Gwenna stared. "A veil, too, Leslie?"
"Rather. Only chance you get of appearing in this thoroughly becoming kit that carries us all back to the worst days of Woman"s Enslavement.
May as well take that chance!" remarked Miss Long cheerfully, as she shook out soft, transparent folds of finest white net that she herself had embroidered, working late into the night, with a border of leaves in white silk. "This is from me."
"Oh, _Les_-lie! You got it as a surprise for me," said the little bride, much touched. "You worked all these beautiful little laurel-leaves----"
"Not laurel, child. Meant for myrtle. Pity your geography is so weak,"
rattled on Leslie, as she heard, outside the Club, the stopping of the taxi which had brought the Reverend Hugh Lloyd to call for his detachment of the bridal party. "Refreshingly unconventional sort of wedding you"re having in some ways, aren"t you? "_The presents were few and inexpensive_" (such a change from the usual report). "_The bride was attended by one bridesmaid: her friend Miss Long, clad in mauve linen, mystic, wonderful_"--(taking into consideration that it had done her cousin for Henley last year). "_The ceremony proceeded without a hitch, except for the usual attempt on the part of the officiating clergyman to marry the bride to the best man._" Which must not be, Taffy. You must remember that I"ve got designs on Mr. Hugo Swayne myself----"
"Don"t, Leslie!" protested the bride. "You know I do so hate to think of you getting engaged in that sort of horrible way--instead of just because you can"t _help_ it! If only there were somebody you could be really in love with----"
"I shall be really rather in love with Uncle Hugh, I know," prophesied the bridesmaid. "_What_ a pity he isn"t thirty years younger! Come along. He"s waiting. I"m going to kiss _him_, anyhow. Got your gloves?
Right. Got my hankerfish? You won"t _want_ to shed any tears into it, but----"
But there was an added brightness in the green-brown eyes of the little bride as she glanced round the girlish room where Leslie would pack up and put everything to rights for her after she had gone.
Impulsively she put her arms round that good chum.
"You"ve been so--so frightfully sweet to me, Leslie, always. Thanks so awfully----"
"_Don"t_ kiss me through a veil, my child!" protested Leslie, drawing back. "D"you want to bring me ill luck?"
"Oh, Leslie! I should want to bring you all the good luck in the world,"
cried the younger girl, earnestly, over her shoulder as they went out.
"If I were given three wishes _now_ for a wedding-present, one of them would be that you would some day be as happy as me!"
"My dear lamb!" said Leslie lightly, running downstairs after her, "How do you know I"m not quite as happy in another--in my own way?"
Gwenna shook the curly head under the orange-blossom wreath and the misty veil. It seemed to her that there was only The One Way in which a woman could be happy.
"And the other two wishes?" suggested Leslie, at the sitting-room door.
"What are they?"
"Mustn"t tell," smiled the little bride of Superst.i.tion with her finger at her lips. "If I told they _might_ not come true!"
Very earnestly she hoped that those two wishes might come true. She thought of them again, presently, as she stood, there in church, a small, white-mist-clad figure, backed by the coloured window and the crimson altar. She had the kindly glances upon her of her uncle, of her tall girl-chum, and of Hugo Swayne--who wore a perfect morning coat with a white flower and grey trousers, admirably pressed by his man Johnson.
Hugo, but for his Chopin stock, would have looked the very model of a prosperous and conventional bridegroom. He did, in fact, look far more like the popular conception of a bridegroom than did young Paul Dampier in his well-cut but ancient grey tweed suit.
--"The only togs I"ve got in the wide world," he"d confided to Gwenna, "except working clothes and evening things!"
She stood with her hand in his large, boyish one, repeating in her soft, un-English accent the vows that once seemed to her such a vast and solemn and relentless undertaking.
"_To love, honour, and obey ... as long as we both shall live...._"
It seemed now so little to have to promise! It seemed only a fraction of all that her heart gave gladly to the lord of it!
"_Till Death us do part_," she repeated quietly.
And it was then she thought of the two wishes. One was that Paul should be always as much in love with her as he was at that moment.
She was too young fully to realise the greater wisdom of her own second wish.
_It was that she herself should always remain as much in love with Paul._
If only G.o.d would be very, very kind to them, she thought, and allow just this to be!
"And you sign your name here," said the clergyman in the vestry to the newly-made husband, who put down in his small neat handwriting, "Paul Dampier, Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps," on the grey-blue sheet, which, duly witnessed and blotted, he was going to tuck away into the breast-pocket of his tweed jacket.
"No. Those marriage lines are not yours," the parson stopped him with a smile. "Those are the property of your wife."
Gwenna, dazed, realised that this referred to herself. She took the folded marriage-certificate and slipped it into the white satin ribbon girding her pretty frock. She looked very childish for "a wife"! But for that bright wedding-ring on her finger (half a size too large for it) she might have pa.s.sed for one of the veiled and white-clad First Communicants of an Easter Sunday in Paris. Then she turned up the little face, from which the veil had been thrown back, to be kissed by the others who had followed them into the vestry. Vaguely she heard Leslie"s voice, arranging in murmurs with Hugo Swayne. "No. Perhaps I"ll come on afterwards.... After I"ve helped her to change.... No; you take Mr. Lloyd and feed him somewhere. No! I"m sure those two won"t want to come on to any lunch. Lunch? My dear man!... Send them in your car to Victoria and Johnson can bring it back.... They"ll be getting away at once."
At once! Gwenna looked up into her young husband"s blue eyes.
He caught her hand.
"Got you now," he said softly. "Can"t run away this time."
By rights she should have walked down the church on his arm. But he did not loose her hand. So it was hand-in-hand, like children, that they hurried out again, ahead of the others, into the sunshine of the porch.
The merry breeze took the bride"s veil and spread it, a curtain of mist, across the pair of them. Gwenna Dampier caught it aside, laughing gleefully as they stepped out of the porch. The gravity of the service had sparkled into gaiety in their eyes. He crushed her fingers in his.
Her heart sang. They would be off----! It was almost too lovely to be true, but----
Yes. It _was_ too lovely to be true.
A shadow fell across the path; across the bride"s white shoe.
Johnson, Hugo"s man, who had been waiting with the car, stepped quickly up to the bridegroom.
"Excuse me, sir, but this message.... Came just as you"d gone into church. I waited. The woman brought it on from your rooms, sir."
Paul Dampier took the wire and read it.
The white-frocked girl he had just married stood at the church entrance watching him, while the breeze lifted her veil and stirred her curls and tossed a couple of creamy petals, from her wreath, on to the breast of his coat. She herself stood motionless, stony.
She knew that this was no wire of congratulation such as any bridal couple may expect to receive as they come out of church from their wedding. She knew, even before she heard his deep voice saying--blankly and hurriedly:
"I say. It"s from the War Office. I shall have to go. I"ve got to leave you. Now. I"m ordered to join at once!"
CHAPTER VIII
THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM