Instead of that letter I sent a conventional little note inviting Dilys to my wedding.
Fanny was still sceptical. She thought it was a queer way to go about getting married. There were references to proverbs such as ” Marry in haste, repent at leisure ” ; and she talked about ” supping sorrow with a long spoon.” Still, the thought of future disaster seemed to cheer her considerably and she was determined that my grand in-laws, if they came to the wedding, should have no complaints about the wedding feast.
Gabriel wrote regularly and his letters were ardent, but they spoke only of his devotion to me and his desire for our union; he did not let me know anything about his family’s reactions.
I heard from Dilys that I had not given her enough notice of my wedding. She was so full of engagements that she could not possibly leave London. I realised then that our lives had taken such entirely different turnings that the intimacy which had once been ours was over.
Three days before our marriage was to take place, Gabriel came back and put up at the King’s Head less than half a mile from Glen House.
When Mary came to my room to tell me that he was in the first-floor sitting-room waiting to see me, eagerly I went down. He was standing with his back to the fireplace watching the door, and as soon as I opened it he strode towards me and we embraced.
He looked excited, younger than he had when tie had left, because some of the strain had gone from him.
I took his face in my hands and kissed it.
” Like a mother with a precious child,” he murmured.
He had summed up my feelings. I wanted to look after him; I wanted to make what life was left to him completely happy ; I was not passionately in love with him, but I did not attach great importance to this because passion was something I knew nothing about at that time.
Yet I loved him nonetheless ; and when he held me tightly against him, I knew that the kind of love I had for him was what he wanted.
I withdrew myself from his arms and made him sit down on the horsehair couch. I wanted to hear what his family’s reactions were to the news of our engagement and how many were coming to the wedding.
” Well, you see,” he said slowly, ” my father is too infirm to make the journey. As for the others …” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Gabriel!” I cried aghast.
“Do you mean that none of them is coming?”
” Well, you see, there’s my Aunt Sarah. Like my father, she’s too old to travel. And …”
” But there’s your sister and her son.”
He looked uneasy and I saw the frown between his eyes. ” Oh, darling,” he said, ” what does it matter? It’s not their wedding is it?”
” But not to come! Does that mean they don’t approve of our marriage?”
” Of course they’ll approve. But the ceremony itself is not all that important, is it? Look, Catherine, I’m back with you. I want to be happy.”
I could not bear to see the moody expression returning to his face, so I tried to hide my uneasiness. It was very strange. No members of his family at the wedding! This was most unusual; but when I looked back, everything that had led up to this wedding of ours was somewhat unusual.
I heard a scratching at the door. Friday knew that Gabriel had come, and was impatient to see him. I opened the door and he bounded straight into Gabriel’s arms. I watched them together; Gabriel was laughing as Friday tried to lick his face.
I told myself that I must not expect Gabriel’s family to behave conventionally, any more than Gabriel himself did; and I was relieved that Dilys had declined my invitation.
“Happen they think you’re not good enough for ‘em.” That was Fanny’s verdict.
I was not going to let Fanny see how the behaviour of Gabriel’s family disturbed me, so I merely shrugged my shoulders.
After the wedding Gabriel and I were going to have a week’s holiday at Scarborough, and then we were going to Kirkland Revels. All in good time I should discover for myself what his family thought of the marriage; I must be patient until then.
My father gave me away, and I was married to Gabriel in our village church on a day in June about two months after we first met. I wore a white dress which had been made rather hurriedly by our village seamstress, and I had a white veil and a wreath of orange blossom.
There were very few guests at the reception, which was held in the drawing-room at Glen House: the Vicar and his wife, the doctor and his, and that was all.
Gabriel and I left immediately after our health had been drunk. It was a quiet wedding; and we were both glad to leave our few guests and be driven to the station, where we took the train for the coast.
I felt that when we were alone together in that first-class compartment that we were like any bride and groom. Previously the unconventional manner of our marrying—at such short notice, so few guests and none of the bridegroom’s family being present—had given the entire proceedings an unreality for me; but now that we were alone together I felt relaxed.
Gabriel held my hand, a smile of contentment on his face, which was gratifying. I had never seen him look so peaceful before and I knew then that that was what he had always lacked: peace. Friday was with us, for it was unthinkable that we could go away without him. I had procured a basket for him, for I was not sure how he would travel; I had chosen a loosely woven one so that he could see us, and I talked to him explaining that it would only be for a short time that he was thus confined. I had taken to talking to him, explaining everything, which had set Fanny’s lips twitching She thought I was ” real daft” talking to a dog.
And so we reached our hotel. During those first days of our honeymoon, I felt my love for Gabriel growing because he needed me so desperately to lift him out of those dark moods of melancholy which could quickly descend upon him; there was a wonderful gratification in being so important to another human being, which I think at that time I mistook for being in love.
The weather was glorious, the days full of sunshine. We walked a good deal; the three of us for Friday was always with us. We explored the glorious coast from Robin Hood’s Bay to Flamborough Head; we marvelled at those delightful little bays, the grandeur of the cliffs, the coves and glimpses of moorland beyond; we both enjoyed walking and did so frequently, and we hired horses and rode inland to explore the moors and compare them with our own of the West Riding. On that coastline there are occasionally to be found the crumbling walls of an ancient castle, and one day we found the remains of an old abbey.
Gabriel was attracted by the ruins; indeed I soon discovered that the fascination they had for him was morbid, and for the first time since our marriage I saw a return to that moodiness which I had determined to abolish. Friday was quick to notice that Gabriel was losing some of his honeymoon happiness. I saw him, on one occasion when we were exploring the abbey ruins, rub his head against Gabriel’s leg, while he looked up appealingly, as though to implore him to remember that the three of us were together and therefore should be happy.
It was then that I felt little pin-pricks of alarm stabbing my pleasure. I said to him: ” Gabriel, does this abbey remind you of Kirkland Abbey?”