THE WEDDING-DAY.
It was not a pleasant day in Grosvenor Square. When the Duke arrived in
his cab the door was opened to him by the humble person who had care of
the house while the family were out of town,--an old servant, to whom
this charge was a sort of pensioning off. She was very much fluttered,
and informed him in an undertone that Lady Jane had arrived a few
minutes before “with a gentleman.” “Her ladyship is in the library, your
Grace, and the gentleman with her,” the old woman said, curtseying and
trembling--for though Lady Jane’s garb was very simple for a bride,
still it was a white dress, and in the middle of winter it is well known
that ladies do not go about their ordinary business in such garments.
The Duke considered a moment and then decided that he would not see his
daughter till her companion was gone. He was tremulous with rage and
discomfiture, yet with the sense that vengeance was in his hands. This
feeling made him conclude that it was more wise not to see Winton, not
to run the risk of losing his temper or betraying his intentions, but to
remain on the watch till he withdrew, and in the meantime to arrange his
own plans. He told the old housekeeper to let him know when the
gentleman was gone, and in the meantime hurried up-stairs to his
daughter’s room, and examined it carefully. Lady Jane had two rooms
appropriated to her use, with a third communicating with them in which
her maid slept. This was a large area to put under lock and key, which
was her father’s determination: but in the ferment of his excited mind
and temper he felt no derogation in the half-stealthy examination he
made of the shut-up rooms, their windows and means of communication, the
locks on the door, and all the arrangements that would be necessary to
shut them off entirely from the rest of the house. With his own hands he
removed the keys, locking all the doors but one, and leaving the key on
the outside of that to shut off all entrance to the prison.
While he was thus occupied the pair so strangely severed stood together
in the library waiting for his appearance, and getting a certain bitter
sweetness out of the last hour they were to spend together. They were
not aware that it was, in any serious sense of the words, their last
hour. “Till to-morrow” was the limit they gave themselves. To-morrow no
further interruption would be possible, the incomplete service would be
resumed, and all would be well. Even the Duke, unreasonable as he might
be, would not think it practicable, when in his sober senses, to
endeavour to sunder those who had been almost put together in the
presence of God. They believed, notwithstanding the tantalising misery
of this interruption, that it could not be but for a few hours; and
though Winton’s impatience and indignation were at first almost frenzy,
Lady Jane recovered her courage before they reached the house, and did
her best to soothe him. She drew good even out of the evil. To-morrow
all would be completed in her father’s presence. When once convinced
that matters had gone too far to be arrested, how could he refuse to
lend his sanction to what must be, whether with his sanction or not?
She pleased herself with this solution of all their difficulties. “My
mother will come, I am sure,” she said, “as soon as the train can bring
her. I shall have her with me, which will be far, far better than Lady
Germaine, and there will be no further need of concealment, which is
odious, is it not, Reginald? There is a soul of goodness in things
evil,” she said. As for Winton, he was past speaking: the
disappointment, and those passions that rage in the male bosom, were too
much for him--fury and indignation, and pride in arms, and the sense of
defeat, which was intolerable. But he permitted himself to be subdued,
to yield to her who had put so much force upon herself, and conquered so
many natural repugnances and womanly traditions for him. Lady Jane would
not even let it appear that she felt the shame of being thus dragged
back to her father’s house. “To-morrow,” she said, “to-morrow,” with a
thousand tender smiles. When it became apparent that the Duke did not
mean to make an appearance, she turned that to their advantage with
soothing sophistry. “He has nothing to say now,” she cried, “don’t you
see, Reginald? You cannot expect him to come and offer us his consent;
if he withdraws his opposition, that is all we can desire. Had he meant
to persevere, he would have come to us at once, and ordered you away,
and made another struggle. That is what I have been fearing. And now in
return for his forbearance you must go. Oh, do you think I wish you to
go? but it is best, it will be most honourable. What could be done in
the circumstances but that you should bring me home? Yes, till your
house is mine this is still home--till to-morrow,” she cried, smiling
upon him. Winton paced up and down the gloomy closed-up room in an
agony of uncertainty, bewilderment, and dismay.
“My home _is_ yours!” he cried; “and what sort of place is this to bring
you to, my darling, without a soul to take care of you or look after
your comfort, without a fire even, or a servant:--on this day! It is
intolerable! And how, how can I go and leave you, on our wedding-day? It
is more than flesh and blood can bear. Jane, I have a foreboding; I
can’t be hopeful like you. If you submitted to the force of
circumstances in that wretched church, there is no force of any kind
here. Don’t send me away; come with me, my love, my dearest. The way is
clear, there is nothing but that old woman----”
“There is our honour,” said Lady Jane. “I pledged it to my father. And
if I went with you, it would only be to separate again. Surely I am
better at home than at Lady Germaine’s:--till to-morrow--till
to-morrow,” she repeated softly. The library was next the door, it was
close to the open street, the free air out-of-doors. The temptation,
though she rejected it, was great upon Lady Jane too. There was a moment
in which, though she did not allow it, she wavered. The next moment,
with more fortitude than ever, she recovered the mastery of herself. It
was she at last who, tenderly persuading and beseeching, induced him to
go away. She went to the door with him and almost put him out with
loving force. “You will come back for me to-morrow--to-morrow! it is not
long till to-morrow,” she said, waving her hand to her distracted
bridegroom as he hurried away. It was well that there was nobody in
town--nobody in Grosvenor Square--except a passing milk-boy, to see the
Duke’s daughter standing in the doorway like the simplest maiden, in her
white dress, a wonderful vision for a murky London day, taking farewell
of her love. She closed the door after him with her own hand, while poor
old Mrs Brown, in such a flutter as she had never before experienced in
her life, came bobbing out from the corner in which she had been keeping
watch. “Oh, my lady! my lady!” the old woman said. She had scarcely been
high enough up in the hierarchy of service below-stairs to have come to
speech of Lady Jane at all, and now to think that she was all the
attendance possible for that princess royal! Lady Jane, it may be
supposed, was in no light-hearted mood, but she stopped with a smile to
reassure the old servant.
“Nurse Mordaunt is with me,” she said; “she will, no doubt, be here
directly, Mrs Brown. You must not vex yourself about me. It will only be
till to-morrow. If you will have a fire lighted in my room, I will go
there.
“Yes, my lady; oh, my lady! but I’m afraid there’s some sad trouble,”
said the old housekeeper.
Lady Jane was far too high-bred to reject this sympathy, but it was
almost more than in her valour she could bear. Her eyes filled in spite
of herself. “It is only an extraordinary accident,” she said. “But
Mordaunt will tell you when she comes.” She was glad to escape into the
library that she might not break down. Turning round to re-enter alone
that huge, cold, uninhabited place, her mind was seized with a spasm of
terror. The blinds were drawn down, the fireplace was cold, it was like
a room out of which the dead had been newly carried, not a place to
receive a woman in the most living moment of life--on her wedding-day!
She had borne herself very bravely as long as her lover was
there--almost too bravely, trying to make him believe that it was
nothing, that she had scarcely any feeling on the subject. But when she
saw him go, the clouds and darkness closed in upon Lady Jane, her lips
quivered sadly as she spoke to Mrs Brown. When she was alone, her
swelling heart and throbbing forehead were relieved by a sudden passion
of tears. Would it be nothing as she had made believe? or was it a
parting, an ending, a severance from Reginald and hope? A black moment
passed over her--blacker than anything that Winton felt, as, distracted
and furious, burning with intentions of vengeance, and a sense of injury
in which there was some relief from the misery of the situation, he
hurried along towards the Germaines’ house. There, at least, he could
plan and arrange, and talk out his fury and wretchedness. But Lady Jane
had no such solace. When she had yielded to that bitter _accès_ of
tears, and felt herself pass under the cloud, she had to gather herself
together again all unaided, and recover her composure as best she could.
That sensation of overwhelming cold which so often accompanies a mental
crisis made her shiver. She drew her cloak closely round her, and went
slowly up-stairs through the hollow silence of the great house, pausing
now and then to take breath in her nervous exhaustion, and looking
anxiously for the appearance of her father. Did he not mean to come to
her at all? Lady Jane had no idea that she was going with all those
hesitations and pauses straight into a prison. Such a thought had never
occurred to her. She believed still in reason and loving-kindness and
truth. Her father, when he saw it impossible, would after all yield, she
thought. Her mother would come to succour her in this extraordinary
emergency. “There is a soul of goodness in things evil,” she murmured
again to herself, but not so bravely as she had said it to her lover.
The house was so cold, such an echoing solitude, no living thing
visible, and she alone in it, left to wear through the weary hours as
she could--on her wedding-day!
Thus with tired and lingering steps, and despondency taking possession
of her soul, Lady Jane went softly up-stairs, longing to divest herself
of her wedding-gown and hide her humiliation, looking vainly for her
father, whose appearance in this wilderness, even if it were only to
upbraid and denounce her, would still have had a certain consolation in
it. The Duke, unseen, watched her progress with a vindictive pleasure in
the downcast air and slow, languid step. He watched her to her very door
with an eagerness not to be described. At the last moment she might turn
round, she might still leave the house, she might escape. In no case
could he have used violence to his daughter. To level thunderbolts of
speech was one thing, to use force was quite another. To lift his hand
was impossible. If she turned round and fled down the stairs and out at
the door, she must do so: there was no way in which he could stop her:
if any third person were present, even Mrs Brown, he would be obliged to
keep a watch upon himself, to demand no more obedience than she would
give, to treat her as a reasonable being. All this the Duke felt,
spying upon her steps as she went slowly up, following her, his
footsteps falling noiselessly on the thick carpets. He heard her sigh,
but this made no difference. To any one else this sigh of the widowed
bride, alone in this dismal empty house on the day that was to have
been, that almost was, her wedding-day, would have contained something
touching. But it did not touch the Duke. He followed at a distance,
keeping out of sight, determined to give her no opportunity to appeal to
him. When he heard her door close, a certain glow of satisfaction came
over his face. He went forward quickly, and turned the key in the lock
and put it in his pocket. He heard her moving about in the room, and he
could hear that she stopped short at the noise and stood listening to
know what it was. But all was quiet again, and Lady Jane suspected
nothing. She had begun to look in her wardrobe for something to put on
instead of her white dress. She thought it was some jar of one of the
doors as she opened them. And he stole down-stairs again, unnoticed and
unobserved. Who was there to notice him? no one in the house, except his
daughter locked into the room, and Mrs Brown with her little niece
down-stairs. The Duke withdrew into the library, where he had sat and
pondered for many a day, but never as now. The old housekeeper had
bestirred herself and had lighted a fire and set out a table with two
places for luncheon. She at least could do her duty if no one else did.
Mrs Brown, indeed, felt as a neglected general has often done when the
moment arrived in which he could distinguish himself. She had never had
this opportunity. Now, at last, in the end of her life it had come to
her. His Grace, who was so particular, should for once in his life know
what it was to eat a chop, an English chop, in its perfection. She had
sent out her handmaiden to fetch them, and lit the fire herself in her
devotion. This is an extent of enthusiasm to which few people would go.
And Lady Jane, sweet creature, who was evidently in trouble somehow with
her papa, who had sent that nice young gentleman off as fast as ever she
could, that the Duke and he might not meet, poor thing! what would be so
good for her as a chop? The old housekeeper betook herself to her work
with the warmest sense at once of benevolence and of power--power to
ameliorate and soften the hardness of destiny, and to win fame and
honour to herself. What enterprise could have a finer motive? Of the
three people in the house, she was the happy one, as happens not
unfrequently among all the twists and entanglements of fate.
Before, however, Mrs Brown had begun to cook her chops, Nurse Mordaunt,
Lady Jane’s devoted attendant since her childhood, arrived in much
anxiety and distress. Nurse had been detained by various matters, by
Lady Germaine, and by the delay in getting her ladyship’s things, which
had been left that morning at Lady Germaine’s house. With a heavy heart
nurse had effaced the direction of Lady Jane Winton from the box. She
had never herself approved of such a marriage any more than the Duke
did. It injured her pride sadly to think of “My Lady” marrying a
commoner at all, and marrying him secretly at a poky little church in
the city! But that she should be married and not married, half a wife,
“dragged from the altar,” was something which no one could contemplate
with calmness. Nurse was more shamed, distracted, broken-hearted than
any of the party. “Oh, don’t ask me,” she answered, shaking her head,
when Mrs Brown humbly, with every respect, begged to know what had
happened. “It is as bad as a revolution--it’s worse than the Chartists;
even Radicals respect the marriage vow,” nurse cried in her dismay. “I
don’t approve of it, and never did, and never will. Up to the church
door I’d have done anything to stop it. But bless us! if you don’t keep
the altar sacred, what have you got to trust to?” She caused the boxes
to be brought into the hall with their erased addresses. There was
nobody to carry them anywhere,--none of the attendance about to which
Mrs Mordaunt was accustomed. “Fetch one of the men,” she had said at
first, but then she remembered there was no man in Grosvenor Square at
this time of the year. “Drat it! as if things were not bad enough
already; no servants, no comfort, nobody but Mrs Brown to look to
everything!” Mrs Mordaunt was too much broken down to go to her young
lady at once. She condescended to go into the kitchen, where it was at
least warm, to eat one of the chops and to rest a little before she went
up-stairs. And her arrival was scarcely over before it was followed by
another more urgent and important. The old housekeeper almost fainted
when, opening the door in answer to the impatient summons of another
arrival, she saw the Duchess herself get out of a hackney-cab. “Bless
us!” the old woman cried; if the Queen had come next she could not have
been more surprised.
The Duchess, it need not be said, was in the secret of all those
arrangements which were to make Lady Jane into Reginald Winton’s wife.
She had a cold that day, partly real, partly no doubt emotional, but
enough to make her keep her room in the morning, leaving her guests to
the care of her sister, who was at Billings on a visit. She got up, as
may be supposed, with a great deal of agitation from her broken rest,
thinking of her Jane, how she would be preparing for her marriage, with
nobody but Lady Germaine to comfort and support her. Lady Germaine was
very kind: she had taken charge of the whole business; she and her
husband had gone to town on purpose to facilitate everything; but still
it was dreadful to the Duchess to think that her child should have no
one but Lady Germaine to lean upon at such a moment of her life. In her
own room, in the stillness of the morning, the thoughts of the mother
were bent upon this subject, which she went over and over, thinking of
everything. She figured to herself how her child would wake, and
realise what a fateful morning it was, and wish for her mother. How she
would say her prayers with all the fervour of such a crisis, and linger
upon the contemplation of the past, and the sweet but awful thought of
the future. Though her husband and his reign were so near, Jane would
think of her home, of the parents who loved her, and shed some tears to
think that the most momentous act of her life was taking place away from
them, in opposition to one of them. The Duchess, who was very much
overcome, at once by what she knew and what she did not know, by
imagination and by fact, shed more tears herself at this point, and she
had to dry them hastily to look up with an unconcerned face when her
maid came into the room bringing a piece of news which in a moment
startled her into activity and alarm. The Duke had gone suddenly off to
town by the early train. After he had read his letters he had seemed
agitated, but said nothing to Bowles (who was his Grace’s valet) except
that business called him to town. And he had been gone an hour when the
news was brought to his wife. The reader may suppose how short a time
elapsed before the anxious mother followed him. She went out quietly in
a close carriage, nobody knowing, and got the next train, arriving in
London two hours later than that by which her husband had travelled. He
was sitting down with a little shrug of his shoulders, but not without
appetite, to Mrs Brown’s chops, when she drove up to the door, and
suddenly came in upon him, pale and full of anguish. Her eye ran round
the room questioning before she said a word:--then she loosened her
cloak and sat down upon the nearest seat with a sigh of relief.
“What have you done with Jane?” she was about to say: but then it
appeared to her that Jane must have escaped, that everything was
accomplished. She could have wept or laughed in the extreme blessedness
of this relief, but she dared not do either. She looked at him instead,
as he sat looking suspiciously at her. “It made me very anxious to hear
of your going,” she said. “I feared something might be wrong. I am going
back directly, and nobody knows I am out of my room: but I felt that I
must hear----”
“What?” he asked with watchful suspicion; it was a terrible ordeal to go
through. The Duchess did all a woman could to take the meaning out of
her own face and put upon it an aspect of affectionate concern alone. “I
did not know what to think,” she said; “I was very anxious: but it
cannot be anything very bad, I hope, since I find you----” How hard it
is to say what is not the truth! While she uttered these commonplace
words her eyes were watching him, keenly questioning everything about
him. At last her heart seemed to stand still. She perceived the two
covers laid on the table. “You have some one with you,” she said, with a
catching of her breath.
He looked at her still more keenly. “I have Jane with me,” he said.
“Jane!” It was all her mother could do not to break down altogether, and
show her anguish and disappointment in passionate tears; but her heart
was leaping in her throat, and she could not speak.
“That is to say,” he added slowly, with unspeakable enjoyment in the
sense of having got the better of the women altogether, and holding them
in his hand, “she is in the house. I arrived in time to save her from
becoming the victim--of a villain. I shall keep her safe now I have got
her,” the Duke said, with an ineffable flourish of his hand.
“The victim--of a villain? What do you mean by such words? They sound as
if you had got them out of a novel,” the Duchess said; but her heart was
beating so that she could scarcely hear herself speak.
“Then you knew nothing about it?” said her husband calmly.
The Duchess got up from her seat. She was too much agitated to be able
to keep still. “I knew, if that is what you mean, that she was to
marry--the man she loved--to-day. What have you done? Have you parted
your own child from her happiness and her life?”
He rose too. He had kept up his calm demeanour as long as he could. Now
his rage got the better of him. “So you were in the plot!” he cried,
“you! I felt it, and yet I could not believe it. You who ought to have
been the first to carry out my will and respect my decision.”
“Augustus,” said his wife, very pale, standing up before him, her hand
upon the back of a tall chair, her head erect, “this must not go too
far. Jane has not one but two parents, and she has always had her
mother’s sanction. You are aware of that.”
“Her mother’s sanction!” cried the Duke, with a tremendous laugh of
passion. “That is a mighty advantage, truly. Her mother! what has her
mother to do with it? Nothing! These are pretty heroics, and do very
nicely to say to the ignorant; but you know very well that, save as my
agent, you have no more to do with Jane or her marriage--no more----”
“It may be so in law,” said the Duchess, recovering her composure, “but
it is certainly not so in nature; nor have I ever considered myself your
agent, in respect to my child. I have yielded to you in a hundred
ways--and so much the worse for you that I have done so; but, as regards
Jane, I have never thought it my duty to yield--and never will; such a
suggestion is intolerable,” she said, with a touch of feminine passion.
“My right and my authority are the same as yours--neither of them
absolute--for she is old enough to judge for herself.”
“Ah, poor girl!” he said, with a knowledge that it was the most
irritating thing he could say, and at the same time a coarse sort of
pleasure in insulting the women, though they were so near to him; “that
is at the bottom of everything. You made her believe it was her last
chance. She was determined anyhow to have a husband.”
The Duchess grew scarlet, but she was sufficiently enlightened by
experience to restrain the angry reply that almost forced its way from
her lips. She looked at him with a silent indignation not unmingled with
pity, then turned her head away. Poor Mrs Brown! Her chops, that had
been so good, so hot, stood neglected on the table. Her opportunity was
over. It was no fault of hers that she had not distinguished herself. So
many another disappointed genius has done its best, and some accident
has stepped in and balked its highest effort. Had the Duchess delayed
but half an hour, his Grace, after so much French cookery, would have
experienced the wholesome pleasure of at least one British chop, and
probably in consequence would have promoted Mrs Brown to a post near his
person. But it was not to be. There was no luncheon eaten that day in
Grosvenor Square. The discussion was prolonged for some time, and then
the Duchess was heard to go hastily up-stairs. She went to her
daughter’s room with tears of hot passion in her eyes and an intolerable
pang in her heart, and knocking softly, called to Jane with a voice
which she could scarcely keep from breaking. “My darling!” she cried,
“my sweet, my own girl!” with something heartrending in her accents. All
had been still before; but now there was a stir in reply.
“Oh, mother dear, come in, come in! How I have longed for you!” Lady
Jane cried; and then there was a little pause of expectation, breathless
with a strange suspicion on one side, and such miserable humiliation and
anguish on the other, as can scarcely be put into words.
“I cannot come in, my dear love. Oh, my darling, you must be patient. I
must go back directly to all those people in the house. You know it
would never do----” Here the Duchess, unable to keep up the farce, began
all at once to cry and sob piteously outside the door.
Lady Jane, fully roused, hurried to it and turned the handle vainly, and
shook the heavy door. “I cannot open it,” she cried wildly. “Mother,
mother! what does this mean? Cannot you come in? What can take you away
from me when I want you--the people in the house? Oh, mother, I want
you, I want you!” she cried as she had never done in her life before.
And then there was such a scene as might be put into a comedy and made
very ridiculous, and which yet was very heartrending as it happened, and
overpowered these two women with a consternation, a sense of
helplessness, a bitter perception of the small account they were of,
which paralysed their very souls--not only that he had the power to do
it, but also the heart: he with whom they had lived in the closest ties,
whom they had loved and served, for whom they had been ready to do all
that he pleased, one for the greater part of her life, the other since
ever she had been born. What did it matter, any one would have said, the
power such a man had over his wife and his daughter? He would never use
it to make them unhappy. But there are capabilities of human misery in
families which no one can fathom, which may seem to make it doubtful by
moments how far the family relation is so blessed as it is thought to
be. The Duke felt that now, for the first time, he had these women under
his thumb, so to speak. He had them so bound that they could not resist,
could not move, could not even call for help from any one without
betraying the secrets of the family. He kept possession of his library,
and, with the key in his pocket, had a moment of triumph. They had
united against him; but now they should feel his power.