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Armstrong’s
Handbook of
Strategic Human
Resource
Management
ALSO AVAILABLE BY
MICHAEL ARMSTRONG

Armstrong on Reinventing Performance Management

Armstrong’s Essential Human Resource Management Practice
Armstrong’s Handbook of Management and Leadership for HR
Armstrong’s Handbook of Performance Management
Armstrong’s Handbook of Reward Management Practice (with Duncan
Brown)
Armstrong’s Job Evaluation Handbook
Evidence-Based Reward Management (with Duncan Brown and Peter
Reilly)
How to Be an Even Better Manager
How to Manage People
Human Capital Management (with Angela Baron)
The Reward Management Toolkit (with Ann Cummins)

www.koganpage.com
Seventh edition

Armstrong’s
Handbook of
Strategic Human
Resource
Management
Improve business performance through
strategic people management

Michael Armstrong
 Publisher’s note
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sibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss or damage
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Strategic human resource management.
Title: Armstrong’s handbook of strategic human resource management:
improve business performance through strategic people management /
Michael Armstrong.
Description: Seventh Edition. | New York: Kogan Page, 2020. | Revised
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 CONTENTS

Introduction 1

PA R T O N E  Strategic human resource

management (SHRM) 5

01 Human resource management 7

Introduction 7
The nature of HRM 8
The HR system 11
The impact of HRM on organizational performance 14
The ethical dimension 16
The state of HRM 17
References 20

02 Strategic management 24
Introduction 24
Strategic management defined 24
The meaning of strategy 25
Strategy in action 27
Developing strategy 28
References 32

03 The concept of strategic human resource

management 34
Introduction 34
Strategic human resource management defined 34
Characteristics of SHRM 35
Aims of SHRM 38
The process of SHRM 39
References 41
vi Contents

04 The evolution of SHRM 43

Introduction 43
Beginnings – focus on vertical integration or fit 44
Recognizing the importance of horizontal as well as
vertical fit 45
Views on the development of HR strategy – ‘best fit’
or ‘best practice’ 45
Development of a conceptual framework for SHRM 50
Preoccupation with performance 54
Focus on implementation 54
A multi-stakeholder approach 54
What is happening to SHRM 55
References 57

05 The reality of SHRM 62

Introduction 62
The reality of SHRM 62
The limitations of SHRM 63
The case for people management 64
References 66

PA R T T WO People strategy in general 69

06 The concept of people management 71

Introduction 71
People management defined 71
Strategic people management 72
Conclusion 75
References 77

07 The nature and practice of people strategy 79

Introduction 79
The nature of people strategy 80
The features of people strategy 81
Broad statements of intent 82
Overall people management approaches 83
 Contents vii

Evaluating people strategy 86

People strategy in action 87
References 97

08 Developing people strategy 99

Introduction 99
Development principles 99
The evidence-based approach to developing
people strategy 99
Limits to an entirely rationalistic approach 102
Formulating people strategy 103
Recommendations from practitioners 112
References 115

09 Implementing people strategy 117

Introduction 117
Implementation problems: the say–do gap 117
The implementation process 120
The role of line managers in implementing HR strategy 125
References 128

10 The strategic role of people professionals 130

Introduction 130
People professionals: their basic strategic role 130
The partnership role of people professionals 132
The strategic business partner model 133
People management strategic roles 135
References 139

PA R T T H R E E Specific people strategies 141

11 Organization development strategy 143

Introduction 143
Organization development defined 143
Organization development activities 144
Organization development strategy 146
Formulating and implementing organization
development strategy 147
viii Contents

Culture change 147

References 150

12 Human capital management strategy 151

Introduction 151
Aims of human capital management 152
The role of human capital management strategy 152
The link between HCM and business strategy 153
Developing a human capital management strategy 154
References 162

13 Knowledge management strategy 163

Introduction 163
The process of knowledge management 163
Sources and types of knowledge 164
Approaches to the development of knowledge management
strategies 165
Strategic knowledge management issues 165
Components of a knowledge management strategy 167
References 169

14 Corporate social responsibility strategy 170

Introduction 170
Corporate social responsibility defined 170
The rationale for CSR 171
Strategic CSR defined 172
CSR activities 173
Developing a CSR strategy 175
Role of the people management function 176
References 178

15 Organizational performance strategy 179

Introduction 179
The process of managing organizational performance 180
The strategic approach to managing organizational
performance 181
 Contents ix

Organizational capability 184

Developing a high-performance culture 185
How people strategies enhance organizational performance 192
References 193

16 Individual performance strategy 195

Introduction 195
Performance and the factors that affect it 195
Performance management systems 197
Limitations of the model 199
The reality of performance management systems 201
Dealing with the issues – reinventing performance
management 203
References 205

17 Digital strategy for people management 207

Introduction 207
Purpose of a digital strategy 207
Components of a digital strategy 207
References 209

18 Employee engagement strategy 210

Introduction 210
What is employee engagement? 210
Why is engagement important? 211
What are the factors that influence employee engagement? 212
The nature and content of employee engagement strategy 213
References 217

19 Resourcing strategy 219

Introduction 219
The rationale for strategic resourcing 219
The strategic approach to resourcing 220
Integrating business and resourcing strategies 220
The components of employee resourcing strategy 221
References 224
x Contents

20 Talent management strategy 225

Introduction 225
What is talent? 227
Strategic talent management 228
References 231

21 Diversity and inclusion strategy 232

Introduction 232
Diversity and inclusion strategy 233
Reference 234

22 Learning and development strategy 235

Introduction 235
The aim of strategic learning and development 235
Strategic learning and development philosophy 236
Strategy for creating a learning culture 238
Organizational learning strategy 239
Individual learning strategy 240
References 241

23 Reward strategy 242

Introduction 242
Reward strategy defined 242
Why have a reward strategy? 243
Characteristics of reward strategy 244
The basis of reward strategy 244
The content of reward strategy 247
Developing reward strategy 249
Effective reward strategies 251
Reward strategy and line management capability 252
The problem with the concept of reward strategy 252
References 255

24 Employment relationships strategy 256

Introduction 256
The employment relationship 256
A strategy for creating a constructive and positive employment
relations climate 258
 Contents xi

A strategy for achieving mutual gains 259

A strategy for building trust 260
The nature of employment relations strategy 260
Partnership agreement strategy 261
Employee voice strategy 262
Trade union recognition strategy 263
References 264

25 Employee wellbeing strategy 266

Introduction 266
The case for a wellbeing strategy 266
Features of an employee wellbeing strategy 267
Factors affecting wellbeing 269
References 272

26 International people management strategy 274

Introduction 274
Strategic international people management defined 275
International strategic people management issues 275
International people management strategies 276
International reward management 280
References 284

Author Index 285

Subject Index 289
THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
Introduction
The first part of this book deals with the concept of strategic human ­resource
management (SHRM) which is defined as the process of making decisions
on the intentions of the organization concerning people. SHRM focuses on
the need to ensure that the organization’s goals are achieved through its
human resources by means of the integration of HR strategies with the busi-
ness strategy and with each other. It is based on the fundamental proposi-
tion that the human resources of an organization play a strategic role in its
success.
SHRM is based on a number of theories supported by research that ex-
plain and justify the process of adopting a strategic approach to HRM. It is
a construct in the sense of a subjective theory containing various conceptual
elements. It provides an insight into the process of HR strategy formulation
in organizations and the factors that affect it. As such the concept of SHRM
is something that HR or people professionals, indeed anyone who manages
people, need to know about.

A revised approach
However, a case can be made for adopting a revised approach to SHRM.
This could be described under the heading of ‘people management’.
Increasingly, we have People Directors or Heads of People Management
rather than HR Directors or Heads of HR. This change to ‘people manage-
ment’ could be justified simply on the grounds that ‘human resources’ ­conveys
the wrong message – that employees are factors of production who exist to
be exploited by the business. It is interesting to note that the extensive New
Profession Map produced by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and
Development (CIPD) in 2018 refers throughout to ‘the people profession’
and mentions HR only once in passing. There is no reference at all to strate-
gic HRM. The conclusion reached by the Institute for Employment Studies
based on their case study research into SHRM (Brown, Hirsh and Reilly,
2019: 43) was that: ‘We hope the term People Management leads to the
wider use of the term People Strategy to cover the big picture of ­employment
and workforce management.’
2 Introduction

But there is more to this than simply a name change. There are deficien-
cies in the ways in which HRM is practised which need to be corrected.
They have been pointed out by a number of commentators, including British
writers such as Armstrong and Brown (2018), Delbridge and Keenoy (2010),
Dundon, Cullinane and Wilkinson (2017), Dundon and Rafferty (2018),
Guest (2017), Marchington (2008, 2015), Paauwe, Wright and Guest
(2013), Sparrow (2017) and Thompson and Harley (2007). Doubts have
also been expressed by American academics on how SHRM has evolved –
Beer (2015), Beer, Boselie and Brewster (2015), Cascio (2015), Delery and
Roumpi (2017) and Kaufman (2015). The thrust of all these criticisms has
been that HRM as originally conceived has lost its way. Instead of adopting
a multi-stakeholder approach as advocated by Michael Beer and his col-
leagues in 1984 in their seminal book on HRM, businesses are preoccupied
with the interests of only one of the stakeholders – the owners or sharehold-
ers, what Marchington refers to as a ‘vertical approach’.
However, this proposal is for a new approach not a radical change. The
fundamental notion of SHRM – the focus on the achievement of strategic
fit – is still relevant. The underpinning concepts of SHRM – the resource-
based view, the behavioural perspective and AMO (Abilities, Motivation
and Opportunities) theory – are still important. The elements of a people
management system are still those present in an HR system. It is the way in
which these elements are applied that needs to be amended, not the elements
themselves. The proposed change is to build on the foundation provided by
the SHRM concept, not to replace it.

Plan of the book

The book begins with an analysis of the two elements that combine to create
SHRM: human resource management and strategic management. This is in
line with the view expressed by Allen and Wright (2007: 88) that SHRM
‘represents an intersection of the strategic management and human resource
management (HRM) literatures’. A description of the concept of SHRM fol-
lows. In the next chapter the ways in which SHRM has evolved since its
initiation in the 1980s are reviewed. This review covers the main features of
SHRM, namely the emphasis on strategic fit, the choice between best p ­ ractice
and best fit, and its underpinning concepts and theories: the resource-based
view, the human capital and behavioural perspectives and stakeholder
­theory. In the final chapter of this part it is suggested that while, c­ onceptually,
Other documents randomly have
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Joan and
Peter: The story of an education
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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Title: Joan and Peter: The story of an education

Author: H. G. Wells

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Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOAN AND

PETER: THE STORY OF AN EDUCATION ***
 JOAN AND PETER

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO
 JOAN AND PETER
THE STORY OF AN EDUCATION

BY

H. G. WELLS
Author of “Mr. Britling Sees It Through,” etc.

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
All rights reserved
 Copyright, 1918
By H. G. WELLS

Set up and electrotyped. Published, September, 1918

 CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I Peter’s Parentage 1

II Stublands in Council 13

III Arthur or Oswald? 31

IV First Impressions of the Universe 59

V The Christening 78

VI The Fourth Guardian 102

VII The School of St. George and the Venerable Bede 112

VIII The High Cross Preparatory School 142

IX Oswald Takes Control 204

X A Searching of Schoolmasters 255

XI Adolescence 282

XII The World on the Eve of War 377

XIII Joan and Peter Graduate 443

XIV Oswald’s Valediction 544

 JOAN AND PETER

THE STORY OF AN EDUCATION

CHAPTER THE FIRST
PETER’S PARENTAGE
 §1

E arly one summer morning in England, in the year 1893 in the

reign—which seemed in those days to have been going on for
ever and to be likely to go on for evermore—of Queen Victoria, there
was born a little boy named Peter. Peter was a novel name then; he
was before the great crop of Peters who derived their name from
Peter Pan. He was born with some difficulty. His father, who had not
been to bed all night, for the trouble of the birth had begun overnight
at about nine o’clock, was walking about in the garden in a dewy
dawn, thinking the world very dreadful and beautiful, when he first
heard Peter cry. Peter, he thought, made a noise like a little
frightened hen that something big had caught.... Peter’s mother had
been moaning but now she moaned no more, and Peter’s father
stood outside and whispered “Oh, God! Oh! Damn them and damn
them! why don’t they tell me?”
Then the nurse put her head out of the window; it was a casement
window with white roses about it; said “Everything’s all right. I’ll tell
you when to come in,” and vanished again.
Peter’s father turned about very sharply so that she should not see
he was fool enough to weep, and went along the flagged path to the
end of the garden, where was the little summerhouse that looked
over the Weald. But he could not see the Weald because his tears
blinded him. All night Peter’s father had been thinking what an
imperfect husband he had always been and how he had never really
told his wife how much he loved her, and how indeed until now he
had never understood how very much he loved her, and he had been
making good resolutions for the future in great abundance, in
enormous abundance, the most remarkable good resolutions, and
one waking nightmare after another had been chasing across his
mind nightmares of a dreadful dark-grey world in which there would
be no Dolly, no Dolly at all anywhere, even if you went out into the
garden and whistled your utmost, and he would be a widower with
only one little lonely child to console him. He could not imagine any
other woman for him but Dolly.
 The last trailing vestige of those twilight distresses vanished when
presently he saw Dolly looking tired indeed but pink and healthy,
with her hair almost roguishly astray, and the room full of warm
daylight from the dawn-flushed sky, full of fresh south-west air from
the Sussex downs, full of the sense of invincible life, and young
master Peter, very puckered and ugly and red and pitiful, in a blanket
in the nurse’s arms, and Dr. Fremisson smirking behind her, entirely
satisfied with himself and the universe and every detail of it.
When Dolly had been kissed and whispered to they gave Peter to
his father to hold.
Peter’s father had never understood before that a baby is an
exquisite thing.
 §2
The parents of Peter were modern young people, and Peter was no
accidental intruder. Their heads were full of new ideas, new that is in
the days when Queen Victoria seemed immortal and the world
settled for ever. They put Peter in their two sunniest rooms; rarely
were the windows shut; his nursery was white and green, bright with
pretty pictures and never without flowers. It had a cork carpet and a
rug displaying amusing black cats on pink, and he was weighed
carefully first once a week and then once a month until he was four
years old.
His father, whom everybody called Stubbo, came of an old Quaker
stock. Quakerism in its beginnings was a very fine and wonderful
religion indeed, a real research for the Kingdom of Heaven on earth,
a new way of thinking and living, but weaknesses of the mind and
spirit brought it back very soon to a commoner texture. The Stubland
family was among those which had been most influenced by the
evangelical wave of the Wesleyan time. Peter’s great-grandfather, old
Stubland, the West-of-England cloth manufacturer, was an
emotional person with pietistic inclinations that nearly carried him
over at different times to the Plymouth Brethren, to the Wesleyan
Methodists, and to the Countess of Huntingdon’s connexion.
Religion was his only social recreation, most other things he held to
be sinful, and his surplus energies went all into the business. He had
an aptitude for mechanical organization and started the Yorkshire
factory; his son, still more evangelical and still more successful, left a
business worth well over two hundred thousand pounds among
thirteen children, of whom Peter’s father was the youngest.
“Stublands” became a limited company with uncles Rigby and John
as directors, and the rest of the family was let loose, each one with a
nice little secure six hundred a year or thereabouts from Stubland
debentures and Stubland ordinary shares, to do what it liked in the
world.
It wasn’t, of course, told that it could do what it liked in the world.
That it found out for itself—in the teeth of much early teaching to the
contrary. That early teaching had been predominantly prohibitive,
there had been no end of “thou shalt not” and very little of “thou
shalt,” an irksome teaching for young people destined to leisure.
Mankind was presented waiting about for the Judgment Day, with
Satan as busy as a pickpocket in a crowd. Also he offered
roundabouts and cocoanut-shies.... This family doctrine tallied so
little with the manifest circumstances and natural activity of the
young Stublands that it just fell off their young minds. The keynote
of Stubbo’s upbringing had been a persistent unanswered “Why
not?” to all the things he was told not to do. “Why not dance? Why
not go to theatres and music-halls? Why not make love? Why not
read and quote this exciting new poetry of Swinburne’s?”...
The early ’nineties were a period of careless diastole in British
affairs. There seemed to be enough and to spare for every one, given
only a little generosity. Peace dwelt on the earth for ever. It was
difficult to prove the proprietorship of Satan in the roundabouts and
the cocoanut-shies. There was a general belief that one’s parents and
grandparents had taken life far too grimly and suspiciously, a belief
which, indeed, took possession of Stubbo before he was in trousers.
His emancipation was greatly aided by his elder sister Phyllis, a
girl with an abnormal sense of humour. It was Phyllis who
brightened the Sunday afternoons, when she and her sister Phœbe
and her brothers were supposed to be committing passages of
scripture to memory in the attic, by the invention of increasingly
irreligious Limericks. Phœbe would sometimes be dreadfully
shocked and sometimes join in with great vigour and glory. Phyllis
was also an artist in misquotation. She began by taking a facetious
view of the ark and Jonah’s whale, and as her courage grew she went
on to the Resurrection. She had a genius for asking seemingly
respectful but really destructive questions about religious matters,
that made her parents shy of instruction. The Stubland parents had
learnt their faith with more reverence than intelligence from their
parents, who had had it in a similar spirit from their parents, who
had had it from their parents; so that nobody had looked into it
closely for some generations, and something vital had evaporated
unsuspected. It had evaporated so completely that when Peter’s
father and Peter’s aunts and uncles came in their turn as children to
examine the precious casket, they not only perceived that there was
nothing in it, but they could very readily jump to the rash conclusion
that there never had been anything in it. It seemed just an odd blend
of empty resonant phrases and comical and sometimes slightly
improper stories, that lent themselves very pleasantly to facetious
illustration.
Stubbo, as he grew up under these circumstances, had not so much
taken on the burthen of life as thrown it off. He decided he would not
go into business—business struck him as a purely avaricious
occupation—and after a pleasant year at Cambridge he became quite
clear that the need of the world and his temperament was Art. The
world was not beautiful enough. This was more particularly true of
the human contribution. So he went into Art to make the world more
beautiful, and came up to London to study and to wear a highly
decorative blue linen blouse in private and to collect posters—people
then were just beginning to collect posters.
From the last stage of Quakerism to the last extremity of
decoration is but a step. Quite an important section of the art world
in Britain owes itself to the Quakers and Plymouth Brethren, and to
the drab and grey disposition of the sterner evangelicals. It is as if
that elect strain in the race had shut its eyes for a generation or so,
merely in order to open them again and see brighter. The reaction of
the revolting generation has always been toward colour; the
pyrotechnic display of the Omega workshops in London is but the
last violent outbreak of the Quaker spirit. Young Stubland, a quarter
of a century before the Omega enterprise, was already slaking a thirst
for chromatic richness behind the lead of William Morris and the
Pre-Raphaelites. It took a year or so and several teachers and much
friendly frankness to persuade him he could neither draw nor paint,
and then he relapsed into decoration and craftsmanship. He beat out
copper into great weals of pattern and he bound books grossly. He
spent some time upon lettering, and learnt how to make the simplest
inscription beautifully illegible. He decided to be an architect. In the
meantime he made the acquaintance of a large circle of artistic and
literary people, became a Fabian socialist, abandoned Stubland
tweeds for fluffy artistically dyed garments, bicycled about a lot—
those were the early days of the bicycle, before the automobile
robbed it of its glory—talked endlessly, and had a very good time. He
met his wife and married her, and he built his own house as a sample
of what he could do as an architect.
It was, with one exception, the only house he ever built. It was
quite original in design and almost indistinguishable from the houses
of a round dozen contemporaries of Mr. Charles Voysey. It was a
little low-browed, white house, with an enormous and very expensive
roof of green slates; it had wide, low mullioned casement windows,
its rooms were eight feet high and its doors five foot seven, and all
about it were enormous buttresses fit to sustain a castle. It had sun-
traps and verandahs and a terrace, and it snuggled into the ruddy
hillside and stared fatly out across the Weald from beyond
Limpsfield, and it was quite a jolly little house to live in when you
had learnt to be shorter than five feet seven inches and to dodge the
low bits of ceiling and the beam over the ingle-nook.
And therein, to crown the work of the builder, Peter was born.
 §3
Peter’s mother came from quite a different strand in the
complicated web of British life. Her “people”—she was brought up to
call them that—were county people, but old-fashioned and prolific,
and her father had been the sixth son of a third son and very lucky to
get a living. He was the Vicar of Long Downport and an early
widower; his two sons had gone to Oxford with scholarships, and
Dolly had stayed at home, a leggy, dark-eyed girl with a sceptical
manner, much given to reading history. One of her brothers passed
from Oxford into the higher division of the Civil Service and went to
India; the other took to scornful, reactionary journalism, dramatic
criticism, musical comedy lyrics, parody, and drink—which indeed is
almost a necessity if a man is to stick to reactionary journalism; this
story will presently inherit Joan from him; she had a galaxy of
cousins who were parsons, missionaries, schoolmasters, and
soldiers; one was an explorer; not one was in business. Her father
was a bookish inattentive man who had just missed a fellowship
because of a general discursiveness; if he could have afforded it he
would have been very liberal indeed in his theology; and, like grains
of pepper amidst milder nourishment, there were all sorts of
sceptical books about the house: Renan’s Life of Christ, Strauss’s Life
of Christ, Gibbon, various eighteenth century memoirs, Huxley’s
Essays, much Victor Hugo, and a “collected” Shelley, books that his
daughter read with a resolute frown, sitting for the most part with
one leg tucked up under her in the chair, her chin on her fists, and
her elbows on either side of the volume undergoing assimilation.
Her reading was historical, and her tendency romantic. Her
private day-dream through some years of girlhood was that she was
Cæsar’s wife. She was present at all his battles, and sometimes, when
he had had another of his never altogether fatal wounds, she led the
army. Also, which was a happy thought, she stabbed Brutus first, and
so her Cæsar, contrariwise to history, reigned happily with her for
many, many years. She would go to sleep of a night dreaming of Mr.
and Mrs. Imperator driving in triumph through the gates of Rome
after some little warlike jaunt. Sometimes she drove. And also they
came to Britain to drive out the Picts and Scots, and were quartered
with her father in Long Downport, conquering Picts, Scots, Danes,
and the most terrific anachronisms with an equal stoutness and
courage. The private title she bestowed upon herself (and never told
to any human being) was “The Imperatrix.”
As she grew up she became desirous of more freedom and
education. After much argument with her father she came up to an
aunt in London, and went to study science in the Huxley days as a
free student at the Royal College of Science. She saw her future
husband at an art students’ soirée, he looked tall and bright and
masterful; he had a fine profile, and his blond hair poured nobly off
his forehead; she did not dream that Peter’s impatience for
incarnation put ideas into her head, she forgot her duty to Cæsar and
imagined a devotion to art and beauty. They made a pretty couple,
and she married amidst universal approval—after a slight dispute
whether it was to be a religious or a civil marriage. She was married
in her father’s church.
In the excitement of meeting, appreciating and marrying Stubbo,
she forgot that she had had a great pity and tenderness and
admiration for her shy and impulsive cousin, Oswald Sydenham,
with the glass eye and cruelly scarred face, who had won the V.C.
before he was twenty at the bombardment of Alexandria, and who
had since done the most remarkable things in Nyasaland. It had been
quite typical heroism that had won him the V.C. He had thrown a
shell overboard, and it had burst in the air as he threw it and pulped
one side of his face. But when she married, she had temporarily
forgotten Cousin Oswald. She was just carried away by Arthur
Stubland’s profile, and the wave in his hair, and—life.
Arthur was Stubbo’s Christian name because he had been born
under the spell of “The Idylls of the King.”
Afterwards when Oswald came home again, she thought the good
side of his face, the side of his face that hadn’t been so seriously
damaged by the Egyptian shell, looked at her rather queerly. But the
wounded side remained a Sphinx-like mask.
“Congratulations!” said Oswald, fumbling with the word.
“Congratulations! I hope you’ll be happy, Dolly.”...
 She was far gone in rationalism before she met Arthur, and he
completed her emancipation. Their ideas ran closely together. They
projected some years of travel before they settled down. He wanted
to see mediaeval Italy “thoroughly,” and she longed for Imperial
Rome. They took just a couple of rooms in South Kensington and
spent all the rest of their income in long stretches of holiday. They
honeymooned in pleasant inns in South Germany; they did some
climbing in the Tyrol and the Dolomites—she had a good head—they
had a summer holiday on the Adriatic coast, and she learnt to swim
and dive well, and they did one long knapsack tramp round and
along the Swiss Italian frontier and then another through the
Apennines to Florence.
It was a perfectly lovely time. Everything was bright and happy,
and they got on wonderfully together, except that——There was a
shadow for her. She found it difficult to say exactly what the shadow
was, and it is still more difficult for the historian to define it. She
dismissed the idea that it had anything to do with Cousin Oswald’s
one reproachful eye. She sometimes had a faint suspicion that it was
her jilted Cæsar asking for at least a Rubicon to cross, but it is
doubtful if she ever had any suspicion of Peter, waiting outside the
doors of life. Yet the feeling of something forgotten, of something left
out, grew throughout those sunny days. It was in some sweet
meadows high up on the great hill above Fiesole, that she tried to tell
Arthur of this vexatious feeling of deficiency.
Manifestly she puzzled him, which was not to be wondered at since
the feeling puzzled her. But it also had a queer effect of irritating
him.
“Arthur, if you always say I don’t love you,” she said, “when I tell
you anything, then how can I tell you anything at all?”
“Aren’t we having the loveliest times?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said without complete conviction. “It isn’t that.”
“You admit you love me. You admit you’re having the loveliest
time!”
She sat up with her elbows on her knees and her knuckles pressing
her round, firm chin.
“It’s just all one holiday,” she said.
“I did some work last month.”
 He had planned three impossible houses and made a most
amusing cardboard model of one of them. She disregarded this plea.
“When we came up here people were working in the fields. Even
that pretty little girl among the bushes was looking after sheep.”
“By Jove! I wish I could paint her—and those Holman Hunt-faced
sheep of hers. It’s tantalizing to be able to see—and yet not to have
the—the expressive gift....”
“Things are going on now, Arthur. Down there in the valley along
that white road, people are going and coming.... There is a busy little
train now.... Things are happening. Things are going to happen. And
the work that goes on! The hard work! Today—there are thousands
and thousands of men in mines. Out of this sunshine....”
There was an interval. Arthur rolled over on his face to look at the
minute railway and road and river bed far below at the bottom of a
deep lake of pellucid blue air.
“I don’t agree with you,” he said at last.
“Too much is happening,” he said. “Noisy, vulgar fuss.
Commercialism, competition, factory production. Does it make
people happy? Look at that horrid little railway disturbing all this
beautiful simple Tuscan life....”
Another long pause.
She made a further step. “But if something beautiful is being
destroyed,” she tried, “we ought not to be here.”
That also took a little time to soak in.
Then he stirred impatiently.
“Don’t we,” he asked, “protest? By the mere act of living our own
lives? Don’t I, in my small way, try to do my share in the Restoration
of Craftsmanship? Aren’t people of our sort doing something—
something a little too unpretending to be obvious—to develop the
conception of a fairer and better, a less hurried, less greedy life?”
He raised an appealing face to her.
She sat with knitted brows. She did not assent, but it was difficult
to argue her disaccord.
He took advantage of her pause.
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