And indeed why should I? Our young friends were married as legally and
irrevocably as half a dozen parsons in the presence of a distinguished
congregation assembled in a fashionable London church could marry them.
Of what actually took place I have the confused memory of the mere man.
I know that it was magnificent. All the dinner parties of Mr. Jornicroft
were splendidly united. Adrian's troops of friends supported him. Doria,
dark eyed, without a tinge of colour in the strange ivory of her cheek,
looked more elfin than ever beneath the white veil. Jaffery, who was
best man, vast in a loose frock coat, loomed like a monstrous effigy by
the altar-rails. Susan, at the head of the bridesmaids, kept the stern
set face of one at grapple with awful responsibility. She told her
mother afterwards that a pin was running into her all the time. . . .
Well, I, for one, signed the register and I kissed the bride and shook
hands with Adrian, who adopted the poor nonchalant attitude of one
accustomed to get married every day of his life. Driving from church to
reception with Barbara, I railed, in the orthodox manner of the superior
husband, at the modern wedding.
"A survival of barbarism," said I. "What is the veil but a relic of
marriage by barter, when the man bought a pig in a poke and never knew
his luck till he unveiled his bride? What is the ring but the symbol of
the fetters of slavery? The rice, but the expression of a hope for a
prolific union? The satin slipper tied on to the carriage or thrown
after it? Good luck? No such thing. It was once part of the marriage
ceremony for the bridegroom to tap the wife with a shoe to symbolise
his assertion of and her acquiescence in her entire subjection."
"Where did Lady Bagshawe get that awful hat?" said Barbara sweetly. "Did
you notice it? It isn't a hat; it's a crime."
I turned on her severely. "What has Lady Bagshawe's hat to do with the
subject under discussion? Haven't you been listening?"
She squeezed my hand and laughed. "No, you dear silly, of course not."
Another instance of the essential inconvincibility of woman.