So I went. For half an hour I padded round St. Miriam's nervously, and then summoning up all my courage, I knocked my pipe out and entered.
"I want," I said jauntily to a sexton or a sacristan or something—"I want—er—a wedding." And I added, "For two."
He didn't seem as nervous as I was. He enquired quite calmly when I wanted it.
"The eleventh of June," I said. "It's probably the one day in the year on which my Uncle Thomas― However, that wouldn't interest you. The point is that it's the eleventh."
The clerk consulted his wedding–book. Then he made the surprising announcement that the only day he could offer me in June was the seventeenth. I was amazed.
"I am a very old customer," I said reproachfully. "I mean, I have often been to your church in my time. Surely―"
"We've weddings fixed on all the other days."
"Yes, yes, but you could persuade somebody to change his day, couldn't you? Or if he is very much set on being married on the eleventh you might recommend some other church to him. I daresay you know of some good ones. You see, Celia—my—that is, we're particularly keen, for some reason, on St. Miriam's."
The clerk didn't appreciate my suggestion. He insisted that the seventeenth was the only day.
"Then will you have the seventeenth?" he asked.
"My dear fellow, I can't possibly say off–hand," I protested. "I am not alone in this. I have a friend with me. I will go back and tell her what you say. She may decide to withdraw her offer altogether."
I went back and told Celia.
"Bother," she said. "What shall we do?"
"There are other churches. There's your own, for example."
"Yes, but you know I don't like that. Why shouldn't we be married on the seventeenth?"
"I don't know at all. It seems an excellent day; it lets in my Uncle Thomas. Of course, it may exclude my Uncle William, but one can't have everything."
"Then will you go and fix it for the seventeenth to–morrow?"
"Can't I send my solicitor this time?" I asked. "Of course, if you particularly want me to go myself, I will. But really, dear, I seem to be living at St. Miriam's nowadays."
And even that wasn't the end of the business. For, just as I was leaving her, Celia broke it to me that St. Miriam's was neither in her parish nor in mine, and that, in order to qualify as a bridegroom, I should have to hire a room somewhere near.
"But I am very comfortable where I am," I assured her.
"You needn't live there, Ronald. You only want to leave a hat there, you know."
"Oh, very well," I sighed.
She came to the hall with me; and, having said good–bye to her, I repeated my lesson.
"The seventeenth, fix it up to–morrow, take a room near St. Miriam's, and leave a hat there. Good–bye."
"Good–bye…. And oh, Ronald!" She looked at me critically as I stood in the doorway. "You might leave that one," she said.
II
Furnishing
"By the way," said Celia suddenly, "what have you done about the fixtures?"
"Nothing," I replied truthfully.
"Well, we must do something about them."
"Yes. My solicitor—he shall do something about them. Don't let's talk about them now. I've only got three hours more with you, and then I must dash back to my work."
I must say that any mention of fixtures has always bored me intensely. When it was a matter of getting a house to live in I was all energy. As soon as Celia had found it, I put my solicitor on to it; and within a month I had signed my name in two places, and was the owner of a highly residential flat in the best part of the neighbourhood. But my effort so exhausted me that I have felt utterly unable since to cope with the question of the curtain–rod in the bathroom or whatever it is that Celia means by fixtures. These things will arrange themselves somehow, I feel confident.
Meanwhile the decorators are hard at work. A thrill of pride inflates me when I think of the decorators at work. I don't know how they got there; I suppose I must have ordered them. Celia says that she ordered them and chose all the papers herself, and that all I did was to say that the papers she had chosen were very pretty; but this doesn't sound like me in the least. I am convinced that I was the man of action when it came to ordering decorators.
"And now," said Celia one day, "we can go and choose the electric–light fittings."
"Celia," I said in admiration, "you're a wonderful person. I should have forgotten all about them."
"Why, they're about the most important thing in the flat."
"Somehow I never regarded anybody as choosing them. I thought they just grew in the wall. From bulbs."
When we got into the shop Celia became businesslike at once.
"We'd better start with the hall," she told the man.
"Everybody else will have to," I said, "so we may as well."
"What sort of a light did you want there?" he asked.
"A strong one," I said; "so as to be able to watch our guests carefully when they pass the umbrella–stand."
Celia waved me away and explained that we wanted a hanging lantern. It appeared that this shop made a speciality not so much of the voltage as of the lamps enclosing it.
"How do you like that?" asked the man, pointing to a magnificent affair in brass. He wandered off to a switch, and turned it on.
"Dare you ask him the price?" I asked Celia. "It looks to me about a thousand pounds. If it is, say that you don't like the style. Don't let him think we can't afford it."
"Yes," said Celia, in a careless sort of way. "I'm not sure that I care about that. How much is it?"
"Two pounds."
I was not going to show my relief. "Without the light, of course?" I said disparagingly.
"How do you think it would look in the hall?" said Celia to me.
"I think our guests would be encouraged to proceed. They'd see that we were pretty good people."
"I don't like it. It's too ornate."
"Then show us something less ornate," I told the man sternly.
He showed us things less ornate. At the end of an hour Celia said she thought we'd better get on to another room, and come back to the hall afterwards. We decided to proceed to the drawing–room.
"We must go all out over these," said Celia; "I want these to be really beautiful."
At the end of another hour Celia said she thought we'd better get on to my workroom. My workroom, as the name implies, is the room to which I am to retire when I want complete quiet. Sometimes I shall go there after lunch … and have it.
"We can come back to the drawing–room afterwards," she said. "It's really very important that we should get the right ones for that. Your room won't be so difficult, but, of course, you must have awfully nice ones."
I looked at my watch.
"It's a quarter to one," I said. "At 2.15 on the seventeenth of June we are due at St. Miriam's. If you think we shall have bought anything by then, let's go on. If, as seems to me, there is no hope at all, then let's have lunch to–day anyhow. After lunch we may be able to find some way out of the impasse."
After lunch I had an idea.
"This afternoon," I said, "we will begin to get some furniture together."
"But what about the electric fittings? We must finish off those."
"This is an experiment. I want to see if we can buy a chest of drawers. It may just be our day for it."
"And we settle the fittings to–morrow. Yes?"
"I don't know. We may not want them. It all depends on whether we can buy a chest of drawers this afternoon. If we can't, then I don't see how we can ever be married on the seventeenth of June. Somebody's got to be, because I've engaged the church. The question is whether it's going to be us. Let's go and buy a chest of drawers this afternoon, and see."