"My God," he thought, "_have_ I got the ring?"--and once more he went through the bridegroom's convulsive gesture.
Then, in a moment, May was beside him,such radiance streaming from her that it sent a faint warmth through his numbness, and he straightened himself and smiled into her eyes.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here," the Rector began ...
The ring was on her hand,the Bishop's benediction had been given,the bridesmaids were a-poise to resume their place in the procession,and the organ was showing preliminary symptoms of breaking out into the Mendelssohn March, without which no newly-wedded couple had ever emerged upon New York.
"Your arm--_I say, give her your arm!_" young Newland nervously hissed;and once more Archer became aware of having been adrift far off in the unknown.What was it that had sent him there, he wondered?Perhaps the glimpse,among the anonymous spectators in the transept,of a dark coil of hair under a hat which,a moment later, revealed itself as belonging to an unknown lady with a long nose, so laughably unlike the person whose image she had evoked that he asked himself if he were becoming subject to hallucinations.
And now he and his wife were pacing slowly down the nave,carried forward on the light Mendelssohn ripples,the spring day beckoning to them through widely opened doors,and Mrs. Welland's chestnuts,with big white favours on their frontlets,curvetting and showing off at the far end of the canvas tunnel.
The footman, who had a still bigger white favour on his lapel,wrapped May's white cloak about her,and Archer jumped into the brougham at her side.She turned to him with a triumphant smile and their hands clasped under her veil.
"Darling!" Archer said--and suddenly the same black abyss yawned before him and he felt himself sinking into it, deeper and deeper, while his voice rambled on smoothly and cheerfully: "Yes, of course I thought I'd lost the ring; no wedding would be complete if the poor devil of a bridegroom didn't go through that. But you _did_ keep me waiting, you know!I had time to think of every horror that might possibly happen. "
She surprised him by turning, in full Fifth Avenue,and flinging her arms about his neck."But none ever can__ happen now, can it, Newland,as long as we two are together?"
Every detail of the day had been so carefully thought out that the young couple,after the wedding-breakfast,had ample time to put on their travelling-clothes,descend the wide Mingott stairs between laughing bridesmaids and weeping parents, and get into the brougham under the traditional shower of rice and satin slippers; and there was still half an hour left in which to drive to the station, buy the last weeklies at the bookstall with the air of seasoned travellers, and settle themselves in the reserved compartment in which May's maid had already placed her dove-coloured travelling cloak and glaringly new dressing-bag from London.
The old du Lac aunts at Rhinebeck had put their house at the disposal of the bridal couple, with a readiness inspired by the prospect of spending a week in New York with Mrs. Archer; and Archer, glad to escape the usual "bridal suite" in a Philadelphia or Baltimore hotel, had accepted with an equal alacrity.
May was enchanted at the idea of going to the country,and childishly amused at the vain efforts of the eight bridesmaids to discover where their mysterious retreat was situated. It was thought "very English" to have a country-house lent to one, and the fact gave a last touch of distinction to what was generally conceded to be the most brilliant wedding of the year; but where the house was no one was permitted to know, except the parents of bride and groom, who, when taxed with the knowledge, pursed their lips and said mysteriously: "Ah, they didn't tell us--" which was manifestly true, since there was no need to.
Once they were settled in their compartment,and the train, shaking off the endless wooden suburbs,had pushed out into the pale landscape of spring,talk became easier than Archer had expected.May was still, in look and tone,the simple girl of yesterday,eager to compare notes with him as to the incidents of the wedding,and discussing them as impartially as a bridesmaid talking it all over with an usher. At first Archer had fancied that this detachment was the disguise of an inward tremor; but her clear eyes revealed only the most tranquil unawareness. She was alone for the first time with her husband; but her husband was only the charming comrade of yesterday. There was no one whom she liked as much, no one whom she trusted as completely, and the culminating"lark" of the whole delightful adventure of engagement and marriage was to be off with him alone on a journey, like a grownup person, like a"married woman," in fact.
It was wonderful that--as he had learned in the Mission garden at St.Augustine--such depths of feeling could coexist with such absence of imagination. But he remembered how, even then, she had surprised him by dropping back to inexpressive girlishness as soon as her conscience had been eased of its burden; and he saw that she would probably go through life dealing to the best of her ability with each experience as it came, but never anticipating any by so much as a stolen glance.
Perhaps that faculty of unawareness was what gave her eyes their transparency,and her face the look of representing a type rather than a person;as if she might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue or a Greek goddess.The blood that ran so close to her fair skin might have been a preserving fluid rather than a ravaging element; yet her look of indestructible youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor dull, but only primitive and pure. In the thick of this meditation Archer suddenly felt himself looking at her with the startled gaze of a stranger, and plunged into a reminiscence of the wedding-breakfast and of Granny Mingott's immense and triumphant pervasion of it.
May settled down to frank enjoyment of the subject."I was surprised, though--weren't you?--that aunt Medora came after all.Ellen wrote that they were neither of them well enough to take the journey;I do wish it had been she who had recovered!Did you see the exquisite old lace she sent me?"