Mary-Jacobine was even more unwell than after the castor oil, but the tedious little intruder did not budge. All the natural aids Marie-Louise knew were now exhausted, and she confessed to her husband that she was beaten, and something would have to be done.
For a miserable week, the parents argued about the possibilities. They could take their daughter to the Continent, wait out the pregnancy, and put the infant in a foundling hospital. They did not like the idea, and after talking with Mary-Jacobine they liked it even less. Everything that lay deep in their composition—the convent, the brother and sister in religious orders, a simple sense of decency—spoke powerfully against it.
There was, of course, marriage.
They thought highly of marriage and it was the only means possible of salvaging morality as they understood it. Could a marriage be achieved?
The Senator was a man for direct action and he knew something of how the world wagged. This time it was he who asked Major Cornish to luncheon, at the Savoy.
Luncheon in a fashionable dining-room, even outside the Season, when really there is not a soul in London, is not the best place for such delicate negotiations, but the Senator said what he had to say, and asked Major Cornish if, under the circumstances, he was still of the same mind? The Major, coolly eating an ice, said that he would like to think about it, and arranged another luncheon with the Senator for a week from that day.
When the meeting came, the Major looked as if he had grown a few inches. He said that yes, he was prepared to maintain his offer of marriage, but the Senator would understand that things were not altogether as they had been. It was distasteful to talk of one’s people, said he, but the Senator should be aware that the Cornishes were an old county family of, understandably, Cornwall. The family seat, Chegwidden (he pronounced it Cheggin, and explained that it meant, in the old Cornish tongue, the White House), was close to Tintagel, the birthplace of King Arthur, and Cornishes had lived there (the memory of man going not to the contrary) so long that they had probably counted King Arthur as a neighbour. When Cornwall had become a royal duchy, several Cornishes at various times served the Dukes of Cornwall as Vice-Warden of the Stannaries. It was a proud record, and an association with such a family might be accounted an honour.
The Major was, however, a younger son, and the family was not a rich one, so it was unlikely that he would ever live at Chegwidden himself, as its master. But he was a Cornish of Chegwidden, all the same. He had served his country honourably as a soldier, but now that he was about to leave the Army, he was undeniably hard up.
The Senator was not utterly unprepared for this, and hastened to say that an alliance with his daughter would certainly include a settlement that would put her husband’s mind at ease about the future.
Very generously put, said the Major, but he wanted it to be clear that his suit to Mary-Jacobine was not prompted by any mercenary motive. The Senator would understand that the personal detail he had confided when last they talked could not be a matter of total indifference. Nevertheless he loved her dearly, and over the week past he had come to love her even more, because she had suffered the gravest misfortune that could befall an innocent girl. The Major touched lightly and tactfully upon Our Lord’s behaviour toward the woman taken in adultery, and the Senator could not repress a tear or two at this show of fine religious feeling, though he had never thought of Christ as an Englishman with a monocle and an improbable moustache. Here was chivalry, and from the Wooden Soldier! Oh, God be praised!
It would be as well, said the Major, for them to understand one another thoroughly. This surprised the Senator, who thought an understanding had been reached. But at this point the Major drew from an inner pocket two pieces of paper which he handed across the table, saying: “These few matters should be understood between us, and if you will be good enough to sign both copies of this agreement I shall ask Mary-Jacobine to marry me tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock. Take your time in reading it over. It is not complicated, but I assure you I have thought carefully about what would best work toward our married happiness, and I should not like to abridge that memorandum in any way.”
He’s as cool as a cucumber, thought the Senator, but he did not find himself particularly cool after he had read what was written, in a very fine hand, on the document—for it could not be otherwise described.
(1) It will be clear that I do not wish to enter upon marriage burdened with debt, and I have some outstanding obligations of the sort that accrue to my position in the Army and in Society. Therefore immediately upon my acceptance by Mary-Jacobine, I should be obliged to receive a draft for ten thousand pounds (£10,000).
(2) I estimate that the expenses of marriage, wedding-tour, and subsequent travel to Canada will not be less than twenty-five thousand pounds (£25,000) for which I should be pleased to accept a draft before the wedding ceremony.
(3) My experience with men, and also with finance, as Adjutant of my regiment, appears to me to fit me for a position in industry in the New World, to which I propose that my wife and myself should emigrate after our wedding tour and the birth of the first child. As we must live in a manner congruous with your position and my own, and not below that to which Mary-Jacobine has been accustomed, I propose a settlement upon her of one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds (£125,000) to be invested or otherwise disposed on my sole authority. In addition, we shall require a dwelling suitable for your daughter and son-in-law and any family we may have, and I think it best that this be a newly-built house, the construction and planning of which I shall be glad to oversee, submitting all bills for building and furnishing to you for settlement. I shall be ready to discuss the position I shall take in your business enterprises and the salary attaching thereto at your convenience.
(4) I undertake to bring up and show every proper care for any children attaching to the union, with the proviso that they be reared in the Protestant faith as evinced in the Church of England.
For a time the Senator breathed deeply and audibly through his nose. Should he tear the agreement up and hit the Wooden Soldier on the head with a bottle? He had expected to be generous, but to have his generosity prescribed for him, and in such figures, hit him very hard in his Highland pride. To be tied down to a deal! The Wooden Soldier was sipping a glass of claret with total self-composure; the light falling on his eyeglass gave him the air of a miniature Cyclops, about to eat a sheep.
“There are two copies, of course,” he murmured; “one for you and one for me.”
Still the Senator glared. He could afford the money, though it had never occurred to him that he might pay his son-in-law’s debts acquired before marriage. It was Number Four that stuck in his craw. Protestants! His grandchildren Protestants! He had no quarrel with Protestants so long as religion did not become an issue; let them be wrong, let them even be damned, if that was their perverse desire. But his grandchildren—and then he bethought himself of that small, obstinate grandchild who had precipitated this whole hateful affair. If Mary-Jacobine did not marry the Wooden Soldier, then who? Where in the time could he find a Catholic who would take her—a Catholic as outwardly suitable, if not really desirable, as Major Cornish?
“Anything troubling you?” said the Major. “I worked out the financial terms as exactly as I could, and I don’t think I could bring any of the figures down.”
The figures! How crass these English could be! To hell with the figures! But Number Four—