Chapter 2

The effect of my announcement was astonishing: she fainted, for which I remonstrated with her as soon as she came to herself. “Such extreme sensitiveness, my love,” I could not help saying, “may be highly creditable to your sense of maidenly propriety, but allow me to say that I can scarcely regard it as a compliment.”

“Augustus,” she said, “you must not think I doubt you; and yet—and yet—the ordeal will be a severe one for you.”

“I will steel my nerves,” I said grimly (for I was annoyed with her); “and, after all, Chlorine, the ceremony is not invariably fatal; I have heard of the victim surviving it—occasionally.”

“How brave you are!” she said earnestly. “I will imitate you, Augustus; I too will hope.”

I really thought her insane, which alarmed me for the validity of the marriage. “Yes, I am weak, foolish, I know,” she continued; “but oh, I shudder so when I think of you, away in that gloomy Gray Chamber, going through it all alone!”

This confirmed my worst fears. No wonder her parents felt grateful to me for relieving them of such a responsibility! “May I ask where you intend to be at the time?” I inquired very quietly.

“You will not think us unfeeling,” she replied, “but dear papa considered that such anxiety as ours would be scarcely endurable did we not seek some distraction from it; and so, as a special favor, he has procured evening orders for Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where we shall drive immediately after dinner.”

I knew that the proper way to treat the insane was by reasoning with them gently, so as to place their own absurdity clearly before them. “If you are forgetting your anxiety in Sir John Soane’s Museum, while I cool my heels in the Gray Chamber,” I said, “is it probable that any clergyman will be induced to perform the marriage ceremony? Did you really think two people can be united separately?”

She was astonished this time. “You are joking!” she cried; “you cannot really believe that we are to be married in—in the Gray Chamber?”

“Then will you tell me where we are to be married?” I asked. “I think I have the right to know—it can hardly be at the Museum!”

She turned upon me with a sudden misgiving; “I could almost fancy,” she said anxiously, “that this is no feigned ignorance. Augustus, your aunt sent you a message—tell me, have you read it?” Now, owing to McFadden’s want of consideration, this was my one weak point—I had not read it, and thus I felt myself upon delicate ground. The message evidently related to business of importance which was to be transacted in this Gray Chamber, and as the genuine McFadden clearly knew all about it, it would have been simply suicidal to confess my own ignorance.