Well, that was the sort of girl Jeremy liked! He saw in himself now a man of considerable experience. Had he not grown up side by side with Sibylla, her whims and her tantrums? Had he not watched the development of Anna Selford's distinction, and listened to her sharp tongue? Had he not cause to remember Dora Hutting's alternate coquettishness and scruples, the one surely rather forward (Jeremy had been revising his recollections), the other almost inhuman? Reviewing this wide field of feminine variety, Jeremy felt competent to form a valid judgment; and he decided that gentleness, trustfulness, and fidelity were what a man wanted. He said as much to Alec Turner, who told him, with unmeasured scorn, that his ideas were out of date and sadly retrograde.
"You want a slave," said Alec witheringly.
"I want a helpmeet," objected Jeremy.
"Not you! A helpmeet means an equal—an intellectual equal," Alec insisted hotly. He was hot on a subject which did not seem necessarily to demand warmth because he too had decided what he wanted. He had fallen into a passion which can be described only as unscrupulous. He wanted to marry clever, distinguished, brilliant Anna Selford—to marry her at a registry office and take her to live on two pounds a week (or thereabouts) in two rooms up two pairs of stairs in Battersea. Living there, consorting with the people who were doing the real thinking of the age, remote from the fatted bourgeoisie, she would really be able to influence opinion and to find a scope for her remarkable gifts and abilities. He sketched this ménage in an abstract fashion, not mentioning the lady's name, and was much annoyed when Jeremy opined that he "wouldn't find a girl in London to do it."
"Oh, as for you, I know you're going to become a damned plutocrat," Alec said, with a scornful reference to the dyeing works.
"Rot!" remarked Jeremy, but he was by no means so annoyed at being accused of becoming a damned plutocrat as he would have been a year earlier, before he had determined to seek speedy riches and fame in order to dazzle Dora Hutting, and when he had not encountered the gentle admiring eyes of Eva Raymore. Whatever else plutocrats (if we may now omit the epiphetus ornans) may or may not do in the economy and service of the commonwealth, they can at least give girls they like fine presents, and furnish beautiful houses (and fabrics superbly dyed) for their chosen wives. There are, in short, mitigations of their lot, and possibly excuses for their existence.
Jeremy's state of mind may easily be gauged. The dye works were prominent, but the experience of life was to the front too. He was working hard—and had his heart in his play besides. For his age it was a healthy, and a healthily typical, existence. The play part was rich in complications not unpleasurable. The applause of large admiring brown eyes is not a negligible matter in a young man's life. There was enough of the old Jeremy surviving to make the fact that he was falling in love seem enough to support an excellent theory on the subject. But on the other hand he had meant the fame and riches for Dora Hutting—to dazzle her anyhow—whether to satisfy or to tantalise her had always been a moot point. In imagination Jeremy had invariably emerged from the process of making wealth and fame either unalterably faithful or indelibly misogynistic, Dora being the one eternal woman, though she might be proved unworthy. It had never occurred to him that he should label the fame and riches to another address. To be jilted may appear ludicrous to the rest of the world, but the ardent mind of the sufferer contrives to regard it as tragic. A rapid transference of affection tends to impair the dignity of the whole matter. Still, large brown admiring eyes will count—especially if one meets them every day. Jeremy was profoundly puzzled about himself, and did not suppose that just this sort of thing had ever occurred before.
Then a deep sense of guilt stole over him. Was he trifling with Eva? He hoped not. But of course there is no denying that the idea of trifling with girls has its own attractions at a certain age. At any rate to feel that you might—and could—is not altogether an unpleasing sensation. However Jeremy's moral sense was very strong—the stronger (as he was in the habit of assuring Alec Turner) for being based on pure reason and the latest results of sociology. Whenever Eva had been particularly sweet and admiring, he felt that he ought not to go to Buckingham Gate again until he had put his relations with Dora Hutting on an ascertained basis. He would knit his brow then, and decline to be enticed from his personal problems by Alec's invitations to general discussion. At this stage of his life he grew decidedly more careful about his dress, not aiming at smartness, but at a rich and sober effect. And all the while he started for Romford at eight in the morning. He was leading a very fine existence.
"These are very roseate hues, Kate," Christine Fanshaw observed with delicate criticism as she sipped her tea. Kate had been talking about Eva and hinting benevolently about Jeremy.
"Oh, the great trouble's always behind. No, it's not so bad now, thank heaven! But if only he could come back for good! I'm sure we want roseate hues!"