4
Next day came the queer dislocated morning—every one either at a loose end or frantically busy,—the arrival of Dr. Nigel Dundas, Bishop of Dunfermline, Colonel Dundas’s first cousin, who had travelled all night from Scotland, to be there to marry Rory; the hurried cold luncheon; the getting the Custs and people off to the church; then Parker’s and Teresa’s fingers fumbling with hooks and eyes and arranging the veil.
When the bride was dressed, and ready to go downstairs, the Doña, who had not appeared all morning, and was not, of course, going to the church ceremony, walked into the room, pale and heavy-eyed.
She held out her arms, “Come to me, my Concha!” she said.
“Oh, Doña ... if only ... I couldn’t ... it’ll be all right,” Concha whispered between little sobs, “and anyway, your baby will always love you ... and ...”
“The Purissima and all the Saints bless you, my child,” said the Doña in a stifled voice, and she made the sign of the Cross on her forehead, “but you mustn’t cry on your wedding day. Come, let me put your veil straight.”
Teresa, watching this little scene, felt a sudden pang of remorse—why had she not more control over her imagination? Why had she allowed her mother to turn, in the play, into such a sinister and shameless figure?
Then they went down to the hall, where Dick was contemplating in a pier-glass, with considerable complacency, the reflection of his stout morning-coated person.
“Well, it’s quite time we were starting, Concha,” he called out; and with that amazing ignoring of the emotional conventions by which men are continually hurting the feelings of women, it was not till he and Concha were well on their way to church, that he remembered to congratulate her on her appearance.
Teresa, Jollypot, and the children, had gone on ahead in the open car—past hens, past hedges, past motor-bicycles, past cottage gardens; past fields of light feathery oats, so thickly sown with poppies that they seemed to flicker together into one fabric; past fields of barley that had swallowed the wind, which bent and ruffled the ductile imprisoning substance that it informed; past fields of half-ripe wheat, around the stalks of which Teresa, who, since she had been writing, had fallen into an almost exhausting habit of automatic observation, noticed the light tightly twisting itself in strands of greenish lavender. And there was a field from which the hay had been carried long enough to have allowed a fresh crop of poppies to spring up; to see them thus alone and unhampered gave one such a stab of joyous relief that one could almost believe the hay to have been but a parasite scum drained away to reveal this red substratum of beauty. All these things, as they rushed past, were remarked by Teresa’s weary, active eyes till they had reached the church and deposited Anna and Jasper with the bridesmaids, waiting in the porch, and at last they were walking up the aisle and being ushered into their places by Bob Norton.
There stood Major Arbuthnot, whispering and giggling with Rory, who was looking very white and bright-eyed. After all, he was not lower than the birds—he, too, felt the thrill of mating-time.
Then the opening bars of the Voice that Breathed o’er Eden, and a stiffening to attention of Major Arbuthnot, and a sudden smile from Rory, and all eyes turning to the door—Concha was entering on her father’s arm, her train held up by Jasper.
Then the Oxford voice of Dr. Nigel Dundas, droning on, droning on, till it reached the low antiphon with Rory:
I, James Roderick Brabazon,
I, James Roderick Brabazon,
take thee, Maria Concepcion,
take thee, Maria Concepcion,
to have and to hold,
to have and to hold,
from this day forward,
from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
to love and to cherish,
till death us do part,
till death us do part,
according to God’s holy ordinance;
according to God’s holy ordinance;
and thereto I plight thee my troth,
and thereto I plight thee my troth.
Then Concha’s turn and then more prayers; and before long they were all laughing and chattering and wiping away tears in the vestry; while in the church the band was playing shamelessly secular tunes, though Mr. Moore had stipulated that there should be “no vaudeville music.”
“Why are people crying? A wedding isn’t a sad thing,” said Anna, in a loud and argumentative voice.
Then down the aisle and down the path between a double hedge of Girl Guides, and whirling back to the Plasencia garden and masses and masses of people.
Teresa was immediately sucked into a vortex of activities—elbowing her way through the crowd with a cup of tea for one old lady and an ice for another; steering a third to one of the tents, to choose for herself what she wanted; making suitable rejoinders to such questions and exclamations as: “How charming dear Concha looks, I really think she’s the prettiest bride I’ve ever seen.” “Do tell me what the red ribbon is that Captain Dundas is wearing—the one that isn’t the M.C.? Some one said they thought it was a Belgian order.” “Tell me dear; it was the Scottish Church Service, wasn’t it? I mean, the Scotch Church that’s like ours? I did so like it ... so much more ... well, delicate than ours.” “Oh, just look at those masses of white butterflies on the lavender! What a splendid crop you’ll have! Do you send it up to London?”
Then, as in a nightmare, she heard Anna proclaiming proudly that she had eaten eight ices, and Jasper ten; well, it was too late now to take any measures.
Also, she had time to be amused at noticing that Mrs. Moore had managed to get introduced to Lady Cust, and was talking to her eagerly.
Later on she heard Lettice Moore saying to another bridesmaid, “Poor old Eben! He was frightfully cut up when he heard about the engagement,” and, in the foolish way one has of moving indifferently among the world’s great tragedies—earthquakes, famines, wars—and suddenly feeling a tightening of the throat, and a smarting of the eyes as one realises that at that moment a bullfinch is probably dying in China, Teresa suddenly felt a wave of pity and tenderness sweep over her for Eben, sitting in his cabin (did senior “snotties” have a cabin to themselves? Well, it didn’t really matter), so poorly furnished in comparison with the gramophones and silver photograph frames, and gorgeous cushions of his mates, his arms, with the red hands whose fingers had never recovered their shape from the chilblains of the Baltic, dangling limply down at either side of him, and perhaps tears in his round china-blue eyes.
Then at last Concha and Rory were running and ducking and laughing under a shower of rice, and rose leaves. They looked very young and frail, both of them, blown out into the world, where God knew what awaited them.
“They are like Paulo and Francesca—two leaves clinging together, blown by the wind,” said Jollypot dreamily to Teresa.