"G.o.d forbid!" said Seymour piously.

Nadine had spent some time with him, but long after she had gone something of her seemed to linger in his room. Some subtle aroma of her, too fine to be purely physical, still haunted the room, and the sound of her detached crisp speech echoed in the chambers of his brain. He had never known a girl so variable in her moods: on one day she would talk nothing but the most arrant nonsense; on another, as to-day, there mingled with it something extraordinarily tender and wistful; on a third day she would be an impetuous scholar; on the fourth she threw herself heart and soul (if she had a heart) into the gay froth of this London life. Indeed "moods" seemed to be too superficial a word to describe her aspects: it was as if three or four different personalities were lodged in that slim body or directed affairs from the cool brain in that small poised head. It would be scarcely necessary to marry other wives, according to their scheme, if Nadine was one of them, for it was impossible to tell even from minute to minute with which of her you were about to converse, or which of her was coming down to dinner. But all these personalities had the same vivid quality, the same exuberance of vitality, and in whatever character she appeared she was like some swiftly acting tonic, that braced you up and, unlike mere alcoholic stimulant, was not followed by a reaction. She often irritated him, but she never resented the expression of his impatience, and above all things she was never dull. And for once Seymour left incomplete the dusting of the precious jade, and tried to imagine what it would be like to have Nadine always here. He did not succeed in imagining it with any great vividness, but it must be remembered that this was the first time he had ever tried to imagine anything of the kind.

Edith had left Meering with Dodo two days before and was going to spend a week with her in town since she was rather tired of her own house. But she had seen out of the railway-carriage window on the north coast of Wales, so attractive-looking a golf-links, that she had got out with Berts at the next station, to have a day or two golfing. The obdurate guard had refused to take their labeled luggage out, and it was whirled on to London to be sent back by Dodo on arrival. But Edith declared that it gave her a sense of freedom to have no luggage, and she spent two charming days there, and had arrived in London only this afternoon. She had gone straight to Dodo's house, and had found Jack with her and then learned the news of their engagement which had taken place only the day before. Upon which she sprang up and remorselessly kissed both Dodo and Jack.

"I can't help it if you don't like it," she said; "but that's what I feel like. Of course it ought to have happened more than twenty years ago, and it would have saved you both a great deal of bother. Dodo, I haven't been so pleased since my ma.s.s was performed at the Queen's Hall.

You must get married at once, and must have some children. It will be like living your life all over again without any of those fatal mistakes, Dodo. Jack--I shall call you Jack now--Jack, you have been more wonderfully faithful than anybody I ever heard of. You have seen all along what Dodo was, without being put off by what she did--"

Dodo screamed with laughter.

"Are these meant to be congratulations?" she said. "It is the very oddest way to congratulate a man on his engagement, by telling him that he is so wise to overlook his future wife's past. It is also so pleasant for me."

Edith was still shaking hands with them both, as if to see whether their hands were fixtures or would come off if violently agitated.

"You know what I mean," she said. "It is useless my pretending to approve of most things you have done: it is useless for Jack also. But he marries the essential you, not a parcel of actions."

Jack kept saying "Thanks awfully" at intervals, like a minute gun, and trying to get his hand away. Eventually Edith released it.

"I am delighted with you both," she said. "And to think that only a fortnight ago I was still not on speaking terms with you, Dodo. And Jack wasn't either. I love having rows with people if I know things are going to come straight afterwards, because then you love them more than ever.

And I knew that some time I should have to make it up with you, Dodo, though if I was Jack I don't think I could have forgiven--well, you don't wish me to go on about that. Anyhow, you are ducks, and I shall leave the young couple alone, and have a wash and brush-up. I have been playing golf quite superbly."

Edith banged the door behind her, and they heard her shrilly whistling as she went off down the pa.s.sages.

Then Dodo turned to Jack.

"Jack, dear, I thought I should burst when Edith kissed you," she said.

"You half shut your eyes and screwed up your face like a dog that is just going to be whipped. But I love Edith. Now come and sit here and talk. I have hardly seen you, since--well, since we settled that we should see a good deal more of each other in the future. I want you to tell me, oh, such lots of things. How often a month on the average have you thought about me during all these years? Jack, dear, I want to be wanted, so much."

"You have always been wanted by me," he said. "It is more a question of how many minutes in the month I haven't thought about you. They are easily counted."

He sat down on the sofa by her, as her hand indicated.

"Dodo," he said, "I don't make demands of you, except that you should be yourself. But I do want that. We are all made differently: if we were not the world would be a very stupidly simple affair. And you must know that in one respect anyhow I am appallingly simple. I have never cared for any woman except you. That is the fact. Let us have it out between us just once. I have never worn my heart on my sleeve, for any woman to pluck at, and carry away a mouthful of. There are no bits missing, I a.s.sure you. It is all there, and it is all yours. It is in no way the worse for wear, because it has had no wear. I feel as if--"

Jack paused a moment: he knew the meaning of his thought, but found it not so easy to make expression of it.

"I feel as if I had been sitting all my life at a window in my heart,"

he said, "looking out, and waiting for you to come by. But you had to come by alone. You came by once with my cousin. You came by a second time with Waldenech. You were bored the first time, you were frightened the second time. But you were not alone. I believe you are alone now: I believe you look up to my window. Ah, how stupid all language is! As if you looked up to it!"

Dodo was really moved, and when she spoke her voice was unsteady.

"I do look up to it, Jack," she said. "Oh, my dear, how the world would laugh at the idea of a woman already twice married, having romance still in front of her. But there is romance, Jack. You see--you see you have run through my life just as a string runs through a necklace of pearls or beads: beads perhaps is better--yet I don't know. Chesterford gave me pearls, all the pearls. A necklace of pearls before swine shall we say?

I was swine, if you understand. But you always ran through it all, which sounds as if I meant you were a spendthrift, but you know what I do mean. Really I wonder if anybody ever made a worse mess of her life than I have done, and found it so beautifully cleaned up in the middle. But there you were--I ought to have married you originally: I ought to have married you unoriginally. But I never trusted my heart. You might easily tell me that I hadn't got one, but I had. I daresay it was a very little one, so little that I thought it didn't matter. I suppose I was like the man who swore something or other on the crucifix, and when he broke his oath, he said the crucifix was such a small one."

She paused again.

"Jack, are you sure?" she asked. "I want you to have the best life that you can have. Are you sure you give yourself the best chance with me? My dear, there will be no syllable of reproach, on my lips or in my mind, if you reconsider. You ought to marry a younger woman than me. You will be still a man at sixty, I shall be just a thing at fifty-eight."

Dodo took a long breath and stood up.

"Marry Nadine," she said. "She is so like what I was: you said it yourself. And she hasn't been battered like me. I think she would marry you. I know how fond she is of you, anyhow, and the rest will follow. I can't bear to think of you pushing my Bath chair. G.o.d knows, I have spoiled many of your years. But, G.o.d knows, I don't want to spoil more of them. She will give you all that I could have given you twenty years ago. Ah, my dear, the years. How cruel they are! How they take away from us all that we want most! You love children, for instance, Jack. Perhaps I shall not be able to give you children. Nadine is twenty-one. That is a long time ago. You should consider. I said 'yes' to you yesterday, but perhaps I had not thought about it sufficiently. I have thought since.

Before you came down to Meering I was awake so long one night, wondering why you came. I was quite prepared that it should be Nadine you wanted.

And, oh, how gladly I would give Nadine to you, instead of giving myself: I should see: I should understand. At first I thought that I should not like it, that I should be jealous, to put it quite frankly, of Nadine. But somehow now that I know that your first desire was for me, I am jealous no longer. Take Nadine, Jack! I want you to take Nadine. It will be better. We know each other well enough to trust each other, and now that I tell you that there will be nothing but rejoicing left in my heart, if you want Nadine, you must believe that I tell you the entire truth. I know very well about Nadine. She will not marry Hugh. She wants somebody who has a bigger mind. She wants also to put Hugh out of the question. She does not mean to marry him, and she would like it to be made impossible. Woo Nadine, dear Jack, and win her. She will give you all I could once have given you, all that I ought to have given you."

At that moment Dodo was making the great renunciation of her life. She had been completely stirred out of herself and she pleaded against her own cause. She was quite sincere and she wanted Jack's happiness more than her own. She believed even while she renounced all claim on him, that her best chance of happiness was with him, for it had taken her no time at all to make up her mind when he proposed to her yesterday. And she had not exaggerated when just now she told him that he ran through her life like a string that keeps the beads of time in place. She had never felt for another man what she had felt for him, and her declaration of his freedom was a real renunciation, made impulsively but most generously and completely. She really meant it, and she did not pause to consider that the offer was one of which no man could conceivably take advantage. And Jack felt and knew her sincerity.

"You are absolutely free, my dear," she said. "Absolutely! And I will come to your wedding, and dance at it if you like, for joy that you are happy."

He got up too.

"There will be no wedding unless you come to it," he said. "Dance at it, Dodo, but marry me. n.o.body else will do."

Dodo looked him full in the face.

"Edith was quite right to remind you of--of what I have done," she said.

"And I am quite right to forget it," said he.

She shook her head, smiling a little tremulously.

"Oh, Jack," she said in a sigh.

He took her close to him.

"My beloved," he said, and kissed her.

CHAPTER V

Dodo's wedding, which took place at the end of July in Westminster Abbey, was a very remarkable and characteristic affair. In the first place she arrived so late that people began to wonder whether she was going to throw Jack over again, this time at the very last moment. Jack himself did not share these misgivings and stood at the west door rather hot and shy but quite serene, waiting till his bride should come.

Eventually Nadine who was to have come with her mother appeared in a taxi going miles above the legal limit, with the information that Dodo was in floods of tears because she had been so horrible to Jack before, and wanted to be so nice now. She said she would stop crying as soon as she possibly could, but would Nadine ask Jack to be a dear and put off the wedding till to-morrow, since her tears had made her a perfect fright. On which the bridegroom took a card and wrote on it: "I won't put off the wedding, and if you don't come at once, I shall go away. Do be quick: there are millions and millions of people all staring."

"Oh, Jack, what a brute you are," said Nadine, as she read it, "I don't think I can take it."

"You can and will," said he. "You will also take Dodo by the hand and bring her here. Bring her, do you understand? Tell her that in twenty minutes from now I shall go."

Somehow Dodo's marriage had seized the popular imagination, and the Abbey was crammed, so also for half a mile were the pavements. The traffic by the Abbey had been diverted, and all round the windows were cl.u.s.tered with sight-seers. The choir was reserved for the more intimate friends, and Bishop Algie who was to perform the ceremony was endorsed by a flock of eminent clergy. The news that Dodo was in tears, but that Nadine had been sent by the bridegroom to fetch her, traveled swiftly up the Abbey, and a perfect babel of conversation broke out, almost drowning the rather Debussy-like wedding march which Edith had composed for the occasion. She had also written an anthem, "Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine," a highly original hymn-tune, and two chants for the psalms written for full orchestra with percussion and an eight-part choir. She had wanted to conduct the whole herself, and expressed her perfect willingness to wear a surplice and her music-doctor's hood, and keep on her cap or not, exactly as the dean preferred. But the dean preferred that she should take no part whatever, beyond contributing the whole of the music, which annoyed her very much, and several incisive letters pa.s.sed between them in which the topics of conventionalism, Pharisees and cant were freely introduced. Edith had to give way, but consoled herself by arranging that the whole of the "Marriage Suite"

should be shortly after performed at the Queen's Hall, where no dean or other unenlightened person could prevent her conducting in any costume she chose. But temporarily she had been extremely upset by this ridiculous bigotry.

Dodo arrived before the twenty minutes were over, and she came up the choir on Jack's arm, looking quite superb and singing Edith's hymn tune very loud and occasionally incorrectly. She had just come opposite Edith, who had, in default of conducting, secured a singularly prominent position, when she sang a long bell-like B flat, and Edith had said "B natural, Dodo," in a curdling, sibilant whisper. There were of course no bridesmaids, but Dodo's train was carried by pages, both of whom she kissed when they arrived at the end of their long march up the choir.

Mrs. Vivian, who on Dodo's engagement had finally capitulated, was next to Edith, and Dodo said "Vivy, dear!" into her ear-trumpet, as she pa.s.sed up the aisle. Miss Grantham alone among the older friends was absent: she had said from the beginning that it was dreadfully common of Dodo to marry Jack, as it was a "lived-happily-ever-afterwards" kind of ending to Dodo's unique experiences. She knew that they would both become stout and serene and commonplace, instead of being wild and unhappy and interesting, and to mark her disapproval, made an appointment with her dentist at the hour at which the voice would be breathing over Eden in the exceedingly up-to-date music which Edith had composed. But so far from her dentist finding change and decay, he dismissed her five minutes after she had sat down, and seized by a sudden ungovernable fit of curiosity she drove straight off to the Abbey to find that Dodo had not arrived, and it seemed possible that there was a thrill coming, and everything might not end happily. But when it became known that Dodo was only late for sentimental reasons, she left again in disgust, and ran into Dodo at the west door, and said, "I am disappointed, Dodo."