A QUIET WEDDING.
Fate was adverse for the moment to Arthur Berkeley's well meant
designs for shuffling off the trammels of his ecclesiastical habit.
He was destined to appear in public at least once more, not only in
the black coat and white tie of his everyday professional costume,
but even in the flowing snowy surplice of a solemn and decorous
spiritual function. The very next morning's post brought him
a little note from Ernest Le Breton specially begging him, in his
own name and Edie's, to come down to Calcombe Pomeroy, and officiate
as parson at their approaching wedding. The note had cost Ernest
a conscientious struggle, for he would have personally preferred
to be married at a Registry Office, as being more in accordance
with the duties of a good citizen, and savouring less of effete
ecclesiastical superstition; but he felt he couldn't even propose
such a step to Edie; she wouldn't have considered herself married
at all, unless she were married quite regularly by a duly qualified
clerk in holy orders of the Church of England as by law established.
Already, indeed, Ernest was beginning to recognise with a sigh
that if he was going to live in the world at all, he must do so by
making at least a partial sacrifice of political consistency. You
may step out of your own century, if you choose, yourself, but you
can't get all the men and women with whom you come in contact to
step out of it also in unison just to please you.
So Ernest had sat down reluctantly to his desk, and consented
to ask Arthur Berkeley to assist at the important ceremony in his
professional clerical capacity. If he was going to have a medicine
man or a priest at all to marry him to the girl of his choice--a
barbaric survival, at the best, he thought it--he would, at any
rate, prefer having his friend Arthur--a good man and true--to
having the fat, easy-going, purse-proud rector of the parish; the
younger son of a wealthy family who had gone into the Church for
the sake of the living, and who rolled sumptuously down the long
hilly High Street every day in his comfortable carriage, leaning
back with his fat hands folded complacently over his ample knees,
and gazing abstractedly, with his little pigs'-eyes half buried
in his cheek, at the beautiful prospect afforded him by the broad
livery-covered backs of his coachman and his footman. Ernest could
never have consented to lot that lazy, overfed, useless encumbrance
on a long-suffering commonwealth, that idle gorger of dainty meats
and choice wines from the tithes of the tolling, suffering people,
bear any part in what was after all the most solemn and serious
contract of his whole lifetime. And, to say the truth, Edie quite
agreed with him on that point, too. Though her moral indignation
against poor, useless, empty-headed old Mr. Walters didn't burn
quite so fierce or so clear as Ernest's--she regarded the fat
old parson, indeed, rather from the social point of view, as a
ludicrously self-satisfied specimen of the lower stages of humanity,
than from the political point of view, as a greedy swallower of
large revenues for small work inefficiently performed--she would
still have felt that his presence at her wedding jarred and grated
on all the finer sensibilities of her nature, as out of accord
with the solemn and tender associations of that supreme moment.
To have been married by prosy old Mr. Walters, to have taken the
final benediction on the greatest act of her life from those big
white fat fingers, would have spoilt the reminiscence of the wedding
day for her as long as she lived. But when Ernest suggested Arthur
Berkeley's name to her, she acquiesced with all her heart in the
happy selection. She liked Berkeley better than anybody else she
had ever met, except Ernest; and she knew that his presence would
rather add one more bright association to the day than detract from
it in the coming years. Her poor little wedding would want all the
additions that friends could make to its cheerfulness, to get over
the lasting gloom and blank of dear Harry's absence.
'You will come and help us, I know, Berkeley,' Ernest wrote to
Arthur in his serious fashion. 'We feel there is nobody else we
should so like to have present at our wedding as yourself. Come
soon, too, for there are lots of things I want to talk over with
you. It's a very solemn responsibility, getting married: you
have to take upon yourself the duty of raising up future citizens
for the state; and with our present knowledge of how nature works
through the laws of heredity, you have to think whether you two
who contemplate marriage are well fitted to act as parents to the
generations that are to be. When I remember that all my own faults
and failings may be handed on relentlessly to those that come after
us--built up in the very fibre of their being--I am half appalled
at my own temerity. Then, again, there is the inexorable question
of money; is it prudent or is it wrong of us to marry on such
an uncertainty? I'm afraid that Schurz and Malthas would tell
us--very wrong. I have turned over these things by myself till I'm
tired of arguing them out in my own head, and I want you to come
down beforehand, so as to cheer me up a bit with your lighter and
brighter philosophy. On the very eve of my marriage, I'm somehow
getting dreadfully pessimistic.'
Arthur read the letter through impatiently and crumpled it up in his
hands with a gesture of despondency. 'Poor little Miss Butterfly,'
he said to himself, pityingly, 'was there ever such an abstraction
of an ethical unit as this good, solemn, self-torturing Ernest! How
will she ever live with him? How will he ever live with her? Poor
little soul! Harry is gone like the sunshine out of her life; and
now this well-meaning, gloomy, conscientious cloud comes caressingly
to overspread her with the shadowing pall of its endless serious
doubts and hesitations. Fancy a man who has won little Miss
Butterfly's heart--dear little Miss Butterfly's gay, laughing,
tender little heart--writing such a letter as that to the friend
who's going to marry them! Upon my word, I've half a mind to go
into the concientious scruples business on my own account! Have I
any right to be a party to fettering poor airy fairy little Miss
Butterfly, with a heavy iron chain for life and always, to this
great lumbering elephantine moral Ernest? Am I justified in tying
the cable round her dainty little neck with a silken thread, and
then fastening it round his big leg with rivets of hardened steel
on the patent Bessemer process? If a couple of persons, duly called
by banns in their own respective parishes, or furnished with the
right reverend's perquisite, a licence, come to me, a clerk in holy
orders, and ask me to marry them, I've a vague idea that unless I
comply I lay myself open to the penalties of praemunire, or something
else equally awful and mysterious. But if the couple write and
ask me to come down into Devonshire and marry them, that's quite
another matter. I can lawfully answer, 'Non possumus.' There's a
fine ecclesiastical ring, by the way, about answering 'Non possumus;'
it sums up the entire position of the Church in a nutshell! Well,
I doubt whether I ought to go; but as a matter of friendship, I'll
throw overboard my poor conscience. It's used to the process by
this time, no doubt, like eels to skinning; and as Hudibras says,
However tender it may be,
'Tis passing blind where 'twill not see.
If she'd only have taken ME, now, who knows but I might in time
have risen to be a Prebendary or even a Dean? 'They that have used
the office of a deacon well, purchase to themselves a good degree,'
Paul wrote to Timothy once; but it's not so now, it's not so now;
preferment goes by favour, and the deacon must e'en shift as best
he can on his own account.' So, in the end, Arthur packed up his
surplice in his little handbag, and took his way peacefully down
to Calcombe Pomeroy.
It was a very quiet, almost a sombre wedding, for the poor Oswalds
were still enveloped in the lasting gloom of their great loss,
and not much outward show or preparation, such as the female heart
naturally delights in, could possibly be made under these painful
circumstances. Still, all the world of Calcombe came to see little
Miss Oswald married to the grave gentleman from Oxford; and most
of them gave her their hearty good wishes, for Edie was a general
favourite with gentle and simple throughout the whole borough.
Herbert was there, like a decorous gentleman, to represent the
bridegroom's family, and so was Ronald, who had slipped away from
London without telling Lady Le Breton, for fear of another distressful
scone at the last moment. Arthur Berkeley read the service in
his beautiful impressive manner, and looked his part well in his
flowing white surplice. But as he uttered the solemn words, 'Whom
God hath joined together, let no man put asunder,' the musical
ring of his own voice sounded to his heart like the knell of his
own one love--the funeral service over the only romance he could
ever mix in throughout his whole lifetime. Poor fellow, he had
taken the duty upon him with all friendly heartiness; but he felt
an awful and lonely feeling steal over him when it was all finished,
and when he knew that his little Miss Butterfly was now Ernest Le
Breton's lawful wife for ever and ever.
In the vestry, after signing the books, Herbert and Ronald and
some of the others insisted on their ancient right of kissing the
bride in good old English fashion. But Arthur did not. It would
not have been loyal. He felt in his heart that he had loved little
Miss Butterfly too deeply himself for that; to claim a kiss would
be abusing the formal dues of his momentary position. Henceforth
he would not even think of her to himself in that little pet name
of his brief Oxford dream: he would call her nothing in his own
mind but Mrs. Le Breton.
Edie's simple little presents were all arranged in the tiny parlour
behind the shop. Most of them were from her own personal friends:
a few were from the gentry of the surrounding neighbourhood: but
there were two handsomer than the rest: they came from outside the
narrow little circle of Calcombe Pomeroy society. One was a plain
gold bracelet from Arthur Berkeley; and on the gold of the inner
face, though neither Edie nor Ernest noticed it, he had lightly
cut with his knife on the soft metal the one word, 'Frustra.' The
other was a dressing-case, with a little card inside, 'Miss Oswald,
from Lady Hilda Tregellis.' Hilda had heard of Ernest's approaching
wedding from Herbert (who took an early opportunity of casually
lunching at Dunbude, in order to show that he mustn't be identified
with his socialistic brother); and the news had strangely proved a
slight salve to poor Hilda's wounded vanity--or, perhaps it would
be fairer to say, to her slighted higher instincts. 'A country
grocer's daughter!' she said to herself: 'the sister of a great
mathematical scholar! How very original of him to think of marrying
a grocer's daughter! Why, of course, he must have been engaged to
her all along before he came here! And even if he hadn't been,
one might have known at once that such a man as he is would never
go and marry a girl whose name's in the peerage, when he could strike
out a line for himself by marrying a grocer's daughter. I really
like him better than ever for it. I must positively send her a
little present. They'll be as poor as church mice, I've no doubt.
I ought to send her something that'll be practically useful.' And
by way of sending something practically useful, Lady Hilda chose
at last a handsome silver-topped Russia leather dressing-case.
It was not such a wedding as Edie had pictured to herself in her
first sweet maidenly fancies; but still, when they drove away alone
in the landau from the side-door of the Red Lion to Calcombe Road
Station, she felt a quiet pride and security in her heart from the
fact that she was now the wedded wife of a man she loved so dearly
as Ernest Le Breton. And even Ernest so far conquered his social
scruples that he took first-class tickets, for the first time in
his life, to Ilfracombe, where they were to spend their brief and
hasty fragment of a poor little honeymoon. It's so extremely hard
to be a consistent socialist where women are concerned, especially
on the very day of your own wedding!