“He came here while you were away.”
His eyes narrowed. His benevolent smile had disappeared. He looked rather like the bronze Buddha.
“You scarcely know him.”
“It seemed enough time…”
“Joliffe!” he repeated. “Joliffe! No good will come of this.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Milner…”
“Not as sorry as you will be if you go on with this. I’ll send for Joliffe. I’ll talk to him.”
There was silence. I said: “Do you want me to do the letters now?”
“No, no,” he said. “This is far too upsetting. Leave me now.”
Disconcerted, bewildered, and unhappy I went to my mother’s sitting room. She was making herself a cup of tea.
“Why, whatever’s the matter, Jane?”
“I’ve told Mr. Milner about Joliffe and me. He doesn’t like it.”
“Well,” said my mother emphatically, “he’ll have to lump it.”
“I see his point. He’s trained me.”
“Stuff and nonsense! What’s training when a girl’s future’s at stake! I expect he wanted someone with money or something for his precious nephew.”
“He never struck me as being like that.”
“But he strikes me now.”
“I’m so sorry he’s upset. I like him. He’s been so good to us.”
“Well, he’s had a good housekeeper though I say it myself, and you were a good secretary to him. But times have got to change and there’s always the possibility of a girl’s getting married.”
“What if he dismisses you when I marry Joliffe?”
“Then he dismisses me.”
“But you thought it was so good here, and so it has been. Think how kind he’s been letting me stay here.”
“Well, so he has, but he doesn’t own us for all that. No, he’s been good to us but you’ve got your future to think of. I want to see you settled, Jane, with a good home and a good husband and in time babies. There’s nothing like it. I always wanted to see you settled before I went.”
“Went… went where?”
“To join your father.”
“What a silly thing to say! You’re here with me and you’ll stay here for years and years…”
“Of course, but I want to see you settled. I’m sorry Mr. High-and-Mighty Milner doesn’t think you’re good enough for his nephew, but I happen to think otherwise and so, bless him, does Joliffe.”
Mr. Sylvester Milner sent for my mother. I sat in her room waiting for her to return. When she came her color was high and she was in true fighting spirit. She had looked like that when she had talked of the Lindsays, my father’s family.
“What did he say?”
“Oh, he was very polite and gentle but he’s against it.”
“So he really doesn’t think I’m good enough to marry his nephew.”
“That’s what it amounts to, but he puts it the other way round. He says Joliffe’s not good enough for you.”
“Whatever does he mean?”
“He says he’s a ne’er-do-well. He’s never settled down and won’t be a good husband.”
“What nonsense! Is he going to turn you out when I marry?”
“He didn’t say that. He was very dignified. He said at the end: ‘I can’t stop your daughter marrying my nephew, Mrs. Lindsay, but I hope with all my heart that she will not. I have a high regard for your daughter, and if she is to marry I would rather she made a more suitable match.’ I stood my ground very firmly and I said: ‘My daughter will marry where her heart is, Mr. Milner, as her father did before her. We’re determined once we make up our minds. And perhaps we know best what’s good for us.’ We left it at that.”
“Is he very angry?”
“More sad I’d say. At least that’s what he wants us to think. He shakes his head and looks like some old prophet when he does it. But we’re taking no notice of him.”
It was all very well to say that, but my joy was dampened a little.
The excitement in the servants’ hall was great. Mrs. Couch rocked on her chair and her eyes were soft. “So you’re the one he’s chosen! I always knew you’d been born lucky. A housekeeper’s daughter going to Cluntons’ like a lady… and now along comes Mr. Joliffe. What a man! Mind you, you’ll have to watch him. Charmers like that don’t grow on every tree and there’ll always be them looking to pluck what don’t belong to them. Men like that Mr. Joliffe can need a lot of looking after.”
“I’ll look after him, Mrs. Couch.”
“I don’t doubt you will. As soon as I clapped eyes on you I said to Jess: ‘There’s a little Madam for you. She knows what she wants and she’ll get it.’ So I was right. You got Mr. Joliffe, and I reckon there’s been a lot of competition for that one.”
Amy said that she reckoned I’d got a handful there but what a handful! Her Jim whom she was marrying at Christmas was a good steady sort and right for her but Mr. Joliffe was a man any girl would fall for given half a beckon; Jess said he was a man and a half and I was lucky.
I went about during those days in a kind of haze of delight. Things looked different; the grass was more luscious, the flowers in the garden more colorful; the world had taken on a new beauty because Joliffe was part of it.
Mr. Sylvester was of course the only one who cast a gloom. He watched me covertly when I thought he did not notice. I supposed he was regretting all the time he had wasted on me.
One day he said to me: “I know it is no use trying to dissuade you. “I can only hope that you will be less unhappy than I fear. My nephew has always been irresponsible. He is wild and adventurous. Some people might find these characteristics attractive. I have never found them so. “I can only hope that you will never regret your decision. When we first met we tried the yarrow sticks. We will try them again before you go.”
On his table was the container with the sticks in it. He held it out to me and asked me to take some. I did so. As I handed them back to him he said, “The first question we will ask is, ‘Will this marriage be a happy one?’”
He proceeded to lay out the sticks. He looked at them, his eyes glowing beneath his skull cap. “Look at this broken line here. This means an emphatic No.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t believe in this fortune telling.”
“It’s a pity,” he answered sadly, and began to study the sticks he had laid out.
In November, Joliffe and I were married in a registrar’s office. It was a quiet wedding. Joliffe had got a special license for he said we didn’t want a fuss.
My mother was in a state of exultation. She looked like a bride herself.
After the ceremony she kissed me fondly.
“This is the happiest day of my life since my husband died,” she told Joliffe and me. She turned to him earnestly: “You will take care of her.”
He swore he would and we went away for our honeymoon.
My mother returned to Roland’s Croft.
THE WOMAN IN THE PARK
I
It was like being born into a new world of discovery. I began to realize how young I had been, how inexperienced. It was an intoxicating existence. “I had been so unworldly before. Life was not all that I had believed it to be. I suppose my parents had lived an ideal married life; they were serene in their happiness, simple one might say. Joliffe was never that.
He was the most exciting person I had ever known and if he had been as easy to understand as my parents, could he have fascinated me so? As I emerged from the ecstatic dream which our honeymoon was I began to see how little I knew of the world, what a simpleton I had been. Everything before had been so clear cut—the good, the bad, the right, the wrong. Now they were merging into each other. Something which I might have condemned before, I discovered was a little risky, but amusing. The greatest quality seemed to be an ability to amuse.