Chapter II

On the night before he was married, John, vaguely nervous, left his mother at Miss Squibb's and went for a walk. All day, he had been "on pins and needles," and now, although it was nine o'clock, he could not remain in the house any longer. He felt that his head would burst if he stayed indoors. The house seemed to be unusually stuffy, and the spectacle of Lizzie gazing at him with mawkish interest, made him wish to rise up and assault her. He had fidgetted about the room, taking a book from its shelf and then, without reading in it, replacing it, until his mother, observing him with cautious eyes, proposed that he should go for a walk. "I won't wait up for you," she said, "so you needn't hurry back!"

"Very well, ma!" he said, getting ready to go out.

He left the house and started to walk towards Streatham, but before he had gone very far, he felt drawn away from Streatham, and he turned and walked past his home and on towards Kennington. At the Horns, he paused indecisively. There were more light and stir towards the Elephant and Castle than there was in the Kennington Road, and light and stir were attractive to him, but to-night he ought to be in quiet places and in shadows. He was beginning to feel dubious about himself. Marriage, after all, was a very serious business, but here he was thrusting himself into it with very little consideration. Eleanor had protested all along that they were insufficiently acquainted with each other and had pleaded for a long engagement, but he had overruled her: they knew each other well enough. The best way for a man and woman to get to know each other, he said, was to marry. Eleanor had exclaimed against that doctrine because, she said, if the couple discovered that they did not care for each other, they could not get free without misery and possibly disgrace.

"You have to run the risk of that," said John.

That always had been his determining argument: that one must take risks. Now, on this night before his marriage, the risk he was about to take alarmed him. The fidgettiness, the nervous irritability which had been characteristic of him all day now concretely became fright. Who was this woman he was about to marry? What did he know of her? She was a pleasant, nice-looking girl and she had an extraordinary power over him ... but what did he _know_ of her? Nothing. Nothing whatever. He liked kissing her and holding her in his arms, but he had liked kissing Maggie Carmichael and holding her in his arms; and now he was very thankful he had not married Maggie. How was he to know that he would feel any more for Eleanor in six months' time than he now felt for Maggie ... for whom he had once felt everything? Eleanor had told him that she only liked him ... was not in love with him ... that he was one of a hundred men, anyone of whom she might have married and lived with in tolerable happiness!...

A cold shiver ran through his body as he thought that he might be about to make the greatest mistake that any man could make ... marry the wrong woman. Ought he to postpone the marriage so that Eleanor and he should have more time in which to consider things? Postponement would mean terrible inconvenience to everybody, but it would be better to suffer such inconvenience than to enter into a dismal marriage because one was reluctant to upset arrangements. This marrying was a terrible affair!... He walked steadily along the Kennington Road and presently found himself in Westminster Bridge Road, and then he crossed the river and turned on to the Embankment. There was a cool breeze blowing from the sea, and he took his hat off and let the air play about his head. He leant against the parapet and gazed across the water to the dark warehouses on the Lambeth side and wondered why they were so beautiful at night when they were so hideous by day. Even the railway bridge at Charing Cross seemed to be beautiful in the dusk, and when a train rumbled across it, sending up clouds of lit smoke from the funnel of the engine and making flickering lights as the carriages rolled past the iron bars of the bridge-side, it seemed to him to be a very wonderful and appealing spectacle. His fidgettiness fell from him as he contemplated the swift river and the great dark shapes of warehouses and the black hulks of barges going down to the Pool and the immutable loveliness of Waterloo Bridge. He had walked along the Embankment past Hungerford Bridge, and then had stopped to look at Waterloo Bridge for a few moments. Even the moving lights of the advertisements of tea and whiskey on the Lambeth side of the river made beauty for him as they were reflected in the water. There were little crinkled waves of green and red and gold on the river as the changing lights of the advertisements ran up and down.... He had seen articles in the newspapers protesting against these illuminated signs ... "the ugly symbols of commercialism" ... but to-night they had the look of loveliness in his eyes. Very often since he had come to London had he found himself in disagreement with the views of men who wrote as if Almighty God had committed Beauty to their charge ... he had never been able to understand or agree with their arguments against great engines and the instruments of power and energy ... and it seemed to him that many of these writers were querulous, fractious people who had not the capacity to make themselves at ease in a striving world. That poet fellow ... what was his name? ... whom he had met at Hampstead ... Palfrey, that was the man's name ... had sneered at Commerce! John had not been able to make head or tail of his arguments against Commerce, and he had found himself defending it against the Poet ... "the very word is beautiful!" he had asserted several times ... mainly on his recollection of his Uncle William. Palfrey had had the best of the argument, because Palfrey could use his tongue more effectively, but John had felt certain that the truth was not in Palfrey, and here to-night, in this place where Commerce was most compactly to be seen, he knew that there was Beauty in the labours of men, that bargaining and competition and striving energies and rivalry in skill were elements of loveliness. "These little poets sitting in their stuffy attics scribbling about the moon!... Yah-rr-r!" he said, putting his hat on to his head again.

His mind was quieter now. He was certain of his love for Eleanor. How wise his mother had been to suggest that he should go out for a walk. She had guessed, no doubt, that he was ill at ease and full of doubt, and had sent him forth to find rest in movement and ease in energy. It was a great comfort to have his mother by him now. That morning he had looked at her, sitting in the light of the window, and had seen for the first time the great depth of her eyes and the wonderful patience in her face.... He must consider her more in future. Eleanor liked her, and she liked Eleanor. That was all to the good!... He must go home now. He would walk to Blackfriars Bridge, cross the river and go home by the Elephant and Castle. He started to walk briskly along the Embankment, but he had not gone very far on his way when he heard his name called.

"Oh, John!" the call was, and looking round, he saw Eleanor rising from one of the garden-seats near the kerb.

"Eleanor!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

She came quickly to him and he took hold of her hands.

"I was frightened," she said, half sobbing as she spoke.

"Frightened!"

"Yes. I lost my nerve this evening and I ... I came out to think. Oh, I wonder are we wise!..."

He drew her arm in his. "Come home, my dear," he said.

He led her across the road, through the District Railway Station and up Villiers Street to the Strand, and as they walked along he told her of his own fears. "You were frightened, too?" she said in astonishment.

"Not frightened," he replied, "only ... well, dubious!"

"Perhaps we'd better wait," she suggested.

"Oh, no, no. I should feel such a fool if I were to tell people we'd postponed our marriage because we'd both got scared about it!"

"It's better to feel a fool than!..."

"And anyhow I know that it's all right. I feel sure it's all right. When I walked along the Embankment before I met you, I became certain that I wanted you, Eleanor, and no one else but you. My dear, I'm terribly happy!"

"Are you?"

"Yes. Why, of course, I am. How can I be anything else when I shall be your husband this time to-morrow?"

They walked along Bond Street because they had discovered that Bond Street, when the shops are shut, is dark and quiet, and once they stopped and faced each other, and John took her in his arms and kissed her. "Sweetheart!" he murmured, with his lips against hers.

Then he took her to her club. "What a place for you to be married from!" he said, as he bade her good-night.

"This is my last night in it," she answered. "I shall never live in a place where there are only women again!" She paused for a moment, and then, with a sigh of relief, added, "Thank Goodness!"