Free Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells

looking unusually alert and
hectic, wore cream and brown also, made up in a more complicated manner.
    Ann Veronica was much impressed by a mighty trying on and altering and
fussing about Alice's "things"—Alice was being re-costumed from garret
to cellar, with a walking-dress and walking-boots to measure, and a
bride's costume of the most ravishing description, and stockings and
such like beyond the dreams of avarice—and a constant and increasing
dripping into the house of irrelevant remarkable objects, such as—
    Real lace bedspread;
    Gilt travelling clock;
    Ornamental pewter plaque;
    Salad bowl (silver mounted) and servers;
    Madgett's "English Poets" (twelve volumes), bound purple morocco;
    Etc., etc.
    Through all this flutter of novelty there came and went a solicitous,
preoccupied, almost depressed figure. It was Doctor Ralph, formerly
the partner of Doctor Stickell in the Avenue, and now with a thriving
practice of his own in Wamblesmith. He had shaved his side-whiskers and
come over in flannels, but he was still indisputably the same person
who had attended Ann Veronica for the measles and when she swallowed
the fish-bone. But his role was altered, and he was now playing the
bridegroom in this remarkable drama. Alice was going to be Mrs. Ralph.
He came in apologetically; all the old "Well, and how ARE we?" note
gone; and once he asked Ann Veronica, almost furtively,
    "How's Alice getting on, Vee?" Finally, on the Day, he appeared like
his old professional self transfigured, in the most beautiful light gray
trousers Ann Veronica had ever seen and a new shiny silk hat with a most
becoming roll....
    It was not simply that all the rooms were rearranged and everybody
dressed in unusual fashions, and all the routines of life abolished and
put away: people's tempers and emotions also seemed strangely disturbed
and shifted about. Her father was distinctly irascible, and disposed
more than ever to hide away among the petrological things—the study was
turned out. At table he carved in a gloomy but resolute manner. On the
Day he had trumpet-like outbreaks of cordiality, varied by a watchful
preoccupation. Gwen and Alice were fantastically friendly, which seemed
to annoy him, and Mrs. Stanley was throughout enigmatical, with an
anxious eye on her husband and Alice.
    There was a confused impression of livery carriages and whips with white
favors, people fussily wanting other people to get in before them,
and then the church. People sat in unusual pews, and a wide margin of
hassocky emptiness intervened between the ceremony and the walls.
    Ann Veronica had a number of fragmentary impressions of Alice strangely
transfigured in bridal raiment. It seemed to make her sister downcast
beyond any precedent. The bridesmaids and pages got rather jumbled
in the aisle, and she had an effect of Alice's white back and
sloping shoulders and veiled head receding toward the altar. In some
incomprehensible way that back view made her feel sorry for Alice. Also
she remembered very vividly the smell of orange blossom, and Alice,
drooping and spiritless, mumbling responses, facing Doctor Ralph, while
the Rev. Edward Bribble stood between them with an open book. Doctor
Ralph looked kind and large, and listened to Alice's responses as though
he was listening to symptoms and thought that on the whole she was
progressing favorably.
    And afterward her mother and Alice kissed long and clung to each other.
And Doctor Ralph stood by looking considerate. He and her father shook
hands manfully.
    Ann Veronica had got quite interested in Mr. Bribble's rendering of the
service—he had the sort of voice that brings out things—and was still
teeming with ideas about it when finally a wild outburst from the organ
made it clear that, whatever snivelling there might be down in the
chancel, that excellent wind instrument was, in its Mendelssohnian
way, as glad as ever it could be. "Pump, pump, per-um-pump, Pum, Pump,
Per-um...."
    The wedding-breakfast was for Ann