Mr Pim Passes By

by A. A. Milne

  She had a sense of humour. You could tell her your most subtle joke and she would laugh at it, but her sense of humour was more to her than that. It had been her shield since first she was married, from over the top of which she smiled at the world when it was being bad, and rejoiced with it when it was good again. The world had been bad to her for five years; now it was very, very good; but you can never be sure of it. Whatever came, Olivia was ready for it, funny old world. The gods who sit in the stalls and laugh at the human comedy could never laugh at her; she was so much more at ease than they.

  People wondered why George and she lived so happily together. If you were George’s Aunt Julia, you wondered how George could ever have fallen in love with such a woman, a woman with a past. Even if you weren’t George’s Aunt Julia, but still a Georgian, you felt that he had been rather sporting and surprising about it, dashed fine woman though Mrs. George might be. But if you were a true Olivian, like Brian, you gave it up as hopeless. Marry him, possibly—but be happy with him? Never, never, never!

  But then Brian knew nothing about Jacob Telworthy.

  Well, not quite nothing, of course. He knew as much as Dinah knew, which was what Mr. Pim knew, what George had always known. Olivia did not talk about those five years with Jacob Telworthy. Those were the days when every ring at the bell sent her heart into her mouth, for fear that it heralded the police. There was a day later when the police did come, and again her heart was in her mouth, but this time for fear that they would go away without taking her husband with them. There was a day when he came back to her, with the air of one who had been at the front for six months, and greeted his Livvy as frankly and as effusively as ever. And afterwards there were days, but not many of them, when he was sober.

  They understood nothing of this, these others, but Olivia remembered. She would have laughed (how she would have laughed!) if she had heard them wondering why George and she were so happy together. Happy at Marden House! Happy with George, that honourable gentleman! Oh, no, no, it was not difficult.

  Of course, they did not always agree. George, to take a case, never found his Aunt Julia funny, whereas Olivia did. Olivia, to take another case, thought that some of the rooms at Marden House might be a little more exciting, whereas George thought them quite exciting enough. But these disagreements did not make them unhappy. George was not unhappy, because, even if Olivia didn’t see it now, a little reflection, my dear, would show her that she was wrong; and Olivia was not unhappy, because when you have spent five years with your first husband disagreeing about the morality of fraudulent company-promoting, a disagreement with your second husband about the humorous possibilities of his Aunt Julia is a so much pleasanter business that it almost seems in itself a cause for happiness.

  For the world was being very good. Sometimes on blue mornings in June, when she and George and Dinah walked through the happy Sunday fields on their way to church, the world felt so good to Olivia that her eyes would brim over suddenly into silent tears. Then she would turn aside for a moment to the hedge, saying that she must have a wild rose for her dress, and, breaking it, would wink the tears away, and laugh at herself for her foolishness, and then again for joy of all life meant now, cleanness and safety and rest. And so back to the anxious George on the footpath, looking at his watch and saying, ‘Olivia, dear, we haven’t too much time,’ and to the faithful Dinah, whose eyes were all loving questions, guessing at the tears, but not knowing why.

  Dinah worshipped her. As you watched Dinah, little bits of Olivia kept peeping out at you; her way of shaking hands, perhaps, a tone in her voice, a movement of the head, a crooked finger when drinking. Dinah’s ‘Olivia Mar den’ at the foot of a letter would pass anywhere for an original. These imitations were partly conscious, partly instinctive. Dinah was fourteen when Olivia, the pattern of perfect womanhood, came into her life. In the warmth of Olivia’s beauty she matured, adapting herself to the new radiance as she grew.

  II

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Olivia, seeing Dinah and Brian together, ‘I think I can guess.’

  They were by her side in a moment.

  ‘Olivia, darling!’ pleaded the girl, meaning that she was to be loved and forgiven and rejoiced with and helped, all in one smile if Olivia could manage it.

  ‘Say you understand, Mrs. Marden,’ said Brian.

  The smile came, and Dinah hugged the arm she was holding.

  ‘Mrs. Marden,’ said Olivia, ‘is a very dense person, I am afraid, Brian, but I think if you asked Olivia if she understood——’

  ‘Bless you, Olivia, I knew you would be on our side.’

  ‘Of course she would,’ said Dinah happily, putting her face up for a kiss.

  Olivia kissed her. Then she looked across at Brian.

  ‘I don’t know if it is usual to kiss an aunt-in-law,’ she said, ‘but Dinah is such a special sort of niece that——’ She waited, her cheek towards him.

  ‘I say, you are in luck to-day, Brian,’ said Dinah, almost enviously.

  Olivia laughed, but Brian took his kiss solemnly with the air of one stepping into a cathedral.

  ‘And how many people have been told the good news?’

  ‘Well, nobody yet.’

  ‘Except Mr. Pim,’ put in Dinah.

  ‘Oh, does he know? I thought he was just congratulating us generally.’

  ‘Who’s Mr. Pim?’

  ‘Oh, he just happened,’ explained Dinah casually.

  One adorable gift which Olivia had was that of knowing what questions to ask, and when to ask them. Suppose that you had been playing cricket all day and took her in to dinner in the evening, she might ask you what you had been doing. ‘Playing cricket,’ you would answer. Some women might then begin to talk about the parliamentary situation, or the price of jumpers, uninspiring subjects to a man who has made fifty that afternoon. Other women might ask at once, ‘How many did you make?’—a maddening question to a man who was bowled first ball. But Olivia would know. She would know from your voice whether you wanted the subject pursued or left alone. You were always safe with her.

  So being the least curious person in the world when curiosity was not wanted, she dropped Mr. Pim with a little smile, and moved across the room to the oak-chest opposite. And from the chest she drew a pile of orange-and-black curtains, and a work-box.

  These were the curtains which had brought the frown to George’s brow at the breakfast-table that morning.

  III

  The faded pink curtains in the morning-room had hung there for generations. They were of that distressing material (you can’t get it nowadays, luckily) which never wears out; in an earlier age they made nothing else. If Charles the First, instead of hiding in an oak-tree, had hidden behind curtains, as is much more usual in fiction, there would be as many country-houses to claim that theirs were the historic curtains as there are country-sides to claim that theirs is the historic oak. The Marden House curtains were well qualified. Alfred behind them would have been—indeed, probably was—quite safe from the Danes.

  But the fact that Alfred or Charles had found them good cover, or even that George’s grandmother had liked them once, brought no comfort to Olivia. Even if she had chosen them herself, a perquisite of marriage which surely every woman can demand, she would have wanted now to choose them again; all the more did she want it, having had no word in the original choice.

  For the morning-room was, of all others, her room. She had, perhaps, no legal rights; she had acquired it, much as George’s ancestors, one gathers, had acquired the outlying parts of George’s land: insidiously. An accident becomes a privilege, a privilege becomes a custom, a custom becomes a right. However it had happened, it was now her room, the room in which she lived, and now, at last, it was to be taken in hand.

  ‘I say!’ said Dinah excitedly. ‘Are those the curtains?’

  You gather that, even in their unfinished state
, they had made a certain amount of history. George’s disapproval had already been recorded.

  ‘I say! Then you are going to have them after all?’

  ‘After all what?’ said Olivia in surprise. ‘But I decided on them long ago.’ As she threaded her needle she said to Brian, ‘You haven’t told George yet?’

  ‘Well, no,’ said Brian. ‘I began to, you know, but I never got any farther then ‘Oh—er—there’s just—er——’

  ‘George would talk about pigs all the time.’

  ‘I think it was a pig morning,’ explained Brian, wishing to excuse George to his wife.

  ‘Well, I suppose you want me to help you.’

  They were round her on the sofa at once.

  ‘Do, darling,’ said Dinah eagerly.

  ‘It would be awfully decent of you,’ said Brian. ‘Of course, I’m not quite his sort really——’

  ‘You’re my sort,’ interrupted Dinah.

  ‘But I don’t think he objects to me, and we do love each other such lots——’

  ‘He means me and him,’ explained Dinah. ‘Not him and George.’

  ‘And I’d work awfully hard for her and we’d be happy together, I’m sure we would.’

  ‘You dears,’ said Olivia, looking lovingly from one to the other. And then, ‘Dinah means a great deal to me, Brian.’

  ‘I know she does,’ replied Brian. ‘But you mean a great deal to us, and we should always be wanting you——’

  Olivia smiled and shook her head.

  ‘I didn’t mean that quite. I want Dinah to be happily married; if she weren’t happy, I couldn’t be happy myself. I want her to marry a—a good man.’

  Brian said nothing, but looked at her steadily. She held out her hand suddenly, and added, ‘And I think she is going to.’

  There was a noise of footsteps on the terrace. George coming in.

  Chapter Five

  Husband and Wife

  I

  GEORGE’S day was not going well. These things happen sometimes. We cut ourselves shaving; there is an unwelcome letter on the breakfast-table; an enemy has hidden our boots; a boy cannons into us maliciously as we step into the street; our money has escaped from our pocket and gone back to the dressing-table. We feel that Somebody is not trying. It would almost seem that on this morning Somebody has forgotten about us altogether.

  A man like George is never forgotten, but there had been a little carelessness about him this morning. The ease and certainty which usually marked his day had been lacking. There was that argument at breakfast; nobody liked a good argument better than George, so long as the opposition kept to the point. But what could you expect from Strange? Just look at the fellow’s pictures! That showed you. And then he must needs come into the library when George was reading The Times. As if one couldn’t have an hour to oneself after breakfast in one’s own house! And then, when he had got rid of the fellow at last, and was just settling down to business with Lumsden, he is called back to the house to see a Mr. Pim or something. Why didn’t Olivia——

  But that was the worst thing of all—Olivia’s curtains.

  Of course it was absurd to suppose that she was going against his wishes. She would never do that. Besides, he had told her that if she wanted new curtains she should have them. Only let them be in keeping with the rest of the room; let them be the sort of curtains which one would expect to find in the house of a country gentleman. Not this new-fangled crazy stuff, meant for new-fangled people who had never been in the same house for more than five years at a time, people who craved always for some fresh excitement. Look at the stuff they called poetry nowadays! Wasn’t Shakespeare good enough for them? Henry F, for example. (George had done Henry V at his preparatory school, and could still quote bits of it, to the astonishment of his neighbours.) Look at their art—what was the matter with—well, with Sir Joshua Reynolds? What was the whole object of painting? To get it something like the original. But look at Strange’s pictures! Like nothing on earth.

  It was with this feeling of ill-usage still strong upon him that he stepped into the morning-room.

  ‘What’s all this about a Mr. Pim?’ he protested to Olivia’s back. ‘Who is he? Where is he? I had most important business with Lumsden, and the girl comes down and cackles about a Mr. Pim or Ping or something. Here, where did I put his card?’ He pulled it out of his waistcoat pocket, and read, ‘Mr. Carraway Pim.’ He added, as if that disposed of Mr. Pim, ‘Never heard of him in my life.’

  Dinah called attention to herself by explaining that he had had a letter of introduction.

  ‘Oh, you saw him, did you? Yes, that reminds me, there was a letter—ah, here we are.’

  He found it in another pocket, and began to read it.

  ‘He had to send a telegram,’ Dinah went on, wishing to keep George as friendly as possible by being really helpful. ‘He’s coming back.’

  Olivia looked at George, who was deep in his letter; she looked at Brian, who was standing uncomfortably near the door; and then she looked at her scissors, which were on the table by her side.

  ‘Brian,’ she said, ‘just pass me those scissors, will you?’

  Brian came towards her and picked up the scissors. ‘These?’ She thanked him, and indicated George’s back. ‘Shall I?’ said Brian’s eyebrows. Olivia nodded.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said George, putting the letter back in his pocket, ‘a friend of Brymer’s. That’s a different matter. Good fellow, Brymer; glad to do anything I can. I think I know the man he wants. Coming back you say, Dinah? Then I’ll be going back.’ He led the laughter at this happy way of putting it, Dinah joining in hopefully. ‘Send him down to the farm, Olivia, when he comes. I dare say he’ll like to see what—Hallo!’ He had suddenly realized Brian’s presence. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Don’t go, George,’ said Olivia gently. ‘There’s something we want to talk about.’

  ‘Hallo, what’s this?’ He looked from one to the other in amazement. His eye caught the curtains, and he frowned. Could it possibly be——

  ‘Shall I?’ murmured Brian to Olivia.

  She nodded, and he stepped forward bravely.

  ‘The fact is, sir,’ he began, ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you all this morning, only I didn’t seem to have an opportunity of getting it out.’

  ‘Well, what is it?’

  Brian pulled at his tie, and he looked at Olivia for help, and he looked at Dinah for help, and Dinah came a little nearer to him.

  ‘I—I want to marry Dinah.’

  George’s lower jaw dropped slowly.

  ‘You—you want to marry Dinah!’ he stammered. ‘God bless my soul!’

  Dinah rushed across to him and hugged his arm.

  ‘Oh, do say you like the idea, Uncle George!’

  George broke away from her, and strode across to Olivia.

  ‘Like the idea!’ he exclaimed. ‘Like the—like——Have you heard of this nonsense, Olivia?’

  ‘They’ve just this moment told me, George. I think they would be happy together.’

  George seized the opening.

  ‘And what do you propose to be happy together on?’ he asked Brian.

  ‘Well, of course, it doesn’t amount to much at present, sir. But we shan’t starve.’

  ‘Brian got fifty pounds for a picture last March,’ put in Dinah eagerly.

  ‘Oh!’ George was certainly staggered. It bewildered him that anybody could throw good money away like that. But he recovered triumphantly. ‘And how many pictures have you sold since?’ he asked.

  ‘Well—er—none,’ said Brian, a little awkwardly.

  ‘None! And I don’t wonder. Who the devil is going to buy pictures with triangular clouds and square sheep? And they call that Art nowadays! Good God, man, go outside and look at the clouds!’ He waved at the windows.

 
A man may be the guardian of the girl whom one wants to marry, but one cannot stand this sort of thing from him, particularly when he obviously knows nothing about painting. Brian was about to tell him that he obviously knew nothing about painting, when Olivia intervened.

  ‘If he promises to draw round clouds in future,’ she said quietly to her curtains, ‘will you let him marry Dinah?’

  ‘What?’ said George, very much upset. ‘What?’ He wheeled round to her and caught sight of the offensive curtains. ‘Yes, of course, you would be on his side—all this futuristic nonsense! I’m just taking these clouds as an example. I suppose I can see as well as any man in the county, and I say that clouds aren’t triangular.’

  Brian made a great effort to be reasonable.

  ‘After all, sir, at my age one is naturally experimenting, and trying to find one’s——’ He gave a little laugh, and went on—‘Well, it sounds priggish, but one’s medium of expression. I shall find out what I want to do, directly, but I think I shall always be able to earn enough to five on. Well, I have for the last three years.’

  ‘I see,’ said George. ‘And now you want to experiment with a wife, and you propose to start experimenting with my niece?’

  This was rather clever of him. He laughed pleasantly to show his approval of it. But that fellow Strange had no sense of humour.

  ‘Well, of course,’ said that fellow Strange, ‘if you talk like that——’ and he shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘You could help the experiment, darling,’ suggested Olivia, ‘by giving Dinah a good allowance until she’s twenty-one.’

  George looked at her in astonishment. She seemed to have missed the point altogether.

  ‘Help the experiment!’ he said indignantly. ‘I don’t want to help the experiment.’