"Who's engaged?" she asked.
"No one, mother," Mary answered. "Quinny and I were talking about the
time when we were engaged!..."
He felt a frightful fool. What on earth had possessed her that she
should treat the matter in this fashion?
"Were you engaged, dear?" Mrs. Graham said.
"Oh, yes, mother. Don't you remember? Of course, we were kids then!..."
Why did she insist on the fact that they were "kids" then?
"I remember it," Ninian interjected. "Old Quinny was frightfully sloppy
over it. Oh, I say, I met Tom Arthurs to-day. He's going to Southampton
to-morrow. The _Gigantic's_ starting on her maiden trip, and he's going
over with her. I wish to goodness I could go too!"
"Why don't you?" Mrs. Graham said. It seemed to her too that if Ninian
wished to do anything that was sufficient reason why he should be
allowed to do it.
"I can't get away," he answered. "We're busier than we've ever been. But
I'm going to Southampton to see the _Gigantic_ start. The biggest boat
in the world! My goodness! Tom's awfully excited about it. You'd think
the _Gigantic_ was his son!..."
Henry thanked heaven that at last the conversation had veered from
factories and his engagement to Mary. He tried to fasten it to the
_Gigantic_.
"What are you so busy about that you can't go with Tom?" he asked.
"Oh, heaps of things! Old Hare's keen on building a Channel Tunnel, and
he's spent a good deal of time working the thing out!"
Mrs. Graham had always imagined that the proposal to build a Tunnel
between France and England was a joke, and she said so.
"Good heavens, mother!" Ninian exclaimed. "Old Hare isn't a joke. The
thing's as practicable as the Tuppenny Tube. People have been
experimenting for half-a-century with it. Joke, indeed! They've made
seven thousand soundings in forty years!..."
"Really!" said Mrs. Graham.
"And borings, too ... lots of them ... in the bed of the Channel.
They've started a Tunnel, two thousand yards of it from Dover, under the
sea, and there isn't a flaw in it. Hardly any water comes through,
although there isn't a lining to the walls ... just the bare, grey
chalk. I was awfully sick when I was told I couldn't go to Harland and
Wolff's, but I don't mind now. Building a Channel Tunnel is as big a job
as building the _Gigantic_ any day, and Hare is as brainy as Tom
Arthurs!"
He became oratorical about the Channel Tunnel, and he told them stories
of remarkable borings on both sides of the sea.
"There's a big thick bed of grey chalk all the way from England to
France," he said, "and the water simply can't get through it. They've
made experimental tubes from our side and from the French side, and they
let people into them, and it was all right. No mud, no water, no foul
air ... perfectly sound!"
He quoted Sartiaux, the French engineer, and Sir Francis Fox, the
English engineer. "They don't fool about with wildcat schemes, I can
tell you. Why, Fox built the Mersey Tunnel and the Simplon Tunnel ...
and the Channel Tunnel is as easy as that!"
There were to be two tubes, each capable of carrying the ordinary
British railway, bored through a bed of cenomian chalk, two hundred feet
thick on an average.
"We could have an extra tunnel for motor-cars, if necessary!" said
Ninian. "Just think of the difference there'd be if we had the Tunnel.
You could buzz from London to Paris in five or six hours without
changing, and you'd never get seasick!..."
"That would be nice," said Mrs. Graham.
"And you'd be safer in the Tunnel than you'd be on the Channel. There'd
be a hundred and fifty feet of watertight chalk between you and the
sea!"
They argued about the Tunnel. How long would it take to construct? "Oh,
six or seven years!" Ninian answered airily. "What about War? Supposing
England and France went to War with each other?"
"We could flood a long section of the Tunnel from our side, and they
couldn't pump the water out from theirs," he answered. "Of course, I
don't know much about it, but when you get chaps like Hare and Sartiaux
and Fox talking seriously about it, you listen seriously to them.
Anyhow, I do. Old Hare told me yesterday I was getting on nicely!..."
Mrs. Graham was delighted. "Did he, dear?" she burbled at Ninian.
"Yes," Ninian answered, "he said I wasn't such an ass as he'd thought I
was. Oh, I'm getting on all right!"
4
Henry sat back in his chair while they talked, and let his mind fill
with thoughts of Mary. She was listening to Ninian, not as if she
understood all that he was saying, but as if she were proud of him, and
while he watched her, he felt his old affection for her surging up in
his heart. He had described a young, fresh girl in "Drusilla," and he
had fallen in love with his description. Now, looking at Mary, he
realised that unconsciously he had drawn her portrait. "I must have been
in love with her all the time," he thought, "even when I was running
after Sheila Morgan!"
He looked at her so steadily that she felt his gaze, and she turned to
look at him. She smiled at him as she did so, and he smiled back at her.
"Isn't it interesting to hear about the Tunnel?" she said.
"Eh?... Oh, yes! Yes. Awfully interesting...."
5
"You know," said Roger when Mrs. Graham and Mary and Rachel had gone,
"we really haven't talked enough about this factory system. Rachel's
wild about it, of course ... she's a girl ... but she's got more sense
on her side than we have on ours. It really isn't any good ignoring it.
It's too big to be overlooked. I think we ought to have a course of
talks about the whole thing. We could get people to come and tell us all
they know. Rachel's got a lot of information. We could pick it out of
her. And then there's that woman ... what's her name ... Mc something
... who knows all about factories ... Mc Mc Mc ..."
"Mary McArthur," said Gilbert.
"Yes. That's her name. I wonder if she'd come and dine with us. You
know, we haven't had any women. That's an oversight, isn't it?" He
walked towards the door as he spoke. "I'm going to bed now," he said.
"I've got a county court case in the morning at Croydon, and I shall
have to get up early. Good-night!"
"Good-night, Roger!" they murmured sleepily.
"Oh, by the way," he added, "Rachel and I are engaged. I thought I'd
tell you!"
He shut the door behind him.
6
They sat up, gaping at the closed door.
"What'd he say?" said Ninian.
"He says he's engaged to that blooming orator!" Gilbert answered.
"But, damn it, why?" said Ninian.
"And we've got the lease of this house for another two years!" Henry
exclaimed. "I suppose he'll want to get married and ... all that!"
They were silent for a while, contemplating this strange disruption of
their affairs.
"Of course, people do get engaged!" said Ninian, and then he relapsed
into silence.
"I've been in love myself," Gilbert said, "but ... this is excessive. We
ought to do something. Can't we get up a memorial or something?..."
Ninian sat upright, pointing a finger at them. "You know, chaps," he
exclaimed, "Roger's ashamed of himself. He didn't tell us 'til he'd got
to the door, and then he damn well hooked it!"
"He's been trapped," Gilbert said. "Females are always trapping
chaps!..."
"We ought to save him from himself!" Ninian stood up as he spoke.
"But supposing he doesn't want to be saved?" Henry asked.
"We'll save him all the same," Ninian answered.
"Let's go on a deputation to him," Gilbert suggested. "We will put it
reasonably to him. Well tell him that he mustn't do this thing.... Oh,
Lord, coves, it's no good. This house is doomed. A female has done it!"
"If it had been you, Gilbert, or Quinny," said Ninian, "I'd have thought
it was natural. You're that sort! But old Roger ... well, there's no
doubt about it, God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.
Let's go to bed. I'm fed-up with everything!"
7
Henry switched off the light and got into bed. He shut his eyes and
tried to sleep, but sleep would not come to him. He lay blinking at the
ceiling for a while, and then he got up and went into his sitting-room
and got out his manuscript and began to write. He wrote steadily for
half-an-hour, and then he put down his pen and read over what he had
written.
"No," he said, crumpling the paper and throwing it into the wastepaper
basket, "that won't do!"
He walked about the room for a few minutes, and then he went back to
bed, and lay there with his hands clasped about his head.
"I don't see why I shouldn't get married myself," he said, and then he
went to sleep.