VII

You can keep a woman going on compliments and dry biscuits, but to get any value from a man you must fill him, declared Darien, determined to make Tiffany's wedding a feast for eyes and ears and stomachs, since in the nature of things it would be attended principally by men. It took something like hysterics from Tiffany to make Darien forego her intention of a brass band from Christchurch and submit to piano, two violins, and an accordion for the dancing; but not Tiffany and Roddy combined could prevent the wedding-march played by Robertson on his bagpipes. For weeks, through the clear spring evenings, horses snorted in their stalls and wekas ran off to hide in the tussock while Robertson consented to see the difference between a wedding-march and a dirge-like coronach.

“Gin theer's ae thing a mon shouldna be licht-hearted aboot it's a wedden',” said Robertson, glowering out of his rusty beard.

“I've sent to town for lashings of Burgundy and champagne and a barrel of beer,” suggested Darien, always a little anxious about Robertson, who was the best overseer she was ever likely to get and knew it far too well.

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“I drink whisky, mem.”

“Oh, there'll be plenty of that … but not if you play coronachs,” said Darien, going off to set the great camp-oven to a red roaring and the hut-cook to boiling hams and sides of bacon over his open fire.

All Bendemeer was dragged at the wheels of Darien's galloping chariot; with Jerry and such station hands as could be spared clearing the cart-shed, laying flooring, making trestles for the table, making forms and stools to eke out the chairs, hanging curtains of Turkey twill, while Roddy rode round the district with invitations (printed in silver with two hearts at the top), and Tiffany and the cook were daily dizzy with talk of plum-cakes, sponge-cakes, custards, pastries, mincemeat, jellies, turkeys, chickens….

Because Sally so wished it, Jermyn came down for the wedding; and Darien, greeting him with floury hands and a large apron, marvelled that she had wasted so much time in learning to curtsy for Jermyn. An elegant and slightly withering dilettante, this Jermyn, scribbling away his days. Where would she be now if she had married him? But she could make him useful.

“I want a column in every paper you can arrange for, Jermyn. And they are all to be sent to Peregrine. I'll show him what I can do if I choose, though he won't let me have more than half of Bendemeer, the mean black hound.”

“You seem to be doing remarkably well with your half,” said Jermyn, who had already seen the wedding preparations.

“Well, of course I can afford it.”

Jermyn went off to find Tiffany. “Don't get married too often my nut-brown maid,” he said, “or even Nick Flower's fortune won't stand it,” he said.

Tiffany put down the white tulle she was frilling for her wedding-hat, and looked up in despairing laughter.

“If I didn't laugh I couldn't bear it. There are even page 419 bowls of goldfish for the table, and a cake from Christ-church with a sugar Cupid on top.”

“She thought she'd killed the woman in her with sheep, but it will out,” said Jermyn, thinking how this rather pale, rather shy Tiffany was all woman and just as eager as any other woman to set her feet on strange roads.

“You'll have to help me, Tiffy. I've never reported a wedding before.”

“Did she dare ask you to do that? Oh, Uncle Jermyn, I do beg your pardon for us all.” Then she began to laugh. “If you could contrive not to use ‘bizarre’?”

“Then it must be a blank sheet with ‘White Mountain-Lily’ in the centre. That's what Darien calls you.”

“Why not make a nosegay of us? Aunt Caroline could be a snapdragon, and Darien a lady's-slipper, and dear little Janet a love-in-the-mist … all surrounded by a nice derangement of bachelor's-buttons.”

“This is not a fit state of mind for a young woman on the dangerous edge of matrimony,” said Jermyn, pulling one of the long thick curls that rolled back from her candid forehead to fall on her shoulders in the fashion of the day. But what was a fit state, wondered Tiffany later, hiding for a few quiet minutes behind the woodpile; hearing the hum of bees in the wallflowers and the patch of red clover; watching the small white clouds high over head. Darien had feared a nor'wester that would blow everything inside out and turn the cream with its heat. But it hadn't come. Perhaps what we most fear never comes, thought Tiffany, knowing what she would fear all her life long.

Roddy walked round the woodpile and immediately began to play “Hail the Bride” on an imaginary flute, but Tiffany ran into his arms.

“Oh, Roddy, hold me tight. I think I'm frightened. All this show and solemnity and—and promises make me want to laugh. I shall never be an orthodox anything, Roddy, dear.”

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“If there's a God I think he'll understand why. If there isn't it don't matter what you believe,” said Roddy, always so comforting.

Yet she found herself shaking all over as she came on Jermyn's arm into the familiar long room, now so unfamiliar with an arch of cabbage-trees, and a white paper bell to stand under, and Darien's brass pots stuffed with daffodils instead of wool-samples. Caroline had powdered her red nose until she looked like a flour-sack in purple silk, and Linda was crying in bright blue, and Emily in crimson with lots of black fluting. There were dozens of strange faces. They were all strange faces … and this strange man taking her hand was not Dick Sackville….

Roddy, watching anxiously, feared that she would faint. But the saying of the vows was loosening something in her, freeing her from Dick Sackville at last; and if she made those vows to a God she couldn't believe in, at least she believed in Brant, turning to him with such a smile when all was done that he kissed her straightway.

Then they were all kissing her, crying over her; Darien marching them out in procession to the cart-shed, and never knowing if it was a wedding-march Robertson played after all. For what with Roddy with his guitar, and Jerry with a flute, and Toby Bayles with a drum, and the bachelors with their stock-whips, it was not the kind of thing Darien had meant in the least. So she took a stock-whip herself, and herded them into the shed, getting one good crack at Caroline's fat legs.

Hungry bachelors fell silent when they saw that table; but Deb (not yet old enough to hide her feelings) expressed them all.

“It's like heaven,” said Deb, forgetting the muslin pride of her bridesmaid's frock to squeeze closer.

Even Darien, it was agreed, could not have thought of anything more. Men, accustomed to stark months of potatoes and mutton, fell almost deliriously upon plump geese and turkeys browned to richness, pink hams, crisp page 421 mince-pies, jam tarts, iced cakes (in the shape of hearts), coloured jellies, sausage-rolls, silver bowls of early strawberries from Christchurch, great glass bowls of yellow clotted cream.

“Champagne,” murmured Jermyn, “flowed in rivers, and one could have bathed in beer and wine and whisky, but I did not observe anyone doing so.” He offered Tiffany a sickle to cut the cake, and Brant Hutton presented Darien with the sugar Cupid on his knees, and Toby Bayles begged a pin from Caroline to catch the goldfish, and a hen who had made her nest unobserved in the rafters did her best for everyone by laying an egg and announcing it loudly.

Roddy gave the first toast, singing to his guitar:

A ragamuffin husband and a rantipoling wife,
They'll fiddle it and scrape it through the ups and downs of life,

and Tiffany's smile had a hint of tears. Oh, this dear ragamuffin Roddy who would be rantipoling all his days.

Jermyn was very eloquent and Brant Hutton very nervous in speeches, and then Darien made a speech at the table-head, clashing two spoons together for silence.

They danced in the shearing-shed to the accordion and violins, and they danced reels on the tussock to Robertson's bagpipes. They sang “Auld Lang Syne,” and cheered themselves hoarse; and when all was done Darien stood beside Jermyn, watching horses and buggies disappear in the scarlet of a new day.

“I think you could make two columns out of this,” she said, complacently.