He blushed. He hesitated. Then he turned and kissed Connie with clumsy awkwardness that knocked her hat aside. While she straightened it, he kissed Mrs. Hammond, and came in her turn to Muriel. It was as he bent above her, very lanky and tall and smelling of the earth and leather and warm black clothes, that suddenly she doubted.
Had they been right to force Connie into this? What had they done? This terrible young man! But even then it was Connie again who reassured her.
"Come on, Ben. Stop kissing Muriel. You know she isn't used to it. Pull up your socks, old man. We've got to face them!" She seized his arm and started almost at a run down the long aisle. They followed her, Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, Muriel and the strange young man, the trail of relatives behind.
Tum, tum, terum—tum, tum—tum! triumphed the organ. A sea of bobbing faces greeted the procession, pallid in the dimness of the church. The scent from Muriel's bouquet of pink carnations choked her. The organ shook and quivered in its ecstasy. She saw Connie's white dress gleam before her. She felt a curious sensation of unreality, as though her mind were quite detached from her body, and she were looking down upon Muriel Hammond's saxe blue dress, upon her flower-crowned hat, and the rocking sea of the congregation. Suppose that this had been her own wedding—hers and Godfrey's? The young man at her side grew taller; his pleasantly mediocre profile hardened and straightened into Godfrey's features as she had last seen them, the straight fine nose, the splendid sweep of his dark eyebrows, the curve of his too-handsome, rather obstinate mouth, his firm chin uptilted against the dark pillar of the aisle.
People were shaking hands at the church door, crowds and crowds of them. Connie, laughing and blushing, was thanking them for their good wishes so volubly that nobody noticed the bridegroom's silence. Even if he had spoken, so many quite eligible young men in Marshington talked with Yorkshire accents that nobody would notice how common Ben's voice sounded. Here was Lady Grainger smiling down at them, and Lady Grainger's kind, guileless face, and her pleasant voice saying, "Well, Mrs. Todd, when I first made your acquaintance so short a time ago, I hardly thought that to-day I should come to your wedding." Mrs. Hammond replied laughingly, "Wasn't she a sight that night? Coming into the drawing-room all muddy! I was ashamed of her."
Really, thought Muriel, is Mother just being wonderful, or does she really feel quite happy? But she knew that Mrs. Marshall Gurney's presence luring Lady Grainger's little speech had helped Mrs. Hammond over a difficult place.
Little Miss Dale, being as usual unable to make her presence felt at the centre of interest, pushed her way to Muriel's side.
"A charming wedding," she said tearfully. Nobody knew whether Miss Dale always wept at weddings out of sympathy for the bride or sorrow for her single state. But she always went, and she always wept. "I love a wedding," she continued, "And how sweet Connie looks! and positively everybody here. The Graingers of course, and I am sure that Mrs. Neale would have been if it had not been for her sad news."
"Her news? What news?"
"Oh, well." Miss Dale hesitated, darting quick, bird-like glances at Muriel and the bride. "I wish that I hadn't mentioned it—at a wedding. We must think of bright things. Happy the bride that the sun shines on, and of all such good things. The sun is shining. Dear Connie. A nice young man, I expect. Younger than she is, surely? But I thought that you would be sure to have heard."