CHAPTER XXII
THE BEGINNING
THE brisk, businesslike little clergyman was sorely disappointed. He had looked forward to a rather smart affair, so to speak, on the afternoon of the fifteenth. Indeed, he had gone to some pains to prepare himself for an event far out of the ordinary. It isn't every day that one has the opportunity to perform a ceremony wherein a real Lord and Lady plight the troth; it isn't every parson who can say he has officiated for nobility. Such an event certainly calls for a little more than the customary preparations. He got out his newest vestments and did not neglect to brush his hair. His shoes were highly polished for the occasion and his nails shone with a brightness that fascinated him. Moreover, he had tuned up his voice; it had gone stale with the monotony of countless marriages in which he rarely took the trouble to notice whether the responses were properly made. By dint of a little extra exertion in the rectory he had brought it to a fine state of unctuous mellowness.
Moreover, he had given some thought to the prayer. It wasn't going to be a perfunctory, listless thing, this prayer for Lord and Lady Temple. It was to be a profound utterance. The glib, everyday prayer wouldn't do at all on an occasion like this. The church would be filled with the best people in New York. Something fine and resonant and perhaps a little personal,—something to do with God, of course, but, in the main, worth listening to. In fact, something from the diaphragm, sonorous.
For a little while he would take off the well-worn mask of humility and bask in the fulgent rays of his own light.
But, to repeat, he was sorely disappointed. Instead of beaming upon an assemblage of the elect, he found himself confronted by a company that caused him to question his own good taste in shaving especially for the occasion and in wearing gold-rimmed nose-glasses instead of the "over the ears" he usually wore when in haste.
He saw, with shocked and incredulous eyes, sparsely planted about the dim church as if separated by the order of one who realized that closer contact would result in something worse than passive antagonism, a strange and motley company.
For a moment he trembled. Had he, by some horrible mischance, set two weddings for the same hour? He cudgelled his brain as he peeped through the vestry door. A sickening blank! He could recall no other ceremony for that particular hour,—and yet as he struggled for a solution the conviction became stronger that he had committed a most egregious error. Then and there, in a perspiring panic, he solemnly resolved to give these weddings a little more thought. He had been getting a bit slack,—really quite haphazard in checking off the daily grist.