One day Joan, lunching at the club, met Madge Singleton.
"I've had such a funny letter from Flossie," said Joan, "begging me almost with tears in her ink to come to her on Sunday evening to meet a 'gentleman friend' of hers, as she calls him, and give her my opinion of him. What on earth is she up to?""It's all right," answered Madge. "She doesn't really want our opinion of him--or rather she doesn't want our real opinion of him.
She only wants us to confirm hers. She's engaged to him.""Flossie engaged!" Joan seemed surprised.
"Yes," answered Madge. "It used to be a custom. Young men used to ask young women to marry them. And if they consented it was called ' being engaged.' Still prevails, so I am told, in certain classes.""Thanks," said Joan. "I have heard of it.""I thought perhaps you hadn't from your tone," explained Madge.
"But if she's already engaged to him, why risk criticism of him,"argued Joan, ignoring Madge's flippancy. "It's too late.""Oh, she's going to break it off unless we all assure her that we find him brainy," Madge explained with a laugh. "It seems her father wasn't brainy and her mother was. Or else it was the other way about: I'm not quite sure. But whichever it was, it led to ructions. Myself, if he's at all possible and seems to care for her, I intend to find him brilliant.""And suppose she repeats her mother's experience," suggested Joan.
"There were the Norton-Browns," answered Madge. "Impossible to have found a more evenly matched pair. They both write novels--very good novels, too; and got jealous of one another; and threw press-notices at one another's head all breakfast-time; until they separated. Don't know of any recipe myself for being happy ever after marriage, except not expecting it.""Or keeping out of it altogether," added Joan.
"Ever spent a day at the Home for Destitute Gentlewomen at East Sheen?" demanded Madge.
"Not yet," admitted Joan. "May have to, later on.""It ought to be included in every woman's education," Madge continued. "It is reserved for spinsters of over forty-five.
Susan Fleming wrote an article upon it for the Teacher's Friend;and spent an afternoon and evening there. A month later she married a grocer with five children. The only sound suggestion for avoiding trouble that I ever came across was in a burlesque of the Blue Bird. You remember the scene where the spirits of the children are waiting to go down to earth and be made into babies?
Someone had stuck up a notice at the entrance to the gangway:
'Don't get born. It only means worry.'"
Flossie had her dwelling-place in a second floor bed-sitting-room of a lodging house in Queen's Square, Bloomsbury; but the drawing-room floor being for the moment vacant, Flossie had persuaded her landlady to let her give her party there; it seemed as if fate approved of the idea. The room was fairly full when Joan arrived.
Flossie took her out on the landing, and closed the door behind them.
"You will be honest with me, won't you?" pleaded Flossie, "because it's so important, and I don't seem able to think for myself. As they say, no man can be his own solicitor, can he? Of course Ilike him, and all that--very much. And I really believe he loves me. We were children together when Mummy was alive; and then he had to go abroad; and has only just come back. Of course, I've got to think of him, too, as he says. But then, on the other hand, Idon't want to make a mistake. That would be so terrible, for both of us; and of course I am clever; and there was poor Mummy and Daddy. I'll tell you all about them one day. It was so awfully sad. Get him into a corner and talk to him. You'll be able to judge in a moment, you're so wonderful. He's quiet on the outside, but I think there's depth in him. We must go in now."She had talked so rapidly Joan felt as if her hat were being blown away. She had difficulty in recognizing Flossie. All the cock-sure pertness had departed. She seemed just a kid.
Joan promised faithfully; and Flossie, standing on tiptoe, suddenly kissed her and then bustled her in.
Flossie's young man was standing near the fire talking, or rather listening, to a bird-like little woman in a short white frock and blue ribbons. A sombre lady just behind her, whom Joan from the distance took to be her nurse, turned out to be her secretary, whose duty it was to be always at hand, prepared to take down any happy idea that might occur to the bird-like little woman in the course of conversation. The bird-like little woman was Miss Rose Tolley, a popular novelist. She was explaining to Flossie's young man, whose name was Sam Halliday, the reason for her having written "Running Waters," her latest novel.
"It is daring," she admitted. "I must be prepared for opposition.
But it had to be stated."
"I take myself as typical," she continued. "When I was twenty Icould have loved you. You were the type of man I did love."Mr. Halliday, who had been supporting the weight of his body upon his right leg, transferred the burden to his left.
"But now I'm thirty-five; and I couldn't love you if I tried." She shook her curls at him. "It isn't your fault. It is that I have changed. Suppose I'd married you?""Bit of bad luck for both of us," suggested Mr. Halliday.
"A tragedy," Miss Tolley corrected him. "There are millions of such tragedies being enacted around us at this moment. Sensitive women compelled to suffer the embraces of men that they have come to loathe. What's to be done?"Flossie, who had been hovering impatient, broke in.
"Oh, don't you believe her," she advised Mr. Halliday. "She loves you still. She's only teasing you. This is Joan."She introduced her. Miss Tolley bowed; and allowed herself to be drawn away by a lank-haired young man who had likewise been waiting for an opening. He represented the Uplift Film Association of Chicago, and was wishful to know if Miss Tolley would consent to altering the last chapter and so providing "Running Waters" with a happy ending. He pointed out the hopelessness of it in its present form, for film purposes.