Then Lucy fell on her neck and cried and told her everything, and her
wonderful, unexpected, uncanny, adorable little aunt, instead of being
upset and making her feel too wicked and ungrateful to live, was full of
sympathy and understanding. They sobbed together, sitting on the sofa
locked in each other's arms, but it was a sweet sobbing, for they both
felt at this moment how much they loved each other. Miss Entwhistle
wished she had never had a single critical impatient thought of the man
this darling little child so deeply loved, and Lucy wished she had never
had a single secret from this darling little aunt Everard so blindly
didn't love. Dear, dear little Aunt Dot. Lucy's heart was big with
gratitude and tenderness and pity,--pity because she herself was so
gloriously happy and surrounded by love, and Aunt Dot's life seemed,
compared to hers, so empty, so solitary, and going to be like that till
the end of her days; and Miss Entwhistle's heart was big with yearning
over this lamb of Jim's who was giving herself with such fearlessness,
all lit up by radiant love, into the hands of a strange husband.
Presently, of course, he wouldn't be a strange husband, he would be a
familiar husband; but would he be any the better for that, she wondered?
They sobbed, and kissed, and sobbed again, each keeping half her
thoughts to herself.
This is how it was that Miss Entwhistle walked into the registrar's
office with Lucy next morning and was one of the witnesses of the
marriage.
Wemyss had a very bad moment when he saw her come in. His heart gave a
great thump, such as it had never done in his life before, for he
thought there was to be a hitch and that at the very last minute he was
somehow not going to get his Lucy. Then he looked at Lucy and was
reassured. Her face was like the morning of a perfect day in its
cloudlessness, her Love-in-a-Mist eyes were dewy with tenderness as they
rested on him, and her mouth was twisted up by happiness into the
sweetest, funniest little crooked smile. If only she would take off her
hat, thought Wemyss, bursting with pride, so that the registrar could
see how young she looked with her short hair,--why, perhaps the old boy
might think she was too young to be married and start asking searching
questions! What fun that would be.
He himself produced the effect on Miss Entwhistle, as he stood next to
Lucy being married, of an enormous schoolboy who has just won some
silver cup or other for his House after immense exertions. He had
exactly that glowing face of suppressed triumph and pride; he was red
with delighted achievement.
'Put the ring on your wife's finger,' ordered the registrar when, having
got through the first part of the ceremony, Wemyss, busy beaming down at
Lucy, forgot there was anything more to do. And Lucy stuck up her hand
with all the fingers spread out and stiff, and her face beamed too with
happiness at the words, 'Your wife.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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