Pauline's wedding-day dawned gloriously bright and beautiful. The whole
village was up and doing, very early, putting the finishing touches to
the decorations.
The widower shoemaker and his children, and the woman who washed
them--the children, I mean--on Saturdays, had all combined to erect a
triumphal arch of, great splendor, and the woman showed such sensibility
in the choice of mottoes, and such a nice appreciation of the joys of
matrimony, together with a decided leaning towards the bridegroom's
side of the arch, that the shoemaker suggested that she should suit her
actions to her words--that was how he expressed it--and marry him, which
she agreed to do. But she afterwards explained, in breaking the news to
her friends, that they could have knocked her down with a leaf! Whether
this was due to the weakened state of her heart, or to her precarious
position on the ladder, I do not know.
Everybody and everything was in a bustle, with the exception of Aunt
Cecilia, who sat through it all as calm and as beautiful as ever. Not
that she did not feel parting with Pauline, but her love for everybody
and everything was of a nature so purely unselfish that it never
occurred to her to count the cost to herself.
I have never met any one who so completely combines in her character
gentleness and strength as does Aunt Cecilia: so gentle in spirit and
judgment, and so strong in her fight for principles and beliefs. If she
has a weakness, and I could never wish any one I love to be without one,
it lies in her love for Patience. She does not think it right to play in
the morning, but sometimes, being unable to withstand the temptation of
so doing, she plays it in an empty drawer of her writing-table, and if
she hears any one coming, she can close the drawer!
Her greatest interest in life, next to her husband and children, is her
garden and other people's gardens. In fact, she looks at life generally
from a gardening point of view, and is apt to regard men as gardeners,
possible gardeners, or gardeners wasted. As gardeners they have their
very distinct use, and as such deserve every consideration, but if a
man will not till the soil, he is a cumberer thereof. She, at least,
inclines that way in thought. Life, she says, is a garden, children the
flowers, parents the gardeners. "If we treated children as we do roses,
they would be far happier. We don't call roses naughty when they grow
badly and refuse to flower as they ought to; we blame the gardeners or
the soil."
"But, Aunt Cecilia," I say, "one can recommend an unsatisfactory
gardener to a friend, but one can't so dispose of unsatisfactory
parents."
"You must educate them, dear."
Now all this sounds very convincing when said by Aunt Cecilia, because,
for one thing, she says it very charmingly, and for another, she is
still a very beautiful woman. She is too fond, perhaps, of extinguishing
her beauty under a large mushroom hat, and is given to bending too much
over herbaceous borders, and so hiding her beautiful face. But I dare
say the flowers love to look at it, and to see mirrored in it their own
loveliness.
Aunt Cecilia wears a bonnet sometimes, and thereby hangs a tale. So few
aunts wear a bonnet nowadays that the fact of one doing so is almost
worth chronicling. She doesn't wear it very often, only at the
christenings of the head gardener's babies. From a christening point of
view that is very often, but from a bonnet point of view I suppose it
might be called seldom--once a year? I know that bonnet well, because it
has been sent to me often for renovation. On one particular occasion
it arrived in a cardboard box. On the top of the bonnet was a bunch of
flowers, beautiful enough to make any bonnet accompanying it welcome, in
whatever state of dilapidation. Aunt Cecilia has a knack of sending
just the right sort of flowers, and they always bring a message, which
everybody's flowers don't do.
The bonnet I renovated to the best of my ability and sent it back. In
the course of a few days I received a slightly agitated note from Aunt
Cecilia. "It doesn't suit me, dearest, and after all the trouble you
have taken!"
Knowing Aunt Cecilia, I wrote back, "Did you try it on in bed with your
hair down?"
She answered by return, "Dearest, I did! It really suits me very well
now that I have tried it on in my right mind. I am going to wear it
at the last little Shrub's christening, this afternoon. It is just in
time."
When David and Diana were singled out by night for the particular
attention of a burglar, Aunt Cecilia wrote to sympathize and said, "I am
so thankful, dearest, David did not meet the poor, misguided man!"
May we all be judged as tenderly!
This is a digression, but it perhaps explains Pauline and Pauline's
wedding, and the joy with which all the people in the village entered
into it.
The strangest people kept on arriving the morning of the wedding. It was
verily a gathering of the halt, the lame, and the blind--all friends of
Pauline's. Whenever Uncle Jim was particularly overcome, it was sure to
mean that some old soldier, officer or otherwise, had turned up, who had
served with him in some part of the world, long before Pauline was born.
Aunt Cecilia welcomed them all in her inimitable manner, which made each
one feel that he was the one and most particularly honored guest. For
all her apparent absent-mindedness, she knew exactly who belonged to
Mrs. Bunce's department and who not.
Mrs. Bunce, the old housekeeper, was very busy, every button doing its
duty! A wedding didn't come her way every day. The sisters-in-law, of
course, came with their belongings.
Zerlina was distressed at the nature of many of the presents; and
wondered if Pauline would have enough spare rooms to put them in; which
showed how little she knew her. If Pauline had told her that she valued
the alabaster greyhound under a glass case, subscribed for by the
old men and women in the village, over seventy, Zerlina wouldn't have
believed her any more than did old Mrs. Barker when Diana told her Sara
was named after a dear old housemaid and not after the Duchess.
Betty and Hugh were among the bridesmaids and pages, and Hugh shocked
Betty very much by saying, in the middle of the service "When may I play
with my girl?"
Some one described Uncle Jim as looking like one of the Apostles, and
Aunt Cecilia certainly looked like a saint. Ought I, by the way, to
bracket an apostle and a saint? But nothing was so wonderful or so
beautiful as the expression on Pauline's face. I am sure that, as she
walked up the aisle, she was oblivious to everything and every one
except God and Dick.
It is assuredly a great responsibility for a man to accept such a love
as hers.
A wedding is nearly always a choky thing, and Pauline's was particularly
so. As she left the church, she stopped in the churchyard to speak to
her friends, and for one old woman she waited to let her feel her dress.
"Is it my jewels you want to feel, Anne?" she said, as the old hands
tremblingly passed over her bodice. "I have on no jewels."
The old hands went up to Pauline's face and gently and reverently
touched it. "God bless her happy face," said the old woman. "I had to
know for sure." Pauline kissed the old fingers gently. We all knew for
sure, but then we had eyes to see.
Pauline went away in the afternoon, and the villagers danced far into
the evening, and there was revelry in the park by night.
After Pauline and Dick had gone away, I walked across the park to
the post office to send a telegram to Julia, who was kept at home by
illness, to her very great disappointment. There is nothing she adores
like a wedding. I was glad to escape for a few minutes. I wrote out the
telegram and handed it to the postmaster, who, reading it, said, I'm
glad it went off so well. "There's nobody what wouldn't wish her well."
Then he counted the words. "Julia Westby?" he said. "Um-um-um-um.
Eleven, miss. You might as well give her the title." I laughed and
added, or rather he added, the "Lady."
Julia is not a sister-in-law really, but she likes to call herself so,
since she might have been one, having been for one ecstatic week in
Archie's life engaged to him. She is wont now to lay her hand on his
head, in public, for choice, and say, "He was almost mine." She says
she still loves him as a friend. "But, you see, dearest Betty, there is
everything that is delightful in the relationship of a poor friend, but
a poor husband! That is another thing. To begin with, it is not fair
to a man that he should have to deny his wife things. It is bad for his
character and, of course, for hers. He becomes a saint at her expense,
whereas the expense should always be borne by the husband. William is so
delightfully rich, but he is not an Archie, of course! But then husbands
are not supposed to be."
Hugh, going to bed, wondered if the angels would bring Pauline a baby
that night, a darling little baby!
And Betty said, in her great wisdom, "Oh, darling, I think it would be
too exciting for Pauline to be married and have a baby all on one day."
Then Hugh suggested the glorious possibility of the angels bringing
it to Fullfield, whereupon Hyacinth said that was not at all likely,
because she knew that when a baby was born, it was usual for one or
other parent to be present!
We stayed for a few days at Fullfield, and Hugh and Betty enjoyed
themselves immensely. Hyacinth said it was just like staying for a week
at the pantomime, and Betty said, with a deep sigh, that it was much
nicer, a billion times nicer.
Pauline's brother Jack most nearly resembled any one in a pantomime, and
the children loved him. One day at lunch he went to the side-table to
fetch a potato in its jacket, and coming back he laid it on Uncle Jim's
slightly bald head and said, "Am I feverish, father?"
"It Good Heavens, my boy!" exclaimed Uncle Jim; "you must be in an awful
state!"
After that, the eyes of the children never left Jack during any meal
at which they happened to be present, and whenever he got up to fetch
anything, Hugh began dancing with joy and saying in a loud whisper,
"He's going to do something funny"; and if Jack remained silent, Hugh
was sure he was thinking of something to do. It is difficult to live up
to those expectations.
One morning at breakfast Hugh said suddenly, "Aunt Woggles, have you got
a mole?"
I said I believed I had.
"It's frightfully lucky. I have," he said, pulling up his sleeve and
disclosing a mole on his very white little arm. "It is lucky."
"I've got one too," said Betty, diving under the table.
"All right, darling," I said, "you needn't show us."
"I couldn't, Aunt Woggles, at least not now. If you come to see me in my
bath, you can; but it's truthfully there."
I said I was sure it was.
"I 'spect she's sitting on it," said Hugh in aloud whisper; "that's
why."
"We asked Mr. Hardy once if he had a mole, and he got redder and
redder;" we asked him at lunch, said Betty.
"He got redder and redder," said Hugh, by way of corroboration. "Mother
said moles weren't good things to ask people about, so we asked him if
he had any little children, and he hadn't; then we didn't know what to
ask."
"We only asked about moles because we wanted him to be lucky," said
kindhearted Betty.
"Last time I went to the Zoo," said Hugh, "I gave all my bread to one
animal. He was a lucky animal, wasn't he?"
"It was the hippopotamus, I think; he was lucky."
"Perhaps he has a mole, Hugh," I said.
We'll look, said Hugh. "I 'spect he has."
The proverbial difficulty of finding a needle in a haystack seemed
child's play compared to that of finding a mole on a hippopotamus.