"He who called Arms and Letters a pair of sisters, knew nothing about their family, for no lineages are so far apart as saying and doing."
Yes, playing the man of letters, with nothing to do but look back, I gabble most confoundedly; but in those days I was a man-at-arms. I might be indeed troop jester, but the jester's habit is the mask of reticence. I made the woman merry, to ease the way as best I could for her, but told her nothing. How could I tell such a creature that, in giving my hand, I gave my mother's rank, my mother's dignities. The woman might be Sarde's wife, or Sarde's discarded mistress, for all I cared, but not the Marchioness of the Alpuxarras to tarnish the old and lovely memories of my house. Rank is a responsibility, at times a burden, a thing we try to forget in our private life, not to be soiled in the filthy conversation of camp or barrack, not to be tarnished by a woman of doubtful character. Unless I could pass my knighthood on to the sons of a gentlewoman, the succession would go to my brother. And so, before we parted at Wild Horse Creek, I gave to Don Pedro's keeping the badge of the Golden Fleece.
The incompetent in charge at the Kootenay Mission was my friend of the church parades, and he refused me marriage. Had he been a Christian, there had been no marriage, for ever so gladly would I have made confession to a real priest, and at his orders provided for the woman in her necessities. But this parson was merely a creature of convention, since the weeds of respectability sprang up to choke the flowering of his soul. He objected to me as a Papist, to the woman as a Prohibitionist or a vegetarian, or some such uncouth sectarian outside the pale. He objected to the social misalliance, as though he were priest to a god of etiquette. He demanded a permit from my commanding officer. He demurred on grounds of infancy.
"We don't mind getting married," I told him, "unless you prefer that this woman should be my mistress."
At that, he collapsed altogether, and merely to save him from being mixed up in a scandal, that marriage was made in hell.
"Whom God hath joined," he said, "let no man put asunder."
"But why blame Him?" I asked, and the service ended.
Of the same breed are marriage and repentance.
V
Our borrowed pony had been left behind at Windermere, from whence the señora and I rode double on Black Prince. My broken leg was scarcely fit for travel, and the wedding delayed us also for some hours on our way to troop headquarters at Wild Horse Creek.