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Bent Twig

<h2 id="id01677" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXXIII</h2> <h5 id="id01678">"WHOM GOD HATH JOINED …"</h5> They were to sail on the 23d, and ever since the big square invitation had come it had been a foregone conclusion, conceded with no need for wounding words, that there was no way out of attending the Sommerville-Morrison wedding on the 21st. They kept, of course, no constrained silence about it. Aunt Victoria detested the awkwardness of not mentioning difficult subjects as heartily as she did the mention of them; and as the tree toad evolves a skin to answer his needs, she had evolved a method all her own of turning her back squarely on both horns of a dilemma. No, there was no silence about the wedding, only about the possibility that it might be an ordeal, or that the ordeal might be avoided. It could not be avoided. There was nothing to be said on that point. But there was much talk, during the few days of their stay in New York, about the elaborate preparations for the ceremony. Morrison, who came to see them in their temporary quarters, kept up a somewhat satirical report as to the magnificence of the performance, and on the one occasion when they went to see Molly they found her flushed, excited, utterly inconsecutive, distracted by a million details, and accepting the situation as the normal one for a bride-to-be. There were heart-searchings as to toilets to match the grandeur of the occasion; and later satisfaction with the moss-green chiffon for Sylvia and violet-colored velvet for her aunt. There were consultations about the present Aunt Victoria was to send from them both, a wonderfully expensive, newly patented, leather traveling-case for a car, guaranteed to hold less to the square inch and pound than any other similar, heavy, gold-mounted contrivance. Mrs. Marshall-Smith told Morrison frankly, in this connection, that she had tried to select a present which Molly herself would enjoy. "Am I not to have a present myself?" asked Morrison. "Something that you selected expressly for me?" "No," said Sylvia, dropping the sugar into his tea with deliberation. "You are not to have any present for yourself." She was guiltily conscious that she was thinking of a certain scene in "The Golden Bowl," a scene in which a wedding present figures largely; and when, a moment later, he said, "I have a new volume of Henry James I'd like to loan you," she knew that the same scene had been in his head. She would not look at him lest she read in his eyes that he had meant her to know. As she frequently did in those days, she rose, and making an excuse of a walk in the park, took herself off. She was quite calm during this period, her mind full of trivial things. She had the firm conviction that she was living in a dream, that nothing of what was happening was irrevocable. And besides, as at Lydford, for much of the day, she was absorbed in the material details of her life, being rubbed and dressed and undressed, and adorned and fed and catered to. They were spending the few days before sailing in a very grand hotel, overlooking Central Park. Sylvia had almost every day the thought that she herself was now in the center of exactly the same picture in which, as a child, she had enviously watched Aunt Victoria. She adored every detail of it. It was an opening-out, even from the Lydford life. She felt herself expanding like a dried sponge placed in water, to fill every crack and crevice of the luxurious habits of life. The traveling along that road is always swift; and Sylvia's feet were never slow. During the first days in Vermont, it had seemed a magnificence to her that she need never think of dish-washing or bed-making. By this time it seemed quite natural to her that Hélène drew and tempered the water for her bath, and put on her stockings. Occasionally she noticed with a little surprise that she seemed to have no more free time than in the laborious life of La Chance; but for the most part she threw out, in all haste, innumerable greedy root-tendrils into the surcharged richness of her new soil and sent up a rank growth of easeful acquiescence in redundance. The wedding was quite as grand as the Sommervilles had tried to make it. The street was crowded with staring, curious, uninvited people on either side of the church, and when the carriage containing the bride drove up, the surge forward to see her was as fierce as though she had been a defaulting bank-president being taken to prison. The police had to intervene. The interior, fern and orchid swathed, very dimly lighted by rich purple stained glass and aristocratic dripping wax candles instead of the more convenient electric imitations, was murmurous with the wonderful throbbing notes of a great organ and with the discreet low tones of the invited guests as they speculated about the relative ages and fortunes of the bride and bridegroom. The chancel was filled with a vested choir which, singing and carrying a cross, advanced down the aisle to meet the bridal party. Molly, who had not been in a church since her childhood, had needed to be coached over and over again in the ins and outs of the complicated service. Sylvia, seated several guests away from the aisle, saw little of the procession as it went up into the chancel. She caught a glimpse of a misty mass of white and, beside it, old Mr. Sommerville's profile, very white and nervous and determined. She did not at that time see the bridegroom at all. The ceremony, which took place far within the chancel, was long and interspersed with music from the choir. Sylvia, feeling very queer and callous, as though, under an anaesthetic, she were watching with entire unconcern the amputation of one of her limbs, fell to observing the people about her. The woman in front of her leaned against the pew and brought her broad, well-fed back close under Sylvia's eyes. It was covered with as many layers as a worm in a cocoon. There were beads on lace, the lace incrusted on other lace, chiffon, fish-net, a dimly seen filmy satin, cut in points, and, lower down, an invisible foundation of taffeta. Through the interstices there gleamed a revelation of the back itself, fat, white, again like a worm in a cocoon. Sylvia began to plan out a comparison of dress with architecture, bringing out the insistent tendency in both to the rococo, to the burying of structural lines in ornamentation. The cuff, for instance, originally intended to protect the skin from contact with unwashable fabrics, degenerated into a mere bit of "trimming," which has lost all its meaning, which may be set anywhere on the sleeve. Like a strong hand about her throat came the knowledge that she was planning to say all this to please Felix Morrison, who was now within fifty feet of her, being married to another woman. She flamed to fever and chilled again to her queer absence of spirit…. There was a chorister at the end of the line near her, a pale young man with a spiritual face who chanted his part with shining rapt eyes. While he sang he slipped his hand under his white surplice and took out his watch. Still singing "Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," he cast a hasty eye on the watch and frowned impatiently. He was evidently afraid the business in hand would drag along and make him late to another appointment, "—is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen!" he sang fervently. Sylvia repressed an hysterical desire to laugh. The ceremony was over; the air in the building beat wildly against the walls, the stained-glass windows, and the ears of the worshipers in the excited tumult of the wedding-march; the procession began to leave the chancel. This time Sylvia caught one clear glimpse of the principals, but it meant nothing to her. They looked like wax effigies of themselves, self-conscious, posed, emptied of their personalities by the noise, the crowds, the congestion of ceremony. The idea occurred to Sylvia that they looked as though they had taken in as little as she the significance of what had happened. The people about her were moving in relieved restlessness after the long immobility of the wedding. The woman next her went down on her knees for a devout period, her face in her white gloves. When she rose, she said earnestly to her companion, "Do you know if I had to choose one hat-trimming for all the rest of my life, I should make it small pink roses in clusters. It's perfectly miraculous how, with black chiffon, they never go out!" She settled in place the great cluster of costly violets at her breast which she seemed to have exuded like some natural secretion of her plump and expensive person. "Why don't they let us out!" she said complainingly. A young man, one of those born to be a wedding usher, now came swiftly up the aisle on patent leather feet and untied with pearl-gray fingers the great white satin ribbon which restrained them in the pew. Sylvia caught her aunt's eye on her, its anxiety rather less well hidden than usual. With no effort at all the girl achieved a flashing smile. It was not hard. She felt quite numb. She had been present only during one or two painful, quickly passed moments. But the reception at the house, the big, old-fashioned, very rich Sommerville house, was more of an ordeal. There was the sight of the bride and groom in the receiving-line, now no longer badly executed graven images, but quite themselves—Molly starry-eyed, triumphant, astonishingly beautiful, her husband distinguished, ugly, self-possessed, easily the most interesting personality in the room; there was the difficult moment of the presentation, the handclasp with Felix, the rapturous vague kiss from Molly, evidently too uplifted to have any idea as to the individualities of the people defiling before her; then the passing on into the throng, the eating and drinking and talking with acquaintances from the Lydford summer colony, of whom there were naturally a large assortment. Sylvia had a growing sense of pain, which was becoming acute when across the room she saw Molly, in a lull of arrivals, look up to her husband and receive from him a smiling, intimate look of possession. Why, they were married! It was done! The delicate food in Sylvia's mouth turned to ashes. Mrs. Marshall-Smith's voice, almost fluttered, almost (for her) excited, came to her ears: "Sylvia—here is Mr. Page! And he's just told me the most delightful news, that he's decided to run over to Paris for a time this fall." "I hope Miss Marshall will think that Paris will be big enough for all of us?" asked Austin Page, fixing his remarkably clear eyes on the girl. She made a great effort for self-possession. She turned her back on the receiving-line. She held out her hand cordially. "I hope Paris will be quite, quite small, so that we shall all see a great deal of each other," she said warmly. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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