Chapter XV. Talk of a Wedding.

'How soon can people get married in this country?' inquired Paget, at the breakfast-table next morning.

'Oh, as soon as in other countries, I suppose,' said Mrs. Retlaw carelessly. 'As soon as a man and woman are of age; earlier if they can obtain the consent of their parents or guardians.'

'Now you know perfectly well that that is not what I meant.'

'How should I know? People should always avoid ambiguity.'

'And other people should not perversely misinterpret. But, seriously, dear friend, could the affair be got over at once—without delay?'

'There again! How like a man! Speaking of the one great event of a woman's life as an "affair"—just as if it were an inquest or a hanging.'

'Well, I withdraw the obnoxious word. We'll call it the wedding.'

'And then the hurry he is in!' continued Mrs. Retlaw, unheeding the interruption. 'I dare say he would hurry the girl to the altar in a cotton gown, rush through the ceremony as if he were ashamed of it, drag her off afterwards in a close carriage, and bury her Heaven knows where.'

'After all,' remarked Mr. Retlaw, 'the Australian aborigines' method of getting married is quite the most natural. The man simply knocks the woman on the head with a club, and carries her off to his own mia-mia. Then the whole thing is done with.'

'Oh, you are all alike,' said Mrs. Retlaw scornfully, 'but I page 107hold that no woman of spirit will allow herself to be cheated of her dues in the matter of white satin and orange-blossoms, and all the dear delights of preparation and anticipatory discussion.'

'Not to speak of the meanness displayed in swindling your friends out of a legitimate feed and champagne ad lib.,' added the host.

'When you have quite done chaffing,' said Paget, calmly reaching for another egg, 'perhaps—Berta, shall I help you to some more toast?—perhaps a fellow may hope for a fair answer to a fair question.'

'Bring on your fair question,' said Mr. Retlaw resignedly. 'As a city councillor and a candidate for Parliament, I'm used to fair questions. Trot it out. It can't be worse than I am accustomed to from enlightened constituents.'

'Well, then, can Berta and I be married to-day?'

'Good Ged!' ejaculated Mr. Retlaw, while his wife absolutely leapt from her seat. 'Teddy, you destroy my nerves. I always knew you for a high-pressure sort of fellow; but this surprises even me. Why, it's as bad as the old digging days, when parties could get through introduction, courtship, marriage, and honeymoon within twelve hours—and sometimes a deed of separation thrown in. My dear old fellow, take a friend's advice—go slow.'

'I can't see the good,' spoke Paget testily, 'of lingering over anything that you have made up your mind to. Berta does not want a trousseau; do you, Berta?'

'I should like some respectable clothes,' she replied, turning a flushed face to Mrs. Retlaw, as if in appeal for support.

'The old Eve, you see, Teddy,' said Retlaw. 'They're all alike,' with a malicious glance at his wife, who tossed her head and said she didn't care.

'And how long will it take to get some respectable clothes, then?' inquired Paget.

'A month, at the very least,' said Mrs. Retlaw promptly.

'Great heavens!'

He protested and importuned; Mrs. Retlaw remonstrated page 108and argued. At the end of half an hour it was settled that the wedding should take place that day fortnight; and then the wordy combatants separated for the time, each with a feeling that the other side had got the worst of it. And then Mrs. Retlaw set to work at once to make the most of a new and pleasant excitement.

I have a private conviction that if humanity had been created all of one sex, and that masculine, marriage ceremonies would never have been thought about Somebody hastens to observe that that is a fact self-evident; and, of course, put somewhat Hibernically as above, I own it is. But what I mean is that the popularity of wedding-ceremonies is entirely due to the feminine element. Men hate it. There is unfortunately no reliable information extant touching that bridal affair in the Garden of Eden. Reporters of that age were gifted with a terseness of style—a conciseness of narration—that it is to be regretted posterity marked out for a similar vocation has not inherited. Yet is there also room for regret in that our forefathers of the quill did not condescend a little more to detail. It might be instructive and gratifying to know whether those long-lived patriarchs did anything else but live, beget sons and daughters, and die. We regret, therefore, that ancient historians were all so scrupulously laconic, and of course, as usual, we regret in vain. Life is made up of vain regrets, as several people have remarked before. Still, there is nothing to hinder others from remarking the same thing again, because, if truthful observations are never to be made more than once, or by more than one person, libraries and newspaper offices had better shut up, and people resign themselves to dead silence forthwith.

To return to the subject of weddings, I am firmly of opinion—and although there is no direct evidence to support me, there is, on the other hand, none to refute my theory—that Eve and her direct successors were quite as particular about making a dash, parade, and flourish over their nuptials as are the great mother's fair daughters of the present day. 'What is the use of getting married anyhow,' said a lovely young bride page 109to me the other day, 'if you can't have everybody to see and admire you?' To which I agreed, as any man might, that if all brides were like unto this one, it would be no use at all.

Said Mrs. Retlaw, 'Now, if you will give me my own way, I will help you right through comfortably. If you won't, why then I will wash my hands of it altogether.'

'I only stipulate that there shall be no fuss,' said Paget, 'and Berta echoes me there.'

'Yes, certainly,' said Philiberta, and Mrs. Retlaw called her a traitress, but added directly, 'I promise you there shall not be the least unnecessary fuss.'

'All fuss is unnecessary,' observed Mr. Retlaw sententiously.

'Now, you hold your peace,' said his wife. 'Too much talk is as bad as too little. Once for all, Mr. Paget, will you leave the management entirely to me?'

'Of course. I never proposed anything else, did I?' groaned he, looking sorely badgered.

'I suppose you will go straight off to Melbourne after it,' said Mr. Retlaw. 'Or will you do your honeymoon up at the Hot Lakes?'

'Neither,' answered Paget. 'The fact is,' said he hesitatingly, 'I am not going back to Victoria at all.'

'No? That's odd. Such a deuce of a hurry as you were in the other day, too.'

'Well, there's no law against a man changing his mind, I hope,' cried Paget impatiently.

'None that I know of,' returned his friend quietly; 'nor any reason, that I can see, for his losing his temper when it is spoken of.'

'I beg your pardon, old man,' said Paget, penitently. 'I'm a regular bear, I know. The fact is, Harry, I am very glad of an excuse for changing my mind about Victoria. There is nothing there to tempt me back; nothing that I need be sorry to leave. I intend to go to America. I will make this step in my life a new start altogether, and give myself a fair chance in a new country.'

'But why America, Teddy? In God's name, why America?'

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The ladies had left the room by this, which perhaps excuses Mr. Retlaw a little.

'Why not stop in New Zealand? There's no country like it for climate and chances; and there's room for you.'

'Scarcely. I want a wide field to choose my patch from. It will have to be America, Harry.'

'Well, it is a big country, Teddy, there's no gainsaying that. And—well, I wish you luck, old fellow.'

'I know that,' said Paget.

Mrs. Retlaw and Philiberta were also discussing America in another part of the house. The bride-expectant was mightily elated at the prospect of going there.

'I don't know where I was born,' she said. 'My earliest memories are of Victoria, yet I have a vague recollection of being told by my mother—my second mother, you know—that I was born in England, so I can never have seen America. Yet of all countries that is the one I most desire to see. If ever I have any of that love of country which is patriotism, I suppose—when people feel it definitely instead of vaguely, as I feel it—it will, I believe, be for America. There is something grandly fascinating in the vastness of the country, and in the mighty spirit of enterprise that moves its people.'

'You talk as if you were a Yankee, positively.'

'Perhaps I was one, centuries ago,' said Philiberta, smiling.

'It can't be so many centuries ago, my dear. The Yanks are comparatively young. I would give all I possess,' said Mrs. Retlaw, with sudden energy, 'to know if there is any truth in that doctrine of pre-existence.'

Said Philiberta: 'If immortality be a truth, the other should be a truth, too. Immortality is eternity. Eternity has no beginning or end. If the whole system of existence is a circle, we must be following it age after age. If we are to exist always, we must have existed always. If there be any meaning at all in the words, "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end," that must be the meaning, I think.'

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'And to it I say Amen,' said Mrs. Retlaw. 'I want to live always, provided I may always do some good, be of some use somewhere. But if there be various successive phases of existence, it is a little hard that we are granted no knowledge of any save the present one; permitted no glimpse of the past, no peep into the future. Nothing given either way but dark uncertainty. If you could only feel that, in this phase, you were developing some grand scheme commenced in a former one; or that in a future life you could complete some dear project of this! If only you could be sure that the time you have lived, and the time you may live after this life, were not quite and utterly a waste.'

'Oh, it cannot be a waste,' said Philiberta. 'Only look round and see how well every created thing is appointed to serve some good purpose, and you will agree that there can be no waste.'

'Ah, your mood just now, my dear, is optimistic. Naturally enough, too, all things considered. But I hold that there is a good deal of waste in the present dispensation. And where there is not waste there is cruelty. The whole thing is a puzzle to me, as it has clearly been to thousands of others before me.'

Mrs. Retlaw had not then read Mark Twain; in fact, I do not think the inimitable humourist had at that time 'come out,' else she might have concluded her remarks with a grand quotation, summing up the whole system in a dozen or so of words: 'All things have their uses and their part and proper place in Nature's economy: the ducks eat the flies—the flies eat the worms—the Indians eat all three—the wild cats eat the Indians—the white folks eat the wild cats—and thus all things are lovely.' (The italics are mine, as literary reviewers sometimes say.)

'Anything is better, I think,' said Mrs. Retlaw, pursuing her reflective remarks, 'than the idea that there is nothing after death. That the total and termination of it all are that we go to feed worms.'

'Yes, I remember,' said Mrs. Retlaw, at the close of this; 'and I must say that the groove of talk we have wandered into is just about the oddest for two people on the brink, of a wedding that could be imagined. Three o'clock, and never a stitch put in. Berta, have you made up your mind about that travelling costume I proposed?'

'Of all waste,' said Philiberta, rousing herself unwillingly, 'the time wasted in talking of dress, when so many better subjects await one, seems to me the greatest.'

'Then that is just where you are wrong. Dress is one of the most important things in life. Men affect to despise it, I know; but they are in reality more influenced by it than women. They will run after a well-dressed—mind, I don't mean a showily dressed—but a well-dressed, ugly woman sooner than after a pretty dowdy. I have witnessed it myself, page 113dear, more than once. Oh, the hosts of women who lose themselves, or waste themselves, through carelessness about dress. Bear it in mind, Berta, and never, if you want to keep a firm hold upon your husband, lapse into dowdyism. Here comes Herbert and Haynes's man with those patterns of satin. Jump up, dear—quick.'