“Of course. We’ve known each other for years. We’re not very sentimental about it, but then for my part I distrust all that profoundly. It isn’t what you want nowadays; good solid esteem is the only thing to build on.”
Tony spoke with an air of deep experience. Maradick, with the thought of his own failure in his mind, wondered whether, after all, that were not the right way of looking at it. It had not been his way, fifteen years before; he had been the true impetuous lover, and now he reaped his harvest. Oh! these considering and careful young men and girls of the new generation were learning their lesson, and yet, in spite of it all, marriage turned out as many failures as ever. But this remark of the boy’s had been little in agreement with the rest of him; he had been romantic, impetuous, and very, very young, and this serious and rather cynical doctrine of “good solid esteem” was out of keeping with the rest of him.
“I wonder if you mean that,” he said, looking sharply at Tony.
“Of course. I’ve thought a great deal about marriage, in our set especially. One sees fellows marrying every day, either because they’re told to, or because they’re told not to, and both ways are bad. Of course I’ve fancied I was in love once or twice, but it’s always passed off. Supposing I’d married one of those girls, what would have come of it? Disaster, naturally. So now I’m wiser.”
“Don’t you be too sure. It’s that wisdom that’s so dangerous. The Fates, or whatever they are, always choose the cocksure moment for upsetting the certainty. I shouldn’t wonder if you change your views before you’re much older. You’re not the sort of chap, if you’ll pardon my saying so, to do those things so philosophically. And then, there’s something in the air of this place——”
Tony didn’t reply. He was wondering whether, after all, he was quite so cocksure. He had been telling himself for the last month that it was best, from every point of view, that he should marry Miss Du Cane; his people, his future, his certainty of the safety of it, all urged him, and yet—and yet . . . His mother’s words came back to him. “Tony, don’t marry anybody unless you are quite certain that it is the only person. Don’t let anything else influence you. Marriage with the wrong person is . . .”
And then, in a moment, the fair was upon them. It had just struck eleven and the excitement seemed at its height. The market-place was very French in its neatness, and a certain gathering together of all the life, spiritual and corporate, of the town; the church, Norman, and of some historical interest, filled the right side of the square. Close at its side, and squeezed between its grey walls and the solemn dignity of the Town Hall, was a tall rectangular tower crowded with little slits of windows and curious iron bars that jutted out into the air like pointing fingers.
There was something rather pathetically dignified about it; it protested against its modern neglect and desertion. You felt that it had, in an earlier day, known brave times. Now the ground floor was used by a fruiterer; apples and plums, cherries and pears were bought and sold, and the Count’s Tower was Harding’s shop.
There were several other houses in the Square that told the same tale, houses with fantastic bow-windows and little pepper-pot doors, tiny balconies and quaintly carved figures that stared at you from hidden corners; houses that were once the height of fashion now hid themselves timidly from the real magnificence of the Town Hall. Their day was over, and perhaps their very life was threatened. The Town Hall, with its dinners and its balls and its speeches, need fear no rivalry.
But to-night the Town Hall was pushed aside and counted for nothing at all. It was the one occasion of the year on which it was of no importance, and the old, despised tower was far more in keeping with the hour and the scene.