The Complete Works. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

      CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      Marian Lind lived at Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, with her father, the fourth son of a younger brother of the Earl of Carbury. Mr. Reginald Harrington Lind, at the outset of his career, had no object in life except that of getting through it as easily as possible; and this he understood so little how to achieve that he suffered himself to be married at the age of nineteen to a Lancashire cotton spinner’s heiress. She bore him three children, and then eloped with a professor of spiritualism, who deserted her on the eve of her fourth confinement, in the course of which she caught scarlet fever and died. Her child survived, but was sent to a baby farm and starved to death in the usual manner. Her husband, disgusted by her behavior (for she had been introduced by him to many noblemen and gentlemen, his personal friends, some one at least of whom, on the slightest encouragement, would, he felt sure, have taken the place of the foreign charlatan she had disgraced him by preferring), consoled himself for her bad taste by entering into her possessions, which comprised a quantity of new jewellery, new lace, and feminine apparel, and an income of nearly seven thousand pounds a year. After this, he became so welcome in society that he could have boasted with truth at the end of any July that there were few marriageable gentlewomen of twenty-six and upward in London who had not been submitted to his inspection with a view to matrimony. But finding it easy to delegate the care of his children to school principals and hospitable friends, he concluded that he had nothing to gain and much comfort to lose by adding a stepmother to his establishment; and, after some time, it became the custom to say of Mr. Lind that the memory of his first wife kept him single. Thus, whilst his sons were drifting to manhood through Harrow and Cambridge, and his daughter passing from one relative’s house to another’s on a continual round of visits, sharing such private tuition as the cousins with whom she happened to be staying happened to be receiving just then, he lived at his club and pursued the usual routine of a gentleman-bachelor in London.

      In the course of time, Reginald Lind, the eldest child, entered the army, and went to India with his regiment. His brother George, less stolid, weaker, and more studious, preferred the Church. Marian, the youngest, from being constantly in the position of a guest, had early acquired habits of selfcontrol and consideration for others, and escaped the effects, good and evil, of the subjection in which children are held by the direct authority of their parents.

      Of the numerous domestic circles of her father’s kin, that with which she was the least familiar, because it was the poorest, had sprung from the marriage of one of her father’s sisters with a Wiltshire gentleman named Hardy McQuinch, who had a small patrimony, a habit of farming, and a love of hunting. In the estimation of the peasantry, who would not associate lands, horses, and a carriage, with want of money, he was a rich man; but Mrs. McQuinch found it hard to live like a lady on their income, and had worn many lines into her face by constantly and vainly wishing that she could afford to give a ball every season, to get a new carriage, and to appear at church with her daughters in new dresses oftener than twice a year. Her two eldest girls were plump and pleasant, good riders and hearty eaters; and she had reasonable hopes of marrying them to prosperous country gentlemen.

      Elinor, her third and only other child, was one of her troubles. At an early age it was her practice, once a week or thereabouts, to disappear in the forenoon; be searched anxiously for all day; and return with a torn frock and dirty face at about six o’clock in the afternoon. She was stubborn, rebellious, and passionate under reproof or chastisement: governesses had left the house because of her; and from one school she had run away, from another eloped with a choir boy who wrote verses. Him she deserted in a fit of jealousy, quarter of an hour after her escape from school. The only one of her tastes that conduced to the peace of the house was for reading; and even this made her mother uneasy; for the books she liked best were fit, in Mrs. McQuinch’s opinion, for the bookcase only. Elinor read openly what she could obtain by asking, such as Lamb’s Tales from Shakespear, and The Pilgrim’s Progress. The Arabian Nights Entertainments were sternly refused her; so she read them by stealth; and from that day there was always a collection of books, borrowed from friends, or filched from the upper shelf in the library, beneath her mattress. Nobody thought of looking there for them; and even if they had, they might have paused to reflect on the consequences of betraying her. Her eldest sister having given her a small workbox on her eleventh birthday, had the present thrown at her head two days later for reporting to her parents that Nelly’s fondness for sitting in a certain secluded summer-house was due to her desire to read Lord Byron’s poetry unobserved. Miss Lydia’s forehead was severely cut; and Elinor, though bitterly remorseful, not only refused to beg pardon for her fault, but shattered every brittle article in the room to which she was confined for her contumacy. The vicar, on being consulted, recommended that she should be well whipped. This counsel was repugnant to Hardy McQuinch, but he gave his wife leave to use her discretion in the matter. The mother thought that the child ought to be beaten into submission; but she was afraid to undertake the task, and only uttered a threat, which was received with stubborn defiance. This was forgotten next day when Elinor, exhausted by a week of remorse, terror, rage, and suspense, became dangerously ill. When she recovered, her parents were more indulgent to her, and were gratified by finding her former passionate resistance replaced by sulky obedience. Five years elapsed, and Elinor began to write fiction. The beginning of a novel, and many incoherent verses imitated from Lara, were discovered by her mother, and burnt by her father. This outrage she never forgave. She was unable to make her resentment felt, for she no longer cared to break glass and china. She feared even to remonstrate lest she should humiliate herself by bursting into tears, as, since her illness, she had been prone to do in the least agitation. So she kept silence, and ceased to speak to either of her parents except when they addressed questions to her. Her father would neither complain of this nor confess the regret he felt for his hasty destruction of her manuscripts; but, whilst he proclaimed that he would burn every scrap of her nonsense that might come into his hands, he took care to be blind when he surprised her with suspicious bundles of foolscap, and snubbed his wife for hinting that Elinor was secretly disobeying him. Meanwhile her silent resentment never softened, and the life of the family was embittered by their consciousness of it. It never occurred to Mrs. McQuinch, an excellent mother to her two eldest daughters, that she was no more fit to have charge of the youngest than a turtle is to rear a young eagle. The discomfort of their relations never shook her faith in their “naturalness.” Like her husband and the vicar, she believed that when God sent children he made their parents fit to rule them. And Elinor resented her parents’ tyranny, as she felt it to be, without dreaming of making any allowances for their being in a false position towards her.

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