Marriage. H. G. Wells

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СКАЧАТЬ harmonized synthesis of conflicts a country church presents! What invisible mysteries of filiation spread between these ancient ornaments and symbols and the new young minds from the whirlpool of the town that looked upon them now with such bright, keen eyes, wondering a little, feeling a little, missing so much?

      It was all so very cool and quiet now—with something of the immobile serenity of death.

      § 5

      When Mr. Pope had finished his letter to the Times, he got out of the window of the study, treading on a flower-bed as he did so—he was the sort of man who treads on flower-beds—partly with the purpose of reading his composition aloud to as many members of his family as he could assemble for the purpose, and so giving them a chance of appreciating the nuances of his irony more fully than if they saw it just in cold print without the advantage of his intonation, and partly with the belated idea of welcoming Marjorie. The law presented a rather discouraging desolation. Then he became aware that the church tower frothed with his daughters. In view of his need of an audience, he decided after a brief doubt that their presence there was unobjectionable, and waved his MS. amiably. Marjorie flapped a handkerchief in reply....

      The subsequent hour was just the sort of hour that gave Mr. Pope an almost meteorological importance to his family. He began with an amiability that had no fault, except, perhaps, that it was a little forced after the epistolary strain in the study, and his welcome to Marjorie was more than cordial. "Well, little Madge-cat!" he said, giving her an affectionate but sound and heavy thump on the left shoulder-blade, "got a kiss for the old daddy?"

      Marjorie submitted a cheek.

      "That's right," said Mr. Pope; "and now I just want you all to advise me——"

      He led the way to a group of wicker garden chairs. "You're coming, mummy?" he said, and seated himself comfortably and drew out a spectacle case, while his family grouped itself dutifully. It made a charming little picture of a Man and his Womankind. "I don't often flatter myself," he said, "but this time I think I've been neat—neat's the word for it."

      He cleared his throat, put on his spectacles, and emitted a long, flat preliminary note, rather like the sound of a child's trumpet. "Er—'Dear Sir!'"

      "Rom," said Mrs. Pope, "don't creak your chair."

      "It's Daffy, mother," said Rom.

      "Oh, Rom!" said Daffy.

      Mr. Pope paused, and looked with a warning eye over his left spectacle-glass at Rom.

      "Don't creak your chair, Rom," he said, "when your mother tells you."

      "I was not creaking my chair," said Rom.

      "I heard it," said Mr. Pope, suavely.

      "It was Daffy."

      "Your mother does not think so," said Mr. Pope.

      "Oh, all right! I'll sit on the ground," said Rom, crimson to the roots of her hair.

      "Me too," said Daffy. "I'd rather."

      Mr. Pope watched the transfer gravely. Then he readjusted his glasses, cleared his throat again, trumpeted, and began. "Er—'Dear Sir,'"

      "Oughtn't it to be simply 'Sir,' father, for an editor?" said Marjorie.

      "Perhaps I didn't explain, Marjorie," said her father, with the calm of great self-restraint, and dabbing his left hand on the manuscript in his right, "that this is a private letter—a private letter."

      "I didn't understand," said Marjorie.

      "It would have been evident as I went on," said Mr. Pope, and prepared to read again.

      This time he was allowed to proceed, but the interruptions had ruffled him, and the gentle stresses that should have lifted the subtleties of his irony into prominence missed the words, and he had to go back and do his sentences again. Then Rom suddenly, horribly, uncontrollably, was seized with hiccups. At the second hiccup Mr. Pope paused, and looked very hard at his daughter with magnified eyes; as he was about to resume, the third burst its way through the unhappy child's utmost effort.

      Mr. Pope rose with an awful resignation. "That's enough," he said. He regarded the pseudo-twin vindictively. "You haven't the self-control of a child of six," he said. Then very touchingly to Mrs. Pope: "Mummy, shall we try a game of tennis with the New Generation?"

      "Can't you read it after supper?" asked Mrs. Pope.

      "It must go by the eight o'clock post," said Mr. Pope, putting the masterpiece into his breast pocket, the little masterpiece that would now perhaps never be read aloud to any human being. "Daffy, dear, do you mind going in for the racquets and balls?"

      The social atmosphere was now sultry, and overcast, and Mr. Pope's decision to spend the interval before Daffy returned in seeing whether he couldn't do something to the net, which was certainly very unsatisfactory, did not improve matters. Then, unhappily, Marjorie, who had got rather keen upon tennis at the Carmels', claimed her father's first two services as faults, contrary to the etiquette of the family. It happened that Mr. Pope had a really very good, hard, difficult, smart-looking serve, whose only defect was that it always went either too far or else into the net, and so a feeling had been fostered and established by his wife that, on the whole, it was advisable to regard the former variety as a legitimate extension of a father's authority. Naturally, therefore, Mr. Pope was nettled at Marjorie's ruling, and his irritation increased when his next two services to Daffy perished in the net. ("Damn that net! Puts one's eye out.") Then Marjorie gave him an unexpected soft return which he somehow muffed, and then Daffy just dropped a return over the top of the net. (Love-game.) It was then Marjorie's turn to serve, which she did with a new twist acquired from the eldest Carmel boy that struck Mr. Pope as un-English. "Go on," he said concisely. "Fifteen love."

      She was gentle with her mother and they got their first rally, and when it was over Mr. Pope had to explain to Marjorie that if she returned right up into his corner of the court he would have to run backwards very fast and might fall over down the silly slope at that end. She would have to consider him and the court. One didn't get everything out of a game by playing merely to win. She said "All right, Daddy," rather off-handedly, and immediately served to him again, and he, taken a little unawares, hit the ball with the edge of his racquet and sent it out, and then he changed racquets with Daffy—it seemed he had known all along she had taken his, but he had preferred to say nothing—uttered a word of advice to his wife just on her stroke, and she, failing to grasp his intention as quickly as she ought to have done, left the score forty-fifteen. He felt better when he returned Marjorie's serve, and then before she could control herself she repeated her new unpleasant trick of playing into the corner again, whereupon, leaping back with an agility that would have shamed many a younger man, Mr. Pope came upon disaster. He went spinning down the treacherous slope behind, twisted his ankle painfully and collapsed against the iron railings of the shrubbery. It was too much, and he lost control of himself. His daughters had one instant's glimpse of the linguistic possibilities of a strong man's agony. "I told her," he went on as if he had said nothing. "Tennis!"

      For a second perhaps he seemed to hesitate upon a course of action. Then as if by a great effort he took his coat from the net post and addressed himself houseward, incarnate Grand Dudgeon—limping.

      "Had enough of it, Mummy," he said, and added some happily inaudible comment on Marjorie's new style of play.

      The evening's СКАЧАТЬ