HALF A MARRIAGE.
One request Judith had made, relative to her marriage, and one only,
after she had given way about the time when it was to take place, and
this request concerned the place. She desired to be married, not in
the parish church of S. Minver, but in that of S. Enodoc, in the yard
of which lay her father and mother, and in which her father had
occasionally ministered.
It was true that no great display could be made in a building
half-filled with sand, but neither Judith nor Coppinger, nor Aunt
Dionysia desired display, and Jump, the sole person who wished that
the wedding should be in full gala, was not consulted in the matter.
November scowled over sea and land, perverting the former into lead
and blighting the latter to a dingy brown.
The wedding-day was sad. Mist enveloped the coast, wreathed the
cliffs, drifted like smoke over the glebe, and lay upon the ocean,
dense and motionless, like a mass of cotton-wool. Not a smile of sun,
not a glimmer of sky, not a trace of outline in the haze overhead. The
air was full of minute particles of moisture flying aimlessly, lost to
all sense of gravity, in every direction. The mist had a fringe but no
seams, and looked as if it were as unrendable as felt. It trailed over
the soil, here lifting a ragged flock or tag of fog a few feet above
the earth, there dropping it again and smearing water over all it
touched. Vapor condensed on every twig and leaf, but only leisurely,
and slowly dripped from the ends of thorns and leaves; but the weight
of the water on some of the frosted and sickly foliage brought the
leaves down with it. Every stone in every wall was lined with trickles
of water like snail crawls. The vapor penetrated within doors, and
made all articles damp, of whatever sort they were. Fires were
reluctant to kindle, chimneys smoked. The grates and irons broke out
into eruptions of rust, mildew appeared on walls, leaks in roofs. The
slate floors became dark and moist. Forks and spoons adhered to the
hands of those who touched them, and on the keys of Mr. Menaida's
piano drops formed.
What smoke did escape from a chimney trailed down the roof. Decomposed
leaves exhaled the scent of decay. From every stack-yard came a musty
odor of wet straw and hay. Stable yards emitted their most fetid
exudations that oozed through the gates and stained the roads. The
cabbages in the kail-yards touched by frost announced that they were
in decomposition, and the turnips that they were in rampant
degeneration and rottenness. The very seaweed washed ashore
impregnated the mist with a flavor of degeneration.
The new rector, the Reverend Desiderius Mules had been in residence at
St. Enodoc for three months. He had received but a hundred and
twenty-seven pounds four and ninepence farthing for dilapidations, and
was angry, declared himself cheated, and vowed he would never employ
the agent Cargreen any more. And a hundred and twenty-seven pounds
four and ninepence farthing went a very little way in repairing and
altering the rectory to make it habitable to the liking of the
Reverend Desiderius. The Reverend Peter Trevisa and his predecessors
had been West Country men, and as such loved the sun, and chose to
have the best rooms of the house with a southern aspect. But the
Reverend Desiderius Mules had been reared in Barbadoes, and hated the
sun, and elected to have the best rooms of the house to look north.
This entailed great alterations. The kitchen had to be converted into
parlor, and the parlor into kitchen, the dining-room into scullery,
and the scullery into study, and the library enlarged to serve as
dining-room. All the down-stairs windows had to be altered. Mr.
Desiderius Mules liked to have French windows opening to the ground.
In the same manner great transformations were made in the garden.
Where Mr. Peter Trevisa had built up and planted a hedge there Mr.
Desiderius Mules opened a gate, and where the late rector had laid
down a drive there the new rector made garden beds. In the same manner
shrubberies were converted into lawns, and lawns into shrubberies.
The pump was now of no service outside the drawing-room window; it had
to be removed to the other side of the house, and to serve the pump
with water a new well had to be dug, and the old well that had
furnished limpid and wholesome water was filled up. The site of the
conservatory was considered the proper one for the well, and this
entailed the destruction of the conservatory. Removal was intended,
with a new aspect to the north, as a frigidarium, but when touched it
fell to pieces, and in so doing furnished Mr. Desiderius Mules with
much comment on the imposition to which he had been subjected, for he
had taken this conservatory at a valuation, and that valuation had
been for three pounds seven and fourpence ha'penny, whereas its real
value was, so he declared, three pounds seven and fourpence without
the ha'penny at the end or the three pounds before.
When the Reverend Desiderius Mules heard that Captain Coppinger and
Judith Trevisa were to be married in his church, "By Jove," said he,
"they shall pay me double fees as extra parochial. I shall get that
out of them at all events. I have been choused sufficiently."
A post-chaise from Wadebridge conveyed Judith, Miss Trevisa, Uncle
Zachie, and Jamie from Polzeath.
The bride was restless. At one moment she leaned back, then forward;
her eyes turned resolutely through the window at the fog. Her hands
plucked at her veil or at her gloves; she spoke not a word throughout
the drive. Aunt Dionysia was also silent. Opposite her sat Mr. Menaida
in blue coat with brass buttons, white waistcoat outside a colored
one, and white trousers tightly strapped. Though inclined to talk, he
was unable to resist the depressing influence of his vis-a-vis, Miss
Trevisa, who sat scowling at him with her thin lips closed. Jamie was
excited, but as no one answered him when he spoke he also lapsed into
silence.
When the church-yard gate of St. Enodoc was reached, Mr. Menaida
jumped out of the chaise with a sigh of relief, and muttered to
himself that, had he known what to expect, he would have brought his
pocket-flask with him, and have had a nip of cognac on the way.
A good number of sight-seers had assembled from Polzeath and St.
Enodoc, and stood in the church-yard, magnified by the mist to
gigantic size. Over the graves of drowned sailors were planted the
figure-heads of wrecked vessels, and these in the mist might have been
taken as the dead risen and mingling with the living to view this
dreary marriage.
The bride herself looked ghostlike, or as a waft of the fog, but
little condensed, blown through the graveyard toward the gap in the
church wall, and blown through that also within.
That gap was usually blocked with planks from a wreck, supported by
beams; when the church was to be put in requisition, then the beams
were knocked away, whereupon down clattered the boards and they were
tossed aside. It had been so done on this occasion, and the fragments
were heaped untidily among the graves under the church wall. The
clerk-sexton had, indeed, considered that morning, with his hands in
his pockets, whether it would be worth his while, assisted by the five
bell-ringers, to take this accumulation of wreckage and pile it
together out of sight, but he had thought that, owing to the fog, a
veil would be drawn over the disorder, and he might be saved this
extra trouble.
Within the sacred building, over his boots in sand, stamped, and
frowned, and paced, and growled the Reverend Desiderius Mules, in
surplice, hood, and stole, very ill at ease and out of humor because
the wedding-party arrived unpunctually, and he feared he might catch
cold from the wind and fog that drifted in through the hole in the
wall serving as door.
The sand within was level with the sills of the windows; it cut the
tables of commandments in half; had blotted away the majority of
inhibitions against marriage within blood relationship and marriage
kinship. The altar-rails were below the surface. The altar-table had
been fished up and set against the east wall, not on this day for the
marriage, but at some previous occasion. Then the sexton had placed
two pieces of slate under the feet on one side, and not having found
handy any other pieces, had thought that perhaps it did not matter.
Consequently the two legs one side had sunk in the sand, and the
altar-table formed an incline.
A vast number of bats occupied the church, and by day hung like little
moleskin purses from the roof. Complaints had been made of the
disagreeableness of having these creatures suspended immediately over
the head of the officiant, accordingly the sexton had knocked away
such as were suspended immediately above the altar and step--a place
where the step was, beneath the sand; but he did not think it
necessary to disturb those in other parts of the church. If they
inconvenienced others, it was the penalty of curiosity, coming to see
a wedding there. Toward the west end of the church some wooden
pew-tops stood above the sand, and stuck into a gimlet-hole in the top
rail of one was a piece of holly, dry and brown as a chip. It had been
put there as a Christmas decoration the last year that the church was
used for divine worship, at the feast of Noel; _when_ that was, only
the oldest men could remember. The sexton had looked at it several
times with his hands in his pockets and considered whether it were
worth while pulling his hands out and removing the withered fragment,
and carrying it outside the church, but had arrived at the conclusion
that it injured no one, and might therefore just as well remain.
There were fragments of stained glass in the windows, in the upper
light of the perpendicular windows saints and angels in white and gold
on ruby and blue grounds. In one window a fragment of a Christ on the
cross. But all were much obscured by cobwebs. The cobwebs, after
having entangled many flies, caught and retained many particles of
sand, became impervious to light and obscured the figures in the
painted glass. The sexton had looked at these cobwebs occasionally and
mused whether it would be worth his while to sweep them down, but as
he knew that the church was rarely used for divine offices, and never
for regular divine worship, he deemed that there was no crying
necessity for their destruction. Life was short, and time might be
better employed--to whit in talking to a neighbor, in smoking a pipe,
in drinking a pint of ale, in larruping his wife, in reading the
paper. Consequently the cobwebs remained.
Had Mr. Desiderius Mules been possessed of antiquarian tastes, he
might have occupied the time he was kept waiting in studying the
bosses of carved oak that adorned the wagon-roof of the church, which
were in some cases quaint, in the majority beautiful, and no two the
same. And he might have puzzled out the meaning of three rabbits with
only three ears between them forming a triangle, or three heads united
in one neck, a king, a queen, a bishop and a monk, or of a sow
suckling a dozen little pigs.
But Mr. Desiderius Mules had no artistic or archaeological faculty
developed in him. His one object on the present occasion was to keep
draught and damp from the crown of his head, where the hair was so
scanty as hardly to exist at all. He did not like to assume his hat in
the consecrated building, so he stamped about in the sand holding a
red bandanna handkerchief on the top of his head, and grumbling at the
time he was kept waiting, at the Cornish climate, at the way in which
he had been "choused" in the matter of dilapidations for the chancel
of the church, at the unintelligible dialect of the people, and at a
good many other causes of irritation, notably at a bat which had not
reverenced his bald pate, when he ventured beyond the range of the
sexton's sweeping.
Presently the clerk, who was outside, thrust in his head through the
gap in the wall, and in a stage whisper announced, "They's a-coming."
The Reverend Mules growled, "There ought to be a right to charge extra
when the parson is kept waiting--sixpence a minute, not a penny less.
But we are choused in this confounded corner of the world in every
way. Ha! there is a mildew-spot on my stole--all come of this
villainous damp."
In the tower stood five men, ready to pull the ropes and sound a merry
peal when the service was over, and earn a guinea. They had a firkin
of ale in a corner, with which to moisten their inner clay between
each round. Now that they heard that the wedding party had arrived
they spat on their hands and heaved their legs out of the sand.
Through the aperture in the wall entered the bridal party, a cloud of
fog blowing in with them and enveloping them. They stepped laboriously
through the fine sand, at this place less firm than elsewhere, having
been dug into daily by the late rector in his futile efforts to clear
the church.
Mr. Mules cast a suspicious look into the rafters above him to see
that no profane bat was there, and opened his book.
Mr. Menaida was to act as father to the bride, and there was no other
bride's-maid than Miss Trevisa. As they waded toward the alter,
Judith's strength failed, and she stood still. Then Uncle Zachie put
his arm round her and half carried her over the sand toward the place
where she must stand to give herself away. She turned her head and
thanked him with her eyes, she could not speak. So deathly was her
whiteness, so deficient in life did she seem, that Miss Trevisa looked
at her with some anxiety, and a little doubt whether she would be able
to go through the service.
When Judith reached her place, her eyes rested on the sand. She did
not look to her left side, she could hear no steps, for the sand
muffled all sound of feet, but she knew by the cold shudder that
thrilled through her, that Captain Coppinger was at her side.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here--now then order, if you
please, and quiet, we are twenty-five minutes after time," said Mr.
Desiderius Mules.
The first few words, seven in all were addressed to the wedding party,
the rest to a number of men and women and children who were stumbling
and plunging into the church through the improvised door, thrusting
each other forward, with a "get along," and "out of the road," all
eager to secure a good sight of the ceremony, and none able to hurry
to a suitable place because of the sand that impeded every step.
"Now then--I can't stay here all day!"
Mr. Mules sniffed and applied the bandanna to his nose, as an
indication that he was chilled, and that this rheum would be on the
heads of the congregation, were he made ill by this delay.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered," he began again, and he was now able
to proceed.
"Cruel," said he in loud and emphatic tones, "wilt thou have this
woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in
the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor,
and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep
thee only unto her so long as ye both shall live?"
The response of Coppinger went through the heart of Judith like a
knife. Then the rector addressed her. For answer she looked up at him
and moved her lips. He took her hand and placed it in that of
Coppinger. It was cold as ice and quivering like an aspen leaf. As
Captain Coppinger held it, it seemed to drag and become heavy in his
hand, whilst he pronounced the words after the rector, making oath to
take Judith as his own. Then the same words were recited to her, for
her to repeat in order after the priest. She began, she moved her
lips, looked him pleadingly in the face, her head swam, the fog filled
the whole church and settled between her and the rector. She felt
nothing save the grip of Coppinger's hand, and sank unconscious to the
ground.
"Go forward," said Cruel. Mr. Menaida and Aunt Dionysia caught Judith
and held her up. She could neither speak nor stir. Her lips were
unclosed, she seemed to be gasping for breath like one drowning.
"Go on," persisted Cruel, and holding her left hand he thrust the ring
on her fourth finger, repeating the words of the formula.
"I cannot proceed," said the Reverend Desiderius.
"Then you will have to come again to-morrow."
"She is unconscious," objected the rector.
"It is momentary only," said Aunt Dionysia; "be quick and finish."
Mr. Mules hesitated a moment. He had no wish to return in like weather
on another day; no wish again to be kept waiting five and twenty
minutes. He rushed at the remainder of the office and concluded it at
a hand gallop.
"Now," said he, "the registers are at the rectory. Come there."
Coppinger looked at Judith.
"Not to-day. It is not possible. She is ill--faint. To-morrow. Neither
she nor I nor the witnesses will run away. We will come to you
to-morrow."
Uncle Zachie offered to assist Judith from the church.
"No," said Cruel, peremptorily, "she is mine now."
She was able with assistance to walk, she seemed to recover for a
moment in the air outside, but again lapsed into faintness on being
placed in the chaise.
"To Pentyre Glaze," ordered Coppinger; "our home."