1
It was the eve of Concha’s wedding; the house was full, and overflowing
into Rudge’s cottage, into Rendall’s cottage, and into the houses of
neighbours: there were Guy and his parents, Sir Roger and Lady Cust,
there was Colonel Dundas, there was “Crippin” Arbuthnot, Rory’s major who
was to be best man, and Elfrida Penn, who was to be chief bridesmaid, and
Harry Sinclair and his children, and Hugh Mallam and Dick’s cousin and
partner, Edward Lane.
A wedding is a _thing_—as concrete and compact as a gold coin stamped
with a date and a symbol; for, though of the substance of Time, it has
the qualities of Matter; colour, shape, tangibleness. Or rather, perhaps
it freezes Time into the semblance of Eternity, but does not rob it of
its colours: these it keeps as Morris’s gods did theirs in the moonlight.
We have all awakened on a winter’s morning to the fantastic joke that
during the night a heavy fall of snow has played on Space; just such a
joke does a wedding play on Time.
And who can keep out the _estantigua_, the demon army of the restless
dead, screaming in the wind and led by Hellequin?
Now Hellequin is the old romance form of Harlequin, and Harlequin leads
the wedding revels. But it is in vain that, like Ophelia, he “turns life,
death and fate into prettiness and favour”: we recognise the eyes behind
the mask, we know of what army he is captain.
And the wedding guests themselves; though each, individually, was
anodyne, even commonplace, yet, under that strange light, they were
fantastic, sinister—they were _folk_.
In her childhood that word had always terrified Teresa—there was her
old nightmare of the Canterbury Pilgrims, knight, franklin, wife of
Bath, streaming down the chimney with strange mocking laughter to keep
Walpurgis-night in a square tiled kitchen.... Bishops, priests, deacons,
sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors, confessors, virgins, widows,
and all the holy people of God.
Yes, they were _folk_.
How pawky Edward Lane was looking—uncannily humorous and shrewd! What
six-plied, cynical thing was he about to say to Jasper?
However, what he did say was: “You don’t get cake like that at school—do
you, young man?”
And Lady Cust, with her light rippling laugh and her observant
eyes—noticing the cut of one’s skirt and whether one asked her if she
_took_ sugar in her tea—when her face was in repose it was sad, like that
of a Christian slave in the land of the Saracens.
“Oh yes, when we were in Pau we motored over to Lourdes, when one
of the pilgrimages was on. Some of them ... well, really, they were
like goblins, poor creatures ... appalling!” and she actually smiled
reminiscently.
Teresa remembered Guy’s having told her that the favourite amusement of
his Brabazon uncles when they were drunk had been potting with their
revolvers at the village idiot.
She looked at Colonel Dundas: solemn, heavy, with a walrus moustache,
and big, owl-like spectacles, each glass bisected with a straight line;
at Sir Roger Cust, a dapper “hard-bitten” little man, with small, sharp
gray eyes—surely _they_ were not sinister.
“Old Tommy Cunningham!” Sir Roger was saying; “that takes one a long way
back. Wasn’t he Master at one time of the Linlithgowshire?”
“Yes ... from eighteen ... eighteen seventy-five, I think, to eighty ...
eighty-_six_, I think. I couldn’t tell you for certain, off-hand, but
I’ll look it up in my diary,” said Colonel Dundas; “he was a first-rate
shot, too,” he added.
“Magnificent!” agreed Sir Roger, “Aye, úhu, aye, úhu. D’you remember how
he used always to say that?”
“So he did! Picked it up from the keepers and gillies, I suppose.”
“He was the coolest chap I’ve ever known. Do you remember his mare White
Heather?”
“Yes ... let me see ... she was out of Lady of the Lake, by ... by....”
“Yes, yes, that’s the one. Well, you know, he had _thousands_ on her
for the National, and I was standing near him, and when she came in ...
third, I think it was....”
“Fourth I _think_, but....”
“Fourth, then. Well, old Tommy just shut up his glasses with a snap and
said, ‘Aye, úhu, well, poor lassie, _I_ thought she’d win somehow.’
Didn’t turn a hair, and he’d thousands on her!”
They were silent for a few seconds; then Sir Roger sighed and smiled:
“Well, all that was a long time ago, Jimmy. _Eheu fugaces, Posthume,
Posthume_.... Isn’t that how it goes, Guy? Funny how these old tags stick
in one’s mind!” and he rubbed his chin and smiled complacently; and
Teresa felt sure he would wake up in the night and chuckle with pride
over the aptness of his Latin quotation.
Yes, but what was “old Tommy Cunningham” doing here? For he brought with
him a rush of dreams and of old cold hopes, and a world as dead as the
moon—dead men, dead horses, dead hounds.
Aye, úhu, fugax es, Cunningham, Cunningham.
“Don’t you adore albinos?” shrilled Elfrida Penn in her peacock scream,
while that intensely conventional little man, “Crippin” Arbuthnot grew
crimson to the top of his bald head, and Lady Cust’s face began to
twitch—clearly, she was seized by a violent desire to giggle.
“Perhaps you would like to go up to your room, Lady Cust? You must be
tired,” said the Doña.
“Well, thank you very much, perhaps it would be a good plan; though it’s
difficult to tear oneself away from this lovely garden—_How_ you must
love it!” and she turned to Teresa; then again to the Doña: “I have been
envying you your delphiniums—they’re much finer than ours, ain’t they,
Roger? Do you cinder them in the spring?” and they began walking towards
the house, talking about gardens; but all the time they were watching
each other, wary, alert, hostile.
“What a delicious room! And such roses!” Lady Cust exclaimed when they
reached her bedroom.
Her maid had already unpacked; and on her dressing-table was unfurled
one of these folding series of leather photograph frames, and each one
contained a photograph of Francis, her eldest son, who had been killed in
the War. There were several of him in the uniform of the Rifle Brigade;
one of him in cricket flannels, one on a horse, two or three in khaki;
a little caricature of him had also been unpacked, done by a girl in
their neighbourhood, when he was a Sandhurst cadet; at the bottom of it
was scrawled in a large, unsophisticated feminine hand: _Wishing you a
ripping Xmas_, and then two or three marks of exclamation.
It belonged, that little inscription, to the good old days of the reign
of King Edward, when girls wore sailor hats in the country, and shirts
with stiff collars and ties, when every one, or so it seemed to Lady
Cust, was normal and simple and comfortable, and had the same ambitions,
namely, to hit hard at tennis, and to ride straight to hounds.
“Were you at Ascot this year?” “Have you been much to the Opera this
season?” “What do you think of the mallet for this year? Seems to _me_ it
would take a crane to lift it!”
Such, in those days, had been the sensible conversational openings;
while, recently, the man who had taken her into dinner had begun by
asking her the name of her butcher; another by asking her if she liked
string. Mad! Quite mad!
Of course, there were cultured people in those days too, but they were
just as easy to talk to as the others. “Do you sing Guy d’Hardelot’s ‘I
know a Lovely Garden?’ There’s really _nothing_ to touch his songs.”
“Have you been to the Academy yet? And oh, _did_ you see that picture
next to Sargeant’s portrait of Lady ——? It’s of Androcles taking a thorn
out of _such_ a jolly lion’s paw.” “Oh yes, of course, that’s from dear
old Omar, isn’t it? There’s no one like him, is there? You know, I like
the Rubaiyat really better than Tennyson.”
And now—there were strikes, and nearly all their neighbours had either
let or sold their places; and Guy had the most idiotic ideas and the most
extraordinary friends; and Francis....
The Doña’s eyes rested for a moment on the photographs; she was too
short-sighted to be able to distinguish any details; but she could see
that they were of a young man, and guessed that he was the son who had
been killed.
“It’s much better for _her_,” she thought bitterly, “she hasn’t the fear
for his soul to keep her awake.”
Lady Cust saw that she had noticed the photographs, and a dozen invisible
spears flew out to guard her grief. Then she remembered having heard that
the Doña had lost a daughter: “But that’s not the same as one’s eldest
son—besides, she has grandchildren.”
Aloud she said, “One good thing about having no daughter, I always feel,
is that one is saved having a wedding in the house. It must mean such
endless organising and worry, and what with servants being so difficult
nowadays.... But this is such a perfect house for a wedding—so gay! We
are so shut in with trees. Dear old Rory, I’m so fond of him; he’s my
only nephew, and ... er ... Concha is such a pretty thing.”
It was clear that at this point the Doña was expected to praise Rory; but
she merely gave a vague, courteous smile.
“I have heard so much about you all from my Guy,” continued Lady Cust;
“he is so devoted to you all, and you have been _so_ good to him.”
“Oh! we are all very fond of Guy,” said the Doña stiffly.
“Well, it’s very nice of you to say so—he’s a dear old thing,” she
paused, “and your other daughter, Teresa, she’s tremendously clever,
isn’t she? I should so love to get to know her, but I’m afraid she’d
despise me—I’m _such_ a fool!” and she gave her rippling laugh.
The Doña, again, only smiled conventionally.
“Well, it’s all ...” and Lady Cust gave a little sigh. “You see, Rory was
my only sister’s only child, and she died when he was seven, so he has
been almost like my own son. I wonder ... don’t you think it’s ... it’s a
little sudden?”
“What is?” asked the Doña icily.
“Well, they haven’t known each other very long, have they? I don’t know
... marriage ... is so ...”
So this foolish, giggling, pink and white woman was not pleased about the
marriage! She probably thought Concha was not good enough for her nephew.
And the Doña who, for the last few days, had been half hoping that the
Immaculate Conception herself, star-crowned, blue-robed, would to-morrow
step down from the clouds to forbid the banns and save her namesake from
perdition—the Doña actually found herself saying with some heat: “They’ve
known each other for nearly a year; that is surely a long time, these
days. I see no reason why it shouldn’t be a most happy marriage.”
“Oh, I’m _sure_ ... you know ... one always ...” murmured Lady Cust.
“Well, I must leave you to your rest. You have everything that you want?”
and the Doña sailed out of the room.
Lady Cust smiled a little, and then sighed.
Dear old Rory! And what would Mab, her dead sister, think of it all? Oh,
why had it not been she that had died in those old, happy days?
She went to her dressing-table and took up the folding leather frame.
They were the photographs of a very beautiful young man, a true
Brabazon—a longer limbed, merrier eyed Rory, with a full, rather insolent
mouth.
Yes, it was funny—she had been apt to call him by the names of her dead
brothers: “Jack! Geoffrey! Desmond! _Francis_, I mean.” She had never had
any difficulty in understanding Francis—how they used to laugh together!
She remembered how she used to dread his marriage; jealously watching him
with his favourite partners at tennis and at dances, and suspiciously
scanning the photographs of unknown and improperly pretty young ladies
in his bedroom: _Best of luck! Rosie; Ever your chum, Vera_—sick at
the thought of perhaps having to welcome a musical-comedy actress as
Francis’s wife.
If only she had known! For now, were she suddenly to wake up and find
it was for Francis’s wedding that she was here—the bride Concha Lane,
or that extraordinary Miss Penn, or, even, “Rosie” or “Vera,” her heart
would burst, she would go mad with happiness.
And she had a friend who actually dared to be heartbroken because she had
suddenly got a letter from her only son, telling her that he had been
married at a registry to a war-widow, whom she knew to be a tenth-rate
little minx with bobbed hair and the mind of a barmaid.
But Francis ... she would never be at his wedding. She would never hear
his voice again—Francis was dead.
* * * * *
When, an hour later, Sir Roger looked in on his way to dress, he found
her lying on the sofa, reading the _Sketch_, smiling and serene.
“Well, May,” he said, “I saw you! You were on the point of disgracing
yourself just before you went upstairs. _Extraordinary_ thing! Will you
never get over this trick of giggling? You simply have no self-control,
darling.”
“I _know_, isn’t it dreadful? Well, what do you think of ’em all?”
“Oh, they seem all right. Rory’s girl’s extraordinary pretty—pretty
manners, too.”
“Charming! ‘I should lo-o-ove to,’” and she reproduced admirably Concha’s
company voice. “However,” she went on, “we have a great deal to be
thankful for—it might have been Miss Penn. ‘Don’t you ado-o-ore albinos?’
Oh, I shall _never_ forget it ... and Major Arbuthnot’s face! Still, if
it had been she, I must say I should have loved to see the sensation
produced on Edinburgh by old Jimmy’s walking down Princes Street with
her.”
Sir Roger gave a hoarse chuckle.
2
As it was too large a party to get comfortably into the dining-room, a
big tent had been pitched on the lawn, and several long narrow tables
joined together, and there they dined, an ill-assorted company.
At one end Dr. Sinclair was shouting to Lady Cust, “Well, I’d send him to
that co-education place, but, unfortunately, they don’t ... er ... LEARN
anything there. They make the fourth form read Tolstoy’s _Resurrection_,
which is not ... er ... only the most ... er ... TRASHY of all the works
of genius, but the only ... er ... _lesson_ to be learned from it is the
... er ... inadvisability of ... er ... SEDUCING A RUSSIAN PEASANT GIRL,
and ... er ... unfortunately, an ... er ... er ... English schoolboy
hasn’t many opportunities of doing that ... er ... er....”
He looked at her, slightly puzzled—her face was pink with suppressed
laughter; but, as she was meant to laugh, why suppress it?
Elfrida Penn was terrifying “Crippin” Arbuthnot by searching questions as
to whether the erotic adventures of his schooldays had been similar to
those described in a recent novel about life at a public school.
Edward Lane was saying to Jollypot, “Yes, before my niece—Olive Jackson,
you know—went to school, I said to her, ‘my advice to you is: _keep your
hands clean_.’ I always....”
“Oh, Mr. Lane, that was beautiful!” cried Jollypot.
“Yes, I always say a lady can be known by the way she keeps her _hands_.”
Jollypot’s face fell.
But Dick and Hugh, at any rate, yelling at each other across the
intervening forms of Concha and Rory, were in perfect harmony. “I say,
Dick, do you remember old Bright, the butler at your father’s? And how
angry he used to be when we asked him if he was any relation of John
Bright?”
“Yes, rather; and do you remember how he used to say, ‘Port, claret,
sherry, madeira, sir?’ always in that order.”
“Yes, and how he used to puff it down one’s neck? And the severe way your
mother used to say, ‘Neither, thank you, Bright’!”
Then, from the other end, they would catch sight of the Doña glaring at
them indignantly through her _lorgnette_, and Dick would turn hurriedly
to Lady Cust.
As to Teresa, she was indulging in that form of intoxication that has
been described before—that of æsthetically withdrawing herself from a
large, chattering company. Once when she was doing it David had guessed,
and had whispered to her, “The laird’s been deed these twa hoors, but
I wisna for spoiling guid company,” in reference to a host who had
inconspicuously died, sitting bolt upright at the head of his table, at
about the third round of port.
A branch, or something, outside was casting a shadow on the tent’s canvas
wall—as usual, it was in the form of Dante’s profile. She had seen it in
patches of damp on ceilings, in burning coals, in the clouds, in shadows
cast on the white walls of the bath-room.
Perhaps he had not really looked like that at all, and the famous fresco
portrait had been originally merely a patch of damp, elaborated into the
outline of a human profile by some wag of the fourteenth century, and
called Dante; and perhaps the Dante he meant was not the poet at all, but
some popular buffoon, Pantaloon or Harlequin, in the comedies at street
corners—the Charlie Chaplin, in fact, of his age....
But for some time Colonel Dundas had been booming away in her right ear,
and it was high time she should listen.
“... _always a note-book on the links, and every shot recorded_—it’s a
golden rule. I’ve advised more than one Amateur Champion to follow it.
You see my point, don’t you? The next time you play on the same links
you whip out your note-book and say, ‘Let me see—_Muirfield, sixth hole,
Sept. 5, 1920_: hit apparently good drive down centre of the course,
found almost impossible approach shot owing to cross bunkers. _N.B. Keep
to the left at the sixth hole._’ You see my point, don’t you?”
Opposite to them, Guy was screaming excitedly to Elfrida Penn, who
seemed to be sucking in his words through her thick lips: “Of course,
there’s _nothing_ so beautiful and significant, from the point of view of
composition, as a lot of people sitting at a narrow table—it’s the making
of the Christian religion. Aubrey Beardsley ought to have done a _Cena_:
the Apostles, in curly white wigs like these little tight clustering
roses—Dorothy Perkins, or whatever they’re called—and black masks,
sitting down one side of a narrow refectory table with plates piled up
with round fruits, the wall behind them fluted and garlanded in stucco,
St. John, his periwigged head on Jesus’ shoulder, leering up at him,
and Judas, sitting a little apart, a white Pierrot, one finger pressed
against his button mouth, his eyes round with horror and glee....”
“Yes, every year I was in India I read it through, from _cover to
cover_,” boomed Colonel Dundas proudly. (Oh yes, of course, Dobbin
and the _History of the Punjab_!) “It’s a wonderful style. He comes
next to Shakespeare, in my estimation.” (Not Dobbin and the _History of
the Punjab_, then!) “Yes, every year I read the whole of the _French
Revolution_ through from cover to cover—a very great book. And when,
by mistake, John Stuart Mill burned the manuscript, what do you think
Carlyle did?”
“I don’t know. What did he do?”
“He sat down and read through all the works of Fenimore Cooper—read ’em
through from _beginning to end_,” and he stared at her in solemn triumph.
“Really?” she gasped, “I don’t quite understand. Fenimore Cooper—he wrote
about Red Indians, didn’t he? Why did he read _him_?”
“_Why?_ To distract his mind, of course. Extraordinary pluck!” and he
glared at her angrily.
At this point Sir Roger, who had not been making much way with the Doña,
leaned across the table, and said, “I say, Jimmy, Mrs. Lane and I have
been talking about Gib.—did I ever tell you about the time I dined with
your old Mess there? Owing to my being a connection of yours the Colonel
asked me to choose a tune for the pipes;” then, turning to the Doña,
he said in parenthesis, “I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard the
bagpipes, but—don’t tell Colonel Dundas—we don’t think much of ’em this
side of the border.” Then again to Colonel Dundas, “Well, for the life of
me, I couldn’t remember the name of a tune, and then suddenly the _Deil
amang the Tailors_ came into my head, so out I came with it, as pleased
as Punch. Well, I thought the Colonel looked a bit grim, and I saw ’em
all looking at each other, but the order was given to the piper, and he
got going, and, by gad, it _was_ a tune—nearly took the roof off the
place! I thought I should be deaf for life—turned out to be the loudest
tune they’d got;” then, again to the extremely bored Doña, “but it’s a
glorious place, old Gib. I remember in the eighties....”
Lady Cust, watching from the other end of the table, was much amused by
the _engouement_ her husband had developed, since arriving at Plasencia,
for the society of Jimmy Dundas; it was clearly a case of “better the
bore I know....”
“Yes, these were great days,” Colonel Dundas was saying; “we’re the
oldest regiment of the line, you know—Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard; that’s
what we call ourselves—Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard!” and he chuckled
proudly.
And this from a pillar of the Scottish Episcopal Church!... Oh pale
Galilean, _hast_ thou conquered?
* * * * *
Then a loving-cup filled with punch began to go the round and they all
drank from it in turn, rising to their feet as they did so, and saying,
“Concha! Rory!”
When every one had had a sip, Rory, rather pale, got up to return thanks.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!... (pause) ... I do think it’s _extraordinary_
kind of you to drink our health in this very nice way. We are most
awfully grateful ... (pause) ... I’m afraid I’m not a Cicero or a Lloyd
George, or anything like that ... (Laughter) ... old Crippin there
will tell you speeches ain’t much in my line....” Then he had a sudden
brilliant idea: “But there’s one thing I should like to ask you all
to do. You see, I’m awfully grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Lane for giving
me Concha, and my uncle has always been most awfully good to me, and
I’d like to ask you all to drink their health ... and if my mother is
anywhere about ... and others ... I know they’ll join in the toast, in
nectar, or whatever they drink up there,” and he ended with an apologetic
little laugh.
The company was very much touched; Edward Lane blew his nose violently,
and muttered to Jollypot that young Dundas was evidently a very
nice-feeling young fellow.
The atmosphere having become emotional, the ghosts walked.
Colonel Dundas had a vision of Rory’s mother—lovely Mab Brabazon—as he
had first seen her, radiant and laughing at the Northern Meeting of
twenty-nine years ago; but then, ever since, he had so often had that
vision: at Church Parade, at polo in India, playing golf in Scotland,
playing Bridge in any of his ten clubs—anywhere, everywhere, he might see
Mab Brabazon. And little had Teresa guessed that as Carlyle read Fenimore
Cooper, so _he_ had read the _French Revolution_—“to distract his mind.”
Sir Roger and Lady Cust thought of Francis; more than one of Pepa. But
Dick thought of his sallow puritanic sister Joannah, who had been so
much older than himself that their interests had never clashed, and all
his memories of her were of petting and spoiling—“Little Dickie doesn’t
_take_ spoiling, his temper is so sweet,” she used to say—his eyes began
to smart. And Hugh Mallam, too, thought of poor old Joannah Lane, and he
remembered how, in the days when his ambition had been to be a painter,
he used to wonder whether, if offered the certainty of becoming as great
a one as Sir Frederick Leighton, on condition of marrying Joannah, he
would be able to bring himself to do it.
3
After dinner they went into the garden; some of them sitting on the lawn,
some of them wandering about among the flowers.
The border was in the summer prime of lilies and peonies and anchusa and
delphiniums; to its right was a great clump of lavender nearly ripe, and
at the stage when it looks like veins of porphyry running through a rock
of jade; a little to its left was a stiff row of hollyhocks.
“An amazingly distinguished flower, hollyhock!” said Guy, “it always
gives a _cachet_ to its surroundings, so different from sweetpeas, which
look sordid in a dusty station garden, and fragrantly _bourgeois_ beside
the suburban lawn on which Miss Smith is playing tennis in lavender
muslin....”
“_Guy!_” cried Lady Cust, looking round anxiously at the company, and
laughing apologetically; Guy, however, went on undaunted; “but hollyhock
is like the signature of a great painter, it testifies that any subject
can be turned into art—or, rather, into that domain which lies between
painting and poetry, where damoizelles, dressed in quaintly damasked
brocades, talk of friendship and death and the stars in curious stiff
conceits.”
“Guy! You _are_ a duffer,” laughed Lady Cust again.
“Well, here come some of these damoizelles in their quaint brocades—do
you think they are talking about friendship and death and the stars?
“Do you think they are talking about friendship and death and the stars?
Do you think they are talking about friendship and death and the stars?”
said Hugh Mallam with his jolly laugh, and he nodded towards Concha and
Elfrida Penn and Lettice Moore and Winifred Norton, who, dressed in a
variety of pale colours, were walking arm in arm up the border.
Sainte-Beuve in a fine passage describes the moment in a journey south
when “en descendant le fleuve, on a passé une de ces lignes par delà
lesquelles le soleil et le ciel sont plus beaux.”
Such a line—beyond which “the sun and the sky are more beautiful”—cuts
across the range of every one’s vision; and the group of flower-bordered
girls were certainly beyond that line for all who were watching them.
Once again Teresa felt as if she were suddenly seeing the present as the
past; and as long as she lived it would always be as that picture that
she would see Concha’s wedding.
“_Vera incessu patuit dea_,” murmured Hugh, and then he added, a little
wistfully, “they _do_ look jolly!”
“You’d look just as jolly far off, in that light, Hugh,” said Dick, who
was sitting blinking at his flowers, like a large, contented tom-cat.
The younger men who, with the exception of Guy, had been walking up and
down between the hawthorn hedge, smoking cigars and deep in talk—probably
about the War—went and joined the four girls; and after a few moments
of general chatter Arnold flung his arm round Concha’s shoulder and
Teresa could hear him saying: “Come on, Conch,” and they wandered off by
themselves. She was glad; for she knew that Concha had felt acutely the
estrangement from Arnold caused by his jealousy at her engagement.
Then Rory came and joined the party on the lawn, and sat down on the
grass at the feet of Lady Cust.
“Well, what about a little Bridge?” said Dick, and he, Hugh, Sir Roger,
and Colonel Dundas, went indoors for a rubber.
Shortly afterwards Lady Cust and Rory wandered off together in the
direction of the lavender.
“Well, Rorrocks, so you’re really going to do it?”
“Yes, Aunt May, I’m in for it this time ... the great adventure!” and he
laughed a little nervously, “Concha ... she ... don’t you think she’s
pretty?”
“Awfully pretty, Rory, I do really ... a dear thing!”
They felt that there were many things they wanted to say to each other,
these two; but, apart from reserve and false shame, they would have found
it hard to express these things in words.
“Well, time does fly! It seems just the other day that I was scurrying up
to Edinburgh for your christening ... and Fran ... Guy was only a year
old.”
“Yes, ... I can hardly believe it myself,” and again he gave a little
nervous laugh.
“Well, dear old thing,” and she laid a hand on his arm, “I’m your
godmother, you know, and your mother and I ... I don’t believe we were
ever away from each other till I married ... you’re sure ... it’s going
to be all right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Aunt May, it’s going to be all right.... I’m sure,” and again he
laughed; and although he was very pale, his eyes were bright and happy.
* * * * *
“Shall we go and walk down the border and look beautiful too?” said Guy
to Teresa.
“Well, and what about the play?” he asked, when they were out of ear-shot.
“It’s finished at last ... so I can breathe again. While I was writing
I felt rather like a sort of Thomas the Rhymer, a thrall to ghosts
and fairies; and I got half to hate the whole thing, as one is always
inclined to hate a master.”
She was trying to be friendly, and thought it would please him if she
told him about such intimate things; but he was not pleased.
Though he had never written anything long enough to give him at first
hand the feeling she had described, yet he realised it was what certainly
_would_ be felt by a genuine dramatist or novelist; and it was not in
his picture that Teresa should be either—Sophocles may have led his own
choruses, but he did not lead those of Euripides.
“The play’s finished, and yet all this,” and she waved her arm vaguely in
the direction of the house and garden and all the groups of people, “and
yet all this goes on just the same.”
4
Next day came the queer dislocated morning—every one either at a loose
end or frantically busy,—the arrival of Dr. Nigel Dundas, Bishop of
Dunfermline, Colonel Dundas’s first cousin, who had travelled all night
from Scotland, to be there to marry Rory; the hurried cold luncheon;
the getting the Custs and people off to the church; then Parker’s and
Teresa’s fingers fumbling with hooks and eyes and arranging the veil.
When the bride was dressed, and ready to go downstairs, the Doña, who had
not appeared all morning, and was not, of course, going to the church
ceremony, walked into the room, pale and heavy-eyed.
She held out her arms, “Come to me, my Concha!” she said.
“Oh, Doña ... if only ... I couldn’t ... it’ll be all right,” Concha
whispered between little sobs, “and anyway, your baby will always love
you ... and ...”
“The Purissima and all the Saints bless you, my child,” said the Doña in
a stifled voice, and she made the sign of the Cross on her forehead, “but
you mustn’t cry on your wedding day. Come, let me put your veil straight.”
Teresa, watching this little scene, felt a sudden pang of remorse—why had
she not more control over her imagination? Why had she allowed her mother
to turn, in the play, into such a sinister and shameless figure?
Then they went down to the hall, where Dick was contemplating in a
pier-glass, with considerable complacency, the reflection of his stout
morning-coated person.
“Well, it’s quite time we were starting, Concha,” he called out; and
with that amazing ignoring of the emotional conventions by which men are
continually hurting the feelings of women, it was not till he and Concha
were well on their way to church, that he remembered to congratulate her
on her appearance.
Teresa, Jollypot, and the children, had gone on ahead in the open
car—past hens, past hedges, past motor-bicycles, past cottage gardens;
past fields of light feathery oats, so thickly sown with poppies
that they seemed to flicker together into one fabric; past fields of
barley that had swallowed the wind, which bent and ruffled the ductile
imprisoning substance that it informed; past fields of half-ripe wheat,
around the stalks of which Teresa, who, since she had been writing, had
fallen into an almost exhausting habit of automatic observation, noticed
the light tightly twisting itself in strands of greenish lavender. And
there was a field from which the hay had been carried long enough to have
allowed a fresh crop of poppies to spring up; to see them thus alone and
unhampered gave one such a stab of joyous relief that one could almost
believe the hay to have been but a parasite scum drained away to reveal
this red substratum of beauty. All these things, as they rushed past,
were remarked by Teresa’s weary, active eyes till they had reached the
church and deposited Anna and Jasper with the bridesmaids, waiting in the
porch, and at last they were walking up the aisle and being ushered into
their places by Bob Norton.
There stood Major Arbuthnot, whispering and giggling with Rory, who was
looking very white and bright-eyed. After all, he was not lower than the
birds—he, too, felt the thrill of mating-time.
Then the opening bars of the _Voice that Breathed o’er Eden_, and a
stiffening to attention of Major Arbuthnot, and a sudden smile from Rory,
and all eyes turning to the door—Concha was entering on her father’s arm,
her train held up by Jasper.
Then the Oxford voice of Dr. Nigel Dundas, droning on, droning on, till
it reached the low antiphon with Rory:
I, James Roderick Brabazon,
_I, James Roderick Brabazon_,
take thee, Maria Concepcion,
_take thee, Maria Concepcion_,
to have and to hold,
_to have and to hold_,
from this day forward,
_from this day forward_,
for better for worse,
_for better for worse_,
for richer for poorer,
_for richer for poorer_,
in sickness and in health,
_in sickness and in health_,
to love and to cherish,
_to love and to cherish_,
till death us do part,
_till death us do part_,
according to God’s holy ordinance;
_according to God’s holy ordinance_;
and thereto I plight thee my troth,
_and thereto I plight thee my troth_.
Then Concha’s turn and then more prayers; and before long they were all
laughing and chattering and wiping away tears in the vestry; while in the
church the band was playing shamelessly secular tunes, though Mr. Moore
had stipulated that there should be “no vaudeville music.”
“_Why_ are people crying? A wedding isn’t a _sad_ thing,” said Anna, in a
loud and argumentative voice.
* * * * *
Then down the aisle and down the path between a double hedge of Girl
Guides, and whirling back to the Plasencia garden and masses and masses
of people.
Teresa was immediately sucked into a vortex of activities—elbowing her
way through the crowd with a cup of tea for one old lady and an ice for
another; steering a third to one of the tents, to choose for herself
what she wanted; making suitable rejoinders to such questions and
exclamations as: “How charming dear Concha looks, I really think she’s
the prettiest bride I’ve ever seen.” “Do tell me what the red ribbon is
that Captain Dundas is wearing—the one that isn’t the M.C.? Some one said
they thought it was a Belgian order.” “Tell me dear; it was the Scottish
Church Service, wasn’t it? I mean, the Scotch Church that’s like _ours_?
I did so like it ... so much more ... well, _delicate_ than ours.” “Oh,
just look at those masses of white butterflies on the lavender! What a
splendid crop you’ll have! Do you send it up to London?”
Then, as in a nightmare, she heard Anna proclaiming proudly that she had
eaten eight ices, and Jasper ten; well, it was too late now to take any
measures.
Also, she had time to be amused at noticing that Mrs. Moore had managed
to get introduced to Lady Cust, and was talking to her eagerly.
Later on she heard Lettice Moore saying to another bridesmaid, “Poor old
Eben! He was frightfully cut up when he heard about the engagement,”
and, in the foolish way one has of moving indifferently among the
world’s great tragedies—earthquakes, famines, wars—and suddenly feeling
a tightening of the throat, and a smarting of the eyes as one realises
that at that moment a bullfinch is probably dying in China, Teresa
suddenly felt a wave of pity and tenderness sweep over her for Eben,
sitting in his cabin (did senior “snotties” have a cabin to themselves?
Well, it didn’t really matter), so poorly furnished in comparison with
the gramophones and silver photograph frames, and gorgeous cushions of
his mates, his arms, with the red hands whose fingers had never recovered
their shape from the chilblains of the Baltic, dangling limply down at
either side of him, and perhaps tears in his round china-blue eyes.
Then at last Concha and Rory were running and ducking and laughing under
a shower of rice, and rose leaves. They looked very young and frail, both
of them, blown out into the world, where God knew what awaited them.
“They are like Paulo and Francesca—two leaves clinging together, blown by
the wind,” said Jollypot dreamily to Teresa.
5
We have already likened a wedding to a fall of snow; and as rapidly as a
fall of snow it melts, disclosing underneath it just such a dingy world.
One by one the motley company drifted off in trains, and motors, their
exit producing on Teresa the same impression that she always got from
the end of _Twelfth Night_—that of a troupe of fairy mimes, laden with
their tiffany, their pasteboard yew hedges, their stucco peacocks, slowly
sailing away in a cloud out of sight, while the clown whom they have
forgotten, sits down here on the earth singing _the rain it raineth
every day_.
But, in spite of a dismantled drawing-room, a billiard-table covered with
presents, a trampled lawn and a furious Parker and Rudge, life quickly
re-adjusted itself.
The next day but one there was a rose show in the county town, and Rudge
went to see it.
After dinner, Dick had him summoned to the drawing-room to discuss the
roses with himself and the Doña.
His leathery cheeks were flushed, his hard eyes shone: “Oh ... it was
grand, ma’am. I was saying to Mrs. Rudge, ‘Well, I said, one doesn’t
often see a sight like that!’ I said. There was a new white rose, sir,
well, I’ve never seen anything to beat it....”
“And what about the _Daily Clarion_ rose?”
“Well, sir, a very fine rose, certainly, but I’m not sure if it would do
with us ... but that white rose, sir, I said to Mrs. Rudge, ‘you could
almost say it was like the moon,’ I said.”
* * * * *
And what was Time but a gigantic rose, shedding, one by one, its petals?
And then Jollypot gathered them up and made them into _pot-pourri_; but
still the petals went on falling, silently, ceaselessly.