“So long.”
CHAPTER XI
A WEDDING-DAY IN BARNRIFF
If signs and omens meant anything at all, Eve Marsham and Will Henderson were about to embark on a happy and prosperous married life. So said the women of Barnriff on the day fixed for the wedding. The feminine heart of Barnriff was a superstitious organ. It loved and hugged to itself its belief in forebodings and portents. It never failed to find the promise of disaster or good-fortune in the trivialities of its daily life. It was so saturated with superstition that, on the morning of the wedding, every woman in the place was on the lookout for some recognized sign, and, finding none, probably invented one.
And the excitement of it all. The single-minded, wholesome delight in the thought of this wedding was as refreshing as the crisp breezes of a first bright spring day. To a woman they reveled in the thought. It was the first wedding actually to take place in the village for over seven years. Everybody marrying during that period had elected to seek the consummation of their happiness elsewhere. And as a consequence of this enthusiasm, there was a surplus of help in getting the meeting-room suitably clad for the occasion, and the preparations for the “sociable” and dance which were to follow the ceremony.
Was there ever such a day in Barnriff? the women asked each other. None of them remembered one. Then 120 look at the day itself. True it was the height of summer; but then who had not seen miserable weather in summer? Look at the sun gleaming out of a perfect azure.
Mrs. Crombie, a florid dame of adequate size, if of doubtful dignity to fill her position as spouse of Barnriff’s first citizen, dragged Mrs. Horsley, the lay preacher’s wife, through the door of the Mission Room, in which, with the others, they were both working at the decorations, to view the sky.
“Look at it, my dear!” she cried enthusiastically. “Was there ever a better omen for the poor dear? Not a cloud anywhere. Not one. And it’s deep blue, too; none of your steel blues, or one of them fady blues running to white. Say, ain’t she lucky? Now, when Crombie took me the heavens was just pouring. Everybody said ‘Tears’ prompt enough, and with reason. That’s what they said. But me and Crombie has never shed a tear; no, not one. We’ve just laffed our way clear through to this day, we have. Well, I won’t say Crombie does a heap of laffing, but you’ll take my meaning.”