“I know what Jimmie would do,” she cried. “He would try to pat the beast on the head.”
There was laughter over the girl's unchallenged championship, but those who had ears to hear found the saying true.
The night before the wedding the two sat up very late, spending their last hours together, and Aline sat like a child on Jimmie's knee and sobbed on his breast. The lover seemed a far-away abstraction, a malevolent force rather than a personality, that was tearing her away from the soil in which her life was rooted. Jimmie stroked her hair and spoke brave words. But he had not realised till then the wrench of parting. Till then, perhaps, neither had realised the strength of the bond between them. They were both fervent natures, who felt intensely, and their mutual affection had been a vital part of their lives. If bright and gallant youth had not flashed across the girl's path and, after the human way, had not caught her wondering maidenhood in strong young arms; if deeper and more tragic passion had not swept away the mature man, it is probable that this rare, pure love of theirs might have insensibly changed into the greater need one of the other, and the morrow's bells might have rung for these two. But as it was, no such impulse stirred their exquisite relationship. They were father and daughter without the barrier of paternity; brother and sister without the ties of consanguinity; lovers without the lovers' throb; intimate, passionate friends with the sweet and subtle magic of the sex's difference.
“I can't bear leaving you,” she moaned. “I can't bear leaving the dear beautiful life. I'll think of you every second of every minute of every hour sitting here all alone, alone. I don't want to go. If you say the word now, I'll remain and it shall be as it has been for ever and ever.”
“I shall miss you—terribly, my dear,” said he. “But I'll be the gainer in the end. You'll give me Tony as a sort of younger brother. I am getting to be an old man, darling—and soon I shall find the need of les jeunes in my painting life. You can't understand that yet. Tony will bring around me the younger generation with new enthusiasms and fresh impulses. It is to my very great good, dear. And if God gives you children, I'll be the only grandfather they'll ever have, poor things, and I'd like to have a child about me again. I have experience. I have washed your chubby face and hands, moi qui vous parle, and undressed you and put you to bed, my young lady who is about to be married.”
“Oh, Jimmie, I remember it—and I had to tell you how to do everything.”
“It seems the day before yesterday,” said Jimmie. “Eheu fugaces!”
The next day when she in her wedding-dress (a present from Connie Deering) walked down the aisle on her husband's arm and stole a shy glance at him, radiant, full of the promise and the pride of manhood, and met the glad love in his eyes, she forgot all else in the throbbing joy of her young life's completion. It was only afterwards when she was changing her dress, with Connie Deering's assistance, in her own little room, that she became again conscience-stricken.
“You will look after Jimmie while I am away, won't you?” she asked tragically—they were going to the Isle of Wight for their honeymoon.
“I would look after him altogether if he would let me,” said Connie, in an abrupt, emotional little outburst.