The way in which the people at Windlow took the news was very
characteristic. Howard frankly did not care how they regarded it. Mr.
Sandys was frankly and hugely delighted. He apologised to Howard for
having mentioned the subject of Guthrie to him.
"The way you took it, Howard," he said, "was a perfect model of
delicacy and highmindedness! Why, if I had dreamed that you cared for
my little girl, I would have said, and truly said, that the dearest
wish of my heart had been fulfilled. But one is blind, a parent is
blind; and I had somehow imagined you as too sedate, as altogether too
much advanced in thought and experience, for such a thing. I would
rather have bitten out my tongue than spoken as I did to you. It is
exactly what my dear girl needs, some one who is older and wiser than
herself--she needs some one to look up to, to revere; she is thoughtful
and anxious beyond her years, and she is made to repose confidence in a
mind more mature. I do not deny, of course, that your position at
Windlow makes the arrangement a still more comfortable one; but I have
always said that my children must marry whom they would; and I should
have welcomed you, my dear Howard, as a son-in-law, under any
circumstances."
Jack, on the contrary, was rather more cautious in his congratulations.
"I am all for things being fixed up as people like," he said, "and I am
sure it's a good match for Maud, and all that. But I can't put the two
ends together. I never supposed that you would fall in love, any more
than that my father would marry again; and when it comes to your
falling in love with Maud--well, if you knew that girl as I do, you
would think twice! I can't conceive what you will ever have to talk
about, unless you make her do essays. It is really rather embarrassing
to have a Don for a brother-in-law. I feel as if I should have to say
'we' when I talked to the other Dons, and I shall be regarded with
suspicion by the rest of the men. But of course you have my blessing,
if you will do it; though if you like to cry off, even now, I will try
to keep the peace. I feel rather an ass to have said that about Fred
Guthrie; but of course he is hard hit, and I can't think how I shall
ever be able to look him in the face. What bothers me is that I never
saw how things were going. Well, may it be long before I find myself in
the same position! But you are welcome to Missy, if you think you can
make anything of her."
Mrs. Graves did little more than express her delight. "It was what I
somehow hoped from the first for both of you," she said.
"Well," said Howard, "the only thing that puzzles me is that when you
saw--yes, I am sure you saw--what was happening, you didn't make a
sign."
"No," said Mrs. Graves, "that is just what one can't do! I didn't doubt
that it would come right, I guessed what Maud felt; but you had to find
the way to her yourself. I was sure of Maud, you see; but I was not
quite sure of you. It does not do to try experiments, dear Howard, with
forces as strong as love; I knew that if I told you how things stood,
you would have felt bound out of courtesy and kindness to speak, and
that would have been no good. If it is illegal to help a man to commit
suicide, it is worse, it is wicked to push a man into marriage; but I
am a very happy woman now--so happy that I am almost afraid."
Howard talked over his plans with Mrs. Graves; there seemed no sort of
reason to defer his wedding. He told her, too, that he had a further
plan. There was a system at Beaufort by which, after a certain number
of years' service, a Fellow could take a year off duty, without
affecting his seniority or his position. "I am going to do this," he
said. "I do not think it is unwise. I am too old, I think, both to make
Maud's acquaintance as I wish, and to keep my work going at the same
time. It would be impossible. So I will settle down here, if you will
let me, and try to understand the place and the people; and then if it
seems well, I will go back to Cambridge in October year, and go on with
my work. I hope you will approve of that?"
"I do entirely approve," said Mrs. Graves. "I will make over to you at
once what you will in any case ultimately inherit--and I believe your
young lady is not penniless either? Well, money has its uses sometimes."
Howard did this. Mr. Redmayne wrote him a letter in which affection and
cynicism were curiously mingled.
"There will be two to please now instead of one," he wrote. "I do not,
of course, approve of Dons marrying. The tender passion is, I believe,
inimical to solid work; this I judge from observation rather than from
experience. But you will get over all that when you are settled; and
then if you decide to return--and we can ill spare you--I hope you will
return to work in a reasonable frame of mind. Pray give my respects to
the young lady, and say that if she would like a testimonial to your
honesty and sobriety, I shall be happy to send her one."
All these experiences, shared by Maud, were absurdly delightful to
Howard. She was rather alarmed by Redmayne's letter.
"I feel as if I were doing rather an awful thing," she said, "in taking
you away like this. I feel like Hotspur's wife and Enid rolled into
one. I shouldn't DARE to go with you at once to Cambridge--I should
feel like a Pomeranian dog on a lead."
And so it came to pass that on a certain Monday in the month of
September a very quiet little wedding took place at Windlow. The bells
were rung, and a hideous object of brushwood and bunting, that looked
like the work of a bower-bird, was erected in the road, and called a
triumphal arch. Mr. Redmayne insisted on coming, and escorted Monica
from Cambridge, "without in any way compromising my honour and virtue,"
he said: "it must be plainly understood that I have no INTENTIONS." He
made a charming speech at the subsequent luncheon, in which he said
that, though he personally regretted the turn that affairs had taken,
he could not honestly say that, if matrimony were to be regarded as
advisable, his friends could have done better.
The strange thing to Howard was the contrast between his own acute and
intolerable nervousness, and the entire and radiant self-possession of
Maud. He had a bad hour on the morning of the wedding-day itself. He
had a sort of hideous fear that he had done selfishly and perversely,
and that it was impossible that Maud could really continue to love him;
that he had sacrificed her youth to his fancy, and his vivid
imagination saw himself being wheeled in a bath-chair along the Parade
of a health-resort, with Maud in melancholy attendance.
But when he saw his child enter the church, and look up to catch his
eye, his fears melted like a vapour on glass; and his love seemed to
him to pour down in a sudden cataract, too strong for a human heart to
hold, to meet the exquisite trustfulness and sweetness of his bride,
who looked as though the gates of heaven were ajar. After that he saw
and heard nothing but Maud. They went off together in the afternoon to
a little house in Dorsetshire by a lonely sea-cove, which Mr. Sandys
had spent many glorious and important hours in securing and arranging.
It was only an hour's journey. If Howard had needed reassuring he had
his desire; for as they drove away from Windlow among the thin cries of
the village children, Howard put his arm round Maud, and said "Well,
child?" upon which she took his other hand in both of her own, and
dropping her head on his shoulder, said, "Utterly and entirely and
absolutely proud and happy and content!" And then they sate in silence.