Philip had no cause, on that day at least, to regret his surrender. “You see, sir,” said Marion mischievously, after some such fathomless spell of happiness as only lovers can feel, “if I had kept the twenty thousand pounds, you could not have had this!”
“I may be glad you had them to refuse, at any rate,” responded Philip.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE most natural sequel to a mutual understanding, such as this between the two lovers, would be that they should get married with the least possible delay; and, as a matter of fact, that is what happened. The legacy having been handed back at Marion’s instance and with Philip’s consent, Marion would hardly be justified in opposing any unreasonable delay to the personal claims of so obedient a lover. It is not every man, however much in love he may be, who will surrender twenty thousand pounds without a murmur. But Philip, in the first place, was not of a specially avaricious disposition; and the unexpected success of his poem had impressed him with a belief in the pecuniary possibilities of a literary career, such as rendered him comparatively indifferent to extraneous resources. Beyond this, however, he had the insight to discern that the fundamental motive of Marion’s action had not transpired in her arguments. What really moved her was some lurking tinge of jealousy with regard to the past relations between himself and Perdita. What basis there may have been for such jealousy, if there were any basis for it, Philip may have known; but he had always avoided any reference to it, and he probably did not care to risk the opening of the subject which would be likely to follow Marion’s enforced acceptance of the legacy. Marion would never be happy under the persuasion that she was in possession of money which, in the natural course of things, should have gone to Perdita. Philip, therefore, capitulated with less parley than he might otherwise have attempted.
They were married in the course of three or four weeks, and went to spend their honeymoon on the Continent; the chief goal of their pilgrimage being the field of Waterloo, where Marion saw her father’s grave. There was no drawback to the enjoyment of the journey; it was a period of serene and profound happiness on which it would be pleasant to dwell at more length. But happiness has few events, nor any apparent movement; it is like a chapter from eternity, which is the infinite development of the present moment. Time loses its semblance of reality, and the discovery that it does, nevertheless, continue to pass, comes as a surprise. The time arrived when Mr. and Mrs. Lancaster were constrained to set their faces homeward: but they did so with unshadowed hearts. Life had begun for them with the sweetest auspices, and there seemed no reason to anticipate that it would not proceed to still brighter issues.
The home of the newly-wedded couple was to be, for the present, in the old house in Hammersmith, which, with some alterations in the way of furniture, would be commodious enough, and which was endeared by association to Marion and her mother, and to Philip also, as being the place where he had first met his bride. It was now the “little season” in London; Parliament was to sit early, and the town was rapidly filling up. The excitement of war being over, every one was set upon getting the largest possible amount of excitement out of society, and the next few months promised to be brilliant ones. Among the literary celebrities of the day, no man’s reputation stood higher at this moment than that of Philip Lancaster. He was mentioned in the same breath with Byron and Shelley, and there were not wanting persons who professed to find in him qualities quite equal to those of the latter poets. It was rumored, also, that his personal advantages were on a par with his mental ones; that he had married a great heiress; that he was the younger son of an earl; that his past career had been distinguished by many romantic and mysterious episodes, involving the reputation of more than a few personages of rank both in England and on the Continent; together with a score of other reports, true, half true and untrue, such as invariably herald the appearance in a prominent position of any one whom nobody ever heard of before.
It was the custom at this period for men and women who happened to have achieved distinction either by their brains or by some equally uncommon means, to be invited to social entertainments at the house of Lady Flanders. To be seen there conferred the insignia of a kind of nobility which had nothing to do with the peerage, but which was, perhaps, scarcely the less valued by the recipients of it. Accordingly it was not without satisfaction that Philip, a few days after his return to Hammersmith, received a communication from her ladyship, conveying her compliments, and an urgent desire to have the honor of welcoming the author of “Iduna” at her abode on the following Wednesday evening, at seven o’clock. Mrs. Lancaster was included in the invitation (not an invariable corollary in similar cases); and, indeed, her ladyship’s carriage had left cards the day before Philip’s return from abroad, as Mrs. Lockhart testified.
Of course, they could have no hesitation in availing themselves of this first social recognition, in the capital of the world, of Philip’s genius; and Marion prepared herself for the occasion with a sentiment of wifely pride, at the thought that the world should so soon confirm that opinion of her husband, which she herself had more or less avowedly entertained ever since the first moment she beheld him. The young people attired themselves in a manner which would excite less remark in the present day than it might have done ten or twenty years ago, but which, at all events, at the period we write of, was altogether in the mode. Shortly before the carriage was announced, Marion, being ready, went down stairs, and saw lying on the hall table a letter addressed to Philip Lancaster, Esquire, in Mr. Fillmore’s handwriting. Now Marion had a day or two before written to Fillmore, inquiring whether there were any formalities to be observed in relation to her rejection of the legacy; and she took it for granted that this letter, although addressed to her husband, was the answer to her question. She and Philip had not as yet had occasion to come to any understanding as to their liberty to open each other’s letters; and, though Marion would probably, in an ordinary case, have let the letter alone, in this instance she had no hesitation in appropriating it. But at this juncture Mrs. Lockhart came into the hall and detected something about Marion’s dress that needed readjustment. Marion put the letter in her pocket and forgot all about it.
They arrived safely at their destination, and were ushered into the presence of their hostess, an immensely tall old lady, with a turban, overhanging eyebrows and a prominent chin. She was of noble descent, and was now recognized as among the most eminent encouragers of literature and the liberal arts; but there were terrible stories told about her youth, when she was said to have traveled in Europe in male attire, to have fought a duel and killed her man, and to have lived several years in some part of Asia under circumstances known only to herself. At this stage of her career, however, she was a great card-player, sternly religious in the way of forms and etiquette, and reputed to have one of the wittiest and sharpest tongues in London. To Philip she contented herself with saying: “Young gentleman, I used to know your grand-uncle. He was not so handsome a man as you. ’Tis a dangerous thing, sir, to be handsome and to write poetry. People who see you will expect your poetry to be as well as you are, and, if they find it is not, they’ll call you both humbugs. I haven’t read your poem, Mr. Lancaster, but now that I have seen you I mean to, and then I shall tell you just what I think of it! Mrs. Lancaster, I like you better than your husband; he’s not good enough for you, though he’ll try and make you believe the contrary. Never let him print anything that you don’t like—else he’ll make a failure. There—run along now and enjoy yourselves, and you may come here again as often as you like.”
The rooms were full of people, many of whom one would be glad enough to see now-a-days, after seventy years’ vicarious acquaintance with them, through books and tradition. There is no need of naming them here, nor were their appearance and casual conversation (temporary costumes and customs aside) any more remarkable than would be the case in a similar gathering in the London of our times. Philip, indeed, was quite as well worth noticing as any other person there; and he certainly was noticed to the full extent of his deserts. There were murmurs on every side of “That’s he!”—“Which?”—“There—tall, short curling hair and white forehead.”—“What splendid eyes!”—“Oh, did he write ‘Iduna’?”—“Yes, madam: looks like his own hero, doesn’t he?”—“Is he married?”—“No.”—“Yes, I assure you: two hundred thousand pounds and a beauty.”—“Is she like ‘Iduna’?”—“She’s sixty and a fright!”—“Have you read the poem?”—“Yes—very pretty: vastly entertaining, indeed.”—“Here he comes!”—“Oh, pray introduce me!” Amidst such comments and exclamations the poet of the hour found himself adrift, with a tolerably calm and impassive exterior, and within, a voice, half sad, half comical, repeating, “This is fame!”