Thus also her delight in another form, and yet in
the same form, in that grotesque expression, when
it was ejaculated as his sole expletive when he caught
his thumb that frightful crack while hanging a picture
in what was to be his study in their newly taken house.
Any other man in the world, even a bishop, would have
sworn; would have sworn no doubt harmlessly and with
an honest heartiness to which the most pious prude
could not have taken exception. Agreed!
But the point was—that Harry didn’t!
She loved him so! She insisted she must bind
up the thumb with her pocket handkerchief, and did,
Harry protesting; and for years, still loving him
with the old, first love, she often would be reminded
by the picture of the incident and of her joy in it.
Yes, the only expletive she ever heard him use; and,
lo, in that very room, years on, he seated beneath
that very picture, she was to come to him with news
(and hers the guilt of it) that for the first time
was to strike him between the joints of his harness,
visibly ageing him as she spoke, and for the first
time cause him to groan his pain. She was to
glance at the picture as she spoke and very terribly
its merry association to be recalled to her.
She was to recall him young, gay, tremendously splendid,
wringing his damaged hand, laughing, “Mice and
Mumps!” She was to see him, grey ascendant upon
the raven of his hair, shrinking down in his seat,
wilting as one slowly collapsing after a stunning blow,
and at her news (and hers the guilt of it) to hear
his voice go, not exclamatorily, but in a thick mutter,
as one dazed, bewildered, in a fog, “My God,
my God, my God, my God!”
How could one ever have foreseen that?
She loved him so! On that first day together
in the park she told him everything about herself,
about all her ideas and theories and principles, particularly
where these touched his sex, even about that terrible
fit of crying of hers in bed an hour after she had
left him. And Harry understood everything and
agreed with her in everything. O rapturous affinity!
They met early when business London was rushing to
business. They stayed late, with no thought of
food or of their occupations, till business London
was returning, and night, in lamps below and stars
above, was setting out its sentinels.
She told him everything; and even if she had wished
not to open all her heart, there would have been the
immense selection of everything—every single
thing about herself—from which to choose
to tell him. For there never had been such a betrothal
as theirs; done at a blow with no single intimate
thing ever before passed between them! Her very
first words to him as they met, her greeting of him
as they came together, showed how preposterous and
never-before-imagined was their affiancement.
“You know, it’s incredible,” she
greeted him. “It’s incredible, it’s
grotesque, it’s flatly impossible—I’ve
never before seen you except in your dress clothes
or at afternoon tea!”
