“I know what I’ll do,” said Grimes. “I’ll get a motor-bicycle.”
This seemed to cheer him up a little. He took another glass of wine and smiled wanly. “I’m afraid I’ve not been following all you chaps have said. I was thinking. What were we talking about?”
“Prendy was telling me about a sea-lion who juggled with an umbrella and two oranges.”
“Why, that’s nothing. I can juggle with a whacking great bottle and a lump of ice and two knives. Look!”
“Grimes, don’t! Everyone is looking at you.”
The headwaiter came over to remonstrate. “Please remember where you are, sir,” he said.
“I know where I am well enough,” said Grimes. “I’m in the hotel my pal Sir Solomon Philbrick is talking of buying, and I tell you this, old boy: if he does, the first person to lose his job will be you. See?”
Nevertheless he stopped juggling, and Mr. Prendergast ate two pêches Melba undisturbed.
“The black cloud has passed,” said Grimes. “Grimes is now going to enjoy his evening.”
XIII
The Passing of a Public School Man
Six days later the school was given a half-holiday, and soon after luncheon the bigamous union of Captain Edgar Grimes and Miss Florence Selina Fagan was celebrated at the Llanabba Parish Church. A slight injury to his hand prevented Paul from playing the organ. He walked down the church with Mr. Prendergast, who, greatly to his dismay, had been instructed by Dr. Fagan to give away the bride.
“I do not intend to be present,” said the Doctor. “The whole business is exceedingly painful to me.” Everybody else, however, was there except little Lord Tangent, whose foot was being amputated at a local nursing home. The boys for the most part welcomed the event as a pleasant variation to the rather irregular routine of their day. Clutterbuck alone seemed disposed to sulk.
“I don’t suppose that their children will be terribly attractive,” said Beste-Chetwynde.
There were few wedding presents. The boys had subscribed a shilling each and had bought at a shop in Llandudno a silver-plated teapot, coyly suggestive of art nouveau. The Doctor gave them a cheque for twenty-five pounds. Mr. Prendergast gave Grimes a walking stick—“because he was always borrowing mine”—and Dingy, rather generously, two photograph frames, a calendar, and a tray of Benares brassware. Paul was the best man.
The service passed off without a hitch, for Grimes’ Irish wife did not turn up to forbid the banns. Flossie wore a frock of a rather noticeable velveteen and a hat with two pink feathers to match.
“I was so pleased when I found he didn’t want me to wear white,” she said, “though, of course, it might have been dyed afterwards.”
Both bride and bridegroom spoke up well in the responses, and afterwards the Vicar delivered a very moving address on the subject of Home and Conjugal Love.
“How beautiful it is,” he said, “to see two young people in the hope of youth setting out with the Church’s blessing to face life together; how much more beautiful to see them when they have grown to full manhood and womanhood coming together and saying ‘Our experience of life has taught us that one is not enough.’ ”
The boys lined the path from the churchdoor to the lychgate, and the head prefect said: “Three cheers for Captain and Mrs. Grimes!”
Then they returned to the Castle. The honeymoon had been postponed until the end of term, ten days later, and the arrangements for the first days of their married life were a little meagre. “You must do the best you can,” the Doctor had said. “I suppose you will wish to share the same bedroom. I think there would be no objection to your both moving into the large room in the West Tower. It is a little damp, but I daresay Diana will arrange for a fire to be lighted there. You may use the morning-room in the evenings, and Captain Grimes will of course have his meals at my table in the dining-room, not with the boys. I do not wish to find him sitting about in the drawing-room, nor, of course, in my library. He had better keep his books and gown in the Common Room, as before. Next term I will consider some other arrangement. Perhaps I could hand over one of the lodges to you or fit up some sort of sitting-room in the tower. I was not prepared for a domestic upheaval.”
Diana, who was really coming out of the business rather creditably, put a bowl of flowers in their bedroom, and lit a fire of reckless proportions, in which she consumed the remains of a desk and two of the boys’ play-boxes.
That evening, while Mr. Prendergast was taking “Prep.” at the end of the passage, Grimes visited Paul in the Common Room. He looked rather uncomfortable in his evening clothes.
“Well, dinner’s over,” he said. “The old man does himself pretty well.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Not too well, old boy. The first days are always a strain, they say, even in the most romantic marriages. My father-in-law is not what you might call easy. Needs thawing gently, you know. I suppose as a married man I oughtn’t to go down to Mrs. Roberts?”
“I think it might seem odd on the first evening; don’t you?”
“Flossie’s playing the piano; Dingy’s making up the accounts; the old man’s gone off to the library. Don’t you think we’ve time for a quick one?”
Arm in arm they went down the familiar road.
“Drinks are on me tonight,” said Grimes.
The silver band were still sitting with their heads together discussing the division of their earnings.
“They tell me that married this afternoon you were?” said the stationmaster.
“That’s right,” said Grimes.
“And my sister never at all you would meet whatever,” he continued reproachfully.
“Look here, old boy,” said Grimes, “just you shut up.
