AT THE GATES OF PARADISE
Many women have advanced the doctrine that the happiest time of life is
that of their engagement. Of course no man can possibly understand this
theory; but from a woman's point of view it can be defended, because it
is for some girls the most delightful thing in the world to be wooed;
and until the church service is actually said and the ring is on the
finger, the bride is Queen and Mistress; afterwards--not always. But the
happiness of it depends upon its being a courtship without obstacles.
Now, in the case of the young couple whose fortunes we are following,
there was plenty of love with excellent wooing; but the engagement had
been opposed by the whole tribe of Arundels, so that every time she met
her lover it was in open rebellion against her mother. To go home from a
walk with him only to find the silence of resentment at home was not
pleasant. Again, we have seen how they were looking forward to a life of
poverty--even of privation. Dame Penury with her pinching ways and
shrewish tongue was going to be their constant lodger. Then the young
man could not choose but ask himself whether he was not a selfish beast
to take a girl out of plenty into privation. And the girl could not
choose but ask herself whether she was not selfish in laying this great
burden upon the back of her lover. No one can be indifferent to such a
prospect: no one can contemplate with pleasure the cheeseparings, the
savings, the management of such a life: no one can like having to make a
penny do the work of sixpence: no one can rejoice as one steps down,
down, down the social ladder: no one can anticipate with satisfaction
the loss of gentlehood for the daughters, and the loss of an adequate
education for the sons.
'You will make me happy,' said the lover, 'at the cost of everything
that makes life happy for yourself.'
'If I make you happy,' said the girl, 'I ask for nothing more. But oh! I
am laying a heavy burden upon you. Can you bear it? Will you never blame
me if the burden is greater than you can bear?'
And now all the trouble vanished like a cloud from the morning
sky--vanished so completely that there was not a trace of it left
anywhere. The accusing figure of her mother was changed into a smiling
face of pleased and satisfied maternity: reproaches were turned into
words of endearment, angry looks to presents and caresses. And as for
her sister, you might have thought that all this good fortune was
actually achieved and conquered by Elsie--otherwise, how could one
justify the praise and flattery that Hilda now lavished upon her? She
gave a great dinner as a kind of official reception of the bridegroom
into the family; she also gave a dance, at which she herself was the
most beautiful woman--she stood in a conspicuous place all the evening,
magnificently dressed, statuesque, wonderful: and Elsie was the
prettiest girl at the party; but between the most beautiful woman and
the prettiest girl was a difference! There is nothing like good fortune
to bring out a girl's good qualities: Elsie had always had friends, now
she might have numbered them by hundreds. Good fortune breeds friends as
the sunshine creates the flowers. She was congratulated, caressed, and
flattered enough to turn her head. Now, girls are so constituted that
they love admiration, which is a kind of affection, even when it takes
the form of flattery: and their heads may be easily turned; but they are
as easily turned back again. And the house--the widow's house--which for
so many years had been so dull and quiet a place, was transformed into a
place of entertainment. It only wanted coloured lamps to make it another
Vauxhall: it was crowded every night with the younger friends of bride
and bridegroom. George had many friends. He was gregarious by nature: he
was a rowing man on the athletic side: he had a healthy love and a light
hand for things like billiards, shooting, and fishing: they are tastes
which assist in the creation of friendships.
These friends--young fellows of like mind--came to the house in
multitudes to rally round the man about to desert their ranks. Young men
are forgiving: George would row no more among them: he would be lost to
the billiard table, and to the club itself: yet they forgave him, and
accepted his invitation and went to see the bride. They found her with
the friends of her own age. Heavens! how the daring of one man in taking
away a maiden from the band encourages others! There are six love
stories at least, all rising out of these evenings, and all of
surpassing interest, had one the time to write them. They are both grave
and gay: there are tears in every one: the course of true love in no
case ran smooth except in the Story of the Two Stupids. Love's enemies
can never effect aught against a Stupid, and so these two Stupids became
engaged without opposition, and were married with acclamations; but they
are too Stupid--perhaps--to know their own happiness.
All this went on for three weeks. It was arranged that the happy pair
should be married in the middle of August: they had resolved to spend
their honeymoon in France, staying a few days in Paris, and then going
on to see the towns and the country along the Loire, with the old city
of Tours for their centre. They proposed to live entirely upon fruit and
wine and kisses. No place in the world like Touraine for those who are
so young, and so much in love, and so perfectly satisfied with so simple
a diet. Even for those who take a cutlet with the fruit and the wine,
there is no place equal to Touraine. Meantime, against the home-coming,
a desirable flat was secured, not one of your little economical flats,
all drawing-room with two or three rabbit-hutches for bedrooms, but a
large and highly decorated flat with all the newest appliances, large
rooms, and a lift and plenty of space for the dinner-parties and
receptions which Elsie would have to give. The servants were engaged.
The furniture was ordered, all in the advanced taste of the
day--carpets, curtains, pictures, over-mantels, cabinets, screens. Elsie
went every day to her new home and found something omitted, and sat down
in it to wonder what it would be like--this new life she was entering
upon. Oh! it was a busy time.--Then there was her trousseau--everybody
knows the amount of thought and care required for a trousseau: this was
approaching completion--everybody knows the happiness, peculiar, and
unlike any other kind of happiness, with which a girl contemplates a
heap of 'things,' all her own. I suppose that it is only at her wedding
that she can enjoy this happiness, for afterwards, the 'things' are not
her own, but the things of the family. The bride's dress, another thing
of supreme importance, had been tried on, though as yet it was very,
very far from being finished. The bridesmaids, two of George's sisters,
had also already tried on their dresses. They came every day, two very
sweet girls, who have both to do with those six love stories which will
never, I fear, be told, to talk over the events and to see the presents.
These came in daily, and were laid out in a room by themselves, looking
very splendid: their splendour proved the wealth and the position of the
pair, because rich presents are only given to rich people.
In a word, everybody was heartily, loyally sympathetic, as if to make up
for the previous harshness and coldness. For four weeks this happiness
lasted! It was on Monday, June 29, that the golden shower descended upon
them: it was on Monday, July 20, that the rain of gold ceased, and
another kind of cloud came up which speedily changed into a driving
storm of rain and sleet and hail and ice and snow.
Look at them on Sunday. Before the storm there is generally a brief time
of sunshine, warm and fine: after the storm, the calm that follows is a
time of dismay, speechless and tearless. Sunday was the day before the
storm: it was a day of sunshine without and within. The lovers spent the
whole day together, hand in hand. They went to church together: they sat
side by side, they warbled off the same hymn book. The service proved,
as the preacher used to say, a season of refreshment, for never doth
religion so uplift the soul as when it is entirely happy: the voices of
the choir chanting the psalms filled them with joy, and would have done
so even if they had been penitential minors, and the lamentation of a
sinner. Their hearts rose higher and higher as the preacher exhorted,
and would have flown upwards just as much whether he had brandished the
terrors of the law or held out the gracious promise of the Gospel. For
you see, at such a time as this, whatever was said or done only led this
faithful pair farther and deeper into the shady glades and fragrant
lawns and flowery dells of Love's Paradise.
Every church, at every service, and especially in the evening, contains
many such lovers. You may know them by certain infallible signs. They
sit very close together: they sing off the same book: their faces betray
by the rigidity of their attitude, which is that of pretended attention,
the far-away expression of their eyes, and the absence of any external
sign of emotion or sympathy with the preacher, that their hands, beneath
some folds of the feminine gabardine, are closely clasped. It has
sometimes pleased the philosopher and relieved the tedium of a dull
sermon to look round the congregation and to pick out the lovers--here a
pair and there a pair. Even in the church, you see, Love is conqueror
and king.
These lovers, therefore, went to church in a frame of mind truly
heavenly: nobody in the whole congregation felt more deeply pious: every
response was an Act of Praise: every prayer an Act of Gratitude: every
hymn a personal Thank-offering. But beneath those seemingly calm faces
was flying and rushing a whirlwind of hopes, memories, plans, projects,
and gratitudes. He who looks back upon the days immediately before his
wedding-day--most men no more remember their own emotions than a child
remembers yesterday's earache--will wonder how he lived through that
time of change, when all that he prayed for was granted, but on the
condition of a turning upside down of all his habits, customs, and
petted ways.
All round them sat the people, no doubt with minds wholly attuned to the
service of Prayer and Praise. Well, the sheep in a flock to outward
seeming are all alike, yet every animal has his own desires and small
ambitions for himself. So I suppose with the congregation. As every man
shuts the street door behind him and trudges along the way to
church--the _Via Sacra_--with wife and children, he carries in his
waistcoat pocket, close to his heart, a little packet of business cares
to think upon during the sermon. And if all the thoughts of all the
people could be collected after the sermon instead of the offertory,
they would make a salutary oblation indeed.
'George,' said Elsie, as they came out, 'let us go into the Gardens and
sit under a tree and talk. Let us get away from everybody for half an
hour.'
Kensington Gardens were filled with the customary throng of those who,
like themselves, had been to church. The carping philosopher says unkind
things about Church, and Gardens, and Fashion. As if Church would ever
keep like from congregating with like! There were shoals of beautiful
girls, dressed as well as they knew or could afford: dozens of young
fellows, and with them the no longer quite so young, the no longer
young, the no longer young at all, the middle-aged, the elderly and the
old, not to speak of the children. Elsie looked up and down the walk.
'We are never so much alone as in a crowd,' she said, with the air that
some girls assume of saying an original thing which no woman ever did
say yet, unless by accident. They joined the stream: presently George
led the girl out of the road and across the grass to a place where two
or three chairs were set under the trees. They sat down. Then occurred
the miracle wrought in these gardens every day and all day long. Out of
the ground sprang a man--for such he seemed, though doubtless a
spirit-messenger--who demanded twopence. This paid, he vanished
straightway. After this ceremony they talked.
'George,' said the girl, 'every day now, wherever I am, even at church,
I feel as if I should like to jump up and sing and dance. This morning I
should have liked a service all to ourselves--you to read and I to sing:
you to pray and I to praise. I kept wondering if there was any girl in
the place so happy as myself--or so unhappy as I was three short weeks
ago.'
'Elsie,' said George--a simple thing to say, but it had a thousand
meanings.
'We have not deserved it. Indeed, indeed--we have not. Why are we
singled out for such joy? We already had the greatest thing of all--we
had love. That is happiness enough for some women. We only wanted a
little more money, and now we have all this great fortune.'
'It is wonderful, Elsie!'
She laid her hand on his and spoke in her sweet low voice, gazing
upwards. 'George! I am so happy, that I want everybody else to be happy
as well. The angels, I am sure, must lose some of their joy in wishing
that all were with them. I pity all those poor girls who have no lovers:
all those poor married people who are lying in poverty: all those poor
creatures who are trying for what they cannot get; all those who are
weeping outside the gates of Heaven. George, it is a beautiful world,
and it should be such a happy world: there should be nothing but joy all
through life. There is such an abundance of happiness possible in it.
Sadness is only a passing cloud: anxiety is only a touch of east wind:
evil and pain are only fleeting shadows.'
She sighed and clasped her hands, and the tears rose to her eyes.
'We shall grow old together, George,' she went on, murmuring rather than
speaking.--I omit her lover's interruptions and interjections.--'You
will always love me, long after my beauty--you know you will call it
beauty, George--is past and gone: even when I am a poor old crone
doubled up in my arm-chair: you will always love me. My life will be
full--full--full of love. Perhaps----' Here her face flushed, and she
stopped. 'We shall have no trouble about money: we shall go on always
learning more and more, growing wiser and wiser and wiser. You will be a
wise and good man, thinking and working all your life for other people,
just as Mr. Dering imagined--three weeks ago. Everybody will love and
respect you. Then you will grow grey-headed, you poor, dear boy; and all
the world will say how wise and strong you are; and I shall be prouder
of my old husband than even I was of my young lover. The life that
others have dreamed, we shall live. Every day shall come laden with its
own joy, so that we would not, if we could help it, suffer it to go
away.' She struck a deeper note, and her voice trembled and sank and her
eyes filled with tears: 'Life shall be all happiness, as God intended
for us. Even Death will be little sorrow, for the separation will be so
short.' Once more she laid her hand on his.
Even to the most frivolous, the prospect of the wedded life awakens
grave and solemn thoughts: for those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear and brains to understand, there is no prospect so charged with
chances and possibilities, where even life itself may become a Death in
Life.
When George left her in the evening, he drove to see Athelstan.
'So,' he said, 'you have been courting all day, I suppose. You ought to
have had enough of it. Sit down and have something--a pipe--a
cigar.--Well--you are going to be very jolly, I suppose. Elsie's little
fortune will help a bit, won't it?'
'I should think so, indeed.'
'Yes--I've been very glad, ever since you told me that the child had had
this stroke of luck. I wonder who gave her the money? To be sure, there
is plenty of money knocking about among the Arundels. Most of us have
had a sort of instinct for making money. Put us down anywhere among a
lot of men in a city, and we begin to transfer the contents of their
pockets to our own.'
'Meanwhile, give up this old resentment. Come back to your own people.
Come to our wedding.'
'I cannot possibly, unless you will tell me who forged that cheque. How
could I go back to people who still believe me guilty? When you are
married, I will go and see Elsie, which I can do with a light heart. You
have not told any one about my return?'
'Certainly not. No one suspects, and no one talks or thinks about you.'
Athelstan laughed a little. 'That is a doubtful piece of information. Am
I to rejoice or to weep, because I am completely forgotten and out of
mind? It is rather humiliating, isn't it?'
'You are not forgotten at all. That is a different thing. Only they do
not speak of you.'
'Well, George, never mind that now. I am glad you came to-night, because
I have some news for you. I have found the commissionaire who took the
cheque to the Bank--actually found the man.'
'No! After all these years?'
'I wrote out the particulars of the case--briefly. Yesterday I took the
paper to the commissionaires' barrack in the Strand and offered a reward
for the recovery of the man who had cashed the cheque. That same evening
the man presented himself and claimed the reward. He remembered the
thing very well--for this reason: the gentleman who employed him first
sent him with a bag to a Parcel Delivery Office: he did not look at the
address. The gentleman was staying at the Cecil Hotel. Now the
commissionaire was a one-armed man. Because he had only one arm, the
gentleman--who was a pleasant-spoken gentleman--gave him ten shillings
for his trouble, which was nine shillings more than his proper pay. The
gentleman sent him to the Bank with this cheque to cash, and he returned
with seven hundred and twenty pounds in ten-pound notes. Then it was
that the gentleman--who seems to have been a free-handed gentleman--gave
him the ten shillings. The man says that he would know that gentleman
anywhere. He was old, and had grey hair. He says that he should know him
wherever he saw him. What do you think of that?'
'Well--it is something, if you could find that old man.'
'Why, of course it was Checkley--grey-haired Checkley. We'll catch that
old fox, yet. Beware of Checkley. He's a Fox. He's a Worm. He's a
creeping Centipede. When the old man goes, you must make Checkley
pack.'