It was a very silent drive to the church. The rain had almost stopped. It only beat every now and again, a little doubtfully, against the window and then went, with a little whirl of wind, streaming away.
The cab went slowly, and, although it lurched from side to side and every now and again pitched forward, as though it would fall on its head, they were not shaken about very badly. Janet leaned back against Tony, and he had his arm round her. They neither of them spoke at all, but his fingers moved very lightly over her hand and then to her cheek, and then back to her hand again.
As they got on to the top of the hill and started along the white road to the church the wind from the sea met them and swept about them. Great dark clouds, humped like camels, raced across the sky; the trees by the roadside, gnarled and knotted, waved scraggy arms like so many witches.
Miss Minns’s only remark as they neared the church was, “I must say I should have liked a little bit of orange-blossom.”
“We’ll get that in Paris,” said Tony.
The aged man was told to wait with his coach until they all came out of church again. He seemed to be quite prepared to wait until the day of doom if necessary. He stared drearily in front of him at the sea. To his mind, it was all a very bad business.
Soon they were all in the church, the clergyman with the flowing beard, his elderly boy, acting as a kind of verger and general factotum, Miss Minns, Maradick, and there, by the altar rails, Tony and Janet.
It was a very tiny church indeed, and most of the room was taken up by an enormous box-like pew that had once been used by “The Family”; now it was a mass of cobwebs. Two candles had been lighted by the altar and they flung a fitful, uncertain glow about the place and long twisting shadows on the wall. On the altar itself was a large bowl of white chrysanthemums, and always for the rest of his life the sight of chrysanthemums brought back that scene to Maradick’s memory: the blazing candles, the priest with his great white beard, the tiny, dusty church, Miss Minns and her bonnet, Tony splendidly erect, a smile in his eyes, and Janet with her hair and her blue serge dress and her glance every now and again at Tony to see whether he were still there.
And so, there, and in a few minutes, they were married.
For an instant some little wind blew along the floor, stirred the dust and caught the candles. They flared into a blaze, and out of the shadows there leapt the dazzling white of the chrysanthemums, the gold of Janet’s hair, and the blue of the little stained-glass windows. The rain had begun again and was beating furiously at the panes; they could hear it running in little streams and rivers down the hill past the church.