Mr Pim Passes By

by A. A. Milne

  ‘But that won’t do,’ said Olivia to herself. ‘It was not an unexpected George who showed himself this afternoon; it was the real George, the George I married.’

  There was one part of her crying out that she was hurt, that her life would never be the same again; there was another part of her insisting that she was only hurt if she allowed herself to be hurt, and that life was always the same again. It rested with her to make the best or the worst of it. Which was she going to do?

  How few of us can deny ourselves a grievance! We are prepared to be generous, none more so. In a day, in an hour, even now at this moment we will forgive, we will welcome the offender again to our bosom. But there is one inexorable condition. It must be quite clear to him that he is the offender. If we failed to have our grievance, he would never realize our magnanimity. He would think that we had nothing to forgive; that his offence was not, or had passed unnoticed; even—horrible thought—that the offence was ours, and that it was he who was the magnanimous one, greeting us again without a word of reproach. So, we tell ourselves, it would not be right to give up our grievance. He must see plainly that he has hurt us, before the reconciling embrace. We forgive, he is forgiven—there must be no misunderstanding about our attitudes. The bent head is his; the outstretched reassuring hand is ours.

  Olivia saw that this must be so, even with a smile at herself for seeing it. ‘Ah, my dear, thank Heaven you are my wife again! Now we can be happy’—George must not get off as lightly as that. Besides—and here the smile became more pronounced—she was not his wife again. She was Mrs. Telworthy.

  She was not fond of grievances, she never sulked, she would not show a hurt reproachful face to George. But she was determined now to take charge. It had been George’s morning; the first part of the afternoon had been his; the rest of the day, the next few days, would be hers. It was to be she now who would say what was to be done or what was not to be done. The engagement between Brian and Dinah should be recognized; the curtains—now the smile was very mischievous—yes, the curtains should be hung.

  She told herself now that she was not hurt. George had been George, but he loved her. That moment, just before Mr. Pim came in, when their eyes met, and she called to him, called to him with her whole heart, was the proof of his love. He had been coming to her. In spite of all that was against her—laws, habits, traditions, the gods whom he had set up, all tugging him the other way—she had been winning. His despairing cry, ‘I want to do what’s right,’ had been wrung from him by her eyes. Another moment, and he would have come to her, right or wrong. What higher tribute could he pay her?

  She looked at herself in the glass again, smiled at it, and then, the smile still on her lips, walked leisurely down the stairs. What a comedy life was, when once you had realized that you couldn’t play it as tragedy. The laugh trembled on her mouth as she thought again of those last moments with Mr. Pim, but she tucked it firmly away. Now then, George.

  III

  George jumped up as Olivia came into the room, and bore down upon her with outstretched hands.

  ‘Olivia!’ he cried.

  Just for a moment she faltered, and then, with a magnificent gesture, she motioned him back.

  ‘Mrs. Tel worthy,’ she said proudly. No actress on the stage, she felt, could have done it with a more superb air.

  His surprise was ludicrous.

  ‘I—I don’t understand,’ he stammered.

  She had to laugh then, but she did it very naturally and pleasantly, moving across to the sofa and inviting him with a look to come too.

  ‘Poor George!’ she said. ‘Did I frighten you rather?’

  ‘You’re so strange to-day,’ he protested, sitting down next to her and trying to take her hands. ‘I don’t understand you. You’re not like the Olivia I know.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t know me very well after all.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nonsense, old girl. You’re just my Olivia.’

  She shot a smile at him and said: ‘And yet it seemed as though I were somebody else’s Olivia half an hour ago.’

  He moved uncomfortably at that.

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about it,’ he said hurriedly. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘Ah, no!’ sighed Olivia, eyes to Heaven, and then quickly from Heaven to George, and back to Heaven again.

  ‘Well, thank God that’s over. And now we can get married again quietly, and nobody will be any the wiser.’

  She turned an innocent face to him. ‘Married again?’ she repeated, apparently not understanding.

  ‘Yes, dear. As you—er—said just now’—he ventured an amused laugh, but only achieved the skeleton of it—‘you are Mrs. Telworthy, just for the moment.’ He patted her hand, and went on soothingly, ‘But we can soon put that right. My idea,’ he went on, elbowing Aunt Julia out of it, ‘was to go up this evening and make arrangements, and if you come up to-morrow afternoon, if we can manage it by then, we could get quietly married at a registry office, and—er—nobody any the wiser.’

  He waited for her approval of his extraordinary grip on the situation. She nodded at him.

  ‘Yes, I see. You want me to marry you at a registry office to-morrow?’

  ‘Yes, if we can manage it by then. I don’t know how long these things take, but I should imagine—my solicitor would know, of course—I dare say I could see him to-night——’

  He hurried on, hoping to keep Olivia’s attention off the dangerous words—‘registry office.’ He had had his own qualms of conscience about this, but they were now subdued. He was persuaded—well, almost persuaded—that his duty as a Christian summoned him to a registry office rather than a church, for the reason that the registry office offered speedier facilities for marriage; well, he supposed they did, but his solicitor would know about that; and, surely the one important thing for both of them was to get married as quickly as possible. True, a registry office was less public than a church, but that was not the point. The point was—well, anyhow, he did not want to argue it with Olivia, who was sometimes obtuse about these things, adorable though she was in other respects.

  However, this afternoon Olivia was not arguing about such details as registry offices. She smiled to herself as she listened, understanding him so clearly, but she was challenging the main idea now. To his great relief she agreed carelessly to all that he said; that was all right. But——

  ‘But what?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, if you want to marry me to-morrow, oughtn’t you to propose to me first?’

  He looked at her in amazement. What on earth did she mean.

  ‘It is usual, isn’t it,’ she went on calmly, ‘to propose to a person before you marry her? And’—another mischievous little smile was lurking—‘we want to do the usual thing, don’t we?’

  Yes, George always wanted to do the usual thing, but he had lost his bearings for the moment. Seeing this, Olivia explained to him very simply just where he was.

  ‘You see, dear, you’re George Marden, and I’m Olivia Telworthy, and you are—well, you’re attracted by me. You think I would make you a good wife, and you want to marry me to-morrow at a registry office. Well, then’—she held up an admonishing forefinger—‘naturally you propose to me first, and tell me how much you are attracted by me, and what a good wife you think I shall make, and how badly you want to marry me.’

  George followed this with open mouth. Gradually, as he began to understand, the mouth went up at the corners, intelligence gleamed in the eyes. There was a broad smile on his face by the time she had finished.

  ‘The baby!’ He threw his head back and laughed heartily. Then, humorously soothing, ‘Did she want to be proposed to all over again?’

  ‘Well, she did rather,’ said Olivia, enjoying quite a different joke.

  George stood up, still chuckling.

  ‘She shall, then.’

  I
t was no doubt merely the accident of birth which had deprived the stage of a great actor in George. To a man of his position the arts were just a relaxation for which as yet he had had no opportunity. George was a busy man. He had not the time on his hands which these actor fellows and writing fellows had. Granted the time, the achievements of the popular favourites are within the reach of all of us; those of us, at any rate, who have had the advantage of a public-school education. To doubt this is to concede too much to these artist fellows.

  Light-heartedly, then, he sketched his idea of the lover proposing.

  ‘Mrs. Telworthy,’ he began, hand on heart, ‘I have long admired you in silence, and the time has now come to put my admiration into words.’ Excellent! There should have been an audience. Now how should he go on? ‘Er—er——’

  ‘Into words,’ Olivia reminded him.

  ‘Er——’

  She continued to wait patiently. Then, with the idea of helping him, she looked bashfully away, and murmured, ‘Oh, Mr. Marden!’

  That gave him his cue. ‘May I call you Olivia?’ he asked sternly.

  ‘Yes, George.’

  He took her hand.

  ‘Olivia—I—er—h’r’m’——’ he announced, and was just getting into the swing of it, when the thoughtless woman broke in:

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt, but oughtn’t you to be on your knees? It is—usual, I believe. If one of the servants came in, you could say that you were looking for my scissors.’

  He threw at her the indignant look of the painter interrupted in the middle of his most delicate brush- work.

  ‘Really, Olivia,’ he protested, ‘you must allow me to manage my own proposal in my own way.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Do go on.’

  ‘Well, then—er——’ No, it was no good. A masterpiece had been ruined. ‘Confound it, Olivia, I love you,’ he burst out. ‘Will you marry me?’

  It had come at last, the proposal for which she had been waiting. She bent her head in acknowledgment of it.

  ‘Thank you, George,’ she said quietly. ‘I will think it over.’

  George laughed admiringly. Olivia, it seemed, was a bit of an actress, too. But the play-acting had gone on long enough. They must get back to business.

  ‘Silly girl,’ he smiled, and touched her cheek. ‘Well, then, to-morrow morning. No wedding-cake, I’m afraid, old girl,’ he laughed again. ‘But we’ll go and have a good lunch somewhere.’

  She looked up at him and repeated firmly: ‘I will think it over, George.’

  ‘Well, give us a kiss while you’re thinking,’ he said, half annoyed at her elaboration of the joke, half amused by it. He bent down to her.

  ‘I’m afraid you mustn’t kiss me until we are actually engaged,’ she explained, turning her face away.

  For the first time something in her manner disturbed him. Was it possible that——No, impossible. He laughed awkwardly, to reassure himself.

  ‘Oh, we needn’t take it as seriously as all that.’

  ‘But a woman must take a proposal seriously,’ she said, still quite calm, quite matter-of-fact.

  ‘What do you mean?’ He was now really alarmed.

  ‘Well, I mean that the whole question—as I heard somebody say once—demands much more anxious thought than either of us has given it.’ She glanced at him to see if he was recognizing his own words, and went on: ‘These hasty marriages——’

  ‘Hasty!’ he put in sarcastically.

  ‘Well, you’ve only just proposed to me, and you want to marry me to-morrow.’

  Olivia was now merely being absurd. It was his duty to tell her so.

  ‘You know, you’re talking perfect nonsense,’ he said. ‘You know quite well that our case is utterly different from’—he hesitated—‘from any other,’ he ended lamely.

  Olivia smiled to herself. Yes, he had recognized his own words. He remembered the occasion of them.

  ‘All the same,’ she answered, ‘one has to ask oneself questions. With a young girl like’—she pulled herself up, just as he had done—‘well, with a young girl,’ she corrected herself, ‘love may well seem to be all that matters. But with a woman of my age it is different. When a man proposes to me I have to ask myself if he can afford to support a wife.’

  ‘Fortunately, that is a question which you can very easily answer for yourself,’ he said coldly. He didn’t know what she was talking about.

  ‘Well, but I have been hearing rather bad reports lately. What with—er—taxes always going up, and—er—rents always going down, some of our landowners are getting into rather straitened circumstances. At least,’ she added, wishing to be fair, ‘that’s what I have been told.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he growled. But he did know now.

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘Isn’t it true?’ she asked. ‘Of course I may have been misinformed.’ He had nothing to say and she went on, ‘I heard of a case only this morning—a landowner who always seemed to be very comfortably off, but who couldn’t afford an allowance for his favourite niece when she wanted to get married.’ She gave a little sigh for the distressing situation, and proceeded to draw the moral. ‘It made me think,’ she said gravely, ‘that one oughtn’t to judge by appearances.’

  George was now thoroughly annoyed. It was damnably unfair to make this use of his few harmless remarks of the morning. It was well known that when a man said that he couldn’t afford this, that or the other, all he meant was that—well, he had another use for his money. And why not?

  ‘You know perfectly well that I can support a wife as my wife should be supported,’ he said with dignity.

  Her brow cleared. She turned to him, all smiles.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad, dear. Then your income—you aren’t really getting anxious?’

  He reminded her stiffly that she knew quite well what his income was, and what, presumably, it would remain.

  ‘Then that’s all right,’ she said with relief. ‘We needn’t think about that any more.’

  She pushed down the first finger of her left hand, and passed on to the second finger. ‘Well, now there’s another thing to be considered.’

  He broke away from her at that, and stalked over to his desk, making indignant noises. What on earth was she up to?

  He knew, but he would not confess it to himself. To admit that she was paying him back for his betrayal of her that afternoon was to admit that he had betrayed her. Already he was ashamed of himself, yet refused to allow it. He had a hundred excuses for himself, where no excuses were necessary, and knew in his heart that not one of the hundred would do. He had acted as his conscience had urged him, yet remained conscience-stricken.

  ‘I can’t make out what you’re up to,’ he muttered uneasily. ‘Don’t you want to get married? Don’t you want to—er—legalize this extraordinary situation in which we are placed?’

  She answered seriously. ‘I want to be sure that I am going to be happy.’ And then with a sudden fall from gravity, ‘I can’t just jump at the very first offer I have had since my husband died, without considering the whole question very carefully.’

  ‘I’m under consideration, eh?’

  ‘Every suitor is.’

  So he was a suitor again! Masters of the House, Lords in our Castles, Keepers of the Purse, we were all suitors once, although we have forgotten it, conveniently enough, now. There was a day when we were on our knees, begging the proud beauty to turn to us, to throw us one kind word, one little smile. Her lightest wish was law to us. Edelweiss or Emeralds, she breathed the desire and we were off in pursuit. Look at us now! Listen to us now! What, this pompous fellow ever a suitor?‘I am sorry, my dear, but I have said my last word on the subject.’ And once, soul bared before her, he was at her feet, praying her not to say that last word which would send him into the darkness. No wonder that he has forg
otten it now; no wonder that she will remember ever.

  He was a suitor again. Gone was the lordship, the authority, the word of command; gone the ease and mastery, companions of the knowledge that one belongs—good heavens, yes—to the superior sex. The woman has her hour, and Olivia’s hour was come again.

  ‘Go on,’ he said gruffly.

  She went on.

  ‘Well, then there’s your niece. You have a niece who lives with you. Of course, Dinah is a delightful girl, but one doesn’t like marrying into a household in which there is another grown-up woman.’ She looked up at him as if an idea had suddenly occurred to her. ‘But perhaps she will be getting married herself soon?’

  ‘I see no prospect of it,’ announced George.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘I think,’ said Olivia gently, ‘it would make it much easier if she did.’

  She did not look at him, but she could feel the comprehension of it creeping over his face, a comprehension which left him speechless.

  ‘Much easier,’ she repeated.

  So that was it! It was not enough that he should fall on his knees to her again; not enough that he should pay—against all precedent, a second time—formal homage to her sovereignty. Something more material was required of him. She was issuing terms.

  ‘Is this a threat, Olivia?’ he demanded, in the voice which had convicted many a vagrant of impiety after a night in the open. ‘Are you telling me that if I do not allow young Strange to marry Dinah, you will not marry me?’

  Put like that, can we be surprised that Olivia quailed before it?

  ‘A threat? Oh no, George.’

  ‘Then what does it mean?’

  ‘Well, I was just wondering if you loved me as much as—well, as much as Brian loves Dinah.’

  Confound that fellow Strange! Why did she want to drag him into it.

  In answer to his thoughts she let the fellow go and asked instead: ‘You do love me, George?’

  Ah, he could answer now.