A WEDDING
The London newspapers devoted small space, if any, to the wedding of
Walter Clinton, Esq., M.D., third son of Edward Clinton, Esq., of
Kencote, Meadshire, and Muriel, only daughter of the late Alexander
Graham, Esq., and the Honourable Mrs. Graham of Mountfield, Meadshire,
but the _Bathgate Herald and South Meadshire Advertiser_ devoted two of
its valuable columns to a description of the ceremony, a list of the
distinguished guests present, and a catalogue of the wedding presents.
No name that could possibly be included was left out. The confectioner
who supplied the cake, the head gardeners at Kencote and Mountfield
who--obligingly--supplied the floral decorations; the organist who
presided, as organists always do, at the organ, and gave a rendering, a
very inefficient one, of Mendelssohn's Wedding March; the schoolmaster
who looked after the children who strewed flowers on the churchyard
path; the coachman who drove the happy pair to the station; the
station-master who arranged for them a little salvo of his own, which
took the form of fog-signals, as the train came in--they were all there,
and there was not an error in their initials or in the spelling of their
names, although there were a good many in the list of distinguished
guests, and still more in the long catalogue of presents.
There was a large number of presents, more than enough to open the eyes
of the readers of the _Melbury Park Chronicle and North London
Intelligencer_, which, by courtesy of its contemporary, printed the
account in full, except for the omission of local names, and in _minion_
instead of _bourgeois_ type. Some of the presents were valuable and
others were expensively useless, and the opinion expressed in Melbury
Park was that the doctor couldn't possibly find room for them all in his
house and would have to take a bigger one. Melbury Park opened its eyes
still wider at the number of titles represented amongst the donors, for
the Clintons, as has been said, had frequently married blood, and many
of their relations were represented, Walter had been popular with his
school and college friends, and on Muriel's side the Conroys and their
numerous connections had come down handsomely in the way of Georgian
sugar-sifters, gold and enamelled umbrella tops, silver bowls and
baskets and bridge boxes, writing-sets, and candlesticks, and other
things more or less adapted to the use of a doctor's wife in a rather
poor suburb of London.
The wedding, if not "a scene of indescribable beauty, fashion and
profusion," as the Bathgate reporter, scenting promotion, described it,
was a very pretty one. The two big houses produced for the occasion a
sufficient number of guests, and the surrounding country of neighbours,
to fill Mountfield church with a congregation that was certainly well
dressed, if not noticeably reverent. The bride looked beautiful, if a
trifle pale, under her veil and orange blossoms, and the bridegroom as
gallant as could be expected under the circumstances. There were six
bridesmaids, the Honourable Olivia and Martha Conroy and Miss Evelyn
Graham, cousins of the bride, and the Misses Cicely, Joan, and Nancy
Clinton, sisters of the bridegroom, who were attired--but why go further
into these details, which were so fully gone into in the journals
already mentioned? Suffice it to say that the old starling, in a new
gown and the first _toque_ she had ever worn, wept tears of pride at the
appearance of her pupils, and told them afterwards, most unwisely, that
the Misses Olivia and Martha Conroy could not hold a candle to them in
respect of good looks.
The twins--there is no gainsaying it--did look angelic, with their blue
eyes and fair hair, and the Misses Conroy, who were of the same sort of
age, were not so well favoured by nature; but that was no reason why
Joan should have told them that they were a plain-headed pair, and Nancy
that they had spoilt the whole show, when some trifling dispute arose
between them at the close of a long day's enthusiastic friendship. The
Misses Conroy, though deficient in beauty, were not slow in retort, and
but for the fine clothes in which all four were attired, it is to be
feared that the quarrel would have been pushed to extremes. It was a
regrettable incident, but fortunately took place in a retired corner of
the grounds, and stopped short of actual violence.
Jim Graham gave his sister away, and Dick acted as best man to his
brother, piloting him through the various pitfalls that befall a
bridegroom with the same cool efficiency as he displayed in all
emergencies, great or small. It was this characteristic which chiefly
differentiated him from his father, who may have been efficient, but was
not cool.
Jim Graham's eyes often rested on Cicely during the wedding ceremony.
She was by far the prettiest of the bridesmaids, and it was little
wonder if his thoughts went forward to the time when he and she would be
playing the leading part in a similar ceremony. But there was some
uneasiness mixed with these anticipations. Cicely was not quite the same
towards him as she had been before his journey, although since that
morning by the lake he had made no attempt to depart from the brotherly
intimacy which he had told himself was the best he had a right to until
he could claim her for his own. She had never seemed quite at her ease
with him, and he was beginning to follow up the idea, in his slow,
tenacious way, that his wooing, when he should be ready for it, would
have to be done all over again--that it might not be easy to claim her
for his own. And, of course, that made him desire her all the more, and
added in his eyes to her grace and girlish beauty.
Afterwards, in the house and on the lawn, where a band played and a tent
for refreshments had been put up, he talked to her whenever he could and
did his best to keep a cheerful, careless air, succeeding so well that
no one observing him would have guessed that he had some difficulty in
doing so. Except Cicely; she felt the constraint. She felt that he was
in process of marking the difference in her attitude towards him, and
was impatient of the slow, ruminating observation of which she would be
the object. As long as he was natural with her she would do her best to
keep up the same friendly and even affectionate relations which had
existed between them up to a year ago, but she could not help a slight
spice of irritation creeping into her manner in face of that subtle
change behind his ordinary address. She was trying to clear up her
thoughts on many matters, and Jim was the last person in the world to
help her. She wanted to be left alone. If only he would do that! It was
the only possible way by which he could gain the end which, even now,
she was not quite sure that she would refuse him in the long-run.
"Well, you needn't be snappy," Jim said to her, with a good-humoured
smile on his placid face when he had asked her for further details of
her visit to London.
She made herself smile in return. "Was I?" she said. "I didn't mean to
be; but I have been home nearly a month now, and I'm rather tired of
talking about London."
"All right," replied Jim. "I agree that this is a better place. Come and
have a look at the nags. There has been such a bustle that I haven't
been near them to-day."
But Cicely refused to go and look at the nags. Nags were rather a sore
point with her, and the constant inspection and weighing of the
qualities of those at Kencote was enough for her without the addition of
the stables at Mountfield. So they went back from the rose-garden where
they were standing to join the crowd on the lawn.
Aunt Ellen and Aunt Laura sat in the shade of a big cedar and held a
small reception. During their long lives they had been of scarcely any
account in the ebb and flow of Clinton affairs, but the tide of years
had shelved them on a little rock of importance, and they were paid
court to because of their age. Old Lord Meadshire was the only other
member of their generation left alive. He was their first cousin. His
mother had been the youngest of Merchant Jack's five daughters. He had
never failed to pay them courteous attention whenever he had been at
Kencote, and he was talking to them now, as Cicely joined them, of the
days when they were all young together. The two old ladies had quite
come to believe that they and their cousin Humphrey had spent a large
part of their childhood together, although he was fifteen years younger
than Aunt Ellen, and his visits to Kencote during his youth had been
extremely rare. Colonel Thomas had been too busy with his chosen
pursuits to have much time for interchange of social duties, proclaimed
himself a fish out of water, and behaved like one, whenever he went to
the house of his youngest sister, and had little to offer a lady of high
social importance and tastes in a visit to his own.
"Well, my dear," Lord Meadshire said to Cicely, as she approached, "I
was reminding your aunts of the time when we used to drive over from
Melford to Kencote in a carriage with postillions. Very few railways in
those days. We old people like to put our heads together and talk about
the past sometimes. I recollect my grandfather--_our_ grandfather," and
he bowed to the two old ladies--"Merchant Jack they used to call him
here, because he had made his money in the city as younger sons used to
do in those days, and are beginning to do again now, but they don't go
into trade as they did then; and he was born in the year of the Battle
of Culloden. That takes you back--what?"
"I recollect," said Aunt Ellen in a slow, careful voice, "when our Uncle
John used to come down to Kencote by the four-horse coach, and post from
Bathgate."
"Ah," said Lord Meadshire sympathetically, "I never saw my Uncle John,
to my knowledge, though he left me a hundred pounds in his will. I
recollect I spent it on a tie-pin. I was an extravagant young dog in
those days, my dear. You wouldn't have suspected me of spending a
hundred pounds on a tie-pin, would you?"
"Uncle John was very kind to us," said Aunt Laura. "There were six of
us, but he never came to the house without bringing us each a little
present."
"He was always dressed in black and wore a tie-wig," said Aunt Ellen.
"Our dear father and he were very dissimilar, but our father relied on
his judgment. It was he who advised him to send Edward to Bathgate
Grammar School."
"He would take a kind interest in our pursuits," said Aunt Laura, "and
would always walk with us and spend part of the day with us, however
occupied he might be with our father."
"Edward was very high-spirited as a child," said Aunt Ellen, "and our
dear father did not sufficiently realise that if he encouraged him to
break away from his lessons, which we all took it in turns to give him,
it made him difficult to teach."
"And when Uncle John went away in the morning he gave us each one a
present of five new sovereigns wrapped in tissue paper," said Aunt
Laura, "and he would say, 'That is to buy fal-lals with.'"
"So our Uncle John and our Uncle Giles, the Rector, persuaded our father
to send Edward to Bathgate Grammar School, where he remained until he
went to Eton, riding over there on Monday morning and returning home on
Saturday," concluded Aunt Ellen.
Lord Meadshire took his leave of the old ladies, and Aunt Ellen said, "I
am afraid that our cousin Humphrey is ageing. We do not see him as much
as we used to do. He was very frequently at Kencote in the old days, and
we were always pleased to see him. With the exception of your dear
father, there is no man for whom I have a greater regard."
"He is a darling," said Cicely. "He is as kind as possible to everybody.
Would you like me to get you anything, Aunt Ellen? I must go to Muriel
now."
"No thank you, my dear," said Aunt Ellen. "Your Aunt Laura and I have
had sufficient. We will just rest quietly in the shade, and I have no
doubt that some others of our kind friends will come and talk to us."
It was getting towards the time for the bride and bridegroom to depart
for their honeymoon, which they were to spend in Norway. Walter had had
no holiday of any sort that year and had thought the desire for solitude
incumbent on newly married couples might reasonably be conjoined with
the desire for catching salmon; and Muriel had agreed with him.
The men were beginning to show a tendency to separate from the ladies.
The Rector of Kencote and the Vicar of Melbury Park, a new friend of
Walter's who happened, as the Squire put it, to be a gentleman, were
talking together by the buffet under the tent. The Vicar, who was thin
and elderly, and looked jaded, was saying that the refreshment to mind
and spirit, to say nothing of body, which came from living close to
Nature was incalculable, and the Rector was agreeing with him, mentally
reserving his opinion that the real refreshment to mind and spirit, to
say nothing of body, was to be found, if a man were strong enough to
find it, in hard and never-ending work in a town.
At the other end of the buffet Dick and Humphrey and Jim Graham were
eating sandwiches and drinking champagne. They were talking of fishing,
with reference to Walter's approaching visit to a water which all four
of them had once fished together.
"It is rather sad, you know," said Humphrey. "Remember what a good time
we had, Jim? It'll never happen again. I hate a wedding. It'll be you
next."
Jim looked at him inscrutably. "Or Dick," he said.
Dick put down his glass. "I'm not a starter," he said. "I must go and
see that Walter doesn't forget to change his tie."
The Squire and Mrs. Clinton and Lord Conroy were in a group together on
the lawn. Lord Conroy, bluff and bucolic, was telling Mrs. Clinton about
his own marriage, fifteen years before. "Never thought I should do it,"
he said, "never. There was I, forty and more, but sound, Mrs. Clinton,
mind you, sound as a bell, though no beauty--ha, ha! And there was my
lady, twenty odd, as pretty as paint, and with half the young fellows in
London after her. I said, 'Come now, will you have me? Will you or won't
you? I'm not going near London,' I said, 'not once in five years, and I
don't like soup. Otherwise you'll have your own way and you'll find me
easy to get on with.' She took me, and here we are now. I don't believe
there's a happier couple in England. I believe in marrying, myself. Wish
I'd done it when I was a young fellow, only then I shouldn't have got my
lady. I'm very glad to see my niece married to such a nice young fellow
as your son--very glad indeed; and my sister tells me there's likely to
be another wedding in both families before long--eh? Well, I mustn't be
too inquisitive; but Jim's a nice young fellow too, a very nice young
fellow, though as obstinate as the devil about this Radical kink he's
got in his brain."
"Oh, he'll get over that," said the Squire. "It isn't sense, you know,
going against the best brains in the country; I tell him we're not _all_
likely to be wrong. And he's got a stake, too. It don't do to play old
Harry with politics when you've got a stake."
"Gad, no," assented Lord Conroy. "We've got to stand together. I'm
afraid your brother's against us, though, eh, Mrs. Clinton?"
"Oh, Herbert!" said the Squire. "He's a lawyer, and they can always make
white black if it suits 'em."
Mrs. Clinton flushed faintly, and Lord Conroy said, "He's a very rising
man, though, and not so advanced as some. He told me a story just now
about a judge and one of those Suffragettes, as they call 'em, and I
haven't heard such a good story for many a long day." And Lord Conroy
laughed very heartily, but did not repeat the story.
The carriage drove round to the door, the coachman and the horses
adorned with white favours, and the guests drifted towards the house and
into the big hall. Walter and Dick came down the staircase, and Muriel
and her mother and Cicely followed immediately afterwards. Muriel's eyes
were wet, but she was merry and talkative, and Mrs. Graham was more
brusque in her speech than usual, but very talkative too. Every one
crowded round them, and Walter had some difficulty in leading his bride
through the throng. There was laughter and hand-shaking and a general
polite uproar. At last they got themselves into the carriage, which
rolled away with them to their new life. It was really Joan and Nancy
who had conceived the idea of tying a pair of goloshes on behind, but
the Misses Conroy had provided them, one apiece, and claimed an equal
share in the suggestion. It was arising out of this that their quarrel
presently ensued, and they might not have quarrelled at all had not Miss
Bird told the twins in the hearing of their friends that where they had
learned such a vulgar notion passed her comprehension. It was really a
dispute that did all four young ladies very great credit.