Chapter XIV: To Miss Molly Harding, 91B Harley Street, London, W

c/o DR. ROBT. LYNN,
APPLEBROOK, DEVON,
_May_ 6, 1910.

MY DEAR HOUSEKEEPER,

Twenty years ago your mother and I came down here for a fortnight's fishing to stay, just as we are staying now, and in the same month, too, with Bob Lynn and his wife. I remember that we wondered for quite six weeks if we could properly afford to do this. The house, you see--not 91B, but the tiny one at the end of Devonshire Street--had been so very costly in its demand for furniture, for rent, for wear and tear. The practice was so uncertain, seemed so desperately slow in growing. Was it safe to leave it? Would it be still there when we returned? And if not----?

So we argued, and knew all the time that there was a far more important consideration than any of these tucked away in the upstairs part of our minds. Was it safe to leave her at only ten months old? Would she know us again when we came back? Could any one in the world take a great enough care of her?

Perhaps you have never guessed what an important little person she was; and perhaps, even now, you decline, in that very calm and unimpassioned habit of yours, to believe it. But that must be because you have never properly studied the evidence. I wonder if you have ever seen, for instance, the clothes that she wore--such little clothes, but just look at them, every stitch as delicate as a tendril, and every dimple and pucker as soft as a wild bird's nest. There's never more than one person in the world who can make clothes like that; and nobody, not even her husband, knows where she learned the secret. And if this were only the husk, what then about the plump little kernel inside?

I can remember the long discussions, and how at last two cold-blooded physicians, the one in Devonshire and the other in town, had their own way, and forced a mother from her babelet for two long, if health-giving, weeks. I can remember the arrival of a Miss Sarah Harding--admirablest of lay-mothers (God bless them all)--to take up her awful charge; and the hour or so during which she received instructions enough to cause a less iron brain to melt upon its pan. But she was a wonderful woman even then, and _somebody_ had to take care of the child.

And now, with a trifling difference or two, here's history repeating itself in the oddest manner possible, father and mother flown down again to Devonshire, and somebody offering, in their absence, to take care of Miss Molly--but for rather longer than a paltry two weeks; and please what do we think of it?

By the same post, too, comes a brief, apologetic sort of letter from the candidate himself. He had meant to wait for another year or so before suggesting himself as even a possible caretaker, only as it happened last night at Lady Pearson's she was looking, etc. etc.--and you know how these things will get the better of a chap, etc. etc.--and, well, there it was, don't you know; and now it is all upon the knees of the gods. Or of one little goddess, did he mean to say? Because that of course is where it really is, as you both know very well indeed, in spite of your pretty letters to us, which have made your mother and me feel at once very elderly and happy and anxious (in a not too unpleasant sense) and also--do you mind?--vicariously honoured.

I doubt if I am looking at the matter quite eye to eye with the W.S.P.U. when I say this; but you'll have to forgive me, I think, especially as it's your Daddy's opinion that you ask for, and not theirs. So I'll tell you just what I felt when I read your letter, and comprehended its tidings.

1. Dear me, is she really as old as that?

2. Then what am I?

3. _O tempus edax rerum!_

4. But it's really rather gratifying.

5. Because after all there are so many nice girls in the world.

6. And yet it's _my_ girl that he would like to marry.

7. _Our_ girl, please. (This from Esther.)

You see how primitive we become in these little crises of life.

And I think, if you really want to have my very particular message to you about this, it is--don't mind being a little primitive yourself.

On the whole, perhaps, I am not able to prescribe this as often as I should like; and chiefly because, I suppose, the young couples that come to me for an opinion on matrimony are not as a rule normal young couples. They have usually been sent, that is to say, by some wise or anxious guardian who has foreseen for them some probable disaster. And often enough I have had to beseech them for their own good and for the unborn others to let their reason lay aside their passion--not without tears.

Now, I believe I know you well enough to be right in saying that the--shall I call it the strictly eugenic?--side of the question is not likely to suffer from your neglect. Newnham and the W.S.P.U. will have taken care of that. Nor is there anything, in the present case, to trouble you from this point of view. For Arthur Lynn is a sound, healthy, athletic young man, four years your senior, of good stock and sufficiently satisfactory means and prospects. Both physically and in every other way he would be a desirable husband for you. And all this, as I gather from your letter, you have been very carefully, and very rightly, considering. Moreover you can be quite sure--you probably _are_ quite sure--that there is no one whom your mother and I would sooner have for a son-in-law, as I am writing to tell him this evening.

No, my dear, I don't think that your danger lies in a too slender application of reason to the problem before you. It lurks, if anywhere, in a too great disregard of what is often supposed to be its antithesis. And I should like you to have written to me, not only that you were 'naturally pleased, of course, if a little perplexed,' but that you were _thrilled_. To which, no doubt, you will reply that in the first place you're not the sort of young woman that indulges in thrills, and in the second that, had you done so, you would certainly never have committed the fact to paper. But I should have read it between the lines. Ah, Molly, don't ever be _too_ afraid of thrills. For at the worst (the most _bourgeois_) they are at any rate evidences of life, not only within but without--some all-pervading force, short-circuited for a moment through your own awakened consciousness to that old, old world on which you stand; while at the best--well, who shall say from what unseen Vessel the current has its birth?

Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,
I would speak my heart out; heaven is my need.

Was it like that with you, Molly? Because that is how I would have it for you, my dear. And I think it is worth waiting for, not for a week only, as you have suggested to Arthur, but for far longer than that. You will tell me, very likely, and with perfect truth, to remember that wherever marriages may be said to have their hypothetical origin, in actual practice they must needs evolve upon earth. And that's a side of the question, no doubt, that a good many people are inclined to forget. But you're not one of them. And I should like you to give Heaven a chance, not only for your own sake, but for your future husband's, whoever he may ultimately be. Husbands need a little halo, you see, at any rate to begin with. And that's why I should like you to wait awhile--say six months or so--even at the risk of causing young Lynn a little gentle (but quite harmless) unhappiness. And when--and if--he comes to you then (for you mustn't allow him to promise) let your heart have no doubt in its yes.

Your affect. father,
P. H.