EVERY one knew that the marriage arranged between Morland King and
Norma Hardacre would not take place. It was announced in the “Times”
and “Morning Post” on the Tuesday morning; those bidden to the wedding
received hurried messages, and a day or two later the wedding-gifts were
returned to the senders, who stored them up for some happier pair. But
the new engagement upon which Norma had entered remained a secret.
Norma herself did not desire to complete the banquet of gossip she
had afforded society, and Mrs. Hardacre was not anxious to fill to
overflowing the cup of her own humiliation. The stricken lady maintained
a discreet reserve. The lovers had quarrelled, Norma had broken off
the match and would not be going out for some time. She even defied
the duchess, who commanded an explicit statement of reasons. Her grace
retorted severely that she ought to have brought her daughter up better,
and signified that this was the second time Norma had behaved with
scandalous want of consideration for her august convenience. “She shall
not have the opportunity of doing it again. I dislike being mixed up
in scandals,” said the duchess; and Mrs. Hardacre saw the gates of
Wiltshire House and Chiltern Towers closed to her forever. But of the
impossible painter wretch she spoke not a word, hoping desperately
that in some mysterious fashion the God of her fathers would avert this
crowning disgrace from them and would lead Norma forth again into the
paths of decency and virtue. As for her husband, he stormily refused to
speak or hear the outcast's name. He had done with her. She should never
sleep again beneath the roof she had dishonoured. He would not allow her
a penny. He would cut her out of his will. She had dragged him in the
mud, and by heaven! she could go to the devil! It took much to rouse
the passions of the feeble, mean-faced little man; but once they were
roused, he had the snarling tenacity of the fox. Mrs. Hardacre did not
tell him of Morland's confession and the rehabilitation of his rival.
The memory of her stunning humiliation brought on a feeling akin
to physical nausea. She strove to bury it deep down in her
sub-consciousness, beneath all the other unhallowed memories. There were
none quite so rank. On the other hand, her husband's vilification of the
detested creature was a source of consolation which she had no desire
to choke. Why should she deny herself this comfort. The supreme joy of
vitriol throwing was not countenanced in her social sphere. At odd times
she regretted that she was a lady.
While the black fog of depression darkened Devonshire Place, in
neighbouring parts of London the days were radiant. A thousand suns
glorified the heavens and the breaths of a thousand springs perfumed the
air. It was a period of exaggeration, unreality, a page out of a fairy
tale lived and relived. Norma abandoned herself to the intoxication,
heedless of the fog in Devonshire Place, and the decent grey of the
world elsewhere. She refused to think or speculate. Rose veils shrouded
the future; the present was a fantasy of delight. For material things,
food, shelter, raiment, she had no concern. Connie fed and housed her,
making her the thrice welcome guest, the beloved sister. From
society she withdrew altogether. Visitors paid calls, odd people were
entertained at meals, the routine of a wealthy woman's establishment
proceeded in its ordinary course, and Norma's presence in the house
remained unknown and unsuspected. She was there in hiding. The world was
given to understand that she was in Cornwall. Even common life had thus
its air of romance and mystery. Being as it were a fugitive, she had
no engagements. There was a glorious incongruity in the position. She
regarded the beginnings of the London season with the amused detachment
of a disembodied spirit revisiting the scenes of which it once made
a part. Morning, afternoon, and evening she was free--an exhilarating
novelty. Nobody wanted to see her save Jimmie; save him she wanted to
see nobody.
They met every day--sometimes in the sitting-room on the ground floor
which Connie had set apart for her guest's exclusive use, and sometimes
in Jimmie's studio. Now and then, when the weather was fine, they walked
together in sweet places unfrequented by the fashionable world, Regent's
Park and Hampstead Heath, fresh woods and pastures new to Norma, who
had heard of the heath vaguely as an undesirable common where the
lower orders wore each other's hats and shied at cocoanuts. Its smiling
loneliness and April beauty, seen perhaps through the artist's eyes,
enchanted her. Jimmie pointed out its undulations; like a bosom, said
he, swelling with the first breaths of pure air on its release from
London.
Most of all she loved to drive up to St. John's Wood after dinner and
burst upon him unexpectedly. The new Bohemian freedom of it all was a
part of the queer delicious life. She laughed in anticipation at his cry
of delighted welcome. When she heard it, her eyes grew soft. To lift
her veil and hang back her head to receive his kiss on her lips was
an ever-new sensation. The intimacy had a bewildering sweetness. To
complete it she threw aside gloves and jacket and unpinned her hat, a
battered gilt Empire mirror over the long table serving her to guide the
necessary touches to her hair. Although she did not repeat the little
comedy of the shirt which had been inspired by the exaltation of a rare
moment, yet she sat in Aline's chair, now called her own, and knitted at
a silk tie she was making for him. She had learned the art from her aunt
in Cornwall, and she brought the materials in a little black silk bag
slung to her wrist. The housewifely avocation fitted in with the fairy
tale. Jimmie smoked and talked, the most responsive and least tiring of
companions. His allusive speech, that of the imaginative and cultured
man, in itself brought her into a world different from the one she had
left. His simplicity, his ignorance of the ways of women, his delight
at the little discoveries she allowed him to make, gave it a touch
of Arcadia. In passionate moments there was the unfamiliar, poetic,
rhapsodic in his utterance which turned the world into a corner of
heaven. And so the magic hours passed.
“I do believe I have found a soul,” she remarked on one of these
evenings, “and that's why I must be so immoderately happy. I'm like a
child with a new toy.”
She was unconscious of the instinctive, pitiless analysis of herself;
and Jimmie, drunk with the wonder of her, did not heed the warning.
Of their future life together they only spoke as happy lovers in the
rosy mist shed about them by the veil. They dwelt in the glamour of the
fairy tale, where the princess who marries the shepherd lives not
only happy ever afterwards, but also delicately dressed and daintily
environed, her chief occupation being to tie silk bows round the lambs'
necks, and to serve to her husband the whitest of bread and the whitest
of cheese with the whitest of hands. Their forecast of the future might
have been an Idyll of Theocritus.
“You will be the inspiration of all my pictures, dear,” said Jimmie.
“I will sit for you as a model, if I am good enough.”
“Good enough!” Language crumbled into meaningless vocables before her
infinite perfection. “I have had a little talent. You will give me
genius.”
“I will also give you your dinner.” She laughed adorably. “Do you know
Connie told me I must learn to cook. I had my first lesson this morning
in her kitchen--a most poetic way of doing sweetbreads. Do you like
sweetbreads?”
“Now I come to think of it, I do. Enormously. I wonder why Aline never
has them.”
“We'll have some--our first lunch--at home.”
“And you will cook them?” cried the enraptured man.
She nodded. “In a most becoming white apron. You'll see.”
“You'll be like a goddess taking her turn preparing the daily ambrosia
for Olympus!” said Jimmie.
On another occasion they spoke of summer holidays. They would take a
little cottage in the country. It would have honeysuckle over the porch,
and beds of mignonette under the windows, and an old-fashioned garden
full of stocks and hollyhocks and sunflowers. There would be doves and
bees. They would go out early and come home with the dew on their feet.
They would drink warm milk from the cow. They would go a hay-making.
Norma's idea of the pastoral pathetically resembled that of the Petit
Trianon.
The magic of the present with its sincerity of passionate worship on the
part of the man, and its satisfaction of a soul's hunger on the part
of the woman, was in itself enough to blind their eyes to the possible
prose of the future. Another interest, one of the sweetest of outside
interests that can bind two lovers together, helped to fix their serious
thoughts to the immediate hour. Side by side with their romance grew up
another, vitally interwoven with it for a spell and now springing clear
into independent life. The two children Aline and Tony Merewether had
found each other again, and the fresh beauty of their young loves lit
the deeper passion of the older pair with the light of spring sunrise.
In precious little moments of confidence Aline opened to Norma her
heart's dewy happiness, and what Norma in delicate honour could divulge
she told to Jimmie, who in his turn had his little tale to bear. More
and more was existence like the last page of a fairy book.
The reconciliation of the younger folk had been a very simple matter. It
was the doing of Connie Deering. The morning after Morland's confession
she summoned Tony Merewether to an interview. He arrived wondering. She
asked him point blank:
“Are you still in love with Aline Marden or have you forgotten all about
her?”
The young fellow declared his undying affection.
“Are you aware that you have treated her shamefully?” she said severely.
“I am the most miserable dog unhung,” exclaimed the youth. He certainly
looked miserable, thin, and worried. He gave his view of the position.
Connie's heart went out to him.
“Suppose I told you that everything was cleared up and you could go to
Aline with a light conscience?”
“I should go crazy with happiness!” he cried, springing to his feet.
“Aline deserves a sane husband. She is one in a thousand.”
“She is one in twenty thousand million!”
“There she goes, hand in hand with Jimmie Padgate. It's to tell you that
I've asked you to come. I hope you'll let them both know you're aware of
it.”
Satisfied that he was worthy of her confidence, she told him briefly
what had occurred.
“And now what are you going to do?” she asked, smiling.
“Do? I'll go on my knees. I'll grovel at his feet. I'll ask him to make
me a door-mat. I'll do any mortal thing Aline tells me.”
“Well, go now and do your penance and be happy,” Connie said, holding
out her hand.
“I don't know how I can thank you, Mrs. Deering,” he cried. “You are the
most gracious woman that ever lived!”
A few moments later an impassioned youth was speeding in a hansom cab
to Friary Grove. But Connie, with the memory of his clear-cut, radiant
young face haunting her, sighed. Chance decreed that the very moment
should bring her a letter from Jimmie, written that morning, full of
his wonder and gratitude. She sighed again, pathetically, foolishly,
unreasonably feeling left out in the cold.
“I wonder whether it would do me good to cry,” she said, half aloud. But
the footman entering with the announcement that the carriage which was
to take her to her dressmaker was at the door, settled the question. She
had to content herself with sighs.
Tony Merewether did not go on his knees, as Aline had ordained; but he
made his apology in so frank and manly a way that Jimmie forgave him at
once. Besides, said he, what had he to forgive?
“I feel like Didymus,” said Tony.
Jimmie laughed as he clapped him on the shoulder and pushed him out of
the studio.
“You had better cultivate the feeling. He became a saint eventually.
Aline will help to make you one.”
If plain indication of another's infirmities can tend to qualify him for
canonisation, Aline certainly justified Jimmie's statement. She did not
confer her pardon so readily on the doubting disciple. His offence had
been too rank. It was not merely a question of his saying a _credo_
and then taking her into his arms. She exacted much penance before she
permitted this blissful consummation. He had to woo and protest and
humble himself exceedingly. But when she had reduced him to a proper
state of penitence, she gave him plenary absolution and yielded to
his kiss, as she had been yearning to do since the beginning of the
interview. After that she settled down to her infinite delight. Nothing
was lacking in the new rapturous scheme of existence. The glory of
Jimmie was vindicated. Tony had come back to her. The bars to their
marriage had vanished. Not only was Tony a man of substance with the
legacy of eight thousand pounds that had been left him, and therefore
able to support as many wives as the Grand Turk, but Jimmie no longer
had to be provided for. The wonder of wonders had happened; she could
surrender her precious charge with a free conscience and a heart
bursting with gratitude.
Thus the happiness of each pair of lovers caught a reflection from that
of the other, and its colour was rendered ever so little fictitious,
unreal. The light of spring sunrise, exquisite though it is, invests
things with a glamour which the light of noon dispels. The spectacle of
the young romance unfolding itself before the eyes of Jimmie and
Norma completed their delicious sense of the idyllic; but the illusive
atmosphere thus created caused them to view their own romance
in slightly false perspective. Essentially it was a drama of
conflict--themselves against the pettinesses and uglinesses of the
world; apparently it was a pastoral among spring flowers.
Another cause that contributed to Norma's unconcern for the future was
her exaggerated sense of the man's loftiness of soul. Instead of viewing
him as a lovable creature capable of the chivalrous and the heroic
and afforded by a happy fate an opportunity of displaying these
qualities--for the opportunity makes the hero as much as it does the
thief--she grovelled whole-sexedly before an impossible idol imbued with
impossible divinity. While knitting silk ties and devising with him the
preparation of foodstuffs (which she did not realise he would not be
able to afford) she was conscious of a grace in the trifling, all the
more precious because of these little earthly things midway between the
empyrean and the abyss which they respectively inhabited. In the deeply
human love of each was a touch of the fantastic. To Jimmie she was the
Princess of Wonderland, the rare Lady of Dreams; to Norma he appeared
little less than a god.
She was talking one evening with Connie Deering in a somewhat exalted
strain of her own unworthiness and Jimmie's condescension, when the
little lady broke into an unwonted expression of impatience.
“My dear child, every foolish woman is a valet to her hero. You would
like to clean his boots, wouldn't you?”
“My dear Connie,” cried Norma, alarmed, “whatever is the matter?”
“I think you two had better get married as quickly as possible. It is
getting on one's nerves.”
Norma stiffened. “I am sorry--” she began.
Connie interrupted her. “Don't be silly. There's nothing for you to be
sorry about.” She brightened and laughed, realising the construction
Norma had put upon her words. “I am only advising you for your good.
I had half an hour's solitary imprisonment with Theodore Weever this
afternoon. He always takes it out of me. It's like having a bath with an
electric eel. He called this afternoon to get news of you.”
“Of me?” asked Norma serenely, settling herself in the depths of her
chair.
“He is like an eel,” Connie exclaimed with a shiver. “He's the
coldest-blooded thing I've ever come across. I told you about the dinner
at the Carlton, did n't I? It appears that he reckoned on my doing just
what I rushed off to do. It makes me so angry!” she cried with feminine
emphasis on the last word. “Of course he did n't tell me so brutally--he
has a horrid snake-like method of insinuation. He had counted on my
getting at the truth which he had guessed and so stopping the marriage.
'I'm a true prophet,' he said. 'I knew that marriage would never come
off.'”
“So he told me,” said Norma. “Do you know, there must be some goodness
in him to have perceived the goodness in Jimmie.”
“I believe he's a disembodied spirit without either goodness or
badness--a sort of non-moral monster.” Connie was given to hyperbole in
her likes and dislikes. She continued her tale. He had come to ask her
advice. Now that Miss Hardacre was free, did Mrs. Deering think he
might press his suit with advantage? His stay in Europe was drawing to
a close. He would like to take back with him to New York either Miss
Hardacre or a definite refusal.
“'You certainly cannot take back Miss Hardacre,' I said, 'because she is
going to marry Jimmie Padgate.' I thought this would annihilate him. But
do you think he moved a muscle? Not he.”
“What did he say?” asked Norma, lazily amused.
“'This is getting somewhat monotonous,'” replied Connie.
Norma laughed. “Nothing else?”
“He began to talk about theatres. He has the most disconcerting way of
changing the conversation. But on leaving he sent his congratulations
to you, and said that you were always to remember that you were the wife
specially designed for him by Providence.”
“You dear thing,” said Norma, “and did that get on your nerves?”
“Would n't it get on yours?”
Norma shook her head. “I have n't any nerves for things to get on.
People don't have nerves when they're happy.”
“And are you happy, really, really happy?”
“I am deliciously happy,” said Norma.
She went to bed laughing at the discomfiture of Weever and the
remoteness of him and of the days last summer when she first met him
among the Monzies' disreputable crowd. He belonged to a former state
of existence. Jimmie's portrait, which had been put for two or three
reasons in her bedroom, caught her attention. She looked at it with
a dreamy smile for a long time, and then turned to the glass. Made
curiously happy by what she saw there, she kissed her fingers to the
portrait.
“He is the better prophet,” she said.
But Connie's advice as to the desirability of a speedy marriage remained
in her mind. Jimmie with characteristic diffidence had not yet suggested
definite arrangements. She was gifted with so much insight as to
apprehend the reasons for his lack of initiative. His very worship of
her, his overwhelming sense of goddess-conferred boon in her every smile
and condescension, precluded the asking of favours. So far it was she
who had arranged their daily life. It was she who had established the
custom of the studio visits, and she had taken off her hat and had
inaugurated the comedy of the domestic felicities of her own accord. She
treasured this worship in her heart as a priceless thing, all the
more exquisite because it lay by the side of the knowledge of her own
unworthiness. The sacrifice of maidenly modesty in proposing instead
of coyly yielding was at once a delicious penance for hypocritical
assumption of superiority, and a salve to her pride as a beautiful and
desirable woman. It was with a glorious sureness of relation, therefore,
that she asked him the next day if he had thought of a date for their
marriage.
“There is no reason for a long engagement that I can see,” she added,
with a blush which she felt, and was tremulously happy at feeling.
“I was waiting for you to say, dear,” he replied, his arm around her. “I
dared not ask.”
She laughed the deep laugh of a woman's happiness.
“I knew you would say that,” she murmured. “Let it be some time next
month.”