A Double Knot Part 59

"Honour bright, I wouldn't say a word for the world."

"Well, it's very shocking, you know, Elbraham, and I was quite astonished to hear her say it; but she is so innocent and girlish, and it came out so naturally that I forgave her."

"But what did she say?"

"Oh, dear child," she clapped her hands together with delight, and then covered her blus.h.i.+ng face and cried, "Oh, Lady Littletown, I wish it was to-morrow!"

"By Jingo!" exclaimed the financier to himself, "so do I!"

Everybody being in the same mind, the wedding was hurried on. The trousseau was of the most splendid character, and Marie entered into the spirit of the affair with such eagerness that the sisters forbore to quarrel.

Mr Montaigne came and went far more frequently, and seemed to bless his pupils in an almost apostolic fas.h.i.+on.

"I would give much," he said, with a gentle, pious look of longing, "to be able to perform the ceremony which joins two loving hearts."

But three eminent divines were to tie that knot, and even if Mr Paul Montaigne had been in holy orders according to the rites and ceremonies of the English Church, his services would not have been demanded, and he contented himself with smiling benignly and offering a few kindly words of advice.

Miss Dymc.o.x and the Honourable Isabella were rather at odds on the question of intimacy, and Captain Glen would have been religiously excluded from the precincts of Hampton Court Palace private apartments if the Honourable Philippa had had her way; but Lady Littletown took it as a matter of course that several of the officers of the barracks should be invited, to add _eclat_ to the proceedings, and as the Honourable Isabella sided with her, invitation-cards were sent, and, for reasons that Glen could not have explained to himself, were accepted.

"Yes, I'll go, if it's only to show her that I am not cast down. I'll go and see her married. I'll see her sell herself into slavery, and I hope she may never repent her step."

The next hour, though, he said he would not go, and he was about to keep to his determination, when d.i.c.k came in, and announced that he had received an invitation.

"You'll go, of course?"

"Go? No; why should I?"

"Just to show that you are a man of the world; no woman should fool me and make me seem like the chap in the song--'wasting in despair--die, because a woman's fair'--you know. Oh, I'd go."

Glen sat thinking for awhile.

"I wouldn't be cut up, you know."

"If I thought that she threw me over of her own free will, d.i.c.k, I would not care a sou; but I believe that wicked old hag, her aunt Philippa, has forced her into it."

"Then you need not care a sou."

"How do you know?"

"Marie told me she accepted Elbraham for his coin."

"Yes; she intimated as much to me."

"She did! When?"

"Oh, the other day--the last time I saw her--when I had been to the private apartments, you know."

"Oh yes. Ah, to be sure," said d.i.c.k, who seemed much relieved. "Oh, I'd go, dear boy; I would indeed."

"I will go," said Glen with energy; and on the appointed day he went.

Hampton Court had not seen a more brilliant wedding for years, and the preparations at the Honourable Misses Dymc.o.x's apartments so completely put Joseph off his head that he, the reputable young man who preached temperance to Buddy the flyman, and was carefully saving up all his money to add to the savings of Markes for the purpose of taking a lodging-house, was compelled to fly to stimulants to sustain him.

The very way in which the dining-room was "done up," as he called it, "with flowers and things" staggered him, and it seemed no wonder that the greeny stone basin in the middle court should sound quite noisy as the big squirt in the centre made more ambitious efforts than usual to mount the sky, and the old gold and silver fish stared more wonderingly as they sailed round and round.

But Joseph was not alone in being off his head and flying to stimulants; even cook was as bad, and was found by Markes standing at the door and talking to a soldier--the greatest treason in Markes' eyes that a woman could commit--and reprimanded thereon, with the consequence that cook rebounded like a spring, and struck the austere, temperate, unloving Markes.

It was no wonder, for the sacred department of cook had been invaded by strange men in white apparel to such an extent that from being angry she grew hysterical, and went to Markes, apologetic and meek, for comfort, vowing that she couldn't "abear" soldiers; but she was so humbled by the austere damsel that she turned to Joseph, who administered to her from the same cup as that wherefrom he obtained his relief.

The wearers of the white caps and jackets brought a _batterie de cuisine_, bombarded and captured the room set apart for cooking, and then and there proceeded to build up strange edifices of sugar, concoct soups, sweets, and all and sundry of those meats which are used to furnish forth a wedding feast.

The cases of wines that came in took away Joseph's breath, but he revived a little at the sight of the flowers, and shortly afterwards relapsed, staying in a peculiarly misty state of mind and a new suit of livery to the end of the proceedings, during which time he had a faint recollection of seeing the Honourable Philippa greatly excited and the Honourable Isabella very tremulous, as they went about in new dresses, made in the style worn by the late Queen Adelaide, making them both bear some resemblance to a couple of human sprigs of lavender, taken out, carefully preserved, from some old box, where they had been lying for the past half-century.

It was a very troublous time, and Joseph wished his head had been a little clearer than it was. Those wide-spreading Queen Adelaide bonnets and feathers seemed to dance before his eyes and to confuse him. So did the constantly arriving company; but, still, he recalled a great deal.

For instance, he had a lively recollection of the smell of his "bokay,"

as he called it; of the young ladies going to the service at the church and coming back in a carriage, behind which he stood with an enormous white favour and the bouquet in his breast, while some boys shouted "Hurray!" He remembered that, but it did not make him happy, for he could never settle it thoroughly in his own mind whether that "hurray"

was meant for him or for the bride.

That affair of the bride, too, troubled Joseph a good deal, and, but for the respect in which he held the family, or the awe in which he stood of the Honourable Philippa, he would have resented it strongly.

Certainly there were only two horses to the carriage behind which Joseph stood, but it was a particularly good carriage, hired from a London livery stables, with capital horses and a superior driver, who looked quite respectable in the hat and coat kept on purpose for Buddy the fly-driver, although he grumbled at having to put them on, as Buddy had been intoxicated upon the last occasion of his wearing them, and had somewhat taken off their bloom through going back to his stables and wearing them while he lay down in the straw for a nap.

Upon that occasion Joseph had seriously lectured Buddy upon the evils of intemperance.

"Look at me," he said; "I can drink a gla.s.s of ale without its hurting me."

"Well, the things ain't improved, suttenly," said Buddy in a repentant tone. Then scornfully: "But as to you and your slooshun of biled brewer's aperns that you calls ale, why, you might wet-nuss babies on it, and it wouldn't hurt 'em so long as you didn't do it when it's sour."

"But it's a very, very bad habit, Buddy," exclaimed Markes; "just look at that hat."

"Ah, you'll have worse jobs than that some of these days when you marries a sojer."

Mrs Markes bounced out in disgust.

"How she do hate to hear the soldiers mentioned, surely," chuckled Buddy. "Why, she can't abear 'em. But she needn't be so hard about a fellow getting a drop; it's a great comfort. She don't know what it is, and never got to that stage, Joe, when everything about you as you taste and touch and smell feels as if it was soft and nice, and as if you'd tumbled into a place as was nothing else but welwet."

The result was that Buddy's hat and coat were thoroughly taken in hand by Markes and furbished up, the overcoat having to be rubbed and turpentined and brushed till it was more in keeping with the style of a wedding garment, while the hat was 'gone over' with a sponge and flat-iron, to the production of a most unearthly gloss, anent which Buddy chaffed the new driver. But of course that was on account of jealousy, that he, the regular ladies' coachman, and his musty-smelling, jangling fly and meagrimed horse should be set aside upon an occasion when there would have been "a bite to get and a sup o' suthin' just to wash out a fellow's mouth," For Buddy had a laudable desire to keep his mouth clean by was.h.i.+ng it out; and he resented the insult to his dignity upon this occasion by going to the Mitre Tap, and was.h.i.+ng out his mouth till he was unable to take this clean mouth home.

As the Dymc.o.xes sported so das.h.i.+ng a turn-out, and Joseph handed in the bride and took her to church, what he wanted to know was why Elbraham should take her back in his four-horse chariot. Of course he would take her away in it afterwards; but according to Joseph's idea it would have been far more respectful to the Honourable Dymc.o.xes if Elbraham had come with his young wife in the hired carriage along with him.

This was a trouble to Joseph, which he objected to largely, wearing a soured and ill-used look on the way back from Hampton Church; and he was not a great deal better when, meeting Elbraham on the staircase, that gentleman slipped a five-pound note in his hand.

The bride looked very beautiful, and Joseph heard that she wore real lace, and it covered her nearly from top to toe. The white satin dress, too, was wonderfully stiff and good, while her bouquet, sent, with those for the bridesmaids, in so many neat wooden boxes from the central avenue of Covent Garden, was "quite a picter," so Joseph said.

But somehow it was all a muddle, and Joseph could make neither head nor tail of it. He felt as if he must seize and ring the dinner-bell, or carry in the form for prayers. For instance, there was that Lord Henry Moorpark there, and Captain Glen and Mr Richard Millet, who had tipped him over and over again, and ought to have married the ladies. They were there, and so was that tall, dark Major Malpas, who always "looked at him as if he had been a dorg; and lots more people crowding into the rooms, and a-eating and drinking and talking till the place was a regular bubble."

Joseph either meant Babel or a state of effervescence, both similes being applicable to the condition of the private apartments on the auspicious day, as it was called by Lord Henry, who played the part of "heavy father" in the genteel comedy in course of enactment.