"Oh, Mr. Magnet!" said Marjorie—his eye so obviously invited her to say something. Mr. Pope tried a nebulous joke about "groaning boards of Frisky Hanger," and only Mr. Wintersloan restrained his astonishment and admiration. "You could have got those chaps in livery," he said—unheeded. The lunch was as a matter of fact his idea; he had refused to come unless it was provided, and he had somehow counted on blue coats, brass buttons, and yellow waistcoats—but everybody else of course ascribed the whole invention to Mr. Magnet.
"Well," said Mr. Pope with a fine air of epigram, "the only thing I can say is—to eat it," and prepared to sit down.
"Melon," cried Mr. Magnet to the waiters, "we'll begin with the melon. Have you ever tried melon with pepper and salt, Mrs. Pope?"
"You put salt in everything," admired Mr. Pope. "Salt from those attics of yours—Attic salt."
"Or there's ginger!" said Mr. Magnet, after a whisper from the waiter.
Mr. Pope said something classical about "ginger hot in the mouth."
"Some of these days," said Mr. Wintersloan, "when I have exhausted all other sensations, I mean to try melon and mustard."
Rom made a wonderful face at him.
"I can think of worse things than that," said Mr. Wintersloan with a hard brightness.
"Not till after lunch, Mr. Wintersloan!" said Rom heartily.
"The claret cup's all right for Theodore, Mrs. Pope," said Magnet. "It's a special twelve year old brand." (He thought of everything!)
"Mummy," said Mr. Pope. "You'd better carve this pie, I think."
"I want very much," said Mr. Magnet in Marjorie's ear and very confidentially, "to show you the view from the church tower. I think—it will appeal to you."
"Rom!" said Theodore, uncontrollably, in a tremendous stage whisper. "There's peaches!... There! on the hamper!"
"Champagne, m'am?" said the waiter suddenly in Mrs. Pope's ear, wiping ice-water from the bottle.
(But what could it have cost him?)
§ 13
Marjorie would have preferred that Mr. Magnet should not have decided with such relentless determination to make his second proposal on the church tower. His purpose was luminously clear to her from the beginning of lunch onward, and she could feel her nerves going under the strain of that long expectation. She tried to pull herself together, tried not to think about it, tried to be amused by the high spirits and nonsense of Mr. Wintersloan and Syd and Rom and Theodore; but Mr. Magnet was very pervasive, and her mother didn't ever look at her, looked past her and away from her and all round her, in a profoundly observant manner. Marjorie felt chiefly anxious to get to the top of that predestinate tower and have the whole thing over, and it was with a start that she was just able to prevent one of the assiduous waiters filling her glass with champagne for the third time.
There was a little awkwardness in dispersing after lunch. Mr. Pope, his heart warmed by the champagne and mellowed by a subsequent excellent cigar, wanted very much to crack what he called a "postprandial jest" or so with the great humorist, while Theodore also, deeply impressed with the discovery that there was more in Mr. Magnet than he had supposed, displayed a strong disposition to attach himself more closely than he had hitherto done to this remarkable person, and study his quiet but enormous possibilities with greater attention. Mrs. Pope with a still alertness did her best to get people adjusted, but Syd and Rom had conceived a base and unnatural desire to subjugate the affections of the youngest waiter, and wouldn't listen to her proposal that they should take Theodore away into the town; Mr. Wintersloan displayed extraordinary cunning and resource in evading a tête-à-tête with Mr. Pope that would have released Mr. Magnet. Now Mrs. Pope came to think of it, Mr. Wintersloan never had had the delights of a good talk with Mr. Pope, he knew practically nothing about the East Purblow experiment except for what Mr. Magnet might have retailed to him, and she was very greatly puzzled to account for his almost manifest reluctance to go into things thoroughly. Daffy remained on hand, available but useless, and Mrs. Pope, smiling at the landscape and a prey to Management within, was suddenly inspired to take her eldest daughter into her confidence. "Daffy," she said, with a guileful finger extended and pointing to the lower sky as though she was pointing out the less obvious and more atmospheric beauties of Surrey, "get Theodore away from Mr. Magnet if you can. He wants to talk to Marjorie."
Daffy looked round. "Shall I call him?" she said.
"No," said Mrs. Pope, "do it—just—quietly."
"I'll try," said Daffy and stared at her task, and Mrs. Pope, feeling that this might or might not succeed but that anyhow she had done what she could, strolled across to her husband and laid a connubial touch upon his shoulder. "All the young people," she said, "are burning to climb the church tower. I never can understand this activity after lunch."
"Not me," said Mr. Pope. "Eh, Magnet?"
"I'm game," said Theodore. "Come along, Mr. Magnet."
"I think," said Mr. Magnet looking at Marjorie, "I shall go up. I want to show Marjorie the view."
"We'll stay here, Mummy, eh?" said Mr. Pope, with a quite unusual geniality, and suddenly put his arm round Mrs. Pope's waist. Her motherly eye sought Daffy's, and indicated her mission. "I'll come with you, Theodore," said Daffy. "There isn't room for everyone at once up that tower."
"I'll go with Mr. Magnet," said Theodore, relying firmly on the privileges of the day....
For a time they played for position, with the intentions of Mr. Magnet showing more and more starkly through the moves of the game. At last Theodore was lured down a side street by the sight of a huge dummy fish dangling outside a tackle and bait shop, and Mr. Magnet and Marjorie, already with a dreadful feeling of complicity, made a movement so rapid it seemed to her almost a bolt for the church tower. Whatever Mr. Magnet desired to say, and whatever elasticity his mind had once possessed with regard to it, there can be no doubt that it had now become so rigid as to be sayable only in that one precise position, and in the exact order he had determined upon. But when at last they got to that high serenity, Mr. Magnet was far too hot and far too much out of breath to say anything at all for a time except an almost explosive gust or so of approbation of the scenery. "Shor' breath!" he said, "win'ey stairs always—that 'fect on me—buful sceny—Suwy—like it always."
Marjorie found herself violently disposed to laugh; indeed she had never before been so near the verge of hysterics.
"It's a perfectly lovely view," she said. "No wonder you wanted me to see it."
"Naturally," said Mr. Magnet, "wanted you to see it."
Marjorie, with a skill her mother might have envied, wriggled into a half-sitting position in an embrasure and concentrated herself upon the broad wooded undulations that went about the horizon, and Mr. Magnet mopped his face with surreptitious gestures, and took deep restoring breaths.
"I've always wanted to bring you here," he said, "ever since I found it in the spring."
"It was very kind of you, Mr. Magnet," said Marjorie.
"You see," he explained, "whenever I see anything fine or rich or splendid or beautiful now, I seem to want it for you." His voice quickened as though he were repeating something that had been long in his mind. "I wish I could give you all this country. I wish I could put all that is beautiful in the world at your feet."