"But if you wanted to take her to my mother, Roger," I ventured, seeing, in fancy, the dear woman cooing over Roger's mysterious, romantic beauty (she adored him and would, moreover, have adopted a chambermaid if I had begged her to), "it could be arranged, I know...."
"Thank you, Jerry," he interrupted shortly, "but it must be now. I can't have anything happen. Any slip----" I saw his hands clench, and I knew why. Whether Tip knew, I couldn't tell; he never indicated it, then or ever after, good fellow. But he wasn't a fool. "_Mêlez-vous de c'qui vous regarde!_" as we used to say at Vevay, and Tip minded his business well.
"That's all right," he said quickly, "I only thought I'd mention it. How about the license in this state?"
They talked a little in low tones, and I looked at Margarita and thought of the odd chances of life, and how we are hurried past this and that and stranded on the other, and skim the rapids sometimes, to be wrecked later in clear shallows, perhaps.
"If you are ready, then?" said Tip, and we all moved across the beach and found ourselves standing on a great, smooth rock that would be cut off in a full high tide, with Caliban, clean and quiet and pathetically attentive, behind us, and with him a curiously familiar stranger, very neatly dressed, with tired eyes. As we grouped ourselves there and Tip pulled a tiny book from his pocket I recollected this stranger's face--it was the telegraph operator! Roger, who forgot nothing, had brought him over for the other witness.
"Dearly beloved," said Tip in a clear, deep voice, and I woke with a start and realised that old Roger was being married. Margarita, in her graceful, faded blue gown, gazed curiously at him, one hand in Roger's; the noon sun streamed down on us from a cloudless, turquoise sky; the little waves ran up the points of rocks, broke, and fell away musically.
To appreciate those quaint sentences of the marriage service, you must hear them out under the heavens, alone, with no bridesmaids, no voice that breathed o'er Eden, no flowers but the great handful of flaming nasturtiums Roger had put in her hands (no maiden lilies grew on that rock!) and a quiet man dressed just as other men are dressed, with only the consciousness of his calling to separate him from the rest of us. They held their own, those quaint old phrases, I assure you! But it was then I learned to respect them.