The sound of her mother's voice woke her for the second time.
"My dear child, do you know it's half past ten? I really thought I'd
better wake you to have some breakfast."
She was followed by a maid carrying a tray, and as Jessica pushed
back her hair, rubbed her eyes and sat up, Mrs. Deane took the tray,
put it on a table and sat down on the bed. She kissed Jessica and
smiled.
"You know I feel quite sentimental," she said, "and a little excited
too. After all, here you are, my youngest daughter on her wedding
day, a most thrilling event for any mother."
"You're every bit as bad as I am, Mother. Do you know when I was
awake before, I felt so silly that I couldn't stop giggling! Do you
know the feeling?"
"Of course I do, but oh, my dear"--Mrs. Deane caught her breath--"I'm
going to miss you terribly. The house will be as quiet as a tomb
without you. When I sit in the front pew this afternoon watching you
and your father come up the aisle, I shall shed tears into my
bouquet."
"You mustn't darling, really you mustn't. I'll be completely
mortified if you do. I can't have you weeping at my wedding. I know
Marjorie will, and that'll be bad enough, heaven knows."
"Well, you must have your breakfast now, anyhow," said Mrs. Deane
getting up decisively to pour out the coffee, "but I warn you that
whatever you say, I shall shed a tear or two. What I shall do when
Drusilla marries I can't think. Thank goodness I've still got her."
"By that time you'll have shoals of grandchildren to console you,"
Jessica suggested comfortably.
"My dear Jessica----" began Mrs. Deane, but broke off suddenly and
continued, "Oh well I suppose you young things know your own business
best, but I could never even have thought a thing like that on my
wedding morning."
"No darling, I don't suppose you could, but then your generation was
so stuffy, wasn't it?" said Jessica gently.
"Some of us were very happy anyhow," retorted Mrs. Deane, kissing
Jessica again, "I couldn't want anything better for you than to be as
happy with Hugh as I've been with your father. But really, my dear,
it's very naughty of you to keep me here gossiping. I have a hundred
and one things to see to, in fact I must go this minute and see if
the bouquets have arrived yet. Eat a proper breakfast and don't
hurry."
As Mrs. Deane opened the door Drusilla appeared on the threshold.
"Oh Mother," she said with an accent of the deepest reproach, "you're
no good at all. You ought to have been having a serious talk with
Jessica. I've been eavesdropping for hours, hoping you would begin
to instruct her in the facts of life, and all I heard was her telling
you you were stuffy!"
When Mrs. Deane blushed she looked like both her daughters, and now
she twisted her fingers in a gesture that Jessica, too, was betrayed
into in moments of embarrassment.
"Really you are terrible," she said distractedly, "both of you. I
don't know which of you is the most indelicate. I shall go and take
refuge with the caterers and the furniture men. They have much nicer
minds than either of my daughters. Good-bye, darlings."
She hurried out and Drusilla took her place on Jessica's bed.
"I'm holding a series of audiences this morning," said Jessica,
"Obviously it's the proper thing for all the family to tip-toe in and
peep at me ghoulishly to make sure I haven't faded away in the night.
Isn't mother a duck?"
"Yes, she's rather sweet," answered Drusilla, "and frightfully
competent too. You know there is a vast amount of arranging to be
done for a show like this, and you and I haven't done a hand's-turn
to help, have we?"
Jessica's white forehead wrinkled into a frown.
"It's rather worrying," she began. "Of course I shan't have to
bother about anything on my honeymoon. Hugh is marvellous about
trains and arrangements and he can do it all, but I suppose in a
month when we come home I'll have to settle down and be a proper
person, and everyone will criticise me."
"Not any more than they do now surely?"
"Yes, far more. A few of the Greene relations may swallow me, but
most of them will think everything I do is wrong, and they'll be
sorry for Hugh, and you know quite well, Drusilla, that I shall never
be able to scold the servants."
"I think that probably comes with practice," Drusilla reassured her,
"and, anyhow, you aren't going to be living so far away that we can't
keep an eye on you."
"I know. That does help of course. But Drusilla I do feel I must go
on letting Hugh be a Greene; I mustn't try to absorb him into our
family. I really have a scruple about it."
"Well, I don't think you need have. There isn't the faintest chance
of Hugh being disassociated from his family. But anyhow you're full
of contradictions; only this morning you said you thought of him as
an isolated fragment or something."
"Really Drusilla, you're very dense sometimes," said Jessica a little
piqued, but Drusilla only laughed.
"You can't possibly understand," began Jessica, but at the sound of a
car drawing up at the front door below with a good deal of
unnecessary hooting, she stopped and sat bolt upright, a scarlet
patch of excitement on either cheek.
"Drusilla, that's Hugh!" she said, and jumping out of bed she darted
over to the window, pushed it up and hung out, waving wildly.
Drusilla leaned over her shoulder, and saw Hugh standing on the steps
below carrying two huge parcels and smiling up at Jessica.
"Darling, come up and see me," called Jessica, "it's most unseemly of
you to be here on our wedding day, but since you are here you must
come up. What have you come for anyhow?"
"Two important presents from two important people," said Hugh gaily,
"Mother wants them shown in most conspicuous places, and incidentally
she thought she'd better give me a job to keep my nerves steady."
"Oh are you nervous, Hugh? Do come up at once, dearest. Why does
nobody let you in?"
"I don't suppose you've rung, have you?" Drusilla called down.
"Heavens, I forgot," said Hugh laughing, "I was just going to when
Jessica appeared for the balcony scene."
He laid down one parcel, and rang the bell, still looking up.
"Couldn't you throw me a flower or something romantic?" he asked.
Jessica tore a small bow of gold ribbon off the shoulder of her
nightgown, kissed it and flung it down to him.
"There you are," she called, watching it flutter slowly and
uncertainly down to the street, "my God, it's going down into the
area; it'll be wasted on cook. No it isn't; it's all right."
As her shrill excited tones followed the flight of the light scrap of
ribbon, a shocked and inquisitive face appeared at the window
opposite, and at the same moment she heard her mother's voice behind
her.
"Jessica, come in at once. This is really too much; you must not
lean out of the window in your nightgown; Drusilla, you shouldn't
have allowed her."
Jessica waved airily to Hugh, blew a kiss to the face in the opposite
house, drew in her head and shut the window.
"It's Hugh, Mother," she said as if that explained the whole
situation, "he's down below with two important parcels from two
important people."
"Well, that makes it worse," said Mrs. Deane severely, "you were
hanging half out of the window and all the top of your nightgown is
transparent lace. Really I feel quite cross with you both."
"Don't be cross, darling," implored Jessica. "My trousseau nighties
are far more indecent than this, and look, I'll put on a
dressing-gown before he comes up."
"He is certainly not coming up, Jessica. It would be most
unsuitable."
Jessica flung her arms round her mother's neck and kissed her.
"Very well, darling," she said, "We won't outrage you any more; he
shan't come up; I'll go down to him instead."
Laughing, she snatched up her dressing-gown and ran out of the room
and downstairs, her bare feet flashing white over the green carpet.
Mrs. Deane laughed reluctantly.
"I'm perfectly helpless with Hugh and Jessica," she said, "It's no
use hoping for any sense from either of them. Jessica is like a
child; she's quite fey with excitement."
"It's really all right Mother," Drusilla soothed her. "She's
frightfully happy and they do suit each other well. I honestly think
Hugh understands her perfectly."
"Yes, I feel that too," said Mrs. Deane, going out on to the landing,
"It's very satisfactory because Jessica _is_ so temperamental."
She leaned over the banisters and then turned smiling to Drusilla.
"Just look at them on the landing; they wouldn't mind if the servants
and the caterers and all the furniture men were drawn up in rows to
look at them."
Quickly sensitive to the watching eyes above, Hugh looked up.
"I say, Mrs. Deane," he said apologetically, "I know I oughtn't to be
here, but Mother sent me round with a couple of presents, and now I
am here I must talk to Jessica for a minute."
"Yes, of course, my dear," agreed Mrs. Deane, entirely forgetting her
conventional qualms, "go into my sitting-room; it's the only room in
the house that isn't upside-down. But really you can only have ten
minutes and then Jessica must come upstairs."
She turned to Drusilla.
"Do go down and talk to your father, dearest. The servants have
chased him from room to room, and now he's pacing round the billiard
table in a terrible state of nerves. He ought to have gone to his
office; it would have been much more sensible, but he had a feeling
that Jessica might want him."
"All right, Mother; what are you going to do?"
"I'm just going to see that all her things are properly packed. But
you know, Drusilla, I do not think she should have said her
nightgowns were indecent."
"My dear Mother," said Drusilla decisively, going downstairs, "if you
take seriously any one thing Jessica may say to-day you will forfeit
all my respect and admiration."
"I hope she'll be serious in church at least," retorted Mrs. Deane,
and went into the spare bedroom to look a little mournfully at
Jessica's strapped trunks.