Free Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington Page B

was marrying into the gentry.
    Dear Papa sent George Augustus his ten pounds, and broke the news to dear Mamma. Strangely enough, she did not cut up as rough as you might have expected. Did she feel the force of Isabel’s character and determination even at that distance? Had she a suspicion of the furtive whoring, and did she think it better to marry than to burn? Perhaps she thought she could vamp George Augustus’s wife as well as George Augustus, and so enjoy two victims.
    She wept a bit and prayed more than ever.
    â€œI think, Papa,” she said, “that the Hand of Providence must have led Augustus. I hope Miss Isabel will make him a good wife, and not be too grand with her Army ways to darn his socks and overlook the maids. Of course the young couple must live here, and I shall be able to give kindly guidance to their early married life as well as religious instruction to the bride. I pray GOD may bless them.”
    Dear Papa, who was not a bad sort, said “Umph,” and wrote George Augustus a very decent letter, promising him £200 to start married life, and suggesting that the honeymoon should take place either in Paris or on the Plains of Waterloo.
    The wedding took place in spring in “rural Kent.” A lot of Winterbournes, including, of course, George’s parents, came down. Dear Mamma was horribly shocked, not to say disgusted, by the unseemly behaviour of the Hartlys; and even dear Papa was a bit staggered. But it was then too late to retreat with honour.
    A village wedding in 1890! Gods of our fathers known of old, what a sight! Alas! that there were no cinemas then! Can’t you see it? Old men in bug-whiskers and top-hats; old ladies in bustles and bonnets. Young men in drooping moustaches, “artistic” flowing ties, and probably grey toppers. Young women in small bustles and small flowery hats. And bridesmaids in white. And a best man. And George Augustus was a bit sweaty in a new morning suit. And Isabel, of course, “radiant” in white and orange-blossoms. And the parson, and signing the register, and the wedding breakfast, and the double peal on thebells, and the “going-away.”… No, it’s too painful, it’s so horrible it isn’t even funny. It’s indecent. I’m positively sorry for George Augustus and Isabel, especially for Isabel. What said the bells? “Come and see the flicking. Come and see the fucking.”
    But Isabel enjoyed the whole ghastly ceremony, little beast. She wrote a long description of it to one of her “fellows”, whom she really loved but had jilted for George Augustus’s “riches.”
    â€œâ€¦ It was a cloudy day, but as we knelt at the altar a long ray of sunshine came through the church window and rested lovingly on our bowed heads…”
    How could they rise to such bilge? But they did, they did, they did. And they believed in it. If only they’d had their tongues in their cheeks there might have been some hope. But they hadn’t. They believed in the sickish, sweetish, canting bilge, they believed in it. Believed in it with all the superhuman force of ignorance.
    Can one tabulate the ignorances, the relevant ignorances, of George Augustus and Isabel when they pledged themselves until death do us part?
    George Augustus did not know how to make a living; he did not know in the very least how to treat a woman; he did not know how to live with a woman; he did not know how to make love to a woman – in fact, he was all minus there, for his experience with whores had been sordid, dismal, and repulsive; he did not know the anatomy of his own body, let alone the anatomy of a woman’s body; he had not the faintest idea of how to postpone conception or that it might be well not to impregnate a virgin bride, indeed neither he nor Isabel had ever heard of such things; he did not know what is implied by “a normal sexual life”; be did not know that women