She had ransacked her cupboards for finery; and, when the lights above her head were put on, the jet on the garments glittered, like a scuttleful of coals. She cared nothing for her appearance, however. She was still too much dazed and bewildered by everything that had happened: her son, her dutiful son, had suddenly been snatched away from her and she was expected to be radiant about it. Less than two months before she had never even seen this adventuress and now she was going back to share her home with her. She felt in no mood for celebration: she was simply a poor widow woman who had been robbed. Burying her face in her gloved hands she wept.
Three rows behind her, sat the woman who had been Mr. Trackett’s maid. She was still in mourning but she was decked out in tribute to her new mistress. She had run a white piping round her black dress and had stuck a band of blue flowers into the side of her dark velvet hat. Apart from them, the Chapel was entirely uninhabited; and those three figures seated there had about them the air of survivors of a lost world—they seemed so small and desolate amid those polished expanses of cheap polished pine.
There was, of course, no one to give the bride away and no best man; Amosites do not hold with such primitive survivals. Instead the bride and bridegroom-to-be, assemble privately in the vestry with their minister, and there is an interval for silent prayer until, under guidance from above, the spirit moves the two parties. (For it to move only one of them is not enough.) The minister takes no action at all in the matter; he is, after all, merely Jehovah’s witness. And Mr. Tuke had known this period of silent prayer, especially when it was mature serious people whom he was marrying, last for as long as twenty minutes. But in the ordinary way he gave the young couple about five minutes by the clock and then coughed. The cough nearly always worked; and the spirit, realising that it was holding up the proceedings, came promptly through.
To-day Mr. Tuke glanced at the two of them and closed his eyes. He was displeased. Miss Croome was not suitably dressed. She had almost discarded her mourning and was wearing a dark tailor-made costume trimmed with fur, and a smart toque with a blue feather. The effect on his mind was almost that of wantonness; a veil and orange blossom would have been easier to condone. Perhaps Mrs. Tuke had been right; perhaps Miss Croome was sinful in her desires. But it seemed surprising: he had never known Mrs. Tuke to be right about anything before.
John Marco was on his knees, his eyes closed. But it was as though by closing his eyes he had opened a window in his mind, and the images that he had wanted to exclude came flooding in. He saw Mary again, saw her in a hundred different ways—clad all in white descending into the Jordan Tank on the evening of her baptism; smiling up at him in the dim light of the staircase as she had kissed him; stroking his hair on that evening when he had told her that she must never leave him.
She was far away at this moment; Mrs. Kent had given it out that she had suffered some kind of breakdown and had sent her away into the country to recover. He did not even know where she was, and the letters that he had written to her had remained unanswered. He doubted, indeed, whether they had ever reached her; and he had posted the last one, the final desperate attempt to explain, with the pre-knowledge that it would probably be the fiery eyes of her parents who perused it.
Mr. Tuke coughed and John Marco started. He was ready, he supposed; as ready as he ever would be. He sat back and caught Mr. Tuke’s eye. But there was still no sign of movement from Hesther Croome: she was praying. Mr. Tuke looked hard at her. If there was one thing he was really expert in it was prayer: he knew the difference between mere muttering and the real stuff. And this was real: Hesther Croome was praying in deadly earnest. She was cut off from everything around her and was engaged in some struggle of her own. The knuckles of her clapsed hands showed white and sharp. She was praying half aloud.
“God grant that it may come right,” she was saying. “God grant that he may grow to love me and that I may be a good wife. God grant that this isn’t a sin that I’m committing, I need him so.” Mr. Tuke coughed again, but the praying went on. “Forgive me my evil desires. Let my life show the face of innocence and humility. Let the evil I have done be washed away and let me bear his sin on my shoulders. Be with me, Christ Jesus, now and forever more.”
She sat back and took John Marco by the hand. In front of Mr. Tuke she kissed it.
“Come, John,” she said.
Mr. Tuke opened his Bible at the page where the purple velvet marker hung downwards and led the way.
He had caught only some of the words which Miss Croome had uttered; but he had caught quite enough.
ii
They all went back to what had been Mr. Trackett’s stucco mansion in Clarence Gardens.
John Marco handed Hesther into the bridal carriage—the verger encouraged by Mr. Morgan’s generosity had put a bunch of white flowers into it—and had climbed in after her in silence. Now that it was over he was calm, quite calm, again: the future held no new terror because there was nothing at all that was worth living in it. They reached the end of Chapel Villas without speaking. Then Hesther drew off her glove and thrust her hand into John Marco’s; but it lay there without his fingers closing over it and after a few moments she withdrew it and put on her glove again. They still had not spoken.
The party on the steps of the Tabernacle watched the cab recede into the distance, and Mr. Tuke announced that he would look after old Mrs. Marco. She was still sitting there in her pew, weeping, and the sight of her vaguely annoyed him. She was another proof of the fact that Mrs. Tuke’s reading of the whole situation had been the right one. He comforted himself, however, with the thought that most mothers weep at weddings; and putting his arm under hers, he started to lift her to her feet. As he did so, he was reminded irresistibly of an occasion years ago when he had assisted in carrying a drunk out of what the landlord had called a respectable licensed house and what Mr. Tuke had called a common gin-palace. The verger, too, had put out the lights and the large chapel was in semi-darkness; a pale, greenish glow was all that filtered in through the tinted windows. As Mr. Tuke stood wrestling with Mrs. Marco he felt suddenly like a diver struggling with something heavy at the bottom of an aquarium.
He got her finally into the last of the carriages, but even inside the carriage old Mrs. Marco went on crying; huddled up in the corner she put a handkerchief across her face and moaned into it. Nor was it better after they had called and picked up Mrs. Tuke. The women, moreover, immediately sided together; they formed a feminine alliance against him. He was forced to give his seat up to his wife and was now sitting on the hard, inadequate tip-up seat opposite. It was not made for a man of his weight and figure. Every time the driver whipped up his horse Mr. Tuke suffered.
But Mrs. Tuke seemed oblivious of her husband’s discomfort. She had her arm round old Mrs. Marco’s shoulders and was consoling her.
“You poor dear,” she was saying. “I know how you feel. There’s one of us who understands.”
The house was empty when John and Hesther got back to it, quite empty. It loomed up like an iceberg, the front broken only by the dark, blind-looking windows. And inside it was silent—an ominous absorbing silence; it was as though the spirit of the departed Mr. Trackett had just recently passed through subduing things. Coming in from the populated streets of Bayswater, it was like entering a pocket in creation.
They closed the door behind them and stood there, man and wife, in what was to be their future home.
“Kiss me,” Hesther said. “Kiss me and say now that you forgive me.”
But he turned away from her still without answering and, as she threw her arms round him and he felt her body draw close to his, he drew back. There was something in the eagerness, the urgency of it, however, that made him pity her. She was asking for something that he could not give, would never be able to give. She had told him frequently in those last few days before the wedding that she knew he would grow to love her; she was recklessly building her whole life upon that pale hope. And instead of drawing bac
k and saving herself, she had gone blindly on. She had bared herself for all the pain the years could inflict on her.
That she loved him already, had loved him from the moment she saw him in that awful bedroom—he had grown to accept. Every time they had met she had tried vainly and pathetically to disguise from both of them that this was not like other betrothals: she had talked cheerfully, like a child, of the things they would do together when they were married. Throughout it all ran the same hopeless thread of illusion that they were lovers. Sitting back in her chair, her dark eyes fixed on him, she had resolutely imagined for the two of them.
Disengaging his arms, he drew off his gloves and began to undo the buttons of his overcoat.
But she did not remain standing silently before him for long. She was still desperately seeking to make the illusion a reality; her mind was fixed on an image of life that did not yet exist.
Opening the door of the dining-room, she beckoned to John Marco to come forward.
“I’ve got it all ready,” she said. “It’s our wedding-breakfast.”
The room had been arranged for a party, a party three times the size of the one that was coming. As he saw the row of chairs against the wall, John Marco recognised that she had calculated and been wrong. Up to the last moment, up to the very instant when they had left the vestry, she must have thought that some of his friends would be there to see them married. She had never guessed that any wedding could be quite so empty.
On the long table under its white damask there was food for a company. John Marco looked at the dishes and cakes and dainties and his feeling of pity for her returned; she had prepared all these herself so that the outward appearance of festivity should be there; she had tried hard to make this a happy wedding. And the cake was magnificent. It rose in three sugary tiers to an icing temple on the top. There were bells and horseshoes and lucky shamrocks all cut out of silver paper decked round the sides of it.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
But John Marco’s answer was cut short. Mr. Morgan had arrived. He came sidling into the room a little astonished by the size of the place. It was a gentleman’s house this, a pretty substantial property. It wasn’t like an assistant’s house at all, and he envied John Marco his good fortune. But he gave him his due. Marrying for money could be just as hard work as earning it in any other way; and glancing across at Hesther as she stood at the top of the table he reflected that he had seen younger and fuller-blooded brides. But he did what was expected of him. Going up to her, he kissed her ceremonially on both cheeks.
“An old man’s privilege,” he said.
Then he came over and patted John Marco on the back.
“Have to go straight home in the evenings now,” he said. “Have your wife after you if you don’t.”
He continued in the same vein until the others arrived. He was a different Mr. Morgan from the Old Gentleman in the shop; there was something vaguely and rather innocently salacious about him. Between some of his remarks he even winked. Evidently in a life that had long been devoid of it, the thought of sex had revived old, boisterous memories. For those few private minutes while he was alone with the young couple this white-haired Amosite Elder became a kind of plaintive Pan in a frock-coat; over his bright spectacles he leered. Then Mr. Tuke arrived too, and all was respectable again.
It had been Mr. Tuke’s intention not to stay very long. But at the sight of so much good food his intention wavered. He began passing things; and in between passing them, he ate. For every dainty that Mrs. Tuke got, he had two. And when tea was brought in he became quite reconciled to staying. The quantity of tea that he could drink—the quantity of tea, indeed, that he seemed to need to drink—was quite surprising. He drank three cups straight off, passing up his cup each time as though it were someone else’s.
Mrs. Tuke was still engaged in comforting old Mrs. Marco. She was trying to get her to eat something and kept patting the back of her hand as though she were just emerging from a faint.
“You’ll like it here when you get used to it,” she was saying. “It’s very nice of your daughter-in-law to want to have you to live with her.”
“I was happy where I was,” Mrs. Marco protested. “I’d lived there ever since Mr. Marco died.”
“But think how lonely you’d have been,” Mrs. Tuke reminded her. “Think of what it would have been like without your son.”
Mrs. Marco pondered over the point for a moment, without replying. She was sitting huddled up in her chair with her shoulders hunched up like a monkey’s. It was obvious that in spirit she was not of the party at all. And when Mrs. Tuke passed her anything she waved it away as if it had been poisoned.
“I’d rather have seen him dead,” she said suddenly, “than married to her.”
Mrs. Tuke patted her aged hand more vigorously. “You’re over-tired,” she said.
“I may be over-tired,” Mrs. Marco answered. “But that doesn’t alter that she stole him. He was all I had.”
“You’ll feel better in the morning,” Mrs. Tuke told her. “See what a good night’s rest does for you.”
“Good night’s rest,” Mrs. Marco spat the words out. “I shan’t sleep a wink under the same roof with her.”
She shifted herself round in her chair until she was facing Hesther as she said it.
Mr. Tuke detected at once that something was amiss and he recognised this as one of the occasions when tact, exemplary tact, would be needed to gloss it over. So, turning towards Hesther, he allowed his voice to swell until Mrs. Marco’s remarks were drowned and inaudible.
“And has to-day been everything you could have wished?” he asked.
“Everything,” Hesther replied briefly.
“If only your dear uncle could have been here,” Mr. Tuke went on. “Such a loss. Such a sad loss.”
“If my uncle hadn’t died we might never have got to know each other,” Hesther answered.
She looked sideways at John Marco as she spoke; but though he was standing by her he gave no sign of having heard.
“Perhaps not,” Mr. Tuke agreed. “Who shall say? How little we any of us know what is in store for us.”
While he was speaking his eye had been roving up and down the snowy terraces of the cake; it was still whole and unbroken as it had been when it was delivered from the shop.
“Isn’t it time for the bride to cut the cake?” he suggested. “Isn’t it time she plied the knife?”
As Hesther moved up to the middle of the table, Mr. Tuke followed her. He waited until she had the large silver-handled knife in her hand and then reached down and taking John Marco firmly by the wrist placed his hand over hers.
“Like that,” he said. “Together.”
He stepped back, smiling, and caught Mr. Morgan’s eye.
“So much to learn,” he said. “So far to go.”
John Marco’s hand, however, dropped to his side again.
Mr. Tuke could not help remarking the gesture: it was almost as though the young man were reluctant to have his hand on hers, as though he did not want to touch her. And what was more extraordinary was that the bride herself did not seem to expect it. To cover up the incident, Mr. Tuke took hold of the knife himself.
“With your permission,” he said. “Allow me ...”
It was at that moment that Mrs. Marco suddenly reasserted herself. She had been watching everything going on around her with a kind of hostile intentness. And she leant forward intently, her old finger pointing.
“That’s my tea-kettle,” she said.
“But you’re forgetting,” Mrs. Tuke reminded her. “All your things have been brought round here. This is where you’re going to live.”
“I’m not going to have that woman using my tea-kettle,” Mrs. Marco asserted loudly.
John Marco left Mr. Morgan to whom he had been talking and came over to her.
“You’d better go to bed,” he said. “You’ve done too much.”
Mrs. Marco stared at him for a mome
nt before she answered.
“You want to get rid of me,” she said. “You want to be alone with her.”
“Go to bed,” he repeated; and leaning over her he began to lift her from her chair.
“Don’t you dare to lay hands on me,” she said. “I can walk.”
It might, even then, still have been all right if Mrs. Tuke had not again intervened.
“This isn’t a very good start,” she said reprovingly. “This isn’t being kind.”
“Was it kind of her to break my home up for me?” Mrs. Marco demanded. “Did I ask her to do that?”
But John Marco did not wait any longer. He gathered old Mrs. Marco up in his arms and, holding her almost like a baby, was proceeding to carry her out of the room.
“Put me down,” she screamed. “Put me down.”
At the door he paused and turned to Hesther; it was the first time that they had heard him speak to her.
“Which room have you given her?” he asked.
Hesther’s eyes met his: her dark ones were steady and unwavering.
“My uncle’s room,” she said. “I’ll come up with you.”
By the time they had got downstairs again, the company was just leaving. They had been sitting there in silence, ever since the others had left them. Even Mr. Tuke’s usually boundless tact suddenly failed him; he just stood there gloomily eating. And when John Marco entered, Mr. Tuke made no pretext of wanting to remain. He went straight up to Hesther and shook her earnestly by the hand.
“We leave you,” he said simply, “in one another’s arms.”
Then the others said good-bye as well, and Mr. Morgan went back to the shop. He was at heart a little vexed; vexed and disappointed. All the week he had hoped that this was going to be a jolly occasion: he had looked forward to enjoying himself. And he hadn’t enjoyed himself a bit. And what was more he knew the reason for it: the two young people had tempted Fate and got married before the shadow of death was properly off the house. He was at heart considerably shocked that his star-assistant should have been so impetuous.
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