Tono Bungay Part 22

She was so pleased that I forgot absolutely my disgust of a moment before. I forgot that she had raised her price two hundred pounds a year and that I had bought her at that.

"Come!" I said, standing up; "let's go towards the sunset, dear, and talk about it all. Do you know--this is a most beautiful world, an amazingly beautiful world, and when the sunset falls upon you it makes you into shining gold. No, not gold--into golden gla.s.s.... Into something better that either gla.s.s or gold."...

And for all that evening I wooed her and kept her glad. She made me repeat my a.s.surances over again and still doubted a little.

We furnished that double-fronted house from attic--it ran to an attic--to cellar, and created a garden.

"Do you know Pampas Gra.s.s?" said Marion. "I love Pampas Gra.s.s... if there is room."

"You shall have Pampas Gra.s.s," I declared. And there were moments as we went in imagination about that house together, when my whole being cried out to take her in my arms--now. But I refrained. On that aspect of life I touched very lightly in that talk, very lightly because I had had my lessons. She promised to marry me within two months' time. Shyly, reluctantly, she named a day, and next afternoon, in heat and wrath, we "broke it off" again for the last time. We split upon procedure.

I refused flatly to have a normal wedding with wedding cake, in white favours, carriages and the rest of it. It dawned upon me suddenly in conversation with her and her mother, that this was implied. I blurted out my objection forthwith, and this time it wasn't any ordinary difference of opinion; it was a "row." I don't remember a quarter of the things we flung out in that dispute. I remember her mother reiterating in tones of gentle remonstrance: "But, George dear, you must have a cake--to send home." I think we all reiterated things. I seem to remember a refrain of my own: "A marriage is too sacred a thing, too private a thing, for this display. Her father came in and stood behind me against the wall, and her aunt appeared beside the sideboard and stood with arms, looking from speaker to speaker, a sternly gratified prophetess. It didn't occur to me then! How painful it was to Marion for these people to witness my rebellion.

"But, George," said her father, "what sort of marriage do you want? You don't want to go to one of those there registry offices?"

"That's exactly what I'd like to do. Marriage is too private a thing--"

"I shouldn't feel married," said Mrs. Ramboat.

"Look here, Marion," I said; "we are going to be married at a registry office. I don't believe in all these fripperies and superst.i.tions, and I won't submit to them. I've agreed to all sorts of things to please you."

"What's he agreed to?" said her father--unheeded.

"I can't marry at a registry office," said Marion, sallow-white.

"Very well," I said. "I'll marry nowhere else."

"I can't marry at a registry office."

"Very well," I said, standing up, white and tense and it amazed me, but I was also exultant; "then we won't marry at all."

She leant forward over the table, staring blankly. But presently her half-averted face began to haunt me as she had sat at the table, and her arm and the long droop of her shoulder.

III

The next day I did an unexampled thing. I sent a telegram to my uncle, "Bad temper not coming to business," and set off for Highgate and Ewart.

He was actually at work--on a bust of Millie, and seemed very glad for any interruption.

"Ewart, you old Fool," I said, "knock off and come for a day's gossip.

I'm rotten. There's a sympathetic sort of lunacy about you. Let's go to Staines and paddle up to Windsor."

"Girl?" said Ewart, putting down a chisel.

"Yes."

That was all I told him of my affair.

"I've got no money," he remarked, to clear up ambiguity in my invitation.

We got a jar of shandy-gaff, some food, and, on Ewart's suggestion, two j.a.panese sunshades in Staines; we demanded extra cushions at the boathouse and we spent an enormously soothing day in discourse and meditation, our boat moored in a shady place this side of Windsor.

I seem to remember Ewart with a cushion forward, only his heels and sunshade and some black ends of hair showing, a voice and no more, against the shining, smoothly-streaming mirror of the trees and bushes.

"It's not worth it," was the burthen of the voice. "You'd better get yourself a Millie, Ponderevo, and then you wouldn't feel so upset."

"No," I said decidedly, "that's not my way."

A thread of smoke ascended from Ewart for a while, like smoke from an altar.

"Everything's a muddle, and you think it isn't. n.o.body knows where we are--because, as a matter of fact we aren't anywhere. Are women property--or are they fellow-creatures? Or a sort of proprietary G.o.ddesses? They're so obviously fellow-creatures. You believe in the G.o.ddess?"

"No," I said, "that's not my idea."

"What is your idea?"

"Well"

"H'm," said Ewart, in my pause.

"My idea," I said, "is to meet one person who will belong to me--to whom I shall belong--body and soul. No half-G.o.ds! Wait till she comes. If she comes at all.... We must come to each other young and pure."

"There's no such thing as a pure person or an impure person.... Mixed to begin with."

This was so manifestly true that it silenced me altogether.

"And if you belong to her and she to you, Ponderevo--which end's the head?"

I made no answer except an impatient "oh!"

For a time we smoked in silence....

"Did I tell you, Ponderevo, of a wonderful discovery I've made?" Ewart began presently.

"No," I said, "what is it?"

"There's no Mrs. Grundy."

"No?"

"No! Practically not. I've just thought all that business out. She's merely an instrument, Ponderevo. She's borne the blame. Grundy's a man.

Grundy unmasked. Rather lean and out of sorts. Early middle age. With bunchy black whiskers and a worried eye. Been good so far, and it's fretting him! Moods! There's Grundy in a state of s.e.xual panic, for example,--'For G.o.d's sake cover it up! They get together--they get together! It's too exciting! The most dreadful things are happening!'

Rushing about--long arms going like a windmill. 'They must be kept apart!' Starts out for an absolute obliteration of everything absolute separations. One side of the road for men, and the other for women, and a h.o.a.rding--without posters between them. Every boy and girl to be sewed up in a sack and sealed, just the head and hands and feet out until twenty-one. Music abolished, calico garments for the lower animals!

Sparrows to be suppressed--ab-so-lutely."

I laughed abruptly.

"Well, that's Mr. Grundy in one mood--and it puts Mrs. Grundy--She's a much-maligned person, Ponderevo--a rake at heart--and it puts her in a most painful state of fl.u.s.ter--most painful! She's an amenable creature.

When Grundy tells her things are shocking, she's shocked--pink and breathless. She goes about trying to conceal her profound sense of guilt behind a haughty expression....

"Grundy, meanwhile, is in a state of complete whirlabout. Long lean knuckly hands pointing and gesticulating! 'They're still thinking of things--thinking of things! It's dreadful. They get it out of books.