Part 60 (2/2)
With the cutting, or, rather, the smas.h.i.+ng into a hundred fragments, of the wedding cake--a work that taxed the united strength of bride and bridegroom to the utmost--the atmosphere lost something of its sombreness. The company, warmed by food, displaying indications of being nearly done, commenced to simmer. The maternal Sellars, putting away with her blunt pencil considerations of material nature, embraced the table with a smile.
”But it is a sad thing,” sighed the maternal Sellars the next moment, with a shake of her huge head, ”when your daughter marries, and goes away and leaves you.”
”d.a.m.ned sight sadder,” commented Uncle Gutton, ”when she don't go off, but hangs on at home year after year and expects you to keep her.”
I credit Uncle Gutton with intending this as an aside for the exclusive benefit of the maternal Sellars; but his voice was not of the timbre that lends itself to secrecy. One of the bridesmaids, a plain, elderly girl, bending over her plate, flushed scarlet. I concluded her to be Miss Gutton.
”It doesn't seem to me,” said Aunt Gutton from the other end of the table, ”that gentlemen are as keen on marrying nowadays as they used to be.”
”Got to know a bit about it, I expect,” sounded the small, shrill voice of the unseen Joseph.
”To my thinking,” exclaimed a hatchet-faced gentleman, ”one of the evils crying most loudly for redress at the present moment is the utterly needless and monstrous expense of legal proceedings.” He spoke rapidly and with warmth. ”Take divorce. At present, what is it? The rich man's luxury.”
Conversation appeared to be drifting in a direction unsuitable to the occasion; but Jarman was fortunately there to seize the helm.
”The plain fact of the matter is,” said Jarman, ”girls have gone up in value. Time was, so I've heard, when they used to be given away with a useful bit of household linen, maybe a chair or two. Nowadays--well, it's only chaps wallowing in wealth like Clapper there as can afford a really first-cla.s.s article.”
Mr. Clapper, not a gentleman in other respects of exceptional brilliancy, possessed one quality that popularity-seekers might have envied him: the ability to explode on the slightest provocation into a laugh instinct with all the characteristics of genuine delight.
”Give and take,” observed the maternal Sellars, so soon as Mr. Clapper's roar had died away; ”that's what you've got to do when you're married.”
”Give a deal more than you bargained for and take what you don't want--that sums it up,” came the bitter voice of the unseen.
”Oh, do be quiet, Joe,” advised the stout young lady, from which I concluded she had once been the lean young lady. ”You talk enough for a man.”
”Can't I open my mouth?” demanded the indignant oracle.
”You look less foolish when you keep it shut,” returned the stout young lady.
”We'll show them how to get on,” observed the Lady 'Ortensia to her bridegroom, with a smile.
Mr. Clapper responded with a gurgle.
”When me and the old girl there fixed things up,” said Uncle Gutton, ”we didn't talk no nonsense, and we didn't start with no misunderstandings.
'I'm not a duke,' I says--”
”Had she been mistaking you for one?” enquired Minikin.
Mr. Clapper commented, not tactfully, but with appreciative laugh. I feared for a moment lest Uncle Gutton's little eyes should leave his head.
”Not being a natural-born, one-eyed fool,” replied Uncle Gutton, glaring at the unabashed Minikin, ”she did not. 'I'm not a duke,' I says, and _she_ had sense enough to know as I was talking sarcastic like. 'I'm not offering you a life of luxury and ease. I'm offering you myself, just what you see, and nothing more.'
”She took it?” asked Minikin, who was mopping up his gravy with his bread.
”She accepted me, sir,” returned Uncle Gutton, in a voice that would have awed any one but Minikin. ”Can you give me any good reason for her not doing so?”
”No need to get mad with me,” explained Minikin. ”I'm not blaming the poor woman. We all have our moments of despair.”
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