by A. A. Milne
‘You know I do, old girl,’ he said earnestly.
‘You’re not just attracted by my pretty face?’ Innocently she added, ‘Is it a pretty face?’
Ah, that too he could answer. From his whole heart he cried, ‘It’s an adorable one, my darling.’
Again he tried to kiss it, but, as if not noticing his movement, she turned away.
‘How can I be sure,’ she wondered, ‘that it is not only my face which makes you think that you care for me? Love,’ she mused ‘which only rests upon a mere outward attraction cannot lead to any lasting happiness.’ She sighed, and added a little unkindly, ‘As one of our thinkers has observed.’
Damnably unfair! As if anything which middle- age said to youth ought to be used in evidence against middle-age! Why, it would make life impossible. Education and religion would be handicapped out of existence.
‘What’s come over you, Olivia?’ he asked. ‘I don’t understand what you’re driving at.’ Feebly he added, ‘Why should you doubt my love?’
Ah, why? He knew. She knew that he knew. Hurriedly he went on, lest she should take advantage of that unlucky question, ‘You can’t pretend that we haven’t been happy together. I’ve been a good pal to you, eh? We—we suit each other, old girl.’
‘Do we?’
‘Of course we do,’ he said persuasively.
‘I wonder. When two people of our age think of getting married, one wants to be very sure that there is real community of ideas between them. Whether it is a comparatively trivial matter, like’—she hesitated, trying to think of an illustration for her meaning and glanced round the room for inspiration—‘well, like the right colour for a curtain,’ she threw out innocently, ‘or whether it is some very much more serious question of conduct which arises, one wants to feel that there is some chance of agreement between husband and wife.’
The right colour for a curtain! Was that to be another of the terms?
‘We love each other, old girl,’ he pleaded. What did colours for curtains matter, compared with the great fact that they loved each other? Colours for curtains were nothing; particularly when all the husband had to say was: ‘I won’t have them in my house,’ and all the wife had to say was ‘Very well, George!’ Now love——
‘We love each other now, perhaps,’ said Olivia. ‘But what shall we be like in five years’ time? Supposing that, after we had been married five years, we found ourselves estranged from each other upon such questions as’—she hesitated again, evidently trying to think of possible questions over which they might be estranged in five years’ time—‘well, such questions as Dinah’s future, or the decorations of the drawing-room; even over the advice to give to a friend who had innocently contracted a bigamous marriage. How bitterly then we should regret our hasty plunge into a matrimony which was no true partnership, whether of tastes, or of ideas, or even of—consciences.’ She leant back and sighed to Heaven ‘Ah me!’ It was a long-worded speech to have made, and she hoped that George would appreciate it.
No doubt if he had heard it properly, he would have liked it very much. But as it happened, a brilliant idea had just come to him, which prevented him from following it closely. For he was now about to turn the tables on her.
‘Unfortunately for your argument, Olivia,’ he said, in a voice which foreshadowed his approaching triumph, ‘I can answer you out of your own mouth.’
She looked at him in alarm.
‘You seem to have forgotten,’ he went on, ‘what you said this morning in the case of young Strange.’
‘George!’ she said reproachfully. ‘Is it fair to drag up what was said this morning?’
He reminded her—she had apparently forgotten—that she was the one to begin it.
‘I ?’ she asked in innocent surprise.
He assured her that it was the fact.
‘Well, and what did I say this morning?’
‘You said that it was quite enough that Strange was a gentleman and in love with Dinah for me to let them marry each other.’
‘But is that enough?’ she asked with interest.
‘You said so!’ The triumph rang out clearly now.
‘Well, if you think so, I—perhaps you’re right.’ The meekest of wives was speaking.
‘Aha, my dear!’ he crowed. ‘You see!’ As he had always said, no woman could stand up against a man in argument for long.
‘Then do you think it’s enough?’
‘Well—obviously——’
She went to him then, holding out her arms.
‘My darling one! Then we can have a double wedding. How lovely!’
‘A double one?’ he said frowning.
‘Of course; you and me, Brian and Dinah.’
Quite suddenly George felt that there must be a flaw in his brilliant idea. He stood gaping at her.
‘You and me,’ she murmured again, flipping up two fingers of the right hand, ‘Brian and Dinah,’ and up went two fingers of the left hand.
George was now quite certain that there was either a flaw, or else that he had failed to handle it properly. However, there was only one line to take now.
‘Now, look here, Olivia,’ he said firmly, ‘understand once and for all that I am not to be blackmailed into giving my consent to Dinah’s engagement. Neither blackmailed nor tricked. Our marriage’—he emphasized it with a sweeping gesture of the hand—‘has nothing whatever to do with Dinah’s.’
‘No, dear,’ said Olivia. ‘I quite understand. They may take place about the same time, but they have nothing to do with each other.’
George observed coldly that he saw no prospect of Dinah’s marriage taking place for many years.
‘Yes, dear,’ she agreed. ‘That was what I said.’
‘What you said?’ he asked, amazed.
She nodded. His mouth was just open to explain to her what she had said when the explanation came to him. He closed it and stood looking at her, almost in horror. Could she really mean that? But even if she meant it in theory, in practice it was absolutely impossible. She would soon see that.
‘We had better have this perfectly clear, Olivia. You apparently insist on treating my—er—proposal as serious.’
‘But wasn’t it serious? George,’ she added wickedly, ‘were you trifling with me?’
‘You know quite well what I mean.’ He spoke with dignity. ‘You treat it as an ordinary proposal from a man to a woman who have been no more than acquaintances before. Very well, then. Will you tell me what you mean to do if you decide—er—not to marry me? You do not suggest that we should go on living together unmarried?’
It was her first chance of being shocked.
‘Of course not, George!’ she said indignantly. ‘What would the County—I mean Heaven—I mean the Law—I mean, of course not! Besides,’ she smiled, ‘it’s so unnecessary. If I decide to accept you, of course I shall marry you.’
‘Quite so. But if you—er—decide to refuse me? What will you do then?’
Now he had got her. It was all very well for her to talk as she had talked, but when it came to the point, she would find that she had no choice in the matter. She would have to marry him; to pretend anything else was bluff.
‘What will you do then?’ he repeated.
‘Nothing,’ said Olivia calmly.
‘Meaning by that?’
‘Just that, George. I shall stay here just as before. I like this house. It wants a little redecorating, perhaps, but I do like it, George.’ She looked round at the room, at the view from the windows, with a happy sigh. ‘Yes, I shall be quite all right here,’ she announced.
‘I see. So you will continue to live down here in spite of what you said just now, about the immorality of it?’ Surely she couldn’t mean that!
She looked at him in surprise for a moment, and then leant forward to argue it out.
‘But ther
e’s nothing immoral in a widow living alone in a big country house,’ she assured him, ‘with perhaps the niece of a friend staying with her, just to keep her company.’
‘And what shall I be doing,’ he asked, layers of sarcasm in his voice, ‘when you’ve so kindly taken possession of my house for me?’
‘I don’t know, George. Travelling, I expect.’ Then an idea occurred to her. ‘You could come down sometimes with a chaperon,’ she said brightly. ‘I suppose there would be nothing wrong in that.’
He could stutter out no more than an indignant ‘Thank you.’ She waved it airily away, only too glad to have been of any help to him.
‘And what if I refuse to be turned out of my house?’ he demanded.
‘Then, seeing that we can’t both be in it, it looks as though you would have to turn me out.’ Carelessly she added: ‘I suppose there are legal ways of doing these things. You would have to consult your solicitor again.’
‘Legal ways?’ repeated the amazed George.
‘Well, you couldn’t throw me out, could you?’
No, he couldn’t throw her out. Force is an effective weapon, only so long as it is kept in reserve, so long, that is to say, as it is used morally, not physically. ‘Do this, or I’ll make you,’ says the big man to the little man, the big nation to the little nation, in the hope that the threat will be sufficient having the authority of Force behind it. But if the authority is not recognized, Force itself can do nothing. ‘All right, make me,’ says the little man to the big man, and the big man is powerless.
No, George could not make Olivia leave his house; he could not make her marry him. She ought to have recognized that he was the stronger; that, in addition, he had all the majesty of the Law behind him; and, recognizing these things, she should have obeyed him meekly. But, as she would not recognize them, what could he do?
‘You’ll have to get an injunction against me,’ she suggested cheerfully, ‘or prosecute me for trespass, or something. Your solicitor will know. It would make an awfully unusual case, wouldn’t it?’ she went on in an interested voice. ‘The papers would be full of it.’
The papers! An unusual case! George shuddered. It would be an absolutely impossible case.
Leaning back, her eyes closed, Olivia murmured in the monotonous voice of the newspaper-seller, a few possible headlines.
‘Widow of well-known ex-convict takes possession of J.P.’s house! Popular country gentleman denied entrance to own home! Doomed to travel!’
George turned on her furiously.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he shouted. ‘Do you mean all this nonsense?’
‘I do mean, George,’ she answered seriously, ‘that I am in no hurry to go up to London and get married. I love the country just now; and, after this morning’—she gave a little sigh—‘I am rather tired of husbands.’
‘I’ve never heard so much damned nonsense in all my life,’ exclaimed one of the husbands. He strode to the door. ‘I will leave you to come to your senses.’ A violent slam announced that he had left her.
As soon as he was gone Olivia jumped up to her feet, blew a loving kiss after him, and then, her face all triumphant smiles, stretched out her arms to her curtains. The dear things were really going up now!
Chapter Thirteen
Return of Mr. Pim
I
THE door of the library swung open and George strode in. He hurried across to the nearest window, and opened it yet wider; then to the next window—it was shut—Good God! wasn’t a man allowed to have air in his own house?—and so round the walls, until the pleasant July afternoon could step into the room from all three sides at once, bringing the peace of the lawns with it. The door of the library remained open—Good God! wasn’t a man allowed to have privacy in his own house? He kicked it shut, damning it for the noise it made.
Here was a pretty state of things! Socialism! Revolution! Anarchy! His own women-folk, Olivia, Dinah, both defying him. It would be his servants next. He would give Anne an order and she would refuse to obey it. Anarchy!
He filled his pipe, stuffing in the tobacco furiously, and then, finding no matches in his pocket, rang the bell. Nothing happened. The revolution had begun. Second after second went by; still no Anne. Probably singing ‘The Red Flag’ somewhere. Mutiny, that’s what it was. Rank mutiny. Take it in hand at once—the only way. He strode to the door . . . and pulled himself up with a jerk. It was opening.
‘Yes, sir?’ said Anne, quiet, respectful, obedient.
‘I want some matches. There never seems to be any. There ought to be plenty of boxes everywhere, in every room.’
Anne’s eyes travelled in one rapid movement from the box on the chimney-piece to the box on the table, and from the box on the table to the box on the desk. And so back to the floor. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said apologetically, and glided out after a fourth box. In an incredibly short time she was back, the fourth box on a salver, and George, who realized now that it was the fourth box, was thanking her awkwardly. The bend of her head indicated that it was a pleasure to do anything for so perfect a gentleman; it even seemed to suggest, in some subtle way, that to serve a master who was content with three boxes of matches would have given her no happiness at all. As George lit his pipe she glided to the door. One got the impression that she was just waiting there for the actual striking of the match, in order to make sure that a fifth box would not be necessary. The ignition being satisfactory, she glided out. George was alone again.
But, for the moment, a humbled George. He had been in the wrong. Wrong over the absurdest trifle, no doubt, but still—wrong. Unfair. And unfair, he realized, to Olivia no less than to Anne. For he had been blaming Olivia in his thoughts, telling himself that, if the house was badly run, it was the fault of the mistress. ‘Really, Olivia if a man can’t have matches in his own house——’ And there they were, a box for him wherever he might be. How well she looked after him!
He sat down, pulling luxuriously at his pipe, and began to consider his position. Indeed, he told himself to do this in so many words:‘I must consider my position.’ And considering it now fairly, reasonably, under the comforting influence of tobacco, and still with that unwonted touch of humility upon him, he found that, in whatever direction his thoughts started out, down whatever side-tracks they wandered, they came back always to the beacon-light of Olivia’s presence in the house. She was here. He was angry with her; he was quarrelling with her; yes, but these were trifles compared with the great fact that she was here to be quarrelled with. She was dictating to him; yes, but here she was to dictate. She was here. In his house. . . .
In his house, yes; but that was not much comfort if he were elsewhere. And he would have to be elsewhere, unless he surrendered to her. Impossible to force this second marriage on her; impossible, after all that he had said, to remain in the house if she refused it. His whole protest had been that it was the wrongness of it, not, as she had implied, the fear of what the County would say, which forbade them living together unmarried. It was impossible to go back on that the moment that the circumstances changed. Now the County would never know; nobody would know except Aunt Julia; but right was still right (as he had maintained) and wrong was wrong. If he betrayed his beliefs now, he betrayed himself doubly. At whatever cost, he must cling to them.
The only alternative, then, was to marry her on her own terms. Yes, it must come to that. Already he saw himself surrendering to her. Whatever her conditions, he must accept them. So comforting was the tobacco, so warm the thought that she was here, in his house, and would never leave it now, that he actually chuckled for a moment at her cleverness. She dictating to him! The cheek of her, the cleverness of her! A beauty she had always been, but, gad, she was clever, too. No one to touch her in the county. And his! His now for ever.
But if he was to give way to her on this matter of Dinah’s engagement, it was necessary to assure himself first that sh
e was in the right about it. Never should it be said of George that he had sacrificed Dinah’s happiness to his own; that he had allowed her to make an impossible marriage simply in order that he might win Olivia’s favour. He was a reasonable man, was George. Convince him that Dinah would be happy with young Strange—her happiness, that was all he wanted—and the marriage should take place. Convince him that she would not be happy, and young Strange should be sent about his business. He had feared that morning that young Strange was not suited to Dinah; perhaps he had been wrong? Surely Olivia, who knew young Strange so much better than he—Olivia, who was so intimately in Dinah’s confidence—surely her opinion on this matter was worth considering? If Olivia thought that Dinah and young Strange would be happy together, it was his duty, as Dinah’s guardian, not to reject this happiness for his ward too hastily. An engagement—there would be no harm, at any rate, in an engagement.
He was now reassured. With a clear conscience he could agree to Olivia’s conditions. No, not conditions. It just happened that Dinah would now be ‘getting married herself soon,’ and that, in some way, this would ‘make things easier.’ Women were strange creatures. There was no accounting for their whims. However, one had to humour them. It wasn’t as if they had the cool reasoning powers, the stern logical faculty, of men.
He got up and went to the window to knock the ashes out of his pipe. How peaceful the lawns looked, how beautiful the wooded hills beyond. All his. His and Olivia’s.
II
Our last view of Mr. Pim (such are our privileges) was from Olivia’s bedroom window. We saw George bidding him an enthusiastic good-bye; we seemed to see Mr. Pim still maintaining that he had been put to no trouble at all, and that he would on such a beautiful afternoon enjoy the little walk to the Trevors’. ‘You mean the Brymers’,’ we can imagine George correcting him, to which Mr. Pim answered, no doubt, ‘Yes, yes, of course, the Brymers’. I am going back to the Brymers’.’ Then he was off. We watched him ambling down the drive, until the bend of it hid him from our sight.
Let us be after him. We have the others under our hands when we want them. Olivia is in the morning- room putting the finishing touches to her curtains, and wondering, with half a smile, how long it will be before George comes back to her—five minutes or ten? George is in the library, nervous but determined; telling himself that if it were ten minutes rather than five, he could rehearse something sufficiently casual and off-hand, yet clothed withal in a certain dignity. He tries over a sentence or two; we shall see how it goes directly. Brian and Dinah are wrapt in lovers’ talk up and down the rose-garden. As for Lady Marden, to whom we may now wave ‘Good-bye,’ she is ten fields away or more, and moving splendidly. Let her go; we shall not want her again. Our business is with Mr. Pim.
