Hawkins' Hotel,
Buckingham Street, Strand, W.C.
Sept. 27th, 1901.My dearest Mother,
I find this a very difficult letter to write, but it has got to be written, and you may as well know at once that by the time you get this letter I shall be married to Mary Wyatt who was at the White Hart Inn. I made up my mind to do this a month ago and I would have told you if I had not been afraid that somehow or other I would have been prevented. Of course I know that you and Father will be angry, but it can't be helped. It's done now. At least it will be by the time you get this. I'm going out to make arrangements now. Of course I'm rather worried about what you will say, but she is a charming girl and if you could only get over your prejudice and meet her I think you would agree with me. She is only three years older than me. Of course I cannot dictate what you are or are not to do. But unless you can see your way to being decent to Mary I would rather cut myself off from the family altogether. It would only make me angry if I thought she was being snubbed, and she is very sensitive. I am sorry for the way I am getting married, but please do not think that I am sorry about getting married, if you can understand what I mean. If I am old enough to know what profession I want to choose, I am old enough to know what wife I want to choose. I mention this because Father said to me last week that if I hadn't made up my mind yet what I wanted to do with my life, I never would make up my mind. I'm afraid this letter sounds rather defiant, but it's not meant to be defiant. Only I do want you both to understand that I'm in earnest. I will spare you the boredom of hearing how fond I am of Mary, partly because I know it would probably bore you and partly because I could not possibly express what I would like to say about her in writing. I know that this will mean giving up Oxford. But I do not mind about that. I think most people stay there too long. It's no good doing nothing for three years. We are going to stay for three or four days in London, and then we are going to spend our honeymoon in the village where Mary lives in Berkshire. After that I had an idea of emigrating to Canada.
Your loving son,
Geoffrey.
Mary gave this letter to her husband without comment and left him to read it alone. She did not feel that there was any possible comment except an outburst of bad language, and she was sure that Jemmie would manage that better than herself. When she rejoined him, he was still spluttering with rage, damning and disinheriting his son with equal fervor. For one thing Mary was grateful. He did not say it was all due to the way she had spoilt him. Indeed, he offered no reproaches. The blow was as inevitable as an apoplexy. There was no human being to be blamed apart from the unhappy principal.
"Married at nineteen to a barmaid! What a future! It isn't as if I'd set him a bad example. I can't blame myself. It's his natural wickedness and selfishness. It's the sort of thing young men do nowadays. No sense of decency. Want of proportion. Form ... no good form. Fancy comparing the choice of a profession with the choice of a wife! You can't compare things like that. The boy's mad. He's been touched by the sun playing golf. He's not normal. I consider we might get the marriage annulled on the ground that he was non compos when he committed it. Yes, non compos! We'll shut him up in a nursing-home for a couple of months. A rest cure. He's mad. The damned lunatic! Emigrate indeed? Canada! He might as well talk of emigrating to the moon. In fact, it strikes me that's the place to which his brains have emigrated...."
Jemmie went on railing like this until his wife interposed with a suggestion that she should go up to town this very morning and interview Geoffrey. There was just a chance he was not married yet. He probably had not realized how hard it was to get married without some preparation. Yes, there was just a chance that he was still free, and that if he were tactfully handled he might consent to remain free.
"You see, he's evidently nervous about us," Mary pointed out. "He had to run away in order to bring himself to do it. I expect the girl is a hussy. I expect she hooked him. Oh dear, how vulgar it makes oneself, when one mixes oneself up with vulgarity. Hooked him! And yet there's no other word for it."
"He's no longer a son of mine," the father swore. "By George, Mary, he is no longer my son. A lazy spendthrift who gets married with less preparation than he would give to ordering himself a lunch. This money he's been wheedling out of you. Depend upon it, his gambling debts were nothing but an excuse, a mean subterfuge. If he'd really been losing money at roulette, he'd have come to me. He'd have known that I wouldn't be hard on him."
"I should prefer to think that the money I gave him was spent upon getting married," said Mary unreasonably. "I loathed the idea of my son's being a weak gambler."
"Well, don't let you and me start arguing. Whatever he did with it, he has had the money. A barmaid! A girl who spends her day listening to beastly chaff! A crimped, corseted, vulgar barmaid to be my daughter-in-law! It's incredible."
"But there is a slight chance that she is not your daughter-in-law yet. So, if you've no objection, dear, I think I'll catch the midday train and go straight to this hotel in the Strand. I will take my dressing-case, and if necessary I can stay in town. I might go to Morley's Hotel. That would be close by."
Hawkins' Hotel was a tall, narrow, gloomy house with a German porter, sluttish chambermaids, and a manageress like a large doll with hair of tow. In the lower half of the house there was a perpetual odor of vegetables being cooked, and in the upper part there was a smell of dusty muslin.