Of course, when at two o’clock they drove to the church, it was crowded with spectators, for the marriage of the heiress who had been defrauded of her fortune by Sir Matthew Mactavish had found its inevitable way into the hands of the paragraph-mongers. But then, as Macneillie remarked, a marriage ought to take place before a congregation, and it would have been a thousand pities if this particular marriage had been smuggled through in secret at some chilly hour of the morning in an empty church.
“As it was,” he added, “some idle London folk had the chance of singing ‘All people that on earth do dwell’ to the old hundredth, and that’s a chance that doesn’t often come to us in these degenerate days of flabby modern hymns. All the women, moreover, will go away persuaded in their own minds that the conventional wedding dress of modern days is ugly and that the old-world dress of Mrs. Ralph Denmead is far more artistic.”
There was one thing, however, which baffled the Press. It described the service with gusto, and gave the most elaborate details as to the dresses, but it could not discover where the Bride and Bride-groom intended to spend the honeymoon. It was reduced at length to the desperate expedient of a good round lie, and said that they left en route for the continent.
Ralph and Evereld, who had kept this detail entirely to themselves, laughed contentedly as they read this fable in their snug little sitting-room at Stratford-on-Avon.
“We knew a trick worth two of that,” said Ralph. “Fancy rushing off to the Continent for a week! It never seemed to occur to anyone that Stratford was the ideal place for an actor’s honeymoon. We are not going to leave our Mecca entirely to the Yankees.”
Evereld hoped she thought enough of Shakspere as they wandered about the quaint old place and enjoyed the bright spring weather in the lovely country around.
“It was a delightful thought of yours to come here,” she said, “one likes to have a beautiful background for the happiest time of one’s life. But after all, darling, it’s very much in the background, we should really be as happy in the black country.”
“Of course,” said Ralph laughing. “And there’ll be plenty of the black country to come by and bye. You have no idea what dreary towns we have sometimes to go to. Are you not afraid when you look forward to that sort of thing?”
“Not a bit,” she said with a radiant face. “Don’t I know now what the song means when it speaks of ‘The desert being a paradise’? That used to seem such nonsense in the old days! But with you Ralph———”
She was interrupted. They had been walking beside the pollarded willows by the river, Evereld’s hands were full of the early spring flowers, cowslips and primroses and delicate white anemones which they had gathered in the country. She looked up, for a daintily dressed little lady suddenly stood before her, having deserted a camp-stool and easel though she still retained palette and brushes in one hand.