It Never Can Happen Again. William De Morgan
I should either say absolutely nothing, or if I said anything at all, just make it chaff—talk about his new flame—say you will evidently have to get somebody else, don't you see? As if it was entirely out of the question! Or perhaps that would be dangerous, and it wouldn't do to have him thinking you suspected him of fancying you weren't in earnest. No!—on the whole, I recommend saying absolutely nothing."
Marianne's brain refuses to receive complications beyond a certain point. She picks up the last intelligible phrase. "As if what was entirely out of the question?"
But Mrs. Eldridge is on her guard against making mischief. "You mustn't run away with the idea that I said there was anything," is the form her caution takes. And then, in response to an angry flush on her friend's face, "I'm sure there isn't the slightest reason for you to be uneasy. I have far too much faith in your husband to suppose such a thing possible for one moment.... No, indeed, dear!—even if she gets him to get her into this play of his—and then, of course, they would go on seeing each other—I shouldn't feel the smallest uneasiness. Because look at her social position!"
"What has her social position got to do with it?"
Mrs. Eldridge elevates her eyebrows, and perhaps her shoulders, slightly, as though asking space what next? But she brings both down to the level of her friend's knowledge of the world before answering: "I should have said everything. A woman in her position doesn't commit herself in any way with a man in your husband's, however distinguished he may be. Read any divorce case of that sort of people, and see if they don't have co-respondents of condition. Of course, I'm not speaking of disgraceful cases, where the woman isn't received after. But ordinary divorce cases in Fashionable Life."
"I can't see what you're talking about, Charlotte."
"Then I can't help it, dear. But I should have thought it was pretty plain, for all that!"
Marianne laughs, a little uneasily. "Do you mean to say, Charlotte, that because Titus goes away for a week to a country-house...?"
"Go on, dear." But Marianne is not constitutionally a sentence-finisher. She begins again:
"Why isn't Titus to speak to a lady without a preach about it?"
"My dear child, nobody's preaching. If you were to listen to me, instead of becoming impatient...."
"I'm not impatient! But you know it's irritating, and you can't deny it."
"Very well, dear, I don't then. But let me finish what I was saying. If you had listened to me, you would have seen my meaning. I was all the time exonerating your husband from the suspicion of even the slightest flirtation with this showy girl. I was trying to make your mind easy about them, and to say that even if they are rather thrown together—as of course they must be, because one knows what country-houses are...."
"Now, Charlotte, that is nonsense! Why are country-houses any different from town-houses? What stuff!" Marianne sees a light on the horizon. She knows about country-houses, because she was a girl in the country once. But much of her friend's analyses and insights had been so much unqualified Sordello to her, and had left her brain spinning. She can and will hold fast that which is good, and stick to the country-houses. And clearly, if she can prove that country and town houses are on all fours for the purposes of Charlotte's world—a world where a sort of dowdy Eros dodders respectably about, all the Greek fire knocked out of him—then a stopper will be put on these suggestions of infidelities. She does not see all the connecting-links, but would like to unhorse her opponent somehow.
That lady is also ready to let the issue turn provisionally on town and country-house life. But this is for a reason of her own. She pursues the subject: "It's not stuff, dear. There's all the difference in the world. In country-houses people split up into couples, and there's no check. Chaperones on long walks, of course!—only they can't go so quick, and get left behind. In town, no such thing. And there's really no such thing as staying with, in town, either. Practically! Of course, now and again friends from the country to stay a few days. But it isn't the same thing, going to the Royal Academy and the New Gallery. The Zoological Gardens is a good deal more like, only scarcely anybody goes. Wasn't that John's knock?"
It was, apparently, and was followed by John's pocket-handkerchief—at least, that was how a very loud noise was inexactly classified. Whatever its proper name was, it caused its promoter's wife to fear his cold was worse. He must have his feet in mustard and hot water. But his attitude was, when he had replaced the contingent remainder of the noise—a real pocket-handkerchief—in his pocket, that his cold was nearly well, and no human power should induce him to submit to treatment of any sort; but mustard and hot water least of all. He would go and have a Turkish Bath, and kill himself. Not that he anticipated a fatal result; his wife forecast that for him. It transpired shortly that he habitually set himself in opposition to all her wishes, and went his own way. But in so doing he encountered frequent disasters, his rescues from which were always achieved by her, single-handed, with constant addition to a long score of debt, unpaid by him, on account of which he never so much as said, thank you!
Mr. Eldridge was a person who defied description, in a certain sense; but only because description calls for materials, and he supplied none, or nearly none. He might have been the Average Man himself, for any salient point that he presented. An observant person, called on to recollect what he was like, would probably have remembered that he shaved, all but a little whisker, and given up the rest of him to oblivion.
His conversation, after the Turkish Bath had passed away, was an inquiry if his wife was ready; and, after he had been told not to fuss, but to sit down and make himself agreeable, a statement that it was a good deal colder than yesterday. So it afforded a natural opportunity to his good lady of giving him a chance to enrich it by comment on the subject in hand at the time of his arrival. She did not wish to drop it, having, in fact—as hinted above—a purpose in dwelling on it.
"We're talking about country-houses," said she.
"What houses?" said he; and then, without waiting for an answer: "Oh—country-houses! Where?"
"Don't pretend to be stupid, John. Nowhere, of course! No particular houses—country-houses in general. And town-houses."
"Oh, I see! What about 'em? How's the children?"
"Never mind them! Listen to me." Marianne interjected that perhaps they hadn't gone to bed, and she could ring for Martha to see. But she didn't do it, and no one urged it. So the children lapsed, and Mrs. Eldridge proceeded: "Pay attention to what I'm saying, John, and put that glass down. You'll break it." He did as he was bid. "We—are—talking—about—the differences between country-houses and town-houses." To which Mr. Eldridge replied, "Oh, ah!—yes, to be sure! Well!—you'd have to see 'em both," causing his wife to despair visibly of male intelligence, with endurance, before starting afresh with an appearance of willingness to make things easy for a slow apprehension: "We were talking about the difference of the way one lives, in town and in the country. Nothing to do with premises."
She then went on to put a hypothetical case, to enable her husband to grasp the full range of the recent conversation. Supposing that he had been a young man enamoured of a damsel whose sentiments towards himself were a matter of conjecture—suppose, in fact, he were "paying attention"; that was how the lady put it—would he prefer to press his suit in a town-house or a country-house? She made the question a leading one by suggesting divine solitudes congenial to the development of tender passions, and a climate favourable to the inspection of sunsets and moonrises. So tempting was the prospect to the mind of her hearer that he made a grimace expressive of greedy delight, and gave a low whistle. "'Ooky!" said he, dropping an aspirate humorously. "Country-houses—rather!"
"Any man would say so at once, Marianne." Which Mrs. Eldridge contrives to articulate in a way that implies, Heaven knows how, that their discussion has had application to some particular case—no mere abstract review of the subject. For the apprehension of her husband is reached, with the effect that he says, with an expression of roused interest: "I say, Lotty, tell up. Who's the party? Who's at it now?" But he does not press for information, because