An hour later, he would not have believed the words had passed his lips. Jest upon such a horror would have seemed profanation to the newly made husband. As the woman who would never again answer to the name of Agnes Welles stood beside him, his were not the only eyes that paid silent homage to her strange beauty—strange, because to the guests, and to the assembled relatives, this phase of one whom most people had hitherto thought only “interesting” and “pleasing,” was new and unexpected. She was but a few inches shorter than her manly partner, and slender to fragility. Straight and supple as a willow-wand, she was ethereal in grace when clad in the misty robes and veil which were the wedding gift of her godmother. Her dark eyes were full of living light, illumining the colorless face into weird loveliness, that belonged neither to feature nor complexion. The short, tense bow of the upper lip, the fine spirited line of the nostrils, the perfect oval of cheek and chin, were always high-bred—some said, haughty. To-night they were chastened into lofty sweetness that was pure womanly.
“She might pass for twenty-two,” said an audaciously young débutante to a crony just behind Mr. Barton.
And—“By George!” thought that astute individual—“the young dog never hinted that his divinity was six years his senior. I should have been surer than ever of receiving that card. Pity! pity! pity! That’s a fault that won’t mend with time.”
Agnes knew better than he could have told her what risks the woman takes who consents to marry her junior in years. Early in their acquaintanceship she had contrived to apprise Barton of this disparity. When he declared his love she set it boldly in the foreground of hesitation and demur.
“When you are thirty-five, in man’s proudest prime and yet far from the comb of the hill, I shall have begun to go down the other side,” she urged. “You might be able to contemplate the contrast boldly, but could I forgive myself? There may be a suspicion of poetry—pathetic but real—in the idea of an old man’s darling, but an old woman’s pet! that is a theme no painter or poet has dared to handle. The suggestion of grotesqueness is inevitable. Both are to be pitied, but I think the wife needs compassion even more than the man she has made ridiculous.”
The rising young lawyer was a clever advocate, and he had never striven longer and harder to win a cause. When his triumph was secured Agnes could not quite dismiss the subject. It haunted her like a wan ghost, with threatening beck and ominous eye. Once, but a month before their wedding day, they were speaking of George Eliot’s singular marriage with a man young enough to be her son, and an abrupt change fell upon Agnes’ visage—a shade of painful doubt and misgiving.
“Dinah Maria Mulock, too!” she exclaimed. “And Mme. de Staël! Elizabeth Browning’s husband was some months younger than she. Then, there are Mrs. —— and Mrs. ——” naming two prominent living American authors. “How very singular! There must be some occult reason for what we cannot set down as coincidences. It looks like fatality—or” hesitatingly—“infatuation.”
“Rather,” said Barton in gentle seriousness, for her perturbation was too real for playful rallying—“attribute such cases to the truth of the eternal youthfulness of genius. These men see in the faces and forms of the women they woo, the beautiful minds that will never know age or change. Time salutes, instead of challenging those high in favor with the king.”
“Do you know,” Agnes said, her slim white hand threading the brown curls of the head she thought more beautiful than that of Antinous—“that you will never say a more graceful thing than that? You are more truly a poet than I. Don’t disclaim, for I am not a bard at all. When I drop into poetry à la Wegg, it is not ‘in the light of a friend.’ When I am in the dark or at best in a half-light, sorry or weary, or lonely of heart, my thoughts take rhythmic shape. They are only homely little crickets, creeping out in the twilight to sing by the fire that is beginning to gather ashes. I am a born story-teller, but I deserve no credit for that. Something within me that is not myself tells the stories so fast that I can hardly write them down as they are made. I am no genius, dear. Don’t marry me with that impression. I wish for your sake that I were. How gloriously proud you would be of me!”
“I am ‘gloriously proud’ of you now!” He said it in fervent sincerity. “If you have genius, don’t develop it. I can hardly keep you in sight as it is.”