Part 16 (1/2)
”Never.” Grizel shook her head. ”I should not have suspected if I'd met them a hundred times. She is not all the kind of girl I should have expected--”
Mrs Evans was seized with a small, tickling cough, and Grizel, looking at her, met a glance of warning. She hesitated, and compromised.
”I hardly know her, of course. She must be nice if he likes her. He is a charming man.”
Mrs Gardiner allowed herself the relief of a phantom sniff. Mrs Beverley she considered was putting on ”side.” She had known Dane and Teresa for precisely the same length of time, yet she spoke of one as a friend, of the other as the merest acquaintance. It was but another example of county _versus_ town, and as such to be personally resented.
”I am very much attached to Teresa Mallison. She is a very nice, well-brought-up girl. She will make him an excellent wife. I think he is very much to be congratulated,” she said stiffly, and the little speech was memorable, inasmuch as it was the only one delivered in the High Street that day, in which Dane himself was singled out for congratulation!
”Are you walking towards home, Mrs Beverley? Perhaps we might go so far together,” said the Vicar's wife, as Mrs Gardiner nodded adieu, and entered the grocer's shop, and the two women turned into a side street, composed of those dreary stucco-faced little villas which seem the special abode of insurance agents and dressmakers. The houses continued but a short way, and then gave place to nursery gardens, and scattered habitations of a better type. Grizel hated the mean little houses, not for any sympathy for the inconvenience which they must cause to their inhabitants, but because she herself was bound to pa.s.s them on her way to the High Street. She amused herself by planning wholesale fires, in which entire terraces would be devoured, and in a hazy, indefinite fas.h.i.+on had decided that such a catastrophe would be profitable for the insurance agents, as well as for herself. Trying for the dressmakers, of course, but then dressmakers spent their lives in being trying to other people. Let them take their turn!
This morning, however, Grizel was oblivious of the villas, she was peering into Mrs Evans's large face, and saying tentatively:
”You stopped me... Why shouldn't I say it? If I don't think Miss Mallison _is_ the right girl, why mayn't I--”
”These things get repeated. One can't be too careful. I make it a rule to be silent, if I find myself unable to say what is agreeable.”
”How dull you would be! I say _would_, because it isn't true. You're scolding me now, and I'm sure that's not agreeable! Dear Mrs Evans, do you think it is a suitable engagement?”
”Dear Mrs Beverley, how can I judge? Can anyone in the world decide whom a man or a woman will choose?”
”They can't, but they can guess pretty well whom they _won't_! You know them both, Captain Peignton and Miss Mallison; can you imagine them living together, and being satisfied all their lives?”
The older woman looked at the bride in silence. Hundreds of couples had she seen kneeling hand in hand in the chancel of the church, cheerfully plighting a troth which bound them together till death should them part, and of how many could it be said that they were satisfied! She knew too well into what a prosaic compromise the lives of many of these lovers degenerated, but she would have felt it a sacrilege to say as much to this bride of the happy eyes, and the gay, unclouded heart.
”My dear,” she said slowly, ”if they think so themselves, it's not my place to judge. It often puzzles one to understand why people choose one another, but I am a strong believer in nature! Nature is always working out her own great plan, and she dictates for the good of the race. You see it all around--the dark chooses the light, the tall chooses the short, the fat chooses the thin, the brilliant woman marries a sportsman, the man of letters a gentle house-frau. Nature has dictated in this case. Captain Peignton is not too strong, and his nerves have been taxed: Teresa doesn't know what nerves are. I never knew a more healthy, normal girl.”
”Mrs Evans, you have known her for ages. Do _you_ think she is interesting?”
But Mrs Evans was not to be trapped into personal expressions of feeling.
”It is quite immaterial what _I_ think. I have known Teresa Mallison all her life, but, my dear, I know nothing about the Teresa whom Captain Peignton sees. He in his turn knows very little about the Teresa who will be his wife at the end of the first two or three years of married life.”
Grizel's hazel eyes widened with a look of fear.
”Does one inevitably change so much?”
”One _grows_!” Mrs Evans said. ”How could it be otherwise? Marriage for a girl means a shouldering of responsibility for the first time in her life, facing a money strain, a health strain, a curtailment of liberty. There is more joy one hopes, but there is certainly more discipline. Troubles must come--”
Grizel threw out a protesting hand. Her thoughts had slipped instinctively from the newly engaged couple, to the more enthralling subject of Martin and herself, and the prophecy hurt.
”Why must they, if they aren't needed? Suppose people can be disciplined by happiness, why need they have the trials? _I_ am disciplined by happiness. It suits me; it makes me good. It does _not_ make me selfish and unkind. And I _am_ grateful. I go about that little house, and there's something inside me singing 'Thank you!'
'Thank you!' all day long. I'm so br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with love and charity that it's all I can do not to kiss the cook on her cross old face, and press a diamond brooch into her hand. Anything to make her cheerful!
It hurts to see anyone less happy than myself. Don't, please, say I must have trouble, Mrs Evans. Let me stay in the sun!”
”Dear child!” said the Vicar's wife, and once again she felt the unwonted p.r.i.c.king sensation at the back of her eyes. She was used to sorrow, skilled in offering consolation and advice, but it was all too rare an experience to meet with joy. In the depths of her kind old heart she wondered if indeed Grizel were not right, but not for the world would she have allowed herself to express so unorthodox a feeling.
She walked in silence for some yards, and then, with a sudden change of subject, asked shortly, ”How's Katrine?”
”Talking of love in the suns.h.i.+ne? Oh, Katrine's _well_! She's just returned from her honeymoon, and Captain Blair has had his old bungalow enlarged. They had a glorious time. She was married from her friend's house, and rode off to camp in the wilds. She shed her skirt as soon as she arrived at the camp, and never saw it again till her return. A honeymoon in leggings! What would Chumley say to that?”
”It sounds exceedingly--er--unlike Katrine!”