Part 6
He became quite sure, by a sort of accumulation of reflection, as
the day wore on. He found his youngest daughter intrusive in his
thoughts all through the morning, and still more so in the
afternoon. He saw her young and graceful back as she descended
from the carriage, severely ignoring him, and recalled a glimpse
he had of her face, bright and serene, as his train ran out of
Wimbledon. He recalled with exasperating perplexity her clear,
matter-of-fact tone as she talked about love-making being
unconvincing. He was really very proud of her, and
extraordinarily angry and resentful at the innocent and audacious
self-reliance that seemed to intimate her sense of absolute
independence of him, her absolute security without him. After
all, she only LOOKED a woman. She was rash and ignorant,
absolutely inexperienced. Absolutely. He began to think of
speeches, very firm, explicit speeches, he would make.
He lunched in the Legal Club in Chancery Lane, and met Ogilvy.
Daughters were in the air that day. Ogilvy was full of a client's
trouble in that matter, a grave and even tragic trouble. He told
some of the particulars.
"Curious case," said Ogilvy, buttering his bread and cutting it
up in a way he had. "Curious case--and sets one thinking."
He resumed, after a mouthful: "Here is a girl of sixteen or
seventeen, seventeen and a half to be exact, running about, as
one might say, in London. Schoolgirl. Her family are solid West
End people, Kensington people. Father--dead. She goes out and
comes home. Afterward goes on to Oxford. Twenty-one, twenty-two.
Why doesn't she marry? Plenty of money under her father's will.
Charming girl."
He consumed Irish stew for some moments.
"Married already," he said, with his mouth full. "Shopman."
"Good God!" said Mr. Stanley.
"Good-looking rascal she met at Worthing. Very romantic and all
that. He fixed it."
"But--"
"He left her alone. Pure romantic nonsense on her part. Sheer
calculation on his. Went up to Somerset House to examine the
will before he did it. Yes. Nice position."
"She doesn't care for him now?"
"Not a bit. What a girl of sixteen cares for is hair and a high
color and moonlight and a tenor voice. I suppose most of our
daughters would marry organ-grinders if they had a chance--at
that age. My son wanted to marry a woman of thirty in a
tobacconist's shop. Only a son's another story. We fixed that.
Well, that's the situation. My people don't know what to do.
Can't face a scandal. Can't ask the gent to go abroad and
condone a bigamy. He misstated her age and address; but you
can't get home on him for a thing like that. . . . There you
are! Girl spoilt for life. Makes one want to go back to the
Oriental system!"
Mr. Stanley poured wine. "Damned Rascal!" he said. "Isn't there
a brother to kick him?"
"Mere satisfaction," reflected Ogilvy. "Mere sensuality. I
rather think they have kicked him, from the tone of some of the
letters. Nice, of course. But it doesn't alter the situation."
"It's these Rascals," said Mr. Stanley, and paused.
"Always has been," said Ogilvy. "Our interest lies in heading
them off."
"There was a time when girls didn't get these extravagant ideas."
"Lydia Languish, for example. Anyhow, they didn't run about so
much."
"Yes. That's about the beginning. It's these damned novels. All
this torrent of misleading, spurious stuff that pours from the
press. These sham ideals and advanced notions. Women who Dids,
and all that kind of thing. . . ."
Ogilvy reflected. "This girl--she's really a very charming,
frank person--had had her imagination fired, so she told me, by a
school performance of Romeo and Juliet."
Mr. Stanley decided to treat that as irrelevant. "There ought to
be a Censorship of Books. We want it badly at the present time.
Even WITH the Censorship of Plays there's hardly a decent thing
to which a man can take his wife and daughters, a creeping taint
of suggestion everywhere. What would it be without that
safeguard?"
Ogilvy pursued his own topic. "I'm inclined to think, Stanley,
myself that as a matter of fact it was the expurgated Romeo and
Juliet did the mischief. If our young person hadn't had the
nurse part cut out, eh? She might have known more and done less.
I was curious about that. All they left it was the moon and
stars. And the balcony and 'My Romeo!' "
"Shakespeare is altogether different from the modern stuff.
Altogether different. I'm not discussing Shakespeare. I don't
want to Bowdlerize Shakespeare. I'm not that sort I quite agree.
But this modern miasma--"
Mr. Stanley took mustard savagely.
"Well, we won't go into Shakespeare," said Ogilvy "What interests
me is that our young women nowadays are running about as free as
air practically, with registry offices and all sorts of
accommodation round the corner. Nothing to check their
proceedings but a declining habit of telling the truth and the
limitations of their imaginations. And in that respect they stir
up one another. Not my affair, of course, but I think we ought
to teach them more or restrain them more. One or the other.
They're too free for their innocence or too innocent for their
freedom. That's my point. Are you going to have any apple-tart,
Stanley? The apple-tart's been very good lately--very good!"
