The Honour of the Clintons

by Archibald Marshall

And yet, by the time the house filled again, he could not congratulate himself on having made any progress with her. She would laugh with him and at him, and keep him agreeable company for an hour or two hours together, during which time their intimacy appeared to be founded on a complete and happy community of taste; but at a word or hint of love-making she would freeze, and if it was persisted in, she would leave him.

The poor man was in torments, underneath his gay exterior. If her behaviour had been designed to draw him on and enmesh him completely, it could not have been more effective. She was merry with him, because now she liked him, as a diversion from her lonely, sad-coloured thoughts. She could forget her estrangement from Nancy when she was playing with him, and the overcasting of her long-familiar life; and she felt so confident of being able to hold him in his place that the designs she knew him to be cherishing no longer troubled her at all.

But how was he to escape the perpetual hope that her obvious increase of liking for him was developing into something warmer than mere liking? And how was he to avoid now and then putting that hope to the test, seeing her so frank and so sweetly desirable? He was always cast down to the ground when he did so. Love had not blunted his native acuteness, and there was no mistaking the state of rising aversion in which she met and parried his tentative advances. In that only was she different from what she had been; for, before, she had parried them with a demure mischievousness, which had shown her taking enjoyment in the exercise of her wits. Now she used other weapons, and made it plain that her friendliness would not stand the strain, if she was to be put to those contests.

And yet liking and love cannot be kept in separate compartments in such circumstances as these. Liking, if it grows big enough, becomes love some day or other. He knew that, and she didn't; which was why he put very strong constraint on himself, made few mistakes in the way of premature soundings, and set himself diligently to be the indispensable companion of her days. The underlying contest, viewed from without, would have been seen to turn upon the question of his possessing qualities which would satisfy the deeper currents of her nature. Gaiety and courage he had, and self-control, if he cared to exercise it. Some amount of goodwill towards the world at large, also; but that was apt to hang upon the satisfaction or otherwise that he received from it. It was likely to come out at its strongest in his present condition of mind, and to throw into shadow his innate triviality.

It always seemed to Joan that he showed up least attractively in the presence of her mother, and this although he seemed more anxious to please her than he did to please Joan herself.

Bobby Trench could never have said that Mrs. Clinton was not giving him his chance. She never came into the room as if she wished to keep guard, nor turned a disapproving face upon the merriment that he made with Joan. She would respond to his sallies, and her smile was free, if it was aroused at all.

He thought that he had taken her measure. She was at heart a serious woman, and on that account she could not be expected to take very readily to him, for he hated seriousness, and it was out of his power to disguise it. But she was a nonentity in this house: he had heard her husband speak to her. The Squire was warmly in his favour, for reasons which were too obvious to need stating, and those reasons might be expected to appeal equally to Mrs. Clinton, who would also follow her husband's lead in everything. He did think that it was owing to her that Joan had been prevented from visiting him upstairs, for the Squire had given him that hint, without intending to do so. But he put that down to her old-fashioned prudery, and had forgiven her for it, since she now seemed quite willing to leave Joan alone with him. She might practically be disregarded as far as effective opposition was concerned; but it would be as well to keep on her right side, for Joan was evidently very fond of her, and by commending himself to her he would commend himself to Joan.

None but a shallow brain could have judged of Mrs. Clinton as a nonentity, when opportunities for observing her were such as Bobby Trench enjoyed. The very fact that when she was present his humour seemed even to him to wear thin, and the conversation always followed the paths into which she directed it, might have warned him of that error. The paths she chose were not such as he could disport himself in to any advantage, although she trod them naturally enough, and Joan followed her as if she liked taking them.

Ideas make the best talk, someone has said, then things, then people. Bobby Trench could talk about people all day and all night if he were to be called upon; his experience had been wide, he had a fund of anecdote, and a quick eye for a point. To talk well about "things," you want reading and knowledge, of which he had little. To talk well about ideas, you want some of your own, and he had but few. He heard Joan, to his surprise, venturing herself with interest on subjects to which he had never given a moment's thought, and on which his readily produced speeches were like those of a child pushing into and spoiling the converse of its elders. Joan would sometimes look at him in surprise, as if he had said something particularly foolish, when he was not aware of having done so. He felt at a disadvantage.

He could not see that the question of woman's suffrage, which he started himself, was not satisfactorily covered by funny stories about the suffragettes, and thought Mrs. Clinton a bore for going on with it. She asked him about plays which he had seen and of which she had read, and he told her about actors and actresses. Of books he knew nothing. They were not much talked about at Kencote, but Mrs. Clinton read a good deal, and so did Joan and Nancy, and talked between themselves of what they read. It was impossible to keep allusion altogether out of their talk, although they spared him as much as possible, having been trained to do so in the similar case of the Squire, whose broad view of literature was that as nobody had written better than Shakespeare, it was waste of time to read anything else until you had thoroughly mastered him, in which modest feat, however, he had not himself made any startling progress. But Bobby Trench, otherwise quite at ease as to his ignorance on such negligible matters, felt that it would have been to his benefit with Mrs. Clinton, and possibly with Joan, if he could have done with rather less explanation of points that were readily appreciated by either of them.