Success
self-congratulation when later she sat down to tea at the
stranger-table, now cleared of flowers by the efficient Mary; “though I
can’t help rather wishing your dress were coming to-night, Rosalind. I
know it’s not customary, and of course we can depend on Madame Elaine;
but I do wish it were coming to-night, and that Michael was. Supposing
he is late to-morrow, or tries to come by some other train than we told
him? How awkward!”
Her daughters assured her there was no need for uneasiness on either
account, and as it was Constance who said it, giving excellent
reasons, she settled into satisfaction again. Everything really was
satisfactory, and every minute of time too fully occupied to admit of
unnecessary troubling over trifles; what with the arrival of belated
presents, notes to be written, and orders to be given, the remainder of
the day was more than taken up.
The next morning was fine, which, besides being pleasing to the bride,
was fortunate for Mr. Annarly, and, later on, for the wearers of
light dresses and thin shoes. Had it not been fine it is difficult
to see quite what Mr. Annarly would have done with himself for the
long morning; that is, after he had superintended the placing of the
champagne in the refreshment tent. As it was, he went into the garden
and devoted himself to tying up hyacinth flowers. He put a small mat
on the path, and knelt on it before the flowers—stooping did not suit
his figure—and tied them to neat new sticks; giving himself to the
work absorbedly, and as if the general success of the wedding would be
considerably marred if the hyacinth blooms were not all standing in a
military row. It is possible that he did, subconsciously, hold this
opinion while he was engaged in his task; at all events, he resented
it as a waste of time when the caterers’ men required his presence and
opinion on some matter in connection with the tent on the lawn.
Jack, of course, was at home that day, and enjoyed it much more than
his father. For one reason, going to the City had not been a custom
so long established with him as to make him feel being at home on a
weekday, which was not a bank holiday, somewhat like finding oneself
at the breakfast-table in pyjamas. For another, he was not yet
sufficiently used to being the object of consideration to the womenkind
when at home to miss that attention now that they were otherwise
engaged and themselves the centre of everything. He enjoyed himself
thoroughly; he had quite got over the slight masculine superiority he
had thought proper to show toward the bustle of the last few days, and
was here, there, and everywhere with almost as much enthusiasm as any
of the servants. He hurried down to the telephone-office to inquire
about the bouquets; he went once to the church to see that the awning
was being fixed; and he carried a perfectly unimportant message to Dick
Wharton, and brought him back to answer it in person at a great pace.
Dick was still answering it in person to Rosalind when the dressmaker
and the dress arrived, and, though it wanted two hours and more before
the ceremony, Rosalind retired from the eye of man for the rite of
dressing.
The women of the household, from Mrs. Annarly to the cook, and
the brusque Mabel to the romantic young housemaid, appreciated the
occasion thoroughly. They did not, as the father and son did, resent
the unpunctual breakfast, they hardly noticed that it was unpunctual;
they preferred a light lunch on trays in their bedrooms, and had it:
Mr. Annarly did not, and was provided with a more proper meal in the
little room at the back, where a space was found by the invaluable
Mary for him and the lunch. The same capable young woman arranged a
substantial meal for Jack in the pantry—and enlivened it for him with
her company, looking to the buttons of Mr. Annarly’s gloves the while.
She looked to the fastenings of everyone’s gloves, and found everything
which was mislaid; she really was a treasure, as Mrs. Annarly said. She
dressed Mrs. Annarly that day; while the parlourmaid, who had taken her
place, dressed the bridesmaid sisters, and the dressmaker attended on
the bride and saw that the creation of her art was put on as it should
be—which must be almost as much satisfaction to a dressmaker as it is
to a poet to recite his own verses.
The wedding-dress was exquisite, everyone (every woman who saw it)
agreed about that. The trimming alone had cost more than Rosalind had
ever spent on a whole dress before—or would be able to again, unless
Dick came most unexpectedly and largely into money. There was a full
Court-train which Rosalind managed as if to the manner born, and which
well became her beauty and her height. It is true Uncle Giles said,
“Why not have given her a bead petticoat and a nose-ring while you’re
about it? She’s quite as likely to go to the Pacific Islands and want
that suit as to Court and want the other.” But then, he was annoyed
with the whole family just then, and as he did not make the remark to
Rosalind, it did not matter. She was entirely happy in the possession
of a dress which fulfilled her ideal and fully set off her beauty, the
central figure of the occasion, the chosen of the man she had chosen,
and about to be united to him.
Everything went precisely as it ought, nobody was late, nothing was
forgotten; when the Annarlys did things they usually did them rather
well, all their friends and acquaintances agreed about that. The
wedding was a case in point, and in every way satisfactory. There were
a great many people there; it was wonderful how many managed to get
into the house afterwards. Not all in one room at once, that would have
been impossible, but divided and with the overflow in the garden, it
was quite comfortable. They did not all know each other, but most of
them did, for they were mostly local people. The few strangers present
were relatives of the two families, unknown to each other and the rest
of the company.
Nan was in this position; she knew hardly anyone, and the few she
did know by sight, from chance meetings on her occasional visits to
Hurstbury, did not remember her. She made little impression on them
then, and was entirely inconspicuous now in spite of her expensive
dress. It was an expensive dress and an unbecoming. Her father had
told her to get herself something fine for the occasion, as good as
or better than anything the Annarlys would have, he had said, and
given her ample money to get it. She had obeyed him, though the sense
of rivalry with them, which at times gleamed jealously in him, was
entirely left out of her. The result of the purchase was not very
satisfactory; she really knew nothing of the fashions, and was,
moreover, a person for whom even a talented costumier could not have
done much. The fashionable dress and Paris hat she had been persuaded
to buy by expert saleswomen were not suited to her; her sense of
fitness, the single things approaching a dress instinct which she
possessed, rebelled at them even when she put them on.
But after a time they caught the attention and raised the admiration
of an unimportant spinster relative of the Whartons. At least, one
concludes it was the impression caused by the dress rather than the
wearer, which made her speak so diffidently. She wanted a piece of
the cake which was on the plate at Nan’s elbow, and asked her for it
with a bashful timidity new in Nan’s experience of the addresses of
her fellow-creatures. Nan passed the plate, and afterwards they talked
a little, Miss Wharton making the correct series of remarks on the
delights of the weather, the beauty of the bride, the charmingness
of Mrs. Annarly, the prettiness of the bridesmaids, and the general
attraction and worth of the bridegroom. Nan listened; she had spoken
to too few people that day to have heard all these before, and she
really did quite agree with them; it did all seem to her much what Miss
Wharton said: a pretty wedding, very nice, so suitable, exactly what
one would wish. The last, of course, must be interpreted—“wish to look
at”—so far as Nan was concerned; considered from any other points of
view it did not even enter her judgment. Had it done so, it would have
given rise to quite another opinion to the one with which she concurred.
The fingers of wedding-cake being finished, she and Miss Wharton went
to look at the wedding presents together. Nan had seen them already,
but Miss Wharton had not, and being, it seemed, incurably shy,
entreated Nan to come with her.
“It looks so odd going about alone and speaking to no one,” she said
naively, “do come with me, if you don’t mind. I quite thought my old
friend, Jenny Matthews, would be here; she told me she was coming, and
somebody told me she was here, but I haven’t seen her yet.”
As it happened, however, she met Miss Matthews in the dining-room, and,
after greeting her, entered into a duet of admiration of the presents
in which Nan was not asked to bear much share.
“What lovely spoons!” said one.
“Such an uncommon pattern!” the other.
“Oh, here are some more!” exclaimed the first. “The same, aren’t they?”
“No, not quite the same, even prettier——”
“Yes, really prettier.”
And so on, Nan behind them listening attentively till someone accosted
her.
It was Michael. “What time are you going?” he asked in the brief way of
one who, for a moment, speaks to an intimate.
She answered in the same way, mentioning a train. “Rosalind will be
gone by that,” she said. “But you won’t be able to leave then; they
will expect you to stop to dinner perhaps.”
“I think not,” he said. “I hardly think I need to do that.”
But she did. “It’s no use doing this sort of thing unless one does it
well,” she urged; “one isn’t doing it really, unless one does it whole,
and seems to like doing it.”
He gave way. “I suppose so,” he said, and turned away, two girls and
their mother claiming his attention.
As he turned, an automatic courtesy slipped over him as completely as a
domino. For the moment when he had spoken to Nan it had not been there;
for that moment, when they stood close together and thought of the same
thing, there had been a curious passing resemblance between them. They
were not alike, but they had something in common, both faces were
thinner than those around, the eyes of both more earnest and watchful;
in expression they were, for the moment when they spoke together,
curiously unlike other people and curiously like each other.
“What’s your name?”
The question was put abruptly to Nan by an elderly gentleman wearing
a short coat and a red tie. Mr. Giles Cordover, Mrs. Annarly’s only
brother, was an advanced Liberal in his political opinions and some
part of the creed, as he held it, would seem to have required him to
attend his niece’s wedding with these articles of attire, though he
would not have dreamed of going either to church or to the City so
dressed.
Nan looked up. “Nan Barmister,” she answered. She had no idea who her
interlocutor was, but she did not resent the abrupt inquiry.
“Barmister,” he repeated, and his eyes, which had gone from Michael to
her before he spoke, followed Michael now.
“You’re related, aren’t you?” he said, nodding in the direction.
“Cousins,” she said.
“He’s with you now, with your father or something? He took him on when
he was returned empty?”
She nodded. “Though that’s not why they returned him,” she said,
smiling a little.
“Oh? That your notion? Do you still hold to the family fancy that he’s
a genius?”
“Is that a fancy of the Annarlys?” Nan asked. “I didn’t know they still
held to it.”
Mr. Cordover’s face relaxed a little. “Well, no, perhaps they don’t,”
he admitted; “they’ve changed their tune of late, I will say that for
them. But you would seem to still hold to it—he’s going to set the