an old proverb says that marriages are made in heaven. it is one of those ridiculous utterances born of primitive fatalism: it is akin to the statement that afflictions are sent by god for his inscrutable purpose. actually, marriages in their material aspect are made by soulless nature, who plots and plans for nothing else, and who cares for nothing else except the production of the next generation.
one cannot blame dolly for using the less worthy arts of her sex to capture the man she wanted. one cannot think ill of jim for having been betrayed by his senses into an alliance wherein there was little hope of happiness. nature has strewn the whole world with her traps; she tricks and inveigles all young men and women with these dreams and promises of joy; she schemes and intrigues and conspires for one purpose, and one purpose only; and in so doing she has no more thought of that spiritual union, which is the only sort of marriage made in heaven, than she has when she sends the pollen from one flower to the next upon the wings of the bees.
human beings in the spring-time of life are the dupes of nature’s heedless joie de vivre, and fortunate are those who can take her animal pranks in good part and avoid getting hurt. her victims are swayed and tossed about by yearnings and desires, passions and jealousies, tremendous joys and[104] desperate sorrows: because she is everywhere at work upon the sole occupation which interests her—her scheme of racial survival.
the marvel is that so many marriages are happy, considering that youths and maidens are flung together, haphazard, by mighty forces, upon the irresistibility of which the whole existence of the race depends. well does nature know that if once men and women mastered their yearnings, if once men should fail to hunt and women to entice, the game would be lost, and the human race would become extinct.
during the following week jim and dolly saw each other every day; but, though their intimacy developed, jim made no definite proposal of marriage. he was a lazy fellow. it was as though he preferred to drift into that state without undergoing the ordeal of the social formalities. he seemed to be carried along by circumstances, yet he dreaded what may be termed the business side of the matter.
at length dolly brought matters to a point in her characteristic manner of assumed ingenuousness. “i think, dear,” she said, “we had better tell mother about it now, hadn’t we? she will be so hurt if she finds that we’ve been leaving her out of our happiness.”
jim made no protest. he felt rather stupid, and the thought of going to mrs. darling, hand-in-hand with dolly, seemed to him to be positively frightening in its crudity. it would be like walking straight into a trap. he would have preferred to slip off to a registry-office, and to see no friend or relative for a year afterwards.
[105]
the ordeal, however, proved to be less painful than he had anticipated, thanks to the tact displayed by mrs. darling. when dolly came into the room at the cottage, triumphantly leading in her captive, the elder woman at once checked any utterance which was about to be made by declaring that jim had just arrived in time to advise her in the choice of a new chintz for her chairs.
“dolly, dear,” she said, “run upstairs and fetch me that book of patterns, will you?” and as soon as the girl had left the room she added: “i wonder whether your taste will agree with dolly’s?”
“i expect so,” he replied, significantly.
“i hope so, for your sake,” she smiled; and then, turning confidentially to him, she whispered: “tell me quickly, before she comes back: do you seriously want to marry her, or shall i help you to get out of it?”
jim was completely startled, and stammered the beginning of an incoherent reply.
she interrupted him, putting a plump hand on his shoulder. “it has been clear to me for some time that dolly is desperately in love with you, and i know she has brought you here to settle the thing. but i’m a woman of the world, my dear boy: i don’t want to rush you into anything you don’t intend; for the fact is, i like you very much indeed.”
jim made the only possible reply. “but,” he said with conviction, “i want to marry her. i’ve come to ask you. may i?”
mrs. darling looked at him intently. “you will have to manage her,” she told him. “she is very young and rather full of absurdities, you know. but[106] you have knocked about the world: i should think you would be able to get the best out of her, and, anyhow, i shall feel she is in good hands.”
when the girl returned, after a somewhat prolonged absence, her mother looked almost casually at her. “dolly,” she said, “i don’t know if you are aware of it, but you are engaged to be married.”
thereat the three of them laughed happily, and the rest was plain sailing.
later that day dolly strolled arm-in-arm with jim around the grounds of the manor, looking about her with an air of proprietorship which he found very fascinating. the linking of their lives and their belongings seemed to him like a delightful game.
“i do like your mother,” he said. “she’s a real good sort.”
dolly looked up at him quickly. “poor mother!” she replied. “i don’t know what we can do with her. she won’t like leaving eversfield.”
“oh, why should she go?” jim asked.
“it would never do for her to stay,” dolly answered firmly. “mothers-in-law are always in the way, however nice they are. i’m not going to risk her getting on your nerves.” she looked at him with an expression like that of a wise child.
“well, we’ll rent a flat for her in london,” he suggested, “and i’ll give her the cottage, too, so that she can come down to it sometimes.”
dolly shook her head. “no,” she said coldly, “she has enough money to keep herself.” his sentiments in regard to her mother had perhaps ruffled her somewhat, and an expression had passed over[107] her face which she hoped he had not seen. she endeavoured, therefore, to turn his thoughts to more intimate matters. “i should hate mother to be a burden to you,” she went on. “it’ll be bad enough for you to have to buy all my clothes.”
“i shall love it,” he replied, with enthusiasm.
“ah, you don’t know how expensive they are,” she hesitated. “you see, it isn’t only what shows on top”—her voice died down to a luscious whisper—“it’s all the things underneath as well. women’s clothes are rather wonderful, you know.”
she smiled shyly, and at that moment their marriage was to him a thing most fervently to be desired.
events moved quickly, and it was decided that the engagement should not be of long duration. the news of the coming wedding caused a great stir in the village; and when the banns were read in the little church all eyes were turned upon them as they sat, he in the squire’s pew, and she with her mother near by. they formed a curious contrast in type: she, with her fair hair, her childlike face, and her dainty little figure; and he with his swarthy complexion, his dark, restless eyes, and his rather untidy clothes. people wondered whether they would be happy, and the general opinion was that the little lamb had fallen into the power of a wolf. the village, in fact, had not taken kindly to the new squire and his “foreign” ways; and mrs. spooner, the doctor’s wife, had voiced the general opinion by nicknaming him “black rupert.”
the weeks passed by rapidly, and soon christmas was upon them. the wedding was fixed for the end of january, and during that month jim caused[108] various alterations to be made in the furnishing of the manor, in accordance with dolly’s wishes, for she held very decided views in this regard, and did not agree with his retention of so many of the mid-victorian features in the drawing-room and the bedrooms. he himself had intended at first to be rid of most of these things, but later he had begun to feel, as mr. beadle had said he would, that he owed a certain homage to the past.
“men don’t understand about these things,” dolly said to him, patting his face; “but, if you want to please me, you’ll let me make a list of the pieces of furniture that ought to be got rid of and sell them.”
the consequence was that a van-load left the manor a few days later, and miss proudfoote and the vicar held one another’s hand as it passed, and choked with every understandable emotion, while mr. and mrs. longarm wept openly at the gates.
the wedding-day at length arrived, and the ceremony proved a very trying ordeal to jim; for mr. glenning had organized the village demonstrations of goodwill, with the result that the school children, blue with cold, were lined up at the church door, the pews inside were packed with uncomfortably-dressed yokels with burnished faces and creaking boots, and a great deal of rice was thrown as the happy couple left the building.
afterwards there was a reception at the darling’s cottage; and jim, wearing a tail-coat and a stiff collar for the first time in his life, suffered torments which were not entirely ended by a later change into a brand-new suit of grey tweed. throughout this trying time mrs. darling, fat and flushed,[109] proved to be his comforter and his stand-by; and it was through her good offices that the hired car, which was to take them to the railway station at oxford, claimed them an hour too early.
dolly, who had looked like an angel of zion in her wedding dress, appeared, in her travelling costume, like a dryad of the bois de boulogne, and jim, who had seen something of her trousseau, turned to mrs. darling in rapture.
“i say!” he exclaimed. “you have rigged dolly out wonderfully! i’ve never seen such clothes.”
mrs. darling smiled. “i believe in pretty dresses,” she said, with fervent conviction. “they tend to virtue. i believe that when the respectable women of england took to wearing what were called indecent clothes, they struck their first effective blow at the power of piccadilly. has it never occurred to you that young peers have almost ceased to marry chorus girls now that peer’s daughters dress like leading ladies?”
the honeymoon was spent upon the riviera, and here it was that jim realized for the first time the exactions of marriage. this exquisitely costumed little wife of his could not be taken to the kind of inn which he had been accustomed to patronize, and he was therefore obliged to endure all the discomforts of fashionable hotel life, with its nerve-racking corollaries—the jabbering crowds, the perspiring, stiff-shirted diners, the clatter, bustle and perplexity, terminating in each case in the dreaded crisis of gratuity-giving and escape.
with all his bedouin heart he loathed this sort of thing, and, had he not been the slave of love,[110] he would have rebelled against it at once. dolly saw his distress, but only added to it by her superior efforts to train him in the way in which he should go; and it was with a sigh of profound relief that at length he found himself in eversfield once more, when the first buds of spring were powdering the trees with green, and the early daffodils were opening to the growing warmth of the sun.
jim’s work in connection with the estate was not onerous, but he very soon found that various small matters had constantly to be seen to, and often they were the cause of annoyance. rents were not always paid promptly, and if his agent pressed for them the tenants regarded jim, who knew nothing about it, as stern and exacting. mr. merrivall held his lease of rose cottage on terms which provided that the tenant should be responsible for all interior repairs; and now he announced that the kitchen boiler was worn out, and the question had to be decided as to whether a boiler was an interior or a structural fitting. some eighty acres were farmed by mr. hopkins on a sharing agreement, that is to say, jim took a part of the profits in lieu of rent; but this sort of arrangement is always fruitful of disputes, and, in the case in question, the fact that jim instinctively mistrusted farmer hopkins, and farmer hopkins mistrusted jim, led at once to friction.
matters came to a head in the early summer. the farmer had decided to remove the remains of a last year’s hayrick from the field where it stood to a shed near his stable, and, during the process, he attempted to make a short-cut by drawing his[111] heavily-loaded wagon over a disused bridge which spanned a ditch. the bridge, however, collapsed under the weight, and the wagon was wrecked.
the farmer thereupon demanded compensation from jim, since the latter was the owner of the bridge and therefore responsible for it. jim, however, replied that that road had been closed for many years to all but pedestrians, and, if anything, the farmer ought to pay for the mending of the bridge. mr. hopkins then declared that he was going to law, and, in the meantime, he aired his grievances nightly at the “green man,” the village public-house.
the trouble simmered for a time, and then, one morning, the two men met by chance at the scene of the disaster. a wordy argument followed, and farmer hopkins, with a mouthful of oaths, repeated his determination to go to law, whereupon jim lost his temper.
“look here!” he said. “i don’t know anything about your blasted law, but i do know when i’m being imposed upon. if you mention the word ‘law’ to me again i’ll put my fist through your face.”
“two can play at that game,” exclaimed the farmer, red with anger.
“very well, then, come on!” cried jim, impulsively, and, pulling off his coat and tossing his hat aside, he began to roll up his shirt-sleeves.
mr. hopkins was a bigger and heavier man than the squire, but jim had the advantage of him in age, being some five years younger, and they were therefore very well matched. the farmer however, did not wish to fight, and, indeed, was so disconcerted[112] at the prospect that he stood staring at jim’s lithe, wild figure like a puzzled bull.
“take your coat off!” jim shouted. “we’ll have this matter out now. put up your fists!”
the farmer thereupon dragged off his coat, and a moment later the two men were at it hammer and tongs, mr. hopkins’ fists swinging like a windmill, and jim, with more skill, parrying the blows and sending right and left to his opponent’s body with good effect. the first bout was ended by jim dodging a terrific right and returning his left to the farmer’s jaw, thereby sending him to the ground.
as he rose to his feet jim shouted at him: “well, will you now mend your own damned cart and let me mend my bridge?—or do you want to go on?”
for answer the infuriated mr. hopkins charged at him, and, breaking his guard, sent his fist into jim’s eye; but he omitted to follow up the advantage with his idle left, and, in consequence, received an exactly similar blow upon his own bloodshot optic.
it was at this moment that a scream was heard, and dolly appeared from behind a hedge, a curious habit of hers, that of always wishing to know what her husband was doing, having led her to follow him into the fields.
“james!” she cried in horror—ever since their marriage she had called him “james”—“what are you doing? mr. hopkins!—are you both mad?”
“pretty mad,” replied jim.
“call yourself a gentleman!” roared the farmer, holding his hand to his eye.
“oh, please, please!” dolly entreated. “go home, mr. hopkins, before he kills you! james,[113] you ought to be ashamed of yourself, fighting like a common man. you have disgraced me!”
jim, who was recovering his coat, looked up at her out of his one serviceable eye in astonishment. then, turning to his opponent, he said: “we’ll finish this some other time, if you want to.”
he then walked off the field of battle, his coat slung across his shoulder and his dark hair falling over his forehead, while mr. hopkins sat down upon the stump of a tree and spat the blood out of his mouth.
for many days thereafter dolly would hardly speak to her disfigured husband, except to tell him, when he walked abroad with his blackened eye, that he had no shame. farmer hopkins, however, mended his wagon in time, and jim mended his bridge; and there, save for much village head-shaking at the “green man” and melancholy talk at the vicarage, the matter ended. it was a regrettable affair, and the general opinion in the village was that “black rupert” was a man to be avoided. miss proudfoote, in fact, would hardly bow to him when next she passed him in the lane; and even mr. glenning, who quarrelled with no man, gazed at him, in church on the following sunday, with an expression of deep reproof upon his venerable face.
it was after this painful incident that jim formed the habit of going for long rambling walks by himself, or of wandering deep into the woods near the manor. sometimes he would sit for hours upon a stile in the fields, sucking a straw and staring vacantly into the distance at the misty towers and spires of the ancient university, or lie in the grass, gazing[114] up at the sky, listening to the far-off bells, his arms behind his head. sometimes he would take a book from his uncle’s library—some eighteenth-century romance, or a volume of elizabethan poetry—and go with it into the woods, there to remain for a whole afternoon, reading in it or in the book of nature.
these woods had a curious effect upon him, and entering them seemed to be like finding sanctuary. it was not that his life, at this period, was altogether unhappy: his heart was full of tenderness towards dolly, and, if her behaviour was beginning to disappoint him, his attitude was at first but one of vague disquietude. yet here amongst the understanding trees he felt that he was taking refuge from some menace which he could not define; and at times he wondered whether the sensation was due to a mental throw-back to some outlawed ancestor who had roamed the merry greenwood, in the manner of adam bell and clim of the clough and william cloudesley in the ancient ballads of the north of england.
he was conscious of a decided sense of failure and he felt that he was a useless individual. to a limited extent he used his brains and his pen in writing the verses which always amused him, but he rarely finished any such piece of work, and seldom composed a poem of any considerable length.
his character was not of the kind which would be likely to appeal to the stay-at-home englishman. he did not play golf, and though as a youth he had been fond of cricket and tennis, his wandering life had given him no opportunities of maintaining his skill in these games, and now it was too late to[115] begin again. he was not particularly interested in horseflesh, and he had no mechanical turn which might vent itself in motoring. his habits were modest and temperate; he preferred pitch-and-toss or “shove-ha’penny” to bridge; and he was a poor judge of port wine. he was sociable where the company was to his taste, but neither his neighbours at and around eversfield, nor the professors at oxford, were congenial to him. when there were visitors to the manor he was generally not able to be found; and when he was obliged to accompany his wife to the houses of other people, he was conscious that her eyes were upon him anxiously, lest he should show himself for what he was—a rebel and an outlaw.
on one occasion the vicar persuaded him to sing and play his guitar at a village concert; but the result was disastrous, and the invitation was never repeated. he chose to sing them kipling’s “mandalay”; but the pathos and the romance of the rough words were lost upon his stolid audience, to whom there was no meaning in the picture of the mist on the rice-fields and the sunshine on the palms, nor sense in the contrasting description of the “blasted henglish drizzle” and the housemaids with beefy faces and grubby hands.
he himself was carried away by the words, and he sang with fervour:—
ship me somewhere east of suez, where the best is like the worst
where there aren’t no ten commandments, an’ a man can raise a thirst;
for the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that i would be—
by the old moulmein pagoda, looking lazy at the sea.
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he did not see dolly’s frowns, nor the pained expression upon the vicar’s face, nor yet the smirks of the yokels; and when the song was ended he came suddenly back to earth, as it were, and was abashed at the feebleness of the applause.
later, as he left the hall, he was stopped outside the door by a disreputable, red-haired creature, nicknamed “smiley-face,” who was often spoken of as the village idiot. he grinned at jim and touched his forelock.
“thank ’e, sir,” he said, “for that there song. my, you do sing beautiful, sir!”
“i’m glad you liked it,” jim answered.
“it was just like dreamin’,” smiley-face muttered.
jim looked at him quickly, and felt almost as though he had found a friend. he himself had been dreaming as he sang, and here, at any rate, was one man who had dreamed with him—and they called him the village idiot!
