II
Miss Mamie Stuart Berridge had explored Exmoor and Dunster and Porlock, and the other wonderful and romantic places that are within walking or driving distance of the little town. She had, perhaps, just scratched the surface; yet, for all that, it was ecstatic to take tea in the shadow of age-old castles, or wander through villages that looked as though they had come straight out of a picture-book. Till she met Jimmy Baker, however, one thing had been lacking in this romance—the final touch. She saw it at last, and clearly too; it had not been so very prominent before. Jimmy’s ingenuous face brought it home to her. She wanted a companion. Doing England and having “a good time” was all very well; but without a companion it was only half the good time it might have been. And there was Jimmy, free to go a-roaming every evening after five, or even earlier. So she annexed him, and such of Seacombe as knew Jimmy whispered that this annexation was not entirely one-sided.
He was twenty-three and she was twenty-two, and it was the month of the harvest moon and all the year’s stored tenderness. They climbed the winding paths that led to the church; close together on a bench they rested and found the sea; through narrow lanes they strolled, and thence upward to purple heather and the misty hills. And there Mamie discovered that she had not been mistaken. The final touch was a hand laid on hers, and an inward wound like that which comes when music is too sweet, too magical. The night she gave her lips to him obliterated America, and especially Lansing, in the State of Michigan. She wanted to stay here for ever, in his arms, and the moon poised above Dunkery Beacon. This place was no longer England; it had become the Land of Heart’s Desire.
“Let me look and look,” she cried; “I shall never see anything like this again!” And with his arm on her neck, and cheek against cheek, they sat there, awed by a world bathed in moonlight, themselves transfigured, smitten and silenced by the great mystery of first-awakened love. It seemed to Mamie that she had been born anew, been here admitted into some strange, all-satisfying faith.
Baker’s holiday, an annual fortnight wherein he might refresh himself as best he could, was due next Monday. He had been saving up for it. During fifty weeks of the year he was a bank clerk, the other two he was permitted to be a man. By a predestinate coincidence—or so they deemed it—Mamie’s trip expired on the same date. A fortnight from the Monday she must go to Liverpool, and thence return to Lansing, in the State of Michigan. She had her berth on the steamboat; all was paid for and arranged. Thus two weeks and some odd days remained to them before she sailed.... It was on the Saturday that they made up their minds to get married.
Which of the two first jumped to that decision is hard to say, and does not matter specially. That they jumped to it is enough. The Saturday found them at Grabbist, above Dunster, and the inspiration came during a pause. It seemed as simple as the line of Dunkery Beacon, that great hill whose monstrous bulk is so precise. Next day, in the smoke-room of the Pier Hotel, they consulted reference books. They could go to London to-morrow, and be married on the Tuesday, it said, provided they paid the fees. They clubbed their money together and went.
From then onward unseen hands seemed to guide them; first to their lodgings, thence to the office of the Vicar-General, where they bought a licence—Mamie had stayed in London, and had a residential qualification, it appeared—and next day to the church where they were married. They came out into the street again, and no one knew their secret. They shared the memory of a sacrament taken in the wilderness, where the droning curate and paid witnesses were of small account beside the flame that had fused them into man and wife.... The golden sunlight of that exquisite hour when, hand-in-hand, they faced London was as though made for them; the old heart of the giant city could still rejoice, it seemed, and was ready to crown true lovers, and fold them in mantles of shimmering tissue and cloth of gold. They wandered through leafy squares, and a man stopped them and asked them the way to Bell Yard. Neither of them knew. Had he inquired the road to Paradise they could have told.... They grew hungry at last. Their wedding breakfast was eaten in a restaurant off Hatton Garden. The regular customers of the place, Jews for the most part, and dealers in the staple article of that quarter, smiled the racial smile of genial incredulity as these two entered and found room. But neither Jim nor Mamie had a doubt; for in their eyes that met across the narrow table shone a light more precious and more enduring than that emitted by all the diamonds, rubies, and emeralds of Hatton Garden.... The night found them in Rye, a southern place that Mamie had chosen—she had so often longed to see it.
III
The boy and girl shared everything in those two weeks—pain and bliss, the joy of early morning, the wistfulness of twilight and the first white star. Their money was in one purse; they spent it together, choosing things to eat and drink, or little gifts that would remind them when their hour was come. Over their young heads hung the shadow; they had the courage to outface it; to-morrow was yet distant, and when it dawned they would praise God for what had been, and could never be removed.... They knew all there was to know; and a strange pride thrilled them, a tenderness that neither had foreseen. Love was even greater than their dreams of it and their foreknowledge. The sea’s strength and the land’s strength had tested soul and body, had blessed these two with infinite renewals, an unassailable virginity.
From Rye and Winchelsea they had wandered to Hythe along that coastline, avoiding Dungeness, and pausing at Lydd, New Romney, and Dymchurch with its sands. Each morning they had bathed, and often at sunset; these old places fascinated them, and especially Mamie, who came from Lansing, in the State of Michigan.