THE EIGHTH CHAPTER

Three months after Mrs. MacDermott departed from London, Eleanor and John were married. They walked into St. Chad's Church in the Bayswater Road, accompanied by Mr. Hinde and Mrs. MacDermott (who had come hurriedly to London again for the ceremony) and Lizzie and a cousin of Eleanor's who excited John's wrath by using the marriage ceremony for propaganda purposes in connexion with Women's Suffrage; and there, prompted by an asthmatic curate, they swore to love and cherish each other until death did them part. Mrs. MacDermott had begged for a Presbyterian marriage in Ballyards ... "where your da and me were married"... but there were difficulties in the way of satisfying her desire, and she had consented to see them married in what, to her mind, was an imitation of a Papist church. Eleanor had stipulated for at least a year's engagement, partly so that they might become more certain of each other and partly to enable John to prove that he could earn enough money to maintain a home, but John had worn down her opposition to an immediate marriage by asserting repeatedly that he could easily earn money for her, would, in fact, be better able to do so because of his marriage which would stimulate him to greater activity, and, finally, by his announcement that his tragedy had been accepted for production by the Cottenham Repertory Theatre. The manager had written to him to say that the Reading Committee were of opinion that his interesting play should be performed, and he enclosed an agreement which he desired John to sign and return to him at his convenience. He had not been able to restrain his joy when he received the letter, and he had hurried to the nearest post office so that he might telephone the news to Eleanor.

"My dear!" she said proudly over the telephone.

"Didn't I tell you I could do it," he exclaimed. "Didn't I?"

"Yes, darling, you did!"

"Wait till Hinde conies back! This'll be one in the eye for him. He thought the play was a very ordinary one, but this proves that it isn't, doesn't it, Eleanor?"

"Yes, dear!"

"It's a well-known theatre, the Cottenham Repertory. One of the best-known in the world. Can you get off for the day, do you think, and we'll go out and celebrate it?..."

"Don't be silly, John!..."

"Well, we'll have lunch together. We'll have wine for lunch!... Oh, my dear, I'm nearly daft with joy. We ought to make enough money out of the play to set up house at once. I don't know how much you make out of plays, but you make a great deal. We'll get married at once!..."

"But we can't!..."

"Och, quit, woman! This makes all the difference In the world. Aren't you just aching for a wee house of your own, the same way that I am!..."

And after a struggle for time to think, Eleanor had consented to be married much sooner than she had ever meant to be. They were married in June, and the play was to be performed at the Cottenham Repertory Theatre in the following September. The manager had written to John, after the business preliminaries were settled, to say that if the play were successful in Cottenham, he would include it in the Company's repertoire of pieces to be performed in London during their annual season. "And of course, it'll be successful," said John when he had read the letter to Eleanor. "I should think we'd easily make several hundred pounds out of the play ... and there's always the chance that it may be a popular success!" His high hopes were dashed by the return of his novel from Messrs. Gooden and Knight who regretted that the novel was not suitable for publication by them; but he recovered some of them when he reflected that the fame he would achieve with his play would cause Messrs. Gooden and Knight to feel exceedingly sorry that they had not jumped at the chance of publishing his book. Hinde had read it and thought it was as good as most first novels. "Nothing very great about it," he said, "but it isn't contemptible!" That seemed very chilly praise to John, and he was grateful to Eleanor for her enthusiasm about the book. "Of course, it has faults," she admitted. "I daresay it has, but then it's your first book. You wouldn't be human if you could write a great book at the first attempt, would you?"

That had consoled him for much, and very hopefully he sent the book on its third adventure, this time to Mr. Claude Jannissary, who called himself "The Progressive Publisher."

On the night before he was married, John, vaguely nervous, left his mother at Miss Squibb's and went for a walk. All day, he had been "on pins and needles," and now, although it was nine o'clock, he could not remain in the house any longer. He felt that his head would burst if he stayed indoors. The house seemed to be unusually stuffy, and the spectacle of Lizzie gazing at him with mawkish interest, made him wish to rise up and assault her. He had fidgetted about the room, taking a book from its shelf and then, without reading in it, replacing it, until his mother, observing him with cautious eyes, proposed that he should go for a walk. "I won't wait up for you," she said, "so you needn't hurry back!"

"Very well, ma!" he said, getting ready to go out.

He left the house and started to walk towards Streatham, but before he had gone very far, he felt drawn away from Streatham, and he turned and walked past his home and on towards Kennington. At the Horns, he paused indecisively. There were more light and stir towards the Elephant and Castle than there was in the Kennington Road, and light and stir were attractive to him, but to-night he ought to be in quiet places and in shadows. He was beginning to feel dubious about himself. Marriage, after all, was a very serious business, but here he was thrusting himself into it with very little consideration. Eleanor had protested all along that they were insufficiently acquainted with each other and had pleaded for a long engagement, but he had overruled her: they knew each other well enough. The best way for a man and woman to get to know each other, he said, was to marry. Eleanor had exclaimed against that doctrine because, she said, if the couple discovered that they did not care for each other, they could not get free without misery and possibly disgrace.

"You have to run the risk of that," said John.

That always had been his determining argument: that one must take risks. Now, on this night before his marriage, the risk he was about to take alarmed him. The fidgettiness, the nervous irritability which had been characteristic of him all day now concretely became fright. Who was this woman he was about to marry? What did he know of her? She was a pleasant, nice-looking girl and she had an extraordinary power over him ... but what did he know of her? Nothing. Nothing whatever. He liked kissing her and holding her in his arms, but he had liked kissing Maggie Carmichael and holding her in his arms; and now he was very thankful he had not married Maggie. How was he to know that he would feel any more for Eleanor in six months' time than he now felt for Maggie ... for whom he had once felt everything? Eleanor had told him that she only liked him ... was not in love with him ... that he was one of a hundred men, anyone of whom she might have married and lived with in tolerable happiness!...

A cold shiver ran through his body as he thought that he might be about to make the greatest mistake that any man could make ... marry the wrong woman. Ought he to postpone the marriage so that Eleanor and he should have more time in which to consider things? Postponement would mean terrible inconvenience to everybody, but it would be better to suffer such inconvenience than to enter into a dismal marriage because one was reluctant to upset arrangements. This marrying was a terrible affair!... He walked steadily along the Kennington Road and presently found himself in Westminster Bridge Road, and then he crossed the river and turned on to the Embankment. There was a cool breeze blowing from the sea, and he took his hat off and let the air play about his head. He leant against the parapet and gazed across the water to the dark warehouses on the Lambeth side and wondered why they were so beautiful at night when they were so hideous by day. Even the railway bridge at Charing Cross seemed to be beautiful in the dusk, and when a train rumbled across it, sending up clouds of lit smoke from the funnel of the engine and making flickering lights as the carriages rolled past the iron bars of the bridge-side, it seemed to him to be a very wonderful and appealing spectacle. His fidgettiness fell from him as he contemplated the swift river and the great dark shapes of warehouses and the black hulks of barges going down to the Pool and the immutable loveliness of Waterloo Bridge. He had walked along the Embankment past Hungerford Bridge, and then had stopped to look at Waterloo Bridge for a few moments. Even the moving lights of the advertisements of tea and whiskey on the Lambeth side of the river made beauty for him as they were reflected in the water. There were little crinkled waves of green and red and gold on the river as the changing lights of the advertisements ran up and down.... He had seen articles in the newspapers protesting against these illuminated signs ... "the ugly symbols of commercialism" ... but to-night they had the look of loveliness in his eyes. Very often since he had come to London had he found himself in disagreement with the views of men who wrote as if Almighty God had committed Beauty to their charge ... he had never been able to understand or agree with their arguments against great engines and the instruments of power and energy ... and it seemed to him that many of these writers were querulous, fractious people who had not the capacity to make themselves at ease in a striving world. That poet fellow ... what was his name? ... whom he had met at Hampstead ... Palfrey, that was the man's name ... had sneered at Commerce! John had not been able to make head or tail of his arguments against Commerce, and he had found himself defending it against the Poet ... "the very word is beautiful!" he had asserted several times ... mainly on his recollection of his Uncle William. Palfrey had had the best of the argument, because Palfrey could use his tongue more effectively, but John had felt certain that the truth was not in Palfrey, and here to-night, in this place where Commerce was most compactly to be seen, he knew that there was Beauty in the labours of men, that bargaining and competition and striving energies and rivalry in skill were elements of loveliness. "These little poets sitting in their stuffy attics scribbling about the moon!... Yah-rr-r!" he said, putting his hat on to his head again.

His mind was quieter now. He was certain of his love for Eleanor. How wise his mother had been to suggest that he should go out for a walk. She had guessed, no doubt, that he was ill at ease and full of doubt, and had sent him forth to find rest in movement and ease in energy. It was a great comfort to have his mother by him now. That morning he had looked at her, sitting in the light of the window, and had seen for the first time the great depth of her eyes and the wonderful patience in her face.... He must consider her more in future. Eleanor liked her, and she liked Eleanor. That was all to the good!... He must go home now. He would walk to Blackfriars Bridge, cross the river and go home by the Elephant and Castle. He started to walk briskly along the Embankment, but he had not gone very far on his way when he heard his name called.

"Oh, John!" the call was, and looking round, he saw Eleanor rising from one of the garden-seats near the kerb.

"Eleanor!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

She came quickly to him and he took hold of her hands.

"I was frightened," she said, half sobbing as she spoke.

"Frightened!"

"Yes. I lost my nerve this evening and I ... I came out to think. Oh, I wonder are we wise!..."

He drew her arm in his. "Come home, my dear," he said.

He led her across the road, through the District Railway Station and up Villiers Street to the Strand, and as they walked along he told her of his own fears. "You were frightened, too?" she said in astonishment.

"Not frightened," he replied, "only ... well, dubious!"

"Perhaps we'd better wait," she suggested.

"Oh, no, no. I should feel such a fool if I were to tell people we'd postponed our marriage because we'd both got scared about it!"

"It's better to feel a fool than!..."

"And anyhow I know that it's all right. I feel sure it's all right. When I walked along the Embankment before I met you, I became certain that I wanted you, Eleanor, and no one else but you. My dear, I'm terribly happy!"

"Are you?"

"Yes. Why, of course, I am. How can I be anything else when I shall be your husband this time to-morrow?"

They walked along Bond Street because they had discovered that Bond Street, when the shops are shut, is dark and quiet, and once they stopped and faced each other, and John took her in his arms and kissed her. "Sweetheart!" he murmured, with his lips against hers.

Then he took her to her club. "What a place for you to be married from!" he said, as he bade her good-night.

"This is my last night in it," she answered. "I shall never live in a place where there are only women again!" She paused for a moment, and then, with a sigh of relief, added, "Thank Goodness!"

III

On the following morning they were married; and in the evening they went to Ireland for their honeymoon. They were to go to Dublin for a week, and then up to Ballyards for a fortnight. Eleanor had proposed that Mrs. MacDermott should cross to Ireland with them, but she shook her head and smiled. "I'm foolish enough," she said, "but I'm not as foolish as all that. You'll want to be by yourselves, my dear!"

"I'll see your mother safely off from Euston," Hinde said, "when she makes up her mind to go!"

They spent the day quietly together until the time came for Eleanor and John to go to the railway station. Mrs. MacDermott took him out of the room. "I want to have a wee talk with you," she said in explanation.

"Here," she said, putting an envelope into his hand. "That's a wedding present for you from me!..."

"But you've given me one already," he interrupted.

"Oh, aye, that was just an ordinary one, but this is the one that matters. It'll be useful to you sometime!"

He opened the envelope, and inside it were ten notes for ten pounds each. "Ma!" he said.

"Now, now, never mention it," she exclaimed hurriedly. "What does an old woman like me want with money when there's two young ones in need of it. It'll help to keep you going till you're earning!"

He hugged her to show his gratitude. "My son," she said, patting his back.

"Listen, John," she went on, "while I speak to you!"

"Yes, ma!"

"Don't forget that Eleanor's a young girl with no one to tell her things. She's very young, and ... and!..." She stumbled over her words. "You'll be very kind to her, won't you, son?"

"Of course, I will, ma," John replied with no comprehension whatever of what it was she was trying to say.

Then she let him go back to Eleanor.

They gathered in the hall to make their "Good-byes." There was a telegram from the Creams to wish them happiness that Eleanor insisted on taking with her although she had never seen the Creams; and Miss Squibb mournfully insisted on giving a packet of sandwiches to them to eat on the journey. She told them that they knew what these trains and boats were like, and that they would be lucky if they got anything at all to sustain them during their travels. "Though you probably won't want to eat nothink when you get on the boat," she added encouragingly.

"Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!"

John went up the hall to Lizzie. "Good-bye, Lizzie!" he said, and then, "What on earth are you crying for?"

"I dunno," she answered, wiping her eyes. "Just 'appiness, I s'pose. I'll be doin' it myself some dy. See if I down't. It'd annoy aunt, anyway!"

They scrambled into the cab and were driven off. They leant back against the cushions and looked at each other.

"Well, we're married, Eleanor. I always said we would be," John said.

"It's frightfully funny," Eleanor replied. "Isn't it?"

He did not answer. He took her in his arms instead.

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