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[104] 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.
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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[106] 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[107] 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[108] 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,[109] 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-rackin............