by A. A. Milne
‘Oh, I thought you did,’ she apologized meekly.
‘You will talk as if I were made of money. What with taxes always going up and rents always going down, it’s as much as we can do to rub along as we are, without making allowances to everybody who thinks she wants to get married.’ He turned to Brian. ‘And that’s thanks to you, my friend.’
There was general astonishment.
‘To me?’ said the accused gentleman.
‘Darling,’ said Olivia, ‘you never told me. What’s Brian been doing?’
Dinah knew the answer to that one.
‘He hasn’t been doing anything,’ she said indignantly
George explained.
‘He’s one of your Socialists who go turning the country upside down.’
‘But even Socialists,’ said Olivia gently, ‘must get married sometimes.’
‘I don’t see any necessity,’ answered George. It was one of his favourite remarks.
‘But you would have nobody to damn after dinner, darling, if they all died out.’
George opened his mouth to say something, but could not think of it. Apparently the possibility mentioned by Olivia had not occurred to him. Brian began to wonder what they were arguing about. He wanted to marry Dinah, that was all.
‘Really, sir,’ he protested, ‘I don’t see what my politics or my art have got to do with it. I am perfectly ready not to talk about either when I am in your house, and as Dinah doesn’t seem to object to them——’
‘I should think she doesn’t,’ put in Dinah.
‘Oh, you can get round the women, I dare say!’
‘Well, it’s Dinah I want to marry and live with,’ said the bewildered Brian.
George grunted. He turned away and caught sight of Olivia, who was going on placidly with her curtains, and turned back again with a frown. Damn those curtains!
‘What it really comes to,’ Brian went on, ‘is that you don’t think I can support a wife.’
‘Well, if you’re going to do it by selling pictures,’ said George, feeling that he was on firm ground here, ‘I don’t think you can.’
Metaphorically Brian buttoned up his coat and rolled up his sleeves.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell me how much you want me to earn in a year, and I’ll earn it.’
George decided that he was not on such firm ground as he thought. If some fool had given Strange fifty pounds for a picture, then there might be other fools who would do the same. In a topsy-turvy world like this you could never be certain. Suppose this fellow knocked off one of his pictures in an hour—no, that was too much—say, half an hour. And worked eight hours a day. Well, there’s eight hundred pounds, provided you can find the fools to buy them. Eight hundred pounds a day . . .
‘It isn’t merely a question of money,’ he explained.
‘I just mention that as one thing. One of the important things. In addition to that I—I think you are both too young to marry.’ (Much firmer ground.) ‘Too young to marry—I don’t think you know your own minds. And then I am not at all persuaded that, with what I venture to call your outrageous tastes, you and my niece will live happily together.’ This was better. He warmed to the subject. ‘Just because she thinks she loves you, Dinah may persuade herself now that she agrees with all you say and do; but she has been properly brought up in an honest English country household, and—er—she——Well, in short, I cannot at all approve of any engagement between you.’ He picked up his hat with an air of finality. ‘Olivia, if this—er—Mr. Pim comes I shall be down at the farm. You might send him along. I expect he would like to see——’
Brian caught him up in three strides as he was making for the terrace.
‘Is there any reason,’ he demanded, ‘why I shouldn’t marry a girl who has been properly brought up?’
‘I think you know my views, Strange,’ said George coldly.
He was on the terrace. Brian and Dinah looked at each other despairingly; then at Olivia. Very quietly, still engrossed in her curtains, she spoke.
‘George, wait a moment, dear. We can’t quite leave it like this.’
‘I have said all I want to say on the subject,’ announced George from the windows.
‘Yes, darling, but I haven’t begun to say all that I want to say on the subject.’
George hesitated, and then came slowly back. He put his cap down.
‘Of course, if you have anything to say, Olivia, I will listen to it,’ he began reasonably. And then his eye caught the curtains again. ‘But I don’t know that this is quite the time, or’—his voice became a little harder—‘or that you have chosen quite the occupation likely to—er—endear your views to me.’
Dinah felt that she had been silent too long. ‘I may as well tell you, Uncle George,’ she said firmly, ‘that I have a good deal to say, too.’
Mutiny! But Olivia spoke before George could get his revolver out.
‘I can guess what you are going to say, Dinah, and I think you had better keep it for the moment.’
‘Yes, Aunt Olivia,’ said Dinah meekly.
‘Brian, you might go and have a little walk together. I expect you have plenty to talk about.’
‘Righto!’
‘Now mind, Strange, no love-making. I put you on your honour about that.’
‘I’ll do my best to avoid it, sir,’ said Brian, with a smile.
‘May I take his arm if we go up a hill?’ asked Dinah, looking about fourteen.
George felt for his revolver again. But again Olivia was too quick for him.
‘I’m sure you will know how to behave,’ she said gravely. ‘Both of you.’
‘Come on then, Dinah.’
‘Righto!’ said Dinah, rather subdued.
They went out together.
But George had a final word for them as they went down the terrace.
‘And if you do see any clouds, Strange,’ he called after them, ‘take a good look at ’em.’ He laughed heartily to himself and added. ‘Triangular clouds! I never heard of such nonsense. Futuristic rubbish!’ He sat down at his desk, and turning to his wife, said, ‘Well, Olivia?’
And then he saw the curtains again.
II
‘Well, George?’ said Olivia, giving him her most confidential smile.
But he was in no mood for smiles.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked grimly.
‘Making curtains, George. Won’t they be rather sweet?’ She held them up lovingly. ‘Oh, but I forgot—you don’t like them.’
‘I don’t like them. And what is more I don’t mean to have them in my house. As I told you yesterday, this is the house of a simple country gentleman, and I don’t want any of these new-fangled ideas in it.’
‘Is marrying for love a new-fangled idea?’ Olivia wondered wistfully.
‘We’ll come to that directly.’ He shook his head over the sex. ‘None of you women can keep to the point,’ he complained. ‘What I am saying now is that the house of my fathers and forefathers is good enough for me.’
‘Do you know, George, I can hear one of your ancestors saying that to his wife in their stuffy old cave, when the new-fangled idea of building houses was first suggested. “The cave of my fore-fathers——”’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ he interrupted. ‘Naturally one must have progress. But that’s just the point.’ He waved an offended hand at the curtains. ‘I don’t call that sort of thing, progress; it’s—er—retrogression.’
‘Well, anyhow, it’s pretty.’
‘There I disagree with you. And I must say once more that I will not have them hanging in my house.’ ‘Very well, George.’
At this point she should have torn the curtains in two, thrown them in the fireplace and settled down comfortably to a bed-spread or a pair of George’s socks. To George’s amazement s
he did none of these things. She went on calmly to the next ring.
‘That being so,’ the indignant husband went on, ‘I don’t see the necessity of going on with them.’
‘Well, I must do something with them now we’ve got the material. I thought perhaps I could sell them when they are finished—as we’re so poor.’
‘What do you mean—so poor?’
‘Well, you said just now that you couldn’t give Dinah an allowance because rents had gone down.’ George looked at her in bewilderment, at this stupidity. And Olivia was so quick, so intelligent as a rule!
‘Confound it! Keep to the point! We’ll talk about Dinah’s affairs directly. We’re discussing our own affairs at the moment.’
‘But what is there to discuss?’ said the surprised Olivia.
‘Those ridiculous things.’
‘But we’ve finished that. You have said that you wouldn’t have them hanging in your house, and I have said, “Very well, George.” Now we can go on to Dinah and Brian.’
‘But put those beastly things away,’ shouted the infuriated man.
‘Very well, George,’ said Olivia in the same meek wifely voice. She rose slowly, beautifully. Beautifully she walked across the room carrying the curtains in front of her as if they were an offering to the high gods. She placed them on the old oak chest by the fireplace. She returned slowly, beautifully, to the table by the sofa; closed her work-basket; moved slowly to the other side of the room, away from George.
‘That’s better,’ he said, a little ashamed of his outburst. Still she said nothing, standing with her back to him, the picture of dignity. Her silence frightened him. He came a little closer.
‘Now look here, Olivia old girl,’ he said, ‘you’ve been a jolly good wife to me, and we don’t often have rows, and—and if I’ve been rude to you about this—lost my temper a bit, perhaps, what?—I’ll say I’m sorry.’
It was a handsome apology. I’m afraid that Olivia had seen it coming from the beginning. But she was properly surprised.
‘George, darling!’ she said, turning round to him, all tenderness.
‘May I have a kiss?’ he pleaded.
‘George!’ She held up her face. He kissed her, taking her in his arms.
‘Do you love me?’ she asked in her deep voice.
‘You know I do, old girl,’ answered the fond, unsuspecting husband.
‘As much as Brian loves Dinah?’ she breathed.
He was away from her at once.
‘I’ve said all I want to say about that.’
‘Oh, but there must be lots you want to say, but perhaps don’t quite like to. Do tell me, darling.’ Thus appealed to, George, decided to make the matter perfectly clear, once and for all.
‘What it comes to is this,’ he said. ‘I consider that Dinah is too young to choose a husband for herself, and Strange is not the husband whom I should choose for her.’
‘You were calling him Brian yesterday.’
‘Yesterday,’ said George, making his best point in the discussion, ‘I regarded him as a boy. To-day he wishes me to look upon him as a man.’
‘He is twenty-four.’
‘And Dinah’s nineteen. Ridiculous!’
The man of forty laughed scornfully. True, Pitt was Prime Minister at twenty-four, Alexander had conquered Syria, and even George himself was standing for Parliament, though unfortunately without success. Yet how little they really knew How properly is the stripling of twenty-four despised by the man of forty; who is despised (how properly) by the man of sixty; who to Methuselah on his death-bed must have seemed almost an idiot. How wise then Methuselah must have been—and how unfortunate that he left nothing behind him but descendants all younger than himself.
‘I suppose,’ said Olivia, trying to puzzle it out, ‘that if Brian had been a Conservative, and thought the clouds were round, he would have seemed older somehow.’
‘That’s a different point altogether; that has nothing to do with his age.’
‘Oh, I thought it had,’ said Olivia.
‘What I am objecting to is these ridiculously early marriages, before either party knows its own mind, much less the mind of the other party. Such marriages invariably lead to unhappiness.’
The sun went out of Olivia’s face.
‘Of course, my first marriage wasn’t a happy one,’ she murmured.
It was not what George had meant, and he looked across at her: half-apologetic for having distressed her, half-annoyed at being reminded of that early adventure.
‘As you know, dear, I dislike speaking about your first marriage at all, and I had no intention of bringing it up now, but since you mention it—well, there is a case in point.’
Olivia sat looking into the past: beyond that unhappy first marriage to the days of her first love. Such warm and gentle memories they were.
‘When I was eighteen I was in love.’
Eighteen! A year younger than Dinah! He was twenty-one:three years younger than Brian. Ah the stolen meetings in the warm days of June! . . . Faintly his voice came back to her over the years.
‘Olivia!’
‘You never called me Olivia before.’
‘I have thought of you as Olivia—always.’
‘Have you?’
‘Say, “Have you, Michael?”’
Shyly she whispers it. ‘Have you, Michael?’
‘Always, Olivia.’
Their hands meet, are interlocked. Oh, the sweet contentment of it! What need now of words? If they could sit thus, always, until the world came to an end! Oh, the comfort of his hand! . . .
‘I must go.’
‘Not yet, Olivia.’
‘I must, Michael.’
‘You will be here to-morrow?’
‘I oughtn’t to be.’
‘Ah, but you will, Olivia?’
‘I will, Michael.’
They stand there, sighing their souls towards each other. Their love is so precious, so fragile, that even a kiss would seem to shatter it.
‘Good-bye, Michael. That means “God be with you, Michael.”’
‘God be with you, Olivia.’ He takes a deep breath, and says again, ‘Olivia!’—all the inexpressible longing of youth in the word. She smiles caressingly at him. . . . Then she is gone. . . .
Ah, how young that Olivia was! It is not the Olivia who is married now to George. She looks back at the girl she was, hardly recognizing her, yet nodding to her for old times’ sake, sharing with her the fragrance of those gentle memories.
‘Perhaps,’ she says to George, ‘I only thought I was in love, and I don’t know if we should have been happy, if I had married him. But my father made me marry a man called Jacob Telworthy, and when things were too hot for him in England——’ She stopped and said reflectively, ‘Too hot for him: I think that was the expression we used in those days—well, then we went to Australia, and I left him there, and the only happy moment I had in all my married life was on the morning when I read in the papers that he was dead.’
George moved uncomfortably. Why talk about this fellow Telworthy? That was over and done with. She was his now. His! Surely we can forget Telworthy now.
‘Yes, yes, my dear, I know,’ he said. ‘You must have had a terrible time. Terrible. I can hardly bear to think about it. My only hope is that I have made up to you for it in some degree.’
‘My dear!’
‘There, there!’ He patted her hand. ‘But I must say,’ he went on with a sudden change of voice, ‘that I don’t see what bearing all this has upon Dinah’s case.’
‘Oh, none; except that my father liked Jacob’s political opinions and his views on art. I mean he liked the way Jacob had furnished his house. I expect that that was why he chose him for me.’
George caught the eye of Heaven and shrugged despairingly over the
obtuseness of the sex. Patiently he explained that he was not choosing a husband for Dinah. Not at all. Let her choose whomever she liked. ‘So long as he can support her,’ he added quickly, seeing that she was about to interrupt, ‘and there is a chance of their being happy together.’
‘Brian——’ began Olivia.
‘Ridiculous! He’s got no money and he has been brought up in a very different way from Dinah. Just because she thinks she’s in love with him, she may be prepared to believe now that—er—all cows are blue and—er—waves are square, but she won’t go on believing it for ever.’
‘Neither will Brian.’
‘Well, that’s what I keep telling him,’ George burst out, ‘only he won’t see it. Just as I keep telling you about those ridiculous curtains. It seems to me that I’m the only person in the house with any eyesight left.’
‘Perhaps you are, darling,’ she soothed him. ‘But at any rate, the important thing is that Brian is a gentleman, he loves Dinah, Dinah loves him, he is earning enough to support himself and you are earning enough to support Dinah. I think it’s worth risking, George.’
But George was not impressed by Brian’s list of qualifications.
‘I can only say,’ he observed stiffly, ‘that the whole question demands much more anxious thought than you seem to have given it. You say that he is a gentleman. He knows how to behave, I admit, but if his morals are as topsy-turvy as his tastes and politics, as I’ve no doubt they are, then—er——In short, I do not approve of Brian Strange as a husband for my niece and ward. . . . Matches? Ah, here they are.’ He lit his pipe, and the discussion was over.
What a futile discussion, thought Olivia. But could any discussion between wife and husband ever end otherwise? Did the man ever convince the woman, or the woman the man? It was as if they stood on opposite sides of a wall, and argued whether the wall was in shadow or in sunshine. Neither would ever see the other’s point of view. How stupid the other one always seemed! Poor George. How Brian’s pictures must have annoyed him!
Olivia herself was neither annoyed nor thrilled by the great painter’s representation of a windy day in April, or—to refer again to the masterpiece—The World’s End on a Saturday night. She knew that he was experimenting, and that, both in his experiments and in the discoveries he was to make, he would seek to please one critic only: himself. That was enough for a beginning. What was important to her was that he gave her—she could not quite say how—the impression of being a ‘good’ man. There was no other word for what she meant but ‘good.’ ‘Honourable’ means so little nowadays. The husband who tells lies in the divorce court is honourable. ‘Gentleman’ means less. Oh, the gentlemen Olivia had known in the days of that great financier, Jacob Telworthy; the gentlemen in the City, and at the stage doors; the gentlemen who pass on to each other scandalous stories about any politician or actress or public character whose name comes up at the dinner-table; the gentlemen after jobs! But Brian was good. He had nice, clean, boyish, chivalrous ideas, of which he was unashamed; there was something of the untouched child about him. . . . Lucky, lucky Dinah!
