Cynthia's Love Affairs/Chapter 3
III.—The Experiment
ALICE and Jimmy, after their marriage, saw very much less of me. They went away to live in the country, where they had no society and the advantage of paying one third more than London prices for such country produce as the people there thought not good enough to send to the London markets. They called this the idyllic life. The really important point was that their manner of life, whether idyllic or not, prevented them from exercising a friendly and unnecessary supervision over my particular affairs.
Neither of them would have discovered any danger in Hubert Pedley. He was twenty-five years older than I was. He had a plain, strong, clean-shaven face. His expression was grave, particularly grave when he was speaking of any humorous subject. He was said to be an expert in the reading of ciphers, and had written a book on the subject, but he never mentioned it to me. His favourite author was Gibbon, but he never quoted him. He was rather matter-of-fact than romantic; he generally seemed somewhat hopeless about everything, but his despair was rather a gentle amusement to him than a suffering. He did not seem to be at all the kind of man that one would marry, and although he was possessed of considerable independent means, I do not think that up to the time when I first met him he had ever had any inclination to spend a portion of his income on the maintenance of a wife.
The first time he took me down to dinner he struck me as being brusque, unusual, and interesting. I do not mean to say that he began to be interesting at once, but then I do not like that kind; when a man talks about the hereafter on the staircase I am always a little nervous about the point that he will have reached by dessert. It was some time afterwards when I came to think over Mr. Pedley that I discovered that he had really managed to advance surprisingly towards intimacy on the first occasion of our meeting; and I thought it rather clever of him not to have let me see it at the time.
However, it was not until we had known each other for some weeks, during which we frequently met, that he told me about his curious collection. The general talk had turned on blue-and-white, and it had been obvious that he knew rather more about it than any one there. I said as much to him.
“Yes,” he said, “I did make it obvious. At the same time I know next to nothing about it. I never collected that; my other collection takes so much time.”
And what is it?”
“Surely, I must have told you. The thing has been the passion of my life. I collect men and women.”
I was by this time used to hearing Hubert Pedley say with perfect gravity things which he did not mean seriously. So I said sympathetically that very few of the men or women I knew would look nice stuffed.
“I don't kill them,” he answered.
“Then don't you think it unkind to keep them in captivity?”
“Ah, then I have not told you. I have divided,” he went on blandly, “the whole human race into three hundred genera, according to their important characteristics. In many cases a genus has a certain number of sub-genera. Well, I have had a cabinet made, a tremendous affair, containing three hundred drawers; it covers nearly the whole of one wall of my study at Ardley”-Ardley was his country place—“and in the drawers of my cabinet I keep my specimens. That is to say, when I meet any one often enough to get any knowledge of him or her, I either get a photograph or, where that is not possible, a card with his or her name written on it, and put it into one of the three hundred drawers. I have got one specimen of each kind now, and of some of the commoner kinds I have got dozens.”
“Yes? My last photograph doesn't even begin to think about doing me justice. Pity, isn't it, Mr. Pedley?”
“"Well, he answered, meditatively, “I should have been very glad, of course, if you could have made a concession to the whim of a collector. All collectors are mad, you know, Miss Ames, and humane people generally humour their delusions. However, there would have been all the trouble of adding an extra drawer to the cabinet; I should not have grudged that, but still it would undoubtedly be too much to ask from you.”
“That will do,” I said, “you could not have done better than that. So I am the three-hundred-and-oneth kind of human being, am I? I don't want anything nicer than that said to me. I promise you my photograph for the collection.”
“You are too kind. I cannot thank you enough.”
“Then tell me—have you got many photographs?”
“Very many. In most cases I get a photograph.”
“And how on earth do you do it?”
He did not blush or appear in the least disconcerted. He answered quite calmly: “If you want the exact truth, I generally get the photograph by implying that its original is the three-hundred-and-oneth kind.”
Then I got angry. “If you think for a minute, I am quite sure that you will see that you are being abominably rude?”
“Certainly,” he answered impassively, “the exact truth—like all other desirable things—is always impossible, Mais que voulez-vous? I could not offer you anything that was not desirable, and—”
At this moment a candle-shade above us caught fire, and fell blazing just on the top of my head. It had hardly touched it, before Mr. Pedley had caught it up in one hand, stepped quickly to the fire-place, and dropped it in the grate. My hair was not even singed. We were in the boudoir, which opens into the drawing room; and although the doors were open and there were several people in the drawing-room, no one noticed the incident.
He came back to me, and went on with his sentence, quite placidly—“and, besides, your conclusion is too hasty. You see—”
“Mr. Pedley,” I said rapidly—I was more excited than he was—“pardon me, but you must have burnt your hand.”
“Not at all, not at all. To return to—”
A sudden impulse come over me. In a second I had caught his right hand in mine, and held it up. What I saw was not pretty; but I could have kissed it. “I thought so,” I said, rising; “if Mrs Carning is idiot enough to have that kind of shade, I suppose that she keeps the remedies on the premises. Now don't protest. There isn't going to be any fuss. But you may want that hand again one of these days.” I pressed the electric bell by the side of the fireplace. We slipped out into the hall, and intercepted the servant there, who got us what we required. The remedies for a burn are not romantic, but I don't think I noticed that fact at the time.
“What can I do to thank you properly?” I asked.
“The thing's too trivial. You speak as if I had saved your life at the risk of my own.”
“You saved my hair, which is my personal appearance, which is quite as much. And I said that you were rude, and you were not. Oh, I could cry!”
“If you did that, I should have saved your personal appearance to no purpose. Don't spoil my sublime act of heroism for me; I am going to have it represented in stained glass, either for St. Paul's or the Abbey—they must toss for it, since both deserve it, and I can only afford one. Casabianca is nothing to it. Don't, please, make it ineffective.”
“There is just one thing that I can do.”
“You can make my excuses to Mrs. Carning, and—oh, yes—you'll see, I'm sure, that she isn't made to feel bad about it.”
“Mrs. Carning married my own first cousin's best friend,” I replied, “and if that does not give me a right to stop her from indirect arson and murder for the future, I don't know what does. That was not what I meant. I can, and will, go to Baker Street to-morrow and get myself photographed in one hundred and fifty different positions, and send you one of each; and please put one in all the cabinet drawers that have got really abusive labels on them.”
“I could not do that. My collection is scientific, and science must be accurate—though complete accuracy is frequently misleading.”
“I suppose the simplest way to get at truth is to make a paradox.”
“But mine was a well-used paradox, and therefore more common-place than the common-place. The tuning of an organ is generally quoted as an instance of the necessity for inaccuracy. But don't let me talk like the Child's Guide to General Knowledge. I should be thanking you in advance for the photograph. I only want one.” He paused, looked at me intently, and added: “And even that is not quite what I want.”
“What would you like best?”
“To keep you in captivity,” he answered. “Good-night, Miss Ames.”
At first I thought that he was merely echoing my own phrase, without any second thought. After he had gone I felt sure that he had meant something, and in consequence I was much perturbed. I felt as if he had almost proposed to me, and might go on with it.
I met him frequently after this, and always in a crowd. It was some time before we were alone together again. The tête-à-tête is hard to procure without the comments of the censorious. I procured one at last by one of the most satisfactory processes—accidental elimination of the chaperone. I felt sure that he meant to propose to me, and I did not know whether I could bring myself to accept a man old enough to be my father, merely because I was immensely interested in him. I was certain that I should know when the time came, and I wanted to put myself out of my misery.
“I have frequently,” he said, “in talking to you, commented on prevalent customs.”
“Yes,” I answered; “you have given me an impression that things in general are all wrong, that they can't be put right, and that it doesn't matter, but is on the contrary rather funny.”
“Well,” he said, “in this case I have a remedy to propose. I think that the present method of getting married—which I propose to remedy—is distinctly disgraceful.”
“Why?”
“In the first place it is not gradual enough. It must be a shock for a woman to suddenly transfer herself from the dead chill of an ordinary social meeting to the—the intimacies of a betrothal. There should be a preliminary step, something which might be called the experiment, something less than an engagement and rather more than disengagement, as things stand at present the engagement is generally public, and if it is broken off one of the parties to it is generally much abused. The experiment would be essentially private; it would not bind either party, and either party would in con sequence be free to break it off at will and without being called a jilt. All it would imply would be that the parties to it would see if an engagement were possible; it would not mean that they loved each other, but that they had thought it worth while to see if they could love each other, to test that question by frequent meetings and so on. If, for instance, an old man, or at least a middle-aged man, finds that he loves a young girl”
At this point my heart suddenly turned into a man beating carpets, and I wanted to run away.
“The man could not perhaps, unless he felt very sure, ask for an engagement; he might ask for the first step—the experiment. Are you agreeing with me?”
“Theoretically,” I said, in rather a husky voice.
“I want to keep you in captivity,” he said slowly. “Will you consent to the experiment? You can free yourself at once if the experiment breaks down by just telling me so. Will you?”
At this moment a door opened and a servant came in. I turned to Mr. Pedley,
“Yes,” I said.
The experiment did not last for long.
I knew almost at once that I had made a mistake, but I waited on with a wild hope that the thing might come right. I used all my logic on the thing that logic never alters. Once I happened to catch his eye looking at me across a room full of people. I got up and went out. I could not stand it.
On the next day I got the following note from him:
- “My dear Cynthia,
- “Since you are too kind to tell me I must tell you—that the experiment has broken down. Most things do. But I shall not. We revert to our original terms. Never try to force yourself in things of that kind. Yours ever,
However, he went back to Ardley, and I have not met him since, on the original terms or any others. He never comes to London now. I hear that he has taken up with the study of heraldry.