"WHOM GOD HATH JOINED ..."
They were to sail on the 23d, and ever since the big square invitation
had come it had been a foregone conclusion, conceded with no need
for wounding words, that there was no way out of attending the
Sommerville-Morrison wedding on the 21st. They kept, of course, no
constrained silence about it. Aunt Victoria detested the awkwardness
of not mentioning difficult subjects as heartily as she did the
mention of them; and as the tree toad evolves a skin to answer his
needs, she had evolved a method all her own of turning her back
squarely on both horns of a dilemma. No, there was no silence about
the wedding, only about the possibility that it might be an ordeal, or
that the ordeal might be avoided. It could not be avoided. There was
nothing to be said on that point. But there was much talk, during the
few days of their stay in New York, about the elaborate preparations
for the ceremony. Morrison, who came to see them in their temporary
quarters, kept up a somewhat satirical report as to the magnificence
of the performance, and on the one occasion when they went to see
Molly they found her flushed, excited, utterly inconsecutive,
distracted by a million details, and accepting the situation as the
normal one for a bride-to-be. There were heart-searchings as to
toilets to match the grandeur of the occasion; and later satisfaction
with the moss-green chiffon for Sylvia and violet-colored velvet for
her aunt. There were consultations about the present Aunt Victoria
was to send from them both, a wonderfully expensive, newly patented,
leather traveling-case for a car, guaranteed to hold less to the
square inch and pound than any other similar, heavy, gold-mounted
contrivance. Mrs. Marshall-Smith told Morrison frankly, in this
connection, that she had tried to select a present which Molly herself
would enjoy.
"Am I not to have a present myself?" asked Morrison. "Something that
you selected expressly for me?"
"No," said Sylvia, dropping the sugar into his tea with deliberation.
"You are not to have any present for yourself."
She was guiltily conscious that she was thinking of a certain scene in
"The Golden Bowl," a scene in which a wedding present figures largely;
and when, a moment later, he said, "I have a new volume of Henry James
I'd like to loan you," she knew that the same scene had been in his
head. She would not look at him lest she read in his eyes that he had
meant her to know. As she frequently did in those days, she rose, and
making an excuse of a walk in the park, took herself off.
She was quite calm during this period, her mind full of trivial
things. She had the firm conviction that she was living in a dream,
that nothing of what was happening was irrevocable. And besides, as at
Lydford, for much of the day, she was absorbed in the material details
of her life, being rubbed and dressed and undressed, and adorned and
fed and catered to. They were spending the few days before sailing in
a very grand hotel, overlooking Central Park. Sylvia had almost every
day the thought that she herself was now in the center of exactly the
same picture in which, as a child, she had enviously watched Aunt
Victoria. She adored every detail of it. It was an opening-out, even
from the Lydford life. She felt herself expanding like a dried sponge
placed in water, to fill every crack and crevice of the luxurious
habits of life. The traveling along that road is always swift; and
Sylvia's feet were never slow. During the first days in Vermont,
it had seemed a magnificence to her that she need never think of
dish-washing or bed-making. By this time it seemed quite natural to
her that Hélène drew and tempered the water for her bath, and put on
her stockings. Occasionally she noticed with a little surprise that
she seemed to have no more free time than in the laborious life of La
Chance; but for the most part she threw out, in all haste, innumerable
greedy root-tendrils into the surcharged richness of her new soil and
sent up a rank growth of easeful acquiescence in redundance.
The wedding was quite as grand as the Sommervilles had tried to make
it. The street was crowded with staring, curious, uninvited people on
either side of the church, and when the carriage containing the bride
drove up, the surge forward to see her was as fierce as though she had
been a defaulting bank-president being taken to prison. The police
had to intervene. The interior, fern and orchid swathed, very dimly
lighted by rich purple stained glass and aristocratic dripping wax
candles instead of the more convenient electric imitations, was
murmurous with the wonderful throbbing notes of a great organ and with
the discreet low tones of the invited guests as they speculated about
the relative ages and fortunes of the bride and bridegroom. The
chancel was filled with a vested choir which, singing and carrying a
cross, advanced down the aisle to meet the bridal party. Molly, who
had not been in a church since her childhood, had needed to be coached
over and over again in the ins and outs of the complicated service.
Sylvia, seated several guests away from the aisle, saw little of the
procession as it went up into the chancel. She caught a glimpse of a
misty mass of white and, beside it, old Mr. Sommerville's profile,
very white and nervous and determined. She did not at that time see
the bridegroom at all. The ceremony, which took place far within the
chancel, was long and interspersed with music from the choir. Sylvia,
feeling very queer and callous, as though, under an anaesthetic, she
were watching with entire unconcern the amputation of one of her
limbs, fell to observing the people about her. The woman in front of
her leaned against the pew and brought her broad, well-fed back close
under Sylvia's eyes. It was covered with as many layers as a worm in
a cocoon. There were beads on lace, the lace incrusted on other lace,
chiffon, fish-net, a dimly seen filmy satin, cut in points, and, lower
down, an invisible foundation of taffeta. Through the interstices
there gleamed a revelation of the back itself, fat, white, again like
a worm in a cocoon.
Sylvia began to plan out a comparison of dress with architecture,
bringing out the insistent tendency in both to the rococo, to the
burying of structural lines in ornamentation. The cuff, for instance,
originally intended to protect the skin from contact with unwashable
fabrics, degenerated into a mere bit of "trimming," which has lost all
its meaning, which may be set anywhere on the sleeve. Like a strong
hand about her throat came the knowledge that she was planning to say
all this to please Felix Morrison, who was now within fifty feet of
her, being married to another woman.
She flamed to fever and chilled again to her queer absence of
spirit.... There was a chorister at the end of the line near her, a
pale young man with a spiritual face who chanted his part with shining
rapt eyes. While he sang he slipped his hand under his white surplice
and took out his watch. Still singing "Glory be to the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost," he cast a hasty eye on the watch and frowned
impatiently. He was evidently afraid the business in hand would drag
along and make him late to another appointment, "--is now and ever
shall be, world without end. Amen!" he sang fervently. Sylvia
repressed an hysterical desire to laugh.
The ceremony was over; the air in the building beat wildly against the
walls, the stained-glass windows, and the ears of the worshipers in
the excited tumult of the wedding-march; the procession began to
leave the chancel. This time Sylvia caught one clear glimpse of the
principals, but it meant nothing to her. They looked like wax effigies
of themselves, self-conscious, posed, emptied of their personalities
by the noise, the crowds, the congestion of ceremony. The idea
occurred to Sylvia that they looked as though they had taken in as
little as she the significance of what had happened. The people about
her were moving in relieved restlessness after the long immobility of
the wedding. The woman next her went down on her knees for a devout
period, her face in her white gloves. When she rose, she said
earnestly to her companion, "Do you know if I had to choose one
hat-trimming for all the rest of my life, I should make it small pink
roses in clusters. It's perfectly miraculous how, with black chiffon,
they _never_ go out!" She settled in place the great cluster of costly
violets at her breast which she seemed to have exuded like some
natural secretion of her plump and expensive person. "Why don't they
let us out!" she said complainingly.
A young man, one of those born to be a wedding usher, now came swiftly
up the aisle on patent leather feet and untied with pearl-gray fingers
the great white satin ribbon which restrained them in the pew. Sylvia
caught her aunt's eye on her, its anxiety rather less well hidden than
usual. With no effort at all the girl achieved a flashing smile. It
was not hard. She felt quite numb. She had been present only during
one or two painful, quickly passed moments.
But the reception at the house, the big, old-fashioned, very rich
Sommerville house, was more of an ordeal. There was the sight of the
bride and groom in the receiving-line, now no longer badly executed
graven images, but quite themselves--Molly starry-eyed, triumphant,
astonishingly beautiful, her husband distinguished, ugly,
self-possessed, easily the most interesting personality in the room;
there was the difficult moment of the presentation, the handclasp with
Felix, the rapturous vague kiss from Molly, evidently too uplifted to
have any idea as to the individualities of the people defiling before
her; then the passing on into the throng, the eating and drinking and
talking with acquaintances from the Lydford summer colony, of whom
there were naturally a large assortment. Sylvia had a growing sense of
pain, which was becoming acute when across the room she saw Molly,
in a lull of arrivals, look up to her husband and receive from him a
smiling, intimate look of possession. Why, they were _married_! It was
done!
The delicate food in Sylvia's mouth turned to ashes.
Mrs. Marshall-Smith's voice, almost fluttered, almost (for her)
excited, came to her ears: "Sylvia--here is Mr. Page! And he's just
told me the most delightful news, that he's decided to run over to
Paris for a time this fall."
"I hope Miss Marshall will think that Paris will be big enough for all
of us?" asked Austin Page, fixing his remarkably clear eyes on the
girl.
She made a great effort for self-possession. She turned her back on
the receiving-line. She held out her hand cordially. "I hope Paris
will be quite, quite small, so that we shall all see a great deal of
each other," she said warmly.