A telegram had arrived, in answer to hers, from the aunt with whom she had lived as a child and young girl. The bride-elect had felt just a little worried about her aunt; she had written her a letter which she would receive on her wedding morning. In it Margaret had told her all about her friendship with Michael while she was living with Freddy in Egypt, and of Freddy's friendship with him, which was of a much longer duration. Also, she took pains to assure her aunt that, as far as pedigree was concerned, he had the blood of Irish kings in his veins.
CHAPTER IV
Their wedding-day was the sort of day which made Browning, when he lived in Florence, sing:
"Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there. . . .
* * * *
"And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows . . ."
Margaret said the words to herself as the day greeted her when she pulled up her blind in the morning.
London, even in war time, was inviting and charming for such as drove about the West End in taxis, for they had not yet disappeared from the highways and byways. The day was clean and fresh and sweet-smelling. The promise of brilliant sunshine in the midday hours made the fashionable streets near the Iretons' rooms very busy and gay. Khaki-clad figures were everywhere; some were accompanied by daintily-clad girls, proud of their soldier lovers; others were walking with portly old gentlemen, their generous grandfathers or godfathers, most probably; while many of them had given themselves over to their mothers for the morning. Nor were they, as they would have been in the days of peace, embarrassed by their affectionate grasp of their arms and the unconcealed adoration and love.
* * * * * *
Things had happened with such bewildering rapidity that Margaret drove through the streets to the church in which they were to be married in a sort of open-eyed dream. She saw with extraordinary vividness all that was going on around her, even to the faces of the boys and girls who passed them in taxis; but she was incapable of concentrated thought. The hurry and excitement in which she had lived for the last two days left her breathless and vague.
She was driving with Michael Ireton, who was amazed at her outward calm. He little knew that the bride whom he was to give away was physically and nervously almost exhausted. The sudden end to the strain which she had endured so long had produced a dreamlike phase of almost semi-consciousness.
Margaret knew that Michael was ahead of her, in another taxi with Hadassah. She also knew that they were driving to the church with the outside pulpit which stands a little way back from the road in Piccadilly. She had always felt a special attraction for the quiet courtyard, right in the hurly-burly of one of the main arteries of London. She knew that she would have to say her responses in the marriage-service. Yet somehow she felt more like another person looking on from a great distance at the doings of someone else. One would feel the same remoteness if one was saying to oneself, "At this very moment Margaret will be getting married, she will be on her way to the church."