“Well, dearest, on the whole, yes. But unfortunately Mrs. Townsend was there. An excellent Bridge player, and I am always pleased to see her myself, but some people are so odd in their manner towards her. Quite embarrassing really, in fact awkward at times. Absurd, too, with so good a player. And though her father was a grocer it was in the wholesale line, which is different from the retail. Besides, she married well, and doesn’t drop her aitches.”
Trix’s chin went up. “I hate class distinctions being made so horribly obvious,” said she with fine scorn.
Mrs. Arbuthnot looked thoughtful.
“Well, dearest, in Mrs. Townsend’s case, perhaps. But not always. I remember a girl I knew married a farmer. Most foolish.”
“But why, if he was nice?” demanded Trix, exceedingly firmly.
“Oh, but dearest,” ejaculated Mrs. Arbuthnot, “it was so unsuitable. He wasn’t even a gentleman farmer. He had been a labourer.”
“He might have been a nice labourer,” contended Trix.
Mrs. Arbuthnot sighed. “In himself, possibly. But it wouldn’t do. The irritation afterwards. We are told to avoid occasions of sin, and it would not be avoiding occasions of ill-temper if you married a man like that. Beer and muddy boots, to say nothing of inferior tobacco. The glamour passed, though for my part I cannot see how there ever would be any glamour, probably infatuation, the boots—you know the kind, dearest, great nails and smelling of leather—the beer and the tobacco would be so terribly obvious. No, dearest, it doesn’t do.”
Trix was silent. After all wasn’t she again arguing on a point regarding which she had had no real experience? Pia had tried the experiment, and declared it didn’t work; and that, in the case of a man who was of gentle birth, though posing as a labourer. In her own mind she felt it ought to work,—of course under certain circumstances. It was not the birth, but the mind that mattered. And, if there were the right kind of mind, there most certainly would not be the boots, the beer, and the tobacco. Trix was perfectly sure there wouldn’t be. But it evidently was no atom of good trying to explain to other people what she meant, because they entirely failed to understand, and she was not certain that she could explain very well to herself even what she did mean.
It was not in the least that she had ever had the smallest desire to run counter to these conventions in any really important way, but she did hate hard and fast rules. Why should people lay down laws, as rigid as the laws of the Medes and Persians on matters that did not involve actual questions of right and wrong! There were enough of those to observe, without inventing others which were not in the least necessary.