She sat in the window, and watched the sky turn from black to gray, and then to the blank absence of colour before daylight....
In the motor, on the way to St. Stephen’s, the silence had become oppressive, and Kate suddenly laid her hand on her daughter’s.
“My darling, I wish you all the happiness there ever was in the world—happiness beyond all imagining.”
“Oh, mother, take care! Not too much! You frighten me....” Through the white mist of tulle Kate caught the girl’s constrained smile. She had been too vehement, then? She had over-emphasized? Doubtless she would never get exactly the right note. She heard herself murmuring vaguely: “But there can’t be too much, can there?” and Anne’s answer: “Oh, I don’t know....” and mercifully that brought them to the verge of the crimson carpet and the awning.
In the vestibule of the church they were received into a flutter of family. No bridesmaids; but Fred Landers and Hendrik Drover, stationed there as participants in the bridal procession, amid a cluster of Drovers and Tresseltons who had lingered for a glimpse of the bride before making their way to the front pews. A pervading lustre of pearls and tall hats; a cloud of expensive furs, a gradual vague impression of something having possibly gone wrong, and no one wishing to be the first to suggest it. Finally Joe Tresselton approached to say in Mrs. Clephane’s ear: “He’s not here yet—”
Anne had caught the whisper. Her mother saw her lips whiten as they framed a laugh. “Chris late? How like him! Or is it that we’re too indecently punctual—?”
Oh, the tidal rush in the mother’s breast! The Not here! Not here! Not here! shouted down at her from every shaft and curve of the vaulting, rained down on her from the accomplice heavens! And she had called the sky indifferent! But of course he was not here—he would not be here. She had always known that she would wear him out in the end. Her case was so much stronger than his. In a flash all her torturing doubts fell away from her.
All about her, wrist-watches were being furtively consulted. Anne stood between the groups, a pillar of snow.
“Anne always is indecently punctual,” Nollie Tresselton laughed; Uncle Hendrik mumbled something ponderous about traffic obstruction. Once or twice the sexton’s black gown fluttered enquiringly out of an aisle door and back; the bridal group began to be aware of the pressure, behind them, of late arrivals checked in the doorway till the procession should have passed into the church.