CHAPTER XV

WED

IT was Orris's wedding day, and though March had come in like a lion, it was going out, as proverbially it should, like a lamb. It was a still bright day. The sea lay serene and calm, with only a ripple of movement, as it lapped the shore.

Orris stood at her bedroom window looking out upon it with dreamy happy eyes. Life had given her a good share of its cares and anxieties. Now she faced the future, feeling that whatever the coming years might bring her, loss or gain, she could face them steadfastly, for Jock would be by her side.

It was, as they had both wished, going to be a very quiet gathering. Miss Lyle was in a comparatively empty house, for her last guests had departed, and she had purposely refrained from having any others till the wedding was over. Miss Raynor was the only outsider. Mr. Dunscombe, as best man, was staying with Jock at the village inn. Dugald had been invited, but would not come. His sister Marie had accepted her invitation, and was very comfortably ensconced in the best spare bedroom.

Orris had asked that she might be left undisturbed in her room till the carriage came to take her to church. Perkins had been allowed to get out the old-fashioned brougham, which Miss Lyle so seldom used, for the occasion.

At eleven o'clock she heard a soft knock at her door. It was Pippa, almost hidden by the big white bridal bouquet which she was carrying.

"It's for you, Aunt Ollie; it's all come out of the 'servatory. And, oh, how lovely you are!"

"And you, Pippa, are my sweet white Elf indeed."

For Jock had asked that Orris should be in the traditional white, and very queenly she looked in the soft white satin gown, with no trimming of any kind about her, except an Italian lace berthe and her veil, both heirlooms belonging to her mother. Pippa, in her tiny white frock and lace cap, with silver ribbon and a silver sash around her waist, was a dainty picture. Her cheeks were pink with excitement.

Orris stooped and kissed her.

"My darling!" she said. "What lovely flowers! Is it time to go?"

Pippa nodded.

"Miss Lyle is waiting, and the carriage is here, and Bess and Bones have real satin rosettes to their ears."

Then they descended the stairs, and Marie, at the bottom, gave Orris a quick kiss before she got into the carriage.

"It's a shame," she said, "that you should not be in town amongst all your friends. Who is there to admire you here, except a handful of fisher-folk?"

Her words sent Orris into her carriage with a smile. Miss Lyle followed her, for she was going to give her away. She had discarded her usual severe style of dress, and was in a powder-blue crêpe-de-chine gown, with black velvet hat and ostrich feathers, and black fox fur round her shoulders. She looked, as she was, a very handsome woman.

They were very silent as they drove to the little church. It was a painful occasion to Miss Lyle. She remembered, as a young woman, how she had hoped to come to that same church as a bride. Her wedding day had been fixed and she was within a week of it when the tragedy occurred that took her fiancé from her.

And Orris began to feel nervous. They found quite a little crowd collected in the church porch. The carriage which preceded them had been hired from the inn, and contained Marie and Pippa.

A few minutes later, and Orris and Jock stood side by side, taking part in one of the most solemn services in the Prayer Book.

Jock was very grave. His erect, stalwart figure evoked open admiration from some of the village women.

"Ay, he du be a praper man, sure 'nuff. He holds his head like a king! Vit to wed the dear lady!"

When it was over, and Jock was driving back in the brougham with his bride, he took her hand in his.

"My greatest moment in my life!" he said. "But oh, sweetheart, what a nervous opportunity it is! What a comfort to feel we shall never have to go through it again!"

And Orris's amusement at his speech took away her momentary feeling of shyness.

They had a pleasant informal meal at the house before departing for the tiny village in Cornwall where they were going to have a fortnight's honeymoon. At first they meant to dispense with that, but later Orris began to think differently.

"It will do you good to get right away from your farm, Jock. Let us have a complete holiday with nothing to distract us."

And so to Cornwall they went, and Pippa waited impatiently for the time when she should join them at Pinestones.

It was a lovely day in April when the bride and bridegroom came home. Pippa and her governess had arrived early in the afternoon, and the hall was decked with flowers when they appeared.

"Why, you little Elf," said Jock, seizing the child and swinging her up in his arms, "you've been stealing my flowers."

"They're mine too," cried Pippa joyously. "We all belong to each other. Aunt Ollie said so."

"Well, if you belong to me, I shall do what I like with you, and I'm going to lock you in the powder-room for theft! Come along!"

Pippa willingly obeyed. It had needed all her self-control to keep from entering her favourite room, but she had been strictly forbidden to go near it. Orris accompanied them, for she knew the secret.

When the door was opened, Pippa gave a gasp, then a shout.

For the little room was furnished now. A thick carpet was underfoot, and a child's suite of furniture was in it. There was a tiny round table, a miniature armchair, and two little wooden chairs with blue velvet cushions upon them. The window was draped with quaint old-fashioned chintz curtains. Against one side of the wall was the dolls' house, against the other was a small glass bookcase, holding children's books. There was a tiny rocking-chair, and a little white china stove with a miniature oven in it. On a little side table was a basket-tray, upon which was a pretty china tea-set.

"Well," said Jock, "does it suit Your Highness, wee Elf? It's to be your own room, and you can shut us all out if you like."

Pippa flung herself into his arms.

"I knewed there would be something lovely, but not half so good as this. You are the darlingest man in the world, Master Jock!"

"I think, Pippa," said Orris, smiling, "that you must forget that name. He is Uncle Jock now."

Pippa went round and round the room in ecstasy of delight. She sat in every chair, she drew them up to the table and spread out the tea-cups on it, and wanted to have tea there and then. She rocked herself in the rocking-chair, she looked at all the books, and then ran away to fetch Miss Raynor to see it all.

Jock and Orris went downstairs and found tea awaiting them in the drawing-room.

"You know how to give pleasure, Jock," said Orris, as she sat down at the tea-tray and commenced to pour out tea. "Pippa is a lucky child."

"Not so lucky as I am!" said Jock warmly. "This is what I pictured to myself over and over again: you and I having tea together in our own house. It has all come to pass as I told you it would. What do you feel like?"

"Very much at home," said Orris, laughing.

"Oh, say something nicer than that!"

"What can I say? We won't be always expressing our happiness in words, Jock. It is too deep for that."

"Yes," he assented more soberly, but letting his eyes travel over her slowly with radiant content in them; "it is deep and sure and lasting."

Orris could echo his words in her heart. She knew that life would bring shadows and trials, but she felt she could meet them contentedly if Jock were by her side.

When their tea was over, she wandered round the house with Jock, and interviewed the cook, a new importation and a great improvement upon Mrs. Snow.

Orris was amused at Jock's housewifely qualities. He had got a new staff of servants alone and unaided, had interviewed them personally, had told them that he was a stern master but, he hoped, a just one; and that their mistress was an "angel on earth."

"I shall never keep up my reputation," said Orris, laughing, when Jock told her this. He assured her gravely that she could not change her nature.

The room to which they drifted last was the smoking-room. Here on one side was a new glass bookcase made of dark oak, and on the shelves were the remnants of the burnt library. Jock had had a few of the volumes rebound, but, for the most part, the blackened and singed leather covers remained.

"Now, darling," said Jock, as he opened the door for her to inspect them, "we must have no sighs or laments for the books that are gone, only pleasure for those which remain."

Orris smiled at him, but an eager light came into her face as she fingered some of her treasures. "Oh, Jock, in the winter evenings we must make ourselves more acquainted with some of these old writers. How glad I am that so many of them have been saved! No, I won't lament over the past. I have put it from me."

"That's A 1! And do you know, I have an instinct that had my precious library remained, I should have found in it a formidable rival. You were getting absorbed in it. It would not have been pleasant to come home tired and hungry and find a wife absolutely indifferent to my needs, deaf to my plaintive voice, entirely buried in her books. You might have quoted your old philosophers to me all day long, until I should long to destroy their works. Now you are detached from that unlucky catalogue making, and have nothing in the world to take off your thoughts from your lord and husband."

Orris laughed at him.

"I warn you, I mean to lead my own life, and I claim my own individuality. And you will find me sometimes in this room enjoying some of the old authors whom I have learnt to love."

"Oh yes," assented Jock; "in my absence you can read as much as you like, but not when I am home."

"We shan't quarrel," said Orris contentedly. "Your bark is always worse than your bite, Jock. To hear you sometimes, one would think that you had a masterful, tyrannical temper, whereas I know to the contrary. Pippa can twist you round her finger."

Jock's eyes rested on his wife with a tender light in them.

"You and she together will coax the life out of me, but I have a streak of obstinacy in me."

Then he took his wife out into the garden. The peace and beauty of it brought stillness and sweetness into their souls. They talked of unseen things, and watched the sunset from the terrace overlooking the pine woods.

"Oh, Orris," Jock said, as finally they returned to the house, "at one time I had lost all interest in this place. But now you are going to make it into a home, I feel so differently. We'll emanate sunshine and content on all around—you see if we don't!"

"With God's help, we'll attempt it," was Orris's rejoinder.

Pippa was a happy child at all times, but this arrival at Pinestones, with the present of the powder-room for her own peculiar domain, almost turned her head. And when, the next morning, Jock came to the schoolroom door and said he wanted to introduce her to a little brown gentleman who was waiting to see her, her eyes nearly started out of her head.

"Is it anuver surprise?" she asked.

Jock nodded.

"What's he like?" she said in a delighted whisper, as hand in hand with him she danced down the stairs, eager expectation shining out of her eyes.

"Well, his hair is too long to please me, and he's rather fat."

"Oh!" screamed Pippa. "Is he a pixie or a brownie?"

"Come and see."

He led her out to the stable, and then she guessed; and she danced up and down in excitement.

In another moment she was standing by the dearest little brown pony that she had ever seen. He had come from Exmoor, and his mane and tail were flowing in the wind. In a moment, she had climbed upon his back.

"What's his name? Is he mine to keep? Can I ride on him whenever I like?"

"His name must be Pixie, I think. He's absolutely quiet, and a little boy has been riding him for over a year, so I think he'll carry you nicely. He is for your very own."

Pippa looked at Jock with unutterable gratitude.

"I do think you're the wonderfullest man in the world," she said, "better than Father Christmas or a fairy godmother. Can I ride him now?"

"Not without a saddle. In half an hour's time, you shall."

The happy child flew into the house. Miss Raynor saw that lessons must not be started that first day, so she gave her a full holiday, and Pippa spent the morning with her pony and the afternoon in her powder-room.

It took a few days to calm her high spirits and make her willing to settle down to her lessons again, but Miss Raynor understood her, had a fund of patience and of humour, and kept her happy.

Two or three days after their return, they had a visit from their Vicar. Orris thought he looked worn and weary. She asked him if he had been overworking himself.

He smiled at her.

"There's not much chance of that here. My days are only pleasantly filled. No, I have had an uncongenial task to do, and I think I have accomplished it."

"You began it over a month ago," said Jock, looking at him with interest. "Tell us the result."

"What is it?" asked Orris, scenting a mystery.

Mr. Dane drew a long sigh.

"Well, Mrs. Muir, I have not been at all happy about a certain house in my parish. You know it. Ivy Towers. I cannot tolerate superstition in any shape or form. Christians ought to be above it. I heard that some new tenants were going to take it, so when they came down to inspect it, I thought it my duty to warn them. Not against the house, but against the intense credulity and superstition of the villagers. The power of suggestion is great. I was afraid from what had happened before that they would soon be driven out of it. And they were most grateful to me.

"He is one of these invalided officers; she is quite young, and has a young family. But she besought me to use my powers of exorcism, and in the end I promised to do this: to live in the house myself for a good month before they came into it. My good old Susan was willing to come with me. Mother wanted to pay my married sister a visit, so I let the Vicarage, and Ivy Towers has been my home for some time now."

"And what have you seen or heard?" questioned Orris. "Is it only the power of suggestion that has proved so fatal to those who live there?"

Mr. Dane did not reply for a moment or two, then he said slowly:

"Our nerve, even our sight, is not always as reliable as it should be. But I can assure you with certainty now that the house will harm no one in future. If evil in the world is strong, God Almighty is stronger. I laid hold of His strength, and it has not failed me."

"It has been a strain," said Orris, looking at his white face and hollow eyes.

And Mr. Dane, looking at her with a smile, said:

"'This kind goeth not forth but by prayer and fasting!'"

He would say no more. But as far as Ivy Towers was concerned, the tide of misfortune was turned. The villagers knew what their Vicar had done, and expressed their satisfaction.

Major and Mrs. Latimer with their four little boys moved in at once; they brought their own servants with them, and peace and cheerfulness reigned there. Pippa was delighted to have small playmates near her, and she and they met frequently. Ivy Towers was now a home of merry children. The atmosphere of depression was no more.

In a few weeks' time, Orris had settled down into her new home. She found her days, like Mr. Dane's, "pleasantly filled."

Jock was out every morning, sometimes away for the whole day, but the evenings were always spent with his wife.

Orris visited the villagers, helped the Vicar in many of his organizations, and worked hard in making the Rest Home a success to those who would use it.

She heard from Venetia, who congratulated her warmly upon her marriage.

"I always knew you would pull it off," she wrote, "you couldn't withstand his determination to get you; and as it turns out, you have done remarkably well for yourself. I am still leaving Pippa under your care. I think she needs English training and education. Perhaps she will grow up a different stamp to her cosmopolitan mother. But I haven't given her to you altogether. When you get a family of your own, you may not want her. And when she gets a young woman, I shall be glad to have her with me."

Orris showed this to Jock.

"It makes me shiver," she said, "when I think of the day on which I shall have to hand Pippa over to her mother."

"We'll get her married first," said Jock the optimist.

"Marriage, with you, is a cure for all evils," laughed Orris.

"It's a cure for a good many, as far as girls are concerned," he retorted; "that is, if they get the right kind of husband who'll look after them and keep them from follies."

"You're very primitive," Orris said. "Don't you know that the modern girl will not be managed by anyone, least of all by her husband?"

"I thank God daily that you are not modern," said Jock.

"Even so," Orris said demurely, "I cannot always be managed, Jock."

He laughed.

"Our wills have never clashed yet, and I hope they never will."

Yet only a few days after this conversation, they had their first disagreement.