An old proverb says that marriages are made in heaven. It is one of those
ridiculous utterances born of primitive fatalism: it is akin to the
statement that afflictions are sent by God for His inscrutable purpose.
Actually, marriages in their material aspect are made by soulless Nature,
who plots and plans for nothing else, and who cares for nothing else
except the production of the next generation.
One cannot blame Dolly for using the less worthy arts of her sex to
capture the man she wanted. One cannot think ill of Jim for having been
betrayed by his senses into an alliance wherein there was little hope of
happiness. Nature has strewn the whole world with her traps; she tricks
and inveigles all young men and women with these dreams and promises of
joy; she schemes and intrigues and conspires for one purpose, and one
purpose only; and in so doing she has no more thought of that spiritual
union, which is the only sort of marriage made in heaven, than she has
when she sends the pollen from one flower to the next upon the wings of
the bees.
Human beings in the spring-time of life are the dupes of Nature’s
heedless _joie de vivre_, and fortunate are those who can take her animal
pranks in good part and avoid getting hurt. Her victims are swayed
and tossed about by yearnings and desires, passions and jealousies,
tremendous joys and desperate sorrows: because she is everywhere at
work upon the sole occupation which interests her—her scheme of racial
survival.
The marvel is that so many marriages are happy, considering that youths
and maidens are flung together, haphazard, by mighty forces, upon the
irresistibility of which the whole existence of the race depends. Well
does Nature know that if once men and women mastered their yearnings, if
once men should fail to hunt and women to entice, the game would be lost,
and the human race would become extinct.
During the following week Jim and Dolly saw each other every day; but,
though their intimacy developed, Jim made no definite proposal of
marriage. He was a lazy fellow. It was as though he preferred to drift
into that state without undergoing the ordeal of the social formalities.
He seemed to be carried along by circumstances, yet he dreaded what may
be termed the business side of the matter.
At length Dolly brought matters to a point in her characteristic manner
of assumed ingenuousness. “I think, dear,” she said, “we had better tell
mother about it now, hadn’t we? She will be so hurt if she finds that
we’ve been leaving her out of our happiness.”
Jim made no protest. He felt rather stupid, and the thought of going to
Mrs. Darling, hand-in-hand with Dolly, seemed to him to be positively
frightening in its crudity. It would be like walking straight into a
trap. He would have preferred to slip off to a registry-office, and to
see no friend or relative for a year afterwards.
The ordeal, however, proved to be less painful than he had anticipated,
thanks to the tact displayed by Mrs. Darling. When Dolly came into the
room at the cottage, triumphantly leading in her captive, the elder woman
at once checked any utterance which was about to be made by declaring
that Jim had just arrived in time to advise her in the choice of a new
chintz for her chairs.
“Dolly, dear,” she said, “run upstairs and fetch me that book of
patterns, will you?” And as soon as the girl had left the room she added:
“I wonder whether your taste will agree with Dolly’s?”
“I expect so,” he replied, significantly.
“I hope so, for your sake,” she smiled; and then, turning confidentially
to him, she whispered: “Tell me quickly, before she comes back: do you
seriously want to marry her, or shall I help you to get out of it?”
Jim was completely startled, and stammered the beginning of an incoherent
reply.
She interrupted him, putting a plump hand on his shoulder. “It has been
clear to me for some time that Dolly is desperately in love with you, and
I know she has brought you here to settle the thing. But I’m a woman of
the world, my dear boy: I don’t want to rush you into anything you don’t
intend; for the fact is, I like you very much indeed.”
Jim made the only possible reply. “But,” he said with conviction, “I want
to marry her. I’ve come to ask you. May I?”
Mrs. Darling looked at him intently. “You will have to manage her,” she
told him. “She is very young and rather full of absurdities, you know.
But you have knocked about the world: I should think you would be able
to get the best out of her, and, anyhow, I shall feel she is in good
hands.”
When the girl returned, after a somewhat prolonged absence, her mother
looked almost casually at her. “Dolly,” she said, “I don’t know if you
are aware of it, but you are engaged to be married.”
Thereat the three of them laughed happily, and the rest was plain sailing.
Later that day Dolly strolled arm-in-arm with Jim around the grounds of
the manor, looking about her with an air of proprietorship which he found
very fascinating. The linking of their lives and their belongings seemed
to him like a delightful game.
“I do like your mother,” he said. “She’s a real good sort.”
Dolly looked up at him quickly. “Poor mother!” she replied. “I don’t know
what we can do with her. She won’t like leaving Eversfield.”
“Oh, why should she go?” Jim asked.
“It would never do for her to stay,” Dolly answered firmly.
“Mothers-in-law are always in the way, however nice they are. I’m not
going to risk her getting on your nerves.” She looked at him with an
expression like that of a wise child.
“Well, we’ll rent a flat for her in London,” he suggested, “and I’ll give
her the cottage, too, so that she can come down to it sometimes.”
Dolly shook her head. “No,” she said coldly, “she has enough money to
keep herself.” His sentiments in regard to her mother had perhaps ruffled
her somewhat, and an expression had passed over her face which she hoped
he had not seen. She endeavoured, therefore, to turn his thoughts to more
intimate matters. “I should hate mother to be a burden to you,” she went
on. “It’ll be bad enough for you to have to buy all my clothes.”
“I shall love it,” he replied, with enthusiasm.
“Ah, you don’t know how expensive they are,” she hesitated. “You see,
it isn’t only what shows on top”—her voice died down to a luscious
whisper—“it’s all the things underneath as well. Women’s clothes are
rather wonderful, you know.”
She smiled shyly, and at that moment their marriage was to him a thing
most fervently to be desired.
Events moved quickly, and it was decided that the engagement should not
be of long duration. The news of the coming wedding caused a great stir
in the village; and when the banns were read in the little church all
eyes were turned upon them as they sat, he in the Squire’s pew, and she
with her mother near by. They formed a curious contrast in type: she,
with her fair hair, her childlike face, and her dainty little figure; and
he with his swarthy complexion, his dark, restless eyes, and his rather
untidy clothes. People wondered whether they would be happy, and the
general opinion was that the little lamb had fallen into the power of a
wolf. The village, in fact, had not taken kindly to the new Squire and
his “foreign” ways; and Mrs. Spooner, the doctor’s wife, had voiced the
general opinion by nicknaming him “Black Rupert.”
The weeks passed by rapidly, and soon Christmas was upon them. The
wedding was fixed for the end of January, and during that month Jim
caused various alterations to be made in the furnishing of the manor,
in accordance with Dolly’s wishes, for she held very decided views in
this regard, and did not agree with his retention of so many of the
mid-Victorian features in the drawing-room and the bedrooms. He himself
had intended at first to be rid of most of these things, but later he had
begun to feel, as Mr. Beadle had said he would, that he owed a certain
homage to the past.
“Men don’t understand about these things,” Dolly said to him, patting his
face; “but, if you want to please me, you’ll let me make a list of the
pieces of furniture that ought to be got rid of and sell them.”
The consequence was that a van-load left the manor a few days later, and
Miss Proudfoote and the vicar held one another’s hand as it passed, and
choked with every understandable emotion, while Mr. and Mrs. Longarm wept
openly at the gates.
The wedding-day at length arrived, and the ceremony proved a very trying
ordeal to Jim; for Mr. Glenning had organized the village demonstrations
of goodwill, with the result that the school children, blue with cold,
were lined up at the church door, the pews inside were packed with
uncomfortably-dressed yokels with burnished faces and creaking boots, and
a great deal of rice was thrown as the happy couple left the building.
Afterwards there was a reception at the Darling’s cottage; and Jim,
wearing a tail-coat and a stiff collar for the first time in his life,
suffered torments which were not entirely ended by a later change into a
brand-new suit of grey tweed. Throughout this trying time Mrs. Darling,
fat and flushed, proved to be his comforter and his stand-by; and it was
through her good offices that the hired car, which was to take them to
the railway station at Oxford, claimed them an hour too early.
Dolly, who had looked like an angel of Zion in her wedding dress,
appeared, in her travelling costume, like a dryad of the Bois de
Boulogne, and Jim, who had seen something of her trousseau, turned to
Mrs. Darling in rapture.
“I say!” he exclaimed. “You have rigged Dolly out wonderfully! I’ve never
seen such clothes.”
Mrs. Darling smiled. “I believe in pretty dresses,” she said, with
fervent conviction. “They tend to virtue. I believe that when the
respectable women of England took to wearing what were called indecent
clothes, they struck their first effective blow at the power of
Piccadilly. Has it never occurred to you that young peers have almost
ceased to marry chorus girls now that peer’s daughters dress like leading
ladies?”
The honeymoon was spent upon the Riviera, and here it was that Jim
realized for the first time the exactions of marriage. This exquisitely
costumed little wife of his could not be taken to the kind of inn
which he had been accustomed to patronize, and he was therefore
obliged to endure all the discomforts of fashionable hotel life, with
its nerve-racking corollaries—the jabbering crowds, the perspiring,
stiff-shirted diners, the clatter, bustle and perplexity, terminating in
each case in the dreaded crisis of gratuity-giving and escape.
With all his Bedouin heart he loathed this sort of thing, and, had he not
been the slave of love, he would have rebelled against it at once. Dolly
saw his distress, but only added to it by her superior efforts to train
him in the way in which he should go; and it was with a sigh of profound
relief that at length he found himself in Eversfield once more, when the
first buds of spring were powdering the trees with green, and the early
daffodils were opening to the growing warmth of the sun.
Jim’s work in connection with the estate was not onerous, but he very
soon found that various small matters had constantly to be seen to,
and often they were the cause of annoyance. Rents were not always paid
promptly, and if his agent pressed for them the tenants regarded Jim,
who knew nothing about it, as stern and exacting. Mr. Merrivall held his
lease of Rose Cottage on terms which provided that the tenant should
be responsible for all interior repairs; and now he announced that the
kitchen boiler was worn out, and the question had to be decided as to
whether a boiler was an interior or a structural fitting. Some eighty
acres were farmed by Mr. Hopkins on a sharing agreement, that is to
say, Jim took a part of the profits in lieu of rent; but this sort of
arrangement is always fruitful of disputes, and, in the case in question,
the fact that Jim instinctively mistrusted Farmer Hopkins, and Farmer
Hopkins mistrusted Jim, led at once to friction.
Matters came to a head in the early summer. The farmer had decided to
remove the remains of a last year’s hayrick from the field where it stood
to a shed near his stable, and, during the process, he attempted to make
a short-cut by drawing his heavily-loaded wagon over a disused bridge
which spanned a ditch. The bridge, however, collapsed under the weight,
and the wagon was wrecked.
The farmer thereupon demanded compensation from Jim, since the latter
was the owner of the bridge and therefore responsible for it. Jim,
however, replied that that road had been closed for many years to all but
pedestrians, and, if anything, the farmer ought to pay for the mending
of the bridge. Mr. Hopkins then declared that he was going to law, and,
in the meantime, he aired his grievances nightly at the “Green Man,” the
village public-house.
The trouble simmered for a time, and then, one morning, the two men met
by chance at the scene of the disaster. A wordy argument followed, and
Farmer Hopkins, with a mouthful of oaths, repeated his determination to
go to law, whereupon Jim lost his temper.
“Look here!” he said. “I don’t know anything about your blasted law, but
I do know when I’m being imposed upon. If you mention the word ‘law’ to
me again I’ll put my fist through your face.”
“Two can play at that game,” exclaimed the farmer, red with anger.
“Very well, then, come on!” cried Jim, impulsively, and, pulling off his
coat and tossing his hat aside, he began to roll up his shirt-sleeves.
Mr. Hopkins was a bigger and heavier man than the Squire, but Jim had the
advantage of him in age, being some five years younger, and they were
therefore very well matched. The farmer however, did not wish to fight,
and, indeed, was so disconcerted at the prospect that he stood staring
at Jim’s lithe, wild figure like a puzzled bull.
“Take your coat off!” Jim shouted. “We’ll have this matter out now. Put
up your fists!”
The farmer thereupon dragged off his coat, and a moment later the two men
were at it hammer and tongs, Mr. Hopkins’ fists swinging like a windmill,
and Jim, with more skill, parrying the blows and sending right and left
to his opponent’s body with good effect. The first bout was ended by Jim
dodging a terrific right and returning his left to the farmer’s jaw,
thereby sending him to the ground.
As he rose to his feet Jim shouted at him: “Well, will you now mend your
own damned cart and let me mend my bridge?—or do you want to go on?”
For answer the infuriated Mr. Hopkins charged at him, and, breaking his
guard, sent his fist into Jim’s eye; but he omitted to follow up the
advantage with his idle left, and, in consequence, received an exactly
similar blow upon his own bloodshot optic.
It was at this moment that a scream was heard, and Dolly appeared from
behind a hedge, a curious habit of hers, that of always wishing to know
what her husband was doing, having led her to follow him into the fields.
“James!” she cried in horror—ever since their marriage she had called him
“James”—“What are you doing? Mr. Hopkins!—are you both mad?”
“Pretty mad,” replied Jim.
“Call yourself a gentleman!” roared the farmer, holding his hand to his
eye.
“Oh, please, please!” Dolly entreated. “Go home, Mr. Hopkins, before he
kills you! James, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, fighting like a
common man. You have disgraced me!”
Jim, who was recovering his coat, looked up at her out of his one
serviceable eye in astonishment. Then, turning to his opponent, he said:
“We’ll finish this some other time, if you want to.”
He then walked off the field of battle, his coat slung across his
shoulder and his dark hair falling over his forehead, while Mr. Hopkins
sat down upon the stump of a tree and spat the blood out of his mouth.
For many days thereafter Dolly would hardly speak to her disfigured
husband, except to tell him, when he walked abroad with his blackened
eye, that he had no shame. Farmer Hopkins, however, mended his wagon
in time, and Jim mended his bridge; and there, save for much village
head-shaking at the “Green Man” and melancholy talk at the vicarage, the
matter ended. It was a regrettable affair, and the general opinion in the
village was that “Black Rupert” was a man to be avoided. Miss Proudfoote,
in fact, would hardly bow to him when next she passed him in the lane;
and even Mr. Glenning, who quarrelled with no man, gazed at him, in
church on the following Sunday, with an expression of deep reproof upon
his venerable face.
It was after this painful incident that Jim formed the habit of going
for long rambling walks by himself, or of wandering deep into the woods
near the manor. Sometimes he would sit for hours upon a stile in the
fields, sucking a straw and staring vacantly into the distance at the
misty towers and spires of the ancient University, or lie in the grass,
gazing up at the sky, listening to the far-off bells, his arms behind
his head. Sometimes he would take a book from his uncle’s library—some
eighteenth-century romance, or a volume of Elizabethan poetry—and go with
it into the woods, there to remain for a whole afternoon, reading in it
or in the book of Nature.
These woods had a curious effect upon him, and entering them seemed to
be like finding sanctuary. It was not that his life, at this period, was
altogether unhappy: his heart was full of tenderness towards Dolly, and,
if her behaviour was beginning to disappoint him, his attitude was at
first but one of vague disquietude. Yet here amongst the understanding
trees he felt that he was taking refuge from some menace which he could
not define; and at times he wondered whether the sensation was due to
a mental throw-back to some outlawed ancestor who had roamed the merry
greenwood, in the manner of Adam Bell and Clim of the Clough and William
Cloudesley in the ancient ballads of the North of England.
He was conscious of a decided sense of failure and he felt that he was a
useless individual. To a limited extent he used his brains and his pen in
writing the verses which always amused him, but he rarely finished any
such piece of work, and seldom composed a poem of any considerable length.
His character was not of the kind which would be likely to appeal to the
stay-at-home Englishman. He did not play golf, and though as a youth he
had been fond of cricket and tennis, his wandering life had given him no
opportunities of maintaining his skill in these games, and now it was too
late to begin again. He was not particularly interested in horseflesh,
and he had no mechanical turn which might vent itself in motoring.
His habits were modest and temperate; he preferred pitch-and-toss or
“shove-ha’penny” to bridge; and he was a poor judge of port wine. He was
sociable where the company was to his taste, but neither his neighbours
at and around Eversfield, nor the professors at Oxford, were congenial
to him. When there were visitors to the manor he was generally not able
to be found; and when he was obliged to accompany his wife to the houses
of other people, he was conscious that her eyes were upon him anxiously,
lest he should show himself for what he was—a rebel and an outlaw.
On one occasion the vicar persuaded him to sing and play his guitar at
a village concert; but the result was disastrous, and the invitation
was never repeated. He chose to sing them Kipling’s “Mandalay”; but the
pathos and the romance of the rough words were lost upon his stolid
audience, to whom there was no meaning in the picture of the mist on the
rice-fields and the sunshine on the palms, nor sense in the contrasting
description of the “blasted Henglish drizzle” and the housemaids with
beefy faces and grubby hands.
He himself was carried away by the words, and he sang with fervour:—
Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst
Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments, an’ a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be—
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea.
He did not see Dolly’s frowns, nor the pained expression upon the
vicar’s face, nor yet the smirks of the yokels; and when the song was
ended he came suddenly back to earth, as it were, and was abashed at the
feebleness of the applause.
Later, as he left the hall, he was stopped outside the door by a
disreputable, red-haired creature, nicknamed “Smiley-face,” who was
often spoken of as the village idiot. He grinned at Jim and touched his
forelock.
“Thank ’e, sir,” he said, “for that there song. My, you do sing
beautiful, sir!”
“I’m glad you liked it,” Jim answered.
“It was just like dreamin’,” Smiley-face muttered.
Jim looked at him quickly, and felt almost as though he had found a
friend. He himself had been dreaming as he sang, and here, at any rate,
was one man who had dreamed with him—and they called him the village
idiot!