An hour later the three set forth in a closed fiacre, accompanied by an elderly sporting friend of Captain Garth, to whom the latter owed a good deal of money, and who went ostensibly as a witness, but in reality to make sure that Miss Garth's marriage with Alexander Wallace's nephew was not a creation of his friend and debtor's facile brain.
It was by no means a festive party. The bridegroom was morose and sullen, and did not once glance at the poor little bride, who sat in silence facing him, with a startled look in her eyes. Captain Garth was restless and voluble, striving, by his forced cheerfulness, to impart something like suitable brightness to the occasion; his friend Mr. Mitcham endeavoured to pay compliments to Laline, who received his well-meant efforts with a dreamy wonder that was not encouraging; the cab splashed through the muddy streets, the rain beat upon the windows, and at every yard traversed Laline's spirits sank to a low ebb, and her mind became more and more overshadowed by dismal forebodings of the future in store for her.
The Consul, a grey-haired fussy man, with a preoccupied manner, made short work of the ceremony; and to Laline, whose ideas of weddings were chiefly gained from those she had witnessed in the village church in Westmoreland, there was something bald and unmeaning in the total absence of any religious ceremony, something that savoured of a bargain made across a counter, and not of a holy sacrament to be honoured throughout a lifetime.
A few words spoken by an elderly gentleman in ordinary attire in the presence of his secretary, his clerk, Garth, Armstrong, Mitcham, and Laline, in a bare-looking office, a few statements made by a man and a woman, a few signatures and the payment of certain fees, and Laline Garth had become Laline Armstrong, wife of the tall, frowning young man who stood facing her with an aching head which had not yet recovered from the gambling and brandy-drinking of the preceding evening.
It was all startling, shocking, and painful to Laline. To the last they had not told her that hers was to be solely a civil marriage; to the last she had hoped that a clergyman might bless her in a holier name before she started on her new life. She was half a child still, but woman enough to feel deeply the inadequacy of such a ceremony as had just taken place to satisfy the requirements of her mind.
Almost as soon as the little party left the Consular residence the bridegroom announced his intention of going to his hotel, "to put his things together," a proposition which his father-in-law urgently combated.
"It isn't half-past ten yet!" growled Armstrong. "That Consul-fellow fixed the ceremony so infernally early! What in the world can one do with oneself in the Rue Planché on a pouring wet day like this?"
"There are plenty of little things to talk over," said Garth, slipping his arm through that of his son-in-law. "We have to drink success to your married life too," he added, insinuatingly.
"In that filthy brandy of yours? There's one good thing about going back to England, one can get something fit to drink there!"