A STRANGE WEDDING
My moralisings were cut short by my entering a village, and, it being
about the hour of noon, finding myself in the thick of a village
wedding.
Undoubtedly the nicest way to get married is on the sly, and indeed it
is at present becoming quite fashionable. Many young couples of my
acquaintance, who have had no other reason for concealing the fact
beyond their own whim, have thus slipped off without saying a word to
anybody, and returned full-blown housekeepers, with "at home" days of
their own, and everything else like real married people,--for, as said
an old lady to me, "one can never be sure of married people nowadays
unless you have been at the wedding."
My friend George Muncaster, who does everything charmingly different
from any one else, hit upon one of the quaintest plans for his
marriage. It was simple, and some may say prosaic enough. His days
being spent at a great office in the city, he got leave of absence for
a couple of hours, met his wife, went with her to the registrar's,
returned to his office, worked the rest of the day as usual, and then
went to his new home to find his wife and dinner awaiting him,--all
just as it was going to be every night for so many happy years.
Prosaic, you say! Not your idea of poetry, perhaps, but, after a new
and growing fashion in poetry, truly poetic. George Muncaster's
marriage is a type of the new poetry, the poetry of essentials. The old
poetry, as exemplified in the old-fashioned marriage, is a poetry of
externals, and certainly it has the advantage of picturesqueness.
There is perhaps more to be said for it than that. Indeed, if I were
ever to get married, I am at a loss to know which way I should
choose,--George Muncaster's way or the old merry fashion, with the rice
and the old shoes and the orange-blossom. No doubt the old cheery
publicity is a little embarrassing to the two most concerned, and the
old marriage customs, the singing of the bride and bridegroom to their
nuptial couch, the frank jests, the country horse-play, must have
fretted the souls of many a lover before Shelley, who, it will be
remembered, resented the choral celebrations of his Scotch landlord and
friends by appearing at his bedroom door with a brace of pistols.
How like Shelley! The Scotch landlord meant well, we may be sure, and
a very small pinch of humour, or even mere ordinary humanity, as
distinct from humanitarianism, would have taken in the situation. Of
course Shelley's mind was full of the sanctity of the moment, and
indignant that "the hour for which the years did sigh" should thus be
broken in upon by vulgar revelry; but while we may sympathise with his
view, and admit to the full the sacredness, not to say the solemnity,
of the marriage ceremony, yet it is to be hoped that it still retains a
naturally mirthful side, of which such public merriment is but the
crude expression.
With all its sweet and mystical significance, surely the prevailing
feeling in the hearts of bride and bridegroom is, or should be, that of
happiness,--happiness bubbling and dancing, all sunny ripples from
heart to heart.
Surely they can spare a little of it, just one day's sight of it, to a
less happy world,--a world long since married and done for, and with
little happiness in it save the spectacle of other people's happiness.
It is good for us to see happy people, good for the symbols of
happiness to be carried high amidst us on occasion; for if they serve
no other purpose, they inspire in us the hope that we too may some day
be happy, or remind our discontented hearts that we have been.
If it were only for the sake of those quaint old women for whom life
would be entirely robbed of interest were it not for other people's
weddings and funerals, one feels the public ceremony of marriage a sort
of public duty, the happiness tax, so to say, due to the somewhat
impoverished revenues of public happiness. Other forms of happiness
are taxed; why not marriage?
In a village, particularly, two people who robbed the community of its
perquisites in this respect would be looked upon as "enemies of the
people," and their joint life would begin under a social ban which it
would cost much subsequent hospitality to remove. The dramatic
instinct to which the life of towns is necessarily unfavourable, is
kept alive in the country by the smallness of the stage and the fewness
of the actors. A village is an organism, conscious of its several
parts, as a town is not.
In a village everybody is a public man. The great events of his life
are of public as well as private significance, appropriately,
therefore, invested with public ceremonial. Thus used to living in the
public eye, the actors carry off their parts at weddings and other
dramatic ceremonials, with more spirit than is easy to a townsman, who
is naturally made self-conscious by being suddenly called upon to fill
for a day a public position for which he has had no training. That no
doubt is the real reason for the growth of quiet marriages; and the
desire for them, I suspect, comes first from the man, for there are few
women who at heart do not prefer the old histrionic display.
However, the village wedding at which I suddenly found myself a
spectator was, for a village, a singularly quiet one. There was no
bell-ringing, and there were no bridesmaids. The bride drove up quietly
with her father, and there was a subdued note even in the murmur of
recognition which ran along the villagers as they stood in groups near
the church porch. There was an absence of the usual hilarity which
struck me. One might almost have said that there was a quite ominous
silence.
Seating myself in a corner of the transept where I could see all and be
little seen, I with the rest awaited the coming of the overdue
bridegroom. Meanwhile the usual buzzing and bobbing of heads went on
amongst the usual little group near the foot of the altar. Now and
then one caught a glisten of tears through a widow's veil, and the
little bride, dressed quietly in grey, talked with the usual nervous
gaiety to her girl friends, and made the usual whispered confidences
about her trousseau. The father, in occasional conversation with one
and another, appeared to be avoiding the subject with the usual
self-conscious solemnity, and occasionally he looked, somewhat
anxiously, I thought, towards the church door. The bridegroom did not
keep us waiting long,--I noticed that he had a rather delicate sad
face,--and presently the service began.
I don't know myself what getting married must feel like, but it cannot
be much more exciting than watching other people getting married.
Probably the spectators are more conscious of the impressive meaning of
it all than the brave young people themselves. I say brave, for I am
always struck by the courage of the two who thus gaily leap into the
gulf of the unknown together, thus join hands over the inevitable, and
put their signatures to the irrevocable. Indeed, I always get
something like a palpitation of the heart just before the priest utters
those final fateful words, "I declare you man and--wife." Half a second
before you were still free, half a second after you are bound for the
term of your natural life. Half a second before you had only to dash
the book from the priest's hands, and put your hand over his mouth, and
though thus giddily swinging on the brink of the precipice, you are
saved. Half a second after
Not all the king's horses and all the king's men
Can make you a bachelor ever again.
It is the knife-edge moment 'twixt time and eternity.
And, curiously enough, while my thoughts were thus running on towards
the rapids of that swirling moment, the very thing happened which I had
often imagined might happen to myself. Suddenly, with a sob, the
bridegroom covered his face with his hands, and crying, "I cannot! I
cannot!" hurriedly left the church, tears streaming down his cheeks, to
the complete dismay of the sad little group at the altar, and the
consternation of all present.
"Poor young man! I thought he would never go through with it," said an
old woman half to herself, who was sitting near me. I involuntarily
looked my desire of explanation.
"Well, you see," she said, "he had been married before. His first wife
died four years ago, and he loved her beyond all heaven and earth."
That evening, I afterwards heard, the young bridegroom's body was found
by some boys as they went to bathe in the river. As I recalled once
more that sad yearning face, and heard again that terrible "I cannot!
I cannot!" I thought of Heine's son of Asra, who loved the Sultan's
daughter.
"What is thy name, slave?" asked the princess, "and what thy race and
birthplace?"
"My name," the young slave answered, "is Mahomet. I come from Yemen.
My race is that of Asra, and when we love, we die."
And likewise a voice kept saying in my heart, "If ever you find your
Golden Bride, be sure she will die."