The Spanish Marriage by Madeleine Robins Page A

for Dorothea,
and it seemed a small enough thing to do. From somewhere among Manuel’s
relatives in the village clothes had been produced for Dorothea a
tatterdemalion collection of black and grey skirts, jackets and shawls in which
to travel; a yellowed white muslin dress at least twenty years out of fashion
and far too big for her, which would somehow be made seemly for the wedding.
    Inevitably, Matlin thought of Adele Frain and how she would
have taken to all this. The image was incongruous: Adele’s vivid,
imperious beauty and fastidious tastes in such a time and place as this. Thea
was still an infant, young enough to make a game of her hardships. He could not
for one moment imagine Adele taking in the seams of a twenty-year-old dress or
feeding the convent chickens or allowing those ridiculous kittens to climb up
her skirts.
    As for Thea, the brief card games with Matlin were almost
her only contact with her betrothed, a circumstance somewhat unsettling to her.
Most of her time was spent with Silvy in the cool, dim confines of her chamber.
They wound skeins of wool, and darned the piles of dark clothes Manuel’s
kinswomen had brought for her, all of them ragged and, despite many washings,
redolent of past owners. Her wedding dress had to be bleached in the sun,
rinsed in lavender water, and bleached again; then Silvy, with hundreds of pins
and the tiny, precise stitches she had taught Thea to make, took the dress in
and up until it fit properly.
    It was awkward, uncomfortable somehow, sitting with Silvy in
the small, cool room where they mended and stitched. This business of marriage
had come between Thea and Silvy in a way that Thea did not understand; it made
Silvy prone to heavy sighings and significant looks. Thea had so much to think
about, the adventure she faced, Matlin; Silvy’s unreproaching, heavy
silence made her very self-conscious. Would it have been any different, she
wondered more than once, if the marriage were to take place in England, in the
Grahamley chapel?
    “It is a serious thing, niña,” Silvy
murmured more than once. “You are marrying this man.”
    Nothing Thea could say seemed to make any difference to Silvy,
and after a day or two she ceased to try, as much interested in putting off
this strange discussion as Silvy seemed to be herself. To Thea the whole matter
was something of a mystery, the marriage a magical solution which would solve
all her problems; she had a vague notion that, if too closely examined, the
magic would simply disappear. It was enough to say that on Sunday afternoon she
would be Matlin’s wife, regarded as the woman she was, no longer a
tiresome child, a responsibility and a danger to her friends. Even were it not
Matlin she was marrying, the feeling of release would be worth the marriage for
her.
    o0o
    Sunday morning half the village was waiting outside the chapel
betimes for early Mass. Señorita de Silva and her charge were known and liked
by the villagers, who had kept their secret well. The marriage of the young
Señorita to a mysterious foreigner was one more matter for secrecy, another way
to guard their Sisters. Sister Ana and Manuel, who regarded himself now as
Cupid, had broadcast the word in their search for garments, and an invitation
to one or another had become a general invitation to the wedding for the whole
town.
    Dressed in the formal muslin dress Thea was conscious of sudden
dignity, as if the dress itself conferred a new and weighty status upon her.
Sister Scholastica and Sister Ana, who had the dressing of her, fluttered and
clucked and swore that Thea resembled sisters, cousins, nieces, anyone beloved.
A veil of lace was settled lightly over her yellow hair.
    At last, clutching nervously at her handkerchief and carrying
the fullness of her skirt over one arm, Thea went in to Silvy.
    When her duenna began to weep—silent racking sobs—Thea
dropped her skirts and knelt; she was heedless of the clean muslin and put her
arms around Silvy. There