"Ahem!—Reginald Ormsby, wilt thou take Mrs. Darcy—"
Here Father Letheby nudged me again, and looked at me suspiciously. I got a sudden and violent paroxysm of coughing, a remnant of an old bronchial attack to which I am very subject. But I managed to say:—
"For the love of God, send that woman into the sacristy."
She covered her retreat nobly, made a curtsey to the priests, genuflected calmly, laid down the aspergill, and, under pretence of having been sent for something which these careless priests had forgotten, retired with honors; and then I suppose had a good long cry. But poor Bittra was blushing furiously; Ormsby was calm as on the quarterdeck; but Dr. Armstrong was pulling at his mustache, as if determined to show the world that there was no use any more for razors or depilatories; and Miss Leslie had bitten right through her under lip, and was threatened with apoplexy. We got through the rest of the ceremony with flying colors: and the moment I said, In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, the hush of death fell on the congregation. Then the nuptial blessing was given, the choir threw all their vocal strength into the grand finale; the registers were signed; Campion kissed his beloved child, and shook hands with Ormsby; and then commenced the triumphal march. I forgot to say that for the glorious procession on the Thursday before the village was en fête. Great arcades of laurel were stretched from chimney to chimney, because there were no upper rooms in the cabins; the posts and lintels of the humble doors were covered with foliage and flowers; and the windows were decorated with all the pious images that had been accumulating in the cabins for generations. Little ëikons of the Sacred Heart, gorgeous statues of our Lady of Lourdes, colored prints of Leo XIII., and crucifixes without number dappled the dark background of the windows,—and all the splendor was allowed to remain untouched during the octave. And glad they were, poor people, to show their love for their young idol and mistress, even with the decorations of their Lord and King. But what a shout tore open the heavens as Bittra appeared, leaning on her husband's arm; and what prayers echoed round and round them, as Ormsby handed Bittra into the victoria that was waiting! No genteel showers of rice, no casting of slippers nor waving of jealous handkerchiefs here, but—
"Come down out o' dat, you grinning monkey," and the gorgeous coachman was hauled down ignominiously, and a score of strong arms replaced the panting horses under the bridal carriage. And so it moved on, this bridal procession, amidst a strange epithalamium of cheering and blessings, whilst rough hands from time to time grasped the strong fingers of the smiling bridegroom or the tiny gloved hand of the bride. Ay, move down the valley of life together, you two, linked hand-in-hand, having said your farewells to the world, for you are entering on a new and altogether consecrated life. No wonder that the Church insists on the sacramental nature of this stupendous compact between two human souls; no wonder that the world, anxious to break its indissolubility, denies its awful sacredness; no wonder that the Catholic girl enters beneath the archway of the priest's stole[6] with the fear of great joy, and that the Catholic bridegroom is unnerved with dread at undertaking the responsibilities of a little universe.
We had a little chat over this matter, my curate and I, the evening before Bittra's marriage. It came around quite naturally, for we had been debating all kinds of possibilities as to the future; and he had been inveighing, in his own tumultuous manner, against the new and sacrilegious ideas that are just now being preached by the modern apostles of free thought in novel and journal. We agreed in thinking that the Christian ideal of marriage was nowhere so happily realized as in Ireland, where, at least up to recent times, there was no lurid and volcanic company-keeping before marriage, and no bitter ashes of disappointment after; but the good mother quietly said to her child: "Mary, go to confession to-morrow, and get out your Sunday dress. You are to be married on Thursday evening." And Mary said: "Very well, mother," not even asserting a faintest right to know the name of her future spouse. But, then, by virtue of the great sacramental union, she stepped from the position of a child and a dependent into the regal position of queen and mistress on her own hearth. The entire authority of the household passed thereby into her hands, as she slung the keys at her girdle; she became bursar and econome of the establishment; and in no instance was her right to rule supreme ever questioned by husband or child, unless drink came in to destroy this paradise, as the serpent fouled with his slime the flowers of the garden of Eden. Married life in Ireland has been, up to now, the most splendid refutation of all that the world and its gospel, the novel, preach about marriage, and the most splendid and complete justification of the supernaturalism of the Church's dogmas and practices. But, reverting to the new phases in the ever-shifting emotionalism of a godless world, with which marriage has become a question of barter—a mere lot-drawing of lambs for the shambles—he compared the happy queenly life of our Irish mother with that of the victim of fashion, or that of uncatholic lands, where a poor girl passes from one state of slavery to another.
"I hope," he said, "that we never shall be able to compare Bittra, like so many other brides, to the sleeping child that Carafola has painted, with an angel holding over it a crown of thorns, and whom marriage, like the angel, would awake by pressing the thorns on her brow."
"God forbid!" I said fervently. How little I dreamed of the troubles that were looming up out of the immediate future to shroud her marriage sunshine in awful gloom!
As the marriage procession passed the door where Alice lived, Bittra gave a little timid, imperious command to her admirers to stop. She and Ormsby alighted and passed into the cottage. The orange blossoms touched the crown of thorns on the head of the sick girl; but, somehow, both felt that there was need of a sisterhood of suffering on the one part to knit their souls together. Ormsby remained in the kitchen, talking to Mrs. Moylan; and from that day forward she was secured, at least, from all dread of dependence or poverty forevermore.
At the breakfast table it was, of course, my privilege to propose the health of the bride and bridegroom, which I most gladly did; and, let me say, so successfully as to bring back unwonted smiles to Campion's face, who now freely forgave me for the gaucheries at the marriage service. Then the guests strolled around, looking at the marriage presents—the usual filigree and useless things that are flung at the poor bride. Bittra took me into a little boudoir of her own to show me her real presents.