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"Got
the ring all right?" whispered young van der Luyden Newland, who was
inexperienced in the duties of a best man, and awed by the weight of his
responsibility.
Archer
made the gesture which he had seen so many bridegrooms make: with his
ungloved right hand he felt in the pocket of his dark grey waistcoat, and
assured himself that the little gold circlet (engraved inside: Newland to
May, April ---, 187-) was in its place; then, resuming his former attitude,
his tall hat and pearl-grey gloves with black stitchings grasped in his left
hand, he stood looking at the door of the church.
Overhead,
Handel's March swelled pompously through the imitation stone vaulting,
carrying on its waves the faded drift of the many weddings at which, with
cheerful indifference, he had stood on the same chancel step watching other
brides float up the nave toward other bridegrooms.
"How
like a first night at the Opera!" he thought, recognising all the same
faces in the same boxes (no, pews), and wondering if, when the Last Trump
sounded, Mrs. Selfridge Merry would be there with the same towering ostrich
feathers in her bonnet, and Mrs. Beaufort with the same diamond earrings and
the same smile--and whether suitable proscenium seats were already prepared
for them in another world.
After
that there was still time to review, one by one, the familiar countenances
in the first rows; the women's sharp with curiosity and excitement, the
men's sulky with the obligation of having to put on their frock-coats before
luncheon, and fight for food at the wedding-breakfast.
"Too
bad the breakfast is at old Catherine's," the bridegroom could fancy
Reggie Chivers saying. "But
I'm told that Lovell Mingott insisted on its being cooked by his own chef,
so it ought to be good if one can only get at it." And he could imagine Sillerton Jackson adding with authority:
"My dear fellow, haven't you heard?
It's to be served at small tables, in the new English fashion."
Archer's
eyes lingered a moment on the left-hand pew, where his mother, who had
entered the church on Mr. Henry van der Luyden's arm, sat weeping softly
under her Chantilly veil, her hands in her grandmother's ermine muff.
"Poor
Janey!" he thought, looking at his sister, "even by screwing her
head around she can see only the people in the few front pews; and they're
mostly dowdy Newlands and Dagonets."
On
the hither side of the white ribbon dividing off the seats reserved for the
families he saw Beaufort, tall and redfaced, scrutinising the women with his
arrogant stare. Beside him sat
his wife, all silvery chinchilla and violets; and on the far side of the
ribbon, Lawrence Lefferts's sleekly brushed head seemed to mount guard over
the invisible deity of "Good Form" who presided at the ceremony.
Archer
wondered how many flaws Lefferts's keen eyes would discover in the ritual of
his divinity; then he suddenly recalled that he too had once thought such
questions important. The things
that had filled his days seemed now like a nursery parody of life, or like
the wrangles of mediaeval schoolmen over metaphysical terms that nobody had
ever understood. A stormy
discussion as to whether the wedding presents should be "shown"
had darkened the last hours before the wedding; and it seemed inconceivable
to Archer that grown-up people should work themselves into a state of
agitation over such trifles, and that the matter should have been decided
(in the negative) by Mrs. Welland's saying, with indignant tears:
"I should as soon turn the reporters loose in my house." Yet there was a time when Archer had had definite and rather
aggressive opinions on all such problems, and when everything concerning the
manners and customs of his little tribe had seemed to him fraught with
world-wide significance.
"And
all the while, I suppose," he thought, "real people were living
somewhere, and real things happening to them . . ."
"THERE
THEY COME!" breathed the best man excitedly; but the bridegroom knew
better.
The
cautious opening of the door of the church meant only that Mr. Brown the
livery-stable keeper (gowned in black in his intermittent character of
sexton) was taking a preliminary survey of the scene before marshalling his
forces. The door was softly
shut again; then after another interval it swung majestically open, and a
murmur ran through the church: "The
family!"
Mrs.
Welland came first, on the arm of her eldest son. Her large pink face was appropriately solemn, and her plum-coloured
satin with pale blue side-panels, and blue ostrich plumes in a small satin
bonnet, met with general approval; but before she had settled herself with a
stately rustle in the pew opposite Mrs. Archer's the spectators were craning
their necks to see who was coming after her.
Wild rumours had been abroad the day before to the effect that Mrs.
Manson Mingott, in spite of her physical disabilities, had resolved on being
present at the ceremony; and the idea was so much in keeping with her
sporting character that bets ran high at the clubs as to her being able to
walk up the nave and squeeze into a seat.
It was known that she had insisted on sending her own carpenter to
look into the possibility of taking down the end panel of the front pew, and
to measure the space between the seat and the front; but the result had been
discouraging, and for one anxious day her family had watched her dallying
with the plan of being wheeled up the nave in her enormous Bath chair and
sitting enthroned in it at the foot of the chancel.
The
idea of this monstrous exposure of her person was so painful to her
relations that they could have covered with gold the ingenious person who
suddenly discovered that the chair was too wide to pass between the iron
uprights of the awning which extended from the church door to the curbstone.
The idea of doing away with this awning, and revealing the bride to
the mob of dressmakers and newspaper reporters who stood outside fighting to
get near the joints of the canvas, exceeded even old Catherine's courage,
though for a moment she had weighed the possibility.
"Why, they might take a photograph of my child AND PUT IT IN THE
PAPERS!" Mrs. Welland exclaimed when her mother's last plan was hinted
to her; and from this unthinkable indecency the clan recoiled with a
collective shudder. The ancestress had had to give in; but her concession
was bought only by the promise that the wedding- breakfast should take place
under her roof, though (as the Washington Square connection said) with the
Wellands' house in easy reach it was hard to have to make a special price
with Brown to drive one to the other end of nowhere.
Though
all these transactions had been widely reported by the Jacksons a sporting
minority still clung to the belief that old Catherine would appear in
church, and there was a distinct lowering of the temperature when she was
found to have been replaced by her daughter-in-law.
Mrs. Lovell Mingott had the high colour and glassy stare induced in
ladies of her age and habit by the effort of getting into a new dress; but
once the disappointment occasioned by her mother-in-law's non-appearance had
subsided, it was agreed that her black Chantilly over lilac satin, with a
bonnet of Parma violets, formed the happiest contrast to Mrs. Welland's blue
and plum-colour. Far different
was the impression produced by the gaunt and mincing lady who followed on
Mr. Mingott's arm, in a wild dishevelment of stripes and fringes and
floating scarves; and as this last apparition glided into view Archer's
heart contracted and stopped beating.
He
had taken it for granted that the Marchioness Manson was still in
Washington, where she had gone some four weeks previously with her niece,
Madame Olenska. It was
generally understood that their abrupt departure was due to Madame Olenska's
desire to remove her aunt from the baleful eloquence of Dr. Agathon Carver,
who had nearly succeeded in enlisting her as a recruit for the Valley of
Love; and in the circumstances no one had expected either of the ladies to
return for the wedding. For a
moment Archer stood with his eyes fixed on Medora's fantastic figure,
straining to see who came behind her; but the little procession was at an
end, for all the lesser members of the family had taken their seats, and the
eight tall ushers, gathering themselves together like birds or insects
preparing for some migratory manoeuvre, were already slipping through the
side doors into the lobby.
"Newland--I
say: SHE'S HERE!" the best man whispered.
Archer
roused himself with a start.
A
long time had apparently passed since his heart had stopped beating, for the
white and rosy procession was in fact half way up the nave, the Bishop, the
Rector and two white-winged assistants were hovering about the flower-banked
altar, and the first chords of the Spohr symphony were strewing their
flower-like notes before the bride.
Archer
opened his eyes (but could they really have been shut, as he imagined?), and
felt his heart beginning to resume its usual task. The music, the scent of the lilies on the altar, the vision
of the cloud of tulle and orange-blossoms floating nearer and nearer, the
sight of Mrs. Archer's face suddenly convulsed with happy sobs, the low
benedictory murmur of the Rector's voice, the ordered evolutions of the
eight pink bridesmaids and the eight black ushers: all these sights, sounds
and sensations, so familiar in themselves, so unutterably strange and
meaningless in his new relation to them, were confusedly mingled in his
brain.
"My
God," he thought, "HAVE I got the ring?"--and once more he
went through the bridegroom's convulsive gesture.
Then,
in a moment, May was beside him, such radiance streaming from her that it
sent a faint warmth through his numbness, and he straightened himself and
smiled into her eyes.
"Dearly
beloved, we are gathered together here," the Rector began . . .
The
ring was on her hand, the Bishop's benediction had been given, the
bridesmaids were a-poise to resume their place in the procession, and the
organ was showing preliminary symptoms of breaking out into the Mendelssohn
March, without which no newly-wedded couple had ever emerged upon New York.
"Your
arm--I SAY, GIVE HER YOUR ARM!" young Newland nervously hissed; and
once more Archer became aware of having been adrift far off in the unknown.
What was it that had sent him there, he wondered?
Perhaps the glimpse, among the anonymous spectators in the transept,
of a dark coil of hair under a hat which, a moment later, revealed itself as
belonging to an unknown lady with a long nose, so laughably unlike the
person whose image she had evoked that he asked himself if he were becoming
subject to hallucinations.
And
now he and his wife were pacing slowly down the nave, carried forward on the
light Mendelssohn ripples, the spring day beckoning to them through widely
opened doors, and Mrs. Welland's chestnuts, with big white favours on their
frontlets, curvetting and showing off at the far end of the canvas tunnel.
The
footman, who had a still bigger white favour on his lapel, wrapped May's
white cloak about her, and Archer jumped into the brougham at her side.
She turned to him with a triumphant smile and their hands clasped
under her veil.
"Darling!"
Archer said--and suddenly the same black abyss yawned before him and he felt
himself sinking into it, deeper and deeper, while his voice rambled on
smoothly and cheerfully: "Yes,
of course I thought I'd lost the ring; no wedding would be complete if the
poor devil of a bridegroom didn't go through that.
But you DID keep me waiting, you know!
I had time to think of every horror that might possibly happen."
She
surprised him by turning, in full Fifth Avenue, and flinging her arms about
his neck. "But none ever
CAN happen now, can it, Newland, as long as we two are together?"
Every
detail of the day had been so carefully thought out that the young couple,
after the wedding-breakfast, had ample time to put on their travelling-clothes,
descend the wide Mingott stairs between laughing bridesmaids and weeping
parents, and get into the brougham under the traditional shower of rice and
satin slippers; and there was still half an hour left in which to drive to
the station, buy the last weeklies at the bookstall with the air of seasoned
travellers, and settle themselves in the reserved compartment in which May's
maid had already placed her dove-coloured travelling cloak and glaringly new
dressing-bag from London.
The
old du Lac aunts at Rhinebeck had put their house at the disposal of the
bridal couple, with a readiness inspired by the prospect of spending a week
in New York with Mrs. Archer; and Archer, glad to escape the usual
"bridal suite" in a Philadelphia or Baltimore hotel, had accepted
with an equal alacrity.
May
was enchanted at the idea of going to the country, and childishly amused at
the vain efforts of the eight bridesmaids to discover where their mysterious
retreat was situated. It was
thought "very English" to have a country-house lent to one, and
the fact gave a last touch of distinction to what was generally conceded to
be the most brilliant wedding of the year; but where the house was no one
was permitted to know, except the parents of bride and groom, who, when
taxed with the knowledge, pursed their lips and said mysteriously:
"Ah, they didn't tell us--" which was manifestly true,
since there was no need to.
Once
they were settled in their compartment, and the train, shaking off the
endless wooden suburbs, had pushed out into the pale landscape of spring,
talk became easier than Archer had expected.
May was still, in look and tone, the simple girl of yesterday, eager
to compare notes with him as to the incidents of the wedding, and discussing
them as impartially as a bridesmaid talking it all over with an usher.
At first Archer had fancied that this detachment was the disguise of
an inward tremor; but her clear eyes revealed only the most tranquil
unawareness. She was alone for
the first time with her husband; but her husband was only the charming
comrade of yesterday. There was
no one whom she liked as much, no one whom she trusted as completely, and
the culminating "lark" of the whole delightful adventure of
engagement and marriage was to be off with him alone on a journey, like a
grownup person, like a "married woman," in fact.
It
was wonderful that--as he had learned in the Mission garden at St.
Augustine--such depths of feeling could coexist with such absence of
imagination. But he remembered
how, even then, she had surprised him by dropping back to inexpressive
girlishness as soon as her conscience had been eased of its burden; and he
saw that she would probably go through life dealing to the best of her
ability with each experience as it came, but never anticipating any by so
much as a stolen glance.
Perhaps
that faculty of unawareness was what gave her eyes their transparency, and
her face the look of representing a type rather than a person; as if she
might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue or a Greek goddess.
The blood that ran so close to her fair skin might have been a
preserving fluid rather than a ravaging element; yet her look of
indestructible youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor dull, but only
primitive and pure. In the
thick of this meditation Archer suddenly felt himself looking at her with
the startled gaze of a stranger, and plunged into a reminiscence of the
wedding-breakfast and of Granny Mingott's immense and triumphant pervasion
of it.
May
settled down to frank enjoyment of the subject. "I was surprised,
though--weren't you?--that aunt Medora came after all.
Ellen wrote that they were neither of them well enough to take the
journey; I do wish it had been she who had recovered!
Did you see the exquisite old lace she sent me?"
He
had known that the moment must come sooner or later, but he had somewhat
imagined that by force of willing he might hold it at bay.
"Yes--I--no:
yes, it was beautiful," he said, looking at her blindly, and wondering
if, whenever he heard those two syllables, all his carefully built-up world
would tumble about him like a house of cards.
"Aren't
you tired? It will be good to
have some tea when we arrive--I'm sure the aunts have got everything
beautifully ready," he rattled on, taking her hand in his; and her mind
rushed away instantly to the magnificent tea and coffee service of Baltimore
silver which the Beauforts had sent, and which "went" so perfectly
with uncle Lovell Mingott's trays and sidedishes.
In
the spring twilight the train stopped at the Rhinebeck station, and they
walked along the platform to the waiting carriage.
"Ah,
how awfully kind of the van der Luydens-- they've sent their man over from
Skuytercliff to meet us," Archer exclaimed, as a sedate person out of
livery approached them and relieved the maid of her bags.
"I'm
extremely sorry, sir," said this emissary, "that a little accident
has occurred at the Miss du Lacs': a leak in the water-tank.
It happened yesterday, and Mr. van der Luyden, who heard of it this
morning, sent a housemaid up by the early train to get the Patroon's house
ready. It will be quite
comfortable, I think you'll find, sir; and the Miss du Lacs have sent their
cook over, so that it will be exactly the same as if you'd been at
Rhinebeck."
Archer
stared at the speaker so blankly that he repeated in still more apologetic
accents: "It'll be exactly
the same, sir, I do assure you--" and May's eager voice broke out,
covering the embarrassed silence: "The
same as Rhinebeck? The
Patroon's house? But it will be
a hundred thousand times better--won't it, Newland? It's too dear and kind
of Mr. van der Luyden to have thought of it."
And
as they drove off, with the maid beside the coachman, and their shining
bridal bags on the seat before them, she went on excitedly: "Only fancy, I've never been inside it--have you?
The van der Luydens show it to so few people.
But they opened it for Ellen, it seems, and she told me what a
darling little place it was: she says it's the only house she's seen in
America that she could imagine being perfectly happy in."
"Well--that's
what we're going to be, isn't it?" cried her husband gaily; and she
answered with her boyish smile: "Ah,
it's just our luck beginning--the wonderful luck we're always going to have
together!"
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