III
The Day!
For perfection of weather, only one other day in Nathan’s experience had surpassed it, the high noon in Siberia when he had seen a splash of vivid scarlet against sharp cobalt and golden brown.
I made a trip up to the church around noon for some detail, when the florists had called their work complete. I stood by the door for a moment and felt prayful with the beauty and portent of it. The chancel had been almost smothered in fine palms. There were banks and vases of cut flowers on the altar. Wreaths were draped about the reading desk, chancel rail and choir stall, and a rope of flowers cast across the center aisle instead of white ribbon, reserving the first six pews for relatives and special guests.
Anticipating her daughter’s departure by a few minutes, at a quarter to four Mrs. Theddon entered her car with old Amos Ruggles, who was to give the bride away, and who never looked more vacuous or pop-eyed in his life. Arriving at the church, she entered on the head usher’s arm and then to the door came the motors of the bridal party.
Vestibule and center aisle were cleared of guests when the bridal party arrived. Doors to street and church were closed. At five minutes to four, the bride and her maids assembled. An electric word came to Nathan and myself, waiting in a side room behind the chancel, that Madelaine and her party had arrived. The organist was on the alert for the opening of the great doors at the far end of the center aisle. The ceremony was a matter of minutes.
It is popularly accepted that a groom a few moments before his marriage must be flustrated, senseless and speechless, a comic object generally and only acceptable because if he failed to put in appearance the wedding machine might have a minor cog missing somewhere, causing it to rasp horribly. As a matter of fact, most grooms are quite cool and collected,—at least outwardly. They may misplace a few little things of minor importance, such as hats, railroad tickets or sense of humor. But on the whole, they really know a surprising lot of what it’s all about and why they are there and what the outcome of the entire fuss may aggregate. Nathan was no exception.
He had not seen Madelaine that morning; he had breakfasted and lunched with me and we had reached the church at about three-forty-five. I was agreeably surprised at sight of him in his wedding clothes,—black cutaway, gray trousers, white waistcoat, gray suède gloves. It came to me with a smash that my little freckled-faced friend of the Foxboro schoolyard had flowered into a handsome man. Not the Gordon-Ruggles, matinee-idol type of handsomeness, but the rugged individuality of the male who has his fundamentals established, who has found himself and carries the whole struggle on firm features.
“Well, Bill, old man,” he said, as we waited for the great signal, “it’s come! The day and the hour we talked about one night down the Green River in the old red scow. Remember?”
“Yes, Nat,” I returned. “How can either of us forget?”