‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘A fortnight hence will do as well.’
‘And I have these for you,’ he continued. ‘Your man Green was passing my grandmother’s on his way back from Warborne, where he had been, he says, for any letters that had come for you by the evening post. As he stayed to assist the other men I told him I would go on to your house with the letters he had brought. Of course I did not tell him I should see you here.’
‘Thank you. Of course not. Now I’ll return at once.’
In descending the column her eye fell upon the superscription of one of the letters, and she opened and glanced over it by the lantern light. She seemed startled, and, musing, said, ‘The postponement of our—intention must be, I fear, for a long time. I find that after the end of this month I cannot leave home safely, even for a day.’ Perceiving that he was about to ask why, she added, ‘I will not trouble you with the reason now; it would only harass you. It is only a family business, and cannot be helped.’
‘Then we cannot be married till—God knows when!’ said Swithin blankly. ‘I cannot leave home till after the next week or two; you cannot leave home unless within that time. So what are we to do?’
‘I do not know.’
‘My dear, dear one, don’t let us be beaten like this! Don’t let a well-considered plan be overthrown by a mere accident! Here’s a remedy. Do you go and stay the requisite time in the parish we are to be married in, instead of me. When my grandmother is again well housed I can come to you, instead of you to me, as we first said. Then it can be done within the time.’
Reluctantly, shyly, and yet with a certain gladness of heart, she gave way to his proposal that they should change places in the programme. There was much that she did not like in it, she said. It seemed to her as if she were taking the initiative by going and attending to the preliminaries. It was the man’s part to do that, in her opinion, and was usually undertaken by him.
‘But,’ argued Swithin, ‘there are cases in which the woman does give the notices, and so on; that is to say, when the man is absolutely hindered from doing so; and ours is such a case. The seeming is nothing; I know the truth, and what does it matter? You do not refuse—retract your word to be my wife, because, to avoid a sickening delay, the formalities require you to attend to them in place of me?’
She did not refuse, she said. In short she agreed to his entreaty. They had, in truth, gone so far in their dream of union that there was no drawing back now. Whichever of them was forced by circumstances to be the protagonist in the enterprise, the thing must be done. Their intention to become husband and wife, at first halting and timorous, had accumulated momentum with the lapse of hours, till it now bore down every obstacle in its course.