On the night before he was married, John, vaguely nervous, left his
mother at Miss Squibb's and went for a walk. All day, he had been "on
pins and needles," and now, although it was nine o'clock, he could not
remain in the house any longer. He felt that his head would burst if he
stayed indoors. The house seemed to be unusually stuffy, and the
spectacle of Lizzie gazing at him with mawkish interest, made him wish
to rise up and assault her. He had fidgetted about the room, taking a
book from its shelf and then, without reading in it, replacing it,
until his mother, observing him with cautious eyes, proposed that he
should go for a walk. "I won't wait up for you," she said, "so you
needn't hurry back!"
"Very well, ma!" he said, getting ready to go out.
He left the house and started to walk towards Streatham, but before he
had gone very far, he felt drawn away from Streatham, and he turned and
walked past his home and on towards Kennington. At the Horns, he paused
indecisively. There were more light and stir towards the Elephant and
Castle than there was in the Kennington Road, and light and stir were
attractive to him, but to-night he ought to be in quiet places and in
shadows. He was beginning to feel dubious about himself. Marriage,
after all, was a very serious business, but here he was thrusting
himself into it with very little consideration. Eleanor had protested
all along that they were insufficiently acquainted with each other and
had pleaded for a long engagement, but he had overruled her: they knew
each other well enough. The best way for a man and woman to get to know
each other, he said, was to marry. Eleanor had exclaimed against that
doctrine because, she said, if the couple discovered that they did not
care for each other, they could not get free without misery and
possibly disgrace.
"You have to run the risk of that," said John.
That always had been his determining argument: that one must take
risks. Now, on this night before his marriage, the risk he was about to
take alarmed him. The fidgettiness, the nervous irritability which had
been characteristic of him all day now concretely became fright. Who
was this woman he was about to marry? What did he know of her? She was
a pleasant, nice-looking girl and she had an extraordinary power over
him ... but what did he _know_ of her? Nothing. Nothing whatever.
He liked kissing her and holding her in his arms, but he had liked
kissing Maggie Carmichael and holding her in his arms; and now he was
very thankful he had not married Maggie. How was he to know that he
would feel any more for Eleanor in six months' time than he now felt
for Maggie ... for whom he had once felt everything? Eleanor had told
him that she only liked him ... was not in love with him ... that he
was one of a hundred men, anyone of whom she might have married and
lived with in tolerable happiness!...
A cold shiver ran through his body as he thought that he might be about
to make the greatest mistake that any man could make ... marry the
wrong woman. Ought he to postpone the marriage so that Eleanor and he
should have more time in which to consider things? Postponement would
mean terrible inconvenience to everybody, but it would be better to
suffer such inconvenience than to enter into a dismal marriage because
one was reluctant to upset arrangements. This marrying was a terrible
affair!... He walked steadily along the Kennington Road and presently
found himself in Westminster Bridge Road, and then he crossed the river
and turned on to the Embankment. There was a cool breeze blowing from
the sea, and he took his hat off and let the air play about his head.
He leant against the parapet and gazed across the water to the dark
warehouses on the Lambeth side and wondered why they were so beautiful
at night when they were so hideous by day. Even the railway bridge at
Charing Cross seemed to be beautiful in the dusk, and when a train
rumbled across it, sending up clouds of lit smoke from the funnel of
the engine and making flickering lights as the carriages rolled past
the iron bars of the bridge-side, it seemed to him to be a very
wonderful and appealing spectacle. His fidgettiness fell from him as he
contemplated the swift river and the great dark shapes of warehouses
and the black hulks of barges going down to the Pool and the immutable
loveliness of Waterloo Bridge. He had walked along the Embankment past
Hungerford Bridge, and then had stopped to look at Waterloo Bridge for
a few moments. Even the moving lights of the advertisements of tea and
whiskey on the Lambeth side of the river made beauty for him as they
were reflected in the water. There were little crinkled waves of green
and red and gold on the river as the changing lights of the
advertisements ran up and down.... He had seen articles in the
newspapers protesting against these illuminated signs ... "the ugly
symbols of commercialism" ... but to-night they had the look of
loveliness in his eyes. Very often since he had come to London had he
found himself in disagreement with the views of men who wrote as if
Almighty God had committed Beauty to their charge ... he had never been
able to understand or agree with their arguments against great engines
and the instruments of power and energy ... and it seemed to him that
many of these writers were querulous, fractious people who had not the
capacity to make themselves at ease in a striving world. That poet
fellow ... what was his name? ... whom he had met at Hampstead ...
Palfrey, that was the man's name ... had sneered at Commerce! John had
not been able to make head or tail of his arguments against Commerce,
and he had found himself defending it against the Poet ... "the very
word is beautiful!" he had asserted several times ... mainly on his
recollection of his Uncle William. Palfrey had had the best of the
argument, because Palfrey could use his tongue more effectively,
but John had felt certain that the truth was not in Palfrey, and here
to-night, in this place where Commerce was most compactly to be seen, he
knew that there was Beauty in the labours of men, that bargaining and
competition and striving energies and rivalry in skill were elements of
loveliness. "These little poets sitting in their stuffy attics
scribbling about the moon!... Yah-rr-r!" he said, putting his hat on to
his head again.
His mind was quieter now. He was certain of his love for Eleanor. How
wise his mother had been to suggest that he should go out for a walk.
She had guessed, no doubt, that he was ill at ease and full of doubt,
and had sent him forth to find rest in movement and ease in energy. It
was a great comfort to have his mother by him now. That morning he had
looked at her, sitting in the light of the window, and had seen for the
first time the great depth of her eyes and the wonderful patience in
her face.... He must consider her more in future. Eleanor liked her,
and she liked Eleanor. That was all to the good!... He must go home
now. He would walk to Blackfriars Bridge, cross the river and go home
by the Elephant and Castle. He started to walk briskly along the
Embankment, but he had not gone very far on his way when he heard his
name called.
"Oh, John!" the call was, and looking round, he saw Eleanor rising from
one of the garden-seats near the kerb.
"Eleanor!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
She came quickly to him and he took hold of her hands.
"I was frightened," she said, half sobbing as she spoke.
"Frightened!"
"Yes. I lost my nerve this evening and I ... I came out to think. Oh, I
wonder are we wise!..."
He drew her arm in his. "Come home, my dear," he said.
He led her across the road, through the District Railway Station and up
Villiers Street to the Strand, and as they walked along he told her of
his own fears. "You were frightened, too?" she said in astonishment.
"Not frightened," he replied, "only ... well, dubious!"
"Perhaps we'd better wait," she suggested.
"Oh, no, no. I should feel such a fool if I were to tell people we'd
postponed our marriage because we'd both got scared about it!"
"It's better to feel a fool than!..."
"And anyhow I know that it's all right. I feel sure it's all right.
When I walked along the Embankment before I met you, I became certain
that I wanted you, Eleanor, and no one else but you. My dear, I'm
terribly happy!"
"Are you?"
"Yes. Why, of course, I am. How can I be anything else when I shall be
your husband this time to-morrow?"
They walked along Bond Street because they had discovered that Bond
Street, when the shops are shut, is dark and quiet, and once they
stopped and faced each other, and John took her in his arms and kissed
her. "Sweetheart!" he murmured, with his lips against hers.
Then he took her to her club. "What a place for you to be married
from!" he said, as he bade her good-night.
"This is my last night in it," she answered. "I shall never live in a
place where there are only women again!" She paused for a moment, and
then, with a sigh of relief, added, "Thank Goodness!"