‘It will take place to-morrow, as I told you, in this room. You will go to the Vicar and ask him to officiate. His two daughters will no doubt consent to be Lady Mary’s bridesmaids. You will make the request in my name. Perhaps the Vicar will call this afternoon and talk matters over with me. Lady Mary and her husband will go to Cumberland for a brief honeymoon — a week at most — and then they will come back to Fellside. Tell Mrs. Power to prepare the east wing for them. She will make one of the rooms into a boudoir for Lady Mary; and let everything be as bright and pretty as good taste can make it. She can telegraph to London for any new furniture that may be wanted to complete her arrangements. And now send Lady Mary to me.’
Mary came, fresh from the pine-wood, where she had been walking with her lover; her lover of to-day, her husband to-morrow. He had told her how he was to start for York directly after luncheon, and to come back by the earliest train next day, and how they two were to be married to-morrow afternoon.
‘It is more wonderful than any dream that I ever dreamt.’ exclaimed Mary. ‘But how can it be? I have not even a wedding gown.’
‘A fig for wedding gowns! It is Mary I am to wed, not her gown. Were you clad like patient Grisel I should be content. Besides you have no end of pretty gowns. And you are to be dressed for travelling, remember; for I am going to carry you off to Lodore directly we are married, and you will have to clamber up the rocky bed of the waterfall to see the sun set behind the Borrowdale hills in your wedding gown. It had better be one of those neat little tailor gowns which become you so well.’
‘I will wear whatever you tell me,’ answered Mary. ‘I shall always dress to please you, and not the outside world.’
‘Will you, my Griselda. Some day you shall be dressed as Grisel was —
“In a cloth of gold that brighte shone,
With a coroune of many a riche stone.”
‘Yes, you darling, when you are Lord Chancellor; and till that day comes I will wear tailor gowns, linsey-wolsey, anything you like,’ cried Mary, laughing.
She ran to her grandmother’s room, ineffably content, without a thought of trousseau or finery; but then Mary Haselden was one of those few young women for whom life is not a question of fashionable raiment.
‘Mary, I am going to send you off upon your honeymoon to-morrow afternoon,’ said Lady Maulevrier, smiling at the bright, happy face which was bent over her. ‘Will you come back and nurse a fretful old woman when the honeymoon is over?’
‘The honeymoon will never be over,’ answered Mary, joyously. ‘Our wedded life is to be one long honeymoon. But I will come back in a very few days, and take care of you. I am not going to let you do without me, now that you have learnt to love me.’
‘And will you be content to stay with me when your husband has gone to London?’
‘Yes, but I shall try to prevent his going very often, or staying very long. I shall try to wind myself into his heart, so that there will be an aching void there when we are parted.’
Lady Maulevrier proceeded to tell Mary all her arrangements. Three handsome rooms in the east wing, a bedroom, dressing-room, and boudoir, were to be made ready for the newly-married couple. Fräulein Müller was to be dismissed with a retiring pension, in order that Lady Mary and her husband might feel themselves master and mistress in the lower part of the house.
‘And if your husband really means to devote himself to literature, he can have no better workshop than the library I have put together,’ said Lady Maulevrier.
‘And no better adviser and guide than you, dear grandmother, you who have read everything that has been written worth reading during the last half century.’
‘I have read a great deal, Mary, but I hardly know if I am any wiser on that account,’ answered Lady Maulevrier. ‘After all, however much of other people’s wisdom we may devour, it is in ourselves that we are thus, or thus. Our past follies rise up against us at the end of life; and we see how little our book-learning has helped us to stand against foolish impulses, against evil passions. “Be good,” Mary, “and let who will be wise,” as the poet says. A faithful heart is your only anchor in the stormy seas of life. My dear, I am so glad you are going to be married.’
‘It is very sudden,’ said Mary.
‘Very sudden; yet in your case that does not much matter. You have quite made up your mind about Mr. Hammond, I believe.’
‘Made up my mind! I began to worship him the first night he came here.’
‘Foolish child. Well, there is no need to wait for settlements. You have only your allowance as Lord Maulevrier’s daughter — a first charge on the estate, which cannot be made away with or anticipated, and of which no husband can deprive you.’
‘He shall have every sixpence of it,’ murmured Mary.
‘And Mr. Hammond, though he tells me he is better off than I supposed, can have nothing to settle. So there will be nothing forfeited by a marriage without settlements.’
Mary could not enter upon the question. It was even of less importance than the wedding gown.
The gong sounded for luncheon.
‘Steadman’s dogcart is to take Mr. Hammond to the station at half-past two,’ said Lady Maulevrier, ‘so you had better go and give him his luncheon.’
Mary needed no second bidding. She flew downstairs, and met her lover in the hall.
What a happy luncheon it was! Fräulein ‘mounched, and mounched, and mounched,’ like the sailor’s wife eating chestnuts: but those two lovers lunched upon moonshine, upon each other’s little words and little looks, upon their own ineffable bliss. They sat side by side, and helped each other to the nicest things on the table, but neither could eat, and they got considerably mixed in their way of eating, taking chutnee with strawberry cream, and currant jelly with asparagus. What did it matter? Everything tasted of bliss.
‘You have had absolutely nothing to eat,’ said Mary, piteously, as the dogcart came grinding round upon the dry gravel.
‘Oh, I have done splendidly — thanks. I have just had a macaroon and some of that capital gorgonzola. God bless you, dearest, and à revoir, à revoir to-morrow.’
‘And to-morrow I shall be Mary Hammond,’ cried Mary, clasping her hands. ‘Isn’t it capital fun?’
They were in the porch alone. The servants were all at dinner, save the groom with the cart. Miss Müller was still munching at the well-spread table in the dining-room.
John Hammond folded his sweetheart in his arms for one brief embrace; there was no time for loitering. In another moment he was springing into the cart. A shake of the reins, and he was driving slowly down the steep avenue.
‘Life is full of partings,’ Mary said to herself, as she watched the last glimpse of the dogcart between the trees down in the road below, ‘but this one is to be very short, thank God.’
She wondered what she should do with herself for the rest of the afternoon, and finally, finding that she was not wanted by her grandmother until afternoon tea, she set out upon a round of visits to her favourite cottagers, to bid them a long farewell as a spinster.
‘You’ll be away a long time, I suppose, Lady Mary?’ said one of her humble friends; ‘you’ll be going to Switzerland or Italy, or some of those foreign parts where great ladies and gentlemen travel for their honeymoons?’
But Mary declared that she would be absent a week at longest. She was coming back to take care of her invalid grandmother; and she was not going to marry a great gentleman, but a man who would have to work for his living.
She went back to Fellside, and read the Times, and poured out Lady Maulevrier’s tea, and sat on her low stool by the sofa, and the old and the young woman were as happy and confidential together as if they had been always the nearest and dearest to each other. Her ladyship had seen Miss Müller, and had informed that excellent person that her services at Fellside would no longer be required after Lady Mary’s marriage; but that her devotion to her duties during the last fourteen years should be rewarded by a pension which, together w
ith her savings, would enable her to spend the rest of her days in repose. Miss Müller was duly grateful, and owned to a tender longing for the Heimath, and declared herself ready to retire from her post whenever her ladyship pleased.
‘I shall go back to Germany directly I leave you, and I shall live and die there, unless I am wanted by one of my old pupils. But should Lady Lesbia or Lady Mary need my services for their daughters, in days to come, they can command me. For no one else will I abandon the Fatherland.’
The Fräulein thus easily disposed of, Lady Mary felt that matrimony would verily mean independence. And yet she was prepared to regard her husband as her master. She meant to obey him in all meekness and reverence of spirit.
She spent the rest of the afternoon and the whole of the evening in her grandmother’s sitting-room, dining tête-à-tête with the invalid for the first time since her illness. Lady Maulevrier talked much of Mary’s future, and of Lesbia’s; but it was evident that she was full of uneasiness upon the latter subject.
‘I don’t know what Lesbia is going to do with her life,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘Her letters tell me of nothing but gowns and parties; and Georgina Kirkbank can only expatiate upon Mr. Smithson’s wealth, and the grand position he is going to occupy by-and-by. I should like to see both my granddaughters married before I die — yes, I should like to see Lesbia’s fate secure, if she were to be only Lady Lesbia Smithson.’
‘She cannot fail to make a good match, grandmother,’ said Mary.
‘I am beginning to lose faith in her future,’ answered Lady Maulevrier. ‘There seems to be a fatality about the career of particularly attractive girls. They are too confident of their power to succeed in life. They trifle with fortune, fascinate the wrong people, and keep the right people at arm’s length. I think if I had been Lesbia’s guide in society her first season would have counted for more than it is likely to count for under Lady Kirkbank’s management. I should have awakened Lesbia from the dream of dress and dancing — the mere butterfly life of a girl who never looks beyond the present moment. But now go and give orders about your packing, Mary. It is past ten, and Clara had better pack your trunks early to-morrow morning.’
Clara was a modest Easedale damsel, who had been promoted to be Lady Mary’s personal attendant, when the more mature Kibble had gone away with Lady Lesbia. Mary required very little waiting upon, but she was not the less glad to have a neat little smiling maiden devoted to her service, ready to keep her rooms neat and trim, to go on errands to the cottagers, to arrange the flowers in the old china bowls, and to make herself generally useful.
It seemed a strange thing to have to furnish a trousseau from the wardrobe of everyday life — a trousseau in which nothing, except half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, a pair of boots, and a few odds and ends of lace and ribbons would be actually new. Mary thought very little of the matter, but the position of things struck her maid as altogether extraordinary and unnatural.
‘You should have seen the things Miss Freeman had, Lady Mary,’ exclaimed the damsel, ‘the daughter of that cotton-spinning gentleman from Manchester, who lives at The Gables — you should have seen her new gowns and things when she was married. Mrs. Freeman’s maid keeps company with my brother James — he’s in the stables at Freeman’s, you know, Lady Mary — and she asked me in to look at the trousseau two days before the wedding. I never saw such beautiful dresses — such hats — such bonnets — such jackets and mantles. It was like going into one of those grand shops at York, and having all the things in the shop pulled out for one to look at — such silks and satins — and trimmed — ah! how those dresses was trimmed. The mystery was how the young lady could ever get herself into them, or sit down when she’d got one of them on.’
‘Instruments of torture, Clara. I should hate such gowns, even if I were going to marry a rich man, as I suppose Miss Freeman was.’
‘Not a bit of it, Lady Mary. She was only going to marry a Bolton doctor with a small practice; but her maid told me she was determined she’d get all she could out of her pa, in case he should lose all his money and go bankrupt. They said that trousseau cost two thousand pounds.’
‘Well, Clara, I’d rather have my tailor gowns, in which I can scramble about the ghylls and crags just as I like.’ There was a pale yellow Indian silk, smothered with soft yellow lace, which would serve for a wedding gown; for indifferent as Mary was to the great clothes question, she wanted to look in some wise as a bride. A neat chocolate-coloured cloth, almost new from the tailor’s hands, with a little cloth toque to match, would do for the wedding journey. All the details of Mary’s wardrobe were the perfection of neatness. She had grown very neat and careful in her habits since her engagement, anxious to be industrious and frugal in all things — a really handy housewife for a hard-worked bread-winner. And now she was told that Mr. Hammond was not so poor as she had thought. She would not be obliged to stint herself, and manage, as she had supposed when she went about among the cottagers, taking lessons in household economy. It was almost a disappointment.
She and Clara finished the packing that night, Mary being much too excited for the possibility of sleep. There was not much to pack, only one roomy American trunk — a trunk which held everything — a Gladstone bag for things that might possibly be wanted in a hurry, and a handsome dressing-bag, Maulevrier’s last birthday gift to his sister.
Mary had received no gifts from her lover, save the plain gold engagement ring, and a few new books sent straight from the publishers. Clara took care to inform her young mistress that Miss Freeman’s sweetheart had sent her all manner of splendid presents, scent bottles, photograph albums, glove boxes, and other things of beauty, albeit his means were supposed to be nil. It was evident that Clara disapproved of Mr. Hammond’s conduct in this matter, and even suspected him of meanness.
‘He did ought to have sent you his photograph, Lady Mary,’ said Clara, with a reproachful air.
‘I daresay he would have done so, Clara, but he has been photographed only once in his life.’
‘Lawk a mercy, Lady Mary! Why most young gentlemen have themselves photographed in every new place they go to; and as Mr. Hammond has been a traveller, like his lordship, I made sure he’d have been photographed in knickerbockers and every other kind of attitude.’
Mary had not refrained from asking for her lover’s portrait; and he had told her that he had carefully abstained from having his countenance reproduced in any manner since his fifteenth year, when he had been photographed at his mother’s desire.
‘The present fashion of photographs staring out of every stationer’s window makes a man’s face public property,’ he told Mary. ‘I don’t want every street Arab in London to recognise me.’
‘But you are not a public man,’ said Mary. ‘Your photograph would not be in all the windows; although, in my humble opinion, you are a very handsome man.’
Hammond blushed, laughed, and turned the conversation, and Mary had to exist without any picture of her lover.
‘Millais shall paint me in his grand Reynolds manner by-and-by,’ he told Mary.
‘Millais! Oh, Jack! When will you and I be able to give a thousand or so for a portrait?’
‘Ah, when, indeed? But we may as well enjoy our day-dreams, like Alnaschar, without smashing our basket of crockery.’
And now Mary, who had managed to exist without the picture, was to have the original. He was to be all her own — her master, her lord, her love, after to-morrow — unto eternity, in life, and in the grave, and in the dim hereafter beyond the grave, they two were to be one. In heaven there was to be no marrying or giving in marriage, Mary was told; but her own heart cried aloud to her that the happily wedded must remain linked in heaven. God would not part the blessed souls of true lovers.
A short sleep, broken by happy dreams, and it was morning, Mary’s wedding morning, fairest of summer days, July in all her beauty. Mary went to her grandmother’s room, and waited upon her at breakfast.
Lady Maulevrie
r was in excellent spirits.
‘Everything is arranged, Mary. I have had a telegram from Hammond, who has got the licence, and will come at half-past one. At three the Vicar will come to marry you, his daughters, Katie and Laura, acting as your bridesmaids.’
‘Bridesmaids!’ exclaimed Mary. ‘I forgot all about bridesmaids. Am I really to have any?’
‘You will have two girls of your own age to bear you company, at any rate. I have asked dear old Horton to be present; and he, Fräulein, and Maulevrier will complete the party. It will not be a brilliant wedding, Mary, or a costly ceremonial, except for the licence.’
‘And poor Jack will have to pay for that,’ said Mary, with a long face.
‘Poor Jack refused to let me pay for it,’ answered Lady Maulevrier. ‘He is vastly independent, and I fear somewhat reckless.’
‘I like him for his independence; but he mustn’t be reckless,’ said Mary, severely.
He was to be the master in all things! and yet she was to exercise a restraining influence, she was to guard him against his own weaknesses, his too generous impulses. Her voice was to be the voice of prudence. This is how Mary understood the marriage tie.
Under ordinary conditions Mary would have been in the avenue, lying in wait for her lover, eager to get the very first glimpse of him when he arrived, to see him before he had brushed the dust of the journey from his raiment. But to-day she hung back. She stayed in her grandmother’s room and sat beside the sofa, shy, and even a little downcast. This lover who was so soon to be transformed into a husband was a formidable personage. She dare not rush forth to greet him. Perhaps he had changed his mind by this time, and was sorry he had ever asked her to marry him. Perhaps he thought he was being hustled into a marriage. He had been told that he was to wait at least a year. And now, all in a moment, he was sent off to get a special licence. How could she be quite sure that he liked this kind of treatment?
If there is any faith to be placed in the human countenance, Mr. Hammond was in no wise an unwilling bridegroom; for his face beamed with happy light as he came into the room presently, followed by an elderly man with grey hair and whiskers, and in a strictly professional frock coat, whom the butler announced as Mr. Dorncliffe. Lady Maulevrier looked startled, somewhat offended even at this intrusion, and she gave Mr. Dorncliffe a very haughty salutation, which was almost more crushing than no salutation at all.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 772