Marriage. H. G. Wells
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"Ah!" cried Aunt Plessington with a loud encouraging note, but evidently making the best of it, "that's better. Sociological observation."
"Yes, Aunt," said Daffy, and negotiated a corner with exceptional care.
§ 8
Mrs. Pope, who had an instinctive disposition to pad when Aunt Plessington was about, had secured the presence at lunch of Mr. Magnet (who was after all staying on in Buryhamstreet) and the Rev. Jopling Baynes. Aunt Plessington liked to meet the clergy, and would always if she could win them over to an interest in the Movement. She opened the meal with a brisk attack upon him. "Come, Mr. Baynes," she said, "what do your people eat here? Hubert and I are making a study of the gluttonous side of village life, and we find that no one knows so much of that as the vicar—not even the doctor."
The Reverend Jopling Baynes was a clergyman of the evasive type with a quite distinguished voice. He pursed his lips and made his eyes round. "Well, Mrs. Plessington," he said and fingered his glass, "it's the usual dietary. The usual dietary."
"Too much and too rich, badly cooked and eaten too fast," said Aunt Plessington. "And what do you think is the remedy?"
"We make an Effort," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes, "we make an Effort. A Hint here, a Word there."
"Nothing organized?"
"No," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes, and shook his head with a kind of resignation.
"We are going to alter all that," said Aunt Plessington briskly, and went on to expound the Movement and the diverse way in which it might be possible to control and improve the domestic expenditure of the working classes.
The Rev. Jopling Baynes listened sympathetically across the table and tried to satisfy a healthy appetite with as abstemious an air as possible while he did so. Aunt Plessington passed rapidly from general principles, to a sketch of the success of the movement, and Hubert, who had hitherto been busy with his lunch, became audible from behind the exceptionally large floral trophy that concealed him from his wife, bubbling confirmatory details. She was very bright and convincing as she told of this prominent man met and subdued, that leading antagonist confuted, and how the Bishops were coming in. She made it clear in her swift way that an intelligent cleric resolved to get on in this world en route for a better one hereafter, might do worse than take up her Movement. And this touched in, she turned her mind to Mr. Magnet.
(That floral trophy, I should explain, by the by, was exceptionally large because of Mrs. Pope's firm conviction that Aunt Plessington starved her husband. Accordingly, she masked him, and so was able to heap second and third helpings upon his plate without Aunt Plessington discovering his lapse. The avidity with which Hubert ate confirmed her worst suspicions and evinced, so far as anything ever did evince, his gratitude.)
"Well, Mr. Magnet," she said, "I wish I had your sense of humour."
"I wish you had," said Mr. Magnet.
"I should write tracts," said Aunt Plessington.
"I knew it was good for something," said Mr. Magnet, and Daffy laughed in a tentative way.
"I mean it," said Aunt Plessington brightly. "Think if we had a Dickens—and you are the nearest man alive to Dickens—on the side of social reform to-day!"
Mr. Magnet's light manner deserted him. "We do what we can, Mrs. Plessington," he said.
"How much more might be done," said Aunt Plessington, "if humour could be organized."
"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Pope.
"If all the humorists of England could be induced to laugh at something together."
"They do—at times," said Mr. Magnet, but the atmosphere was too serious for his light touch.
"They could laugh it out of existence," said Aunt Plessington.
It was evident Mr. Magnet was struck by the idea.
"Of course," he said, "in Punch, to which I happen to be an obscure occasional contributor——"
Mrs. Pope was understood to protest that he should not say such things.
"We do remember just what we can do either in the way of advertising or injury. I don't think you'll find us up against any really solid institutions."
"But do you think, Mr. Magnet, you are sufficiently kind to the New?" Aunt Plessington persisted.
"I think we are all grateful to Punch," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes suddenly and sonorously, "for its steady determination to direct our mirth into the proper channels. I do not think that any one can accuse its editor of being unmindful of his great responsibilities——"
Marjorie found it a very interesting conversation.
She always met her aunt again with a renewal of a kind of admiration. That loud authoritative rudeness, that bold thrusting forward of the Movement until it became the sole criterion of worth or success, this annihilation by disregard of all that Aunt Plessington wasn't and didn't and couldn't, always in the intervals seemed too good to be true. Of course this really was the way people got on and made a mark, but she felt it must be almost as trying to the nerves as aeronautics. Suppose, somewhere up there your engine stopped! How Aunt Plessington dominated the table! Marjorie tried not to catch Daffy's eye. Daffy was unostentatiously keeping things going, watching the mustard, rescuing the butter, restraining Theodore, and I am afraid not listening very carefully to Aunt Plessington. The children were marvellously silent and jumpily well-behaved, and Mr. Pope, in a very unusual state of subdued amiability, sat at the end of the table with the East Purblow experiment on the tip of his tongue. He liked Aunt Plessington, and she was good for him. They had the same inherent distrust of the intelligence and good intentions of their fellow creatures, and she had the knack of making him feel that he too was getting on, that she was saying things on his behalf in influential quarters, and in spite of the almost universal conspiracy (based on jealousy) to ignore his stern old-world virtues, he might still be able to battle his way to the floor of the House of Commons and there deliver himself before he died of a few sorely needed home-truths about motor cars, decadence and frivolity generally....
§ 9
After lunch Aunt Plessington took her little Madge for an energetic walk, and showed herself far more observant than the egotism of her conversation at that meal might have led one to suppose. Or perhaps she was only better informed. Aunt Plessington loved a good hard walk in the afternoon; and if she could get any one else to accompany her, then Hubert stayed at home, and curled up into a ball on a sofa somewhere, and took a little siesta that made him all the brighter for the intellectual activities of the evening. The thought of a young life, new, untarnished, just at the outset, just addressing itself to the task of getting on, always stimulated her mind extremely, and she talked to Marjorie with a very real and effectual desire to help her to the utmost of her ability.
She talked of a start in life, and the sort of start she had had. She showed how many people who began with great advantages did not shove sufficiently, and so dropped out of things and weren't seen and mentioned. She defended herself for marrying Hubert, and showed what a clever shoving thing it had been to do. It startled people a little, and made them realize that here was a woman who wanted something more in a man than a handsome organ-grinder. She made it clear that she thought a clever marriage, if not a startlingly brilliant one, the first duty of a girl. It was a girl's normal gambit. She branched off to the things single women might do, in order to justify this view. She did not think single women could do very much. They might perhaps shove as suffragettes, but even there a husband helped tremendously—if only by refusing to bail you out. She ran over the cases of a number of prominent single women.
"And what," said Aunt Plessington, "do they all amount to? A girl is so hampered and an old maid is so neglected," said Aunt Plessington.
She paused.
"Why don't you up and marry Mr. Magnet, Marjorie?" she said, with her most brilliant flash.
"It takes two to make a marriage, aunt,"