Miss Mamie Stuart Berridge had explored Exmoor and Dunster and Porlock,
and the other wonderful and romantic places that are within walking or
driving distance of the little town. She had, perhaps, just scratched
the surface; yet, for all that, it was ecstatic to take tea in the
shadow of age-old castles, or wander through villages that looked as
though they had come straight out of a picture-book. Till she met Jimmy
Baker, however, one thing had been lacking in this romance—the final
touch. She saw it at last, and clearly too; it had not been so very
prominent before. Jimmy’s ingenuous face brought it home to her. She
wanted a companion. Doing England and having “a good time” was all very
well; but without a companion it was only half the good time it might
have been. And there was Jimmy, free to go a-roaming every evening after
five, or even earlier. So she annexed him, and such of Seacombe as knew
Jimmy whispered that this annexation was not entirely one-sided.
He was twenty-three and she was twenty-two, and it was the month of the
harvest moon and all the year’s stored tenderness. They climbed the
winding paths that led to the church; close together on a bench they
rested and found the sea; through narrow lanes they strolled, and thence
upward to purple heather and the misty hills. And there Mamie discovered
that she had not been mistaken. The final touch was a hand laid on hers,
and an inward wound like that which comes when music is too sweet, too
magical. The night she gave her lips to him obliterated America, and
especially Lansing, in the State of Michigan. She wanted to stay here
for ever, in his arms, and the moon poised above Dunkery Beacon. This
place was no longer England; it had become the Land of Heart’s Desire.
“Let me look and look,” she cried; “I shall never see anything like this
again!” And with his arm on her neck, and cheek against cheek, they sat
there, awed by a world bathed in moonlight, themselves transfigured,
smitten and silenced by the great mystery of first-awakened love. It
seemed to Mamie that she had been born anew, been here admitted into
some strange, all-satisfying faith.
Baker’s holiday, an annual fortnight wherein he might refresh himself as
best he could, was due next Monday. He had been saving up for it. During
fifty weeks of the year he was a bank clerk, the other two he was
permitted to be a man. By a predestinate coincidence—or so they deemed
it—Mamie’s trip expired on the same date. A fortnight from the Monday
she must go to Liverpool, and thence return to Lansing, in the State of
Michigan. She had her berth on the steamboat; all was paid for and
arranged. Thus two weeks and some odd days remained to them before she
sailed.... It was on the Saturday that they made up their minds to get
married.
Which of the two first jumped to that decision is hard to say, and does
not matter specially. That they jumped to it is enough. The Saturday
found them at Grabbist, above Dunster, and the inspiration came during a
pause. It seemed as simple as the line of Dunkery Beacon, that great
hill whose monstrous bulk is so precise. Next day, in the smoke-room of
the Pier Hotel, they consulted reference books. They could go to London
to-morrow, and be married on the Tuesday, it said, provided they paid
the fees. They clubbed their money together and went.
From then onward unseen hands seemed to guide them; first to their
lodgings, thence to the office of the Vicar-General, where they bought a
licence—Mamie had stayed in London, and had a residential qualification,
it appeared—and next day to the church where they were married. They
came out into the street again, and no one knew their secret. They
shared the memory of a sacrament taken in the wilderness, where the
droning curate and paid witnesses were of small account beside the flame
that had fused them into man and wife.... The golden sunlight of that
exquisite hour when, hand-in-hand, they faced London was as though made
for them; the old heart of the giant city could still rejoice, it
seemed, and was ready to crown true lovers, and fold them in mantles of
shimmering tissue and cloth of gold. They wandered through leafy
squares, and a man stopped them and asked them the way to Bell Yard.
Neither of them knew. Had he inquired the road to Paradise they could
have told.... They grew hungry at last. Their wedding breakfast was
eaten in a restaurant off Hatton Garden. The regular customers of the
place, Jews for the most part, and dealers in the staple article of that
quarter, smiled the racial smile of genial incredulity as these two
entered and found room. But neither Jim nor Mamie had a doubt; for in
their eyes that met across the narrow table shone a light more precious
and more enduring than that emitted by all the diamonds, rubies, and
emeralds of Hatton Garden.... The night found them in Rye, a southern
place that Mamie had chosen—she had so often longed to see it.