Estelle's wedding was a great success, but this was not surprising when
one realized how many years had been spent in preparation for it.
Estelle was only twenty-three, but for the last ten years she had known
that she would marry, and she had thought out every detail of the
ceremony except the bridegroom. You could have any kind of a
bridegroom--men were essentially imperfect--but you need have only one
kind of ceremony, and that could be ideal.
Estelle had visualized everything from the last pot of lilies--always
Annunciation ones, not Arum, which look pagan--at the altar to the red
cloth at the door. There were to be rose-leaves instead of rice; the
wedding was to be in June, with a tent in the garden and strawberries.
If possible, she would be married by a bishop; if not, by a dean. The
bishop having proved too remote, the dean had to do. But he was a
fine-looking man, and would be made a bishop soon, so Estelle did not
really mind. The great thing was to have gaiters on the lawn afterward.
The day was perfect. Estelle woke at her usual hour in the morning, her
heart was beating a little faster than it generally did, and then she
remembered with a pang of joy the perfect fit of her wedding-gown
hanging in the wardrobe. She murmured to herself:
"One love, one life." She was not thinking of Winn, but she had always
meant to say that on her wedding morning.
Then she had early tea. Her mother came in and kissed her, and Estelle
implored her not to fuss, and above all not to get red in the face
before going to church, where she was to wear a mauve hat.
It was difficult for Mrs. Fanshawe not to fuss, Estelle was the most
expensive of her children and in a way the most important; for if she
wasn't pleased it was always so dreadful. There were half a dozen
younger children and any of them might do something tiresome.
Estelle arrived at the church five minutes late, on her father's arm,
followed by four little bridesmaids in pink and white, and four little
pages in blue and white. The effect was charming.
The village church was comfortably full, and with her eyes modestly cast
down Estelle managed to see that all the right people were there,
including the clergyman's daughters, whom she had always hated.
The Fanshawes and her mother's relations the Arnots had come down from
town. They all looked very prosperous people with good dressmakers and
tailors, and most of them had given her handsome silver wedding presents
or checks.
They were on one side of the church just as Estelle had always pictured
them, and on the other were the Staines and their relations. The Staines
had very few friends, and those they had were hard riding, hunting
people, who never look their best in satin. There was no doubt that the
Staines sitting in the front seat were a blot on the whole affair.
You couldn't tell everybody that they were a county family, and they
didn't look like it. They were too large and coarse, and took up far
too much room. There they sat, six big creatures in one pew, all
restless, all with big chins, hard eyes, jutting eyebrows, and a
dreadful look as if they were buccaneering. As a matter of fact they all
felt rather timid and flat, and meant to behave beautifully, though Sir
Peter needn't have blown his nose like a trumpet and stamped
simultaneously just as Estelle entered.
At the top of the aisle Winn waited for his bride; and his boots were
dusty. Standing behind him was the handsomest man that Estelle had ever
seen; and not only that, but the very kind of man she had always wished
to see. It made Estelle feel for a moment like a good housekeeper, who
has not been told that a distinguished guest was coming to dinner. If
she had known, she would have ordered something different. She felt in a
flash that he was the kind of bridegroom who would have suited the
ceremony.
He was several inches taller than Winn, slim, with a small athletic head
and perfectly cut Greek features; his face would have been a shade too
regular and too handsome if he had not had the very same hard-bitten
look in his young gray eyes that Winn had in his bright, hawk-like
brown ones. Lionel was looking at Estelle as she came up the aisle in a
tender, protective, admiring way, as if she were a very beautiful
flower. This was most satisfactory, but at least Winn might have done
the same. Instead of looking as if he were waiting for his bride, he
looked exactly as if he were holding a narrow pass against an enemy. His
very figure had a peculiarly stern and rock-like expression. His broad
shoulders were set, his rather heavy head erect, and when he did look at
Estelle, it was an inconceivably sharp look as if he were trying to see
through her.
She didn't know, of course, that on his way to church he had thought
every little white cloud in the blue sky was like her, and every lily in
a cottage garden. There was a drop of sardonic blood in him, that made
him challenge her even at the moment of achieved surrender.
"By Jove," he thought to himself, "can she be as beautiful as she
looks?"
Then the service began, and they had the celebration first, and
afterward the usual ceremony, perfectly conducted, and including the
rather over-exercised "Voice that Breathed o'er Eden." The dean gave
them an excellent, short and evasive address about their married duties,
a great deal nicer than anything in the Prayer Book, and the March from
Lohengrin took them to the vestry. In the vestry Winn began to be
tiresome. The vicar said:
"Kiss the bride," and Winn replied:
"No, thanks; not at present," looking like a stone wall, and sticking
his hands in his pockets. The vicar, who had known him from a boy, did
not press the point; but of course the dean looked surprised. Any dean
would.
The reception afterwards would have been perfect but for the Staines,
who tramped through everything. Estelle perpetually saw them bursting
into places where they weren't wanted, and shouting remarks which
sounded abusive but were meant to be cordial to cowering Fanshawes and
Arnots. It was really not necessary for Sir Peter to say in the middle
of the lawn that what Mr. Fanshawe wanted was more manure.
It seemed to Estelle that wherever she went she heard Sir Peter's
resonant voice talking about manure.
Lady Staines was much quieter; still she needn't have remarked to
Estelle's mother, "Well--I'm glad to see you have seven children, _that_
looks promising at any rate." It made two unmarried ladies of uncertain
age walk into a flower-bed.
Winn behaved abominably. He took the youngest Fanshawe child and
disappeared with him into the stable yard.
Even Charles and James behaved better than that. They hurled well-chosen
incomprehensible jokes at the clergyman's daughters--dreadful girls who
played hockey and had known the Staines all their lives--and these
ladies returned their missiles with interest.
It caused a good deal of noise, but it sounded hearty.
Isabella, being a clergyman's wife, talked to the Dean, who soon looked
more astonished than ever.
At last it was all comfortably over. Estelle, leaning on her father's
arm in pale blue, kissed her mother. Mrs. Fanshawe looked at the end
rather tactlessly cheerful. (She had cried throughout the ceremony,
just when she had worn the mauve hat and Estelle had hoped she
wouldn't.)
Mr. Fanshawe behaved much more suitably; he said to Winn with a
trembling voice, "Take care of my little girl," and Winn, who might have
said something graceful in reply, merely shook his father-in-law's hand
with such force that Mr. Fanshawe, red with pain, hastily retreated.
Lionel Drummond was charming and much appreciated everywhere; he
retrieved Winn from the stable yard when no one could guess where he
was, and was the first person to call Estelle, Mrs. Staines; he wound up
the affair with a white satin slipper.
When they drove off, Estelle turned toward Winn with shining eyes and
quivering lips. It was the moment for a judicious amount of love-making,
and all Winn said was:
"Look here, you know, those high-heeled things on your feet are
absolutely murderous. They might give you a bad tumble. Don't let me see
you in 'em again. Are you sure you're quite comfortable, and all that?"
He made the same absurd fuss about Estelle's comfort in the railway
carriage; but it was one of the last occasions on which he did it,
because he discovered almost immediately that however many things you
could think of for Estelle's comfort, she could think of more for
herself, and no matter how much care or attention was lavished upon her,
it could never quite equal her unerring instinct for her own
requirements.
After this he was prepared to be ardent, but Estelle didn't care for
ardor in a railway train, so she soon stopped it. One of the funny
things she discovered about Winn was that it was the easiest possible
thing to stop his ardor, and this was really odd, because it was not
from lack of strength in his emotion. She never quite discovered what it
did come from, because it didn't occur to her that Winn would very much
rather have died than offend or tire the woman he loved.
She thought that Winn was rather coarse, but he wasn't as coarse as
that!
Estelle had a great deal that she wanted to talk over about the wedding.
The whole occasion flamed out at her--a perfect project, perfectly
carried out. She explained to Winn at length who everybody was and how
there had been some people there who had had to be taken down, and
others who had had to be pushed forward, and her mother explained to,
and her father checked, and the children (it was too dreadful how they'd
let Bobby run after Winn), kept as much out of the way as possible.
Winn listened hard and tried to follow intelligently all the family
histories she evolved for him. At last after a rather prolonged pause on
his part, just at a point when he should have expressed admiration of
her guidance of a delicate affair, Estelle glanced at him and discovered
that he was asleep! They hadn't been married for three hours, and he
could go to sleep in the middle of their first real talk! She was sure
Lionel Drummond wouldn't have done any such thing. But Winn was old--he
was thirty-five--and she could see quite plainly now that the hair round
the tops of his ears was gray. She looked at him scornfully, but he
didn't wake up.
When he woke up he laughed.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I believe I've been to sleep!" but he didn't
apologize. He began instead to tell her some things that might interest
her, about what Drummond, his best man, and he, had done in Manchuria,
just as if nothing had happened; but naturally Estelle wouldn't be
interested. She was first polite, then bored, then captious. Winn looked
at her rather hard. "Are you trying to pay me back for falling asleep?"
he asked with a queer little laugh. "Is that what you're up to?" Estelle
stiffened.
"Certainly not," she said. "I simply wasn't very interested. I don't
think I like Chinese stories, and Manchuria is just the same, of
course."
Winn leaned over her, with a wicked light in his eyes, like a naughty
school boy. "Own up!" he said, laying his rough hand very gently on her
shoulder. "Own up, old lady!"
But has anybody ever owned up when they were being spiteful?
Estelle didn't. She looked at Winn's hand till he withdrew it, and then
she remarked that she was feeling faint from want of food.
After she had had seven chicken sandwiches, pate de foie gras, half a
melon, and some champagne, she began to be agreeable.
Winn was delighted at this change in her and quite inclined to think
that their little "breeze" had been entirely due to his own awkwardness.
Still, he wished she had owned up.