A NEW PROTECTOR.
Captain Arundel's inquiries at the Kemberling station resulted in an
immediate success. A young lady--a young woman, the railway official
called her--dressed in black, wearing a crape veil over her face, and
carrying a small carpet-bag in her hand, had taken a second-class
ticket for London, by the 5.50., a parliamentary train, which stopped
at almost every station on the line, and reached Euston Square at
half-past twelve.
Edward looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to two o'clock. The
express did not stop at Kemberling; but he would be able to catch it at
Swampington at a quarter past three. Even then, however, he could
scarcely hope to get to Berkshire that night.
"My darling girl will not discover how foolish her doubts have been
until to-morrow," he thought. "Silly child! has my love so little the
aspect of truth that she _can_ doubt me?"
He sprang on his horse again, flung a shilling to the railway porter
who had held the bridle, and rode away along the Swampington road. The
clocks in the gray old Norman turrets were striking three as the young
man crossed the bridge, and paid his toll at the little toll-house by
the stone archway.
The streets were as lonely as usual in the hot July afternoon; and the
long line of sea beyond the dreary marshes was blue in the sunshine.
Captain Arundel passed the two churches, and the low-roofed rectory,
and rode away to the outskirts of the town, where the station glared in
all the brilliancy of new red bricks, and dazzling stuccoed chimneys,
athwart a desert of waste ground.
The express-train came tearing up to the quiet platform two minutes
after Edward had taken his ticket; and in another minute the clanging
bell pealed out its discordant signal, and the young man was borne,
with a shriek and a whistle, away upon the first stage of his search
for Mary Marchmont.
It was nearly seven o'clock when he reached Euston Square; and he only
got to the Paddington station in time to hear that the last train for
Marlingford had just started. There was no possibility of his reaching
the little Berkshire village that night. No mail-train stopped within a
reasonable distance of the obscure station. There was no help for it,
therefore, Captain Arundel had nothing to do but to wait for the next
morning.
He walked slowly away from the station, very much disheartened by this
discovery.
"I'd better sleep at some hotel up this way," he thought, as he
strolled listlessly in the direction of Oxford Street, "so as to be on
the spot to catch the first train to-morrow morning. What am I to do
with myself all this night, racked with uncertainty about Mary?"
He remembered that one of his brother officers was staying at the hotel
in Covent Garden where Edward himself stopped, when business detained
him in London for a day or two.
"Shall I go and see Lucas?" Captain Arundel thought. "He's a good
fellow, and won't bore me with a lot of questions, if he sees I've
something on my mind. There may be some letters for me at E----'s. Poor
little Polly!"
He could never think of her without something of that pitiful
tenderness which he might have felt for a young and helpless child,
whom it was his duty and privilege to protect and succour. It may be
that there was little of the lover's fiery enthusiasm mingled with the
purer and more tender feelings with which Edward Arundel regarded his
dead friend's orphan daughter; but in place of this there was a
chivalrous devotion, such as woman rarely wins in these degenerate
modern days.
The young soldier walked through the lamp-lit western streets thinking
of the missing girl; now assuring himself that his instinct had not
deceived him, and that Mary must have gone straight to the Berkshire
farmer's house, and in the next moment seized with a sudden terror that
it might be otherwise: the helpless girl might have gone out into a
world of which she was as ignorant as a child, determined to hide
herself from all who had ever known her. If it should be thus: if, on
going down to Marlingford, he obtained no tidings of his friend's
daughter, what was he to do? Where was he to look for her next?
He would put advertisements in the papers, calling upon his betrothed
to trust him and return to him. Perhaps Mary Marchmont was, of all
people in this world, the least likely to look into a newspaper; but at
least it would be doing something to do this, and Edward Arundel
determined upon going straight off to Printing-House Square, to draw up
an appeal to the missing girl.
It was past ten o'clock when Captain Arundel came to this
determination, and he had reached the neighbourhood of Covent Garden
and of the theatres. The staring play-bills adorned almost every
threshold, and fluttered against every door-post; and the young
soldier, going into a tobacconist's to fill his cigar-case, stared
abstractedly at a gaudy blue-and-red announcement of the last dramatic
attraction to be seen at Drury Lane. It was scarcely strange that the
Captain's thoughts wandered back to his boyhood, that shadowy time, far
away behind his later days of Indian warfare and glory, and that he
remembered the December night upon which he had sat with his cousin in
a box at the great patent theatre, watching the consumptive
supernumerary struggling under the weight of his banner. From the box
at Drury Lane to the next morning's breakfast in Oakley Street, was but
a natural transition of thought; but with that recollection of the
humble Lambeth lodging, with the picture of a little girl in a pinafore
sitting demurely at her father's table, and meekly waiting on his
guest, an idea flashed across Edward Arundel's mind, and brought the
hot blood into his face.
What if Mary had gone to Oakley Street? Was not this even more likely
than that she should seek refuge with her kinsfolk in Berkshire? She
had lived in the Lambeth lodging for years, and had only left that
plebeian shelter for the grandeur of Marchmont Towers. What more
natural than that she should go back to the familiar habitation, dear
to her by reason of a thousand associations with her dead father? What
more likely than that she should turn instinctively, in the hour of her
desolation, to the humble friends whom she had known in her childhood?
Edward Arundel was almost too impatient to wait while the smart young
damsel behind the tobacconist's counter handed him change for the
half-sovereign which he had just tendered her. He darted out into the
street, and shouted violently to the driver of a passing hansom,--there
are always loitering hansoms in the neighbourhood of Covent
Garden,--who was, after the manner of his kind, looking on any side
rather than that upon which Providence had sent him a fare.
"Oakley Street, Lambeth," the young man cried. "Double fare if you get
there in ten minutes."
The tall raw-boned horse rattled off at that peculiar pace common to
his species, making as much noise upon the pavement as if he had been
winning a metropolitan Derby, and at about twenty minutes past nine
drew up, smoking and panting, before the dimly lighted windows of the
Ladies' Wardrobe, where a couple of flaring tallow-candles illuminated
the splendour of a foreground of dirty artificial flowers, frayed satin
shoes, and tarnished gilt combs; a middle distance of blue gauzy
tissue, embroidered with beetles' wings; and a background of greasy
black silk. Edward Arundel flung back the doors of the hansom with a
bang, and leaped out upon the pavement. The proprietress of the Ladies'
Wardrobe was lolling against the door-post, refreshing herself with the
soft evening breezes from the roads of Westminster and Waterloo, and
talking to her neighbour.
"Bless her pore dear innercent 'art!" the woman was saying; "she's
cried herself to sleep at last. But you never hear any think so pitiful
as she talked to me at fust, sweet love!--and the very picture of my
own poor Eliza Jane, as she looked. You might have said it was Eliza
Jane come back to life, only paler and more sickly like, and not that
beautiful fresh colour, and ringlets curled all round in a crop, as
Eliza Ja--"
Edward Arundel burst in upon the good woman's talk, which rambled on in
an unintermitting stream, unbroken by much punctuation.
"Miss Marchmont is here," he said; "I know she is. Thank God, thank
God! Let me see her please, directly. I am Captain Arundel, her
father's friend, and her affianced husband. You remember me, perhaps? I
came here nine years ago to breakfast, one December morning. I can
recollect you perfectly, and I know that you were always good to my
poor friend's daughter. To think that I should find her here! You shall
be well rewarded for your kindness to her. But take me to her; pray
take me to her at once!"
The proprietress of the wardrobe snatched up one of the candles that
guttered in a brass flat-candlestick upon the counter, and led the way
up the narrow staircase. She was a good lazy creature, and she was so
completely borne down by Edward's excitement, that she could only
mutter disjointed sentences, to the effect that the gentleman had
brought her heart into her mouth, and that her legs felt all of a
jelly; and that her poor knees was a'most giving way under her, and
other incoherent statements concerning the physical effect of the
mental shocks she had that day received.
She opened the door of that shabby sitting-room upon the first-floor,
in which the crippled eagle brooded over the convex mirror, and stood
aside upon the threshold while Captain Arundel entered the room. A
tallow candle was burning dimly upon the table, and a girlish form lay
upon the narrow horsehair sofa, shrouded by a woollen shawl.
"She went to sleep about half-an-hour ago, sir," the woman said, in a
whisper; "and she cried herself to sleep, pore lamb, I think. I made
her some tea, and got her a few creases and a French roll, with a bit
of best fresh; but she wouldn't touch nothin', or only a few spoonfuls
of the tea, just to please me. What is it that's drove her away from
her 'ome, sir, and such a good 'ome too? She showed me a diamont ring
as her pore par gave her in his will. He left me twenty pound, pore
gentleman,--which he always acted like a gentleman bred and born; and
Mr. Pollit, the lawyer, sent his clerk along with it and his
compliments,--though I'm sure I never looked for nothink, having always
had my rent faithful to the very minute: and Miss Mary used to bring it
down to me so pretty, and--"
But the whispering had grown louder by this time, and Mary Marchmont
awoke from her feverish sleep, and lifted her weary head from the hard
horsehair pillow and looked about her, half forgetful of where she was,
and of what had happened within the last eighteen hours of her life.
Her eyes wandered here and there, doubtful as to the reality of what
they looked upon, until the girl saw her lover's figure, tall and
splendid in the humble apartment, a tender half-reproachful smile upon
his face, and his handsome blue eyes beaming with love and truth. She
saw him, and a faint shriek broke from her tremulous lips, as she rose
and fell upon his breast.
"You love me, then, Edward," she cried; "you do love me!"
"Yes, my darling, as truly and tenderly as ever woman was loved upon
this earth."
And then the soldier sat down upon the hard bristly sofa, and with
Mary's head still resting upon his breast, and his strong hand straying
amongst her disordered hair, he reproached her for her foolishness, and
comforted and soothed her; while the proprietress of the apartment
stood, with the brass candlestick in her hand, watching the young
lovers and weeping over their sorrows, as if she had been witnessing a
scene in a play. Their innocent affection was unrestrained by the good
woman's presence; and when Mary had smiled upon her lover, and assured
him that she would never, never, never doubt him again, Captain Arundel
was fain to kiss the soft-hearted landlady in his enthusiasm, and to
promise her the handsomest silk dress that had ever been seen in Oakley
Street, amongst all the faded splendours of silk and satin that
ladies'-maids brought for her consideration.
"And now my darling, my foolish run-away Polly, what is to be done with
you?" asked the young soldier. "Will you go back to the Towers
to-morrow morning?"
Mary Marchmont clasped her hands before her face, and began to tremble
violently.
"Oh, no, no, no!" she cried; "don't ask me to do that, don't ask me to
go back, Edward. I can never go back to that house again, while--"
She stopped suddenly, looking piteously at her lover.
"While my cousin Olivia Marchmont lives there," Captain Arundel said
with an angry frown. "God knows it's a bitter thing for me to think
that your troubles should come from any of my kith and kin, Polly. She
has used you very badly, then, this woman? She has been very unkind to
you?"
"No, no! never before last night. It seems so long ago; but it was only
last night, was it? Until then she was always kind to me. I didn't love
her, you know, though I tried to do so for papa's sake, and out of
gratitude to her for taking such trouble with my education; but one can
be grateful to people without loving them, and I never grew to love
her. But last night--last night--she said such cruel things to me--such
cruel things. O Edward, Edward!" the girl cried suddenly, clasping her
hands and looking imploringly at Captain Arundel, "were the cruel
things she said true? Did I do wrong when I offered to be your wife?"
How could the young man answer this question except by clasping his
betrothed to his heart? So there was another little love-scene, over
which Mrs. Pimpernel,--the proprietress's name was Pimpernel--wept
fresh tears, murmuring that the Capting was the sweetest young man,
sweeter than Mr. Macready in Claude Melnock; and that the scene
altogether reminded her of that "cutting" episode where the proud
mother went on against the pore young man, and Miss Faucit came out so
beautiful. They are a playgoing population in Oakley Street, and
compassionate and sentimental like all true playgoers.
"What shall I do with you, Miss Marchmont?" Edward Arundel asked gaily,
when the little love-scene was concluded. "My mother and sister are
away, at a German watering-place, trying some unpronounceable Spa for
the benefit of poor Letty's health. Reginald is with them, and my
father's alone at Dangerfield. So I can't take you down there, as I
might have done if my mother had been at home; I don't much care for
the Mostyns, or you might have stopped in Montague Square. There are no
friendly friars nowadays who will marry Romeo and Juliet at
half-an-hour's notice. You must live a fortnight somewhere, Polly:
where shall it be?"
"Oh, let me stay here, please," Miss Marchmont pleaded; "I was always
so happy here!"
"Lord love her precious heart!" exclaimed Mrs. Pimpernel, lifting up
her hands in a rapture of admiration. "To think as she shouldn't have a
bit of pride, after all the money as her pore par come into! To think
as she should wish to stay in her old lodgins, where everythink shall
be done to make her comfortable; and the air back and front is very
'ealthy, though you might not believe it, and the Blind School and
Bedlam hard by, and Kennington Common only a pleasant walk, and
beautiful and open this warm summer weather."
"Yes, I should like to stop here, please," Mary murmured. Even in the
midst of her agitation, overwhelmed as she was by the emotions of the
present, her thoughts went back to the past, and she remembered how
delightful it would be to go and see the accommodating butcher, and the
greengrocer's daughter, the kind butterman who had called her "little
lady," and the disreputable gray parrot. How delightful it would be to
see these humble friends, now that she was grown up, and had money
wherewith to make them presents in token of her gratitude!
"Very well, then, Polly," Captain Arundel said, "you'll stay here. And
Mrs.----"
"Pimpernel," the landlady suggested.
"Mrs. Pimpernel will take as good care of you as if you were Queen of
England, and the welfare of the nation depended upon your safety. And
I'll stop at my hotel in Covent Garden; and I'll see Richard
Paulette,--he's my lawyer as well as yours, you know, Polly,--and tell
him something of what has happened, and make arrangements for our
immediate marriage."
"Our marriage!"
Mary Marchmont echoed her lover's last words, and looked up at him
almost with a bewildered air. She had never thought of an early
marriage with Edward Arundel as the result of her flight from
Lincolnshire. She had a vague notion that she would live in Oakley
Street for years, and that in some remote time the soldier would come
to claim her.
"Yes, Polly darling, Olivia Marchmont's conduct has made me decide upon
a very bold step. It is evident to me that my cousin hates you; for
what reason, Heaven only knows, since you can have done nothing to
provoke her hate. When your father was a poor man, it was to me he
would have confided you. He changed his mind afterwards, very
naturally, and chose another guardian for his orphan child. If my
cousin had fulfilled this trust, Mary, I would have deferred to her
authority, and would have held myself aloof until your minority was
passed, rather than ask you to marry me without your stepmother's
consent. But Olivia Marchmont has forfeited her right to be consulted
in this matter. She has tortured you and traduced me by her poisonous
slander. If you believe in me, Mary, you will consent to be my wife. My
justification lies in the future. You will not find that I shall sponge
upon your fortune, my dear, or lead an idle life because my wife is a
rich woman."
Mary Marchmont looked up with shy tenderness at her lover.
"I would rather the fortune were yours than mine, Edward," she said. "I
will do whatever you wish; I will be guided by you in every thing."
It was thus that John Marchmont's daughter consented to become the wife
of the man she loved, the man whose image she had associated since her
childhood with all that was good and beautiful in mankind. She knew
none of those pretty stereotyped phrases, by means of which well-bred
young ladies can go through a graceful fencing-match of hesitation and
equivocation, to the anguish of a doubtful and adoring suitor. She had
no notion of that delusive negative, that bewitching feminine "no,"
which is proverbially understood to mean "yes." Weary courses of Roman
Emperors, South-Sea Islands, Sidereal Heavens, Tertiary and Old Red
Sandstone, had very ill-prepared this poor little girl for the stern
realities of life.
"I will be guided by you, dear Edward," she said; "my father wished me
to be your wife; and if I did not love you, it would please me to obey
him."
It was eleven o'clock when Captain Arundel left Oakley Street. The
hansom had been waiting all the time, and the driver, seeing that his
fare was young, handsome, dashing, and what he called
"milingtary-like," demanded an enormous sum when he landed the soldier
before the portico of the hotel in Covent Garden.
Edward took a hasty breakfast the next morning, and then hurried off to
Lincoln's-Inn Fields. But here a disappointment awaited him. Richard
Paulette had started for Scotland upon a piscatorial excursion. The
elder Paulette was an octogenarian, who lived in the south of France,
and kept his name in the business as a fiction, by means of which
elderly and obstinate country clients were deluded into the belief that
the solicitor who conducted their affairs was the same legal
practitioner who had done business for their fathers and grandfathers
before them. Mathewson, a grim man, was away amongst the Yorkshire
wolds, superintending the foreclosure of certain mortgages upon a
bankrupt baronet's estate. A confidential clerk, who received clients,
and kept matters straight during the absence of his employers, was very
anxious to be of use to Captain Arundel: but it was not likely that
Edward could sit down and pour his secrets into the bosom of a clerk,
however trustworthy a personage that employe might be.
The young man's desire had been that his marriage with Mary Marchmont
should take place at least with the knowledge and approbation of her
dead father's lawyer: but he was impatient to assume the only title by
which he might have a right to be the orphan girl's champion and
protector; and he had therefore no inclination to wait until the long
vacation was over, and Messrs. Paulette and Mathewson returned from
their northern wanderings. Again, Mary Marchmont suffered from a
continual dread that her stepmother would discover the secret of her
humble retreat, and would follow her and reassume authority over her.
"Let me be your wife before I see her again, Edward," the girl pleaded
innocently, when this terror was uppermost in her mind. "She could not
say cruel things to me if I were your wife. I know it is wicked to be
so frightened of her; because she was always good to me until that
night: but I cannot tell you how I tremble at the thought of being
alone with her at Marchmont Towers. I dream sometimes that I am with
her in the gloomy old house, and that we two are alone there, even the
servants all gone, and you far away in India, Edward,--at the other end
of the world."
It was as much as her lover could do to soothe and reassure the
trembling girl when these thoughts took possession of her. Had he been
less sanguine and impetuous, less careless in the buoyancy of his
spirits, Captain Arundel might have seen that Mary's nerves had been
terribly shaken by the scene between her and Olivia, and all the
anguish which had given rise to her flight from Marchmont Towers. The
girl trembled at every sound. The shutting of a door, the noise of a
cab stopping in the street below, the falling of a book from the table
to the floor, startled her almost as much as if a gunpowder-magazine
had exploded in the neighbourhood. The tears rose to her eyes at the
slightest emotion. Her mind was tortured by vague fears, which she
tried in vain to explain to her lover. Her sleep was broken by dismal
dreams, foreboding visions of shadowy evil.
For a little more than a fortnight Edward Arundel visited his betrothed
daily in the shabby first-floor in Oakley Street, and sat by her side
while she worked at some fragile scrap of embroidery, and talked gaily
to her of the happy future; to the intense admiration of Mrs.
Pimpernel, who had no greater delight than to assist in the pretty
little sentimental drama that was being enacted on her first-floor.
Thus it was that, on a cloudy and autumnal August morning, Edward
Arundel and Mary Marchmont were married in a great empty-looking church
in the parish of Lambeth, by an indifferent curate, who shuffled
through the service at railroad speed, and with far less reverence for
the solemn rite than he would have displayed had he known that the
pale-faced girl kneeling before the altar-rails was undisputed mistress
of eleven thousand a-year. Mrs. Pimpernel, the pew-opener, and the
registrar who was in waiting in the vestry, and was beguiled thence to
give away the bride, were the only witnesses to this strange wedding.
It seemed a dreary ceremonial to Mrs. Pimpernel, who had been married
at the same church five-and-twenty years before, in a cinnamon satin
spencer, and a coal-scuttle bonnet, and with a young person in the
dressmaking line in attendance upon her as bridesmaid.
It _was_ rather a dreary wedding, no doubt. The drizzling rain dripped
ceaselessly in the street without, and there was a smell of damp
plaster in the great empty church. The melancholy street-cries sounded
dismally from the outer world, while the curate was hurrying through
those portentous words which were to unite Edward Arundel and Mary
Marchmont until the final day of earthly separation. The girl clung
shivering to her lover, her husband now, as they went into the vestry
to sign their names in the marriage-register. Throughout the service
she had expected to hear a footstep in the aisle behind her, and Olivia
Marchmont's cruel voice crying out to forbid the marriage.
"I am your wife now, Edward, am I not?" she said, when she had signed
her name in the register.
"Yes, my darling, for ever and for ever."
"And nothing can part us now?"
"Nothing but death, my dear."
In the exuberance of his spirits, Edward Arundel spoke of the King of
Terrors as if he had been a mere nobody, whose power to change or mar
the fortunes of mankind was so trifling as to be scarcely worth
mentioning.
The vehicle in waiting to carry the mistress of Marchmont Towers upon
the first stage of her bridal tour was nothing better than a hack cab.
The driver's garments exhaled stale tobacco-smoke in the moist
atmosphere, and in lieu of the flowers which are wont to bestrew the
bridal path of an heiress, Miss Marchmont trod upon damp and mouldy
straw. But she was happy,--happy, with a fearful apprehension that her
happiness could not be real,--a vague terror of Olivia's power to
torture and oppress her, which even the presence of her lover-husband
could not altogether drive away. She kissed Mrs. Pimpernel, who stood
upon the edge of the pavement, crying bitterly, with the slippery white
lining of a new silk dress, which Edward Arundel had given her for the
wedding, gathered tightly round her.
"God bless you, my dear!" cried the honest dealer in frayed satins and
tumbled gauzes; "I couldn't take this more to heart if you was my own
Eliza Jane going away with the young man as she was to have married,
and as is now a widower with five children, two in arms, and the
youngest brought up by hand. God bless your pretty face, my dear; and
oh, pray take care of her, Captain Arundel, for she's a tender flower,
sir, and truly needs your care. And it's but a trifle, my own sweet
young missy, for the acceptance of such as you, but it's given from a
full heart, and given humbly."
The latter part of Mrs. Pimpernel's speech bore relation to a hard
newspaper parcel, which she dropped into Mary's lap. Mrs. Arundel
opened the parcel presently, when she had kissed her humble friend for
the last time, and the cab was driving towards Nine Elms, and found
that Mrs. Pimpernel's wedding-gift was a Scotch shepherdess in china,
with a great deal of gilding about her tartan garments, very red legs,
a hat and feathers, and a curly sheep. Edward put this article of
_virtu_ very carefully away in his carpet-bag; for his bride would not
have the present treated with any show of disrespect.
"How good of her to give it me!" Mary said; "it used to stand upon the
back-parlour chimney-piece when I was a little girl; and I was so fond
of it. Of course I am not fond of Scotch shepherdesses now, you know,
dear; but how should Mrs. Pimpernel know that? She thought it would
please me to have this one."
"And you'll put it in the western drawing-room at the Towers, won't
you, Polly?" Captain Arundel asked, laughing.
"I won't put it anywhere to be made fun of, sir," the young bride
answered, with some touch of wifely dignity; "but I'll take care of it,
and never have it broken or destroyed; and Mrs. Pimpernel shall see it,
when she comes to the Towers,--if I ever go back there," she added,
with a sudden change of manner.
"_If_ you ever go back there!" cried Edward. "Why, Polly, my dear,
Marchmont Towers is your own house. My cousin Olivia is only there upon
sufferance, and her own good sense will tell her she has no right to
stay there, when she ceases to be your friend and protectress. She is a
proud woman, and her pride will surely never suffer her to remain where
she must feel she can be no longer welcome."
The young wife's face turned white with terror at her husband's words.
"But I could never ask her to go, Edward," she said. "I wouldn't turn
her out for the world. She may stay there for ever if she likes. I
never have cared for the place since papa's death; and I couldn't go
back while she is there, I'm so frightened of her, Edward, I'm so
frightened of her."
The vague apprehension burst forth in this childish cry. Edward Arundel
clasped his wife to his breast, and bent over her, kissing her pale
forehead, and murmuring soothing words, as he might have done to a
child.
"My dear, my dear," he said, "my darling Mary, this will never do; my
own love, this is so very foolish."
"I know, I know, Edward; but I can't help it, I can't indeed; I was
frightened of her long ago; frightened of her even the first day I saw
her, the day you took me to the Rectory. I was frightened of her when
papa first told me he meant to marry her; and I am frightened of her
now; even now that I am your wife, Edward, I'm frightened of her
still."
Captain Arundel kissed away the tears that trembled on his wife's
eyelids; but she had scarcely grown quite composed even when the cab
stopped at the Nine Elms railway station. It was only when she was
seated in the carriage with her husband, and the rain cleared away as
they advanced farther into the heart of the pretty pastoral country,
that the bride's sense of happiness and safety in her husband's
protection, returned to her. But by that time she was able to smile in
his face, and to look forward with delight to a brief sojourn in that
pretty Hampshire village, which Edward had chosen for the scene of his
honeymoon.
"Only a few days of quiet happiness, Polly," he said; "a few days of
utter forgetfulness of all the world except you; and then I must be a
man of business again, and write to your stepmother and my father and
mother, and Messrs. Paulette and Mathewson, and all the people who
ought to know of our marriage."