When the minister had finished with the couple and they moved down the
aisle to what the paper called the "Bridle March, by Lohengrin," Mr.
Maugans always craned his neck to see and usually put his foot on the
wrong pedal, with the startling effect of firing a cannon at the
departing guests.
He did not crane his neck, however, to see Mr. and Mrs. Pouch depart.
They were too commonplace entirely. He played the march with such
doleful indifference that Eddie found the aisle as long as the distance
from Marathon to Athens. Also he was trying to walk so that his pinching
shoes would not squeak.
At the end of the last pew Eddie and Ellaphine encountered Luella
Thickins leaning out into the aisle and triumphantly beautiful in her
finest raiment. Her charms were militant and vindictive, and her smile
plainly said: "Uh-huh! Don't you wish you'd taken me instead of that
thing you've hitched up with for life?"
Eddie gave her one glance and found her hideous. Ellaphine lowered her
eyelids in defeat and slunk from the church, thinking:
"Now he's already sorry that he married me. What can he see in me to
love? Nothing! Nothing!"
When they clambered into the carriage Eddie said, "Well, Mrs. Pouch,
give your old husband a kiss!"
Ellaphine shrank away from him, however, crying again. He was hurt and
puzzled until he remembered that it is the business of brides to cry.
He held her hand and tried to console her for being his victim, and
imagined almost every reason for her tears but the true one.
The guests at the church straggled to Mrs. Govers's home, drawn by the
call of refreshments. Luella was the gayest of them all. People wondered
why Eddie had not married her instead of Ellaphine. Luella heard some
one say, "What on earth can he see in her?"
Luella answered, "What on earth can she see in him?" It was hardly
playing fair, but Luella was a poor loser. She even added, to clinch it,
"What on earth can they see in each other?"
That became the town comment on the couple when there was any comment at
all. Mainly they were ignored completely.
Eddie and Ellar were not even honored with the usual outburst of the
ignoblest of all sports--bride-baiting. Nobody tied a white ribbon to
the wheel of the hack that took them to the depot. Old shoes had not
been provided and rice had been forgotten. They were not pelted or
subjected to immemorial jokes. They were not chased to the train, and
their elaborate schemes for deceiving the neighbors as to the place of
their honeymoon were wasted. Nobody cared where they went or how long
they stayed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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