xcited, and his brain, full of pictures. This was his first
wedding, and he was haunted by a vision of his sister's little white
form, and her face with its starry eyes. She was gone--his no more!
How fearful the Wedding March had sounded on that organ--that awful old
wheezer; and the sermon! One didn't want to hear that sort of thing when
one felt inclined to cry. Even Gordy had looked rather boiled when he
was giving her away. With perfect distinctness he could still see the
group before the altar rails, just as if he had not been a part of
it himself. Cis in her white, Sylvia in fluffy grey; his impassive
brother-in-law's tall figure; Gordy looking queer in a black coat, with
a very yellow face, and eyes still half-closed. The rotten part of
it all had been that you wanted to be just FEELING, and you had to be
thinking of the ring, and your gloves, and whether the lowest button
of your white waistcoat was properly undone. Girls could do both, it
seemed--Cis seemed to be seeing something wonderful all the time, and
Sylvia had looked quite holy. He himself had been too conscious of the
rector's voice, and the sort of professional manner with which he did it
all, as if he were making up a prescription, with directions how to take
it. And yet it was all rather beautiful in a kind of fashion, every
face turned one way, and a tremendous hush--except for poor old Godden's
blowing of his nose with his enormous red handkerchief; and the
soft darkness up in the roof, and down in the pews; and the sunlight
brightening the South windows. All the same, it would have been much
jollier just taking hands by themselves somewhere, and saying out before
God what they really felt--because, after all, God was everything,
everywhere, not only in stuffy churches. That was how HE would like to
be married, out of doors on a starry night like this, when everything
felt wonderful all round you. Surely God wasn't half as small as people
seemed always making Him--a sort of superior man a little bigger than
themselves! Even the very most beautiful and wonderful and awful things
one could imagine or make, could only be just nothing to a God who had a
temple like the night out there. But then you couldn't be married alone,
and no girl would ever like to be married without rings and flowers and
dresses, and words that made it all feel small and cosy! Cis might
have, perhaps, only she wouldn't, because of not hurting other people's
feelings; but Sylvia