DORA. About?

CHARLIE. Oh, because you and I agree with each other so well on all subjects, marriage included.

DORA (_pressing his hand_). My beloved!

CHARLIE. I said it was a rotten inst.i.tution--or something of the kind.

DORA (_charmingly_). An effete conventionality----

CHARLIE (_putting his arm round her waist_). Only suited to reckless people who risk the disappointments of the future for the effervescence of the present.

DORA. What did she say?

CHARLIE. She began to talk about my sister's boy inheriting the property, as though we cared.

DORA. Will he?

CHARLIE. Of course. It's entailed. But he's a fine lad, and we, who will be all in all to each other, need not grudge it him.

DORA (_thoughtfully_). I suppose not.

CHARLIE. I believe that is the source of Jane's affection for me. She knows how safe I am in the matter of marriage.

DORA. Then you have never contemplated it?

CHARLIE (_emphatically_). Never!

DORA (_horrified_). And you made love to me without any idea of proposing?

CHARLIE. You forget: you explained your creed at the outset.

DORA (_paling_). Then you deliberately availed yourself of the opportunity----

CHARLIE (_drawing his moustache over the corners of his lips_). Of adoring a girl whose theories corresponded with my own? Yes.

DORA (_with tears in her eyes_). Oh! You mean you would not have loved me if your courtship had involved marriage?

CHARLIE. I can't say. We both abhor to be handicapped by legalities, don't we? We both enjoy the same rights of independence----

DORA (_rising angrily_). Then, if loving me had necessitated the surrender of your liberty you could not have done it?

CHARLIE (_earnestly_). Could you?

DORA (_sobbing_). Could I? I would have loved you always.

CHARLIE (_taking her in his arms_). I would have loved you in the same way.

DORA. Not if I had wanted to marry you?

CHARLIE. I won't say. You never put me to the test.

DORA (_excitedly_). But if I should? Oh, Charlie--tell me, would you--won't you--marry me?

(Mrs GRAHAM _enters, and, finding them in each others arms, prepares to leave_.)

CHARLIE. Clare! We want your congratulations. Dora has proposed to me, and I am to name the happy day.

Mrs CLARE GRAHAM. What! And how about her oath?

DORA (_blushing_). Oh, I only vowed that, however pressed to marry, I would refuse. But I was not pressed; was I, Charlie?

CHARLIE (_sedately_). Certainly not.

In the Cradle of the Deep.

"But the sweet child heart you may always keep, For then the stars will be yours and the deep, The boundless deep. Good night."

It had been a long engagement, commenced by him between the ages of knickerbocker and tobacco, and encouraged by her as a development of the Prince Bountiful and Cinderella romances of the schoolroom. A charming contract, drawn up without sign and seal and cemented after the manner of barbaric hordes by heterogeneous offerings precious to the engaging parties, such as guinea-pigs, bird's eggs, looted apples, and, later on, prizes in vellum, deposited with blushing triumph into the concavity of a Dolly Varden pinafore. Parents wagged their heads and forbade, but the veto was conditional; the wisdom of the serpent was allied to a certain downiness of the dove, for hints at expectations in the future of the impecunious suitor necessitated an att.i.tude both Ja.n.u.s-faced and revolving. Their perspicacity was duly rewarded, for later on the vacuous pockets of the young subaltern--he had gone to thicken the "thin red line"--became plethoric with inherited revenues of a deceased uncle on the mother's side, a personage for whom malt had been the Brahma of idolatry, who had laid up for himself a tidy treasure despite the corruptions of rust and moth.

No sooner were the legacy dues arranged than Victor Dorrien, in a letter beautifully ebullient if ungrammatical, demanded permission to import his chosen one to share a temporary exile in India where, for the nonce, he was tied by technical obligations. He vowed that celibacy was dull, and soldiering monotonous; and, moreover, that, without the sweetheart of his youth to tease and plague him, there would no glint on the avuncular guineas.

The letter was a hearty one, and went the round of the family circle to a chorus of satisfied praise. The chorus did it. Someone has said that "perpetual representation amounts to inculcation," and this phrase ably describes the uses of chorus. Continued reiteration makes gospel truth.

The family chorus on the subject of matrimony is the mainstay of parental soloists, its note brings the recalcitrant or frisking lamb to "mark time," and subsequently dictates the pace of a quick march to the impending sacrifice. Social excitement is almost as sustaining as fanatical enthusiasm; it is the intoxicant which inflames half the actors that strut through the world's dramas of marriage, murder, or martyrdom. It sustained and inflamed little Elsie, who, dizzy with congratulations, valedictory gushings, present receiving, dress trying, and orange-blossom choosing, ignored the importance of life's destination in the enjoyment of the surrounding and immediate scenery.

There was great leave-taking and kerchief-waving and some coursing of tears down kindred cheeks and noses as the bride-elect was deposited, with wedding-cake, dress, and addenda, on board the s.s. _Kenilworth_, in temporary charge of a _pa.s.see_ matron of skittish proclivities and Anglo-Indian epidermis. This obliging lady had volunteered to personify decorum until arrival in Bombay, when her youthful charge would be transferred to the chaperonage of Dorrien's sister, on whom the observances of marriage etiquette depended. Elsie was in no way averse from the arrangement. All was so novel and so exciting that the Columbus instinct outbalanced the romantic one. The world had much to offer and the suburbs very little. There was certainly a well-grown curate, an Oxford man, ingrained with pedantry and pomposity, and delicately veneered with artistic ethics; also a retired bookmaker's son, who wore loud ties and restricted "unmentionables," and who spent money lavishly nursing a const.i.tuency, no one knew where. On the other hand stood Victor as she remembered him, sound in wind and limb, handsome, honest, and professedly devoted. Her choice was unhesitating, and she started forth with dancing heart.

As usual came the inevitable _dies non_, when the unfledged traveller makes a first bow to the Channel, followed by one or two squeamish days, when the Bay of Biscay as lauded in poesy and the Bay of Biscay as discovered in practice are two quite antagonistic things. After which, with rarified complexion, the sufferer forgets his troubles, and mounts the deck to enjoy a beatific spell of brine and breeze.

So in due course did Elsie. She found Mrs Willis, who was an old campaigner, busily engaged in conversation, or its equivalent, the note-comparing, gossip-scavengering tattle which is inherent to feminine camp followers of a certain age. Her companions were one Major Lane and his friend, Captain Burton Aylmer, the latter a person of some celebrity in military circles where sport was supreme. He looked lazy, long, and languid, and to those who had seen him neither tent-pegging nor polo playing, who knew nothing of the spearing of veteran boars, whose tushes fringed his mantel at home, nor of the "man eater" duel, which in hunting annals had made his name historical, he seemed effete, if not affected. He was lolling at full length in a rattan chair, listening indolently to the flippant duologue of the major and the gra.s.s widow.

The lady did not interest him. Her type was too cheap. She represented one of an order that seemed to be chromo-lithographed in reams for the benefit of garrisons in Great Britain, India, and the Colonies; but when he discovered in her the chaperone of a young _ingenue_, with fringeless forehead and skin like new milk dashed with sunset, his nonchalance subsided, and he became almost polite. Mrs Willis was prompt to detect the change of tactics, and swift to solve the problem. She plumed herself not a little on the possession of a decoy duck, capable of luring so desirable a prey as Captain Burton Aylmer into her social toils.

"Be civil to him, my dear," she advised when in private. "Half the women on board would give their eyes to get him in tow. He is very _difficile_." Mrs Willis affected the slangy in talking to young girls.

She thought it gave a contemporaneous flavour to the intercourse.

"He seemed to me pleasant enough," breathed Elsie, who was quite unscienced in complexities of character.

"He can be when he chooses. They say Lady Staines would have given her back hair for him and followed him barefoot across Asia--but he didn't see it!"

"Oh!"

"He is very accustomed to that sort of thing. His heart is quite tear-toughened, a kind of spongiopiline--receptive and impermeable at the same time."

"Perhaps you do him an injustice; there may never have been a question of his heart?"

"His sponsor so soon? Beware, little girl; they say he never loved since a certain queen of society threw him over for strawberry leaves."