One o'clock was fixed for the wedding, and at a quarter to one the church was full.
They did not have the red chair for the bride. The consensus of opinion was against it. “It was given up now by the best people in Peking. They generally had carriages. And anyhow it was a ridiculous expense.” So it was deeided that the bride should walk. The church was only a stone's-throw from the schoolhouse where she lived. The bridegroom stood at the door on the men's side of the church, a tall, stalwart Chinaman, with his blaek hair sleek and oiled and cut short after the modern fashion. He was suitably clad in black silk. He reminded me of “William,” a doll of my childhood who was dressed in the remains of an old silk umbrella—this is saying nothing against the bridegroom, for “William” was an eminently superior doll, and always looked his very best if a little smug occasionally. But if a gentleman who has attained to the proud position of laundryman and evangelist, and is marrying the girl he has himself at great expense educated for the position, has not a right to look a little smug, I don't know who has. Beside him stood his special friend, the chief Chinese evangelist, who had himself been married four months before. At the organ sat the American doctor's pretty young wife, and as the word was passed, “The bride is coming!” she struck up the wedding march, and all the women's eyes turned to the women's door, while the men, who would not commit such a breach of decorum as to look, stared steadily ahead.
But the wedding march had been played over and over again before she did come, resplendent and veiled, after the foreign fashion, in white mosquito netting, with pink and blue flowers in her hair, and another bunch in her hand. The bridegroom had wished her to wear silk on this great occasion, so he had hired the clothes, a green silk skirt and a bronze satin brocade coat.
A model of Chinese decorum was that bride. Her head under the white veil was bent, her eyes were glued to the ground, and not a muscle of her body moved as she progressed very slowly forward. Presumably she did put one foot before the other, but she had the appearance of an automaton in the hands of the women on either side—her mother, a stooping little old woman, and a tall young woman in a bright blue brocade, the wife of the bridegroom's special friend. Each grasped her by an arm just above the elbow and apparently propelled her up the aisle as if she were on wheels. Up the opposite aisle came the bridegroom, also with his head bent and his eyes glued to the ground and propelled forward in the same manner by his friend.
They met, those two who had never met face to face before, before the minister, and he performed the short marriage ceremony, and as he said the closing words the Chinese evangelist became Master of Ceremonies.
“The bridegroom and bride,” said he, “'will bow to each other once in the new style.”
The bride and groom standing before the minister bowed deeply to each other in the new style.
“They will bow a second time,” and they bowed again.
“They will bow a third time,” and once more they bowed low.
“They will now bow to the minister,” and they turned like well-drilled soldiers and bowed to the white-haired man who had married them.