The elopement was a little complicated by a surprise manoeuvre of Mrs.
Pope's. She was more alive to the quality of the situation, poor lady!
than her daughter suspected; she was watching, dreading, perhaps even
furtively sympathizing and trying to arrange--oh! trying dreadfully to
arrange. She had an instinctive understanding of the deep blue quiet in
Marjorie's eyes, and the girl's unusual tenderness with Daffy and the
children. She peeped under the blind as Marjorie went out, noted the
care in her dress, watched her face as she returned, never plumbed her
with a question for fear of the answer. She did not dare to breathe a
hint of her suspicions to her husband, but she felt things were adrift
in swift, smooth water, and all her soul cried out for delay. So
presently there came a letter from Cousin Susan Pendexter at Plymouth.
The weather was beautiful, Marjorie must come at once, pack up and come
and snatch the last best glow of the dying autumn away there in the
west. Marjorie's jerry-built excuses, her manifest chagrin and
reluctance, confirmed her mother's worst suspicions.
She submitted and went, and Mrs. Pope and Syd saw her off.
I do not like to tell how a week later Marjorie explained herself and
her dressing-bag and a few small articles back to London from Plymouth.
Suffice it that she lied desperately and elaborately. Her mother had
never achieved such miracles of mis-statement, and she added a vigour
that was all her own. It is easier to sympathize with her than exonerate
her. She was in a state of intense impatience, and--what is
strange--extraordinarily afraid that something would separate her from
her lover if she did not secure him. She was in a fever of
determination. She could not eat or sleep or attend to anything
whatever; she was occupied altogether with the thought of assuring
herself to Trafford. He towered in her waking vision over town and land
and sea.
He didn't hear the lies she told; he only knew she was magnificently
coming back to him. He met her at Paddington, a white-faced, tired,
splendidly resolute girl, and they went to the waiting registrar's
forthwith.
She bore herself with the intentness and dignity of one who is taking
the cardinal step in life. They kissed as though it was a symbol, and
were keenly business-like about cabs and luggage and trains. At last
they were alone in the train together. They stared at one another.
"We've done it, Mrs. Trafford!" said Trafford.
She snapped like an over-taut string, crumpled, clung to him, and
without a word was weeping passionately in his arms.
It surprised him that she could weep as she did, and still more to see
her as she walked by his side along the Folkestone pier, altogether
recovered, erect, a little flushed and excited like a child. She seemed
to miss nothing. "Oh, smell the sea!" she said, "Look at the lights!
Listen to the swish of the water below." She watched the luggage
spinning on the wire rope of the giant crane, and he watched her face
and thought how beautiful she was. He wondered why her eyes could
sometimes be so blue and sometimes dark as night.
The boat cleared the pier and turned about and headed for France. They
walked the upper deck together and stood side by side, she very close to
him.
"I've never crossed the sea before," she said.
"Old England," she whispered. "It's like leaving a nest. A little row
of lights and that's all the world I've ever known, shrunken to that
already."
Presently they went forward and peered into the night.
"Look!" she said. "_Italy!_ There's sunshine and all sorts of beautiful
things ahead. Warm sunshine, wonderful old ruins, green lizards...." She
paused and whispered almost noiselessly: "_love_----"
They pressed against each other.
"And yet isn't it strange? All you can see is darkness, and clouds--and
big waves that hiss as they come near...."