Cornwall (England : County) -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Vacations -- Fiction
Miss Minns came forward, Miss Minns in an amazing bonnet. It was such an
amazing bonnet that Miss Minns must positively have made it herself; it
was shaped like a square loaf and little jet beads rang little bells on
it as she moved. She was in a perfect tremble of excitement, and the
whole affair sent her mind back to the one other romantic incident in
her life—the one and only love affair. But the really amazing discovery
was that romance wasn’t over for her yet, that she was permitted to take
part in a real “affair,” to see it through from start to finish. She was
quivering with excitement.
They all got into the cab.
It was a very silent drive to the church. The rain had almost stopped.
It only beat every now and again, a little doubtfully, against the
window and then went, with a little whirl of wind, streaming away.
The cab went slowly, and, although it lurched from side to side and
every now and again pitched forward, as though it would fall on its
head, they were not shaken about very badly. Janet leaned back against
Tony, and he had his arm round her. They neither of them spoke at all,
but his fingers moved very lightly over her hand and then to her cheek,
and then back to her hand again.
As they got on to the top of the hill and started along the white road
to the church the wind from the sea met them and swept about them. Great
dark clouds, humped like camels, raced across the sky; the trees by the
roadside, gnarled and knotted, waved scraggy arms like so many witches.
Miss Minns’s only remark as they neared the church was, “I must say I
should have liked a little bit of orange-blossom.”
“We’ll get that in Paris,” said Tony.
The aged man was told to wait with his coach until they all came out of
church again. He seemed to be quite prepared to wait until the day of
doom if necessary. He stared drearily in front of him at the sea. To his
mind, it was all a very bad business.
Soon they were all in the church, the clergyman with the flowing beard,
his elderly boy, acting as a kind of verger and general factotum, Miss
Minns, Maradick, and there, by the altar rails, Tony and Janet.
It was a very tiny church indeed, and most of the room was taken up by
an enormous box-like pew that had once been used by “The Family”; now it
was a mass of cobwebs. Two candles had been lighted by the altar and
they flung a fitful, uncertain glow about the place and long twisting
shadows on the wall. On the altar itself was a large bowl of white
chrysanthemums, and always for the rest of his life the sight of
chrysanthemums brought back that scene to Maradick’s memory: the blazing
candles, the priest with his great white beard, the tiny, dusty church,
Miss Minns and her bonnet, Tony splendidly erect, a smile in his eyes,
and Janet with her hair and her blue serge dress and her glance every
now and again at Tony to see whether he were still there.
And so, there, and in a few minutes, they were married.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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