Well, it was love. But a rose-garden will not
long remain beautiful if no care is taken of what
may intrude.
If we but stand sentinel at the door, exercising a
nice discretion, the garden may likely remain unsoiled,
its air uncontaminated.
George said that though across the first portion of
the scheme he had so laboriously planned he had been
shot at lightning speed by the vehicle of Mary’s
action, its latter portion yet remained to be discussed.
“We’ve got to marry, dearest—and
as quick as quick. We can’t go on like
this—seeing each other once a week.
No, not even if it were once a day. It’s
got to be always.”
“Always and always, dear,” Mary said softly.
Women are more intoxicated than men by the sudden
atmosphere of that new world. The awe of it was
still upon her. The light of love comes strongly
to men, with the sensation of bright sunshine; to women
as through stained glass windows, softly.
She continued: “Fancy saying ‘always’
and being glad to say it! I never thought I could.
Do you know—will this frighten you?—I
am one of those people who dread the idea of ‘always.’
I never could bear the idea of looking far, far ahead
and not seeing any end. It frightened me.
Ever since father died, I’ve been like that—even
in little things, even in tangible things. When
we go to the seaside in the summer I never can bear
to look straight across the sea. That gives me
the idea of always—of long, long miles and
miles without a turn or a stop. I want to think
every day, every hour, that what I am doing can’t
go on—mustchange. It suffocates me
to think otherwise. I want to jump out, to scream.”
Then she gave that laugh that seldom failed to come
to her relief, and said: “It’s a
sort of claustrophobia—isn’t that
the word?—on a universal scale. But
why is it? And why am I suddenly changed now?
Why does the thought of always, always, endless always
with you, bring a sort of—don’t laugh,
dear—a sort of bliss, peace?”
This poor George of mine, who was no deep thinker,
nevertheless had the reason pat. He said:
“I think because the past has all been unhappy
and because this, you know, means happiness.”
She gave a little sigh; told him: “Yes,
that’s it—happiness.”
And now they fell to making plans as mating birds
build nests. Here a bit of straw and there a
tuft of moss; here a feather, there a shred of wool—George
would do this and George would do that; here the house
would be and thus would they do in the house.
Probabilities were outraged, obstacles vaulted.
Castles that are builded in the air spring into being
quicker than Aladdin’s palace—bricks
and mortar, beams and stones are featherweight when
handled in the clouds; every piece is so dovetailed,
marked and numbered that like magic there springs before
the eye the shining whole—pinnacled, turreted,
embattled.
