The next day dawned fine, after all. "I told you so," remarked St George jauntily over breakfast, looking with satisfaction out at the portion of the grounds visible from the breakfast table. Morning dew glistened on the grass and plants. Trees which were just coming into leaf shone under the warmth of the unapologetic sun, returned in full glory as if he had never been away.
Helen sighed a sigh which communicated the intense self-control being exerted to prevent a much more dramatic utterance. "I suppose we shall have the drinks before the wedding breakfast on the lawn after all," she said, as though she personally would be required to carry them all down from the house.
"We can have cricket as soon as luncheon is over", St George continued as though his mother had spoken. "Good-oh! Jolly nice for you, too, Aunt Mary," he added as a kindly after thought.
"Yes, rather," replied his Aunt, serenely eating her toast.
"I was far too nervous to eat a thing in the morning of my wedding," Helen remarked and the note of implied criticism of Mary's hearty appetite may have been due to her habitual tones of disapproval rather than any ill intention.
"I think you're being jolly sensible, Aunt Mary," St George continued, seriously. "The worst of weddings is all the standing around wondering when the food will begin." He spoke with the jaded weariness of an octogenarian. "I say, I think I'll run down to Grandmama's after breakfast and see if Uncle Peter will let me have a try at the Daimler again before church."
"Well, don't crash it, Jerry," Mary said lightly, "Peter's lending it to Charles to drive us to the Lakes in."
"I wish he'd lend it to me," St George sighed, and then, taking his own advice about a hearty breakfast, cheered himself up with some kippers. His father glowered from over his newspaper. "Utter nonsense, boys messing about with motor cars," he said, with what struck Mary as needless belligerence. "Good Lord! When I was a boy -"
"When you were a boy motor cars hadn't even jolly well been invented, or you'd have messed about with them too," interrupted St George, rudely and inaccurately.
Helen passed a tensed hand over her brow. "St George, be quiet for the remainder of the meal. Today is certain to be trying enough as it is, without you behaving badly to your father."
Mary was once again surprised to find herself unable to take offence at Helen's extremely pointed words. She got up and left the table. "I'd better start having my hair done. I expect Davies is waiting, and I'll send her on to you, Helen." She turned at the door and obeyed a sudden and unusual impulse, never felt either before or after, to run back to the table and kiss her sister-in-law. "You've been a perfect dear to organise everything, Helen," she said. "Thanks awfully."
She left a stunned silence behind her at the breakfast table, which at least had the advantage of precluding any further argument between Duke and Viscount.
The path up through the churchyard to the church was lined with almond and blackthorn trees, early blossomers who had been encouraged by a mild March and were now in full bloom, so that every gentle breeze elicited a fresh shower of pink and white petals. The churchyard itself was covered with early dog violets, celandines, buttercups and forget-me-nots, and all the formal hot-house flowers in the world could not have been more beautiful.
Charles was much more relieved about the change in the weather than Mary. There were far fewer guests from his side than Mary's at the wedding; so much so that the convention of sitting guests on different sides of the church depending upon which member of the couple they were connected to had been abandoned. Charles's own quiet nature accounted for this a little, but the principal reason was simply that his friends in his hometown, and even for many of his colleagues in London, couldn't take the time off work for a journey to Denver, and indeed lacked the money for the journey even if they had the time. For those who had come it had meant a sacrifice of time and money unguessed by the financially independent guests from Mary's side, and he was glad it would be a good day for them. Of his Scotland Yard colleagues, he had invited the five which he considered personal friends, and all four of those who had not been required to work had come, and were standing under a timidly budding sycamore at the entrance to the churchyard as Charles and Peter approached. They looked every bit like off duty detectives despite their best suits and the presence of Anne Dorridge with her husband, looking pretty and flushed and excited. They all shook hands with Charles, who introduced Lord Peter and took the opportunity to warn them that Sir Andrew Mackenzie, the Chief of Scotland Yard and all of their ultimate boss, was to attend the wedding. "He's a friend of Mary's family," he added, unnecessarily, lest they think it a mark of unlikely closeness between he and the Chief. "He wrote to congratulate me on the engagement when it was in the Times, but not to Mary, from which I deduce that he disapproves on her account."
"Don't you believe it," Lord Peter said. "Mary put a knitted dolls cap on one of Sir Andrew's dogs when she was about eight and he's never forgiven her. I expect he thinks you're the only man in London with a hope of controlling her." There was polite laughter, and as Charles and Peter walked on into the church Anne murmured to her husband, "There, now you really mustn't drink too much, Fred. Promise me you won't."
Charles and Peter had arrived early and they stood together a long while at the front of the church, gloriously bedecked for its Easter gaiety, talking quietly and looking up every so often to nod to a new influx of guests drifting in.
Charles was waiting to feel nervous, and a church packed full of extremely well-bred people he didn't know, at least half of whom presumably disapproved of someone like him daring to marry one of their own, not to mention a large contingent of pressmen with their notebooks and a couple of photographers busily setting up their apparatus, ought to have done it. But the nerves wouldn't start. Perhaps it was because Peter was telling him in great detail about an article he'd read on chemical solutions for testing blood samples which could pinpoint the age of the blood much more precisely than had previously been done, just as though they were sitting in Charles's flat smoking their pipes before the fire. "I say, Peter," Charles said when this interesting flow of information came to a temporary halt. He looked at his friend, dressed with scrupulous elegance in a dove grey suit, and briefly wished that theirs was a culture which would allow them to embrace, would allow Charles to express his gratitude for Peter's friendship, his delight in becoming his brother-in-law, and which had a language for Charles to say that he wished Peter could taste this exquisite happiness for himself, that he was sorry about the stilted progress, if progress it could be called, of Peter's own courtship and regretted the extent to which Charles having arrested Miss Vane for murder must contribute at least something to the difficulties. Peter raised an inquiring eyebrow and courteously waited for Charles to finish his sentence. But words were too little, and at the same time any words he could find would seem too much. Charles gave an awkward grin, and said "Lend me that article when you've finished with it, will you?" and Peter clapped him affectionately on the back. "I gave a copy to Mason to pack into your case this morning, old man, so we can discuss it when next we meet. I rather fancied you might not take in all the details this morning. Oh look!" The organ struck up Purcell's Trumpet Tune in D. "Here she comes. I've never known her so punctual. It must be your wholesome influence, old man."
Charles had turned towards the church entrance and Peter's voice hardly registered in his ear. The spring sunshine was pouring into the church, descending exultantly in wide diagonal shafts from the high windows which lined the nave. Through this of dancing sunbeams Mary processed with her usual grace down the aisle on Gerald's arm. Her dress was a very pale rose-grey, cut on the bias in the way that was new and extremely fashionable. The neckline was high at the front, just below her collarbone, and low at the back - perfectly respectable, of course, but Mary had no pretensions to the sort of humility which would cause her to design a dress which didn't show off the contours of her slender figure for her wedding day. All the same, had Mrs Parker's approval now been less whole-hearted it would certainly now have been shaken by the effect.
Charles was always struck anew by her high beauty when he saw her: what struck him now with great force was that the church and the house and all the estate at Denver, this world of ease and privilege into which she fitted so seamlessly, would never again be Mary's home. It seemed to him suddenly to be unforgivable selfishness on his part to remove her from it, as though he were greedily plucking a rare and delicate flower from a sheltered garden and taking it out into a rougher, uglier world for his own gratification. He was almost ashamed as she neared the altar at last and he met her eyes. Mary smiled at him, and it was the unmistakable smile of a person who has at last obtained exactly the thing they want most in the world. Then his last doubts dissolved into nothingness and his face broke into a grin of relief and of triumph. He took in now the extent of Mary's loveliness, and found it so absorbing that he remembered just in time to give the Duke the required nod of gratitude and respect as he and his sister came to the steps of the altar and stood alongside Charles and Peter.
The words of the beautiful and ancient wedding rite resonated around the flagstones of the still more ancient church and each one entered into Charles's heart as if it were the first time he had heard them. He vowed to love Mary, comfort her, honour and keep her in sickness and in health in a voice which suggested that he would like to see anyone try and stop him and all heaven opened before him at the sound of her voice, high, sweet and terribly happy, making her own vows. There was a special richness to the words Charles spoke as he slid the ring onto Mary's finger: With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, with all my worldly goods I thee endow. The worldly goods in question, hard-earned though they were, might have been paltry in comparison to those with which Mary had grown up, but the light in her violet eyes as he looked up to meet them made a mockery of any more hesitation on that score. The vicar joined their hands together, Mary's soft and yielding in Charles's exultant grasp, and raised them slightly before the congregation, a gesture of holy jubilation. Those whom God has joined together let no man put asunder.
It may have been that not everyone in the church experienced the feeling of solemn wonder at the abundant of goodness of the world which swept Charles and Mary, but handkerchiefs were brought out amongst many of the ladies in the congregation, including several who had been most vociferous in their condemnation of the match. Even Helen was seen to exchange a brief but apparently sincere smile with her husband during the hymn that followed, and forebore to reprimand either of her children during the time that Charles and then Mary signed the register, Charles with his hand gently at Mary's waist in a first wondering act of husbandly tenderness. Indeed both children were behaving perfectly well, being not unaffected by the hush of holy happiness themselves, but in other moods their mother could have found a reprimand for them all the same.
Prayers were said, and the final hymn sung. Charles had chosen hymns suitable for both Eastertide and for a wedding and the church rang to the triumphant chords of "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation." He looked at Mary standing next to him, radiant and his, as the words "Ponder anew/ What the Almighty can do" were sung. He did ponder it, and the praises he sang were as deeply felt as any ever uttered in the long history of the faithful at that ancient church.
There was one spring shower that day, and it fell during the part of a wedding of which the Viscount of Denver had so strongly expressed his disapproval - the part where everybody shakes hands and exchanges pleasantries and sips drinks but still nobody is given anything to eat. All the guests were dispersed over the west lawn at Duke's Denver, and Charles and Mary had finished receiving the congratulations, some more heartfelt than others, of every guest, and were able to talk to whomsoever they pleased. When the rain started, everyone ran for the nearest cover, and Charles found himself standing under an ash in a row of trees which separated that lawn from the wide avenue to the left with Peter and Gerald, with Mary ten feet away with a group of friends under a small pavilion. The sun shone throughout the shower, as it sometimes deigns to do in the springtime, and Charles looked at Mary through the dancing raindrops that made a crystal curtain across the lawn. She looked back at him, her hair bright in the sun, her face impossibly sweet and her body much better not contemplated at all until they were alone. Aloud he said, without even knowing that he spoke, "She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
Gerald coughed, and murmured vaguely "What, what," but Peter looked disgusted.
"I warn you, old chap," he told Charles severely, "you have precisely one month more of cavorting about like a two-penny Romeo and expressing yourself in this most unpleasing fashion, and then I shall demand a moratorium. Love may be patient and kind and all that, as St Paul tells us, but brothers-in-law need not."
Gerald refrained from remarking that in his experience a month of marriage would be ample to cure any man of the urge to be sentimental. The rain shower finished as abruptly as it had started, and the wet lawn glistened playfully in the sun. Mary walked towards them. She gestured up to the sky. "There's hardly a cloud, now that's blown over. I think Gherkins shall have his cricket after all. Charles, my wicked uncle Paul has got hold of your sister and I believe he's deliberately scandalising her. We must go and stop him." They walked off together, Charles's hand at her waist, to interrupt one of the most interesting conversations Dulcie Parker had had for many a moon.
After the wedding breakfast, Mary changed into a white and navy dress of her own design with a daring ruffle which offset its demureness and a perfect matching cloche hat, and they left with as little fuss as possible. Charles drove the current Mrs Merdle with great care. Peter's suggestion that they take his car up to the Lakes had seemed a good one - the train would have been quicker but, of course, considerably less private - until Charles noticed the slightly anxious way that his friend eyed him as he recollected what he could of the somewhat rusty driving skills he had learned during the war and started the car. His concentration was not helped by the Viscount jumping onto the running board and tipping little bags of french sugared almonds into the backseat in the spirit of helpfulness, lest they be hungry on the journey. They set off down the long sweep of the drive, once St George had been dislodged, and he and the other boys and young girls in the wedding party ran along behind them throwing rice and confetti. Mary turned around and waved to Winifred who was standing by the pillared entrance hall looking on wistfully at the heedless jollity which society told her she had outgrown. When the car at last reached the first turn on the sweeping drive and the whoops and footsteps of the running children had died away, Charles stopped the car. He turned to Mary and found her eyes full of tears. He raised her hand to his lips and then leaned across to kiss her, a long and solemn kiss of mutual homecoming. When St George, who was the fastest of the running children and had been spurred on to a prolonged chase by sheer exuberance and his great love of seeing the Daimler in action, sped round the corner he stopped in his tracks, and then ran lightly back to the others still trickling along behind.
"It's no go," he said cheerfully, "they're quite gone. Come on, back up to the house and bags I the first bat!" The children disappeared and Charles and Mary were left alone at last.