All Kneeling/Chapter 8
Uncle Johnnie followed Aunt Deborah up the aisle and into the front pew. Now, Deborah, hold your forehead with your fingertipsf as if it were beginning to ache, and I'll look into my hat.
He glanced sideways to see when she would lift her head. Almost nothing there but a smell of age, eau de Cologne, and new kid gloves, wrapped in a black silk mantle and topped by a bonnet, trembling so that the bonnet's glass dangles made a tiny clashing. Poor Deborah, you're getting very old.
Up we come! Ann and Susannah were in the front pew, too, and behind were the younger girls, Eliza, Lydia and Hannah. And here was Amy, weeping and delighted. She knew, for all her tears, that her daughter was doing well for herself. The Carey family across the aisle made an impressive showing.
Here came the bishop, fresh and rosy as a baby just out of its bath, his starched sleeves two white billows against the white billows of marguerites on the altar, and Dr. Marsh, well laundered, too, looking as if he were going to give some one a nice but solemn surprise. They moved into sunlight falling through stained glass, and were wrapped in celestial crazy quilts of colored light.
The bridegroom and best man.
That earl-yust wedding day,
The primul marridge ble-uh-sing
It hahth not pahssed away."
The choir was rocking slowly by, splitting, filing into choir stalls.
Of Chris-chun mahn and maid"
Will she have her head down-drooping like a flower, Uncle Johnnie wondered, or bravely uplifted?
Bravely uplifted. Going into battle with all flags flying.
"What, Deborah?"
"I said, the blesséd child!"
Two little pages in green velvet carried her train. Curtis should have been in doublet and hose. He was the only one who looked out of, place. Nice of her to let him come. Or did she know he was there? She seemed completely detached.
They were moving toward the altar now. Kneeling. Green and purple flakes of glory slid over the bishop's bald head and flowed down the bride's veil and train. She'd like that, Uncle Johnnie thought.
a very young choir-boy sang, with his eyes rolled up. Which would win in a Looking Holy contest, he or Christabel? Uncle Johnnie wondered.
"that ye may so live together in this life, that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting." The bishop's words were thick bubbles of honey. "Amen," the choir sang seven times.
For a while Uncle Johnnie let ladies tell him that it was a beautiful day, a beautiful wedding, that Christabel was a beautiful bride, that Shady Lawn was looking beautiful. Then, understanding the feelings of one of the little moss-green pages who was being sick behind a mock-orange bush, he went to a rustic summerhouse, out of the way of the crowd. It was occupied by a young man in a large soft collar, almost a fichu, Uncle Johnnie thought, eating lobster salad.
"I hope I'm not intruding."
The young man's mouth was too full for speech, but he made welcoming gestures with a fork held by a hand whose wrist was encircled by a silver-and-turquoise bangle, and Uncle Johnnie sat down and yawned. The other gave a final gulp.
"I couldn't stand watching them turn a sacrifice into a festival any more, so I came off here by myself. My God! This is the kind of thing that makes a man want to get dead drunk!"
"We could make a start," said Uncle Johnnie as a waiter passed by the summerhouse with a tray full of glasses of punch. "No, I don't want any of that vegetable soup. Go and get a bottle of champagne and two glasses."
"You couldn't stand it, either?"
"No, I couldn't."
"What's she doing it for, that's what I want toknow? That exquisite girl throwing herself away."
"What's the matter with the groom, aside from his getting married?"
"Well, he's so evidently just a typical business man."
"Good family, rich."
"That would mean less than nothing to Christabel."
"Ah?"
The waiter's black face appeared in the doorway, framed in dangling sprays of roses. "Yassuh, yassuh, heah you ah, suh, all right suh? Thank you suh, thank you kindly suh!" The gentlemen buried their noses in spray.
"She's as near pure spirit as anyone I ever knew. Why, Christabel is almost a religion to the people who really know her."
"Indeed!"
"What is she doing this for? Did you notice her expression? White as death, and those shining eyes—there was a sort of tragic radiance about her. You know she looked more like a nun than a bride, the way she wore her veil like a wimple, and carried that one Madonna lily. All the time I kept feeling that what was really happening was that she was taking the veil. I kept thinking, what is that man doing there?"
"That was rather the effect. Let me fill your glass."
"Thank you. Salut! The sunlight coming through the leaves turns your face a very interesting green, sir. I should like to paint it."
"Ah, you're a painter?"
"Well, yes, although my work isn't what the Philistine means when he says painting. In fact, I don't confine myself to paint. I use any medium that I feel will express my meaning most truly. And the thing I try to do is, I try to escape from convention into pure abstraction. I'm not interested in your mustache, for instance, or your nose, but in your essential personality. But I don't want to talk about myself."
"Not at all."
"I feel that convention means death to art, emotion, spirit. Thank you. Salut! Shoo! How these roses attract the bees! Speaking of convention, don't you agree with me that it's wonderful for a girl like Christabel to have escaped so completely from the death in life of the conventions she was brought up in?"
"You feel that?"
"Oh, absolutely." He flapped a hand at a bee. "You know there's no one in her family who understands her—love, yes, she must be given that wherever she goes, I think, but understanding, no! It almost killed her to get away from them. She used to tell us about it. Very sweetly and understandingly, but you could tell what she'd been through. And now that I've seen it all for myself, I can realize what a hell her life here must have been to her."
"As bad as all that? . . . I don't think that kind stings."
"Don't you? It looks terribly angry. Just watch it worrying that rose! What were we saying? Oh, Christabel! Well, just look around you, sir! Just feel the atmosphere. But she did get out into the light and air, and yet now of her own free will she's going back into darkness like—like—Persephone, and nobody's stopping her. When I looked at the priests and the flowers, and Christabel with her white face, I could think of just one word. Sacrifice."
I thought of that word, too, Uncle Johnnie said to himself. There was also the bridegroom's red face. Red as a rose was he. I shall have to lend this young man my handkerchief in a minute.
"Maybe she can take care of herself," he added aloud.
"I know her as perhaps you don't, sir."
"I think that's highly probable."
They finished the champagne in a silence broken by the roaring of the bees, and presently by distant shouts.
"They must be going away."
The victoria was at the door, with Deborah's new coachman, beaming red face and big white wedding-favor. "So pretty and touching to see how the old family servants adore her!" Uncle Johnnie heard a strange lady say reverently.
Around the front steps people were calling, laughing, their hands full of rice. But when Christabel came slowly out, more nunlike than ever in pale gray, her face whitely, stilly shining, hands fell, rice dribbled to the ground.
"Good-by, good-by! Good-by, Gobby dear. Good-by, dear Uncle Johnnie."
If I'd let out a cloud of sulphur and switched a tail at him he couldn't have been more scared, thought Uncle Johnnie, looking at the place from which the young man had vanished.