Inside this cumbrous and creaking structure, and behind this decayed
conductor, the partie carrée took their seats--the bride and
bridegroom and Mr and Mrs Crick. Angel would have liked one at least
of his brothers to be present as groomsman, but their silence after
his gentle hint to that effect by letter had signified that they did
not care to come. They disapproved of the marriage, and could not be
expected to countenance it. Perhaps it was as well that they could
not be present. They were not worldly young fellows, but fraternizing
with dairy-folk would have struck unpleasantly upon their biased
niceness, apart from their views of the match.
Upheld by the momentum of the time, Tess knew nothing of this, did
not see anything, did not know the road they were taking to the
church. She knew that Angel was close to her; all the rest was
a luminous mist. She was a sort of celestial person, who owed
her being to poetry--one of those classical divinities Clare was
accustomed to talk to her about when they took their walks together.
The marriage being by licence there were only a dozen or so of people
in the church; had there been a thousand they would have produced
no more effect upon her. They were at stellar distances from her
present world. In the ecstatic solemnity with which she swore her
faith to him the ordinary sensibilities of sex seemed a flippancy.
At a pause in the service, while they were kneeling together, she
unconsciously inclined herself towards him, so that her shoulder
touched his arm; she had been frightened by a passing thought, and
the movement had been automatic, to assure herself that he was really
there, and to fortify her belief that his fidelity would be proof
against all things. Clare knew that she loved him--every curve of her form showed that--
but he did not know at that time the full depth of her devotion, its
single-mindedness, its meekness; what long-suffering it guaranteed,
what honesty, what endurance, what good faith.
As they came out of church the ringers swung the bells off their
rests, and a modest peal of three notes broke forth--that limited
amount of expression having been deemed sufficient by the church
builders for the joys of such a small parish. Passing by the tower
with her husband on the path to the gate she could feel the vibrant
air humming round them from the louvred belfry in the circle of
sound, and it matched the highly-charged mental atmosphere in which
she was living. This condition of mind, wherein she felt glorified by an irradiation
not her own, like the angel whom St John saw in the sun, lasted till
the sound of the church bells had died away, and the emotions of the
wedding-service had calmed down. Her eyes could dwell upon details
more clearly now, and Mr and Mrs Crick having directed their own gig
to be sent for them, to leave the carriage to the young couple, she
observed the build and character of that conveyance for the first
time. Sitting in silence she regarded it long. "I fancy you seem oppressed, Tessy," said Clare. "Yes," she answered, putting her hand to her brow. "I tremble at
many things. It is all so serious, Angel. Among other things I seem
to have seen this carriage before, to be very well acquainted with
it. It is very odd--I must have seen it in a dream."