OF A MARRIAGE BY SPECIAL LICENCE. ROSALIND'S COMPARISONS. OF THE THREE
BRIDESMAIDS, AND HOW THE BRIDE WAS A GOOD SAILOR
But it never occurred to Dr. Vereker that the voice of the smoking
gentleman, whose "_she_" knew a couple that had been cooked at a
registry office, was a voice quite familiar to him. The only effect
it had on his Sally-dazed mind was to make him wonder four hours after
what it was that kept putting Julius Bradshaw into his head. If a
brain-molecule could have been found not preoccupied with Sally he
might have been able to give her next day a suggestive hint about
a possibility ahead. But never a word said he to Sally; and when,
on her return from bathing the following morning, Mrs. Lobjoit, the
fisherman's wife, surprised her with the news that "the young lady"
had come and had left her luggage, but would be back in half-an-hour,
she was first taken aback, and thought it was a mistake next. But
no--no chance of that! The young lady had asked for Mrs. Algernon
Fenwick, or, in default, for Miss Sally, quite distinctly. She hadn't
said any name, but there was a gentleman with her. Mrs. Lobjoit
seemed to imply that had there been no gentleman she might have been
nameless. Padlock's omnibus they came in.
So Sally went on being taken aback where she had left off, and was
still pondering over the phenomenon when her mother followed her
through the little yard paved with round flints bedded in mortar--all
except the flower-beds, which were in this case marigold-beds and
fuschia-beds and tamarisk-shakedowns--and the street door which always
stood open, and it was very little use ringing, the bell being broken.
But you could pass through, and there would always be old Mr. Lobjoit
in the kitchen, even if Mrs. Lobjoit was not there herself.
"Why not look on the boxes, you stupid kitten? There's a name on them,
or ought to be." Thus Rosalind, after facts told.
"What a thing it is to have a practical maternal parent!" Thus Sally.
And Mrs. Lobjoit put on record with an amiable smile that that is what
she kept saying to Miss Nightingale, "Why not look?" Whereas the fact
is Mrs. Lobjoit never said anything of the sort.
"Here's a go!" says Sally, who gets at the label-side of the trunk
first. "If it isn't Tishy!" And the mother and daughter look at each
other's faces, each watching the other's theory forming of what this
sudden apparition means.
"What do you think, mother?"
"What do _you_ think, kitten?" But the truth is, both wanted time
to know what to think. And they hadn't got much forwarder with the
solution of the problem when a light was thrown upon it by the sudden
apparition of Lætitia herself, accompanied by the young gentleman
whom Sally did not scruple to speak of--but not in his presence--as
her counter-jumper. She did this, she said, to "pay Tishy out" for
what she had said about him before she made his acquaintance.
The couple were in a mixed state of exaltation and confusion--Tishy
half laughing, a third crying, and a sixth keeping up her dignity.
Both were saying might they come in, and doing it without waiting for
an answer.
Rosalind's remark was one of those nonsequences often met with in real
life: "There's enough lunch--or we can send out." Sally's was: "But
are you the Julius Bradshaws, or are you not? That's what _I_ want to
know." Sally won't be trifled with, not she!
"Well, Sally dear, no,--we're not--not just yet." Tishy hesitates.
Julius shows firmness.
"But we want to be at two o'clock this afternoon, if you'll come...."
"Both of us?"
"Why--of course, both of you."
"Then Mrs. Lobjoit will have to be in time with lunch." It does not
really matter who were the speakers, nor what the share of each was
in the following aggregate:
"How did you manage to get it arranged?" "Why _now_? Have you
quarrelled with your mother?" "How long can you be away? I hate a
stingy honeymoon!" "You've got no things." "Do you think they'll know
at home where you are?" "Where are you going afterwards?" "What do you
think your father will say?" "What I want to know is, what put it into
your head _now_, more than any other time?"
Responses to the whole of which, much at random, are incorporated in
what follows: "Julius isn't wanted for three weeks." "I'm sure the
Professor's on our side, really." "I left a letter to tell them,
anyhow." "Calais. We shan't be sick, in weather like this. We'll cross
by the night boat." "I've got a new dress to be married in, and a new
umbrella--oh yes, and other things." "I'll tell you the whole story,
Sally dear, as soon as I've had time to turn round." "No--not
quarrelled--at least, no more than usual." "Special licence, of course."
What time Vereker, who had been to the post-office, which sold all
sorts of things, to inquire if they had a packet of chemical oatmeal
(the only thing his mother could digest this morning), and was coming
back baffled, called in on his way to Mrs. Iggulden's. Not to see
Sally, but only to take counsel with the family about chemical
oatmeal. By a curious coincident, the moment he heard of Miss Sales
Wilson's arrival, he used Sally's expression, and said that there was
"a go!" Perhaps there was, and that accounted for it.
"Here's Dr. Conrad--he'll have to come too." Thus Sally explicitly.
To which he replied, "All right. Where?" Sally replied with gravity:
"To see these two married by special licence." And Julius added: "You
_must_ come, doctor, to be my bottle-holder."
A small undercurrent of thought in the doctor's mind, in which he can
still accommodate passing events and the world's trivialities, begins
to receive impressions of the facts of the case. The great river
called Sally flows steadily on, on its own account, and makes and
meddles not. It despises other folk's petty affairs. Dr. Conrad
masters the position, and goes on to draw inferences.
"Then that must have been _you_ last night, Bradshaw?"
"I dare say it was. When?"
"Walking up and down with another fellow in front here. Smoking
cigars, both of you."
"Why didn't you sing out?"
"Well, now--why didn't I?" He seems a little unable to account for
himself, and no wonder. "I think I recollected it was like you after
you had gone."
"Don't be a brain-case, Dr. Conrad. What would your patients say if
they heard you go on like that?" Sally said this, of course. Her
mother thought to herself that perhaps the patients would send for
a married doctor.
But her mind was taking no strong hold on the current of events,
considering what a very vital human interest was afloat on them. It
was wandering back to another wedding-day--her own first wedding-day
of twenty years ago. As she looked at this bridegroom--all his
upspring of hope making light of such fears as needs must be in like
case all the world over--he brought back to her vividly, for all he
was so unlike him, the face of the much younger man who had met her
that day at Umballa, whose utter freedom from suspicion as he welcomed
her almost made her able to forget the weeks gone by--the more so that
they were like a dream in Hell, and their sequel like an awakening in
Paradise. Well, at any rate, she had recaptured this man from Chaos,
and he was hers again. And she had Sally. But at the word the whole
world reeled and her feet were on quicksands. What and whence was
Sally?
At least this was true--there was no taint of her father there! Sally
wasn't an angel--not a bit of it--no such embarrassment to a merely
human family. But her mother could see her truth, honour, purity--call
it what you will--in every feature, every movement. As she stood
there, giving injunctions to Vereker to look alive or he'd be late,
her huge coil of sea-soaked black hair making her white neck look
whiter, and her white hands reestablishing hair-pins in the depths of
it, she seemed the very incarnation of non-inheritance. Not a trace of
the sire her mother shuddered to think of in the music of her voice,
in the laughter all who knew her felt in the mirth of her eyebrows and
the sparkle of her pearly teeth. All her identity was her own. If only
it could have been known then that she was going to be Sally!... But
how fruitless all speculation was!
"Perhaps mother knows. Chemical oatmeal, mother, for invalids and
persons of delicate digestion? They haven't got it at Pemberton's."
The eyes and the teeth flash round on her mother, and in a twinkling
the unhallowed shadow of the past is gone. It was only a moment in
all, though it takes more to record it. Rosalind came back to the life
of the present, but she knew nothing about chemical oatmeal. Never
mind. The doctor would find out. And he would be sure to be in time.
He was in time--plenty of time, said public opinion. And the couple
were duly married, and went away in Padlock's omnibus to catch
the train for Dover in time for the boat. And Dr. Conrad's eyes
were on the eldest bridesmaid. For, after all, two others were
obtained--jury-bridesmaids they might be called--in the persons of
Miss Gwendolen Arkwright and an even smaller sister, who were somehow
commandeered by Sally's enterprise, and bribed with promises of
refreshment. But the smaller sister was an erring sister, for having
been told she was on no account to speak during the service, she
was suddenly struck with the unfairness of the whole thing, and,
pointing at St. Sennans' arch-priest, said very audibly that _he_
was "peatin'," so why wasn't she to "peat"? However, it was a very
good wedding, and there was no doubt the principals had really become
the Julius Bradshaws. They started from Dover on a sea that looked
like a mill-pond; but Tishy's husband afterwards reported that the
bride sat with her eyes shut the last half of the _trajet_, and said,
"Don't speak to me, and I shall be all right."
* * * * *
That summer night Rosalind and her daughter were looking out over the
reputed mill-pond at the silver dazzle with the elves in it. The moon
had come to the scratch later than last night, from a feeling of what
was due to the almanac, which may (or must) account for an otherwise
enigmatical remark of Sally's, who, when her mother wondered what time
it was, replied: "I don't know--it's later than it was yesterday." But
did that matter, when it was the sort of night you stopped out all
night on, according to Sally. They came to an anchor on a seat facing
the sea, and adjourned human obligation _sine die_.
"I wonder if they've done wisely." Rosalind represents married
thoughtfulness.
Sally shelves misgivings of this sort by reflections on the common lot
of humanity, and considers that it will be the same for them as every
one else.
"_They_'ll be all right," she says, with cheerful optimism. "I wonder
what's become of Prosy."
"He's up there with his mother. I saw him at the window. But I didn't
mean that: they'll be happy enough together, I've no doubt. I mean,
has Lætitia done wisely to quarrel with her family?"
"She hasn't; it's only the she-dragon. Tishy told me all about it
going to church."
* * * * *
And, oh dear, how poor Prosy, who was up there with his mother, did
long to come out to the voices he could hear plain enough, even as
far off as that! But then he had been so long away to-day, and he
knew his excellent parent always liked to finish the tale of her own
wedding-day when she began it--as she often did. So he listened again
to the story of the wedding, which was celebrated in the severest
thunderstorm experienced in these islands since the days of
Queen Elizabeth, by a heroic clergyman who was suffering from
pleuro-pneumonia, which made his voice inaudible till a miraculous
chance produced one of Squilby's cough lozenges (which are not to be
had now for love or money), and cured him on the spot. And how the
bridesmaids all had mumps, more or less. And much concerning the
amazingly dignified appearance of her own father and mother, which
was proverbial, and therefore no matter of surprise to any one, the
proverb being no doubt well known to Europe.
But there, it didn't matter! Sally would be there to-morrow.