“Then am I here contrary to her wish?”
“What’s the use of worrying about trifles? never do. What’s troubling me is the much more serious question as to whether we can be married in the morning. The Bishop’s an unmanageable creature. Used to be my tutor. Short of throwing things at him, you never could get him to behave with decency. You can’t throw things at a Bishop. It’s not good form. Do you know anything about that sort of thing?”
“About what sort of thing?”
“Special licences, and so on.”
“Will you have the kindness to ask your coachman to stop the next cab we come to, and I will get into it.”
“I say! Really! You mustn’t talk like that!”
“It seems to me very much as if I must talk like that. I appear to be riding in your sister’s carriage against her wish, and you certainly are talking in a strain which would seem to hint at there being something the matter with your mental balance. I should be sorry to seem discourteous, but I prefer a cab.”
He looked at me with his impertinent eyes in a way which made me thrill all over. It is entirely impossible for a person like me—who hardly knows one end of a pen from the other, and does not want to—to give an adequate impression of the perfectly charming way in which he said the most ridiculous and disgraceful things. I had every intention and desire to be angry, but I had to smile.
“That’s the unreasonableness of the world. Everybody—including Louisa, who practically is everybody—has been urging me for ever so long to marry. But I have felt that I had a vocation. Women have seemed to me to be good for everything but marrying. Louisa weeps. Then, to-night, when I see you at the Imperial, I not only fall in love with you—which is nothing, because I am constantly falling in love and out again—but I am seized with an instant conviction that marriage is my vocation. I rush after you to the theatre, where Louisa has a box. I say to her, ‘Louisa, I am going to do as you wish, I am about to marry!’ She gives a movement which may or may not signify satisfaction, and ejaculates, ‘No!’ I retort, ‘Yes! there is the lady who is to be my wife!’ And I point you out to her in your place in the stalls. She focusses you with her glass, and exclaims ‘Good heavens!’ Then adds, ‘Who is she?’ ‘I have not the faintest notion who she is,’ I explain, ‘I only know that she is going to be—my wife.’ Louisa looks up at me and demands, ‘Are you mad?’ There—to return to my former position—is the unreasonableness of the world. Louisa hints insanity because I am unable to accede to her wishes; when I am, she calls me mad. I ask you if there is any reason why you should not be my wife?”
“Rather! To enter for a moment into your mood—is there any reason why I should?”