“What can you mean?” asked Lenox.
“Snow is so messy. I warned Toto.”
“You’re not much of a romantic, my dear.”
They dressed and ate breakfast alone, Frederick having taken his breakfast in his room, while his soon-to-be wife was staying with Toto, her chief adviser now, in the dower house, McConnell, only partially back in her good graces, nearby at Everley. At nine o’clock Lenox and Jane stepped into one of the carriages that waited along the avenue. The horses that pulled them into town were strangers, hired for the day, but Lenox had gone to see Sadie in her stable the day before. He had tried to sneak her a carrot but she turned her nose up at it, having become very spoiled, now, and snorting until she received an apple each morning.
The village had rarely looked better. The town green was a smooth white. Steps away, on the porch of St. Stephen’s, there was a great mass of black coats and top hats, people speaking to each other between the merrily green-garlanded pillars of the church.
Everyone had turned out, it seemed. There was Fripp, who placed a proprietary hand on Lenox’s elbow and walked him around; Millington, the blacksmith and cricket captain; fat Mr. Kempe, red from the cold; and dozens besides, all full of “Happy Christmas” and sure that the snow was a sign of good luck.
Then, too, there was someone Lenox had particularly hoped to see, Dr. Eastwood, with his newly betrothed: Lucy, the niece of Emily Jasper and Lenox’s old Plumbley friend.
The news was fresh, and so was Lucy, who looked giddy with happiness. She had the feminine beauty — there is none like it in the world, not even in the loveliest eighteen year old — that comes to a woman who has thought her time was gone and past, who has resigned herself to a life alone, and then finds herself truly in love. It was a kind of radiance beyond radiance. She ducked her head and blushed when Lenox congratulated her, her lined eyes full of joy, and held tighter to Eastwood’s arm. For his part the doctor seemed so pleased as to be a new man.
“The great virtue of getting married today is that they shall have to see very little of me.” He looked at Lucy. “We shall get married on a Monday, too, perhaps.”
Lenox looked at him quizzically. “Why is that?”
“You remember, Charles,” said Lady Jane, “Marry on Monday for health, Tuesday for wealth, Wednesday the best day of all, Thursday for crosses, Friday for losses, and Saturday for no luck at all.”
“What day did we get married, dear?”
“Can you have forgotten? It was a Saturday.”
“Then I think it a very stupid rhyme.”
“Perhaps it should be Saturday for the most luck of all,” said Lucy.
“I like that better.”
Besides the villagers, Lenox shook hands with a great many distant cousins, glad to exchange a word with them: Plans were made for suppers and luncheons in London, news of the old house in Devon was passed from mouth to mouth, and cousin Wendell, beatific and plump, said he had driven past Everley that morning when he arrived and it looked “capital, simply capital.”
Lenox felt a fondness for the man now. “When it is yours, will you keep the trees as Frederick has them?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t think of changing ’em — always liked a tree, myself, I think them a very companionable sort of person.”
Soon, by some mysterious common consent, they made their way into the church and filled the pews. Lenox and Lady Jane sat in the third row; already there was Dallington, who was staying at the King’s Arms. He had seemed slightly wan when the subject of Frederick and the governess arose in the past months, but he had always set his mouth firmly and said that he was, “Delighted for them — no, and I shall send them a cracking great hogshead of champagne for their wedding day.”
Rushing in at the last minute, having caught an early train apparently, was Edmund, accompanied by his wife, Molly, a cheery fuschia ribbon tying her hair up, and, to Lenox’s surprise and joy, their son, Teddy. He looked taller at fifteen than he had even six months earlier. He didn’t wear his midshipman’s uniform, but his bearing seemed, nevertheless, naval.
Lenox stood up, and in a church whisper, said, “My dear Teddy, you came! How long are you ashore?”
“Only two weeks. But have you heard I’m studying for lieutenant? And there’s so much to report from the Lucy. Carrow told me especially to say hello, and Cresswell said—”
The opening chords of the organ hushed him, and they crowded into a row together. Frederick, looking unflustered and with a sprig of something wintry in his buttonhole, appeared at the altar — and then the bride came in.
It was uncommon indeed for a bride past the age of twenty to wear white — indeed that color was only consecrated as the ideal twenty-four years earlier, when Victoria had worn it to marry Albert — and no doubt when she married Eastwood, Lucy would opt for gray or blue. Yet with the light of a recent snow still falling gently through the windows, the world clear and soft, it looked beautiful, looked eternal. Lenox felt a fatherly sensation as he watched the governess walk down the aisle and then thought of Sophia — and realized, with gratitude, that the world was always offering him lessons, if he chose to take them. One day the little infant beside him would walk down an aisle like this. Time! How it played you forward, how it filled the world with people to love, how cruel and wonderful at once it could seem. When Miss Taylor stopped at the altar he thought, for a very brief moment, that tears might come into his eyes. Soon enough he mastered himself and the ceremony began.
An hour later they were back at Everley, part of a great multitude of people who were congregated in the hall to celebrate with Mr. and Mrs. Ponsonby.
“Charlie!” called Fripp, holding a glass of champagne.
“Wish you much joy, Mr. Fripp,” said Lenox, smiling.
“There hasn’t been a turn-out like this that I can recall since the old squire’s funeral.”
“A cheery observation.”
Fripp laughed. “Try an orange, there on the sideboard, if you like. I brought them up this morning, as a present, you know.”
You could say for the village that it annihilated some distinctions of class that the metropolis enforced; there was to be a supper later only for the cousins and the likes of Emily Jasper, but this wedding breakfast saw every stripe of person come together. Lady Jane was speaking to some of the women from the cricket pavilion; Toto was fretting with a farmer’s wife about the state of the bride’s train; Dallington and Wendell were reminiscing with the veterinarian from West Buckland about Wells and his coining operation.
Perhaps it wasn’t the village, though; perhaps it was Frederick.
Finding himself alone for a moment, Lenox watched the bride and groom. He was pleased, so very pleased, that they would stay in Everley. He didn’t quite understand why. It was something to do with his mother, in truth: He had believed, before he lost anyone, that after a person died there was a process of comprehension for those left behind, a waning sense of loss. In fact all that happened was that days went on passing, whether you wished them to or not — even for the suffering the sun would rise, casting its inhuman chemistries over the earth, even for the suffering there was food, water, and what color to paint the second bedroom. The formality of a funeral was a deceit; everything that followed it was strayness, pangs, forgetting, remembering, unguided, and unnegotiable.
Then there was Parliament. Every generation no doubt considers themselves especially burdened, their souls harried and pent — certainly each finds of itself that it falls very late in history, as no doubt the Vikings did, to exist so many hundreds of years beyond the legends, or the medieval priests who knew that it had been a thousand years since the birth of Christ. Lenox was not immune from this feeling; and Everley, perhaps, while Freddie was there, represented an inoculation against it.