The next few weeks were decked with the richness of autumn tints, the
glory of autumn skies; but Evadne was unaware of either. She had no
consciousness of distinct days and nights, and indeed they were pretty
well mingled after she went to town, for she often danced till daylight
and slept till dusk. And it was all a golden haze, this time, with
impressions of endless shops; of silks, satins, and lovely laces; of
costly trinkets; of little notes flying between London and Shorncliffe;
and of everybody so happy that it was impossible to help sitting down and
having a good cry occasionally.
The whirl in which she lived during this period was entered upon without
thought, her own inclinations agreeing at the time to every usage
sanctioned by custom; but in after years she said that those days of
dissipation and excitement appeared to her to be a curious preparation for
the solemn duties she was about to enter upon.
Evadne felt the time fly, and she felt also that the days were never
ending. It was six weeks at first; and then all at once, as it seemed,
there was only one week; and then it was "tomorrow!" All that last day
there was a terrible racket in the house, and she was hardly left alone a
single moment, and was therefore thankful when finally, late at night, she
managed to escape to her own room--not that she was left long in peace
even then, however, for two of her bridesmaids were staying in the house,
and they and her sisters stormed her chamber in their dressing-gowns, and
had a pillow fight to begin with, and then sat down and cackled for an
hour, speculating as to whether they should like to be married or not.
They decided that they should, because of the presents, you know, and the
position, and the delight of having such a lot of new gowns, and being
your own mistress, with your own house and servants; they thought of
everything, in fact, but the inevitable husband, the possession of whom
certainly constituted no part of the advantages which they expected to
secure by marriage. Evadne sat silent, and smiled at their chatter with
the air of one who has solved the problem and knows. But she was glad to
be rid of them, and when they had gone, she got her sacred "Commonplace
Book," and glanced through it dreamily. Then, rousing herself a little,
she went to her writing table, and sat down and wrote: "This is the close
of the happiest girlhood that girl ever had. I cannot recall a single
thing that I would have had otherwise."
When she had locked the book away, with some other possessions in a box
that was to be sent to await her arrival at her new home, she took up a
photograph of her lover and gazed at it rapturously for a moment, then
pressed it to her lips and breast, and placed it where her eyes might
light on it as soon as she awoke.
She was aroused by a kiss on her lips and a warm tear on her cheek next
morning. "Wake, darling," her mother said. "This is your wedding day."
"Oh, mother," she cried, flinging her arms round her neck; "how good of
you to come yourself! I _am_ so happy!"
Mr. Hamilton-Wells, Lady Adeline, and the Heavenly Twins had been at the
Fraylings' since breakfast, and nothing had happened.
Lady Adeline, having seen the children safely and beautifully dressed for
the ceremony, Angelica as a bridesmaid, Diavolo as page, left them
sitting, with a picture-book between them, like model twins.
"Really," she said to Mr. Hamilton-Wells, "I think the occasion is too
interesting for them to have anything else in their heads."
But the moment she left them alone those same heads went up, and set
themselves in a listening attitude.
"_Now_, Diavolo; _quick_!" said Angelica, as soon as the sound
of her mother's departing footsteps had died away.
Diavolo dashed the picture-book to the opposite side of the room, sprang
up, and followed Angelica swiftly but stealthily to the very top of the
house.
When the wedding party assembled in the drawing room the twins were
nowhere to be found, Mr. Hamilton-Wells went peering through his eyeglass
into every corner, removed the glass and looked without it, then dusted
it, and looked once more to make sure, while Lady Adeline grew rigid with
nervous anxiety.
The search had to be abandoned, however; but when the party went down to
the carriages, it was discovered, to everybody's great relief, that the
children had already modestly taken their seats in one of them with their
backs to the horses. Each was carefully covered with an elegant wrap, and
sitting bolt upright, the picture of primness. The wraps were superfluous,
and Mr. Hamilton-Wells was about to remonstrate, but Lady Adeline
exclaimed: "For Heaven's sake, _don't_ interfere! It is such a
_trifle_. If you irritate them, goodness knows _what_ will
happen."
But, manlike, he could not let things be.
"Where have you been, you naughty children?" he demanded in his precisest
way. "You have really given a great deal of trouble."
"Well, papa," Angelica retorted hotly, at the top of her voice through the
carriage window for the edification of the crowd, "you said we were to be
good children, and not get into everybody's way, and here we have been
sitting an hour as good as possible, and quite out of the way, and you
aren't satisfied! It's quite unreasonable; isn't it, Diavolo? Papa can't
get on, I believe, _without_ finding fault with us. It's just a bad
habit he's got, and when we give him no excuse he invents one."
Mr. Hamilton-Wells beat a hasty retreat, and the party arrived at the
church without mishap, but when the procession was formed there was a
momentary delay. They were waiting for the bride's page, who descended
with the youngest bridesmaid from the last carriage, and the two came into
the church demurely, hand in hand, "What darlings!" "Aren't they pretty?"
"What a sweet little boy, with his lovely dark curls!" was heard from all
sides; but there was also an audible titter. Lady Adeline turned pale,
Mrs. Frayling's fan dropped. Evadne lost her countenance. The twins had
changed clothes.
There was nothing to be done then, however; so Angelica obtained the
coveted pleasure of acting as page to Evadne, and Diavolo escaped the
trouble of having to hold up her train, and managed besides to have some
fun with a small but amorous boy who was to have been Angelica's pair, and
who, knowing nothing of the fraud which had been perpetrated, insisted on
kissing the fair Diavolo, to that young gentleman's lasting delight.
It was a misty morning, with only fitful glimpses of sunshine.
Mrs. Frayling was not a bit superstitious (nobody is), but she had been
watching the omens (most people do), and she would have been better
satisfied had the day been bright; but still she felt no shadow of a
foreboding until the twins appeared. Then, however, there arose in her
heart a horrified exclamation: "It is unnatural! It will bring bad luck."
There was no fun for the Heavenly Twins apart, so they decided to sit
together at the wedding breakfast, and nobody dared to separate them, lest
worse should come of it.
Diavolo bet he would drink as much champagne as Major Colquhoun, and
having secured a seat opposite to an uncorked bottle, he proceeded
conscientiously to do his best to win the wager. Toward the end of
breakfast, however, he lost count, and then he lost his head, and showed
signs of falling off his chair.
"You must go to sleep under the table now," said Angelica. "It's the
proper thing to do when you're drunk. _I'm_ going to. But I'm not far
enough gone yet. My legs are queer, but my head is steady. Get under, will
you? I'll be down directly." And she cautiously but rapidly dislodged him,
and landed him at her feet, everybody's attention being occupied at the
moment by the gentleman who was gracefully returning thanks for the
ladies. When the speech was over Lady Adeline remembered the twins with a
start, and at once missed Diavolo.
"Where is he?" she asked anxiously.
"He is just doing something for me, mamma," Angelica answered.
He was acting at that moment as her footstool under the table. She did not
join him there as she had promised, however, because when the wine made
her begin to feel giddy she took no more. She said afterward she saw no
fun in feeling nasty, and she thought a person must be a fool to think
there was, and Diavolo, who was suffering badly at the moment from
headache and nausea, the effect of his potations, agreed. That was on the
evening of the eventful day at their own town house, their father and
mother having hurried them off there as soon after Diavolo was discovered
in a helpless condition as they could conveniently make their escape. The
twins had been promptly put to bed in their respective rooms, and told to
stay there, but, of course, it did not in the least follow that they would
obey, and locking them up had not been found to answer. Angelica did
remain quiet, however, an hour or so, resting after all the excitement of
the morning; but she got up eventually, put on her dressing gown, and went
to Diavolo; and it was then they discussed the drink question. Discussion,
however, was never enough for the twins; they always wanted to _do_
something; so now they went down to the library together, erected an altar
of valuable books, and arrayed themselves in white sheets, which they tore
from the parental couch for the purpose, considerably disarranging the
same; and the sheets they covered with crimson curtains, taken down at
imminent risk of injuring themselves from one of the dining room windows,
with the help of a ladder, abstracted from the area by way of the front
door, although they _were_ in their dressing-gowns, the time chosen
for this revel being when their parents were in the drawing room after
dinner, and all the servants were having their supper and safe out of the
way. The ladder was used to go down to the coal cellar, and never, of
course, replaced, the consequence being that the next person who went for
coal fell in in the dark, and broke her leg, an accident which cost Mr.
Hamilton-Wells from first to last a considerable sum, he being a generous
man, and unwilling to let anyone suffer in pocket in his service; he
thought the risks to life and limb were sufficient without that.
Having completed these solemn preparations the twins swore a ghastly oath
on the altar never to touch drink again, and might they be found out in
everything they did on earth if they broke it, and never see heaven when
they died!
The wedding breakfast went off merrily enough, and when the bride and
bridesmaids left the table, and the dining room door was safely shut,
there was much girlish laughter in the hall, and an undignified scamper up
the stairs, also a tussle as to who should take the first pin from the
bride's veil and be married next, and much amusement when Mrs, Frayling's
elderly maid unconsciously appropriated it herself in the way of business.
Evadne hugged her, exclaiming: "You dear old Jenny! You _shall_ be
married next, and I'll be your bridesmaid!"
"Oh, no you won't!" cried one of the girls. "You'll never be a bridesmaid
again."
Then suddenly there was silence. "Never again" is chilling in effect; it
is such a very long time.
As Evadne was leaving the room in her travelling dress she noticed some
letters lying on her dressing table, which she had forgotten, and turned
back to get them. They had come by the morning's post, but she had not
opened any of them, and now she began to put them into her pocket one by
one to read at her leisure, glancing at the superscriptions as she did so.
One was from Aunt Olive: dear Aunt Olive, how kind of her! Two were
letters of congratulation from friends of the family. A fourth was from
the old housekeeper at Fraylingay; she kissed that. The fifth was in a
strange and peculiar hand which she did not recognize, and she opened it
first to see who her correspondent might be. The letter was from the
North, and had been addressed to Fraylingay, and she should have received
it some days before. As she drew it from its envelope she glanced at the
signature and at the last few words, which were uppermost, and seemed
surprised. She knew the writer by name and reputation very well, although
they had never met, and, feeling sure that the communication must be
something of importance, she unfolded the letter, and read it at once
deliberately from beginning to end.
When she appeared among the guests again she was pale, her lips were set,
and she held her head high. Her mother said the dear child was quite
overwrought, but she saw only what she expected to see through her own
tear-bedimmed eyes, and other people were differently impressed. They
thought Evadne was cold and preoccupied when it came to the parting, and
did not seem to feel leaving her friends at all. She went out dry-eyed
after kissing her mother, took her seat in the carriage, bowed polite but
unsmiling acknowledgments to her friends, and drove off with Major
Colquhoun with as little show of emotion, and much the same air as if she
had merely been going somewhere on business, and expected to return
directly.
"Thank goodness, all that is over!" Major Colquhoun exclaimed. She looked
at him coolly and critically.
He was sitting with his hat In his hand, and she noticed that his hair was
thin on his forehead, and there was nothing of youth in his eyes.
"I expect you are tired," he further observed.
"No, I am not tired, thank you," Evadne answered.
Then she set her lips once more, leant back, and looked out of the
carriage window at the street all sloppy with mud, and the poor people
seeming so miserable in the rain which had been falling steadily for the
last hour.
"Poor weary creatures!" she thought. "We have so much, and they so
little!" But she did not speak again till the carriage pulled up at the
station, when she leant forward with anxious eyes, and said something
confusedly about the crowd.
Major Colquhoun thought she was afraid of being stared at. He took out his
watch.
"You will only have to cross the platform to the carriage," he said, "and
the train ought to be up by this time. But if you don't mind being left
alone a moment, I'll just go myself and see if it is, and where they are
going to put us, and then I can take you there straight, and you won't
feel the crowd at all."
He was not gone many minutes, but when he returned the carriage was empty.
"Where is Mrs. Colquhoun?" he said.
"She followed you, sir," the coachman answered, touching his hat.
"Confound--" He pulled himself up. "She'll be back in a moment, I
suppose," he muttered.
"Dover express! Take your seats!" bawled a porter. "Are you for the Dover
express?"
"Yes," said Major Colquhoun.
"Engaged carriage, sir?"
"Yes--oh, by the way, perhaps she's gone to the carriage," and he started
to see, the porter following him. "Did you notice a young lady in a gray
dress pass this way?" he asked the man as they went.
"With a pink feather in 'er 'at, sir?"
"Yes."
"Not pass up this way, sir," the man rejoined. "She got into a 'ansom over
there, and drove off--if it was the same young lady." Major Colquhoun
stopped short. The compartment reserved for them was empty also.
"Dover express! Dover express!" the guard shouted as he came along banging
the carriage doors to.
"For Dover, sir?" he said in his ordinary voice to Major Colquhoun.
"No. It seems not," that gentleman answered deliberately.
The guard went on: "Dover express! Dover express! All right, Bill!" This
was to someone in front as he popped into his own van, and shut the door.
Then the whistle shrieked derisively, the crank turned, and the next
moment the train slid out serpent-like into the mist. Major Colquhoun had
watched it off like any ordinary spectator, and when it had gone he looked
at the porter, and the porter looked at him.
"Was your luggage in the train, sir?" the man asked him.
"Yes, but only booked to Dover," Major Colquhoun answered carelessly,
taking out a cigarette case and choosing a cigarette with exaggerated
precision. When he had lighted it he tipped the porter, and strolled back
to the entrance, on the chance of finding the carriage still there, but it
had gone, and he called a hansom, paused a moment with his foot on the
step, then finally directed the man to drive to the Fraylings'.
"Swell's bin sold some'ow," commented the porter. "And if I was a swell I
wouldn't take on neither."