Pierston here gave in brief the history of his revived comradeship with Avice, the verge of the engagement to which they had reached, and its unexpected rupture by him, merely through his meeting with a woman into whom the Well-Beloved unmistakably moved under his very eyes—by name Miss Marcia Bencomb. He described their spontaneous decision to marry offhand; and then he put it to Somers whether he ought to marry or not—her or anybody else—in such circumstances.
‘Certainly not,’ said Somers. ‘Though, if anybody, little Avice. But not even her. You are like other men, only rather worse. Essentially, all men are fickle, like you; but not with such perceptiveness.’
‘Surely fickle is not the word? Fickleness means getting weary of a thing while the thing remains the same. But I have always been faithful to the elusive creature whom I have never been able to get a firm hold of, unless I have done so now. And let me tell you that her flitting from each to each individual has been anything but a pleasure for me—certainly not a wanton game of my instigation. To see the creature who has hitherto been perfect, divine, lose under your very gaze the divinity which has informed her, grow commonplace, turn from flame to ashes, from a radiant vitality to a relic, is anything but a pleasure for any man, and has been nothing less than a racking spectacle to my sight. Each mournful emptied shape stands ever after like the nest of some beautiful bird from which the inhabitant has departed and left it to fill with snow. I have been absolutely miserable when I have looked in a face for her I used to see there, and could see her there no more.’
‘You ought not to marry,’ repeated Somers.
‘Perhaps I oughtn’t to! Though poor Marcia will be compromised, I’m afraid, if I don’t. … Was I not right in saying I am accursed in this thing? Fortunately nobody but myself has suffered on account of it till now. Knowing what to expect, I have seldom ventured on a close acquaintance with any woman, in fear of prematurely driving away the dear one in her; who, however, has in time gone off just the same.’
Pierston soon after took his leave. A friend’s advice on such a subject weighs little. He quickly returned to Miss Bencomb.
She was different now. Anxiety had visibly brought her down a notch or two, undone a few degrees of that haughty curl which her lip could occasionally assume. ‘How long you have been away!’ she said with a show of impatience.
‘Never mind, darling. It is all arranged,’ said he. ‘We shall be able to marry in a few days.’
‘Not to-morrow?’
‘We can’t to-morrow. We have not been here quite long enough.’
‘But how did the people at Doctors’ Commons know that?’
‘Well—I forgot that residence, real or assumed, was necessary, and unfortunately admitted that we had only just arrived.’
‘O how stupid! But it can’t be helped now. I think, dear, I should have known better, however!’
1. VIII. ‘TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING’
They lived on at the hotel some days longer, eyed curiously by the chambermaids, and burst in upon every now and then by the waiters as if accidentally. When they were walking together, mostly in back streets for fear of being recognized, Marcia was often silent, and her imperious face looked gloomy.
‘Dummy!’ he said playfully, on one of these occasions.
‘I am vexed that by your admissions at Doctors’ Commons you prevented them giving you the licence at once! It is not nice, my living on with you like this!’
‘But we are going to marry, dear!’
‘Yes,’ she murmured, and fell into reverie again. ‘What a sudden resolve it was of ours!’ she continued. ‘I wish I could get my father and mother’s consent to our marriage. … As we can’t complete it for another day or two, a letter might be sent to them and their answer received? I have a mind to write.’
Pierston expressed his doubts of the wisdom of this course, which seemed to make her desire it the more, and the result was a tiff between them. ‘Since we are obliged to delay it, I won’t marry without their consent!’ she cried at last passionately.
‘Very well then, dear. Write,’ he said.
When they were again indoors, she sat down to a note, but after a while threw aside her pen despairingly. ‘No: I cannot do it!’ she said. ‘I can’t bend my pride to such a job. Will YOU write for me, Jocelyn?’
‘I? I don’t see why I should be the one, particularly as I think it premature.’
‘But you have not quarrelled with my father as I have done.’
‘Well no. But there is a long-standing antagonism, which would make it odd in me to be the writer. Wait till we are married, and then I will write. Not till then.’
‘Then I suppose I must. You don’t know my father. He might forgive me marrying into any other family without his knowledge, but he thinks yours such a mean one, and so resents the trade rivalry, that he would never pardon till the day of his death my becoming a Pierston secretly. I didn’t see it at first.’
This remark caused an unpleasant jar on the mind of Pierston. Despite his independent artistic position in London, he was staunch to the simple old parent who had stubbornly held out for so many years against Bencomb’s encroaching trade, and whose money had educated and maintained Jocelyn as an art-student in the best schools. So he begged her to say no more about his mean family, and she silently resumed her letter, giving an address at a post-office that their quarters might not be discovered, at least just yet.
No reply came by return of post; but, rather ominously, some letters for Marcia that had arrived at her father’s since her departure were sent on in silence to the address given. She opened them one by one, till on reading the last, she exclaimed, ‘Good gracious!’ and burst into laughter.
‘What is it?’ asked Pierston.
Marcia began to read the letter aloud. It came from a faithful lover of hers, a youthful Jersey gentleman, who stated that he was soon going to start for England to claim his darling, according to her plighted word.
She was half risible, half concerned. ‘What shall I do?’ she said.
‘Do? My dear girl, it seems to me that there is only one thing to do, and that a very obvious thing. Tell him as soon as possible that you are just on the point of marriage.’
Marcia thereupon wrote out a reply to that effect, Jocelyn helping her to shape the phrases as gently as possible.
‘I repeat’ (her letter concluded) ‘that I had quite forgotten! I am deeply sorry; but that is the truth. I have told my intended husband everything, and he is looking over my shoulder as I write.’
Said Jocelyn when he saw this set down: ‘You might leave out the last few words. They are rather an extra stab for the poor boy.’
‘Stab? It is not that, dear. Why does he want to come bothering me? Jocelyn, you ought to be very proud that I have put you in my letter at all. You said yesterday that I was conceited in declaring I might have married that science-man I told you of. But now you see there was yet another available.’
He, gloomily: ‘Well, I don’t care to hear about that. To my mind this sort of thing is decidedly unpleasant, though you treat it so lightly.’
‘Well,’ she pouted, ‘I have only done half what you have done!’
‘What’s that?’
‘I have only proved false through forgetfulness, but you have while remembering!’