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Morals of Marcus Ordeyne

<h2> CHAPTER X </h2> 10th July. Judith and I have had our day in the country. We know a wayside station, on a certain line of railway, about an hour and a half from town, where we can alight, find eggs and bacon at the village inn and hayricks in a solitary meadow, and where we can chew the cud of these delights with the cattle in well-wooded pastures. Judith has a passion for eggs and bacon and hayricks. My own rapture in their presence is tempered by the philosophic calm of my disposition. She wore a cotton dress of a forget-me-not blue which suits her pale colouring. She looked quite pretty. When I told her so she blushed like a girl. I was glad to see her in gay humour again. Of late months she has been subject to moodiness, emotional variability, which has somewhat ruffled the smooth surface of our companionship. But to-day there has been no trace of “temperament.” She has shown herself the pleasant, witty Judith she knows I like her to be, with a touch of coquetry thrown in on her own account. She even spoke amiably of Carlotta. I have not had so thoroughly enjoyable a day with Judith for a long time. I don’t think she set herself deliberately to please me. That I should resent. I know that women in order to please an unsuspecting male will walk weary miles by his side with blisters on their feet and a beatific smile on their faces. But Judith has far too much commonsense. Another pleasing feature of the day’s jaunt has been the absence of the appeal to sentimentality which Judith of late, especially since her return from Paris, has been overfond of making. This idle habit of mind, for such it is in reality, has been arrested by an intellectual interest. One of her great friends is Willoughby, the economic statistician, who in his humorous moments, writes articles for popular magazines, illustrated by scale diagrams. He will draw, for instance, a series of men representing the nations of the world, and varying in bulk and stature according to the respective populations; and over against these he will set a series of pigs whose sizes are proportionate to the amount of pork per head eaten by the different nationalities. To these queer minds that live on facts (I myself could as easily thrive on a diet of egg-shells) this sort of pictorial information is peculiarly fascinating. But Judith, who like most women has a freakish mental as well as physical digestion, delights in knowing how many hogs a cabinet minister will eat during a lifetime, and how much of the earth’s surface could be scoured by the world’s yearly output of scrubbing-brushes. I don’t blame her for it any more than I blame her for a love of radishes, which make me ill; it is not as if she had no wholesome tastes. On the contrary, I commend her. Now, Willoughby, it seems, has found the public appetite so great for these thought-saving boluses of knowledge—unpleasant drugs, as it were, put up into gelatine capsules—that he needs assistance. He has asked Judith to devil for him, and I have to-day persuaded her to accept his offer. It will be an excellent thing for the dear woman. It will be an absorbing occupation. It will divert the current of her thoughts from the sentimentality that I deprecate, and provided she does not serve up hard-boiled facts to me at dinner, she will be the pleasanter companion. The only return to it was when I kissed her at parting. “That is the first, Marcus, for twelve hours,” she said; very sweetly, it is true—but still reproachfully. But Sacred Name of a Little Good Man! (as the depraved French people say), what is the use of this continuous osculation between rational beings of opposite sexes who set out to enjoy themselves? If only St. Paul, in the famous passage when he says there is a time for this and a time for that, had mentioned kissing, he would have done a great deal of practical good. July 13th. To-night, for the first time since I came into the family estates (such as they are), I feel the paralysis of aspiration occasioned by poverty. If I were very rich, I would buy the two next houses, pull them down and erect on the site a tower forty foot high. At the very top would be one comfortable room to be reached by a lift, and in this room I could have my being, while it listed me, and be secure from all kinds of incursions and interruptions. Antoinette’s one-eyed cat could not scratch for admittance; Antoinette herself could not enter under pretext of domestic economics and lure me into profitless gossip; and I could defy Carlotta, who is growing to be as pervasive as the smell of pickles over Crosse & Blackwell’s factory. She comes in without knocking, looks at picture-books, sprawls about doing nothing, smokes my best cigarettes, hums tunes which she has picked up from barrel-organs, bends over me to see what I am writing, munching her eternal sweetmeats in my ear, and laughs at me when I tell her she has irremediably broken the thread of my ideas. Of course I might be brutal and turn her out. But somehow I forget to do so, until I realise—too late—the havoc she has made with my work. I did, however, think, when Miss Griggs mounted guard over Carlotta, and Antoinette and her cat were busied with luncheon cook-pans, that my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or its skirts about my drawing-room. I was arranging my notes, I had an illuminating inspiration concerning the life of Francois Villon and the contemporary court of Cosmo de’ Medici; I was preparing to fix it in writing when the door opened and Stenson announced: “Mrs. Ordeyne and Miss Ordeyne.” My Aunt Jessica and Dora came in and my inspiration went out. It hasn’t come back yet. My aunt’s apologies and Dora’s draperies filled the room. I must forgive the invasion. They knew they were disturbing my work. They hoped I didn’t mind. “I wanted mamma to write, but she would come,” said Dora, in her hearty voice. I murmured polite mendacities and offered chairs. Dora preferred to stand and gaze about her with feminine curiosity. Women always seem to sniff for Bluebeardism in a bachelor’s apartment. “Why, what two beautiful rooms you have. And the books! There isn’t an inch of wall-space!” She went on a voyage of discovery round the shelves while my aunt explained the object of their visit. Somebody, I forget who, had lent them a yacht. They were making up a party for a summer cruise in Norwegian fiords. The Thingummies and the So and So’s and Lord This and Miss That had promised to come, but they were sadly in need of a man to play host—I was to fancy three lone women at the mercy of the skipper. I did, and I didn’t envy the skipper. What more natural, gushed my aunt, than that they should turn to me, the head of the house, in their difficulty? “I am afraid, my dear aunt,” said I, “that my acquaintance with skipper-terrorising hosts is nil. I can’t suggest any one.” “But who asked you to suggest any one?” she laughed. “It is you yourself that we want to persuade to have pity on us.” “I have—much pity,” said I, “for if it’s rough, you’ll all be horribly seasick.” Dora ran across the room from the book-case she was inspecting. “I would like to shake him! He is only pretending he doesn’t understand. I don’t know what we shall do if you won’t come with us.” “You can’t refuse, Marcus. It will be an ideal trip—and such a comfortable yacht—and the deep blue fiords—and we’ve got a French chef. You will be doing us such a favour.” “Come, say ‘Yes,’” said Dora. I wish she were not such a bouncing Juno of a girl. Large, athletic women with hearty voices are difficult for one to deal with. I am a match for my aunt, whom I can obfuscate with words. But Dora doesn’t understand my satire; she gives a great, healthy laugh, and says, “Oh, rot!” which scatters my intellectual armoury. “It is exceedingly kind of you to think of me,” I said to my aunt, “and the proposal is tempting—the prospect is indeed fascinating—but—” “But what?” “I have so many engagements,” I answered feebly. My Aunt Jessica rose, smiling indulgently upon me, as if I were a spoilt little boy, and took me on to the balcony, while Dora demurely retired to the bookshelves in the farther room. “Can’t you manage to throw them aside? Poor Dora will be inconsolable.” I stared at her for a moment and then at Dora’s broad back and sturdy hips. Inconsolable? I can’t make out what the good lady is driving at. If she were a vulgar woman trying to squeeze her way into society and needed the lubricant of the family baronetcy, I could understand her eagerness to parade me as her appanage. But titles in her drawing-room are as common as tea-cups. And the inconsolability of Dora— “If I did come she would be bored to death,” said I. “She is willing to risk it.” “But why should she seek martyrdom?” “There is another reason,” said my aunt, ignoring my pertinent question, but glancing at me reassuringly “there is another reason why it would be well for you to come on this cruise with us.” She sank her voice. “You met Miss Gascoigne in the park last week—” “A very charming and kind young lady,” said I. “I am afraid you have been a little indiscreet. People have been talking.” “Then theirs, not mine, is the indiscretion.” “But, my dear Marcus, when you spring a good-looking young person, whom you introduce as your Mohammedan ward, upon London society, and she makes a scene in public—why—what else have people got to talk about?” “They might fall back upon the doctrine of predestination or the price of fish,” I replied urbanely. “But I assure you, Marcus, that there is a hint of scandal abroad. It is actually said that she is living here.” “People will say anything, true or untrue,” said I. My aunt sighfully acquiesced, and for a while we discussed the depravity of human nature. “I have been thinking,” she said at last, “that if you brought your ward to see us, and she could accompany us on this cruise to Norway, the scandal would be scotched outright.” She glanced at me very keenly, and beneath her indulgent smile I saw the hardness of the old campaigner. It was a clever trap she had prepared for me. I took her hand and in my noblest manner, like the exiled vicomte in costume drama, bent over it and kissed her finger-tips. “I thank you, my dear aunt, for your generous faith in my integrity,” I said, “and I assure you your confidence is well founded.” A loud, gay laugh from the other room interrupted me. “Are you two rehearsing private theatricals?” cried Dora. As I was attired in a remarkably old college blazer and a pair of yellow Moorish slippers bought a couple of years ago in Tangier, and as my hair was straight on end, owing to a habit of passing my fingers through it while I work, my attitude perhaps did not strike a spectator as being so noble as I had imagined. I took advantage of the anti-climax, however, to bring my aunt from the balcony to the centre of the room, where Dora joined us. “Well, has mother prevailed?” “My dear Dora,” said I, politely, “how can you imagine it could possibly be a question of persuasion?” “That might be taken two ways,” said Dora. “Like Palmerston’s ‘Dear Sir, I’ll lose no time in reading your book.’” Dora is a minx. “I fear,” said I, “that my pedantic historical sense must venture to correct you. It was Lord Beaconsfield.” “Well, he got it from Palmerston,” insisted Dora. “You children must not quarrel,” interposed my aunt, in the fond, maternal tone which I find peculiarly unpleasant. “Marcus will see how his engagements stand, and let us know in a day or two.” “When do you propose to start?” I asked. “Quite soon. On the 20th. “I will let you know finally in good time,” said I. As I accompanied them downstairs, I heard a door at the end of the passage open, and turning I saw Carlotta’s pretty head thrust past the jamb, and her eyes fixed on the visitors. I motioned her back, sharply, and my aunt and Dora made an unsuspecting exit. The noise of their departing chariot wheels was music to my ears. Carlotta came rushing out of her sitting-room followed by Miss Griggs, protesting. “Who those fine ladies?” she cried, with her hands on my sleeve. “Who are those ladies?” I corrected. “Who are those ladies?” Carlotta repeated, like a demure parrot. “They are friends of mine.” Then came the eternal question. “Is she married, the young one?” “Miss Griggs,” said I, “kindly instil into Carlotta’s mind the fact that no young English woman ever thinks about marriage until she is actually engaged, and then her thoughts do not go beyond the wedding.” “But is she?” persisted Carlotta. “I wish to heaven she was,” I laughed, imprudently, “for then she would not come and spoil my morning’s work.” “Oh, she wants to marry you,” said Carlotta. “Miss Griggs,” said I, “Carlotta will resume her studies,” and I went upstairs, sighing for the beautiful tower with a lift outside. July 14th. Pasquale came in about nine o’clock, and found us playing cards. He is a bird of passage with no fixed abode. Some weeks ago he gave up his chambers in St. James’s, and went to live with an actor friend, a grass-widower, who has a house in the St. John’s Wood Road close by. Why Pasquale, who loves the palpitating centres of existence, should choose to rusticate in this semi-arcadian district, I cannot imagine. He says he can think better in St. John’s Wood. Pasquale think! As well might a salmon declare it could sing better in a pond! The consequence of his propinquity, however, has been that he has dropped in several times lately on his way home, but generally at a later hour. “Oh, please don’t move and spoil the picture,” he cried. “Oh, you idyllic pair! And what are you playing? Cribbage! If I had been challenged to guess the game you would have selected for your after-dinner entertainment, I should have sworn to cribbage!” “An excellent game,” said I. Indeed, it is the only game that I remember. I dislike cards. They bore me to death. So dus chess. People love to call them intellectual pastimes; but, surely, if a man wants exercise for his intellect, there are enough problems in this complicated universe for him to worry his brains over, with more profit to himself and the world. And as for the pastime—I consider that when two or more intelligent people sit down to play cards they are insulting one another’s powers of conversation. These remarks do not apply to my game with Carlotta, who is a child, and has to be amused. She has picked up cribbage with remarkable quickness, and although this is only the third evening we have played, she was getting the better of me when Pasquale appeared. I repeated my statement. Cribbage certainly was an excellent game. Pasquale laughed. “Of course it is. A venerable pastime. Darby and Joan have played it of evenings for the last thousand years. Please go on.” But Carlotta threw her cards on the table and herself on the sofa and said she would prefer to hear Pasquale talk. “He says such funny things.” Then she jumped from the sofa and handed him the box of chocolates that is never far from her side. How lithe her movements are! “Pasquale says you were his schoolmaster, and used to beat him with a big stick,” she remarked, turning her head toward me, while Pasquale helped himself to a sweet. He was clumsy in his selection, and the box slipped from Carlotta’s hand and the contents rolled upon the floor. They both went on hands and knees to pick them up, and there was much laughing and whispering. It is curious that I cannot recall Pasquale having alluded, in Carlotta’s presence, to our early days. It was on my tongue to ask when he committed the mendacity—for in that school not only did the assistant masters not have the power of the cane, but Pasquale, being in the sixth form at the time I joined, was exempt from corporal punishment—when they both rose flushed from their grovelling beneath the table, and some merry remark from Pasquale put the question out of my head. All this is unimportant. The main result of Pasquale’s visit this evening is a discovery. Now, is it, after all, a discovery, or only the non-moral intellect’s sinister attribution of motives? “A baby in long clothes would have seen through it,” said Pasquale. “Lord bless you, if I were in your position I would go on board that yacht, I’d make violent love to every female there, like the gentleman in Mr. Wycherley’s comedy, I’d fill a salmon fly-book with samples of their hair, I’d make them hate one another like poison, and at the end of the voyage I’d announce my engagement to Carlotta, and when they all came to the wedding I’d make the fly-book the most conspicuous of wedding presents on the table, from the bridegroom to the bride. By George! I’d cure them of the taste for man-hunting!” I wonder what impelled me to tell Pasquale of the proposed yachting cruise? We sat smoking by the open window, long after Carlotta had been sent to bed, and looking at a full moon sailing over the tops of the trees in the park; enveloped in that sensuous atmosphere of a warm summer night which induces a languor in the body and in the will. On such a night as this young Lorenzo, if he happens to have Jessica by his side, makes a confounded idiot of himself, to his life’s undoing; and on such a night as this a reserved philosopher commits the folly of discussing his private affairs with a Sebastian Pasquale. But if he is correct in his surmise, I am much beholden to the relaxing influences of the night. I have been warned of perils that encompass me: perils that would infest the base and insidiously scale the sides of the most inaccessible tower that man could build on the edge of the Regent’s Park. A woman with a Matrimonial Purpose would be quite capable of gaining access by balloon to my turret window. Is it not my Aunt Jessica’s design melodramatically to abduct me in a yacht? “Once aboard the pirate lugger, and the man is ours!” she cries. But the man is not coming aboard the pirate lugger. He is going to keep as far as he possibly can from the shore. Neither is he to be lured into bringing his lovely Mohammedan ward with him, as an evidence of good faith and unimpeachable morals. They can regard her as a Mohammedan ward or a houri or a Princess of Babylon, just as they choose. Pasquale must be right. A hundred remembered incidents go to prove it. I recollect now that Judith has rallied me on my obtuseness. The sole end of all my Aunt Jessica’s manoeuvring is to marry me to Dora, and Dora, like Barkis, is willing. Marry Dora! The thought is a febrifuge, a sudorific! She would be thumping discords on my wornout strings all day long. In a month I should be a writhing madman. I would sooner, infinitely sooner, marry Carlotta. Carlotta is nature; Dora isn’t even art. Why, in the name of men and angels, should I marry Dora? And why (save to call herself Lady Ordeyne) should she want to marry me? I have not trifled with her virgin affections; and that she is nourishing a romantic passion for me of spontaneous growth I decline to believe. For aught I care she can be as inconsolable as Calypso. It will do her good. She can write a little story about it in The Sirens’ Magazine. I am shocked. For all her bouncing ways and animal health and incorrect information, I thought Dora was a nice-minded girl. Do nice-minded girls hunt husbands? Good heavens! This looks like the subject of a silly-season correspondence in The Daily Telegraph. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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