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Oldrieve commended her beneficent intention, and besought her to bring the irreligiously wedded pair to the Vicar, and have them wedded in a respectable, Anglican way. She was firmly convinced that if this were done, nothing more could possibly be heard of separate lives. Zora promised to do her best, but Cousin Jane continued to sniff.
"About a fortnight ago. 'If I may be so bold, sir, who is the young lady? I asks. 'It's Miss Emily Oldrieve, says he, and I said, 'A nicer, brighter, prettier bit of goods' I beg your pardon, ma'am 'young lady, you couldn't pick up between here and Houndsditch. I did say that, ma'am, I tell you straight."
She had been brought up to believe in doctors, the Catechism, the House of Lords, the inequality of the sexes, and the Oldrieve family, and in that faith she would live and die. Sypher bore her no malice. She did not call the Cure pestilential quackery. He was beginning not to despise the day of small things.
She did not reckon with the rough-and-tumble experiences of life which a girl must gain from a two years' battle on the stage. In fact, she did not reckon with any of the circumstances of Emmy's position. She herself was too ignorant, too much centered as yet in her own young impulses and aspirations, and far too serene in her unquestioning faith in the impeccability of the Oldrieve family.
He omitted, therefore, reference to the demoniac rages which turned the home into an inferno, and to the quarrels over the machine for elongating the baby's nose. Their tempers were incompatible; they found a common life impossible; so, according to the wise modern view of things, they had decided to live apart while maintaining cordial relations. Mrs. Oldrieve was greatly distressed.
She was cast, physically, in heroic mold, a creature of dancing blood and color and warmth. Disparaging tea-parties called her an Amazon. The Vicar's wife regarded her as too large and flaring and curvilinear for reputable good looks. She towered over Nunsmere. Her presence disturbed the sedateness of the place. She was a wrong note in its harmony. Mrs. Oldrieve sighed.
"William Octavius Oldrieve Dix," he murmured an apostrophe which caused the future statesman a paroxysm of amusement "I am exceedingly glad to see you. I hope you like London. We're great friends, aren't we? And when you grow up, we're going to be greater. I don't want you to have anything to do with machinery.
She would plunge into the great swelling sea of Life. She would drink sunshine and fill her soul with laughter. She would do a million hyperbolic things, the mention of which mightily confused her mother. "I, my dear," said the hen in the fairy tale, "never had the faintest desire to get into water." So, more or less, said Mrs. Oldrieve. "Will you miss me very dreadfully?" asked Zora.
Then, in a couple of hours he would sun himself in the smiles of his adored mistress, and listen to the prattle of his other friend, Emmy. Mrs. Oldrieve would be knitting by the lamp, and probably he would hold her wool, drop it, and be scolded as if he were a member of the family; all of which was a very gracious thing to the sensitive, lonely man, warming his heart and expanding his nature.
"It means, my dear mother, that they're married," said Zora; "but why they should have thought it necessary to run away to do it in this hole-and-corner fashion I can't imagine." "It's very terrible," said Mrs. Oldrieve. "It's worse than terrible. It's idiotic," said Zora. She was mystified, and being a woman who hated mystification, was angry. Her mother began to cry.
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