II
When clouds are iron-grey above the prim drab houses, and a hard east wind blows flakes of dust, stable-straws, scraps of soiled newspaper, and sharp pieces of grit into the eyes of foot-passengers, a less inviting and romantic dwelling-spot than Eaton Place can hardly be experienced.
But the Prince’s daughter of the Canticles, emerging from her palace to see the vine flourish and the pomegranates bud forth with her Beloved, could not have looked more unconscious of grime than Rosalys Ambrose as she came down the steps of one of the tall houses in the aforesaid highly respectable place of residences. Her cheeks were hotly pink, her eyes shining, her lips parted. Having once made up her mind, “Qualms of prudence, pride and pelf” had died within her passionate little heart. After today she would belong absolutely to Jim, be his alone, through all the eternities, as it seemed; and of what account was anything else in the world? The entirely physical character of his affection for her, and perhaps of hers for him, was an unconjectured element herein which might not render less transitory the most transitory of sweet things. Thus hopefully she stepped out of the commonplace home that would, in one sense, be hers no more.
The raw wind whistled up the street, and deepened the colour in her face. She was plainly dressed in grey, and wore a rather thick veil, natural to the dusty day: it could not however conceal the sparkle of her eyes: veils, even thick ones, happily, never do. Hailing a hansom she told the driver to take her to the corner of the Embankment.
In the midst of her preoccupation she noticed as the cab turned the corner out of Eaton Place that the bony chestnut-horse went lame. Rosalys was superstitious as well as tenderhearted, and she deemed that some stroke of ill-luck might befall her if she drove to be married behind a suffering animal. She alighted and paid off the man, and in her excitement gave him three times his fare. Hurrying forward on foot she heard her name called, and received a cordial greeting from a tall man with grey whiskers, in whom she recognized Mr. Durrant, Jim’s father. It occurred to her for a second that he might have discovered the plot and have lain in wait to prevent it. However, he spoke in his usual half-respectful, half-friendly tones, not noticing her frightened face. Mr. Durrant was a busy man. Besides holding several very important land-agencies in the county where Rosalys lived, he had business in the city to transact at times. He explained to Miss Ambrose that some urgent affairs he was supervising for a client of his, Lord Parkhurst, had now brought him up to London for a few weeks.
“Lord Parkhurst is away?” she asked, to say something. “I hear of him sometimes through his uncle Colonel Lacy.”
“Yes. A thorough sailor. Mostly afloat,” Mr. Durrant replied. “Well—we’re rather out of the way in Porchester Terrace; otherwise, my wife would be so pleased if you would come to tea. Miss Ambrose? My son Jim, lazy young beggar, is up here now, too—going to plays and parties. Well, well, it’s natural he should like to amuse himself before he leaves for Burma, poor boy. Are you looking for a hansom? Yes? Hi!” And he waved his stick.
“Thank you so much” said Miss Ambrose. “And I will tell to Mamma where you and Mrs. Durrant are staying.”
She was surprised at her own composure. Her unconscious father-in-law elect helped her into the cab, took off his hat, and walked rapidly away. Rosalys felt her heart stand still when she drew up at the place of meeting. She saw Jim, very blooming and very well-dressed, awaiting her, outwardly calm, at any rate. He jumped into her vehicle and they drove on city-wards.
“You are only ten minutes late, dearest,” he said. “Do you know, I was half afraid you might have failed me at the last moment?”
“You don’t believe it, Jim!”
“Well, I sometimes think I ought not to expect you to keep engagements with me so honestly as you do. Good, brave, little Rosalys!”
They moved on through the press of struggling omnibuses, gigantic vans, covered carts, and foot-passengers who darted at imminent risk of their lives amid the medley of wheels, horses, and shouting drivers. The noise jarred Rosalys’ head, and she began to be feverishly anxious.
The church stood in the neighbourhood of a great meat-market, and the pavement was crowded by men in blue linen blouses, their clothes sprinkled with crimson stains. The young girl gave a shiver of disgust.
“How revolting it must be to have a butcher for a husband! They can’t have hearts like other men. … What a gloomy part of London this is to be married in, Jim!”
“Ah—yes! Everything looks gloomy with the east wind blowing. Now, here we are! jump out, little woman!”
He handed money to the driver, who went off with the most cursory thoughts of the part that he had played in this little excursion of a palpitating pair into the unknown.
“Jimmy darling; oughtn’t you, or one of us, to have lived here for fifteen days?” she said as they entered the fine old Norman porch, to which she was quite blind in her preoccupation.
Durrant laughed. “I have declared that I did,” he answered coolly. “I hope, in the circumstances, that it’s a forgivable lie. Cheer up, Rosalys; don’t all of a sudden look so solemn!”
There were tears in her eyes. The gravity of the step she was about to take had begun to frighten her.
They had some time to wait before the clergyman condescended to come out of the vestry and perform the ceremony which was to unite her to Jim. Two or three other couples were also in the church on the same errand: a haggard woman in a tawdry white bonnet, hanging on to the arm of a short crimson-faced man, who had evidently been replenishing his inside with gin to nerve himself to the required pitch for the ordeal: a girl with a coarse, hard face, accompanied by a slender youth in shabby black: a tall man, of refined aspect, in very poor clothes, whose hollow cough shook his thin shoulders and chest, and told his bride that her happiness, such as it was, would probably last but the briefest space.
Rosalys glanced absently at the beautiful building, with its Norman apse and transverse arches of horseshoe form, and the massive curves and cushion-capitals that supported the tower-end; the whole impression left by the church being one of singular harmony, loveliness, and above all, repose—which struck even her by its great contrast with her experiences just then. As the clergyman emerged from the vestry a shaft of sunlight smote the altar, touched the quaint tomb where the founder of the building lay in his dreamless sleep, and quivered on the darned clothes of the consumptive bridegroom.
Jim and Rosalys moved forward, and then the light shone for a moment, too, upon his yellow hair and handsome face. To the woman who loved him it seemed that “From the crown of his head even to the sole of his foot there was no blemish in him.”
The curate looked sharply at the four couples; angrily, Rosalys fancied, at her. But it was only because the cast-wind had given him an acute toothache that his gaze was severe, and his reading spiritless.
The four couples having duly contracted their inviolable unities, and slowly gone their ways through the porch, Jim and Rosalys adjourned to a fashionable hotel on the Embankment, where in a room all to themselves they had luncheon, over which Rosalys presided with quite a housewifely air.
“When shall I see you again?” he said, as he put her into a cab two or three hours later on in the afternoon.
“You must arrange all that, Jim. Somehow I feel so dreadfully sad and sinful now, all of a sudden! Have I been wicked? I don’t know!”
Her tone changed as she met his passionate gaze, and she said very low, with a lump in her throat:
“O my dear darling! I care for nothing in the whole wide world, now that I belong to you!”