Then Concha’s turn and then more prayers; and before long they were all laughing and chattering and wiping away tears in the vestry; while in the church the band was playing shamelessly secular tunes, though Mr. Moore had stipulated that there should be “no vaudeville music.”
“_Why_ are people crying? A wedding isn’t a _sad_ thing,” said Anna, in a loud and argumentative voice.
Then down the aisle and down the path between a double hedge of Girl Guides, and whirling back to the Plasencia garden and masses and masses of people.
Teresa was immediately sucked into a vortex of activities—elbowing her way through the crowd with a cup of tea for one old lady and an ice for another; steering a third to one of the tents, to choose for herself what she wanted; making suitable rejoinders to such questions and exclamations as: “How charming dear Concha looks, I really think she’s the prettiest bride I’ve ever seen.” “Do tell me what the red ribbon is that Captain Dundas is wearing—the one that isn’t the M.C.? Some one said they thought it was a Belgian order.” “Tell me dear; it was the Scottish Church Service, wasn’t it? I mean, the Scotch Church that’s like _ours_? I did so like it ... so much more ... well, _delicate_ than ours.” “Oh, just look at those masses of white butterflies on the lavender! What a splendid crop you’ll have! Do you send it up to London?”
Then, as in a nightmare, she heard Anna proclaiming proudly that she had eaten eight ices, and Jasper ten; well, it was too late now to take any measures.
Also, she had time to be amused at noticing that Mrs. Moore had managed to get introduced to Lady Cust, and was talking to her eagerly.
Later on she heard Lettice Moore saying to another bridesmaid, “Poor old Eben! He was frightfully cut up when he heard about the engagement,” and, in the foolish way one has of moving indifferently among the world’s great tragedies—earthquakes, famines, wars—and suddenly feeling a tightening of the throat, and a smarting of the eyes as one realises that at that moment a bullfinch is probably dying in China, Teresa suddenly felt a wave of pity and tenderness sweep over her for Eben, sitting in his cabin (did senior “snotties” have a cabin to themselves? Well, it didn’t really matter), so poorly furnished in comparison with the gramophones and silver photograph frames, and gorgeous cushions of his mates, his arms, with the red hands whose fingers had never recovered their shape from the chilblains of the Baltic, dangling limply down at either side of him, and perhaps tears in his round china-blue eyes.