Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “What a horribly dismal morning!” Miss Dunbar exclaimed. “Did you ever see anything like it, Elizabeth?”

  Mrs. Madden was bustling about, arranging her young mistress’s breakfast upon a little table near the blazing fire. Laura had just emerged from her bath room, and had put on a loose dressing-gown of wadded blue silk, prior to the grand ceremonial of the wedding toilet, which was not to take place until after breakfast.

  I think Miss Dunbar looked lovelier in this déshabille than many a bride in her lace and orange-blossoms. The girl’s long golden hair, wet from the bath, hung in rippling confusion about her fresh young face. Two little feet, carelessly thrust into blue morocco slippers, peeped out from amongst the folds of Miss Dunbar’s dressing-gown, and one coquettish scarlet heel tapped impatiently upon the floor as the young lady watched that provoking rain.

  “What a wretched morning!” she said.

  “Well, Miss Laura, it is rather wet,” replied Mrs. Madden, in a conciliating tone.

  “Rather wet!” echoed Laura, with an air of vexation; “I should think it was rather wet, indeed. It’s miserably wet; it’s horribly wet. To think that the frost should have lasted very nearly three weeks, and then must needs break up on my wedding morning. Did ever anybody know anything so provoking?”

  “Lor’, Miss Laura,” rejoined the sympathetic Madden, “there’s all manner of provoking things allus happenin’ in this blessed, wicked, rampagious world of ours; only such young ladies as you don’t often come across ‘em. Talk of being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, Miss Laura; I do think as you must have come into this mortal spear with a whole service of gold plate. And don’t you fret your precious heart, my blessed Miss Laura, if the rain is contrairy. I dare say the clerk of the weather is one of them rampagin’ radicals that’s allus a goin’ on about the bloated aristocracy, and he’s done it a purpose to aggeravate you. But what’s a little rain more or less to you, Miss Laura, when you’ve got more carriages to ride in than if you was a princess in a fairy tale, which I think the Princess Baltroubadore, or whatever her hard name was, in the story of Aladdin, must have had no carriage whatever, or she wouldn’t have gone walkin’ to the baths. Never you mind the rain, Miss Laura.”

  “But it’s a bad omen, isn’t it, Elizabeth?” asked Laura Dunbar. “I seem to remember some old rhyme about the bride that the sun shines on, and the bride that the rain rains on.”

  “Laws, Miss Laura, you don’t mean to say as you’d bemean yourself by taking any heed of such low rubbish as that?” exclaimed Mrs. Madden; “why, such stupid rhymes as them are only made for vulgar people that have the banns put up in the parish church. A deal it matters to such as you, Miss Laura, if all the cats and dogs as ever was come down out of the heavens this blessed day.”

  But though honest-hearted Elizabeth Madden did her best to comfort her young mistress after her own simple fashion, she was not herself altogether satisfied.

  The low, brooding sky, the dark and murky atmosphere, and that monotonous rain would have gone far to depress the spirits of the gayest reveller in all the universe.

  In spite of ourselves, we are the slaves of atmospheric influences; and we cannot feel very light-hearted or happy upon black wintry days, when the lowering heavens seem to frown upon our hopes; when, in the darkening of the earthly prospect, we fancy that we see a shadowy curtain closing round an unknown future.

  Laura felt something of this; for she said, by-and-by, half impatiently, half mournfully, —

  “What is the matter with me, Elizabeth. Has all the world changed since yesterday? When I drove home with papa, after the races yesterday, everything upon earth seemed so bright and beautiful. Such an overpowering sense of joy was in my heart, that I could scarcely believe it was winter, and that it was only the fading November sunshine that lit up the sky. All my future life seemed spread before me, like an endless series of beautiful pictures — pictures in which I could see Philip and myself, always together, always happy. To-day, to-day, oh! how different everything is!” exclaimed Laura, with a little shudder. “The sky that shuts in the lawn yonder seems to shut in my life with it. I can’t look forward. If I was going to be parted from Philip to-day, instead of married to him, I don’t think I could feel more miserable than I feel now. Why is it, Elizabeth, dear?”

  “My goodness gracious me!” cried Mrs. Madden, “how should I tell, my precious pet? You talk just like a poetry-book, and how can I answer you unless I was another poetry-book? Come and have your breakfast, do, that’s a dear sweet love, and try a new-laid egg. New-laid eggs is good for the spirits, my poppet.”

  Laura Dunbar seated herself in the comfortable arm-chair between the fireplace and the little breakfast-table. She made a sort of pretence at eating, just to please her old nurse, who fidgeted about the room; now stopping by Laura’s chair, and urging her to take this, that, or the other; now running to the dressing-table to make some new arrangement about the all-important wedding-toilet; now looking out of the window and perjuring her simple soul by declaring that “it” — namely, the winter sky — was going to clear up.

  “It’s breaking up above the elms yonder, Miss Laura,” Elizabeth said; “there’s a bit of blue peepin’ through the clouds; leastways, if it ain’t quite blue, it’s a much lighter black than the rest of the sky, and that’s something. Eat a bit of Perrigorge pie, or a thin wafer of a slice off that Strasbog ‘am, Miss Laura, do now. You’ll be ready to drop with feelin’ faint when you get to the altar-rails, if you persist on bein’ married on a empty stummick, Miss Laura. It’s a moriel impossible as you can look your best, my precious love, if you enter the church in a state of starvation, just like one of them respectable beggars wot pins a piece of paper on their weskits with ‘I AM HUNGRY’ wrote upon it in large hand, and stands at the foot of one of the bridges on the Surrey side of the water. And I shouldn’t think as you would wish to look like that, Miss Laura, on your wedding-day? I shouldn’t if I was goin’ to be own wife to a baronet!”

  Laura Dunbar took very little notice of her nurse’s rambling discourse; and I am fain to confess that, upon this occasion, Mrs. Madden talked rather more for the sake of talking than from any overflow of animal spirits.

  The good creature felt the influence of the cold, wet, cheerless morning quite as keenly as her mistress. Mrs. Madden was superstitious, as most ignorant and simple-minded people generally are, more or less. Superstition is, after all, only a dim, unconscious poetry, which is latent in most natures, except in such very hard practical minds as are incapable of believing in anything — not even in Heaven itself.

  Dora Macmahon came in presently, looking very pretty in blue silk and white lace. She looked very happy, in spite of the bad weather, and Miss Dunbar suffered herself to be comforted by her half-sister. The two girls sat at the table by the fire, and breakfasted, or pretended to breakfast, together. Who could really attend to the common business of eating and drinking on such a day as this?

  “I’ve just been to see Lizzie and Ellen,” Dora said, presently; “they wouldn’t come in here till they were dressed, and they’ve had their hair screwed up in hair-pins all night to make it wave, and now it’s a wet day their hair won’t wave after all, and their maid’s going to pinch it with the fire-irons — the tongs, I suppose.”

  Miss Macmahon had brown hair, with a natural ripple in it, and could afford to laugh at beauty that was obliged to adorn itself by means of hair-pins and tongs.

  Lizzie and Ellen were the daughters of a Major Melville, and the special friends of Miss Dunbar. They had come to Maudesley to act as her bridesmaids, according to that favourite promise which young ladies so often make to each other, and so very often break.

  Laura did not appear to take much interest in the Miss Melvilles’ hair. She was very meditative about something; but her meditations must have been of a pleasant nature, for there was a smile upon her face.

  “Dora,” she said, by-and-by, “do you know I’ve been thinking about something
?”

  “About what, dear?”

  “Don’t you know that old saying about one wedding making many?”

  Dora Macmahon blushed.

  “What of that, Laura dear?” she asked, very innocently.

  “I’ve been thinking that perhaps another wedding may follow mine. Oh, Dora, I can’t help saying it, I should be so happy if Arthur Lovell and you were to marry.”

  Miss Macmahon blushed a much deeper red than before.

  “Oh, Laura,” she said, “that’s quite impossible.”

  But Miss Dunbar shook her head.

  “I shall live in the hope of it, notwithstanding,” she said. “I love Arthur almost as much — or perhaps quite as much, as if he were my brother — so it isn’t strange that I should wish to see him married to my sister.”

  The two girls might have sat talking for some time longer, but they were interrupted by Miss Dunbar’s old nurse, who never for a moment lost sight of the serious business of the day.

  “It’s all very well for you to sit there jabber, jabber, jabber, Miss Dora,” exclaimed the unceremonious Elizabeth; “you’re dressed, all but your bonnet. You’ve only just to pop that on, and there you are. But my young lady isn’t half dressed yet. And now, come along, Miss Laura, and have your hair done, if you mean to have any back-hair at all to-day. It’s past nine o’clock, and you’re to be at the church at eleven.”

  “And papa is to give me away!” murmured Laura, in a low voice, as she seated herself before the dressing-table. “I wish he loved me better.”

  “Perhaps, if he loved you too well, he’d keep you, instead of giving you away, Miss Laura,” observed Mrs. Madden, with evident enjoyment of her own wit; “and I don’t suppose you’d care about that, would you, miss? Hold your head still, that’s a precious darling, and don’t you trouble yourself about anything except looking your very best this day.”

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  THE UNBIDDEN GUEST WHO CAME TO LAURA DUNBAR’S WEDDING.

  The wedding was to take place in Lisford church — that pretty, quaint, old church of which I have already spoken.

  The wandering Avon flowed through this rustic churchyard, along a winding channel fringed by tall, trembling rushes. There was a wooden bridge across the river, and there were two opposite entrances to the churchyard. Pedestrians who chose the shortest route between Lisford and Shorncliffe went in at one gate and out at another, which opened on to the high-road.

  The worthy inhabitants of Lisford were almost as much distressed by the unpromising aspect of the sky as Laura Dunbar and her faithful nurse themselves. New bonnets had been specially prepared for this festive occasion. Chrysanthemums and dahlias, gay-looking China-asters, and all the lingering flowers that light up the early winter landscape, had been collected to strew the pathway beneath the bride’s pretty feet. All the brightest evergreens in the Lisford gardens had been gathered as a fitting sacrifice for the “young lady from the Abbey.”

  Laura Dunbar’s frank good-nature and reckless generosity were well remembered upon this occasion; and every creature in Lisford was bent upon doing her honour.

  But this aggravating rain balked everybody. What was the use of throwing wet dahlias and flabby chrysanthemums into the puddles through which the bride must tread, heiress though she was? How miserable would be the aspect of two rows of damp charity children, with red noses and no pocket-handkerchiefs! The rector himself had a cold in his head, and would be obliged to omit all the n’s and m’s in the marriage service.

  In short, everybody felt that the Abbey wedding was destined to be more or less a failure. It seemed very hard that the chief partner in the firm of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby could not, with all his wealth, buy a little glimmer of sunshine to light up his daughter’s wedding. It grew so dark and foggy towards eleven o’clock, that a dozen or so of wax-candles were hastily stuck about the neighbourhood of the altar, in order that the bride and bridegroom might be able, each of them, to see the person that he or she was taking for better or worse.

  Yes, the dismal weather made everything dismal in unison with itself. A wet wedding is like a wet pic-nic. The most heroic nature gives way before its utter desolation; the wit of the party forgets his best anecdote; the funny man breaks down in the climactic verse of his great buffo song; there is no brightness in the eyes of the beauty; there is neither sparkle nor flavour in the champagne, though the grapes thereof have been grown in the vineyards of Widow Cliquot herself.

  There are some things that are more powerful than emperors, and the atmosphere is one of them. Alexander might conquer nations in very sport; but I question whether he could have resisted the influence of a wet day.

  Of all the people who were to assist at Sir Philip Jocelyn’s wedding, perhaps the father of the bride was the person who seemed least affected by that drizzling rain, that hopelessly-black sky.

  If Henry Dunbar was grave and silent to-day, why that was nothing new: for he was always grave and silent. If the banker’s manner was stern and moody to-day, that stern moodiness was habitual to him: and there was no need to blame the murky heavens for any change in his temper. He sat by the broad fireplace watching the burning coals, and waiting until he should be summoned to take his place by his daughter’s side in the carriage that was to convey them both to Lisford church; and he did not utter one word of complaint about that aggravating weather.

  He looked very handsome, very aristocratic, with his grey moustache carefully trimmed, and a white camellia in his button-hole. Nevertheless, when he came out into the hall by-and-by, with a set smile upon his face, like a man who is going to act a part in a play, Laura Dunbar recoiled from him with an involuntary shiver, as she had done upon the day of her first meeting with him in Portland Place.

  But he offered her his hand, and she laid the tips of her fingers in his broad palm, and went with him to the carriage. “Ask God to bless me upon this day, papa,” the girl said, in a low, tender voice, as these two people took their places side by side in the roomy chariot.

  Laura Dunbar laid her hand caressingly upon the banker’s shoulder as she spoke. It was not a time for reticence; it was not an occasion upon which to be put off by any girlish fear of this stern, silent man.

  “Ask God to bless me, father dearest,” the soft, tremulous voice pleaded, “for the sake of my dead mother.”

  She tried to see his face: but she could not. His head was turned away, and he was busy making some alteration in the adjustment of the carriage-window. The chariot had cost nearly three hundred pounds, and was very well built: but there was something wrong about the window nevertheless, if one might judge by the difficulty which Mr. Dunbar had, in settling it to his satisfaction.

  He spoke presently, in a very earnest voice, but with his head still turned away from Laura.

  “I hope God will bless you, my dear,” he said; “and that He will have pity upon your enemies.”

  This last wish was more Christianlike than natural; since fathers do not usually implore compassion for the enemies of their children.

  But Laura Dunbar did not trouble herself to think about this. She only knew that her father had called down Heaven’s blessing upon her; and that his manner had betrayed such agitation as could, of course, only spring from one cause, namely, his affection for his daughter.

  She threw herself into his arms with a radiant smile, and putting up her hands, drew his face round, and pressed her lips to his.

  But, as on the day in Portland Place, a chill crept through her veins, as she felt the deadly coldness of her father’s hands lifted to push her gently from him.

  It is a common thing for Anglo-Indians to be quiet and reserved in their manners, and strongly adverse to all demonstrations of this kind. Laura remembered this, and made excuses to herself for her father’s coldness.

  The rain was still falling as the carriage stopped at the churchyard. There were only three carriages in this brief bridal train, for Mr. Dunbar had insisted that there should be no grande
ur, no display.

  The two Miss Melvilles, Dora Macmahon, and Arthur Lovell rode in the same carriage. Major Melville’s daughters looked very pale and cold in their white-and-blue dresses, and the north-easter had tweaked their noses, which were rather sharp and pointed in style. They would have looked pretty enough, poor girls, had the wedding taken place in summer-time; but they had not that splendid exceptional beauty which can defy all changes of temperature, and which is alike glorious, whether clad in abject rags or robed in velvet and ermine.

  The carriages reached the little gate of Lisford churchyard; Philip Jocelyn came out of the porch, and down the narrow pathway leading to the gate.

  The drizzling rain descended on him, though he was a baronet, and though he came bareheaded to receive his bride.

  I think the Lisford beadle, who was a sound Tory of the old school, almost wondered that the heavens themselves should be audacious enough to wet the uncovered head of the lord of Jocelyn’s Rock.

  But it went on raining, nevertheless.

  “Times has changed, sir,” said the beadle, to an idle-looking stranger who was standing near him. “I have read in a history of Warwickshire, that when Algernon Jocelyn was married to Dame Margery Milward, widow to Sir Stephen Milward, knight, in Charles the First’s time, there was a cloth-of-gold canopy from the gate yonder to this porch here, and two moving turrets of basket-work, each of ’em drawn by four horses, and filled with forty poor children, crowned with roses, lookin’ out of the turret winders, and scatterin’ scented waters on the crowd; and there was a banquet, sir, served up at noon that day at Jocelyn’s Rock, with six peacocks brought to table with their tails spread; and a pie, served in a gold dish, with live doves in it, every feather of ’em steeped in the rarest perfume, which they was intended to sprinkle over the company as they flew about here and there. But — would you believe in such a radical spirit pervadin’ the animal creation? — every one of them doves flew straight out of the winder, and went and scattered their perfumes on the poor folks outside. There’s no such weddin’s as that nowadays, sir,” said the old beadle, with a groan. “As I often say to my old missus, I don’t believe as ever England has held up its head since the day when Charles the Martyr lost his’n.”