XXVII
"Tum! Tum! Ter-um, tum, tum, tum!"
It was all over, then. The smooth bluish page scrawled over with signatures had completed the deed performed with greater solemnity in church. That was the wedding march of course, and soon they would process back down the aisle, following Connie's white fox fur and the tall shambling figure of the young man. All Marshington would watch them pass, and Muriel could imagine the things that would be said afterwards round luncheon tables all over the village.
"What do you think of the new bridegroom, Mrs. Daunt?"
"Hem, not much. A decent young man I dare say. Probably good enough for Connie Hammond." They would not be merciful, for they had been cheated out of their champagne reception. "Should ha' thought Hammond would ha' done things better," Colonel Cartwright would complain, and ladies who had hoped for an opportunity for new clothes would sniff surreptitiously over the announcement in the Kingsport Chronicle: "Owing to the severe illness of the bridegroom's father, no reception will be held, but all friends will be welcome at the church."
It had been a little weak, that, but if Mr. Todd Senior had not been conveniently indisposed what other excuse could have kept the Todd family away from Marshington? True, he was no more ill to-day than he had been for the past ten years or more, but nobody at Holy Trinity Church was likely to know the High Farm, Thraile, except the bridegroom, who would keep his own counsel. And the Todd family, as a visit of Mrs. Hammond to the High Farm had revealed, was quite impossible.
That visit had almost shaken Mrs. Hammond's confidence, almost, not quite. After it she had plunged with even greater thoroughness into the preparations for the wedding. "She must have cared," thought Muriel to whom the whole business appeared intolerable. She had not thought that anything Connie might do could have touched herself so closely. Yet, if Mrs. Hammond cared, she continued to hide her feelings with superhuman self-control. Of course it would have been almost impossible to preserve in private that attitude of shamed reproach while in public she posed as the proud mother, but Muriel was deeply shocked in some obscure pride of soul when Mrs. Hammond adopted almost at once her public pose for domestic purposes, and began to order clothes and household linen with the wholehearted interest that she usually devoted to such things.
Only Mr. Hammond ever seemed to doubt the wisdom of her policy, but he too followed where she led him with uneasy meekness, clumsily trying to comfort her with lace scarves brought from London, and an almost pathetic consideration of her wishes that drew them closer together than ever before since their days of love-making by the one passion that could steady his uncertain nature, or make her forget for a moment her quiet calculations.
Her mother and father were all right. They had each other. Connie was all right. She was going to be married. She had new clothes, presents and attention, all of which, her first rebellion overcome, she accepted with complacent satisfaction, as though they were her due. Night after night, Muriel had thought of it, feeling that sometimes she had been mistaken, that Connie's behaviour had not been disgraceful, outraging all her sense of delicacy and reserve. Perhaps to Connie it had been a swift romance, the madness of moonlight on the darkened moor, the sudden call of youth and brave adventure, then fleeting fear and hot rebellion to be assuaged by final victory. Sometimes Muriel had tossed on her bed, feeling the fury of her outraged virtue; sometimes she found in her own loneliness the greater shame.
And now it was all over.
The vestry was hot and stuffy. Muriel wished that they need not all wait so long. Why did the bridegroom hesitate so while signing his name, Benjamin Durdletree Todd, in weak slanting copper-plate across the page? Constance Rachel Adeline. Muriel had almost forgotten that all this was Connie's name, sprawled in her dashing black signature almost into the columns for Spinster, Age and Parish.
Mrs. Hammond rustled forward in her lilac silk. "Muriel dear, won't you sign too?"
So Muriel's small, symmetrical signature went below, and the little crowd rocked and stirred about the vestry table.
"Well, is that all?" laughed Connie.
"Quite all, Mrs. Todd," smiled Mr. Vaughan. "Please let me offer you every happiness."
But his thin queer face looked troubled as he shook Connie's hand, and he glanced at the tall sheepish young man with an expression of veiled bewilderment.
Muriel put down the pen, wondering why the pens in vestries and offices always disguise one's signature so effectively.
And then she caught sight of the bridegroom again and began another wonder. That is Connie's husband. That is my brother-in-law. They are married. They will share the same house, the same room. She will see him always, at breakfast, at dinner, when they get up in the morning. His relations are my relations. Connie is going to live at his father's house. Connie, Connie, who used to play in the day nursery at weddings, with a lace curtain over her head.
The bride did not wear a veil now, for this quiet war-wedding was far more chic. Dorothy Daunt and Peggy Mason, who had secured their young officers, assisted by six bridesmaids and a military escort were made to feel hopelessly ostentatious by the aristocratic restraint of the Hammond wedding. So Connie hid her bright hair beneath a large, white hat, and her white coat frock of soft silky material spoke the last word in decorous elegance. Her eyes shone with excitement, and she held her head high with reckless pride.
"She's almost beautiful," thought Muriel, and was dazed by the wonder of it all. For two days before, Connie had broken down again, and declared that whatever happened she could not go through with it. Mr. Hammond had said gruffly, "Look here, Rachel, had we better chuck it? I'll do something for the kid." But Mrs. Hammond had persisted, declaring that it was too late to withdraw now, when the wedding had been arranged, and every one would know. Then finally Connie herself had saved the situation, by crying out that since they'd pushed her into it she supposed that she'd go on. But if they knew what Thraile would be like, they hadn't the feelings of a toad, and for God's sake they weren't to fuss her any more, for she was fed up with it all.
But, after that, she had recovered her spirits. Even during the awful hour before the car arrived, she had not faltered in her attention given to gloves and hat and white suède shoes. And now she looked as though she had just gained her heart's desire in the rather pale, dark young man who kept looking sheepishly askance at his newly acquired father-in-law, as upon one who had bought, at the price of paying off the Todds' long-standing debts, the honesty of his erring daughter.
They stood waiting for something, the bride, the bridegroom, the Hammonds, the best man—a vaguely non-committal cousin of the Todds selected after much diligent searching by Mrs. Hammond, and imposed upon the now thoroughly intimidated Ben without compunction—Aunt Rose, Aunt Beatrice and half a dozen Bennet relatives.
"Well, Ben," smiled Mrs. Hammond tremulously, "aren't you going to do your duty?"
He blushed. He hesitated. Then he turned and kissed Connie with clumsy awkwardness that knocked her hat aside. While she straightened it, he kissed Mrs. Hammond, and came in her turn to Muriel. It was as he bent above her, very lanky and tall and smelling of the earth and leather and warm black clothes, that suddenly she doubted.
Had they been right to force Connie into this? What had they done? This terrible young man! But even then it was Connie again who reassured her.
"Come on, Ben. Stop kissing Muriel. You know she isn't used to it. Pull up your socks, old man. We've got to face them!" She seized his arm and started almost at a run down the long aisle. They followed her, Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, Muriel and the strange young man, the trail of relatives behind.
Tum, tum, terum—tum, tum—tum! triumphed the organ. A sea of bobbing faces greeted the procession, pallid in the dimness of the church. The scent from Muriel's bouquet of pink carnations choked her. The organ shook and quivered in its ecstasy. She saw Connie's white dress gleam before her. She felt a curious sensation of unreality, as though her mind were quite detached from her body, and she were looking down upon Muriel Hammond's saxe blue dress, upon her flower-crowned hat, and the rocking sea of the congregation. Suppose that this had been her own wedding—hers and Godfrey's? The young man at her side grew taller; his pleasantly mediocre profile hardened and straightened into Godfrey's features as she had last seen them, the straight fine nose, the splendid sweep of his dark eyebrows, the curve of his too-handsome, rather obstinate mouth, his firm chin uptilted against the dark pillar of the aisle.
People were shaking hands at the church door, crowds and crowds of them. Connie, laughing and blushing, was thanking them for their good wishes so volubly that nobody noticed the bridegroom's silence. Even if he had spoken, so many quite eligible young men in Marshington talked with Yorkshire accents that nobody would notice how common Ben's voice sounded. Here was Lady Grainger smiling down at them, and Lady Grainger's kind, guileless face, and her pleasant voice saying, "Well, Mrs. Todd, when I first made your acquaintance so short a time ago, I hardly thought that to-day I should come to your wedding." Mrs. Hammond replied laughingly, "Wasn't she a sight that night? Coming into the drawing-room all muddy! I was ashamed of her."
Really, thought Muriel, is Mother just being wonderful, or does she really feel quite happy? But she knew that Mrs. Marshall Gurney's presence luring Lady Grainger's little speech had helped Mrs. Hammond over a difficult place.
Little Miss Dale, being as usual unable to make her presence felt at the centre of interest, pushed her way to Muriel's side.
"A charming wedding," she said tearfully. Nobody knew whether Miss Dale always wept at weddings out of sympathy for the bride or sorrow for her single state. But she always went, and she always wept. "I love a wedding," she continued, "And how sweet Connie looks! and positively everybody here. The Graingers of course, and I am sure that Mrs. Neale would have been if it had not been for her sad news."
"Her news? What news?"
"Oh, well." Miss Dale hesitated, darting quick, bird-like glances at Muriel and the bride. "I wish that I hadn't mentioned it—at a wedding. We must think of bright things. Happy the bride that the sun shines on, and of all such good things. The sun is shining. Dear Connie. A nice young man, I expect. Younger than she is, surely? But I thought that you would be sure to have heard."
"No. We've been rather absorbed by our own affairs for the last few weeks, I am afraid." Then, with sharpening anxiety, "Not about—her son?" She could not say his name.
"Poor Godfrey. Yes, poor Godfrey. We only heard last night over the telephone. Mrs. Marshall Gurney rang up about the nursing fund, and then . . ."
The crowd moved forward. In another minute Miss Dale might be swept away and Muriel would not know. She stretched out her hand and caught at the little woman's sleeve.
"You said—you were saying—Mrs. Neale had heard . . ." Her heart cried, "Tell me, tell me," yet she did not want to know.
"Poor Godfrey—— She had a telegram from the War Office—— Reported wounded and prisoner of war. Of course reports are not always true. As I said to my sister Maud . . . you know, she was so sorry that she could not come to-day," and Miss Dale proceeded to describe all that Muriel had known for weeks past about her sister Maud's sciatica.
But Muriel did not hear. She was picking at the silver paper round her pink carnations while she fought for self-control. She saw all sorts of irrelevant, meaningless things, her father's broad, black back, the frightened pertness of the bow in Miss Dale's hat, Mrs. Marshall Gurney's flowing scarves and veils. Part of her mind recalled the stale Marshington joke that Mrs. Marshall Gurney wore as many veils as a widow because she had forgotten her husband's existence long ago. The other part remembered as though she herself had seen them, the horrors that she dreamed of at the front. She saw again pictures drawn by the too graphic pencil of a war-artist. She saw the wooden face of an old woman in a lamp-lit shop, who said, "War's bloody hell, ah'm telling you, bloody hell." She saw Godfrey's splendid body torn and broken, his handsome face distorted out of its complacency, his smiling eyes looking straight into despair.
She supposed that she must have followed her sister out into the sunlit churchyard, where fallen chestnut leaves spread a carpet of mottled gold and green before the bride. She supposed that people must have thrown confetti at her, for afterwards she shook it from her hat and it lay on her bedroom carpet like the fallen petals of pink and white may. She must have sat through the long luncheon party, and have helped Connie into her brown travelling dress, and have talked to Uncle George and Aunt Rose, and the long-legged cousin, Adeline, from Market Burton, who would stay until the evening train.
Only when she had helped to tidy the abandoned luncheon table, and helped Annie to pack in their tissue paper the rose bowls and silver inkstands destined incongruously for the High Farm, Thraile, horror and desolation overcame her. Perhaps the act of packing away Connie's presents reminded her of that evening at Scarborough when she had packed her mother's trunk, and Godfrey found her. Perhaps, all the time since Miss Dale spoke to her, her imagination had been feeding upon horrors. But suddenly she put down the painted blotter that she was holding, and fled from the room. The house was full of borrowed maids, and aunts and stray acquaintances. She rushed to the only sure retreat and locked the bathroom door behind her. Flinging herself down beside the towel rail, she stifled her sobs in the rough softness of her father's bath towels.
"Oh, Godfrey, Godfrey!" she moaned. "Oh, poor Godfrey. He mustn't be hurt. He mustn't." Her own body writhed as with acute physical pain. She could feel the agony of his wounds. They tore her without mercy.
The light of motor lamps in the yard shone through the uncurtained window on to her small, shaking body and the bowed darkness of her head. Her lips moved.
"Oh, God, don't take him out of the world, don't let him die. Even if he has to marry Clare. Make him come back. Come back to me, some day." She remembered one dreadful night, soon after Martin Elliott's death, when she had wished Godfrey dead too, in a storm of jealous bitterness. She felt herself a murderess.
"Don't let him die. Don't let him die!" Her hands tore at the thick towels. Her imagination, beyond all control, tortured her with his pain. She had heard tales of prison camps. . . .
"Muriel, Muriel," called her mother's voice. "Where are you, dear? Come and help me to forward these telegrams to Connie."
With her hand to her mouth, choking the little sobs that broke from time to time, she stared round the room like a trapped creature. The wan light from the yard gleamed on the enamel bath, the metal rails, the polished taps.
"Muriel! Muriel!"
The house claimed her. She was bound to its routine as to a wheel. It would not stop, wherever Godfrey lay, his broken body nursed by alien hands.
"Come along, dear."
Slowly, as in a dream, she rose and turned the key.