Read Ebook: The Tallants of Barton vol. 3 (of 3) by Hatton Joseph

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CHAP. PAGE

WEDDING BELLS.

As the sail which we first discern, like a speck against the sky, comes into port at last, so the wedding-day of Miss Amy Tallant arrived in due course of time; and in order that we may present the event to our readers in the most familiar manner, we have compiled from the newspapers the following account of it, discarding on the one hand the rhapsodies of a Severntown reporter who introduced the whole of the marriage service into his version of the ceremony, and omitting on the other hand certain Swivellerish flights of fancy in which the redoubtable Mr. Jenkins himself indulged after he had dined with Richard Tallant, Esq., at his "palatial residence" in Kensington Palace Gardens.

The marriage took place at St. George's, Hanover Square. The bride was accompanied to church by her brother, Mr. Richard Tallant, her aunt, Lady Amelia Petherington, Miss Somerton, and Lady Georgina Evelyn. The Earl of Verner, accompanied by his "best man" Lord Tufton, went to the church from the Gordon Hotel, Pall Mall East; and the bride from her brother's princely residence, Kensington Palace Gardens. The bridesmaids were Lady Georgina Evelyn, Lady Maria Fotherington, Miss Fredrika Lionel, Miss Alicia Lionel, Lady de Witz, and Miss Somerton. The bridegroom was first at the church, speedily followed by the bridesmaids, who came from their respective residences. The bride arrived at eleven o'clock, and was conducted to the altar by her brother, a voluntary on the organ being played meanwhile.

Long before this, a distinguished party of friends and spectators had taken their places in the church, and amongst them we noticed Lady Duval, the Countess of Wharton, Major Darfield and Mrs. Darfield, the Hon. J. Delafield and Mrs. Delafield, the Hon. Mrs. Dawkins, Miss Elizabeth Dawkins, Miss Amelia Dawkins, and Miss Felicia Henrietta Dawkins, the Misses Constantine, and the Marquis of Questfield, Sir John and Lady Bewdley, Lady Elizabeth Himley, the Hon. Captain Evesham, Mrs. Evesham, and Miss Evesham, Lady Worcester, the Marquis of Forth, Mr. De Lawtworth and the Countess Dawnforth, His Excellency the French Ambassador, His Excellency the Prince Calignousky, accompanied by the Baron Dionsky and General Dronkoni, Mr. Dest, Lieut. Somerton, Captain MacSchauser, &c., &c.

The bridesmaids awaited the arrival of the bride in the central aisle, and their appearance was as charming as the loveliest bride could desire. Their dresses were of white grenadine trimmed with cerise satin and sashes of the same colour. The wreaths were of lilies of the valley and violets.

The beauty of the bride was the theme of general admiration. She was said to be much like the Petherington family, of which her noble mother was reckoned the greatest beauty. Her bridal dress was of the costliest and most becoming character,--a robe of white satin with a veil of exquisite point-lace, which fell in gorgeous folds upon her heavy sweeping train. She wore a necklace of pearls and diamonds, and bracelets to match.

The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Francis Clifton, vicar of Brazencrook, assisted by the Hon. and Rev. James Fitzpatrick. The responses were given in clear and distinct tones, and the ceremony was altogether most imposing and impressive.

Before the company retired from the dining-room, Lord Tufton rose, and in a few appropriate sentences proposed "Health and happiness to the Bride and Bridegroom." The toast was received with rapturous applause. In reply, Lord Verner said that a year ago he had not even dreamed of such a day as this; but the time would never be effaced from his memory as one of the greatest happiness he could possibly experience: it not only was a day never to be forgotten by him, and always to be remembered with gratitude and delight as that upon which his dear wife had given herself up to his keeping; but it was to be remembered also with unfeigned pleasure on account of the many friends it had brought around him, and from whose society his former bachelor habits had, to a great extent, excluded him. It was indeed the happiest, the most important, the one red-letter day of his existence. Loud cheers greeted his lordship's earnest speech, and then the bride retired to prepare for her departure for Horton Hall, Essex, the seat of Lord Tufton, where they would spend the honeymoon. The Marquis of Questfield then proposed "the Bridesmaids," and Mr. Tallant acknowledged the deserved compliment in eloquent terms.

At three o'clock the bride and bridegroom took their departure, proceeding by special train to Corfield. The lady's travelling dress was pronounced to be in the best possible taste.

The journals then gave a list of the presents to the bride, which we need not republish; the gifts were from great people mostly, and were of the costliest character. They included necklets, with pendants of diamonds and pearls; bracelets set in brilliants, diamonds, brooches, workboxes inlaid with gold, dressing cases, S?vres vases, antique china, crosses set with diamonds, writing tablets, watches, fans, and a hundred other things of gold and silver and precious stones, and woods and china, and leather work.

"You may leave me now," said the bride to her maid.

"Yes, your ladyship," said the woman.

The title sounded strange and harsh somehow to the newly-made countess. It seemed to cut her off from the people whom she had known from childhood; and yet her heart beat with pride when she felt that she had reached the highest point of her ambition--that all her wild dream had come true.

"How charming you look, my pet!" she said to Phoebe.

"Reflected beauty," said Phoebe, putting her arm round the bride. "Only reflected beauty, for I never saw you look so pretty, so lovely as you look this morning."

The Countess smiled a little sadly, but this might only be a woman's tribute to the importance of the occasion.

"How kind his lordship is! how very kind," said the bride, as she discovered some new gift on the dressing table.

"It made me cry to hear him speak so earnestly and nobly to-day when your health was proposed," said Phoebe.

"You are very tender-hearted," said the Countess, "I did not see any one else look like crying; but the words touched me too. He is a truly generous, warm-hearted man, I am sure."

Phoebe looked at her friend, as much as to ask her if she had ever doubted it. The Countess read the thought in an instant.

"You think me a strange woman. I have never thought much about his feelings or his heart until lately, Phoebe, and never so much as I have done this morning. It has been all ambition and revenge until to-day, Phoebe; what is it to be in the future?"

She sat down as this thought presented itself to her, and looked at herself in the great mirrors that repeated her supple figure over and over again. She sat and looked at herself, and Phoebe, knowing her secret, crept near her and laid her head upon her shoulders.

"Duty in the future," said Phoebe softly; "your noble husband's love and generosity will make you love him in the end I am sure, as he deserves to be loved; the path of duty lies before you and cannot be mistaken."

"He has long since won my respect, Phoebe, and my gratitude; he loves me with a good man's truthfulness and sincerity, and I will love him; you know how I have struggled, you know what I have suffered: let us both blot all that part out now and for ever, Phoebe, and as you love me pray that I may be sustained in the wifely path of duty and obedience."

The Countess spoke like her former self in those past days before that cloud of sorrow fell upon Barton Hall; in those past days when she was the bailiff's daughter and the sisterly companion of her whom she had since supplanted in fortune and position.

The tears came into Phoebe's eyes again, and the two women embraced each other tenderly.

"Bless you, my own dear friend," said the Countess, "believe me, I will make reparation for all my unkindness to you. There dear, do not reply--kiss me again and leave me--it is better I should be alone a little while."

She rose with a calm expression upon her face, refreshed by the outpouring of her supplications, and determined to do her duty in the high station to which she had risen, and towards her husband.

"Dearest--I shall be at Barton Hall at four o'clock to-morrow. Do not let me go away without seeing you. L. H." This was all the note contained. For long days and weeks and months afterwards she had treasured up that poor little scrap of paper--worn it in her bosom, wept over it, kissed it, and cherished the memory of that hour of happiness which followed it.

For a moment she held it in her hand hesitatingly. She felt that it was the only link between the present and the past. Lighting a vesta, she held the paper in the flame until it was consumed, and then she stamped her little satin-slippered foot upon the embers. The flame burnt her fingers before it went out, as if there were venom in the perjured words that the fire was consuming. But this was nothing to the fire which had seared her heart long since, burning into it those serpent words that had looked so fair only to sting the deeper. But it was over at last, and now she was Countess of Verner.

"My lady" rang for her maid, and prepared to dress for the bridal journey. Whilst her robes were being removed she glanced round the room which had been furnished with so much magnificence for her reception, and then she thought, with a grateful smile, of the homage which her husband had paid her in all things.

The maid being asked some simple question, told her how the health of the bridesmaids had been proposed, and how her ladyship's handsome brother had made a beautiful speech in reply. This she thought would please her ladyship very much indeed; but it only excited uncomfortable thoughts in her ladyship's mind--a vague kind of danger seemed to threaten her through Richard Tallant.

Her ladyship asked no more questions, but went through the elaborate process of her toilette in silence, and by-and-by left the room robed in purple moire, and lace, and looking every inch a countess, to the everlasting envy of Lady Petherington and her youngest sister, and to the delight of her husband and the rest.

All this time the bells at Severntown, Avonworth, and Brazencrook rung out over town and field and river. The summer air was full of their glorious old music. The ringers in their shirt sleeves pulled with a will, until the churches fairly shook again. Mighty jugs of ale passed from hand to hand, from lip to lip, in the intervals of this labour of love, and majors and triple bob-majors and all kinds of curious changes were performed on the swinging bells. Avonworth caught the faint echoes from Severntown, and Brazencrook, picking up the trembling tones from Avonworth, took them up into its own ringing measure, and carried the grand old-fashioned harmonies away down the river to distant villages, where women stood at cottage doors and listened, and men rested on their scythes to wonder why Brazencrook bells were ringing.

Glorious bells, merry bells, wedding bells! Arthur Phillips sat in his studio with the windows wide open listening to the joyous music, and thinking of the peal that would soon ring out the news of another marriage. He looked away beyond the Linktown hills in the direction of London, thought of his darling Phoebe in her bridesmaid's dress, and pictured her, in a wreath of orange blossoms at a country church, by a time-sanctified altar in Avonworth Valley.

Happy bells, tuneful bells, olden bells, wedding bells! Luke Somerton heard them as he sat with his wife at the Hall Farm, and puzzled his brain with all sorts of vague happy fancies that seemed to soar upwards in the smoke of his early after-dinner pipe. His wife spoke cheerily of the music, but it was a great struggle for her. Something would whisper in her ear that the Countess might perhaps have been her daughter, but the next moment she remembered that Phoebe was there as her ladyship's friend, and that Lieutenant Somerton was amongst the distinguished visitors. That strange dream of ambition, you see, had not all passed away from the proud Lincolnshire woman's heart.

Joyful bells, brazen bells, jubilant bells, wedding bells! Travel your happy strains adown that glimmering river; no whisper of your tender music can reach that home-bound ship that rides on the Indian sea.

"YET OFT O'ER CREDULOUS YOUTH SUCH SIRENS TRIUMPH, AND LEAD THEIR CAPTIVE SENSE IN CHAINS AS STRONG AS ADAMANT."

The day after the marriage of Miss Tallant, Lieutenant Somerton sat in Mrs. Dibble's front parlour, discussing, with her interesting lodger, the details of his scheme for the future.

Embellished with several pictures and vases, a lady's easy chair, and other little things which the Lieutenant had purchased from time to time, the room looked quite neat and attractive.

They would be content, Paul was telling her, with something a little better than this in their distant home, where they would begin the world all afresh, and remember nothing but their own true love for each other. "What an infatuated fool he must be, most renowned Asmodeo," Don Cleofas would say. "Why, the young woman is vulgar too. Do you not notice how ignorant she is? And what shambling efforts she is making to hide it?" "You forget that my business," says Asmodeo, "is to make ridiculous matches, marry maids to their masters, greybeards to raw girls; and see here, you forget the cloak!" Refreshing his memory upon these points, Don Cleofas would be satisfied of course; and so must we; for Paul Somerton sees only charms in "Chrissy's" defects. We need hardly say that she had improved considerably in her manners since that conversation with Dibble at Severntown; she had long since ceased to call things "stunning" and "fizzing."

That gentleman, who was enamoured of her dexterity at cards, had done much to prune her exuberance of expression in this respect, and it was wonderful how quickly she further improved during her stay with Mrs. Dibble, not under the tuition of that elegant lady, but with the inspiration of Paul's books and her own cunning instinct.

She was prepared at any moment, she felt, to enter the next phase of her career, whatever it might be, and had gone so far in her imitative insane fashion, as to sleep with a dagger beneath her pillow; but she secretly hoped that nothing would occur to prevent her flying with Paul. In her own fashion, she loved this mad-headed soldier, and she dreaded the discovery of her wickedness and deception. If she had been brought up in a respectable home, with moral influences about her and a mother at her elbow, she might perchance still have done justice to her home education, as she did now; but it is not necessary that we should enter into speculations upon this point. Her story is before us, and it is the duty of the writer to tell it fairly, and leave the reader to form his own opinion about what education and good moral home influences might have done for this woman of the booth and the fair, the race-course and the gaming-room, who, with the brightness of youth still about her, managed, with siren-like skill, to look so innocent and attractive in the eyes of Paul Somerton.

"Of course, of course," said Paul, wishing old Dibble at Hanover; "and how are you, Thomas? how do you do?"

Dibble made no reply, but allowed his hand to be shaken in the most condescending fashion, whilst he fixed his eyes upon the young lady.

"Why, deary me!" he exclaimed, all of a sudden, "Miss Christabel, how do you do? Well, who would ha' thought as I should find you at Mrs. Dibble's?"

The lady addressed looked at Mr. Dibble with the greatest possible astonishment, and then turned to Lieutenant Somerton, as if she sought some explanation of this extraordinary conduct.

"What the devil do you mean!" exclaimed the Lieutenant.

"Surely the man is not sober," said the young lady in her finest style, and with just a faint smile at Dibble's bewildered look.

"And what?" exclaimed the Lieutenant.

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