The wedding was quite the prettiest function of the season. The eight bridesmaids walked in moss-green crêpe de Chine veiled with silver-spotted chiffon. On their heads were skull-caps of silver tissue, each having a thirty-inch-high aigrette supported by a thin bandeau of gold, set with crystals and olivines, the gift of the bride.... Their stockings were of white lace openwork, the left knee of each being clasped by the bridegroom's souvenir, a garter of gold, crystal, and olivines. Silver slippers with four-inch heels completed the ravishing effect.
O Perfect Love! was sung before the Bishop's Address, and the ceremony concluded with The Voice that Breathed and Stainer's Sevenfold Amen. The bridal-party passed down the nave to the strains of the Wedding Chorus from Lohengrin. And there was a reception at the Werkeley Square house of one of the dearest of Margot's innumerable dearest friends, and the happy pair left in their beautiful brand-new Winston-Beeston touring car en route for the old red-brick Hall in Devonshire. Decidedly the honeymoon might have been termed ideal—and four subsequent months of married life proved tolerably cloudless—until Fate sent a stinging hailstorm to strip the roses from the bridal bower.
An unexpected, appalling, inevitable discovery was made in Paris in the Grande Semaine, at the end of the loveliest of June seasons. It utterly ruined—for two people—the Day of the Grand Prix, that marks the climax of the Big Week, when the Parisian coaching-world tools its four-in-hands to Longchamps Racecourse, and the smartest, richest, and gayest people, mustered from every capital of Europe, parade under the chestnut-trees that shade the sunny paddock, to display or criticise the creations of the greatest couturiers.
Margot had put on an astonishing gown for the occasion.... You will recall that the summer dress designs of 1914 were astonishing; the autumn modes promised to be even more so, according to Babin, Touchet, and the Brothers Paillôt. Skirts—already as short and as narrow as possible—were to be even narrower; the Alpha and Omega of perfection would be represented by the Amphora Silhouette. And Margot, revolving before her cheval-glass in a sheath of jonquil-coloured silk lisse, embroidered with blue-and-green beetle-wings, found—to her horror and consternation——
Shall one phrase it that Dame Nature, intent upon her essential, unfashionable business of reproduction, was at variance with Madame Fashion re the Amphora Silhouette? The slender shape was not yet spoilt, but long before the autumn came, no art would mask the wealthy curves of its maternity.
CHAPTER II
DAME NATURE INTERVENES
"I can't bear it!—I won't bear it!" Margot reiterated. With her tumbled hair, swollen eyes, pink uptilted nose, and the little mouth and chin that quivered with each sobbing breath intaken, she looked absurdly babyish for her twenty years, as she vowed that wild horses shouldn't drag her to Longchamps, and railed against the injustice of Fate.
"None of my married friends have had such rotten luck!" she asserted. She stamped upon the velvety carpet and flashed at Franky a glance of imperious appeal. "Not Tota Stannus, or Cynthia Charterhouse, or Joan Delabrand, or anybody! Then, why me? That's what I want to know? After all the mascots I've worn and carried about with me.... Gojo and Jollikins and the jade tree-frog, and the rest! ... Every single one given me by a different woman who'd been married for years and never had a baby! This very day I'll smash the whole lot!"
"By the Great Brass Hat! ..."