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.

Joliffe was passionate and tender, delighted to initiate me into a way of life which I had never known existed before. My innocence he found delightful, “amusing” in fact. But at the same time I knew that it would not continue to amuse. It was something I had to grow out of.

We spent the first night of our honeymoon in a country hotel, with Tudor architecture—oak beams, and floors which sloped, of the Queen-Elizabeth-Slept-Here variety. There were old tennis courts—the Tudor kind where Henry VIII was said to have played; and in the evening after dinner we strolled into the old Tudor garden with its winter heath, jasmine and yellow chrysanthemums.

I was living in a dream then; there was Joliffe my new husband at whom I had already noticed women turned to look, and he had eyes for me only, which made me feel proud and humble all at once.

So that first night together was spent in the ancient bedroom with the tiny leaded paned windows through which shafts of moonlight touched the room with a dreamlike radiance, and it was Joliffe’s delight to lead me to understanding. When he slept for I could not, I watched his sleeping face while the moonlight threw shadows over it and it seemed then that it changed and put lines where there were none and it was as though I saw Joliffe as he would be twenty years hence and I told myself passionately I will love him then even as I do now.

He awoke and I told him this and we were solemn talking of our love. And strangely enough—as though some premonition of disaster had cast a sudden shadow—I assured myself that whatever happened in the future nothing could spoil the magic of this night.

That was only the beginning of our honeymoon. It must be spent in style, as I discovered everything must be with Joliffe. We were to go to Paris, a city he dearly loved. “All honeymoons,” he declared, “should be spent in Paris.”

We went by train to Dover and crossed the Channel in a mild swell and took the boat train from Calais to the French capital.

“The first thing we must do is get you some clothes,” said Joliffe. “I have friends in Paris. I can’t introduce my little country mouse to them.”

Little country mouse! I was indignant. He laughed at me. He took off my hat—one which I had thought greatly daring with its little emerald green feather on black satin and its green velvet ribbons tied under my chin. He grimaced at it. “All very well for walks in the forest but hardly suited to the Champs-Elysées, my darling.”

And my gown of dark green merino with the velvet collar which mother and I had thought the height of good taste was just a little too homely, he said.

I was hurt but my spirits rose as we went to the little shops and new clothes were bought for me. I had a gown with a little cape of black and white and a black hat which was scarcely a hat for it was just a twist of black net with a huge white bow in it.

“It won’t be of the least use,” I declared.

“My darling Jane will learn that the last thing that is expected of a hat is that it should be useful. Piquant, elegant, decorative, yes. Useful never.”

“How can you know so much about women’s clothes?” I demanded.

“Only one woman’s. And I know about hers because she is my wife and I adore her.”

I had a gown for evening which was daring, I thought. Joliffe said it was just right. It was white satin and he gave me a jade brooch set in diamonds to wear with it. When I put it on I was startled by my reflection. I was indeed a different person.

During those two weeks in Paris I was in turns deliriously happy and vaguely apprehensive. I was enchanted by this magic city. I loved it best in the morning when there was a smell of freshly baked bread in the streets and an excitement in the air which means that a big city is coming to life. Blissfully I wandered through the flower markets on either side of the Madeleine, Joliffe at my side; I bought armfuls of blossoms to decorate our bedroom and their haunting scent stayed with me forever. We strolled along the boulevards, climbed to Sacré Coeur and explored Montmartre; I shivered over the cruel leering faces of the gargoyles of historic Notre Dame; I laughed at the traders in Les Halles. I reveled in the treasures of the Louvre and I mingled with the artists and students seated outside the cafés of the Left Bank. It was the most wonderful experience I had ever known. It was all that a honeymoon should be. And whatever new and wonderful sights I saw, whatever thrilling experiences were mine it all came back to one thing: Joliffe was with me.

He was the best possible companion; he knew this city so well. But I began to notice that the Joliffe of our morning rambles and tours of exploration was different from the man he became in the evenings. I was learning that people were more complicated than I in my innocence had believed them to be—some people at least, and Joliffe for one. There were many facets to the natures of some. I could not at that time understand why my husband could revel in the simple pleasures by day and in the evening subtly change to the sophisticate. This alarmed me faintly. I felt at a disadvantage.

In the afternoon we used to draw the blinds and lie on our bed talking idly or making love. “It’s an old French custom,” said Joliffe; and these were the happiest times.

Then in the evening we must join his friends of whom there seemed to be many. We must go to Marguery’s to sample his special filet de sole in its sauce of Marguery’s creating which could not be found anywhere in the world; we must dine at the Moulin Rouge and see the dancing at the Bal Tabarin; we must join Joliffe’s friends at the Café de la Paix. I used to hope that we would dine alone but we rarely did. There were always friends to join us. They talked volubly in French which I did not always find easy to follow; they drank what seemed to me a great deal and shared jokes of which I sometimes did not grasp the point. At such times I seemed to lose touch with Joliffe and it was then so hard to believe that he was the same man with whom I shared those interesting mornings and ecstatic afternoons.

I saw the artists Monet and Toulouse-Lautrec; we mingled with the literati and people from the theatrical world; they were colorful, larger than life—women with exquisite complexions which I innocently thought were their own, their gowns of breathtaking elegance made me feel gauche and out of place and I longed for the peace of our hotel room.