Volume Three—Chapter Seven.
Bigton Bewitched.
The quiet, little unpretending, out-of-the-way and not-of-much-account watering place of Bigton, was emphatically upside-down and out of its mind.
Bigton was, in a word, bewitched—good reason, too, if all things were taken into consideration. It is not every day, according to our Hibernian friends, that “Morris kills a pig.” Following out the analogy, it was not every day that Bigton had a wedding—a wedding, moreover, where the bride was the daughter of a lady, “in her own right;” and the happy man, if not “a lord of high degree,” a shining light in the church, and closely related to a high and eminent political personage, such as Sir Boanerges Todhunter.
Besides, the nuptial ceremony was to be celebrated by the right reverend prelate, the Lord Bishop of Chumpchopster, who was renowned far and wide as the most imposing of confirmists in the annual laying on of hands; and distinguished, not only as being one of the most ornate of orators, but for having published the well-known refutation of Judaism on the part of the pork-consuming portion of the population. A treatise which proclaimed his unswerving adherence to the time-honoured thirty-nine articles and undoubted hostility to the pre-adamite theologians. The fact that he would be there was quite enough to set Bigton in a whirligig of wonder and expectation, quite apart from the contingent circumstances attending the auspicious event.
The engagement between the present contracting parties had not been a very long one, the campaigner being in favour of early marriages, she said—having daughters to dispose of; but her probable reason was to get the irrevocable knot tied so that there might be no backing-out and no backsliding on the part of I promessi sposi.
Lady Inskip took all the arrangements in her own hands. Having brought Pringle to book, she decided upon the length of the engagement, fixed the wedding day, and then told the languid Laura and her expectant son-in-law all about it. They had nothing whatever to do with the affair at all; they were to be married, and that was sufficient for them. She considered the pair as children in her hands, who had only to do as they were told. Hers be it to act, and plan, and settle everything; theirs to acquiesce in what she planned, and be thankful for the considerate forethought of their mamma-of-action.
Pringle glided readily and easily into such an improved order of things; he accepted the gifts the gods gave him with admirable complacency. He consented to every arrangement that was made; indeed, it was well that the campaigner took matters in her own hands, for the young incumbent was of such an easy-going temperament, that even if he had gone to the length of popping the question to the languid Laura on his own behalf, it might have been years before he summoned up resolution enough to take the final plunge into matrimony. All things considered, therefore, it was better for the campaigner to act; and act she did, with promptitude and despatch.
The Reverend Herbert Pringle, B.A., behaved, throughout, as a very decorous, about-to-be-married man, and expectant filial. Of course he paid a regular visit every day to the cottage on the esplanade to see his fiancée. He enjoyed her placid society, and went through all the formulas expected and required of him—even to the extent of going shopping for his presumptive mother-in-law, and selecting gaudy wools of many colours for mat manufacture, and purchasing garden seeds, besides attending to the redecoration and preparation of the parsonage for the reception of his bride, under the stern and uncompromising eye of the campaigner, who would have “this” done, and “that” altered, as she pleased: her word was already law to him.
The gloom that had fallen over the house of Hartshorne did not, in any way, affect the approaching marriage.
A rumour had got abroad that something was wrong at The Poplars, from the chattering of the villagers, but no real facts had leaked out; and everybody put down the old dowager’s attack of paralysis and subsequent long illness to the news of her daughter Susan’s sudden death, which they had read of in the necropolitan portion of the Times newspaper. Doctor Jolly, with the exception of such observations as, “Bless my soul! Sad pity! sad pity!” and “By Gad!” ’Twas a fearful “shock to the old woman!” kept a sealed tongue in his head; and the lawyer, who was the only other person that now had the entrée at The Poplars, was naturally and professionally reticent. At the parsonage, the calamities of the “big house” had, of course, created interest. Herbert Pringle thought, from his religious position, and Lizzie, from her sympathetic little heart, which naturally yearned towards anyone in affliction—particularly now, and when the object of her sympathy was the mother of her lover—both made attempts to minister at The Poplars, and both were unsuccessful.
The old lady was, for weeks, speechless; and so ill, as not to be able to bear the sight of a new face. Doctor Jolly would not hear of the young incumbent seeing her; she could not understand anything said to her, and, for the present—the doctor told him gravely—any religious question which she wanted settled must rest between herself and her God! The doctor thought that but little spiritual consolation could be imparted by a flippant young man, who only wore a cassock for temporal purposes: as the means of obtaining a living, to a woman old enough to be his mother, and who was already, even now, struggling, with the Infinite!
To Lizzie, however, the doctor spoke kindly. He recognised the spirit in which her sympathy was tendered; and he told her that as soon as the old lady got round a bit he would be glad of her services. When she recovered her consciousness, a brighter face around her than that of the old servant, who now attended her, would conduce to her recovery; and Lizzie, you may be sure, was very glad to hear this, and longed for the time when she could be of use to “Tom’s mother.”
Although the old dowager, therefore, lay sick unto death, the marriage preparations were not set aside. Pringle, indeed, had hinted to the campaigner that perhaps it would not be in good taste to celebrate the festival while the great proprietress of the county, his especial patroness, was in this state, but that intrepid lady had incontinently derided the notion, asking what was the dowager to them? following up the question with another and more potent one, as to whether he wished to postpone the marriage with her darling girl in a very aggrieved tone of voice. Upon this Pringle was hastily “shut up,” and had to pour out a hundred apologies of, “Really, Lady Inskip, not for the world!” and so on.
The end of the old year came, and the beginning of the new ushered in the wedding morn.
Many things had been achieved before this, however, as may have been expected, from the great preparations which had been going on ever since Pringle’s proposal, ex parte the campaigner, and the settlement of the engagement.
The parsonage had been newly decorated and painted throughout from top to basement; on the campaigner’s express stipulation, the drawing-room had been refurnished in a gorgeous suite of velvet and gold; and, although Lizzie’s special domain in the garden had not been interfered with, everything else about the young incumbent’s mansion had been altered and duly prepared for the coming event. At Laburnum Cottage, too, the occasion was not disregarded.
To do her the justice, the campaigner was not stingy in her present expenditure. Whether it was the joy of marrying off one of her marriageable daughters opened her purse-strings in the same extent as it gladdened her heart, or that it arose from a desire to shine amidst the thing, or that it was owing to a union of both sentiments, cannot be exactly decided: suffice it to say that the campaigner opened her purse with a lavish hand.
For many days large boxes had come down from various haberdashers—“dry goods establishments,” the Americans call them—and milliners in London; and every little shop in Bigton had been ransacked to the same intent by Lady Inskip and her daughters. The languid Laura was provided with such a gigantic trousseau that she would probably attain the rank of grandmother before she wore out one half the number of “dozens” provided, while a perfect corps of needlewomen was kept in constant employment, basting, fitting, hemming, stitching, cutting out, felling, “goring,” and trying on, for upwards of a fortnight or more.
The campaigner had an additional motive in thus providing for her eldest darling. You see, Lady Inskip had no dôt, as she elegantly phrased it, with which to endow her “poor, portionless darlings,” and the fact of giving them a handsome “rig-out,” as their brother Mortimer said, would perhaps blind the eyes of Caelebs in search of a wife. Be that as it may, however, the needlewomen worked apace, the trousseau was fully provided, and Monday night, the eve of the wedding day, Tuesday, the seventh of January, anno domini 1868, found everything ready for the auspicious event.
Lizzie was necessarily one of the bridesmaids—that highly necessary corps d’armée, without which no bride of any pretensions will allow herself to be conducted to Hymen’s sacrificial font. Carry, the bride’s sister, was another; and the places of the two additional ladies-in-waiting (for espousal themselves) were supplied by two distant cousins of the Inskips, who had already officiated in a similar capacity so many times that they had most probably made up their maiden minds that this was the only problematical manner in which they would ever officiate at a wedding. Some people seem doomed always to play second fiddle through life, and bridesmaids are no exceptions to the rule.
The campaigner had spared no pains, as she had grudged no expense. All her influence, whether important or slight, was brought to bear on the contingent circumstances of the affair.
By back-stairs beseeching she so worked round the maternal aunt of the Bishop of Chumpchopster, that the right reverend prelate was persuaded—inasmuch as he had temporal expectations from the said maternal aunt—to accompany her to Bigton, and officiate in the tying of the matrimonial noose between Herbert Pringle, of whom his lordship was pleased to take some considerable notice, and Laura. The prelate and his maternal aunt became the honoured guests of Lady Inskip for a day and a night in consequence; but how on earth they were stowed in Laburnum Cottage, and what accommodation was provided for them, remains to this day a puzzle.
“The blushing orb of day at length gilded the sky,” and “Phoebus” announced the wedding morn.
Enormous dressings of bride and bridesmaids. White and scarlet were the colours adopted, if you’ve a fancy for knowing them, although the campaigner had a strong leaning, which she subsequently quenched, towards mauve and yellow. Multitudinous errands and scurryings to and fro of “slavies” and domestics, including “Buttons” and several hired menials, now addicted to Berlin gloves, although displaying raw, beefsteaky hands in every-day life. Manifold preparations for the déjeuner, and consequent encroachments of pastry-cook’s boys with superincumbent trays and oblong covered boxes with horizontal S handles; Laburnum Cottage turned inside out, and outside in; Bigton church bells clanging “fit to bust ’emselves,” as the villagers said; Bigton upside-down—in a word, bewitched.
In the early morning two cavaliers might have been seen wending their way towards the scene of the festivities; not “clad in Lincoln green,” as the late lamented G.P.R. James would have described, but dressed en règle: these were Captain Miles and Lieutenant Harrowby, who had received pressing invitations from Lady Inskip to come over from Brighton in order to be present at the ceremony. Neither was averse to coming, and, indeed, Captain Miles had certain reasons of his own, which will be detailed presently, for jumping at the offer; so the two cavaliers set out early, and wended their way to Bigton, as already chronicled in the language of the ancient “romancist.” The Americans will add an “ist” or a “cist” to every known trade or substantive under the sun, to describe the person or individual who practises or has any connection with the same: thus, a “paragraphist” is a man who writes a paragraph, and they carry it down to a “pipist,” who uses a pipe—whether for smoking or musical purposes it does not matter—and “chawist,” he who masticates tobacco—a remarkably dirty habit!
Captain Miles and Lieutenant Harrowby, however, were not the only guests. Besides these were others, great and important too, although it must be observed that there was an especial lack of young men in the campaigner’s “goodlie compagnie;” whether it was because she deprecated their presence or feared their worldly ways cannot be exactly decided. The campaigner was acquainted with the truism that “young people will be young people,” and fenced herself in accordingly, as she had fears on the subject of her youngest daughter Carry, who was far too frivolous to suit her more prudent expectations, and she wanted to put temptation out of the way of the “dear girl” that she might not be led to throw herself away on an “ineligible parti.” The campaigner thought that she knew Captain Miles very well; he had nothing but his pay, and if he were younger she would not put him in the way of any young lady whom she wished to marry well, but she was certain that the captain was no fool to let his beautiful Dundreary whiskers be sold for nothing, so she had no fears for Carry with him. Lieutenant Harrowby was perfectly allowable too: he was a simpleton, and had a very snug little fortune of five “thou” per annum.
Besides the Bishop of Chumpchopster and his maternal aunt, the next most important guest who would grace the festal board at the wedding breakfast would be Sir Boanerges Todhunter, the great Conservative Reformer. He was stopping at the parsonage now with the Reverend Herbert Pringle, his distant cousin, but he had already accepted an invitation to the déjeuner, and had in fact come over for the purpose, on the grounds of his relationship with the bridegroom, to assist in the demolition of the Strasbourg paté, and propose the health of the about-to-be-newly-spliced pair.
In the list also of the fashionable world present might have been seen the names of Captain Curry Cucumber, of the Honorable and defunct East India Company’s Service, Miss Blandish, Lady Sparrowhawk and sister, the Honorable Miss Bigges (pray be particular about the final e), the Reverend Jabez Heavieman—invited in virtue of his office more than on account of his convivial proclivities—and others.
Suppose the wedding over. Picture the bride in her orange blossoms, the bridegroom in his magpie dress—he could not adopt the time-honoured blue frock, being a cleric—the bridesmaids in their scarlet and white trains of tulle and tulips—the Bishop of Chumpchopster in his voluminous lawn sleeves pronouncing the blessing in his well-known and to be-much-admired Alcaic manner. Imagine the bells of Bigton clanging out their merry peal in the frosty air: paint to yourself the gallant and gay assemblage. Fancy, in a word, the marriage to be un fait accompli; the guests returned to Laburnum Cottage; the toast of the day proposed in that highly-declamatory style which makes the name of Sir Boanerges Todhunter synonymous with that of Cicero; thanks responded in the usual halting manner by the bridegroom; the happy pair started on their tour with the customary shower of shoes; the banquet concluded. Imagine all this. Aha! and now I will a tale unfold.
The campaigner had been in ecstasies with the way in which everything had gone off. The Bishop and Sir Boanerges had just driven away, late in the evening, after partaking of a hasty dinner, which had been scrambled out of the remains of the previous feast; Captain Curry Cucumber was detailing some highly-spiced Indian anecdotes to Miss Blandish, who was in a holy state of maiden indignation at some of the particulars with which the captain thought it incumbent on him to furnish her, although she listened eagerly all the while; Lieutenant Harrowby was indulging in platitudes with the Hon. Miss Bigges, while poor Lizzie was being swamped by the veteran Lady Sparrowhawk, who was imparting to our little friend—who found the whole thing fearfully dreary—her views on the girls of the present day, contrasting them, sadly to the disadvantage of the former, with the time when she was young: all, in fact, was going on just as the campaigner wished.
When, suddenly, just as Lady Inskip proposed a carpet dance to break the monotony of the evening, she discovered that her darling girl Carry and Captain Miles were both missing!
Horror! Where could they be? Could her worst fears be realised? The skeleton which had lurked behind the banquet now stepped forth. Her atra cura now confronted the campaigner! Uneasy was the head that wore the crown of manoeuvring triumph that day: Carry and the Captain had gone off nulla vestigia retrorsum, leaving not a trace behind.
Mortimer was first dispatched to search for the fugitives; but when he returned unsuccessfully, and no trace of the delinquents was to be found, either in and about the house or in the adjacent garden, the campaigner, whose nerves had been in a state of tension all day, fairly broke down. She proclaimed her calamities to her astonished company, bursting into a passion of tears, as she threw her arms round the neck of her boy, that young imp, and exclaimed, “Oh! Morti-mer! Morti-mer! I told you so! I told you so!” over and over again, insisting all the time that she had him still left to her!
The fiasco of the pic-nic was comparatively nothing to the present scene; and the excitement culminated when a note was brought in at this juncture by the campaigner’s abigail (who said she had just found it on the dressing-table in Miss Carry’s room, although she had known of its existence some hours before, and Lady Inskip discharged her, “by the same token,” as Paddy says, the next day for her complicity in the affair), telling how the young lady—somewhat “fast” on her part, it must be confessed—had gone off with Captain Miles to get married, spurred up to the point probably by the events of the day.
The note, which was handed round for general perusal, in consequence of Lady Inskip’s temporary abstraction, ran as follows, in Carry’s neat calligraphy, described in violet ink, on cream-laid note:—
“Dear Ma,—
“Algernon and I having determined to unite our lot—(we have been in correspondence for a long time without your knowledge)—have gone off to get married without any bother. We knew you would object and ‘kick up a row,’ as dear Algernon says, and have therefore thought it best to go off without letting you know anything about the state of our affections. Any pursuit will be vain, as we are both determined. We will be married to-morrow morning. Hoping you will not be vexed very much with your ‘darling girl,’ and that Laura will be as happy as I intend to be, with the ‘prig,’ as I used to call the poor little parson,
“Believe me,
“Your affectionate daughter,
“Carry.
“P.S.—Algernon says to give you his love, and he tells you to ‘keep your pecker up.’ Tell Mortimer he can have my Persian kitten. Please excuse Abigail for helping me off. I bullied her into doing it. Forgive me, dear ma! I know I shall be as happy as a butterfly, and, at all events, I shall ever be your loving daughter, Carry.”
The comments that were made on this missive may be imagined; and in the commotion that ensued the characters of the campaigner’s guests soon developed themselves, as is usually the case in moments of excitement, particularly when an esclandre arises.
Old Lady Sparrowhawk and the antiquated virgin, Miss Bigges, thought it highly immoral on Lady Inskip’s part to invite them to a house where any such thing could possibly have happened. Of course they would not mention anything about it, they said, as they retired from the scene; but, strange to say, in a very little while after, the mutual friends of Lady Sparrowhawk and the campaigner were acquainted with every incident of the elopement. Indeed, from the statements of these people, you would be led to suppose that they knew a good deal more about it than had as yet transpired, with much noddings and sly gestures, and confidential “you knows.”
To say that Captain Curry Cucumber was wrath, would convey but a feeble idea of his state of mind and volubility of expression, when he, too, got up to go. In the first place, he had had a slight penchant for the fair Carry, which Lady Inskip had fostered and encouraged; the remnant of his liver was consequently wrung with jealousy and baffled love—if love it may be called—which empurpled his saffron face; and he looked upon it is a special affront and injury to himself that the campaigner should have allowed her daughter thus to run away.
“By Gad! sir!” he said, to Lieutenant Harrowby, who, having been a confidant of Captain Miles, was dreading in much fear and trembling that the onus of the whole affair would be laid upon his weak shoulders. “By Gad! sir, I have never been so scandalously treated in my life; not even by the Begum of Ferozesha!”
He said this in sufficiently angry tones, ere he left the room; but when he got into the hall, his wrath rose to thunder, and was terrific to behold.
The magnificent gold-mounted bamboo cane which he had left there, which had been presented to him by Rumagee Bumagee, the Rajah of Bugpoor, and which he valued at ever so many lakhs of rupees, was missing. The captain boiled over with indignation, called Laburnum Cottage a den of thieves, and heaped such reams of violent epithets on the heads of Lady Inskip, her daughter, and all her family, even unto the third and fourth generation, as made Miss Blandish’s scanty locks stand on end with fright, and even restored the campaigner to her senses.
Captain Curry Cucumber then went out of Laburnum Cottage, for good and all, and he vowed he would never set foot within another house in Bigton for social purposes or otherwise. For the remainder of his term of residence in the sea-side retreat, he shut himself up in the red brick corner house of the terrace he inhabited, where he spent his time, it is believed, from morning until night, swearing at his Kitmaghar, a lascar servant, and eating chutney and prawn curries. The poor unhappy half caste servant’s life must have been a sad burden to him, for the captain was continually calling him an “Ooloo ka bucka,” or son of an owl, and associating his name in Hindostanee with a big black monkey, who was being perpetually consigned to the lower regions.
Carry Inskip’s elopement was a “nine days’ wonder” in Bigton, and then was forgotten. It is supposed that the young lady made a better bargain of it than most runaway matches turn out, and she lives very happily on a somewhat limited income, with the gallant son of Mars, whom she espoused the day after their elopement, not at Gretna Green, but by licence at Chumpchopster, the adjacent cathedral town to Bigton.
The campaigner’s star was certainly under an eclipse. She had done well for her eldest, but Carry turned out “a bold, ungrateful hussie,” as she called her. Yet she quickly recovered from the blow. In bewitching Bigton she had been bewitched herself; but she was not one to be daunted, and now that her “darling Laura” was so comfortably established, the campaigner began to agitate a most notable scheme in her worldly-wise head.