There was no one to be found anywhere, but he remembered the stove still burning in the bar-room, and the empty chairs gathered socially about it. Thither he made his way through the silent office and corridors, and drawing his cheap fur coat close about him, settled himself to pass what little remained of the night. There was sawdust on the floor, spittoons, scraps of sausage-rind; the air stank stalely of beer and spirits; the single gas-jet, turned very low, flickered over the nude women that decorated the mean, fly-blown walls, and flickered, too, over a man, half-slumbering in a chair, who, but glimmeringly to himself, had taken the turning road of his life.
The sensation of most runaway couples, after filling up a blank form, and having a marriage service gabbled over them by a shabby stranger in a frock-coat, is one of unmixed astonishment at the facility of the whole proceeding. A dog-license is no harder to obtain, and the formalities attending vaccination are even greater.
Phyllis emerged from the Reverend Josiah Lyell’s with a ring on her finger, and a cardboard certificate on which the Almighty, angels, and forked lightning were depicted above her name and Adair’s. The first discussion of their married life was what to do with this monstrosity. Phyllis was for tearing it up, but Adair, superstitiously afraid of bad luck, insisted stoutly on its being retained.
"I’ll hide it at the bottom of my trunk," he said.
They returned to the carriage, which was awaiting them as composedly as though nothing in particular had happened in the ten-minute interval. Adair wished to take a drive before going back to the hotel, thinking that the air and repose would be soothing for their nerves,--but to his surprise Phyllis demurred.
"I’ve been married your way," she said, "now you must come and be married mine."
"Yes, tell him to drive to a Catholic church."
He gave the order good-humoredly. "Aren’t you satisfied?" he asked. "Do you want more angels and forked lightning?"
"You see, I’ve always been a sort of Catholic," she explained. "Not a good Catholic, but a poor little straggler, galloping on half a mile behind, like a baby sheep that’s got left. I’ve never liked the confession part of it, but really, Cyril, there’s a sort of whiff of Heaven about a Catholic church that I need occasionally. It’s just as though you were awfully hungry, and went in to smell a beautiful dinner a long way off!"