“Not to that woman!”
“There, I knew you would be amazed. They tell me Ophelia fainted; frightful affectation in a great, strapping girl like that; but then, my dear, those big creatures are always so emotional. I told my cousin Herbert years ago that I would never marry, and the poor fellow got engaged to a dissenter two months afterwards out of pique. Men are so inferior in these days. And those Gusset girls are shocking; they remind me of the pictures of that awful man Rossetti. You should have known my grandfather; he was such a gentleman, and could quote Latin like a native.”
Mrs. Mince adjusted the patent ventilator in the roof and remarked that the room seemed “stuffy.”
“Of course I had foreseen the thing for weeks,” she said, with emphasis, not desirous of appearing too markedly impressed. “I expected the affair every day. Mr. Mince is very intimate with dear Lord Gerald.”
Mrs. Marjoy’s spectacles glittered in the doorway. The pair pounced upon her, both speaking at once, as though eager to claim precedence in the sensation. At the conclusion thereof Mrs. Marjoy displayed the deficiencies in her dental array.
“A mere matter of decency,” she observed, with superlative sagacity. “The Gusset girl had to avoid a scandal. These society women are impossible. Ask my husband; he’s a man of the world.”
It was the evening of “The Guild” meeting, and the room was soon surcharged with the matrons of Saltire. Their work-bags, pamphlets, and gloves littered the deal table with its green baize cover. Unfortunately these ladies were not unique, in that they were moved to be charitable to other women’s reputations only by active moral endeavor. Spontaneously invidious, they only transcended their natural impulse towards mendacity by the power of spiritual pride. Venus ruled the room that evening. Many minutes passed before Mrs. Mince could reclaim her sisters from worldly discussion and direct their energies to the prescribed philanthropies of the hour.
After the concluding prayer the members of the Saltire Christian Guild again reverted with ardor to matrimonial topics. Mrs. Jumble, Saltire’s intellectual luminary, discussed the problem with certain of her more youthful disciples. Mrs. Jumble possessed a liking for epigrams; she revered the Johnsonian spirit, and had embraced the dignity of a judge summing up evidence. Moreover, her Roman nose lent color to the latter illusion.
“Marriage, Miss Ginge,” she said, addressing that simpering young lady—“marriage is a most serious and imposing circumstance, the mingling of two individualities in the alembic of love. To be frank, I consider Paul something of a pedant. He was a fanatic who did not comprehend the full significance of woman in religious evolution. Now, dear John would have made an admirable husband, so cultured, so reposeful, so Victorian. Never marry a fanatic, my dear, even though he be insane on the subject of potato-growing. Fanatics are unpleasant persons to live with. As for the present example, after a thorough sifting of individual eccentricities I should expect this alliance to lead to prodigious domestic problems. The begetting of an unwieldy family is the fundamental error of matrimony. Mr. Strong is a poet, I believe. Tin trumpets and sonneteering do not harmonize kindly. Poets and artists are generally undisciplined beings. I could quote you a certain remark of Giotto’s; but you are over young, Miss Ginge, to listen to realisms. Candidly, I foresee a fiasco in the approaching marriage.”
There was one woman in Saltire who aspired to a higher philosophy than that of a monthly nurse. To Judith Strong nothing was more repugnant than the subjection of a brother’s character to the tyranny of trivial tongues. For the prevalent physical estimate of marriage she had a superlative loathing, nor did she love the rustic oracles and their lore.