AND because it is the correct thing to introduce a wedding into the
last chapter, I had better mention the one I know most about.
I always did say that, whenever I married, my wedding should be
characterised by everything appertaining to common sense; while all the
feebleness and foolishness and weakmindedness I had noticed at other
people’s weddings would be entirely lacking. I have often remarked
how strange it is that otherwise sensible people seem to lose all
idea of proportion when it comes to arranging a wedding; how they let
themselves be obsessed with clothes and furniture and wedding presents
that they don’t require; or if they do require them, they might have
been dealt with on orderly systematic lines.
“Why need there be a chaos of garments in the spare room and every
wardrobe and chest of drawers in the house just because one person is
going to be married?” I have said many a time. Well, I’m not going to
say it again. In fact, the older I get the more I find life resolves
itself into one continual discovery that I needn’t have said half the
things that I did say in my first youth.
But with regard to the wedding, I think I started all right; it was as
matters proceeded that I was overtaken by the inevitable. I really was
too busy with arrears of work that accumulated during my long illness
to see to the trousseau details _in extenso_, so I asked an intimate
friend if she would take this in hand for me—which she kindly agreed
to do. She had had lots of experience, and her taste was exquisite; so
I knew matters were safe with her. She asked me what frocks I already
had. I replied, “Not a rag fit to wear!”
“Then I’ll make a good selection, and have them sent home for you to
choose from,” she replied, her face suffused with that joy-radiance
that invariably overtakes a woman who starts out shopping with a blank
cheque in her handbag.
She certainly did make a good selection; I almost wished it hadn’t been
quite so good, then at least I should have known what to send back. But
as it was, every fresh box I opened, I exclaimed, “Isn’t that lovely!
I _must_ have _that_!” till presently the room was a billowy sea of
tissue paper and beautiful garments that looked as though hands had
never touched them. I thought I was quite hardened and proof against
lures of this kind; but the snare of it simply enmeshes you before you
know where you are. As my bedroom was soon full to overflowing, I said
the rest of the things had better go into a spare room. Very soon the
spare rooms were full too. And so we went on like that!
Why didn’t I put the things away in drawers and wardrobes? Simply
because every such receptacle I possessed was full to distraction
before the trousseau things started to arrive! Did you ever know a
woman who possessed a drawer or a wardrobe peg that wasn’t already over
full, and she pining for more space? So for weeks we had to hop over
piles of cardboard boxes no matter what room we entered, and scrabble
up more bales of tissue paper and things to make room on the sofa for
the friend who called to bring her good wishes in person.
Still, I have always thought that a strong argument in favour of a
woman getting married is the fact that she, presumably, comes in for
additional drawers and wardrobes. Hence I looked forward to getting
into my new home with considerable satisfaction in view of the purchase
of extra furniture.
“Yes, I know it’s a bit crowded just now,” I agreed, when Virginia
suggested I should set up a shop with “Modes et Robes” over the door,
because she had estimated that I shouldn’t need to buy any tissue paper
for eleven years and five months. “But I shall have _heaps_ of spare
room when I get into the new house; I really shan’t know what to do
with so many chests of drawers!”
But alas! in spite of the additional furniture, I am still squeezing
things into drawers that would be so much more useful if made of
elastic india-rubber instead of wood. And I am still flattening
garments into wardrobes that are so bulgingly full that I wonder
sometimes whether the looking-glass will stand the inside pressure. And
still I don’t seem to have a rag fit to wear.
But the moving process was even worse than the trousseau. The very
thought of it was turning my brain to stone.
When I mentioned my quakings about the moving to the Head of Affairs,
he said airily, “Don’t you give a solitary thought to _that_. Just go
away for a couple of days’ holiday, and when you come back you will
find everything as right as can be in the new house. You don’t need to
touch a thing or pack an atom. The men do _everything_. Now, why bother
your head with unnecessary worrying?” etc.
I seemed to think I had heard the same remark made in the dim past when
we removed from one house to another in my early days. I also remember
that the brother of Virginia and Ursula said the very same thing to
them when they moved, and they, acting on masculine advice, had the
greatest difficulty, ultimately, in ever finding any solitary thing
they possessed (including themselves) among the ruins. So I decided to
postpone the couple of days’ holiday and face the worst.
There is no need to go into details about that move. Those who have
been through it know exactly how many months it takes to find such
things as the corkscrew, the buttonhook, the oil-can belonging to the
sewing-machine, the one hammer that has its head fixed on firmly.
They know the joy with which you fall on the missing sofa cushions
when they are eventually discovered done up with spare bedding in the
attic—that everyone has been too tired to undo; and the affectionate
greetings bestowed on the hall clothes-brush when it is at length
found—in company with the dog’s whip—in a drawer one has forgotten in
a small table. Of course, it’s very satisfactory when the perspiring
gentleman who has packed—and then unpacked again—all the china comes
to announce, “Not a single piece is cracked or chipped, madam;” but
when you survey the piles of crockery and glass on the kitchen dresser
and table and window-ledge and mantelpiece, that haven’t yet found an
abiding-place, and see the pantries full to overflowing, a lurking
thought comes that perhaps it might have been an advantage if he _had_
smashed a few dozens of the multitudinous array of cups and saucers
and plates and dishes that seem woefully superfluous at the moment!
As there seemed a good bit still to do, I said I would dispense with
the conventional “tour,” proper to the occasion, and spend the time
trying to dispose of the twenty-seven British workmen, supposed to be
house-decorating, who were cheerfully in possession (and apparently
regarding their posts as life appointments) when our goods arrived at
the door, despite our having let them live in the house rent free for
two months previously.
It was a little difficult to follow their twenty-seven lines of
argument as to why they should remain with us permanently, with Abigail
continually at my elbow presenting a tradesman’s card and explaining—
“Please, ma’am, this man says he served the people who were here
before; but I’ve told him he’s the ninth fishmonger who has said that
to-day.”
Or else it would be, “There’s a man at the door says he served the last
people with groceries. Can I tell him to run back and get some soap? I
can’t find where the men put our packets, and it will be quicker than
sending to the Stores. I suppose you don’t happen to have seen it, m’m?
Cook and I have looked everywhere. But we’ve found the anchovy sauce,
and the carpet beater. Where _do_ you think they had packed them——” and
so on.
But I determined to do my wifely duty in making a happy home for the
man who had had the courage to marry me.
I was politely attentive when interviewed by a near-by magnate who was
anxious to propose the Head of Affairs for the Conservative Club. I
accepted particulars supplied me by the secretary of the Golf Club, who
felt we were the very people the club needed. I tried to understand
when the gardener explained the peculiarities of the greenhouse heating
apparatus, and the danger that would threaten if anyone but himself
entered the greenhouse.
I endured the postman knocking at the door a dozen times a day to
inquire if we lived there, only to point out to us that we didn’t when
we had assured him that we did. I informed the sweep that everything
was quite satisfactory thank you, and I should hope to have the
pleasure of meeting him again.
I accepted the coal man’s many reasons for not having delivered the
coal sooner; and I thanked cook for the information that the policeman
said he or his mate would always be on point duty at the corner
whenever we wanted him.