Chapter XXXIII: Conclusion

'Now for the double wedding!' said Mother Constance, as one September evening the Reverend Charles Audley entered the Superior's room in the temporary daughter-house at East Ewmouth.

'What should an old blind Australian know of gay weddings?'

'Don't you know that to hear of mundane festivities is the delight of convents?'

'The festivities were to no great extent.'

'Of course not, but you must begin at the beginning, for I lost all knowledge of everybody and thing that had not got small-pox.'

For the malady had been raging in a town at the other end of England, and the special hospital where she and her staff had done service had only just closed, and quarantine was over, so that she could return.

'Which is the beginning?'

'Mine are only confused lights since Lance brought his Daisy to see me on their way to the sands by St. Kitt's Head. What a fresh pleasant face it is! and with a spice of originality in it, too.'

'Commend me to the elder sister's. Leonard Ward had prepared me for it, when I met him circulating among the unhappy deported Melanesians in Queensland. I believe she was the making of him, and a noble work he is.'

'Come, I can't let you go back to the Antipodes. Miss May was abroad at that time, and plans were not in the least fixed, only that Lance should not give up the retail business.'

'No, he said very justly, that if he did so, Mrs. Lamb would never be contented without her husband doing the same, and that would be destruction. When I went down to the S.P.G. meeting at Bexley, I saw a good deal how the land lay, and found that all the neighbours were quite ready to visit Lance's wife, and she will live at Marshlands in a very different style from the old times we remember. I am afraid Mrs. Lamb will be a trial, but she is prepared for that.'

'It was an excellent plan to have the weddings together at Stoneborough. They could hardly have borne another here.'

'No. There was a proposal that Will and Robina should be married at Minsterham, but they rather shrank from that, and the De la Poers wrote urgently to persuade her to have the wedding at Repworth, but she saw he disliked it, and then Miss May came forward and undertook to manage it all, "being inured to such affairs," as she put it; but there was an old promise in an unguarded moment that all their young Ladyships should be bridesmaids, and they held to it: so Lord and Lady De la Poer brought a bevy of daughters to the Swan at Stoneborough, and you had better be prepared, for they are coming to see Vale Leston to-morrow, and probably will come on here. Nice people, exceedingly fond of Robina. I never saw such loads of wedding presents. Lady Caergwent gives a great Russian samovar, labelled for "school feasts."'

'I suppose Fernan--I beg his pardon, Mr. Travis Underwood--did not give another diamond bouquet.'

'No. The common sense keeping he has got into showed itself in the choice of all the household plate, just the same, for each of the couples.'

'And Angela was not there, I know. Our Mother wrote to me that the poor child was so distressed at the notion of going that as they did not make a point of it, she thought it better not to send her. I think she will soon be allowed to become a postulant. It seems evidently the life she needs. But who were Miss May's bridesmaids?'

'She set her face against any but her sister and Geraldine--would hear of no one else, though Cherry had always avoided it before. They called themselves the elderly bridesmaids. What! does the conventual mind require to know what they wore? Not the same as Robina's, who had white and blue ribbons; but they were in--what do you call it?--a Frenchified name for some kind of purple.'

'Mauve?'

'Yes, mauve with white fixings; very becoming to Cherry.'

'Who married them?'

'It was a joint performance of Mr. Wilmot, Richard May, and myself, but we had a characteristic hitch. They gave my couple the first turn, and when I held out the book for the ring, my bridegroom began fumbling in his pocket and reddening up to the roots of his red hair, while poor Robina's eyes grew rounder and rounder under her veil, and Clement rose taller and taller behind her, looking as if just cause or impediment had arisen, and he only wished he had not been commanded to hold his peace.'

'Did you marry them with the key of the door?'

'Not exactly--Lance's long hand came in between with the ring in his palm.'

'Only one between the two couples?'

'No, Bill had asked Lance to get both together, and had never claimed his own. It was a fine incident to tease him about, but he says he has his memory made fast to him now for ever. After all, Lance gave him the wrong one, and the brides had to change afterwards.'

'So they were married with each other's rings?'

'Yes, and I don't think they much regret it.'

'Where are they gone?'

'To see little Stella in her glory, and the other two are bound to a great Rhenish musical festival, and to hear the Freiburg and Lucerne organs. They went off together in the same railway carriage, and were only to part in London. The whole affair was as quiet as possible. I am glad it was at Stoneborough. Dr. May filled the place that neither Clement nor Harewood could have borne to take.'

'And you have not told me of Cherry or Clement.'

'You will see them to-morrow, and I think you will be satisfied about Cherry. The wrench last July was dreadful; both she and Clement say that they could never have made up their minds to it if they had known the grief it would cause in the village, and the partings they would undergo, but it has certainly been good for her. She looks well, and she says that though a little while ago she felt as if she had nothing to hope or fear, a month of Whittingtonia has shown her enough to engross a hundred lifetimes.'

'And little Gerald?'

'He walks better, and he is exceedingly happy at Stoneborough. Dickie May, the Archdeacon's son, you know, a fine fellow of fourteen, is so kind to him, teaches him to make models, and I fancy has secured that admiration little boys pay to big ones. They say the poor little fellow will probably outgrow his weakness and do well in the end, but that he must be kept at home for a good many years.'

'At which I suppose Cherry cannot repine.'

'No; he is her delight; and with Bernard to give the element of manhood and spirit, I don't think he will be spoilt, for Clement is sure to be strict enough. I never saw any one more improved than Bernard, by-the-by; he is grown into a reasonable being, and as devoted and attentive to Cherry as they all are. I am sure she is happier even now than she ever thought to be again! There was as much smile as tear when she told me that she was coming to see Felix and Theodore to-morrow, and to admire Wilmet in the Priory. She is carrying on a gleam from the past sunshine of her life.'

'She is learning to _pleurer son Albert gaîment_,' said Mother Constance. 'So we must when the pillars of our joy are taken from us here. And sooner or later we can do so, if we can believe of them that they have become pillars that shall never be removed, with the new Name written upon them, in the House of the Lord above.'