Estelle’s wedding was a great success, but this was not surprising when one realized how many years had been spent in preparation for it. Estelle was only twenty-three, but for the last ten years she had known that she would marry, and she had thought out every detail of the ceremony except the bridegroom. You could have any kind of a bridegroom — men were essentially imperfect — but you need have only one kind of ceremony, and that could be ideal.
Estelle had visualized everything from the last pot of lilies — always Annunciation ones, not Arum, which look pagan — at the altar to the red cloth at the door. There were to be rose-leaves instead of rice; the wedding was to be in June, with a tent in the garden and strawberries.
If possible, she would be married by a bishop; if not, by a dean. The bishop having proved too remote, the dean had to do. But he was a fine-looking man, and would be made a bishop soon, so Estelle did not really mind. The great thing was to have gaiters on the lawn afterward.
The day was perfect. Estelle woke at her usual hour in the morning, her heart was beating a little faster than it generally did, and then she remembered with a pang of joy the perfect fit of her wedding-gown hanging in the wardrobe. She murmured to herself:
“One love, one life.” She was not thinking of Winn, but she had always meant to say that on her wedding morning.
Then she had early tea. Her mother came in and kissed her, and Estelle implored her not to fuss, and above all not to get red in the face before going to church, where she was to wear a mauve hat.
It was difficult for Mrs. Fanshawe not to fuss, Estelle was the most expensive of her children and in a way the most important; for if she wasn’t pleased it was always so dreadful. There were half a dozen younger children and any of them might do something tiresome.
Estelle arrived at the church five minutes late, on her father’s arm, followed by four little bridesmaids in pink and white, and four little pages in blue and white. The effect was charming.
The village church was comfortably full, and with her eyes modestly cast down Estelle managed to see that all the right people were there, including the clergyman’s daughters, whom she had always hated.
The Fanshawes and her mother’s relations the Arnots had come down from town. They all looked very prosperous people with good dressmakers and tailors, and most of them had given her handsome silver wedding presents or checks.
They were on one side of the church just as Estelle had always pictured them, and on the other were the Staines and their relations. The Staines had very few friends, and those they had were hard riding, hunting people, who never look their best in satin. There was no doubt that the Staines sitting in the front seat were a blot on the whole affair.
You couldn’t tell everybody that they were a county family, and they didn’t look like it. They were too large and coarse, and took up far too much room. There they sat, six big creatures in one pew, all restless, all with big chins, hard eyes, jutting eyebrows, and a dreadful look as if they were buccaneering. As a matter of fact they all felt rather timid and flat, and meant to behave beautifully, though Sir Peter needn’t have blown his nose like a trumpet and stamped simultaneously just as Estelle entered.
At the top of the aisle Winn waited for his bride; and his boots were dusty. Standing behind him was the handsomest man that Estelle had ever seen; and not only that, but the very kind of man she had always wished to see. It made Estelle feel for a moment like a good housekeeper, who has not been told that a distinguished guest was coming to dinner. If she had known, she would have ordered something different. She felt in a flash that he was the kind of bridegroom who would have suited the ceremony.
He was several inches taller than Winn, slim, with a small athletic head and perfectly cut Greek features; his face would have been a shade too regular and too handsome if he had not had the very same hard-bitten look in his young gray eyes that Winn had in his bright, hawk-like brown ones. Lionel was looking at Estelle as she came up the aisle in a tender, protective, admiring way, as if she were a very beautiful flower. This was most satisfactory, but at least Winn might have done the same. Instead of looking as if he were waiting for his bride, he looked exactly as if he were holding a narrow pass against an enemy. His very figure had a peculiarly stern and rock-like expression. His broad shoulders were set, his rather heavy head erect, and when he did look at Estelle, it was an inconceivably sharp look as if he were trying to see through her.
She didn’t know, of course, that on his way to church he had thought every little white cloud in the blue sky was like her, and every lily in a cottage garden. There was a drop of sardonic blood in him, that made him challenge her even at the moment of achieved surrender.
“By Jove,” he thought to himself, “can she be as beautiful as she looks?”
Then the service began, and they had the celebration first, and afterward the usual ceremony, perfectly conducted, and including the rather over-exercised “Voice that Breathed o’er Eden.” The dean gave them an excellent, short and evasive address about their married duties, a great deal nicer than anything in the Prayer Book, and the March from Lohengrin took them to the vestry. In the vestry Winn began to be tiresome. The vicar said:
“Kiss the bride,” and Winn replied:
“No, thanks; not at present,” looking like a stone wall, and sticking his hands in his pockets. The vicar, who had known him from a boy, did not press the point; but of course the dean looked surprised. Any dean would.
The reception afterwards would have been perfect but for the Staines, who tramped through everything. Estelle perpetually saw them bursting into places where they weren’t wanted, and shouting remarks which sounded abusive but were meant to be cordial to cowering Fanshawes and Arnots. It was really not necessary for Sir Peter to say in the middle of the lawn that what Mr. Fanshawe wanted was more manure.
It seemed to Estelle that wherever she went she heard Sir Peter’s resonant voice talking about manure.
Lady Staines was much quieter; still she needn’t have remarked to Estelle’s mother, “Well — I’m glad to see you have seven children, that looks promising at any rate.” It made two unmarried ladies of uncertain age walk into a flower-bed.
Winn behaved abominably. He took the youngest Fanshawe child and disappeared with him into the stable yard.
Even Charles and James behaved better than that. They hurled well-chosen incomprehensible jokes at the clergyman’s daughters — dreadful girls who played hockey and had known the Staines all their lives — and these ladies returned their missiles with interest.
It caused a good deal of noise, but it sounded hearty.
Isabella, being a clergyman’s wife, talked to the Dean, who soon looked more astonished than ever.
At last it was all comfortably over. Estelle, leaning on her father’s arm in pale blue, kissed her mother. Mrs. Fanshawe looked at the end rather tactlessly cheerful. (She had cried throughout the ceremony, just when she had worn the mauve hat and Estelle had hoped she wouldn’t.)
Mr. Fanshawe behaved much more suitably; he said to Winn with a trembling voice, “Take care of my little girl,” and Winn, who might have said something graceful in reply, merely shook his father-in-law’s hand with such force that Mr. Fanshawe, red with pain, hastily retreated.
Lionel Drummond was charming and much appreciated everywhere; he retrieved Winn from the stable yard when no one could guess where he was, and was the first person to call Estelle, Mrs. Staines; he wound up the affair with a white satin slipper.
When they drove off, Estelle turned toward Winn with shining eyes and quivering lips. It was the moment for a judicious amount of love-making, and all Winn said was:
“Look here, you know, those high-heeled things on your feet are absolutely murderous. They might give you a bad tumble. Don’t let me see you in ’em again. Are you sure you’re quite comfortable, and all that?”
He made the same absurd fuss about Estelle’s comfort in the railway carriage; but it was one of the last occasions on which he did it, because he discovered almost immediately that however many things you could think of for Estelle’s comfort, she could think of more for herself, and no matter how much care or attention was lavished upon her, it could never quite equal her unerring instinct for her own requirements.
After this he was prepared to be ardent, but Estelle didn’t care for ardor in a railway train, so she soon stopped it. One of the funny things she discovered about Winn was that it was the easiest possible thing to stop his ardor, and this was really odd, because it was not from lack of strength in his emotion. She never quite discovered what it did come from, because it didn’t occur to her that Winn would very much rather have died than offend or tire the woman he loved.
She thought that Winn was rather coarse, but he wasn’t as coarse as that!
Estelle had a great deal that she wanted to talk over about the wedding. The whole occasion flamed out at her — a perfect project, perfectly carried out. She explained to Winn at length who everybody was and how there had been some people there who had had to be taken down, and others who had had to be pushed forward, and her mother explained to, and her father checked, and the children (it was too dreadful how they’d let Bobby run after Winn), kept as much out of the way as possible.
Winn listened hard and tried to follow intelligently all the family histories she evolved for him. At last after a rather prolonged pause on his part, just at a point when he should have expressed admiration of her guidance of a delicate affair, Estelle glanced at him and discovered that he was asleep! They hadn’t been married for three hours, and he could go to sleep in the middle of their first real talk! She was sure Lionel Drummond wouldn’t have done any such thing. But Winn was old — he was thirty-five — and she could see quite plainly now that the hair round the tops of his ears was gray. She looked at him scornfully, but he didn’t wake up.
When he woke up he laughed.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, “I believe I’ve been to sleep!” but he didn’t apologize. He began instead to tell her some things that might interest her, about what Drummond, his best man, and he, had done in Manchuria, just as if nothing had happened; but naturally Estelle wouldn’t be interested. She was first polite, then bored, then captious. Winn looked at her rather hard. “Are you trying to pay me back for falling asleep?” he asked with a queer little laugh. “Is that what you’re up to?” Estelle stiffened.
“Certainly not,” she said. “I simply wasn’t very interested. I don’t think I like Chinese stories, and Manchuria is just the same, of course.”
Winn leaned over her, with a wicked light in his eyes, like a naughty school boy. “Own up!” he said, laying his rough hand very gently on her shoulder. “Own up, old lady!”
But has anybody ever owned up when they were being spiteful?
Estelle didn’t. She looked at Winn’s hand till he withdrew it, and then she remarked that she was feeling faint from want of food.
After she had had seven chicken sandwiches, pâté de foie gras, half a melon, and some champagne, she began to be agreeable.
Winn was delighted at this change in her and quite inclined to think that their little “breeze” had been entirely due to his own awkwardness. Still, he wished she had owned up.