"I only hope, Patricia," with dignity, "that considering the disgraceful haste of your engagement, you will not require the offices of anyone to cut the cake, for a long while to come."
"Heavens, no. Not for ages. Not until the tenth of February." Patricia sprang from her perch to anticipate with a rush of dishevelling kisses any objection the good lady might be likely to raise. For this was the twenty-ninth of January.
Neither she nor Gareth cared to wait. Hers was not a nature to brook delay; and he was feverish lest again he should be thwarted of this gift of wedlock which promised to be so fair. He had always desired to be married; as a young man, dreamt of it; later, mused on the state with the wistful envy of one who sees no hope of it for himself. All the failure of his union with Kathleen, he now arbitrarily set down to the fact that she had never been his wife. Nor did he realize that owing to his dislike of the relationship between them, it was never accepted by them openly and proudly; in which acceptance might have lain their only possibility of finding happiness. It was he who had first created tension, by his sensitive disposition to avoid the subject; skirmishing round every allusion; doing his utmost to spare her, taking for granted a shame in her which had never existed save by his assumption. Thus Gareth had damaged irrevocably Kathleen's experiment of a passionate free comradeship, by his always delicate and chivalrous attempts to reassure her that they were tighter bound than if they had been indeed man and wife. Little deceptions and pretences and silences, swelling to giant proportions ... till they were a guilty furtive nagging couple, nothing more noble than that; pitiful enough end to his boyish high hopes—to the Songs his Mother Taught Him.
And suppose there had been children—Gareth shuddered at the illimitable possibilities of misery entailed....
But Patricia had consented to marry him. They might have as many children as they pleased. And a home without the forbidden subject to make it ghastly. It would be all right this time—all right—Gareth Albert Temple to Patricia O'Neill, on the tenth of February, nineteen hundred and fourteen.
In anticipation of which date of release, release from the intolerable wearying necessity of the outcast forever compelled to beat out a fresh track untrodden by custom, Gareth, on the night of February the ninth, stretched the cramped limbs of his dreams, with a great sigh of thanks to Patricia, the wonderful girl who had freed him from his bondage of freedom. On the morrow he might slacken his tautly drawn initiative; settle down into a condition socially and legally sanctioned. Oh, the hushed benison of rest which Patricia had achieved for him! Patricia ... beloved ... he murmured her name as though in prayer to a goddess. Patricia ... wife ... and his very soul he could have flooded like moonlight at her feet. He would be such a husband as had never before existed, so faithful in guardianship and vigilant in loyalty. Supposing she were ever ill—almost he could have wished her ill at once, for an opportunity to set in motion his solicitude and tenderness. Patricia ... home ... with—hazily—a luxurious aroma about it of comfort and harmony, which Kathleen had never succeeded in imparting to Pacific Villa; but which his imagination infallibly allied to Patricia, as mistress of the quaint squat old-maidish house they had rented furnished in St. John's Wood.
He recollected with drowsy satisfaction ... the dining-room fire was burning low now, and it was late—his last night at Pacific Villa ... the sybaritic effect of Patricia's own sitting-room at Sydenham.
Raising his heavy eyes, he became aware of the black china cat; and by way of a last precaution, knocked it with his foot off the mantelpiece, and broke it.
On the same memorable eve of the tenth, Mrs. O'Neill was trying to make up her mind to go to Patricia's room, and talk to her for a little while ... the child had no mother of her own. The bride-to-be had behaved all through dinner with what looked like the wildest high spirits, but which Mrs. O'Neill did not doubt was hysteria; and then in the traditional manner of brides-to-be, had vanished early to bed. Mrs. O'Neill's hesitation in going up to her, arose from a misty apprehension—engendered she knew not where nor how—that she would find Patricia lying across her bed, shaken by sobs, and moaning: "I can't! I can't! I can't!"...