Читать книгу Iron and Smoke - Sheila Kaye-Smith - Страница 13

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The wedding took place according to all Jenny’s ideas of what a wedding should be. Choir boys, carriages, bouquets, bridesmaids, white satin, red baize, kisses, cake, tears—all the things that she had expected were there, giving her a pleased impression of complete success. She drove away all smiles and waving fluffy ends of lace and feathers, the happiest creature Humphrey had ever seen.

He was a little surprised, but on the whole relieved to find that she did not seem to have any of the usual bridal qualms—no tears for her mother, who shed them freely, no regrets for the old Grange in the North or the fields of Eden-in-Cleveland. He did not know that the absence of such tears and regrets was due to her conviction that, alone with her bridegroom, she soon would know the mystery of his mind, just as he would search hers and lift it out of the shadows. Timothy’s words had given her a new hope and boldness. She would no longer accept the idea that she was silly and ignorant—she would try to please him with her thoughts and conversation, just as she would try to please him with her clothes and appearances. She felt she had been too timid in the past. Marriage would make all the difference, break down those barriers between mind and mind which she had deplored. “A marriage of true minds?” ... Who had written that? Was it Tennyson or Shakespeare?

Humphrey did not remotely guess such thoughts. They would have appeared to him incredible in the brain of Jenny. A little virginal curiosity and eagerness he half suspected, but this passion for the union of their minds had no place in the estimation he had formed of her. He was glad she was so happy, though, so free of either apprehension or regret. He would do his best to keep her happy, care for her, pet her, give her pretty things, steal little caresses at dangerous moments. ...

They went to Bordighera for their honeymoon. When given a choice, Jenny had asked for Italy, and Bordighera was in Italy—just in Italy, so that they were not involved in any difficult remoteness. For Humphrey did not want to feel himself too far from home—he wanted to be able to get back when the Herringdales called, which he knew the Manor would do before long. It never let him stay away many weeks.

Jenny was disappointed when at the end of the first week he suggested they should return to Paris. She had thought they would go on to Venice, Rome, and Naples. He had talked vaguely of such progress at Slapewath, when he had not yet realized all that exile would mean.

“It’s the wrong time of year for Venice, and too early for Rome. Paris would be ideal just now—and then we could run home if anything happened.”

“But is anything likely to happen?”

“Not likely—but it might. You don’t run an estate like Herringdales, short of cash and short of labour, without things happening pretty violently every now and then.”

“It’s so beautiful here. Can’t we stay on here, in the sunshine, even if we don’t go any further?”

He knew that he was being cruel. She had never been out of England before, and this sophisticated Italian seaboard was to her the land of glory and romance. But he hardened his heart. After all he had married her for the sake of Herringdales, and if he preferred her to it now, even in a small matter, he would be betraying his own act. So he wired for rooms at the Hôtel St. James et Albany, and took her away from the sunshine and palms and sea to the unceasing downpour of the Paris streets. They stayed in Paris for a week of rain, at the end of which even Jenny was sated with her honeymoon and thought that they might just as well go home.

It had not happened—that wonderful mental discovery she had hoped to make and see him make. But her ideas had changed a little. Her husband’s love seemed to make any more spiritual adventures unnecessary. With her heart full of his ardour, her memory sweet with new, rapturous experience, she could not believe that any woman had ever been loved as she was, and that was enough.