Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land | Page 7

existence in England--his doctor advises him to settle down in a temperate climate--an appointment on some City Board--rubber shares and that kind of thing--you know it all--a red brick house in South Kensington and perhaps a little place in the country. He did not fill in the picture--but I did for him--with the charmingly domesticated wife-- well connected: the typical "nice English Girl," heiress of a comfortable fortune to supplement his own, which he candidly admitted needs supplementing.
Of course he's not a mere vulgar fortune-hunter. He must be genuinely in love with the nice English Girl. And that's where I upset HIS apple-cart.
In fact, we are both in an IMPASSE. I'm not eligible for his post and I shouldn't want it if I were. To my mind marriage is only conceivable with a barbarian or a millionaire. From the sordid atmosphere of English conjugality upon an income of anything less than an assured 5,000 pounds a year, good Lord deliver me! And you know my reasons for adding another clause to my litany. Good Lord deliver me also from further experience of the exciting vicissitudes of a stock-jobbing career!
Then again, apart from personal prejudices, I am appalled, quite simply, at the cold-blooded marriage traffic that I see going on in London. Any crime committed in the name of Love is forgivable, but to sell a girl--soul and body to the highest bidder is to my mind, the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. Frankly, I'm petrified with amazement at the way in which mothers hurl their daughters at the head of any man who will make a good settlement. There's Molly's sister-- she chases the game till she has corralled it, and once inside her walls the unfortunate prey hasn't swallowed his first cup of tea before she has wedded him in imagination to one of her girls--"How do you like Mr CHOSE?" "Like him? What is there to like? He's the same as all the rest of the men, and they're as like as a box of ninepins. . ."
"But what do you think of him. . .?" "But really there's nothing to think" . . . "But don't you think he'd do for Hester?" etcetera, etcetera.
She has just married the one before Hester to what she calls the perfect type of an English country gentleman--meaning that he owns an historical castle in Scotland, a coal mine in Wales and a mansion in Park Lane. Heavens! I'd rather follow the fortunes of a Nihilist and be sent to Siberia, or drive wild cattle and fight wild blacks with one of your Bush cowboys, than I'd marry the perfect type of an English country gentleman! Give me something REAL--anything but the semi-detached indifference of most of the couples one knows. No. MY man must be strong enough to carry ME off my feet and to break down all the conventions of "OUR CLASS." Then, I'd cheerfully tramp through the forest beside him, if it came to that, or cook his dinner in front of our wigwam. Now, if my Soldier of Fortune were to ask me to climb the Andes with him in search of that buried treasure! But he won't: and--I confess it, Joan--I'm in mortal terror of his insisting upon my entering the sphere of stock-jobbing respectability instead, and of my being weak enough to consent. But we haven't got anywhere near that yet.
So far, I'm just--living--trying to make up my mind what it is that I want most. Do you know, that since my violent attraction to him--or whatever you like to call it--all sorts of odd bits of revelation have come to me as to the things that really matter!
For one thing, I'm pretty certain that the ultimate end of Being is Beauty and that Love means Beauty and Beauty means Love. The immediate result of this discovery is that I'm buying clothes with a reckless disregard of the state of my banking account.
I begin to understand and to sympathise with that pathetic striving after beauty which one sees in the tawdry finery and exaggerated hairdressing of a kitchenmaid--Rosamond Tallant has one who is wonderful to behold as she mounts the area steps on her Sundays out. Formerly I should have been horrified at that kitchenmaid. Now I have quite a fellow-feeling with her piteous attempts to make herself attractive to her young man, the grocer's boy or the under-footman I suppose. Am I not at this very moment sitting with complexion cream daubed on my face, in order that I may appear more attractive to MY young man. I know now how Molly's maid--who is keeping company with Luke's butler--feels when we all dine early for a theatre and Josephine gets an evening out at the Earl's Court Exhibition with her gentleman.
Sounds beastly vulgar, doesn't