Lady Penelope. Morley Roberts
was rot," said Goby. "For, if you married no one else, you would marry me."
"Certainly not as you are," retorted Penelope. "I want you and all men (that I know) to reform."
Goby was not astonished at anything Penelope said.
"I reformed long ago," he said. "As soon as I saw you, I said I'd reform and I did. It was a great deal of trouble, but I did it. Oh, you've no idea how I suffered. But I said, 'Plantagenet, my boy, if you are to be worthy, you must buck up!'"
This was encouraging.
"I'm glad I've had so much influence," said Pen, who didn't quite know what his reforms had been. "But there are other things. This is merely negative. What are you doing to be useful to the state? Are you loafing about on your money? Do you do any work? Are you educating yourself?"
Goby gasped.
"I say, come, Lady Penelope, I've done all that! Education! why, I had a horrid time at school and at a crammer's—"
"Do you read?" asked Pen, severely.
"Why, of course," said Goby.
"What?"
Goby rubbed his cropped hair with two fingers.
"Papers?"
"Anything?" said Pen.
"Well, I read the Sportsman and the Pink Un (at least, I did before I reformed) and the Referee," said Goby.
"Books?"
"Not many," said Goby. "But I will. What do you recommend?"
"I think Tennyson and Shelley would do you good," said Pen, "but you had better ask Mr. de Vere. And do you do anything useful?"
"De Vere! Oh, Lord!" cried Goby. "Anything useful? Why, I was in the army—"
"And now you do nothing. Well," said Penelope, "I think you had better begin at once. Any man I know has to do something useful. You must go to the War Office and ask to be made something again. I think a colonelcy of a militia regiment would suit you. And I am going to ask Mr. de Vere to take an interest in your reading."
"The devil!" said Goby. "I say, my dear Lady Penelope, I can't stand him. Why, you may have seen we are barely civil to each other."
"I shall speak to him firmly," said Penelope, "and it's for his good, too. He leads an unhealthy indoor life. I want you to change all that. You row a great deal still, don't you?"
"Since I reformed I began again," said Goby. He felt the muscles of his right arm with complacency.
"Take him out and make him row, then," said Pen, "and while he rows you can read poetry to him, and so on. It will be good for both of you."
"But—" said Goby.
"Yes?"
"If I do this, will you marry me?"
Penelope shook her head.
"If you do it, I'll think whether I'll marry you."
"Oh," said the soldier, "and if I just can't hit it off with that poet?"
"Then I won't think about it," replied Pen. "I'll never, never consider the possibility of marrying any one who isn't leading a useful life, and educating himself, and living on less than a thousand a year. Can you do that, too?"
"Dashed if I see how it can be done," said Plantagenet Goby. "But I'll try, oh, yes, I'll try."
"Now you talk to Chloe," said Penelope, and she went away to the rescue of the poet. For Bob had got him in a corner.
CAPTAIN PLANTAGENET GOBY, V.C., LATE OF THE GUARDS. Who was ordered to read poetry
"I say, Mr. de Vere, wasn't that ripping of old Goby to say he'd give me a real pedigree bull-pup? He knows a bull-pup from a window-shutter, as Baker says. You don't like them? No, but you would if you had one. I feed mine myself, and I wear thick gloves, so's not to get hydrophobia when he bites. He's a most interesting dog, and not so good-tempered as most bulldogs. When he sees a cat, oh, my, it's fun! Look here, when Goby gives me the new pup with the pedigree, you can have mine, if you like, cheap. I know you have a place in the country, and you must want a bulldog. Will you buy him?"
"Good heavens, no!" said the poet.
"Humph!" cried Bob, who of course had quite forgotten that he was doing all this for Goby, and was just enjoying himself. "Why, what do you do in the country without a dog? Do you ride?"
"No," said De Vere.
"Well, of all—I say, Mr. de Vere, what do you do? Do you walk about and make poetry, and do you like making it? Old Guth, I mean Mr. Guthrie, he's my tutor, and he's over there talking to Mrs. Cadwallader, he reads a lot, and some of yours, too."
"Oh, does he!" said De Vere, who began to take some interest. "Does he?"
"Oh, a lot of yours, he says; most of it, I think."
"And does he like it?"
Bob put his head on one side.
"Well, he says it's not bad, some of it."
De Vere flinched at this faint praise.
"Indeed! And what does he like best?" he asked.
"Oh, the beastliest rot," returned Bob, "Browning and Shelley, and I say, do you see that bulge in his pocket? That's Catullus. He reads him all day. But here comes Pen. I say, won't you have my bull-pup? I'll let you have him for half a sovereign; I got him for a sovereign, at least, Baker did. I think your poetry's very fine, sir; Mr. Guthrie lent me some."
But Penelope came across the lawn, and De Vere forgot Bob and the bull-pup, and fell down and worshipped. And the goddess took hold of him, and stripped a lot of his poetry away, and set a few facts before him and made him gasp.
"I heard a very strange rumour, Lady Penelope," he said, when he was once more standing upright before Aphrodite. "I heard—oh, but it was absurd! I can't believe it."
"Then it is probably true," said the goddess, breathlessly, "for I mean to have my own way and to initiate a reform in marriages, Mr. de Vere. I have been reading the accounts of some fashionable weddings lately, and they made me ill. What you have heard is quite true."
The poet shook his head.
"I have had the honour to beg you to believe a thousand times that I am devoted to you—"
"Three times, I think," said Pen, who was good at arithmetic.
"Is it only thrice? But do I understand that, if I were to have the inexpressible delight of winning your love, Lady Penelope, that the marriage would be a secret one, that no one would know of it?"
"I mean that," said Penelope, enthusiastically. "It is a new departure, an assertion of a just individualism, although I am a socialist. I abhor ceremonies, and will not be interfered with. I have stated with the utmost clarity to all my relations that I shall not consult them or let them know until I choose, and I shall only get married (if I ever do) on these terms."
"I agree to them," said the poet. "Lady Penelope, will you do me the inexpressible honour to be my wife?"
"Oh, dear, no," said Pen. "Why, certainly not, Mr. de Vere. I don't love any one yet, and perhaps I never shall. But what I say is this: I'll think as to whether I shall marry you if you do as I wish about this matter and about others."
"My blessed lady," said the poet, "is there anything I would not dare or do?"
"I've told Captain Goby exactly the same thing," said Penelope, thereby putting her pretty foot upon the sudden flowers of De Vere's imagination, "and what I want of you is to be more an out-of-door man. You live too much in rooms, hothouses, Mr. de Vere, and in your own garden."
"I