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.