I remember I thought that what I had just gone through differed in no respect from the signing of my marriage settlement, except that in the one case I had given my husband rights over my money, my father's money, whereas in this case I seemed to have given him rights over myself.

Otherwise it was all so cold, so drear, so dead, so unaffecting.

The blue paper had slipped out of my hand on to the worn hearthrug when my helpless meditations were interrupted by the thrumming and throbbing of the motor-car outside, and by my father, who was at the office door, saying in his loud, commanding voice:

"Come, gel, guess it's time for you to be back."

Half an hour afterwards I was in my own room at home, and given over to the dressmakers. I was still being moved automatically--a creature without strength or will.

THIRTY-FIRST CHAPTER

I have only an indefinite memory of floating vaguely through the sights and sounds of the next two hours--of everybody except myself being wildly excited; of my cousins railing repeatedly from unseen regions of the house: of Aunt Bridget scolding indiscriminately; of the dressmakers chattering without ceasing as they fitted on my wedding dress; of their standing off from me at intervals with cries of delight at the success of their efforts; of the wind roaring in the chimney; of the church-bells ringing in the distance; of the ever-increasing moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rock; and finally of the rumbling of the rubber wheels of several carriages and the plash of horses' hoofs on the gravel of the drive.

When the dressmakers were done with me I was wearing an ivory satin dress, embroidered in silver, with a coronal of myrtle and orange blossoms under the old Limerick lace of the family veil, as well as a string of pearls and one big diamond of the noble house I was marrying into. I remember they said my black hair shone with a blue lustre against the sparkling gem, and I dare say I looked gay on the outside anyway.

At last I heard a fluttering of silk outside my room, and a running stream of chatter going down the stairs, followed by the banging of carriage doors, and then my father's deep voice, saying:

"Bride ready? Good! Time to go, I guess."

He alone had made no effort to dress himself up, for he was still wearing his every-day serge and his usual heavy boots. There was not even a flower in his button-hole.

We did not speak very much on our way to church, but I found a certain comfort in his big warm presence as we sat together in the carriage with the windows shut, for the rising storm was beginning to frighten me.

"It will be nothing," said my father. "Just a puff of wind and a slant of rain maybe."

The little church was thronged with people. Even the galleries were full of the children from the village school. There was a twittering overhead like that of young birds in a tree, and as I walked up the nave on my father's arm I could not help but hear over the sound of the organ the whispered words of the people in the pews on either side of us.

"Dear heart alive, the straight like her mother she is, bless her!"

"Goodness yes, it's the poor misfortunate mother come to life again."

"Deed, but the daughter's in luck, though."

Lord Raa was waiting for me by the communion rail. He looked yet more nervous than in the morning, and, though he was trying to bear himself with his usual composure, there was (or I thought there was) a certain expression of fear in his face which I had never seen before.

His friend and witness, Mr. Eastcliff, wearing a carnation button-hole, was by his side, and his aunt, Lady Margaret, carrying a sheaf of beautiful white flowers, was standing near.

My own witnesses and bridesmaids, Betsy Beauty and Nessy MacLeod, in large hats, with soaring black feathers, were behind me. I could hear the rustle of their rose-coloured skirts and the indistinct buzz of their whispered conversation, as well as the more audible reproofs of Aunt Bridget, who in a crinkly black silk dress and a bonnet like a half moon, was telling them to be silent and to look placid.

At the next moment I was conscious that a bell had been rung in the chancel; that the organ had stopped; that the coughing and hemming in the church had ceased; that somebody was saying "Stand here, my lord"; that Lord Raa, with a nervous laugh, was asking "Here?" and taking a place by my side; that the lighted altar, laden with flowers, was in front of me; and that the Bishop in his vestments, Father Dan in his surplice and white stole, and a clerk carrying a book and a vessel of holy water were beginning the service.

Surely never was there a sadder ceremony. Never did any girl under similar circumstances feel a more vivid presentiment of the pains and penalties that follow on a forced and ill-assorted marriage. And yet there came to me in the course of the service such a startling change of thought as wiped out for a while all my sadness, made me forget the compulsion that had been put upon me, and lifted me into a realm of spiritual ecstasy.

The Bishop began with a short litany which asked God's blessing on the ceremony which was to join together two of His children in the bonds of holy wedlock. While that was going on I was conscious of nothing except the howling of the wind about the church windows and the far-off tolling of the bell on St. Mary's Rock--nothing but this and a voice within me which seemed to say again and again, "I don't love him! I don't love him!"

But hardly had the actual ceremony commenced when I began to be overawed by the solemnity and divine power of the service, and by the sense of God leaning over my littleness and guiding me according to His will.

What did it matter how unworthy were the preparations that had led up to this marriage if God was making it? God makes all marriages that are blessed by His Church, and therefore He overrules to His own good ends all human impulses, however sordid or selfish they may be.

After that thought came to me nothing else seemed to matter, and nothing, however jarring or incongruous, was able to lower the exaltation of my spirit.

But the service, which had this effect upon me, appeared to have an exactly opposite effect on Lord Raa. His nervousness increased visibly, though he did his best to conceal it by a lightness of manner that sometimes looked like derision.

Thus when the Bishop stepped down to us and said:

"James Charles Munster, wilt thou take Mary here present for thy lawful wife, according to the rite of our holy Mother the Church," my husband halted and stammered over his answer, saying beneath his breath, "I thought I was a heretic."

But when the corresponding question was put to me, and Father Dan thinking I must be nervous, leaned over me and whispered, "Don't worry, child, take your time," I replied a loud, clear, unfaltering voice:

"I will."

And again, when my husband had to put the ring and the gold and silver on the salver (he fumbled and dropped them as he did so, and fumbled and dropped them a second time when he had to take them up after they had been blessed, laughing too audibly at his own awkwardness), and then repeat after the Bishop:

"With this ring I thee wed; this gold and silver I thee give; with my body I thee worship; and with all my worldly goods I thee endow," he tendered the ring slowly and with an obvious effort.

But I took it without trembling, because I was thinking that, in spite of all I had heard of his ways of life, this solemn and sacred sacrament made him mine and no one else's.

It is all very mysterious; I cannot account for it; I only know it was so, and that, everything considered, it was perhaps the strangest fact of all my life.

I remember that more than once during the ceremony Father Dan spoke to me softly and caressingly, as if to a child, but I felt no need of his comforting, for my strength was from a higher source.

I also remember that it was afterwards said that all through the ceremony the eyes of the newly-wedded couple seemed sedulously to shun each other, but if I did not look at my husband it was because my marriage was like a prayer to me, carrying me back, with its sense of purity and sanctity, to the little sunlit church in Rome where Mildred Bankes had taken her vows.

After the marriage service there was Nuptial Mass and Benediction (special dispensation from Rome), and that raised to a still higher pitch the spiritual exaltation which sustained me.

Father Dan read the Epistle beginning "Let wives be subject to their husbands," and then the Bishop read the Gospel, concluding, "Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh: what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

I had trembled when I thought of these solemn and sonorous words in the solitude of my own room, but now that they were spoken before the congregation I had no fear, no misgiving, nothing but a sense of rapture and consecration.

The last words being spoken and Lord Raa and I being man and wife, we stepped into the sacristy to sign the register, and not even there did my spirit fail me. I took up the pen and signed my name without a tremor. But hardly had I done so when I heard a rumbling murmur of voices about me--first the Bishop's voice (in such a worldly tone) and then my father's and then my husband's, and then the voices of many others, in light conversation mingled with trills of laughter. And then, in a moment, in a twinkling, as fast as a snowflake melts upon a stream, the spell of the marriage service seemed to break.

I have heard since that my eyes were wet at that moment and I seemed to have been crying all through the ceremony. I know nothing about that, but I do know that I felt a kind of internal shudder and that it was just as if my soul had suddenly awakened from an intoxicating drug.

The organ began to play the Wedding March, and my husband, putting my arm through his, said, "Come."

There was much audible whispering among the people waiting for us in the church, and as we walked towards the door I saw ghostly faces smiling at me on every side, and heard ghostly voices speaking in whispers that were like the backward plash of wavelets on the shore.

"Sakes alive, how white's she's looking, though," said somebody, and then somebody else said--I could not help but hear it--

"Dear heart knows if her father has done right for all that."

I did not look at anybody, but I saw Martin's mother at the back, and she was wiping her eyes and saying to some one by her side--it must have been the doctor--

"God bless her for the sweet child veen she always was, anyway."