The Princess Becomes Queen
Danielle's aunt was in Québec for a short respite before returning to her missionary and humanitarian work on Turtle Island in Haiti. She was short, lively, charming and adventurous. But, most important of all, hers was the presence required for our engagement. Uncle Oscar, my mother's brother, a Jesuit priest, gave the blessing of our engagement in an informal manner. He insisted on the informality, for he had unfortunately looked up the traditional ceremony of engagement as practised in forgotten times. It had once been something huge and cumbersome implying a social gathering and a public commitment, something far beyond what Danielle and I meant by an engagement. We just wanted to slip a diamond ring on Danielle's left ring-finger as a mutual promissory symbol of the seriousness of our decision to wed. Uncle Oscar was in fact the only person conscious of the drastic changes the form of engagement had gone through. But, as he was himself devoid of pomposity and formality, he was only too happy to comply with our much simpler requirements.
Saturday, October 1, was the day. A day of flowers that swept Danielle off her feet. She received a dozen red roses from her parents and a dozen rose roses from mine. I knew roses would be coming, so I myself had a dozen of red and white carnations sent to her home. Her godmother, from Switzerland, gave her a table floral display, and Danielle's aunt who was present did the same. Then Uncle Oscar arrived with a bouquet of garden flowers snipped from his community's garden.
Danielle was radiant. Her eyes sparkled with happiness. Her bewitching smile became eternal. And though we were not alone, though Danielle's parents and aunt and my uncle were there with us, though a wisp of formality remained, I believe I was happy.
I slipped the ring on Danielle's left hand ring-finger. Uncle Oscar blessed our united hands. And supper was delicious.
* * *
During this school term, the limits which had been put to our calls and dates were swept away. Danielle had asked me, one day, whether I went to mass on week days. I replied that I did so occasionally. In return, she told me that she went to Mass each morning before school. There was suddenly an unreligious twinkle in my eyes: not anti-religious, simply non-religious. And I asked whether I could accompany her to daily Mass. Danielle realised that lover Georges had been awakened far more than Christian Georges. But both Georges were still there. Neither was harmful to the other. She consented. Thus, during week days, at quarter to seven in the morning, I should be waiting near Danielle's home for her to come out. We should then hike up the hill towards her parish church where she would adore Christ and I should adore her and Christ, in all due respect for both.
An amusing, yet trying, side-show to the presence of the Eucharistic Christ was a rivalry between two men we called the crows. A fat slushy man was responsible for singing the various responses to the priest's parts. People could join in with him. But he was always off key and rhythm, which quite discouraged any participation from the flock... except for the other crow, a tall thin man with a bass voice who insisted upon correcting his colleague's singing errors. He would sing the required responses loudly and correctly. The duo produced pure cacophony. Luckily the Lord readeth the soul and not the voice. Also, both men were certainly a source of sanctity through the trial of all those who endured with remarkable patience their praises to the Lord. As for the crows, they had the great virtue of persistence.
Whenever Danielle's timetable and mine agreed, I should also walk for thirty minutes to her college, and to have the pleasure of accompanying her, hand-in-hand, back home after her classes. I was generally not invited in, because of her school work and because a Swiss home is simply not an open house. This does not mean that it is not hospitable. It simply means that hospitality there is by invitation only, and is a more definite mark of affection than elsewhere.
* * *
Danielle's teaching challenge was trying. Because a good number of her students were teenage flunkies, the going was quite rough. Apathy and disturbance were their spontaneous contributions to the class. By Christmas time, Danielle was tired out and convinced that her students' failure was largely inevitable and her own fault. She went to see Mother Superior in order to tender her resignation. She was sobbing and desperate. Mother Superior shook her, refused the resignation, refused Danielle's evaluation of her girls' future: "They shall not fail," said she, "because you can and will succeed."
Danielle came back marked with new confidence and the will to carry on. She organised her girls in competing groups, gave responsibilities to group leaders, invented interesting challenges composed school subjects. Gradually there emerged a class spirit that would carry a majority of the girls on to success.
In Danielle's group, there was a beautiful blond girl who presented a painful challenge. This girl was completely closed up within herself. She was in grade seven for the second year. She worked lamely and easily slipped into disturbances organised by the reckless ones, though she was not of their kind. Nathalie was the only child of a thirty-five year old woman married to a sixty-five year old man. The woman had married into money and was patiently waiting for the old man to pass away. At the start of their common bond, some fifteen years before, he had insisted upon being a father. Nathalie was their victim.
Danielle tried persistently to reach Nathalie's heart and mind, to make her receptive to people and knowledge. When the school year ended, Nathalie's last results climbed beyond passing requirements. However the year's average barely kept her just below passing requirements. Danielle then begged the school authorities to allow her to raise Nathalie's average considering the gains she had made. They refused. When Danielle told Nathalie of their common failure, the girl's mask reappeared, shutting off her heart and mind.
Mr Quéloz's decision to give Danielle adult experience in life succeeded.
* * *
This was my last year at Laval University. I was required to write a short thesis. Carlos was my thesis director, and I worked on an author we both loved, the English novelist, biographer, essayist, and all around man of wit and wisdom, Gilbert Keith Chesterton.
While putting together something on Human Nature and Private Property, I was happy to find pertinent observations in Chesterton's writings which clearly illustrated why both Danielle and her mother had the same insight concerning my shortcomings and yet could arrive at opposite conclusions: "Grown-up men are quite unpresentable", Chesterton wrote in What's Wrong with the World, suggesting that males are made liveable and polite either by matrimony or by monastery. "It is true that there are many polite men, but none that I ever heard of who were not either fascinating women or obeying them."
I could not pass judgement on the universal truth of this observation: but it fitted me well. It agreed with my future in-law's view of me. Yet Danielle remained committed to me. Why?
"Love is not blind", Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy; "that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more bound the less it is blind." And he added appropriately: "The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head." — In other words, Danielle was in love.
And Carlos was satisfied with my work.
* * *
During my last term, tragedy struck Carlos' family. A tragedy that deeply touched us as we were getting more involved in our friendship with Carlos, Maria-Martha and the children.
Maria-Martha was eight-months pregnant when, one evening, Carlos told us that the baby was no longer moving within her. They feared him dead. Being ignorant in such matters, I wondered whether his immobility really meant something. Was it all that serious? Carlos insisted that a baby, in his later months, always moves a lot in his mother's womb. Death was the only conceivable cause of his present immobility. This realisation gave us chills, though we could not comprehend and feel all the horror it is for a mother to carry her dead child entombed within her.
We never understood why, but Maria-Martha's doctor refused to provoke the child's expulsion. He insisted that she wait for nature to do it for her. For three weeks, Maria-Martha carried her dead baby in her. For three full weeks, she had in her the cadaver of a child she loved.
When, finally, the dead child had been expelled, Danielle and I visited the bereaved mother at the hospital and offered her our deeply felt condolence. We were surprised by Maria-Martha's profuse thanks. She told Danielle: "You are the only one who has spoken to me this way. All the others insisted that our child was nothing. They tried to console me by saying how lucky we were to have the four others. As if it was a matter of numbers and not of a person who has died."
It had never occurred to us that the death of one's child could not be considered a tragedy by everyone. Maria-Martha was the first person to show us there are people who could consider a child as something rather than someone.
After her ordeal, Maria-Martha slid into a state of depression and clung to the idea that she must leave Québec and return home to Argentina.
Carlos' professional life and future had never been so promising as now at Laval University. His working conditions permitted him time to study and think, whilst in Argentina he would be overtaken by hustle and bustle. His personality was sufficiently appreciated for some of his colleagues to suggest that he might become the next Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy.
But Maria-Martha's illness was irretrievable. It was not a matter of will but of physical and psychological depression. Maria-Martha could not change her heart and mind. The hurt was too deep in her flesh. She was not free to do otherwise than beg for her homeland, her home.
Carlos was a free man, a man free to be bound. He had freely chosen to bind himself to a woman he loved. And he freely chose to forgo a successful personal career in favour of the good of Maria-Martha.
This seemed normal to us. It would only be a few years later that we realised how many would say, on such occasions: "Damn the woman. You've got your own self to think of."
* * *
Our wedding was set for Saturday, May 6. It would be one week after the end of my exams, and a month and a half before the end of Danielle's school year. Sweet reason would have us wait till the end of June. But I argued that I would not simply wait around all that time, playing tiddly-winks or whatever. I had given in for a whole term. That was enough. And Danielle agreed. Her college would allow her to take a week off for our honeymoon. After which she would finish off her school year and then we should leave for Manitoba.
We had to buy our wedding rings and find an apartment for our short marital stay in Quebec City. The wedding reception was to be Danielle's parents responsibility. As I was utterly devoid of social awareness, I had told Danielle that I should be quite content to butter a few sandwiches for our friends and guests. Such remarks made it certain that I should never be bothered by anything pertaining to the social aspects of our wedding.
Danielle's parents suggested to us a jeweller of Swiss origin who might be expected to sell us our wedding rings at a reasonable price. After having chosen our white-gold bands fitted for our ring-fingers, Danielle — raised to be money-conscious — tried to negotiate with the jeweller to bring his price down. Finally he did so, all the while discoursing on the value of craftsmanship and his commitment to non-profiteering. This made us a bit ill-at-ease. As I disliked wrangling over money matters, especially for objects close to our hearts, I mailed the man the original amount he'd asked for our rings. I believe the man was honest. And we were proud of our acquisition.
We showed our rings to all our friends. I slipped mine on and Danielle put hers on, both of us feeling flutterings of anticipation for the great day.
It was harder to find an apartment in which we would stay only a short while. Apartments for the summer were readily available, vacated between the university's winter and autumn terms. But that was too long for us. Finally, through an advertisement in the paper, we found an awkwardly arranged two-and-a-half-room apartment at above average price. It was awful and we loved it, for it would be our love-nest. The street name was unforgettable: it was "Forget".
* * *
A few years before, back at St. Boniface college, a student had imagined, in adolescent morbidity, a humorous sketch of a wedding true to its debilitating nature: the death of freedom. Consequently, the bride along with the groom would be dressed in black. The priest's vestments and the altar cloth would also be black. Organ music would play a funeral march. And at the end, the couple would solemnly exit to a waiting hearse and their dark-of-the-moon honeymoon.
I was that student. Somehow, now that the fatal day was at hand, I had undergone a change of mind and heart, for that scenario was quite forgotten.
The nearest I came to recalling it was the eve of the wedding day when, for a half-minute, I felt a slight twinge of nostalgia in realising that my roaming days with a friend of mine were over. Neither he nor I could simply drop by at any time at either's place without prior notice to the missus. This bit of nostalgia disappeared a moment later and never came back.
May 6 was a beautiful spring day, sunny and cloudless; just a bit cool. My parents had arrived from Manitoba and stayed at our new apartment. At 8:30 that morning, my father came to get me at my room on campus.
"Before going to the apartment and get Mother, I must go the shopping centre," I told him.
"Why?", he asked me.
"I must buy a tie that matches with my new suit."
I think he was nervous, because he was slightly cross at this piece of news. I explained to him that there was nothing to worry about as the stores opened at nine thirty and the wedding was not till eleven. And I did have to buy my tie.
As soon as the first store opened, we rushed to the men's clothing section. We bought an unsatisfactory tie, slipped into a second store, found the tie made to fit my suit and bought it. Then we went to our apartment to pick up Mother.
All the while, Danielle slept peacefully till the time came for her to get up rested, have breakfast and go to the hairdresser. Back home, she put on the simple yet attractive and radiant wedding gown skilfully and affectionately made by her mother.
As they boarded the family car to leave for church, some neighbours came over with good wishes for Danielle and her parents. The car then cruised to the end of the street, its occupants full of the gravity of the moment. Suddenly, Mrs Quéloz squeaked: "My slippers!"
Danielle and her father stared inquiringly at her.
"I still have my slippers on," she explained. "We must go back. I forgot to put my shoes on."
There is no doubt that her slippers would have given an entertaining touch to her chic, cream, two-piece suit.
The neighbours wondered seeing the car back around and return towards them. Embarrassed, Mrs Quéloz went through the little group to correct the result of forgetfulness.
By that time, my parents and I, and a growing number of guests, were waiting outside St. Yves' parish church. A ten o'clock wedding was ending. The married couple came out with their cheering crowd. The new spouses climbed into a waiting horse-and-buggy rented for the occasion. As they drove off, a friend asked whether we also would leave in style with a buggy.
"No," said I. "We will be content with a Cadillac."
For Mr Quéloz had asked one of his friends to take us from the church to the reception hall in the latter's prestigious motor-car.
As Danielle was arriving with her parents, her best girl-friend — who had failed to save her from her coming fate — told me: "Well, Georges Allaire, you wanted her. Now you have her!"
The officiating priest was Cadillac-style in priesthood, as he was a bishop (auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Montreal). He had previously been the pastor of St. Boniface parish in Manitoba, and my mother had worked a few years as his secretary. A good man, devoid of unctuosity or self-importance, he had readily accepted our invitation to be the man of Christ who would receive our mutual oaths of love and fidelity.
There was a special gift for our wedding: the breads to be consecrated had been specially baked for us by a cloistered nun far away in the province of Saskatchewan: Sister Veronica, my mother's sister, my aunt.
Danielle was calm, peaceful and happy. When we met, I whispered to her: "I've forgotten everything about the ceremony."
"Never mind", she answered.
The disquieting aspect of a wedding is its uniqueness for the main actors. They cannot have had sufficient experience in it to stride effortlessly through it. Added to the amateurish situation of the bride and groom, there are the inevitable quirks of chance.
The moment was solemn. Danielle and I faced each other near the alter, in front of everyone. Invited by the priest, to take one another as wife and husband, we readily spoke the irrevocable words committing our freedom to one another.
"I do", said I.
"I do", said she.
A woman among the guests noticed a twinkle of light in Danielle's eye.
"Poor girl," she thought. "She is overcome by emotions. There is a tear in her eye."
There was no tear. Danielle felt (and I saw) a contact lens falling onto her eyelash. What could we do with everyone staring at us at this unique moment in our live?
The lens fell. I tried, in vain, to snatch it with my hand. The lens was now in between my feet. Danielle did not know that I had noticed it. She thought in horror that I might shift a foot and crush it. As the bishop turned aside to put on his mitre, Danielle quickly stooped down and picked up her lens. What next? She would need her right hand to slip Georges' ring on. She put the lens in her left hand. But must she always keep it in her hand till all was over? Whereas she usually needed a mirror and proper attention to fit a lens back in her eye, this time instinct took over: she briskly popped it into place. Her best girl-friend, who also wore contact lenses, smiled in recognising the gesture.
Now was the time for Georges to put Danielle's ring on. He picked up a ring from the platter. The wrong ring! Each was used to show around his own ring. Habit had taken over. I now had my large ring. Crushed by the solemnity of the moment, I dared not change it. I wondered if I could get away with it by simply slipping my ring on Danielle's finger. There was no problem. I did it. But I also realised that she could never slip her small ring on my large finger. During the while that I was mentally sorting these things out, Danielle was smiling at my mistake, then wondering that I did nothing about it, then was horrified to find my ring on her finger. She whispered a shout: "It's not the right one, wise guy!"
Those were her first words as my adoring wife.
Of course, I had arrived at the same conclusion as her and rapidly took off that ring, put it back on the platter and slipped hers onto her gentle hand.
Two years, two months, three weeks, and one day after the eventful avowals, "I love you" ... "I love you too", I had won: Danielle had caught her man.
After the wedding, some of Danielle's students crowded around her joyously. One tried to get her attention: "Madmoiselle, madmoiselle...." she said.
"Madame, it’s Madame....!" other voices corrected.
There was general laughter all round and Danielle felt proud.
The wedding reception was at a hotel outside Québec City, near a small lake. My father-in-law generously offered us — and some forty guests, all very good friends — a filet mignon dinner. Before this, I had alighted with a happy leap down three short steps, landing bodily upright with a right foot slant-ways. A slight pain was rapidly dismissed. But after a few hours, I was feeling an ever-swelling ankle. For the first time in my life, I had a sprained ankle.
When Danielle and I arrived at Québec's magnificent hotel, the Chateau Frontenac, and entered our bridal suite, I phoned the hotel clerk to have a doctor sent up. The doctor bandaged my foot. His bill was our first expense paid as Mr and Mrs Allaire. He suggested that I do not walk too much the following days... whereas our honeymoon was to consist in visiting, on foot, the pavilions of Montreal's International Exposition. Luckily, my foot followed my heart's desire rather than the doctor's orders.
Thanks to the lame foot, and the wait for the doctor, Danielle had time to fit her heart into the peaceful bliss of her committed love before being swept over by Georges' eager passion.
They had ordered and eaten supper (club-sandwich for milady and hamburger steak for her wooer) before time came for a trickle of loving blood to flow and their entry into the foolishness of life.
* * *
"And they had many children and they lived happily ever after."
Well that is the way stories ended when we were little. Somehow, these stories were but the first page to human adventure. They ended at the beginning. We had just begun.
