Penny Plain Part 44

"Off with you all to your play. It's an odd thing to choose to go to to-night--

"'For never was there such a tale of woe As this of Juliet and her Romeo.'"

Mrs. Macdonald shook her head and sighed.

"I can't help thinking it's a poor preparation for a serious thing like marriage. I often don't feel so depressed at a funeral. There at least you know you've come to the end--nothing more can happen." Then her eyes twinkled and they left her laughing.

CHAPTER XXV

"'My lord, you nod: you do not mind the play.'

"'Yes, by Saint Anne, do I.... Madam lady.... _Would 'twere done_!'"

_The Taming of the Shrew._

Jean awoke early on her wedding morning and lay and thought over the twenty-three years of her life, and wondered what she had done to be so blessed, for, looking back, it seemed one long succession of sunny days.

The dark spots seemed so inconsiderable looking back as to be hardly worth thinking about.

Her window faced the east, and the morning sun shone in, promising yet another fine day. Through the wall she could hear Mhor, who always woke early, busy at some game--possibly wigwams with the blankets and sheets--already the chamber-maid had complained of finding the sheets knotted round the bed-posts. He was singing a song to himself as he played. Jean could hear his voice crooning. The sound filled her with an immense tenderness. Little Mhor with his naughtiness and his endearing ways! And beloved Jock with his gruff voice and surprised blue eyes, so tender hearted, so easily affronted. And David--the dear companion of her childhood who had shared with her all the pleasures and penalties of life under the iron rule of Great-aunt Alison, who understood as no one else could ever quite understand, not even Biddy.... But as she thought of Biddy, she sprang out of bed, and leaning out of the window she turned her face to Little St. Mary's, where her love was, and where presently she would join him.

Five hours later she would stand with him in the church among the blossoms, and they would be made man and wife, joined together till death did them part. Jean folded her hands on the window-sill She felt solemn and quiet and very happy. She had not had much time for thinking in the last few days, and she was glad of this quiet hour. It was good on her wedding morning to tell over in her mind, like beads on a rosary, the excellent qualities of her dear love. Could there be another such in the wide world? Pamela was happy with Lewis Elliot, and Lewis was kind and good and in every way delightful, but compared with Richard Plantagenet--In this pedestrian world her Biddy had something of the old cavalier grace. Also, he had more than a streak of Ariel. Would he be content always to be settled at home? He thought so now, but--Anyway, she wouldn't try to bind him down, to keep him to domesticity, making an eagle into a barndoor fowl; she would go with him where she could go, and where she would be a burden she would send him alone and keep a high heart, till she could welcome him home.

But it was high time that she had her bath and dressed. It would be a morning of dressing, for about 10.30 she would have to dress again for her wedding. The obvious course was to breakfast in bed, but Jean had rejected the idea as "stuffy." To waste the last morning of April in bed with crumbs of toast and a tray was unthinkable, and by 9.30 Jean was at the station giving Mhor an hour with his beloved locomotors.

"You will like to come to Mintern Abbas, won't you, Mhor?" she said.

Mhor considered.

"I would have liked it better," he confessed, "if there had been a railway line quite near. It was silly of whoever built it to put it so far away."

"When Mintern Abbas was built railways hadn't been invented."

"I'm glad I wasn't invented before railways," said Mhor. "I would have been very dull."

"You'll have a pony at Mintern Abbas. Won't that be nice?"

"Yes. Oh! there's the signal down at last. That'll be the express to London. I can hear the roar of it already."

Pamela's idea of a wedding garment for Jean was a soft white cloth coat and skirt, and a close-fitting hat with Mercury wings. Everything was simple, but everything was exquisitely fresh and dainty.

Pamela dressed her, Mrs. Macdonald looking on, and Mawson fluttering about, admiring but incompetent.

"'Something old and something new, Something borrowed and something blue,'"

Mrs. Macdonald quoted. "Have you got them all, Jean?"

"I think so. I've got a lace handkerchief that was my mother's--that's old. And blue ribbon in my under-things. And I've borrowed Pamela's prayer-book, for I haven't one of my own. And all the rest of me's new."

"And the sun is shining," said Pamela, "so you're fortified against ill-luck."

"I hope so," said Jean gravely. "I must see if Mhor has washed his face this morning. I didn't notice at breakfast, and he's such an odd child, he'll wash every bit of himself and neglect his face. Perhaps you'll remember to look, Mrs. Macdonald, when you are with him here."

Mrs. Macdonald smiled at Jean's maternal tone.

"I've brought up four boys," she said, "so I ought to know something of their ways. It will be like old times to have Jock and Mhor to look after."

Mhor went in the car with Jean and Pamela and Mrs. Macdonald. The others had gone on in Lord Bidborough's car, as Mr. Macdonald wanted to see the vicar before the service. The vicar had asked Jean about the music, saying that the village schoolmistress who was also the organist, was willing to play. "I don't much like 'The Voice that breathed o'er Eden,'" Jean told him, "but anything else would be very nice. It is so very kind of her to play."

Mhor mourned all the way to church about Peter being left behind.

"There's poor Peter who is so fond of marriages--he goes to them all in Priorsford--tied up in the yard; and he knows how to behave in a church."

"It's a good deal more than you do," Mrs. Macdonald told him. "You're never still for one moment. I know of at least one person who has had to change his seat because of you. He said he got no good of the sermon watching you bobbing about."

"It's because I don't care about sermons," Mhor replied, and relapsed into dignified silence--a silence sweetened by a large chocolate poked at him by Jean.

They walked through the churchyard with its quiet sleepers, into the cool church where David was waiting to give his sister away. Some of the village women, with little girls in clean pinafores clinging to their skirts, came shyly in after them and sat down at the door. Lord Bidborough, waiting for his bride, saw her come through the doorway winged like Mercury, smiling back at the children following ... then her eyes met his.

The first thing that Jean became aware of was that Mr. Macdonald was reading her own chapter.

"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them: and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose....

"And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The Way of Holiness: the unclean shall not pa.s.s over it: but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein....

"No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there.

"And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."

The schoolmistress had played the wedding march from _Lohengrin_, and was prepared to play Mendelssohn as the party left the church, but when the service was over Mrs. Macdonald whispered fiercely in Jean's ear, "You _can't_ be married without 'O G.o.d of Bethel,'" and ousting the schoolmistress from her place at the organ she struck the opening notes.

They knew it by heart--Jean and Davie and Jock and Mhor and Lewis Elliot--and they sang it with the unction with which one sings the songs of Zion by Babylon's streams.

"Through each perplexing path of life Our wandering footsteps guide; Give us each day our daily bread, And raiment fit provide.

O spread Thy covering wings around Till all our wanderings cease, And at our Father's loved abode Our souls arrive in peace."

Out in the sunshine, among the blossoms, Jean stood with her husband and was kissed and blessed.

"Jean, Lady Bidborough," said Pamela.

"Gosh, Maggie!" said Jock, "I quite forgot Jean would be Lady Bidborough. What a joke!"

"She doesn't look any different," Mhor complained.

"Surely you don't want her different," Mrs. Macdonald said.

"Not _very_ different," said Mhor, "but she's pretty small for a Lady--not nearly as tall as Richard Plantagenet."