"I really knew hardly anything about him when I accepted him; he was just a girl's hero to me. But I have watched and watched, and now I know a good deal."
An excellent mood for a wife, no doubt—or for a husband—excellent, and, it may be, inevitable. But for a lover yet unmated, a bride still to be, a girl in her first love? Should she not leave reverend seniors to prate to her—quite vainly—of difficulties and dangers, while her fancy is roaming far afield in dreamy lands of golden joy? To endeavour, by an affectionate study of and consideration for your partner, to avoid unhappiness and to give comfort—such is wont to be the text of the officiating minister's little homily at a wedding. Is it to be supposed that bride and bridegroom are putting the matter quite that way in their hearts? If they were, a progressive diminution in the marriage-rate might be expected.
So ran the Nun's criticism, full of sympathy with the girl, not perhaps quite so full of sympathy for what seemed to her an over-saintly abnegation of her sex's right. The bitterest anti-feminist will agree that a girl should be worshipped while she is betrothed; he will allow her that respite of dominion in a life which, according to his opponents, his theories reduce, for all its remaining years, to servitude. Vivien was already serving—serving and watching anxiously—amid all her love. At this Doris rebelled—she who never fell in love. But she was quicker to grow fond of people than to criticize their points of view. Vivien's over-saintliness did sinful Harry's cause no service. If this were Vivien's mood in the light of her study of what her lover was, how would she stand towards the knowledge of what he did?
Yet Andy Hayes thought that the best thing now possible was that she should come to the knowledge of it—that was what he meant by there being a "row." That opinion of his was a mightily strong endorsement of Vivien's anxiety.
"Don't you now and then feel like backing out of it?" the Nun had asked with her usual directness.
Vivien's answer came with a laugh, suddenly scornful, suddenly merry, "Why, it's all my life!"
The Nun shook her sage little head; these things were not all people's lives—oh dear, no! She knew better than that, did Doris! But then the foolish obstinate folk would go on believing that they were, and thereby, for the time, made the trouble just as great as though their delusion were gospel truth.
Then Vivien had turned penitent about her fears, and remorseful for the expression of them. By an easy process penitence led to triumph, and she fell to singing Harry's praises, to painting again that brightly coloured future—the marvellous things to be seen and done by Harry's side. She smiled gently, rather mysteriously; the sound of the wonderful words was echoing in her ears. Doris saw her face, and pressed her hand in a holy silence.
The result of her various conversations, of her own reflections, and of her personal inspection of the situation at Nutley was to throw Miss Doris Flower into perhaps the gravest perplexity under which she had ever suffered. When you are accustomed to rule your life—and other people's, on occasion—by the simple rule of doing the obvious thing, it is disconcerting to be confronted with a case in which there appears to be no obvious thing to do, where there is only a choice of evils, and the choice seems balanced with a perverse and malicious equality. From Vivien's side of the matter—Doris troubled herself no more with her old friend Harry's—the marriage was risky far beyond the average of matrimonial risks; but the "row" was terribly risky too, with the girl in that mood about "all her life." If she had that mood badly upon her, she might do—well, girls did do all sorts of things sometimes, holding that life had nothing left in it.
Though there was nothing obvious, there must be something sensible; at least one thing must be more sensible than the other. Was it more sensible to do nothing—which was to favour the "row"—or to attempt something—which was to work for the marriage? Her temperament asserted itself, and led her to a conclusion in conflict with Andy's. She was by nature inclined always to do something. In the end the "row" was a certain evil; the marriage only a risk. Men do settle down—sometimes! (She wrinkled her nose as she propounded, and qualified, this proposition.) The risk was preferable to the certainty. After all, her practical sense whispered, in these days even marriage is not wholly irrevocable. Yes, she would be for the marriage and against the "row"—and she would tell Andy that.