they were remarkable: and from their
horoscopes I gathered the boy would probably become a prime minister,
and the girl a musical genius. We don't actually know yet what form
their greatness will take, for as I write this they are still greedy,
healthy children, who come out in plum-pudding rash regularly at
Christmas.
I knew her well by the time the garden had been given its _coup de
grâce_, and I told her after I had been dragged all over it that she had
a constructive mind. (I have never been a particularly truthful person,
but my career as a liar dates from Jimmy's marriage with Gertrude.)
My remark pleased her. She smiled graciously and said, "Ah, I had not
got Mars rising in Capricorn for nothing when I was born."
As we became more intimate she insisted on drawing out my horoscope, and
after a week of intense mental activity produced a sort of cart wheel on
paper at which I looked with respectful misgiving.
"I hope it does not say anything about my living anywhere except here,"
I said anxiously.
I had long had a fear at the back of my mind that she might need my
cottage for some benevolent scheme. Jimmy, who had always been fond of
me, had let it to me at a nominal rent in his easygoing widower days,
because the mild climate suited my rheumatism, and my society suited
him. Round the cottage had gradually sprung up what many, though not
Gertrude, considered a beautiful garden.
"No travelling at all," she said, "no movement of any kind. And I am
afraid, Anne, I can't hold out the slightest hope of a marriage for
you."
"Since I turned forty I had begun to fear I might remain unwedded," I
remarked.
"No sign of marriage," she said, exploring the cart wheel, "and there
must have been considerable lethargy in the past when openings of this
kind did occur. Your Venus seems for many years to have been in square
to Neptune, and that would tend to make these chances slip away from
you."
"I endeavoured to pounce on them," I said humbly. "My dear mother's
advice to me as to matrimony was 'clutch while you can'--I assure you I
left no stone unturned."
"In that case you probably turned the wrong ones," she said judicially.
"And I am sorry to tell you that I don't see any good fortune coming to
you either, and rather bad health. In short, you will have a severe
illness next spring. March especially will be a bad month for you. Your
Moon will be going through Virgo, the sign of sickness."
It generally was. I don't mean my moon, but March. I rarely got through
the winter without an attack of rheumatism at the end of it.
All in a moment, as it seemed to me, after a few springs and autumns and
attacks of rheumatism, Gertrude's two children were leaving the nursery,
and Joan was returning home from school to be introduced into society.
Gertrude began to look round for a governess who would also be a
companion for Joan. I helped her to find one. It was a case of nepotism.
I recommended my own niece, Dulcibella, who had just returned from the
completion of her education at Dresden. Dulcibella's impecunious parents
had, of course, both died and left her to battle with life--and me,
alone, her only heritage being a wild rose prettiness and dark eyes like
an Alderney calf's.
She was well educated. I had been able to achieve that owing to the
cheap rate at which I lived, thanks to Jimmy. But I had thoroughly made
up my mind that I was not going to have her twirling her thumbs under my
roof. She was close on eighteen, and must now earn her own living.
She was staying with me on a visit when Gertrude told me of her
requirements. Gertrude's two stout children were at that moment sitting
on the lawn blowing soap bubbles with Dulcibella. Jimmy had been engaged
in the same pursuit as his offspring five minutes earlier, but had
departed. Gertrude looked at the group critically.
"Your niece does not look strong," she said dubiously.
"She isn't."
"Or energetic."
"She's not."
"Is she really firm with children?"
"I should not think so, but you are a better judge of character than I
am."
Conscience pricked as I said the words, but I had become inured to its
prickings.
"I have, of course, studied human nature," she said slowly, still
looking at the pretty group on the lawn.
I have not yet met a fellow creature who does not think he has studied
human nature. Yet how few turn the pages of that open book. And out of
that few the greatest number scan it upside down.
"I could make a truer estimate," she continued, "if I drew out her
horoscope. I go by that more than by my own fallible judgment. I may
err, but I have never known astrology to fail."
* * * * *
Dulcie was duly engaged as governess on approval for three months, on
the strength of her horoscope. Before she went to the Manor House I made
a few remarks to her to which she listened decorously, her eyes
reverently fixed on my face.
"You will leave with me that remarkably pretty lilac muslin you appeared
in yesterday--and the sun-bonnet. You will make yourself look as like a
district visitor as possible, thick where you ought to be thin, and thin
where you ought to be thick. Don't cry, Dulcie. I am endeavouring to
help you. Be thankful you have an aunt like me. Who educated you?"
"You did." Sob. Sob.
"Well, now I am finishing your education. You want to earn your living,
I suppose. You know that I only have a small annuity, that I have not a
farthing to leave you."
"Yes, yes, Aunt Anne."
"Well, then, don't look prettier than that square Joan, and don't let
the wave in your hair show."
The Alderney calf eyes brimmed anew with tears. Dulcie drooped her pin
of a head. Like that defunct noodle, her mother, she lived solely for
clothes and poetry and the admiration of the uncorseted sex. She had
come into the world a little late. She conformed to the best Victorian
ideals, but there are men still lurking in secluded rural districts if
one could but find them, to whom her cheap appeal might be irresistible.
I had hopes she might secure a husband if she took a country engagement.
I proceeded with my discourse. It spread over Jimmy as well. I did not
bid her pure eyes look into depths of depravity but I did make her
understand that Mrs. Cross was becoming rather stout and middle-aged,
and that if Mr. Cross blew soap bubbles in the schoolroom too
frequently, she, Dulcie, might find that her French accent was not good
enough for her young charges.
Dulcie has not the faintest gleam of humour, but she is docility itself.
She appeared next day staid, flat-figured, almost unpretty, her
wonderful hair smoothed closely over her small ears.