There was a hint of sternness in the question. Uncle Edward answered it.
"I’m expecting them every minute. I drove up first to fetch Maud. Lucy is a hopeless fool. She’s never in time for anything."
Even as he spoke, there came the rush of wheels on the hard road outside and the hoot of a motor horn.
The sound as it reached Maud, seemed to galvanize her into sudden energy. She rose, white to the lips but resolute. "I am ready," she said.
Jake gave her a straight, hard look, and turned without another word. He went back up the aisle, square, purposeful, steady, and took up his stand by the waiting clergyman.
Maud’s hand pressed her uncle’s arm with urgency. "Let us go! Let us go!" she said. "I can see my mother--afterwards."
The old man also gave her a shrewd glance, but he also said no word. Only as he stumped up the aisle beside her, he took the girlish hand upon his arm and held it hard in his gnarled fingers.
They had reached the chancel steps where the clergyman awaited them ere the opening of the door and the sound of fluttering feet announced the arrival of Maud’s mother. A heavier tread and a man’s loud whisper and barely muffled laugh testified to the presence of Giles Sheppard also.
Uncle Edward cleared his throat ferociously, releasing Maud’s hand with a mighty squeeze as Jake came to her side. Then he turned with deliberation and scowled upon the advancing couple.
Maud did not turn. Her face was white and still as the face of a marble statue. Her eyes stared blankly at the flickering candles on the altar. Had Jake lighted those candles, she wondered, as well as the fire in the stoke shed?
She heard her mother’s step behind her, but still she did not move; and after the briefest pause the clergyman began to read the service.
It was all horribly unreal. The only thing of which she was vividly and poignantly conscious was the cold. She heard Jake’s voice beside her, very calm and steady, and when her turn came she spoke with equal steadiness, for somehow she seemed to be imbued with his strength. But she was too frozen, too ice-bound, to feel any meaning in the words she uttered. She spoke them like an automaton, through lips that would scarcely move.
Jake’s hand, warm and purposeful, holding her own, sent a faint, faint glow through her; but it did not reach her heart. She thought it had ceased to beat long ago, and she wondered how soon he would realize that he was wedded to a dead woman, what he would say when he knew. For Jake was so essentially full-blooded, so burningly alive. He was the most virile person she had ever met. Standing there by his side, she could feel the warmth of him. She thought it was that alone that kept her from turning into a solid block of ice.