1. VI. ON THE BRINK
Miss Bencomb was leaving the hotel for the railway, which was quite
near at hand, and had only recently been opened, as if on purpose for
this event. At Jocelyn's suggestion she wrote a message to inform her
father that she had gone to her aunt's, with a view to allaying anxiety
and deterring pursuit. They walked together to the platform and bade
each other good-bye; each obtained a ticket independently, and Jocelyn
got his luggage from the cloak-room.
On the platform they encountered each other again, and there was a
light in their glances at each other which said, as by a flash-
telegraph: 'We are bound for the same town, why not enter the same
compartment?'
They did.
She took a corner seat, with her back to the engine; he sat opposite.
The guard looked in, thought they were lovers, and did not show other
travellers into that compartment. They talked on strictly ordinary
matters; what she thought he did not know, but at every stopping
station he dreaded intrusion. Before they were halfway to London the
event he had just begun to realize was a patent fact. The Beloved was
again embodied; she filled every fibre and curve of this woman's form.
Drawing near the great London station was like drawing near Doomsday.
How should he leave her in the turmoil of a crowded city street? She
seemed quite unprepared for the rattle of the scene. He asked her
where her aunt lived.
'Bayswater,' said Miss Bencomb.
He called a cab, and proposed that she should share it till they
arrived at her aunt's, whose residence lay not much out of the way to
his own. Try as he would he could not ascertain if she understood his
feelings, but she assented to his offer and entered the vehicle.
'We are old friends,' he said, as they drove onward.
'Indeed, we are,' she answered, without smiling.
'But hereditarily we are mortal enemies, dear Juliet.'
'Yes--What did you say?'
'I said Juliet.'
She laughed in a half-proud way, and murmured: 'Your father is my
father's enemy, and my father is mine. Yes, it is so.' And then their
eyes caught each other's glance. 'My queenly darling!' he burst out;
'instead of going to your aunt's, will you come and marry me?'
A flush covered her over, which seemed akin to a flush of rage. It was
not exactly that, but she was excited. She did not answer, and he
feared he had mortally offended her dignity. Perhaps she had only made
use of him as a convenient aid to her intentions. However, he went on-
-
'Your father would not be able to reclaim you then! After all, this is
not so precipitate as it seems. You know all about me, my history, my
prospects. I know all about you. Our families have been neighbours on
that isle for hundreds of years, though you are now such a London
product.'
'Will you ever be a Royal Academician?' she asked musingly, her
excitement having calmed down.
'I hope to be--I WILL be, if you will be my wife.'
His companion looked at him long.
'Think what a short way out of your difficulty this would be,' he
continued. 'No bother about aunts, no fetching home by an angry
father.'
It seemed to decide her. She yielded to his embrace.
'How long will it take to marry?' Miss Bencomb asked by-and-by, with
obvious self-repression.
'We could do it to-morrow. I could get to Doctors' Commons by noon to-
day, and the licence would be ready by to-morrow morning.'
'I won't go to my aunt's, I will be an independent woman! I have been
reprimanded as if I were a child of six. I'll be your wife if it is as
easy as you say.'
They stopped the cab while they held a consultation. Pierston had
rooms and a studio in the neighbourhood of Campden Hill; but it would
be hardly desirable to take her thither till they were married. They
decided to go to an hotel.
Changing their direction, therefore, they went back to the Strand, and
soon ensconced themselves in one of the venerable old taverns of Covent
Garden, a precinct which in those days was frequented by West-country
people. Jocelyn then left her and proceeded on his errand eastward.
It was about three o'clock when, having arranged all preliminaries
necessitated by this sudden change of front, he began strolling slowly
back; he felt bewildered, and to walk was a relief. Gazing
occasionally into this shop window and that, he called a hansom as by
an inspiration, and directed the driver to 'Mellstock Gardens.'
Arrived here, he rang the bell of a studio, and in a minute or two it
was answered by a young man in shirt-sleeves, about his own age, with a
great smeared palette on his left thumb.
'O, you, Pierston! I thought you were in the country. Come in. I'm
awfully glad of this. I am here in town finishing off a painting for
an American, who wants to take it back with him.'
Pierston followed his friend into the painting-room, where a pretty
young woman was sitting sewing. At a signal from the painter she
disappeared without speaking.
'I can see from your face you have something to say; so we'll have it
all to ourselves. You are in some trouble? What'll you drink?'
'Oh! it doesn't matter what, so that it is alcohol in some shape or
form. . . . Now, Somers, you must just listen to me, for I HAVE
something to tell.'
Pierston had sat down in an arm-chair, and Somers had resumed his
painting. When a servant had brought in brandy to soothe Pierston's
nerves, and soda to take off the injurious effects of the brandy, and
milk to take off the depleting effects of the soda, Jocelyn began his
narrative, addressing it rather to Somers's Gothic chimneypiece, and
Somers's Gothic clock, and Somers's Gothic rugs, than to Somers
himself, who stood at his picture a little behind his friend.
'Before I tell you what has happened to me,' Pierston said, 'I want to
let you know the manner of man I am.'
'Lord--I know already.'
'No, you don't. It is a sort of thing one doesn't like to talk of. I
lie awake at night thinking about it.'
'No!' said Somers, with more sympathy, seeing that his friend was
really troubled.
'I am under a curious curse, or influence. I am posed, puzzled and
perplexed by the legerdemain of a creature--a deity rather; by
Aphrodite, as a poet would put it, as I should put it myself in marble.
. . . But I forget--this is not to be a deprecatory wail, but a
defence--a sort of Apologia pro vita mea.'
'That's better. Fire away!'
