. She was
dressed very smartly, wearing a big-plumed hat that made her neck seem
longer and slenderer than ever, and when she walked up the aisle with
that rolling stride of hers and her eye all on Marion, perplexed into
self-forgetfulness, it wasn't somehow funny. She was, I do believe,
giving my marriage more thought than I had done, she was concerned
beyond measure at my black rage and Marion's blindness, she was looking
with eyes that knew what loving is--for love.

In the vestry she turned away as we signed, and I verily believe she was
crying, though to this day I can't say why she should have cried, and
she was near crying too when she squeezed my hand at parting--and she
never said a word or looked at me, but just squeezed my hand....

If I had not been so grim in spirit, I think I should have found much
of my wedding amusing. I remember a lot of ridiculous detail that still
declines to be funny in my memory. The officiating clergyman had a
cold, and turned his "n's" to "d's," and he made the most mechanical
compliment conceivable about the bride's age when the register was
signed. Every bride he had ever married had had it, one knew. And two
middle-aged spinsters, cousins of Marion's and dressmakers at Barking,
stand out. They wore marvellously bright and gay blouses and dim old
skirts, and had an immense respect for Mr. Ramboat. They threw rice;
they brought a whole bag with them and gave handfuls away to unknown
little boys at the church door and so created a Lilliputian riot; and
one had meant to throw a slipper. It was a very warm old silk slipper,
I know, because she dropped it out of a pocket in the aisle--there was
a sort of jumble in the aisle--and I picked it up for her. I don't think
she actually threw it, for as we drove away from the church I saw her
in a dreadful, and, it seemed to me, hopeless, struggle with her pocket;
and afterwards my eye caught the missile of good fortune lying, it or
its fellow, most obviously mislaid, behind the umbrella-stand in the
hall....

The whole business was much more absurd, more incoherent, more human
than I had anticipated, but I was far too young and serious to let the
latter quality atone for its shortcomings. I am so remote from this
phase of my youth that I can look back at it all as dispassionately as
one looks at a picture--at some wonderful, perfect sort of picture
that is inexhaustible; but at the time these things filled me with
unspeakable resentment.