"What do you think of the new bridegroom, Mrs. Daunt?"
"Hem, not much. A decent young man I dare say. Probably good enough for Connie Hammond." They would not be merciful, for they had been cheated out of their champagne reception. "Should ha' thought Hammond would ha' done things better," Colonel Cartwright would complain, and ladies who had hoped for an opportunity for new clothes would sniff surreptitiously over the announcement in the Kingsport Chronicle: "Owing to the severe illness of the bridegroom's father, no reception will be held, but all friends will be welcome at the church."
It had been a little weak, that, but if Mr. Todd Senior had not been conveniently indisposed what other excuse could have kept the Todd family away from Marshington? True, he was no more ill to-day than he had been for the past ten years or more, but nobody at Holy Trinity Church was likely to know the High Farm, Thraile, except the bridegroom, who would keep his own counsel. And the Todd family, as a visit of Mrs. Hammond to the High Farm had revealed, was quite impossible.
That visit had almost shaken Mrs. Hammond's confidence, almost, not quite. After it she had plunged with even greater thoroughness into the preparations for the wedding. "She must have cared," thought Muriel to whom the whole business appeared intolerable. She had not thought that anything Connie might do could have touched herself so closely. Yet, if Mrs. Hammond cared, she continued to hide her feelings with superhuman self-control. Of course it would have been almost impossible to preserve in private that attitude of shamed reproach while in public she posed as the proud mother, but Muriel was deeply shocked in some obscure pride of soul when Mrs. Hammond adopted almost at once her public pose for domestic purposes, and began to order clothes and household linen with the wholehearted interest that she usually devoted to such things.
Only Mr. Hammond ever seemed to doubt the wisdom of her policy, but he too followed where she led him with uneasy meekness, clumsily trying to comfort her with lace scarves brought from London, and an almost pathetic consideration of her wishes that drew them closer together than ever before since their days of love-making by the one passion that could steady his uncertain nature, or make her forget for a moment her quiet calculations.
Her mother and father were all right. They had each other. Connie was all right. She was going to be married. She had new clothes, presents and attention, all of which, her first rebellion overcome, she accepted with complacent satisfaction, as though they were her due. Night after night, Muriel had thought of it, feeling that sometimes she had been mistaken, that Connie's behaviour had not been disgraceful, outraging all her sense of delicacy and reserve. Perhaps to Connie it had been a swift romance, the madness of moonlight on the darkened moor, the sudden call of youth and brave adventure, then fleeting fear and hot rebellion to be assuaged by final victory. Sometimes Muriel had tossed on her bed, feeling the fury of her outraged virtue; sometimes she found in her own loneliness the greater shame.
And now it was all over.
The vestry was hot and stuffy. Muriel wished that they need not all wait so long. Why did the bridegroom hesitate so while signing his name, Benjamin Durdletree Todd, in weak slanting copper-plate across the page? Constance Rachel Adeline. Muriel had almost forgotten that all this was Connie's name, sprawled in her dashing black signature almost into the columns for Spinster, Age and Parish.
Mrs. Hammond rustled forward in her lilac silk. "Muriel dear, won't you sign too?"
So Muriel's small, symmetrical signature went below, and the little crowd rocked and stirred about the vestry table.