“Not if her affections are really engaged,” said Miss Verinder, with one of her deprecating smiles.
“Oh, no, nonsense,” said Mr. Parker, in a tone more irritable than any that he had ever employed when addressing this honoured guest. “Don’t let’s have any idiotic sentimentality, which would merely encourage her. We have never fostered anything of that sort, and Mildred, up to now, has seemed to have her head screwed on all right. I regard this as a passing craze—due, in great measure, to all this preposterous exaltation of the stage. Upon my word, the illustrated papers make me positively sick nowadays—nothing but photographs of actors and actresses. Miss So-and-So at play. Mr. What’s-his-name on the golf links. Theatrical stars on the Riviera!”
A few days later Miss Verinder called upon the Parkers, and reported that, having sounded Mildred, she had no doubt that the young lady’s feelings for the young gentleman were of a deep and serious character.
Mr. Parker immediately said that if he accepted even half the substance of this report, the time had come to put his foot down, and he would either send or take Mildred into exile on the continent.
“I’ll keep her out of his way, until she has got over it.”
An absorbingly interesting discussion ensued on the ethics of parental authority. Miss Verinder advised them not to attempt strong measures with Mildred; above all, not to put restrictions on her liberty here in London or to banish her from her native land.
“I really don’t think,” she said meekly, “that parents have the right to act in so violent a manner. And I am quite sure, Mr. Parker, that it never pays. As to banishment—well, you know, absence is apt to make the heart grow fonder; and if it comes to giving a young girl peremptory orders to stop being in love with somebody that she is in love with, I do really think it must always strengthen her resolve. She feels then that she is being unjustly dealt with. After all, it is her destiny that is at stake. She may love and respect her parents, she may regret—oh, yes, she may most bitterly regret giving them pain”—Miss Verinder’s voice faltered, and she showed other signs of slight emotion—“but she cannot renounce the whole happiness of her life, because other people—even her father and mother—order her to do so. She herself must decide. Believe me, Mr. Parker, it isn’t right to use more than argument and persuasion. Force is quite out of the question.”
Mr. Parker walked about the room fuming; and it must be confessed that as Miss Verinder observed his frowning brows, his heightened colour, and the querulous lines at each side of his mouth, she felt for a moment an almost mischievous amusement in recognizing how little human nature had changed in the last quarter of a century. This room was very different from any room of that old house in Prince’s Gate, and yet the atmosphere was the same. Emmie glanced round at the very modern decorations chosen by Mrs. Parker with so much pride and pleasure. This was the boudoir of Mrs. Parker, and she called it the Chinese parlour. The ceiling was red; the walls were black, with panels filled not by pale-limbed nymphs of Leighton or Burne-Jones, but by golden sprawling dragons, iridescent fishes, and impossible silver trees; the furniture, instead of being heavy and splendid, was light and fantastic. Mrs. Parker had no comfortable pouf to sit upon. But here was Mr. Parker, who believed himself to be full of liberal-mindedness and advanced up-to-date philosophy, who belonged to the Automobile Club and went by aeroplane to Paris, holding in all essentials the views that fathers held twenty-five years ago, or a hundred years before that. He believed not only that he had the right to dispose of his daughter’s heart, but that if he showed firmness he would vindicate this right. He was more old-fashioned, further behind his times, than poor Mr. Verinder had been. He walked to and fro and gloured at Emmie.
“I hope,” she said, “that you will not think me impertinent in venturing to give my advice.”
“Oh, no. Oh, certainly not. I am very much obliged.” Mr. Parker stopped walking, made some swallowing movements in his throat, and then spoke impressively but urbanely. “There are very few people for whose judgment I have so much respect as for yours, Miss Verinder. The position and the influence that you have rightly secured among all who have the honour of your acquaintance is, if I may say so, principally due to the very high standard of, ah, manners as well as morals that you rightly stand out for. I know that you do not tolerate subversive ideas. Otherwise, frankly, I could not have listened to you with the patience that I hope I have shown. But I cannot, I will not agree that it is my duty to allow a child of mine to make a fool of herself if I can prevent it. And what staggers me, what beats me altogether”—and he looked from Miss Verinder to his wife, with a suddenly helpless, baffled expression—“what utterly amazes me is the change in Mildred. I ask myself what has happened to her. Is she bewitched? It is not like her to oppose any headstrong wish of hers to the considered opinion of those older and presumably wiser. Up till now she has seemed to lean on one’s advice, to crave for it. It is not as if she had ever been a disobedient girl. Why, good gracious, no. We used to say from the very beginning, even when she was quite a tiny little thing, ‘There is never any trouble with Mildred.’ One just told her what to do, and she seemed to take a positive pleasure in doing it. Is not that so?”