“Our lamps never burn like that. Yet I see to them myself. Aunt Sophy taught me her own particular way of trimming a lamp.”
“My lamp burns well because I never see to it myself. The whole duty of the foolish young housekeeper is ‘doing the lamps.’
“I was telling you about Tim.” She seemed in a confidential mood. “He was brought up to the profession of great expectations. One’s greatest curse is a modest competence. We had it—until Tim’s father died, without even leaving him the shilling with which he cut him off. We hadn’t a halfpenny. Tim, with his unfailing originality, suggested earning a living, but his profession had spoiled him. He was like the Irishman who was willing to do anything but work or run errands. I took in boarders, but it didn’t pay; I never happened on a paying paying guest. He tried journalism; every failure tries that. At last a man on a rather prominent paper—worn out with importunities, no doubt—shipped him to South America and told him to study out-of-the-way sides of things. He paid him for it, too. His articles have been a great success. It really seems as if our luck has turned. Journalists are short-sighted; the man need not have sent him abroad in search of novelty. I could tell strange tales. Every cottage here has its skeleton, and I wheedle round the old people until they show me the bones. I am making a note-book for Tim—he can write a series of articles on Sussex skeletons when he comes home.”
She looked round at her bits of china and brass; at the shabby furniture which she had picked up at sales and in odd corners.
“Every little thing,” she said, “has its history. Such tender tales—such fierce, curdling, terrible tales—I hear from plodding men and heavy women in these little Sussex cottages! And it is all the more impressive because they are so phlegmatic. They tell you of a ruined life much more calmly than they would tell you of a bad batch of bread or a chicken stolen by the fox.”
Pamela was hardly listening. Her feet were on the gleaming rail of the pierced brass fender; her eyes thoughtful on the winking coals.
“Do you consider one runs a risk in marrying?” she asked tentatively at last.
“No risk—if you marry for the right motive. I haven’t found out what that is: not money; not duty—only prigs do their duty; not impulse; certainly not love.”
“Can one marry for peace?”
“Maybe. Peace is a great thing; I’ve found that since dear Tim went away and took his imaginary incurable troubles with him. I would write over every baby girl’s cradle: ‘DON’T MARRY A DYSPEPTIC!’