"One Corset Ecraseur, patent laces.
"One pair bronze promenade shoes, Louis XV. heels, extra height. Stockings to match.
"One parasol composed peau-de-soie rose fanée and chiffon bleu-de-ciel."
To which may be added—one young woman, suffering horrible agony and quite intoxicated with happiness.
* * * * *
It was this marvellous possession that Vaiti yearned to show off at the wedding. She had not had a chance to wear it since the day when she had walked through the streets of San Francisco, with an admiring and amused crowd at her rear, and found it quite impossible to get on board the schooner, when she reached the water front, until she took off her voluminous skirt and handed it up over the side—afterwards climbing the rope-ladder in a storm of applause and a pink silk petticoat. Now the occasion for getting full value out of the wonderful thing had come at last, and she could not—no, she really could not—miss it.
Rather late next morning, when the bride and bridegroom—the former in a gorgeous gown of yellow curtain muslin, the latter in a thick tweed suit from Auckland that caused him to stream at every pore—were sitting on opposite sides of the little white church, enthroned on chairs all by themselves, and listening decorously to a long preliminary address from the native pastor—Vaiti swept in, and at once brought the ceremony to a momentary pause. The pastor stopped in his address and gaped, the women exclaimed audibly, the bridegroom fixed his eyes on the apparition and sighed in a manner that the bride evidently resented as a personal slight, for she grew still darker in the face than nature had made her, and stared penknives and scissors at Vaiti. Wild titters of delight swept indecorously through the church. The entry was indeed a success—the native pastor found it necessary to address his flock directly, and to tell them that they would undoubtedly all go to hell if they did not behave better in church, before order was restored.
It is not necessary to relate at length how Mata and Ivi were made one, how they walked out of the church nonchalantly by different doors, and were subsequently so deeply interested in the killing of the pigs for the marriage feast, and the preparing of the various cooking-pots, that they did not meet again all afternoon. It was a commonplace wedding enough, and this history is not interested in it, other than as it concerned the affairs of Vaiti. These, indeed, were fairly notable.
For with Vaiti pride very literally brought about a fall that day.
She had had a terrible time getting into her dress, and the whole ship's company had shared in the trouble. First, the native A.B.'s had to fetch her a big looking-glass from the nearest trader's, and secure it to the bulkhead of her cabin. Then the cook had to deliver up all the hot water in the galley—at seven bells, with dinner just coming on!—and the boatswain must needs broach the cargo for some special scented soap. Matters were only beginning, however. When the dress was disinterred from its many wrappings and finally put on it became immediately apparent that the bodice could not possibly be made to meet. Perhaps the coming of the bread-fruit season had caused the young lady's waist to expand—perhaps the practised art of Madame Retaillaud had exceeded anything that a mere amateur could compass in the way of lacing. At any rate, it was not till Vaiti had passed her corset laces out through the port and ordered two of the strongest sailors to tail on to them—not till Harris, agonising with laughter, had directed this novel evolution from the poop for at least five delirious minutes, during which Vaiti several times thought she was dying, but remained none the less determined to die rather than give in, that the deed was accomplished at last, and the "Kapitani" of Sybil was enabled to look at herself in the glass and know heavenly certainty that she was the best dressed woman in the Pacific at that instant, whoever saw or did not see.