Читать книгу Gerald Cranston's Lady - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 12

Table of Contents

Certain moments print themselves indelibly on that ever-moving film which is human memory; and such a moment was Gerald Cranston’s as he stood to await his bride. The scene registered sharp as some stereoscopic photograph through the lenses of his brain—showing him every monument, every brass on the church walls, every fretted carving of its roof, every twined garland on its pillars, every figure on its stained-glass windows, every face along its pews. The bulk of those faces, even on his own side—for the bride’s friends, outnumbering the groom’s, had overflowed from north to south of the church—were hardly known to him. Yet his brain photographed each and every one of them.

They seemed, those unknown faces of Hermione’s acquaintances, a little unfriendly, quizzing, speculative. Almost it was as though he could see their lips moving in condemnation of her. “Cranston,” those lips seemed to be saying. “Cranston? Why is she marrying Cranston?” So that it was relief to recognize among them the faces of his own acquaintances—his old general’s, for instance, soldierly and clear-eyed; Hartigan’s, his stock-broker’s, obviously amused; Harrison’s; Sir James Guthrie’s; Rennie’s even, right at the back there, under the quaint carved figure in the wooden ruff and farthingale.

No unfriendliness there! Nor in the near-by faces of Hermione’s two brothers. Their high-molded faces showed only a touch of boredom, a mild but unhostile superciliousness. “The viscount’s rather like her,” he thought. And, so thinking, looked for Hermione’s boy. But the boy’s face, low in its pew, seemed to elude him. He could see it only as a fluff of yellow hair over a white forehead and two wistful-serious brown eyes.

It was at that moment, just before the preliminary organ music ceased and the first chime of Big Ben’s clock carried down to him through the chancel window, that Gerald Cranston’s brain registered the last of the known countenances, Ibbotsleigh’s, the mining engineer’s. Always, before that moment—was it not Ibbotsleigh who had introduced him to Hermione?—that countenance, despite its dandyism and the black arrogant upcurl of its mustaches, had been friendly enough. Why, then, to-day should its black eyes be hard as agates, its thin lips tensed to condemnation above its cleft chin?

The questions were automatic, danger-signals of a mind trained to deal instanter with the minds of its fellow-men; but even as Gerald Cranston’s brain was asking them, the film of memory clicked away the picture; Big Ben’s second chime cleft down to him through the chancel windows; music recommenced; the verger whispered; boys’ voices mingled with the music; and, as known with unknown faces turned away toward the north door, he knew Hermione and her father at hand. A moment later, the music and the voices swelling loud to greet her, they were in the aisle.

He could see, while the pair of them were yet half the nave away, that Hermione was no paler than her wont; that neither on her face nor in her bearing showed any trace of emotion. Her step, in its deliberateness, might have been his own. Her clothes, to his inexperience, seemed of the simplest; some silver-gold tissue that accentuated the tallness and slimness of her.

Closer she came, and closer. Now, under the silver-gold of the hat with its draped-back veil, he could see her hair, coroneted smooth and dark above the broad white forehead. Her eyes, too, were dark—dark as early violets.

Closer she came, and closer. Now she was almost at his side. Now his nostrils caught the faint sweet scent of her. Now his eyes gave him her full picture—hardly beautiful, yet all appeal. But his eyes, as his heart, rejected the appeal of her, realizing only her dignity, her resemblance to the tall, gray-haired, high-featured aristocrat against the black of whose sleeve her hand, small yet capable as his own, showed pale-gloved and untrembling.

How alike they were, those two—the old man, broad-shouldered still, on his long unbending limbs, and the young woman with the straight, high nose, the dimpled chin, and the clean-cut softly curving lips!

The bridal-hymn ceased as the pair reached him; the verger whispered a word; and, turning, Gerald Cranston faced the priest. His mind was still calm with that peculiar frozen calmness. Memory’s film still registered its pictures—the purple robes of the canon, the markered book in his hands, the black and yellow tessellation of the chancel paving, the altar flowers, the Calvary window, and the two soiled flags hanging on either side of it. But now words registered with the pictures.

“Dearly beloved,” began those words, “we are gathered together here in the sight of God ... to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honourable estate ... not by any to be enterprised unadvisedly.”

The words flowed on; till for a moment—the impressiveness of them ousting all else from his mind—it seemed to Gerald Cranston as though here, in the opening of the Church of England service, he had found actual confirmation of the morning’s theorizing. Marriage—agreed this church of his perfunctory allegiance—was not to be enterprised unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites. Marriage—agreed this church—was ordained for the procreation of children. How those words tallied with his own theories! Glancing sideways at Hermione, he wondered if she, too, were weighing them.

But Hermione’s face might have been a mask; and as he looked on that mask, speculated on the thoughts behind it, the words lost their impressiveness for him ...

Till gradually his mind stiffened against the words.

The words, however, flowed on. “Wilt thou, Gerald, have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance ... Wilt thou love her? ...”

“I will,” answered Gerald Cranston. Yet now, on a sudden, every fiber of him denied the ritual. “Love,” he thought. “What have we to do with love—Hermione and I—man and woman of this new world, where each hour brings its fresh problem, each day its renewal of thee struggle for existence? Let the church preach order, discipline, system—the strength of men and women, not their bodily passions, not their sickly sentimentalities....”

And as the ritual continued, as Hermione’s voice, too, answered with his own calmness, “I will,” as the earl gave her over to the priest, and the priest, their troths plighted, whispered, “The ring now”—his mind, stiffening yet further, threw off even its perfunctory allegiance to this church which bade him love.

“Ceremony!” he thought, watching the ring glitter on the book. “What are ceremonies to me? My word is my bond. I need neither church nor priest to seal my bargains.”

Then the priest handed him the ring, and began: “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship....”

But even as his fingers touched Hermione’s, even as he repeated those words which should make them man and wife, Gerald Cranston’s subconscious mind reacted to its own especial fear, to that apprehension which forbade him surrender himself in love to any woman; and that fear, none the less real because he might not yet realize it, was still on him when, a moment later, they passed side by side across the tessellated chancel paving to kneel, man and wife, before St. Margaret’s altar.