Also, she had time to be amused at noticing that Mrs. Moore had managed to get introduced to Lady Cust, and was talking to her eagerly.
Later on she heard Lettice Moore saying to another bridesmaid, “Poor old Eben! He was frightfully cut up when he heard about the engagement,” and, in the foolish way one has of moving indifferently among the world’s great tragedies—earthquakes, famines, wars—and suddenly feeling a tightening of the throat, and a smarting of the eyes as one realises that at that moment a bullfinch is probably dying in China, Teresa suddenly felt a wave of pity and tenderness sweep over her for Eben, sitting in his cabin (did senior “snotties” have a cabin to themselves? Well, it didn’t really matter), so poorly furnished in comparison with the gramophones and silver photograph frames, and gorgeous cushions of his mates, his arms, with the red hands whose fingers had never recovered their shape from the chilblains of the Baltic, dangling limply down at either side of him, and perhaps tears in his round china-blue eyes.
Then at last Concha and Rory were running and ducking and laughing under a shower of rice, and rose leaves. They looked very young and frail, both of them, blown out into the world, where God knew what awaited them.
“They are like Paulo and Francesca—two leaves clinging together, blown by the wind,” said Jollypot dreamily to Teresa.
5
We have already likened a wedding to a fall of snow; and as rapidly as a fall of snow it melts, disclosing underneath it just such a dingy world.
One by one the motley company drifted off in trains, and motors, their exit producing on Teresa the same impression that she always got from the end of Twelfth Night—that of a troupe of fairy mimes, laden with their tiffany, their pasteboard yew hedges, their stucco peacocks, slowly sailing away in a cloud out of sight, while the clown whom they have forgotten, sits down here on the earth singing the rain it raineth every day.
But, in spite of a dismantled drawing-room, a billiard-table covered with presents, a trampled lawn and a furious Parker and Rudge, life quickly re-adjusted itself.
The next day but one there was a rose show in the county town, and Rudge went to see it.
After dinner, Dick had him summoned to the drawing-room to discuss the roses with himself and the Doña.