Let me give you what they call the data.
One day I was lunching with Ann, and was just proposing to her as usual, when, instead of simply refusing me, as she generally did, she fixed me with a thoughtful eye and kind of opened her heart.
“Do you know, Reggie, I am in doubt.”
“Give me the benefit of it,” I said. Which I maintain was pretty good on the spur of the moment, but didn’t get a hand. She simply ignored it, and went on.
“Sometimes,” she said, “you seem to me entirely vapid and brainless; at other times you say or do things which suggest that there are possibilities in you; that, properly stimulated and encouraged, you might overcome the handicap of large private means and do something worthwhile. I wonder if that is simply my imagination?” She watched me very closely as she spoke.
“Rather not. You’ve absolutely summed me up. With you beside me, stimulating and all that sort of rot, don’t you know, I should show a flash of speed which would astonish you.”
“I wish I could be certain.”
“Take a chance on it.”
She shook her head.
“I must be certain. Marriage is such a gamble. I have just been staying with my sister Hilda and her husband–-“
“Dear old Harold Bodkin. I know him well. In fact, I’ve a standing invitation to go down there and stay as long as I like. Harold is one of my best pals. Harold is a corker. Good old Harold is–-“
“I would rather you didn’t eulogize him, Reggie. I am extremely angry with Harold. He is making Hilda perfectly miserable.”
“What on earth do you mean? Harold wouldn’t dream of hurting a fly. He’s one of those dreamy, sentimental chumps who–-“
“It is precisely his sentimentality which is at the bottom of the whole trouble. You know, of course, that Hilda is not his first wife?”
“That’s right. His first wife died about five years ago.”
“He still cherishes her memory.”
“Very sporting of him.”
“Is it! If you were a girl, how would you like to be married to a man who was always making you bear in mind that you were only number two in his affections; a man whose idea of a pleasant conversation was a string of anecdotes illustrating what a dear woman his first wife was. A man who expected you to upset all your plans if they clashed with some anniversary connected with his other marriage?”
“That does sound pretty rotten. Does Harold do all that?”
“That’s only a small part of what he does. Why, if you will believe me, every evening at seven o’clock he goes and shuts himself up in a little room at the top of the house, and meditates.”
“What on earth does he do that for?”
“Apparently his first wife died at seven in the evening. There is a portrait of her in the room. I believe he lays flowers in front of it. And Hilda is expected to greet him on his return with a happy smile.”
“Why doesn’t she kick?”
“I have been trying to persuade her to, but she won’t. She just pretends she doesn’t mind. She has a nervous, sensitive temperament, and the thing is slowly crushing her. Don’t talk to me of Harold.”
Considering that she had started him as a topic, I thought this pretty unjust. I didn’t want to talk of Harold. I wanted to talk about myself.
“Well, what has all this got to do with your not wanting to marry me?” I said.
“Nothing, except that it is an illustration of the risks a woman runs when she marries a man of a certain type.”
“Great Scott! You surely don’t class me with Harold?”
“Yes, in a way you are very much alike. You have both always had large private means, and have never had the wholesome discipline of work.”
“But, dash it, Harold, on your showing, is an absolute nut. Why should you think that I would be anything like that?”
“There’s always the risk.”
A hot idea came to me.
“Look here, Ann,” I said, “Suppose I pull off some stunt which only a deuced brainy chappie could get away with? Would you marry me then?”
“Certainly. What do you propose to do?”
“Do! What do I propose to do! Well, er, to be absolutely frank, at the moment I don’t quite know.”
“You never will know, Reggie. You’re one of the idle rich, and your brain, if you ever had one, has atrophied.”
Well, that seemed to me to put the lid on it. I didn’t mind a heart-to-heart talk, but this was mere abuse. I changed the subject.
“What would you like after that fish?” I said coldly.
