A Boy's Marriage

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II

BfiVsRLsY was due to arrive home at fifteen minutes past five.

The entire household had spent the day in a state of happy excitement ; each one striving to think of some point which might add a lustre to his home-coming.

At break&st Mrs. Teruel quiedy announced that she intended to decorate his room with Sowers, She was occupied all the morning in choosing and picking die most beautiful roses, and she arranged them many times in large bowls before she was satisfied with their appearance.

"And I do hope, Jane," she said to the housemaid, whose help she repudiated, " you mil remember to set them outside his room when you turn down the bed the last thing, because their scent is so injurious."

Jane, who had at one time acted as nurse to Beverley, was almost injured that any one should think it necessary to give her such elementary instructions regarding her boy's health. But she soon forgave her mistress ; she could well imagine the strain a mother's nerves must feel under stress of such an event — and she was such a mother, and he was such a son I So she smiled as she laid lavender bags between his sheets and under the pillow, that everything might be sweet and home-like.

Mr. Teruel made an effort to protest against all this absurd fuss, and paced the garden trying to determine whether he should have champagne for dinner or whether it would be better to mix one of his famous Moselle cups. The solution came to him like an inspiration. He decided to have both. A small loving-cup at dessert would be entirely suitable to the occasion ; and finding there was not enough Chartreuse, he thanked Providence with pleasure at his own foresight and drove into the neighbouring town of Littlehampton to buy the best he could obtain from the grocer.

He was a tall man, distinguished only for his indolence and good nature. Had he been less good-natured he would have been clever ; had he been less indolent he would have been unhappy. As it was, he managed to avoid both points of danger and was contented.

Beverley actually arrived at half-past five. It was a great moment. He, the only son, had come to live at home for good — in this case pleasantly synonymous with for ever — and once more the family would be undivided. For his marriage- would involve no separation ; only an enlarging of the family heart to receive within its compass a new being — the lady of hra love ; and an extension of the family garden, for the garden of the bungalow in which they were going to live would open into the garden of the Hall.

Mrs. Teruel was a little woman of fifty, with a childish look of wonder in her face, which came from the way her eyes were set in her head. She was round and pretty and easily excited. She watched her son busy with his tea, watched his every movement with admiration and delight that this wonderful, beautiful young man was her son. She looked at the dear fellow eating strawberries, and she laughed. She seemed to have forgotten how white were his teeth, how brown and wavy his hair, and that his hands were lovely. She was his mother. She was obliged to rise and kiss him occasionally without a smile or any word of excuse. And he said, " Dear little mater, you're prettier than ever," and caressed her fat, small hand. Then she sat down and listened to the laughter and talk in silence.

Emotion was easily roused in her heart ; and emotion caused her to sigh and to smile, and from time to time to lay her knitting down and wipe her eyes, whether they were wet with tears or dry. She knitted continually — with large black needles and specially wound soft wool — blankets for newly born children. She knitted slowly and deliberately, despatch of any kind being foreign to her nature. She knitted as a matron saint might knit who wished to symbolise the true peace of home life. And this solemnity lent the charm of dignity to her actions, the grace of dignity to her life, which might otherwise have seemed insignificant She adored her husband, worshipped her children, and believed in herself implicitly as the presiding genius of the home. And this she was.

She was simple-minded as a girl, with a girl's complexion and a young girl's laugh, and when she laughed she wrinkled her nose and her cheeks dimpled. She laughed suddenly — a laugh that came like a surprise or a summer sneeze — and suddenly stopped, resuming her knitting and habitual expression of sweet seriousness ; for she never tempted Providence by trying to do two things at the same time. No one coiUd see her laugh and not laugh too, her pleasure was so whole-hearted and infectious.

DiMZeCbvCOOf^lC

Her one anxiety was her daughter Marion, who showed signs of being clever, and cleverness in her mind was for a woman akin to wickedness — in some way she did not understand, but felt instinctively to be. Marion read with such assiduity and knitted with such a lack of interest tluit she was a source of vague alarm to Mrs. Teruel. Her own library consisted of the Holy Bible, the Prayer Book, and a much-used copy of Mrs. Beeton's *' Household Companion," which she said was her staff in life. She used to moisten her finger thoughtfully in turning over the leaves of the " Companion " : she never did this when reading her Bible, of which she perused a chapter every morning before breakfast, beginning at the first chapter of Genesis, and proceeding in rotation, chapter by chapter, day by day, to the last word of Revelation. Then she began again. The ** Housewife's Companion" she understood perfectly, and carried it into the kitchen every morning, and every morning she suggested some new dish to the cook, which the cook — of twenty-one years' standing in her service — firmly proved — her head set back, and her arms akimbo — could not be managed under the existing conditions of the larder, the range, or the kitchen garden.

She had read through the Bible from cover to cover thirteen times, and had knitted sixty-three soft, woolly blankets for the babies who were helped into existence at the Maternity Hospital in the Portobello Road, London. If these were spread out, she used sometimes to think with pride, they would certainly cover the tennis lawn, and if she were spared to a good old age , . . this hypothesis gave rise to bold visions of the entire field blanketed with the work of her two hands. She aspired to knit a hundred blankets and read through the Bible twenty times before she died — as a cricketer might aspire to make a thousand runs and take a hundred wickets in the same season. No doubt a recording angel kept good count and knew, even though she would be denied the satisfaction of pointing a proud finger to white, convincing rows, and of exclaiming, " Behold the industry of thy handmaiden." Such a scene as this on the threshold of entry into the future — and even serener — life appealed strongly to her imagination, as a fitting dimax to her well-spent days on earth.

But as she watched her son, once more at home, the present joy was sufficient to her, and left no room for speculation, however gende, for speculation was her mind's nearest approach to melancholy.

There was another person who watched Beverley intently, in silence, and had not the gift of knitting or any artificial cloak to emotion. On the floor, head on paws, with two eyes glowing through grey tufts of shaggy hair, lay Ajax, motionless and happy. He would have b^en a bob-tailed sheep-dog, if Nature had not adorned him with a tail which a man had docked in puppyhood. He was an odd fellow. Beverley had met him when he was a puppy, irresistibly fluffy, soft and ridiculous, the companion of a neighbouring bailiff's son, who took him seriously even then and educated him to a strenuous, practical life — to retrieve, to know a ferret, to watch, to herd cattle, to be in fact a dog of all work ; achievements he mastered and remembered and treated as accomplishments rather than as a means of livelihood. The bailiff^ becoming bankrupt left the neighbourhood with his son, and Beverley, passing the farm, recognised an unkempt, Uncared-for rascal, as his droll young friend of yore. But he was no longer droll. Six months, during which he had been perpetually chained to an inverted tub, had forced him to be as philosophic as any Diogenes, and possibly dirtier. Ten shillings released him for ever. Scissors and soap and kindness changed his whole appearance. He became passionately devoted to Beverley, with that entirety of devotion of which the dog alone among earthly creatures — human or not human — has learned the secret.

His beauty was a matter of dispute. One man said he resembled an architectural grotesque; another su^;ested Thyrsites as a more appropriate name, remembering that Thyrsites was the ugliest Greek who went to Troy — that remark was passed after a heavy shower of rain, and wet hair makes even a lovely woman appear peculiar. But Beverley knew him to be beautiful, and sincerely pitied those who could not appreciate his beauty. Ajaz was his attendant spirit and a thorough gentleman, in spite of the farmyard surroundings of his early youth. He had long 1^ ; he had long hair ; and the hazel eyes that the grey hair overshadowed showed a capacity for emotion that was unequalled and in itself proved terribly moving. He never barked, and never trotted about the house ; he was always silent and walked with a measured step, as one who knew the value of deportment.

Out of doors his manner was less stilted. Sometimes on the sands Beverley would ask him to lie down, and would walk away until Ajax looked a small grey stone in the distance. Then he would beckon him to come ; and Ajax came with yelping shrieks of suppressed excitement at a pace that gave the illusion of a long rope shaken to curves. He could run a hundred and twenty yards in eight and threequarters seconds, and that too without a pacemaker.

He had enjoyed his life at Oxford, but preferred his life at home.

At last Mr. Teruel got up and said —

*' I shoiUdn't like to hurry you — have another slice of cake — but when you have quite finished your tea — do have a bun — you might come and look round the garden with me."

"James, remember the dear boy has had a journey," said his wife.

*' All right. Pater, just coming."

In the garden he took his father's arm and asked, "Do you still smoke that beastly sundried?"

" Yes. I've found it good enough for fifteen years."

Trivialities clear the air, when the air is slightly oppressive with sentiment

Together they walked round the garden, examining the fiowers, inspecting the fruit, smelling the roses ; and Beverley wondered at the change that had happened during his eight weeks' absence, the change from the first endeavour of spring to the full flower and foliage of the summer,

*' Things have come on," he remarked.

" You should have seen the daffodils," said his father, referring to a bank which skirted the drive and was entirely covered with large single daffodils.

" They were in bud when I left"

*' A sight — a marvellous sight"

" ' And dances with the daffodils,' " murmured Beverley, trying to remember the previous lines. " Something about my heart."

"What's that? Oh, poetry! Look here, I've been thinking it would be an improvement to move that shrubbery back into the field and widen the front lawn. What's your opinion ? I've waited to consult you, because one day in the ordinary course of things you'll "

" Don't, Pater," interrupted Beverley, pressing his father's arm.

" Not yet awhile — I'm good for a bit longer. It would open up the view from the lawn ; the house is rather shut in, you know. Just think about it"

" Yes. Hullo, I must be off — to meet Eva — I "

" Right, my boy," said his father, beaming at him ; and he continued to smile as he watched his son run down the drive. ** Mind you're not late for dinner," he shouted after him, and Beverley half turned and waved his hand without stopping. Ajax looked round too, and then both disappeared from sight.

*' Well, well," said Mr. Teruel to himself on a deliberate sigh of pleasure as he went into the house.

That evening Marion went to her room early. In spite of herself she was worried about her brother's future happiness, because she felt that he was too undeveloped in character properly to know his own mind. She had been friends with Eva Westake for some years — by force of circumstances rather than by choice — in fact ever since she had come to live with her aunt at the Grange.

Eva was pretty and sweet-tempered ; but for all her sweetness Marion wondered whether she was worthy of her brother's love. She knew Beverley and Eva better than each knew the other, and she could not be as desirous as her father and mother that their marriage should tftke place so speedily.

She was two years older than Beverley, and up to this point in his life had guided him ; it was she who had roused and sustained his enthusiasm for poetiy and for what was beautiful. She was aware of the ascendency she had over his mind and was fearful of misusing it, so that he might be caught in the snare set ready for his temperament, of becoming weak and losing his selfreliance. But now she was filled with vague misgivings, for which she was not fully conscious of her motives. She feared that there might be a taint of selfishness in them, that they were due to her dread lest his marriage might raise a barrier between them, and not wholly to a disinterested wish for his happiness. She determined to be silent ; and at once began to doubt whether her silence might not be caused by the knowledge that she would have no rival in little Eva. And so her mind was in a state of perplexity, a state that was foreign to her nature.

That evening her perplexity was given new life by his home-coming ; and she envied her father's joy in his son's happiness. She seemed a sad wiseacre with her forebodings of gloomy possibilities. She would certainly keep them to herself, and not forfeit her brother's confidences, in which she delighted, by any croak of ill omen. But the vague fear of her instinct remained. And after all, she told herself, it was natural enough to dread the issue, when a person dear to one's heart takes a momentous step in life. That thought was sane and a comfort, and led to pleasant pictures of happiness, upon which her fency rested for a long time.

She was roused by hearing the crunch of gravel, and looking out of the window she saw Beverley smoking a cigarette, and by his side the grey shadow of Ajax.

"Come up and talk to me, dear," she called out in an undertone.

She would not go into the garden for fear of catching cold in the night air that was damp and cool with dew.

So he came in, and bolting the garden door went upstairs to her room.

She was sitting in a straight-backed chair by the open window in a loose blue dressing-gown, and her hair hung down in waves, nearly touching the floor.

" You took like the Dark Ladye of some old romaunt," he said, kissing her forehead.

" Eva's hair reaches below her knees," she said, twinkling at him.

The picture roused his imagination to ecstasy. All the beautiful mysteries of marriage suddenly became more beautiful and more mysterious. He tried to think how Eva would look wrapped in that encompassing aureole of golden hair :

hi3 fancy whispered to him that she was liege lady of the chaffinches, the empress of the daJfodils, and fairy queen of all the buttercups.

** How lovely she must look," he said, awed by his own imaginings.

Ajax stretched himself on the floor with a sigh of supreme weariness.

** Poor old fellow," said Beverley ; and Ajax beat the stump of his tail slowly on the floor in answer.

*' If you're feeling in a specially nice mood, you can sit here," said Marion, moving a chair a little behind her, " and brush my hair while you talk to me ; you must be very gentle."

" Splendid plan 1 What jolly soft hair you've got."

" How have you done in * Schools ' ? "

" Oh, scraped a third, I expect ; but don't talk about that. I shall know the worst all too horribly soon."

He went on brushing her hair rhythmically in silence, soothed by the movement into sweet thoughts of a future party in which he would brush golden hair belonging to an even dearer person, loosened from a smaller head, enveloping the daintiest, tiniest form. Marion pretended to purr, and Ajax quietly slept.

After a little he leaned back in his chair, and began to play idly with the soft texture, letting the hair slip through his fingers.

Marion broke in upon his dreams by saying suddenly —

" How do you think Other's looking ? "

"Awfully well, don't you think so ?"

** Yes ; but he's been worried lately by something. I wish I knew. One is so powerless. Darting little mother measures him out a dose of Nux Vomica, her panacea for all evils ; but I do hate that worried look he sometimes gets."

*' Perhaps it's only a touch of liver."

** I don't believe it."

The tone of her voice made him feel that the dreams of his own happiness had rendered him unresponsive.

"You know a woman came here — wanting advice "

He interrupted her. *'Look here, Maid Marion, don't talk as if the old pater were a character in a cheap melodrama. It's perpetually living at home puts these ideas into your head."

His superior experience of the world swiftly raised him to the level of a patron ; and at once he felt far older and wiser than his sister. Marion smiled. She was not disposed to depreciate her brother ; but her own insight into life, acquired from books and her power of observation, seemed more trustworthy than his, in spite of his wider scope of experience gained by knowledge of life at Oxford. So she smiled and became inscrutable, saying —

" I should like to be father's friend, that's all."

"Oh well, the mater has lived with him for some twenty odd years, and if she doesn't know him, who does ? "

" Exactly," said Marion, musing.

He began to brush her hair again ; then asked, obeying the impulse of sympathy awakened by a sudden misgiving, " Are you happy at home ? "

" Yes, dear."

*' Always ? "

** Oh yes. I have bad moods, of course ; but you must never waste sympathy on a megrim. I dread becoming selBsh, my life's so easy and comfortable."

He laughed incredulously.

" You're a fearful darling," he said, tilting her back in the chair that he might kiss both her cheeks. Then he sat down at her feet, and resting his head on her knee, began to talk softly, as though to himself, of all the feelings pent up in his heart, of his dreams of love and joy ; and they seemed to attain to reality as he strove to put them into words to his sister, whose sympathy he felt. At last he was silent, and the silence drew them closer one to another. Then he went on —

"And I had a wonderful time with Eva to-day. It was my idea, you know, that she should not be at the house — that we should meet in the lane that leads to the sea. She ran to meet me, and as she ran her hat fell back. Oh, you should have seen her hair shining in the sun. We talked, and I read to her. Fancy any one so lovely loving me. Isn't it gloriously beautiful ? "

Marion chid herself for wishing that some one more intelligent loved him, and the thought jarred on their harmony.

" It's getting very late, dear, I'm afraid," she said.

He got up, and Ajax rose at once, yawned, shook himself, and stood waiting.

She put her hands on her brother's shoulders and said —

** I like you to talk to me as you have done to-night. You'll never let anything, anything come between us ? "

"Nothing — ever," he answered with conviction.

And he went away, Ajax slowly wagging his tail as he walked out of the room after him.

Ill

Bruce arrived ten days after Beverley for a week's rest before settling down to work for his fellowship. At the Teruels' house he used to say he drank the waters of oblivion ; and he bore in his mind how Lethe flowed perilously near to Avernus. He hardly thought of them as a family of living people, their life seemed so strange and unreal and happy, with none of the stress and worry which he connected with life. Certainly it would be a mistake for any one to leave this haven and buffet with the world ; and for a man of Beverley's temperament, which owed its attraction for him to Its softness and delicady, it would be a singularly fatal mistake. Let him curl up and sleep and dream pretty dreams — perhaps put his dreams into words — poetry of a sort, that would be quite pleasant to read ; and let him cultivate that genius of his for intimacy.

Bruce himself had hated his home life, and had always cherished a fierce desire to be quit of it and free ; but then his own home life had been a thing to hate — in fact most of the homes he knew were hateful. Here, on the contrary, there was that atmosphere of love, of which he had read as a pleasant myth, and which he regarded as a survival from some bygone age, rare and good. So he resolved again to nip in the early bud the growth of discontent which he sometimes noticed in Beverley, but never with any serious alarm.

He found that everything had remained unchanged ; the same peaceful routine occupied each day without hitch or obstruction. He was given the same welcome, the same room, and when he went to dress for dinner he found the same old servant lingering in his room apologetically eager for a little gossip.

All this pleased him exceedingly ; and looking out with a sharp eye for any innovation, he found none and surrendered to the omnipotent peace of the household. He did not, however, notice Marion's twinkle of amusement at his interest in the knitting of woollen blankets ; indeed he did not yet think of her as an individual at all, but merely as a figure in the fkmWy pattern.

Holmwood Hall — Bruce considered the name of the house most apt — was in an ideal situation.

quite near to the sea, the joys of which it was not necessary to share with nigger-loving crowds ; and yet far enough inland to possess a garden in which everything grew in profusion, shut in by trees, and rich as any old garden in Kent, with a view through the branches of elms over woods right on to the superb line of the Sussex downs, which caught the reflection of the setting sun. Five miles away was the River Arun ; and with careful calculation of time and tide a picnic could be arranged on certain days. And two days after Bruce arrived a picnic was arranged.

Mrs, Teruel stayed quietly at home, as the very thought of sitting in a boat all day on any water caused her to feel slightly sick. The same expostulations were made, as Bruce remembered, on his previous visits, and were met with the same unwavering firmness by Mrs. Teruel.

The one-horse wagonette came to the door at half-past ten, and its sombre aspect was soon enlivened to something more festive by its load of gay occupants. Mr. Teruel sat on the box-scat in a large Panama hat and a large bright tie, the picture of contented benevolence. Eva, sitting by his side, felt a pang at his appearance. He was quite vulgarly unlike a coachman, though he intended to drive. She was relieved at her inability to find a blemish in the spotlessness of her own white dress and gloves. At that time a types-of-beauty series was running through one of the magazines, and she longed to see her own photograph therein, with the inscription "a beautiful English girl" printed neatly below. As she sat on the box, with her feet on a hamper of provisions, she knew that she would choose the hat and costume she was wearing at the moment, and she sighed to think how incomplete that series must remain, and all for lack of a little initiative on the part of Beverley, who did not even possess a camera.

At last the old grey horse started to walk down the drive, paying a proper disregard to Mr. Teruel's cheerful cracking of the whip, and leaving sufficient time for Mrs. Teruel to urge a plwntive warning to be careful in the boat. The papers were already full of accounts of accidents which were invariably the result of carelessness.

Beverley promised to consider editorial feelings, and as they disappeared round a curve in the drive one long howl of disappointment came from Ajax, who had been watching their departure through the window of the smoke-room. Mr. Teruel had refused him permission to join the party — summarily — with the remark trite and find, "A dog in a boat, my boy, is a nuisance."

For the one outlet which Mr. Tcruel allowed to his energy was in the arrangement of a pleasure trip. There was nothing more intolerable to him than that a particular attempt at happiness should fail through lack of foresight or an omission. In everyday life he accepted his lot cheerfully and what was put before him without criticism ; but on these special occasions he wrested matters out of the hands of Promdence or his wife (whichever it was that he permitted to control his life)> and saw that the arrangements were right to the minutest detail.

The boat, ordered in advance, was roomy enough for ten, and the genial boatman assured them that they couldn't *' overset her, not if you tried, sir."

" 1 have no intention of doing so," said Mr. Teruel, fussing with the cushions and seating with which no one was rash enough to interfere.

*'Be on the look out for us about six," he cried out as they pulled from the landing-stage, remembering the pace of the current and the consequent difficulty of making the boat-house without the help of the boatman's pole.

** Always here, sir," said the man, grinning at his anxiety.

It was a brilliant windless day in July. The haze of heat hung shimmering over the meadows, as the boatj aided by a strong tide, went swiftly through the water.

"A day to blister your arms," remarked Mr. Teruel, who always started by stroking, until the Black Rabbit Inn was reached, distant a quarter of a mile, where he stopped for his morning glass of beer, lit a large pipe, and then took to the rudder-lines and criticism.

The trees that came right down to the river, steeply down from the hills in Arundel Park, seemed oppressed by the heat for all their variety of green foliage. They passed a squirrel which they laughed to see run up a great beech. Marion and Beverley wanted to stop in hopes of catching another glimpse of him, and Eva, who felt she was not receiving sufficient attention, siud, "Oh, how absurd," a remark which cut Beverley to the heart and made him feel miserable.

Mr. Teruel would not hear of any delay. ** Destructive little beasts I Go on — no excuses for slackness."

" Are they destructive as a matter of fact ? " asked Bruce, liking Eva to show some spirit, but wondering at her manner of doing so. He accepted her without question as part of the quiet scheme of content, sweet and pretty enough for any one. Girls he knew nothing of — was frightened of them in consequence ; but he acknowledged the charm of rosy cheeks and long eyelashes from a respectful distance.

" The ruin of young trees, the rascals." And he told at length the sad history of a friend who had rented a large estate and had neglected to keep down the squirrels, with the result that plantations of young birches had been spoilt and he had been forced to pay unheard-of damages.