Her mother was reduced to complete silence. Mrs. Mynors—in her own opinion—was the interesting and tragic heroine of this occasion. She, in all her beauty, all her desolation, had been passed by in favour of her inexperienced, immature daughter. The pathos of her position—left in Laburnum Villa while Virginia went to take up a place in county society—flooded her with self-pity. Never had she felt capable of such an intensity of emotion as upon this day, when she was carried helpless to church to give her daughter away. Never had she come so near to being primally and brutally elementary as at the moment when the carriage stopped at the church door, and Gaunt came forward, greeting her with:
"Good morning, my mother-in-law!"
She drew in her breath with a sound like a moan; but in a flash she had seen that she must make no manifestation. The time for that had gone by. As she moved up the church, side by side with her daughter, she realised two things, sharply and simultaneously. One, that she could and ought to have prevented this marriage; the other, that it was now too late.
What was Gaunt's plan she could not exactly know. If it was simply to mortify her, then she could not see why he should be unkind to Virgie. Yet she distrusted and feared him; and she had given no warning to the simple creature at her side, going like a lamb to the slaughter, blind to all life's mysterious issues, blind to the sinister motive which her mother so clearly saw behind Gaunt's eccentric marriage. For Virginia, the old truth held good, that at the actual moment one ceases to realise what is happening. The service struck her with a sense of detachment. She heard it with interest, almost for the first time. The vows were, indeed, comprehensive. One had, however, the comforting knowledge that the vowing was mutual. He promised things as well as she. There was a curious consolation in the reflection that he vowed to love, cherish, and even worship his wife. There seemed nothing detached about his own participation in the rite. He grasped her fingers so strongly as to be almost painful as he vowed "to have and to hold."
And now it was done, and there was no more use in wondering whether one had been right or wrong.
The bare and unadorned service was quickly over. The elderly vicar read a short and platitudinous address to the newly married out of a small pastoral book. Gaunt took his wife's hand, placed it on his arm, and marched her into a stuffy, small vestry, wherein she was to write for the last time her name, Virginia Mynors.
She wrote it; and turning, fixed her troubled gaze upon her mother with an expression so bewildered, so lost, that it pierced even through the crust of egotism. Mrs. Mynors began to gasp hysterically, but, after a momentary fight for composure, managed to say, "Osbert, Osbert, I conjure you! Be good to her! Be good to my Virgie!"
"My dear mother-in-law, I promise you that Virgie shall have the treatment she deserves," was his reply. "Come, Mrs. Gaunt, we must be off, if we are to catch the London train."
Virginia was now quite numb. She took his arm because he offered it, and because there seemed nothing else to do. They were at the church door. She broke away from Gaunt to fling her arms round Tony. The boy was radiant, showing her with glowing eyes a sovereign which his new brother-in-law had just bestowed. The sight did more to encourage the bride than might be supposed. She kissed her mother next, finding it out of the question to give any parting message or direction, because the attempt to articulate would let loose a flood of feeling hardly complimentary to her husband.
Then she was in the carriage, alone with the man who was to walk through life at her side. Still the merciful numbness held her.