'Hah!' interrupted Mr. Yeo, and waved his cane, 'there is my secretary signalling to me from away yonder on the dunes. Excuse me—I must go to him.'
He rose and walked hastily away.
'How very odd!' said Jeremiah. 'I could swear he was in my great-coat.' He watched the man as he strode away. 'And that hat!—surely I know that also.'
CHAPTER XXV.
WITHOUT BELLS.
Virgilius, Bishop of Salzburg in the eighth century, condemned the erroneous doctrine held by some that we have antipodes. It was, no doubt, true that men in the Middle Ages had not their antipodes, but it is certainly otherwise now. Where our fathers' heads were, there now are our feet. Everything is the reverse in this Generation of what it was in the last. Medicine condemns those things which medicine did enjoin, and enjoins those things which were forbidden. What our parents revered that we turn into burlesque, and what they cast aside as worthless that we collect and treasure. Maxims that moulded the conduct in the last generation are trampled underfoot in this, and principles thought immutable are broken by the succeeding age, as royal seals are broken on the death of the sovereign. If we were bred up by our fathers in high Toryism, when of age we turn a somersault and pose as Social Democrats; if we learned the Gospel at our mother's knee we profess Buddhism with the sprouting of our whiskers. The social and moral barriers set up by our fathers we throw down, and just as pigs when driven in one direction turn their snouts the other way, so do we—so do our children; which is an evidence in favour of Darwinianism, showing that the porcine character still inheres.
It was regarded of old as a canon by romance writers, that the final chapter of the last volume, be it the seventh as in the days of Richardson, or the third as in these of Mudie and Smith, should end with the marriage of the hero and heroine. A cruel and wayward Fate held the couple apart through the entire story, but they came together in the end. And there was a reason for this. Marriage is the climax of the romance of life. It concludes one epoch and opens another, and that which it opens is prosaic. It was concluded, and concluded with some show of reason that a romance should deal with the romantic period of life and finish when that reaches its apogee.
The Parliament of Love at Toulouse in the twelfth century laid down that love and marriage were mutually exclusive terms; that romance died to the sound of wedding-bells, or at longest lingered to the expiration of the honeymoon. This law has governed novelists ever since. The ingenuity of the author has consisted in devising impediments to the union of the lovers, and in knocking them out of their way as the story neared its conclusion.
But in this revolutionary age we have discarded the rule; and carried away by the innovating stream the author of this tale has ventured to displace the marriage. Had he been completely lost to reverence for the ancient canons, in his desire to be original, he would have opened his novel with a wedding procession, strutting to the carriages over strewn flowers, holding bouquets, with the pealing of wedding-bells, whilst the bridegroom's man circulates, tipping the parson, the curate, the pewopener, the sexton, the clerk, the bellringers, and all the other sharks that congregate about a bridegroom, as the fish congregate about a ship on board of which is a corpse. But, as the author is still held in check by old rule, or prejudice, and yet yields somewhat to the modern spirit of relaxation, he compromises between the extremes, and introduces the marriage in the middle of his tale.
In a novel, a marriage is always built up of much romantic and picturesque and floral adjunct. It is supposed necessarily to involve choral hymns, white favours, bridal veils, orange blossoms, tears in the bride, flaming cheeks in the bridegroom, speeches at the breakfast, an old slipper, and a shower of rice. Without these condiments a wedding is a very insipid dish.