The Daughter of the Storage Part 22

_Miss Ramsey_: "That would give him _less_ than no right."

_Miss Garnett_: "That is true. I didn't think of it in that light."

_Miss Ramsey_: "I'm trying to decide what I ought to do if he does want to get off. She said herself that they were engaged?"

_Miss Garnett_: "As much as that. Conny understood her to say so. And Conny never makes a mistake in what people say. Emily didn't say _whom_ she was engaged to, but Conny felt that that was to come later, and she did not quite feel like asking, don't you know."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Of course. And how came she to decide that it was Mr.

Ashley?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Simply by putting two and two together. They two were together the whole time last summer."

_Miss Ramsey_: "I see. Then there is only one thing for me to do."

_Miss Garnett_, admiringly: "I knew you would say that."

_Miss Ramsey_, dreamily: "The question is what the thing is."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes!"

_Miss Ramsey_: "That is what I wish to think over. Chocolates?" She offers a box, catching it with her left hand from the mantel at her shoulder, without rising.

_Miss Garnett_: "Thank you; do you think they go well with tea?"

_Miss Ramsey_: "They go well with anything. But we mustn't allow our minds to be distracted. The case is simply this: If Mr. Ashley is engaged to Emily Fray, he has no right to go round calling on other girls--well, as if he wasn't--and he has been calling here a great deal. That is perfectly evident. He must be made to feel that girls are not to be trifled with--that they are not mere toys."

_Miss Garnett_: "How splendidly you do reason! And he ought to understand that Emily has a right--"

_Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I don't know that I care about _her_--or not _pri_marily. Or do you say pri_mar_ily?"

_Miss Garnett_: "I never know. I only use it in writing."

_Miss Ramsey_: "It's a clumsy word; I don't know that I shall. But what I mean is that I must act from a general principle, and that principle is that when a man is engaged, it doesn't matter whether the girl has thrown herself at him, or not--"

_Miss Garnett_: "She certainly did, from what Conny says."

_Miss Ramsey_: "He must be shown that other girls won't tolerate his behaving as if he were _not_ engaged. It is wrong."

_Miss Garnett_: "We must stand together."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Yes. Though I don't infer that he has been attentive to other girls generally."

_Miss Garnett_: "No. I meant that if he has been coming here so much, you want to prevent his trifling with others."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Something like that. But it ought to be more definite.

He ought to realize that if another girl cared for him, it would be cruel to her, paying her attentions, when he was engaged to some one else."

_Miss Garnett_: "And cruel to the girl he is engaged to."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Yes." She speaks coldly, vaguely. "But that is the personal ground, and I wish to avoid that. I wish to deal with him purely in the abstract."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes, I understand that. And at the same time you wish to punish him. He ought to be made to feel it all the more because he is so severe himself."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Severe?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Not tolerating anything that's the least out of the way in other people. Taking you up about your ideas and showing where you're wrong, or even silly. Spiritually snubbing, Conny calls it."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I like that in him. It's so invigorating. It braces up all your good resolutions. It makes you ashamed; and shame is sanative."

_Miss Garnett_: "That's just what I told Conny, or the same thing. Do you think another one would hurt me? I will risk it, anyway." She takes another chocolate from the box. "Go on."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Oh, I was just wis.h.i.+ng that I had been out longer, and had a little more experience of men. Then I should know how to act.

How do you suppose people do, generally?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Why, you know, if they find a man in love with them, after he's engaged to another girl, they make him go back to her, it doesn't matter whether they're in love with him themselves or not."

_Miss Ramsey_: "I'm _not_ in love with Mr. Ashley, please."

_Miss Garnett_: "No; I'm supposing an extreme case."

_Miss Ramsey_, after a moment of silent thought: "Did you ever hear of anybody doing it?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Not just in our set. But I know it's done continually."

_Miss Ramsey_: "It seems to me as if I had read something of the kind."

_Miss Garnett_: "Oh yes, the books are full of it. Are those mallows?

They might carry off the effects of the chocolates." Miss Ramsey pa.s.ses her the box of marshmallows which she has bent over the table to look at.

_Miss Ramsey_: "And of course they couldn't get into the books if they hadn't really happened. I wish I could think of a case in point."

_Miss Garnett_: "Why, there was Peg Woffington--"

_Miss Ramsey_, with displeasure: "She was an actress of some sort, wasn't she?"

_Miss Garnett_, with meritorious candor: "Yes, she was. But she was a very _good_ actress."

_Miss Ramsey_: "What did _she_ do?"

_Miss Garnett_: "Well, it's a long time since I read it; and it's rather old-fas.h.i.+oned now. But there was a countryman of some sort, I remember, who came away from his wife, and fell in love with Peg Woffington, and then the wife follows him up to London, and begs her to give him back to her, and she does it. There's something about a portrait of Peg--I don't remember exactly; she puts her face through and cries when the wife talks to the picture. The wife thinks it is a real picture, and she is kind of soliloquizing, and asking Peg to give her husband back to her; and Peg does, in the end. That part is beautiful. They become the greatest friends."

_Miss Ramsey_: "Rather silly, I should say."

_Miss Garnett_: "Yes, it _is_ rather silly, but I suppose the author thought she had to do something."

_Miss Ramsey_: "And disgusting. A married man, that way! I don't see any comparison with Mr. Ashley."

_Miss Garnett_: "No, there really isn't any. Emily has never asked you to give him up. And besides, Peg Woffington really liked him a little--loved him, in fact."