Cheerfulness Breaks In Page 4

  CHAPTER III

  GO, LOVELY ROSE

  THE School Chapel really looked very nice, just as Kate had said it would, though nothing could disguise its complete hideousness. It had been built about seventy years previously by the same architect who had built Lord Pomfret’s seat, Pomfret Towers, and though the architect, hampered by the restrictions of space, had not been able to carry out his Neo-Gothic wishes to full effect, he had managed to combine inconvenience and darkness in a manner hitherto unparalleled in any of his work. The Chapel was a very long, narrow, lofty building, richly panelled in pitch-pine. The windows which were placed near the roof were of most elaborate tracery, filled with lozenges of green and purple glass. The pews, also of pitch-pine, had specially constructed seats, not only very narrow, but with a slight forward tilt that obliged the worshipper to brace himself against the encaustic tiled floor with both feet. The stalls at the east end were so profusely ornamented with carving that they constituted a kind of Little Ease for the senior boys and masters who occupied them, and were furnished with seats which folded back on a hinge at such an angle that at least two boys were able to say that their seats had fallen down with a bang of themselves at every service. The Great East Window, presented by former pupils in memory of the Rev. J. J. Damper, Headmaster from 1850 to 1868, when he retired to an honorary canonry of Barchester which he held in a state of mild imbecility for the next ten years, was one of the finest examples of the Munich school of stained glass in the country, sustaining very favourably a comparison with the glass in St. Mungo’s, Glasgow. It cast indeed, as the School Chaplain had more than once said, a dim religious light, so that the electric fittings (installed in 1902, as a memorial to Old Boys killed in the Boer War, in the finest art nouveau style) had to be used all through the year. As for the organ (now electrically controlled), the lectern, given in memory of an unpopular master who was killed in the Alps because he would not take his guide’s advice but had a rich mother (who also put up a less expensive memorial to the guide in his village church), the tiles on each side of the altar (copied from those used in the kitchen at Pomfret Towers), they are described (with five stars) in all guide books to Barsetshire, so we will say no more.

  Short of burning it all to the ground, there was not much to be done, but Mrs. Birkett had put lilies and delphiniums all over the choir and up the altar steps and, greatly daring, ordered quantities of blue carpet to cover the aisle and the handsome Kidderminster rug that lay in front of the altar and vied in richness of colour with the East window.

  Soon after lunch the guests began to arrive. Mr. and Mrs. Birkett naturally had an enormous number of friends and acquaintances, nearly all of whom had sent a present to Rose because they were fond of her parents, and so had to be asked. A certain number were already abroad, or dispersed in far parts of England and Scotland, but even so there were enough acceptances to make Mrs. Birkett a little anxious about accommodation in the Chapel. However, the more people are jammed together at any social function, the more they will enjoy it, so from her place of vantage in the choir stalls she was able to survey the audience without too much discomposure.

  It is well known that proper weddings in a church, as distinguished from hole and corner affairs for conscience’ or convenience’ sake in what even quite well-educated people will call registry offices, are conducted entirely for the benefit of the bride’s mother and the bridesmaids. The bride, beyond a general feeling that it will be marvellous to be married, has usually been reduced by dressmakers, presents, nervous and unintelligible advice from her very ignorant mother, visits to her lover’s great-aunts, and doubts about the setting of her hair, to a state of drugged imbecility in which she would as easily be led to suttee (or sati, if you prefer it, both being probably incorrect) as to the altar; while the bridegroom is merely an adjunct or bleating victim. As for the bridegroom’s family and friends, everyone knows that they are only there by courtesy, being as naught, and relegated to the right or decani side of the church which for some ecclesiastical reason is the less honourable. And what is more, it is rare for the bridegroom’s friends to turn up in such force as the bride’s, so that the ushers are fain to hustle poor relations of the bride’s, old governesses, nannies, and obvious members of the domestic staff into the bridegroom’s side to fill up the pews, while the bridegroom and his best man have to hang about in new boots with no particular locus standi as it were.

  But on the left or cantoris side, how different is the scene. All the bride’s friends have come to talk to each other, all her parents’ friends have turned up, majestic, distinguished, and except for an aunt or two, well dressed. Everyone says, ‘Where is the bride’s mother? Oh, there she is. Doesn’t she look well in that blue (or purple, or flowered silk or whatever it may be). Dear Elsie, she looks as happy as if she were going to be married herself. I suppose those are his people up in front. I don’t think I’ve met them. Taunton, isn’t it, or somewhere in Yorkshire. Look, there is Cynthia. Come into our pew, my dear, there’s heaps of room and I have something I want to tell you.’

  So on this occasion did the Birketts’ party and Rose’s large body of bosom friends surge into the church and storm the pews. So did Mrs. Birkett look quite delightful in a shade of cyclamen that she had not been quite sure about and dispense welcoming smiles to anyone who caught her eye and co-opt into her pew her old friend Mrs. Morland, the well-known novelist, whose youngest boy Tony had been through Southbridge School from the bottom of the Junior School to the top of the Senior School and had just left in a cloud of glory with a Formership (corrupted from Formaship and pronounced Formayship, because scholars were supposed to apply for free tuition in forma pauperis at Paul’s College, Oxford. Mrs. Morland’s hat was too apt to lose its moorings on her head, her abundant brown hair was too apt to escape and rain hairpins on the floor, but no one could call her undistinguished, and Mrs. Birkett was very fond of her.

  As for the bridegroom’s parents they were both dead, which simplified everything very much, and Philip Winter, who was doing duty as usher for Lieutenant Fairweather, saw to it that the front pews were filled with the best specimens of the bridegroom’s friends, including some very pretty young wives of Old Southbridgeians who had been at school with the Fairweathers, and the Dean’s secretary who was well known as a football player by all the younger men and so gave lustre to the scene.

  The organ pealed forth, though never except in fiction does it do this, rather blaring and bursting, or in more refined cases quavering. In every heart began to spring that exquisite hope, seldom if ever realised, that the bride will have had a fit, or eloped with someone else.

  Meanwhile Mr. Birkett was approaching the drawing-room, more nervous than he had ever been since he had to explain to the Dean of his College why he had frightened the wife of the President of St. Barabbas next door by stumbling against her camp bed in the garden at three o’clock on a June morning, an action formally deprecated but privately condoned by the Dean, who did not hold with married Presidents, or indeed anyone else, and most especially not with people who slept out of doors in the summer, as he himself had slept with all his windows shut for nearly seventy years, and who also defended the members of his own College against all comers, whatever the offence, and that with such venom and gusto that only the President of St. Barabbas’s fear of his wife had driven him to make the complaint. Mr. Birkett had been dismissed with an injunction not to be a young fool and the information that in his, the Dean’s, young days when undergraduates were undergraduates, the way back into College via St. Barabbas was condemned as milk-soppery and child’s play by all self-respecting men, who took the higher road by the crocketted gable end of Colney House, then but lately built for non-denominational non-collegiate students. At the present moment Mr. Birkett felt that he would rather face the Dean, or even the President of St. Barabbas’s wife, than the ordeal of escorting Rose to the Chapel, but it had to be done, so he pulled himself together and went into the drawing-room, where Oc
tavia Crawley and Delia Brandon were practising Court curtsies, much despised by Lydia and Geraldine, while Rose made up her face.

  ‘It’s time, Rose,’ said Mr. Birkett, finding an odd difficulty in speaking.

  ‘Oh, Daddy, need I?’ said Rose, with rather impeded articulation as she applied a lipstick to her beautiful mouth.

  ‘Now come along, Rose,’ said Mr. Birkett helplessly. But he might have appealed in vain had not Lydia Keith taken Rose’s bag and lipstick away from her and put her bouquet into her hand. Rose was so surprised that she allowed her father to tuck her arm into his and lead her through the private passage to the anteroom, from which one door led to the choir, the other to the west end of the Chapel. Lydia and Geraldine arranged themselves behind the bride, Delia Brandon and Octavia Crawley followed, and the bridal procession began to move up the aisle towards the Dean. There was an audible gasp from the audience as Rose appeared on her father’s arm and they all turned their heads to look. Never had her exquisite figure shown to more advantage than on what Everard Carter’s House Matron described in a letter to her married sister as the Day of Days, and if her lovely face appeared to be vacant of all expression her friends were used to it. Lydia, who with Geraldine’s passive acquiescence had constituted herself chief bridesmaid, was pleased by the admiration around her, and collecting Rose’s bouquet prepared to stand by. To her old friend Noel Merton, who had driven Mrs. Crawley and a selection of the Deanery girls over from Barchester in his car, she had something of the air of a very competent second, bouquet in hand instead of a sponge, ready to give first aid between the rounds.

  And indeed it looked at one moment as if her services would be required, for Rose, suddenly recognising her bridegroom, was about to say, ‘Hullo, darling, isn’t this marvellous.’ Her lips had actually parted to say the words; her father’s frown was unnoticed, and Noel Merton told Mrs. Crawley afterwards that he was certain Lydia would have garrotted Rose. But Lieutenant Fairweather, who had no illusions at all about his lovely bride, saw with his sailor’s eye what was in the wind and stepping forward one pace gave his Rose a warning look that for once silenced her completely. Mr. Birkett stood back, weak with relief; the Dean and Mr. Smith did their duty; Captain Fair-weather produced the ring at exactly the right moment; and with a feeling of loss and an even deeper feeling of thankfulness Mr. and Mrs. Birkett saw their daughter and her husband kneeling together, Rose’s dress perfectly arranged, Lieutenant Fairweather, as seen in perspective, appearing to consist chiefly of the soles of his boots. For the brief moment of silent prayer Mrs. Birkett wondered if she had been a bad mother, and decided with her usual admirable common sense that she had made the best of a difficult job. Her mother’s heart was divided, one half feeling a so natural pang at the sight of her lovely daughter setting out into a new life in a distant country, far from her parents’ care, the other and by far the larger half feeling a gratitude amounting to idolatry for the son-in-law who was going to relieve her of a child that had done her best for the last five or six years to drive her parents mad.

  Relations and old friends began to move towards the vestry. Lydia marshalled the bridesmaids and herded them along, stopping for a moment to exchange greetings with Noel Merton.

  ‘Hullo, Noel,’ she said, ‘hullo, Mrs. Crawley, come along and sign the register.’

  Noel Merton said he would gladly accompany Mrs. Crawley, but didn’t think he would sign as he hardly knew the Birketts.

  ‘Rot,’ said Lydia. ‘You were at Northbridge with us in the summer Rose got unengaged to Philip and threw his ring into the pond. You can’t call that not knowing her. Come on.’

  As there was no point in resisting, Noel followed with Mrs. Crawley as Lydia swept them into her wake.

  In the vestry the register was lying ready. The Dean himself conducted the bride to the table and showed her where to sign.

  ‘Your full name,’ he said, ‘Rose Felicity Birkett.’

  ‘Not Birkett,’ said Rose, ‘Fairweather.’

  ‘For this last time,’ said the School Chaplain kindly, ‘you sign in your maiden name.’

  ‘But I can’t,’ said Rose, looking round for sympathy. ‘I mean I’ve just got married, haven’t I, and it works the minute you’re married. I mean if anyone talked to me that I didn’t know them, they’d say Mrs. Fair-weather.’

  The Dean and Mr. Smith, who had never been up against this particular difficulty before, looked at each other with what in anyone but a professed Christian would have been despair, when Lieutenant Fairweather, who had waited out of respect for superior officers, saw that the moment had come for the secular arm to assert itself.

  ‘Don’t argue, my girl,’ he said. ‘You know nothing about it. Write Rose Felicity Birkett or you won’t be married at all.’

  Rose threw an adoring look at her husband, and murmuring that it was foully dispiriting and on one’s wedding day too, did as she was told and immediately recovered her spirits. The other requisite signatures were quickly affixed and a general orgy of kissing took place.

  ‘I’m glad it wasn’t me,’ said Lydia to her friend Noel Merton, giving him a violent hit on the arm. Noel, who in spite of being a very distinguished barrister and about fifteen years older than Lydia was always treated by her as an equal and enjoyed it, inquired whether it was the bridegroom or the ceremony that she objected to.

  ‘Oh, John’s all right,’ said Lydia negligently, ‘I mean all this marrying business. Do you remember, Noel, a very good conversation we had about getting married the first time you stayed with us or the second and you said you didn’t think you’d get married and I said I probably would if it was only not to be like the Pettinger.’

  ‘Look out, she’s just behind me,’ said Noel, casting a warning glance in the direction of the Headmistress of the Barchester High School, who was exercising the fascination of a snake over a small bird upon the Dean’s secretary, Mr. Needham.

  ‘Well, I’ve changed my mind,’ said Lydia, taking no notice of Noel’s warning, ‘and I think I’ll not get married. Supposing one had a daughter like Rose.’

  ‘I can promise you that you won’t,’ said Noel. ‘And if you do think of marrying anyone, be sure to tell me, and I’ll see if he’s nice enough for you and have proper settlements.’

  Lydia said of course she would, only if Noel wanted to marry anyone he had better not tell her till afterwards, as she was sure it would be someone ghastly that she’d absolutely loathe. This compact having been made, it was time to reform the bridal procession. The organ suddenly trumpeted like an elephant and Rose on the arm of Lieutenant Fairweather, followed by her bridesmaids, passed down the aisle, between their admiring friends, out at the little door and so by the private passage back to the drawing-room where the reception was to take place.

  ‘Here you are,’ said Lydia firmly, as she handed Rose her bag. ‘You can stick on some more powder and lipstick if you like, but I think you’ve quite enough, don’t you, John?’

  ‘Don’t be so dispiriting,’ said Rose, ‘and this lipstick doesn’t come off anyway.’

  ‘I should think not,’ said her husband. ‘I wouldn’t let you put it on if it did. That’s enough, Lydia. Take it away.’

  ‘Darling John,’ said Rose, relinquishing the bag to Lydia.

  And now Simnet in all his glory began to announce the guests. Rose kissed everyone with fervour and said it was too marvellous of them to have given her such a marvellous present, while Lieutenant Fairweather shook everyone’s hand in a very painful way and smiled, for there seemed to him no particular reason to say anything. Considering that it was the end of July Mrs. Birkett had collected a very good bag. Lord Pomfret, who had been for many years a Governor of the School, was unfortunately abroad, but had sent a silver rose bowl chased, as Philip Winter had said, within an inch of its life. Lord Stoke too was absent, enjoying himself very much at an Agricultural Congress in Denmark, and was represented by a mezzotint (framed). But there were several parents with titles, and som
e Old Boys who were distinguished in various walks of life, among them a young Cabinet Minister, two actors, a film star who had endeared himself to the public by always acting with his wife, whoever she might happen at the moment to be, an Admiral, and an Indian prince who had been in the School Eleven. Add to these a good sprinkling of dignitaries from Barchester Close, quantities of subalterns and young naval officers on the Fairweather side and enough pretty girls to go round, and it will be seen that Mrs. Birkett had cause for satisfaction. For half an hour she did her duty in receiving guests as they flowed steadily through the room, and then she felt free to do what she really wanted, which was to talk to as many of the Old Boys as possible. There was not a boy who had been in the Junior School when she and her husband were there, but liked and admired Ma Birky, and before long she had twenty or thirty young men about her, competing for her attention, so that Rose’s friends had to content themselves with the older, more distinguished, and to their minds much duller men.

  It was a long time since Mrs. Birkett had had so many of her chickens under her wing at once and questions and answers flew between them, with much laughter. All the naval men and the subalterns were eager to tell her what they planned to do on their next leave, and all said much the same thing. So long, Mrs. Birkett gathered, as there wasn’t a scrap, or a blow-up, they proposed to climb, fish, tramp, bathe, shoot for every moment of daylight. If there was any sort of trouble, they said, it would be jolly hard luck on the fellows who were in India, or on the China station, or attached to Embassies, but of course nothing was likely to happen, because we had had quite enough trouble over Munich to last us for a long time and anyway Old Moore said it was going to be all right. Mrs. Birkett was sensible of a chill that she didn’t stop to analyse, told herself not to be silly, and felt that a world with so many very nice healthy young men in it couldn’t be so very wrong.