The appointed end of all such things, in print and out of it, is marriage. Outside marriage there is no such thing as affection between man and woman (in that atmosphere passion and desire do not exist and children are not born but just crop up). True to his fiction—and how many men are ever true to anything else?—Old Mole came in less than a week to the idea of marriage with Matilda. It was offensive to his common sense, so repugnant indeed that it almost shocked him back into the world of fact and that hideous mental and spiritual flux from which he was congratulating himself on having escaped. He held his nose and gulped it down and sighed:
“Ah! Let us not look on the dark side of life!”
Then he asked himself:
“Do I love her? She has young dreams of love. How can I give her my love and not shatter them?”
And much more in this egoistic strain he said, the disturbance in his heart, or whatever organ may be the seat of the affections, having totally upset his sense of humor. He told himself, of course, that she was hardly the wife for a man of his position, but that was only by way of peppering his emotions, and he was really rather amazed when he came to the further reflection that, after all, he had no position. To avoid the consternation it brought he decided to ask Matilda’s hand in marriage.
As it turned out, to the utter devastation of his novelette, it was his hand that was asked.
He bought Matilda a new camisole. He had heard the word used by women and was rather staggered when he found what it was he had purchased. Confusedly he presented it to Innocent Girlhood. She giggled and then, with a shout of laughter, rushed off to show Mrs. Copas her gift. He did not on that occasion stammer out his proposal.
He took her for three walks and two tram-drives at fourpence each, but she was preoccupied and morose, and gave such vague answers to his preliminary remarks that his hopes died within him and he discussed the Insurance Act and Lancashire’s chances of defeating Yorkshire at Bradford. Moreover, Matilda was pale and drawn and not far from being downright ugly, far too plain for a novelette at all events. He felt himself sliding backward and could hear the buzz and roar of the chaos within himself, and the novelette was unfinished and until he came to the last jaunting little hope in the future, the last pat on the back for the hero, the final distribution of sugar-plums all round, there would be no sort of security, no sealed circle wherein to dwell. He felt sick, and the nausea that came on him was worse than the fear and doubt through which he had passed. He was like a man after a long journey come hungry to an inn to find nothing to eat but lollipops.
When they returned from their last tram-drive they had supper with Mr. and Mrs. Copas, who discussed the new actors whom they had engaged, as only two of the old company were willing to return. The new comic had acted in London, in the West End, had once made his twenty pounds a week. They were proud of him, and Mr. Copas unblushingly denounced the Drink as the undoing of many a nartist. Very early in the evening, before any move had been made to clear the plates and dishes away, Matilda declared herself tired, and withdrew. Mr. Copas went on talking and Mrs. Copas began to make horrible faces at him, so that Old Mole, in the vagueness of his acute discomfort, thought mistily that perhaps they were at the beginning of an altercation, which would end—as their altercations ended. However, the talk went on and the grimaces went on until at last Mr. Copas perceived that he was the object of them, stopped dead, seized his hat and left the room. Mrs. Copas beamed on Mr. Mole. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. They were bare to the elbow and fat and coarse and red. She went on beaming, and nervously he took out a cigar and lit it. Mrs. Copas leaned forward and with a knife began to draw patterns with the mustard left on the edge of a plate.