“Well, I never do anything right! Yesterday—you do shake hands with people when you meet them, don’t you?—well, yesterday, Lady Denby took me to the Skating Party at Government House. I thought it was going to be so nice, Raymond. We always thought so at home, you know, but it wasn’t just like what we imagined—in fact, it was awfully different.”
“Yes, yes. But the point of the story, Marjorie?”
“I’m trying to tell you, dearie. You see, if you haven’t been there, it’s so difficult to understand the queer customs of the place. I’d been introduced to Captain Dodson—he called out the names, you know, standing just beside Their Royal Highnesses—and when we got into the room where they were receiving, Lady Denby went first, and I came second, and Miss Deane last, and you understand, Raymond, I couldn’t see whether Lady Denby spoke to him or not, and so when I came along and he saw me and sort of smiled, I said, ‘How do you do, Captain Dodson?’ and held out my hand. You do shake hands with people, don’t you, Raymond?”
“Never mind just now. Go on.”
“Well, he didn’t shake hands with me! Worse than that, he put his hands behind his back and said, ‘Mrs. Raymond Dilling,’ in an awful voice, and Miss Deane simply pushed me past him! I didn’t know what to do when I got there in front of the Duke and the Duchess. I didn’t know whether to shake hands or not, and I’m—I’m afraid, darling, that I behaved like a terrible simpleton. It was easy enough to see that Lady Denby was frightfully annoyed. She said that to shake hands with Captain Dodson was not the thing, and to shake hands with Their Royal Highnesses, was the thing, and altogether, I’m so muddled, I don’t know what to do! Raymond, what on earth is THE THING?”
Dilling drew his finger definitely from his book, laid the volume on the table, and gave his attention to the question.
“Well, Marjorie,” he said, “although I’ve never formed a considered opinion on this subject, I’ll lay the facts before you, and we’ll reason it out together.”
Reasoning a subject out together between Marjorie and her husband was a merest euphemism for a philosophical lecturette with Dilling on the platform and his wife supplying the atmosphere. With his characteristic gesture when entering upon a discussion of some remote topic that interested him—an upward sweep of the right arm with the sensitive fingers coming to rest on his rapidly-thinning chevelure—he proceeded to instruct her.
“The Thing, my dear girl, as I see it, is one of the forms of what the Polynesians call ‘Tabu’. In the large, ‘tabu’ may be said to be negative magic—that is, abstention from certain acts in order that unpleasant or malefic results may not ensue. Do you follow, so far?”
“Yes, dear . . . I think so . . . a kind of rule, you mean, don’t you? One can see that, but what puzzles me, is that it works both ways. How does one learn when it is right, and when it is wrong? Isn’t there some starting point?”