England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Social aspects -- England -- Fiction
That was the strong, first impression! It was all very well for his
surface mind to say that the girl was not by birth a tweeny maid; she
was the daughter of Professor Wannop and she could jump! For Tietjens
held very strongly the theory that what finally separated the classes
was that the upper could lift its feet from the ground whilst common
people couldn't. . . . But the strong impression remained. Miss Wannop
was a tweeny maid. Say a lady's help, by nature. She was of good family,
for the Wannops were first heard of at Birdlip in Gloucestershire in the
year 1417--no doubt enriched after Agincourt. But even brilliant men of
good family will now and then throw daughters who are lady helps by
nature. That was one of the queernesses of heredity. . . . And, though
Tietjens had even got as far as to realise that Miss Wannop must be a
heroine who had sacrificed her young years to her mother's gifts, and no
doubt to a brother at school--for he had guessed as far as that--even
then Tietjens couldn't make her out as more than a lady help. Heroines
are all very well; admirable, they may even be saints; but if they let
themselves get careworn in face and go shabby. . . . Well, they must
wait for the gold that shall be amply stored for them in heaven. On this
earth you could hardly accept them as wives for men of your own set.
Certainly you wouldn't spend your own wife's money on them. That was
what it really came to.
But, brightened up as he now suddenly saw her, with silk for the pink
cotton, shining coiled hair for the white canvas hat, a charming young
neck, good shoes beneath neat ankles, a healthy flush taking the place
of yesterday's pallor of fear for her comrade; an obvious equal in the
surroundings of quite good people; small, but well-shaped and healthy;
immense blue eyes fixed without embarrassment on his own. . . .
"By Jove . . ." he said to himself: "It's true! What a jolly little
mistress she'd make!"
He blamed Campion, Sandbach and the club gossips for the form the
thought had taken. For the cruel, bitter and stupid pressure of the
world has yet about it something selective; if it couples male and
female in its inexorable rings of talk it will be because there is
something harmonious in the union. And there exists then the pressure of
suggestion!
He took a look at Mrs. Duchemin and considered her infinitely
commonplace and probably a bore. He disliked her large-shouldered,
many-yarded style of blue dress and considered that no woman should wear
clouded amber, for which the proper function was the provision of
cigarette holders for bounders. He looked back at Miss Wannop, and
considered that she would make a good wife for Macmaster; Macmaster
liked bouncing girls and this girl was quite lady enough.
He heard Miss Wannop shout against the gale to Mrs. Duchemin:
"Do I sit beside the head of the table and pour out?"
Mrs. Duchemin answered:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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