As Minna had taken care to have completed the fifteen days’ residence
required of one of the parties for a marriage by license, it was she
who, accompanied by Hugh, gave the necessary notice the next day. On
the Tuesday in Whitsun week they were married, taking with them, as one
witness, Anna Cassaba, whose Jewish conscience Minna had wheedled into
complicity. The old woman, bent and thin, her swarthy face wrinkled
with a myriad lines, fastened eyes upon them that still glowed with
unquenched fires. Her darling’s prince had come. A handsome prince,
indeed, for which she pardoned him his Gentile birth. But it took all
her love for Minna to reconcile her to the non-religious ceremony. Its
bareness shocked her.
The Registrar was an old man in a skull cap, with long, white beard
and lack-lustre eyes. He took but indifferent interest in the pair. A
wearied resignation showed itself in his manner, as he administered the
customary declarations, and pointed with shrivelled finger to the spaces
wherein they should sign their names. He reminded one of an old scholar
serving out trumpery fiction to the subscribers of a circulating
library. A sorry book he was delivering up to them. A trivial pair were
they for desiring it. He wished them good luck in a mechanical, far off
tone. If they had put the fees in the slot of an automatic machine and
drawn out a marriage certificate, the business could not have been more
impersonally concluded.
Out in the street again they parted from the old woman, who stood
for some time watching them as they went in the direction of the new
lodgings that Hugh had engaged on the Parade. She would dearly have
loved to shelter them like love-birds in her own nest. But prudence
forbade Minna to reveal her secret to Anna’s servants. She sighed as
soon as they had disappeared, and turning her slow steps homewards,
thought in her old woman’s way of the beautiful children that would be.
The newly wedded pair walked on for a long while in silence. Minna
pressed her husband’s arm tightly, waiting for him to speak, half afraid
of breaking in upon his thoughts, which she instinctively felt must be
deeper than her own. Besides, the bareness of the ceremony had left her
with a vague depression. It was a cold, grim episode in the heart of her
romance. The walk grew hateful. She longed for the shelter of four walls
and the dearer, warming shelter of his arms. Until they were about
her, life was a limbo where nothing was defined. She glanced up at him
timidly, to see him looking straight before him, his shoulders square,
his head thrown back defiantly. Now that she had won him, she faltered
over her victory. A sudden dismay depressed her further. His present
attitude was an impenetrable wall closing round the inner man. What did
she know of him? For a sickening moment her brain was confused by the
illusion that he was a total stranger whom some nightmare freak had made
master of her destiny. It vanished quickly, but an after-sensation of
fear remained. It was so different from the joyous glow that she had
anticipated. She felt herself upon the verge of tears. Resentment
against him, as if to justify her depression, began to spread like a
dull pain around her heart. It was cruel of him to walk as he was doing,
in other spheres, apart from her whom he had just made his wife. She
withdrew her hand from his arm. He started, caught her hand and replaced
it, pressed it closely to him and looked down upon the trouble of her
face.
“Poor child,” he said, “you are shaken. Thank goodness it is over.”
The tears began to gather in her eyes. “It was horrid,” she said.
“Well, it will never happen again, sweetheart. Let us forget the dismal
old man and think of what lies before us. You must be bright and happy
on your wedding day.”
“If you would let me,” said Minna.
“I, dearest?” he exclaimed, with some prickings of self-reproach.
“Yes. Why have you walked all this time without speaking a word to me?”
A tear fell. It roused the man’s tenderness, melted the cold weight of
misgiving that had held him silent. He felt that he had behaved brutally
to her. She was his wife; nothing could alter it. Cruelly vain now
were searchings of heart and conscience. He had caused her unhappiness
already. In the revulsion of feeling he broke into passionate speech,
bending as he walked, to whisper in her ear. He spoke foolish words of
comfort, chided her loverwise for vain fancies, explained his previous
mood of seriousness. It was a solemn step they had taken. He was trying
to realise that he held her happiness in his hands for the rest of her
life. Minna began to brighten.
“It is foolish to cry,” she said, “but I was hungering for a word.”
He laughed gaily, to cheer her. She must laugh, too, like a happy bride,
to please her lord. He demanded to see the wedding ring. She held up her
gloveless left hand. Her heart grew warm again, as the symbol of their
union gleamed before the eyes of both. A little later, she was nestling
in his arms, murmuring her content in low dove notes that stole sweetly
over his senses.
Thus began their married life. In moments of intoxication they touched
some of the lower stars. In sober hours they trod upon indubitable
earth, which each pretended to call the floor of paradise. When the
Trinity law sittings commenced, Hugh was forced to return to London.
On the evening before his departure, they were sitting together on the
pier, somewhat silent. Minna sighed her regret. The end of the honeymoon
already. Although it was not the poor tragedy:--“_Déjà!--Enfin!_”--yet
Hugh’s responsive, “Yes, already,” was somewhat lacking in spontaneity.
Minna marked it, with a little pang of mortification, but she said,
indulgently:
“I believe you want to get back to your horrid briefs.”
He did not deny the fact. “I must lose no chances now, dear. Energy is
doubly necessary.”
“There ought to be no work in the world,” she answered, in her slow,
plaintive way. “I wish we could live just as we have been doing.”
Hugh protested. His blindest flatterer could not call him a fanatical
Carlylean in his views of the nobility of toil, but purposeful joining
in the great struggle for existence was a condition of moral health.
He apologised for the platitude. Minna laughed, dubbed it an old wives’
fable to be ranked with the proverbial but fallacious advantages of
early rising. She wanted nothing in life but love. It was its own
purpose. It was the heart of life.
“But the heart cannot exist by itself,” he answered, earnestly. “It must
have its clothing of flesh, its supply of blood. And the stronger and
more vigorous these outer walls of life are, the truer does it beat.”
“I think you only look upon love as one of the outer graces of life
and not the heart at all,” she said, pensively. “For you, the heart is
something quite different.”
“If it isn’t you, dear, can you tell me what it is?” he asked, tenderly.
She yielded herself to the arm he had slipped behind her.
“I suppose it is I, after all,” she said, with a half sigh. “I hope so.
If not I shall be throbbing, quite bare, without my wall of flesh. You
will always go on loving me, Hugh? It would kill me now if you didn’t.”
He answered as millions of men have done since the world began:
honestly, according to his lights, willing to love her loyally for her
soul’s sake, not for her beauty’s. Yet the consciousness of an effort
of volition in the matter was disquieting. As usual, he took refuge in
impetuous speech.
“I shall love you blindly and passionately till the hour of my death.”
The first morning in London he missed her. His bachelor rooms seemed
cold and informal with vague discomfort. His breakfast, served by
the porter’s wife, who attended to his domestic needs, was singularly
unappetising. The morning paper supported in front of him by the tea-pot
proved an inadequate substitute for Minna’s pretty face and sweet, lazy
talk. He convinced himself that he loved her truly. But when he reached
his chambers he found a brief awaiting him that demanded all his
faculties. In half an hour he had forgotten her. When he went out for
lunch, it was with a glow of satisfaction at work accomplished. At the
restaurant, he met brother barristers, fellow-frequenters of the
place, and found unprecedented zest in the keen, masculine talk. In the
afternoon at his club, he dropped into a vacant armchair by the side of
the editor of a great review, who cast over all who approached him the
charm of his culture and the spell of his genius. By the afternoon post
came two letters, one from Minna, who had addressed him at the club
according to arrangement, the other from Irene. He opened his wife’s
first, read it with genuine tenderness. Everything, she wrote, was
plunged into utter darkness. She was yearning for to-morrow when she
would see her dear love again. A passionate letter with an untrained
girl’s lack of reserve. He went to a writing-table, finished a
half-written letter of his own and dropped it into the club letter-box.
Then he read Irene’s communication. It was a request that he would
attend a committee meeting of her Institution at half-past eight. Gerard
was engaged and could not come. She reproached him for his absence, was
anxious for a talk with him, had addressed him at the club on the chance
of catching him.
Long custom had caused him to regard such requests as commands. To
please her he would have broken many engagements. At half-past eight he
found himself in the committee room, and seated at the table by the side
of Irene who had reserved a place for him. The business concluded, they
went back to Sunnington together by the District Railway.
“What have you been doing with yourself all this time?” she said, as
soon as they were settled comfortably in the train.
“Oh, lotus-eating, generally,” he replied.
“I thought so.”
“Why?”
“It is said to impair the memory. You seem to have forgotten all about
us.”
“I accept the rebuke,” he answered, meekly. “Now tell me all that I have
been oblivious of.”
She gave him her little budget of news, aware that he would give no
further information as to his own doings. She spoke of the waif she had
rescued.
“You have no idea how strong and bonny she looks. I have been canvassing
for votes for the St. Katherine schools. The election is next week. I
think she’ll get in.”
“But I had an idea you were going to keep her,” said Hugh.
“So had I. I shall miss her dreadfully. It would be so nice to adopt
a child. But Gerard thought this would be better for her--and he’s so
wise, you know.”
The idea of her husband’s goodness and wisdom brought tenderness into
her eyes, changing her expression to one of wonderful simplicity. Hugh
made no reply, but leaned back and watched her across the compartment
which they alone occupied. The central light, that fell full upon her,
showed nothing, in her face, of the practical, capable woman of affairs,
only the soft charm of girlhood, that lingered still in her eight and
twenty years. Presently she bent forward.
“Why do you look at me like that?” she asked, smiling.
“I was dipping into the poem of your face, and reading my favourite
bits,” he replied, half seriously.
“What are they?”
“Oh, I am not going to talk Shakespearian comedy to you,” he answered,
laughing. “So you needn’t expect it.”
The jest put her into a mood of light frivolity. They discussed faces.
Some were sermons, some were Hymns, Ancient and Modern, some were
comic operas, some were post-office directories, whilst others were
the collected works of minor poets. She wondered what her own was.
Hugh suggested an ode. The comparison pleased her and she thanked him
prettily. Really, she had been a most ugly child. Just as if she had
been at a feast of features and stolen the scraps. The foolish chat took
them to Sunnington. He walked with her as far as the gate of her house.
“When are you coming to dinner?”
“The day after to-morrow,” he said, after a moment’s reflection.
He shook hands with her and turned homeward with a buoyant step. He
felt happy, exhilarated, a different man from the bereaved and depressed
bridegroom who had set out in the morning. The day had opened with a
wretched sense of loss; it closed with a glad consciousness of gain. He
wondered at the change. The fact was that the small but varied incidents
of the day, bringing him into close touch with the external world of
work, action, thought and sympathy, had stimulated a somewhat flagging
moral energy. He was conscious of this as he dwelt upon them. Yes, these
were the things that made life worth the living. These together formed
the heart of life. Without them he would perish of inanition. Love, even
sweet, wedded love a fortnight old, was but the fringe, the grace, the
colour, the what you will of adornment of life; but its heart--ah, no!
He was honest and dishonest with himself at once. The conviction that
he had spent his first day of absence from his wife, in whole-hearted
enjoyment of the outer world, was too absolute for him to accept
it otherwise than frankly. But deep down in his soul were
warning glimmerings of a truth to which he defiantly blinded his
eyes--glimmerings that duskly revealed a love that might be the heart of
life, rich, throbbing, vitalising, such as his feelings for Minna were
not.
He drew her letter from his pocket and read it through again. His
heart smote him sorely for not feeling more miserable. Instinctively
he conjured up the hours of sweet intoxication and caught at their
lingering glamour.
“Poor little girl,” he said aloud, rising to his feet. “How wretched she
must be at this moment.”
He sat down at his writing-table.
“Sweet little wife,” he began, “I would that you were with me now.” And,
for the hour, he was quite sincere.