HER WEDDING DRESS.
Those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings—
High instincts before which our moral nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.
Wordsworth.
"Vera, are you not coming to look at it?"
"Presently."
"It is all laid out on your bed, and you ought to try it on; it might want alterations."
"Oh, there is plenty of time!"
"It is downright affectation!" says old Mrs. Daintree, angrily, to her daughter-in-law, as she and Marion leave the room together; "no girl can really be indifferent to a wedding dress covered with yards of lovely Brussels lace flounces; she ought to be ashamed of herself for her ingratitude to Lady Kynaston for such a present; she must really want to see it, only she likes playing the fine lady beforehand!"
"I don't think it is that," says Marion, gently; "I don't believe Vera is well."
"Fiddlesticks!" snorts her mother-in-law. "A woman who is going to marry ten thousand a year within ten days is bound to be well."
Vera sits alone; she leans her head against the window, her hands lie idle in her lap, her eyes mechanically follow the rough, gray clouds that rack across the winter sky. In little more than a week she will be Vera Nevill no longer; she will have gained all that she desired and tried for—wealth, position, Kynaston—and Sir John! She should be well content, seeing that it has been her own doing all along. No one has forced or persuaded her into this engagement, no one has urged her on to a course contrary to her own inclination, or her own judgment. It has been her own act throughout. And yet, as she sits alone in the twilight, and counts over on her fingers the few short days that intervene between to-day and her bridal morning, hot miserable tears rise to her eyes, and fall slowly down, one by one, upon her clasped hands. She does not ask herself why she weeps; possibly she dares not. Only her thoughts somehow—by that strange connection of ideas which links something in our present to some other thing in our past, and which apparently is in no way dependent upon it—go back instinctively, as it were, to her dead sister, the Princess Marinari.
"Oh, my poor darling Theodora!" she murmurs, half aloud; "if you had lived, you would have taken care of your Vera; if you had not died, I should never have come here, nor ever have known—any of them."
And then she hears Marion's voice calling to her from the top of the stairs.
"Vera! Vera! do come up and see it before it gets quite dark."
She rises hastily and dashes away her tears.
"What is the matter with me to-day!" she says to herself, impatiently. "Have I not everything in the world I wish for? I am happy—of course I am happy. I am coming, Marion, instantly."
Upstairs her wedding dress, a soft cloud of rich silk and fleecy lace, relieved with knots of flowers, dark-leaved myrtle, and waxen orange blossoms, lies spread out upon her bed. Marion stands contemplating it, wrapt in ecstatic admiration; old Mrs. Daintree has gone away.
"It is perfectly lovely! I am so glad you had silk instead of satin; nothing could show off Lady Kynaston's lace so well: is it not beautiful? you ought to try it on. Why, Vera! what is the matter? I believe you have been crying."
"I was thinking of Theodora," she murmurs.
"Ah! poor dear Theodora!" assents Marion, with a compassionate sigh; "how she would have liked to have known of your marriage; how pleased she would have been."
Vera looks at her sister. "Marion," she says, in a low earnest voice; "if—if I should break it off, what would you say?"
"Break it off!" cries her sister, horror-struck. "Good heavens, Vera! what can you mean? Have you gone suddenly mad? What is the matter with you? Break off a match like this at the last minute? You must be demented!"
"Oh, of course," with a sudden change of manner; "of course I did not mean it, it only came into my head for a minute; of course, as you say, it is a splendid match for me. What should I want to break it off for? What should I gain? what, indeed?" She spoke feverishly and excitedly, laughing a little harshly as she spoke.
Marion looked at her anxiously. "I hope to goodness you will never say such horrid things to anybody else; it sounds dreadful, Vera, as if Eustace and I were forcing you into it; as if you did not want to marry Sir John yourself."
"Of course I want to marry him!" interrupted Vera, with unreasonable sharpness.
"Then, pray don't make a fool of yourself, my dear, by talking about breaking it off."
"It was only a joke. Break it off! how could I? The best match in the county, as you say. I am not going to make a fool of myself; don't be afraid, Marion. It would be so inconvenient, too; the trousseau all bought, the breakfast ordered, the guests invited; even the wedding dress here, all finished and ready to put on, and ten thousand a year waiting for me! Oh, no, I am not going to be such an utter fool!"
She laughed; but her laughter was almost more sad than her tears, and her sister left her, saddened and puzzled by her manner.
It was now nearly two months since the ball at Shadonake; and, soon after that eventful visit, Vera had begun to be employed in preparing for her wedding-day, which had been fixed for the 27th of February; for Sir John had taken Mrs. Romer's hint, and had pressed an early marriage upon her. Vera had made no objection; what objection, indeed, could she have found to make? She had acquiesced readily in her lover's suggestions, and had set to work to prepare herself for her marriage.
All this time Captain Kynaston had not been in Meadowshire at all; he had declined his brother's hospitality, and had gone to spend his leave amongst other friends in Somersetshire, where he had started a couple of hunters, and wrote word to Sir John that the sport was of such a very superior nature that he was unable to tear himself away.
Within a fortnight, however, of Sir John's wedding, Maurice did yield at last to his brother's pressing request, and came up from Somersetshire to Kynaston. Last Sunday he had suddenly appeared in the Kynaston pew in Sutton Church by Sir John's side, and had shaken hands with Vera and her relations on coming out of church, and had walked across the vicarage garden by the side of Mrs. Daintree, Vera having gone on in front with Tommy and Minnie. And it was from that moment that Vera had as suddenly discovered that she was utterly and thoroughly wretched, and that she dreaded her wedding-day with a strange and unaccountable terror.
She told herself that she was out of health, that the excitement and bustle of the necessary preparations had over-tried her, that her nerves were upset, her spirits depressed by reason of the solemnity a woman naturally feels at the approach of so important a change in her life. She assured herself aloud, day after day, that she was perfectly happy and content, that she was the very luckiest and most fortunate of women, and that she would sooner be Sir John's wife than the wife of any one else in the world. And she told it to herself so often and so emphatically, that there were whole hours, and even whole days together, when she believed in these self-assurances implicitly and thoroughly.
All this time she saw next to nothing of Maurice Kynaston; the weather was mild and open, and he went out hunting every day. Sir John, on the other hand, was much with her; a constant necessity for his presence seemed to possess her. She was never thoroughly content but when he was with her; ever restless and ill at ease in his absence.
No one could be more thoroughly convinced than Vera of the entire wisdom of the marriage she was about to make. It was, she felt persuaded, the best and the happiest thing she could have done with her life. Wealth, position, affection, were all laid at her feet; and her husband, moreover, would be a man whose goodness and whose devotion to her could never fail to command her respect. What more could a woman who, like herself, was fully alive to the importance of the good things of this world desire? Surely nothing more. Vera, when she was left alone with the glories of her wedding garment, took herself to task for her foolish words to her sister.
"I am a fool!" she said to herself, half angrily, as she bundled all the white silk and the rich lace unceremoniously away into an empty drawer of her wardrobe. "I am a fool to say such things even to Marion. It looks, as she says, as if I were being forced into a rich marriage by my friends. I am very fond of John; I shall make him a most exemplary wife, and I shall look remarkably well in the family diamonds, and that is all that can possibly be required of me."
Having thus settled things comfortably in her own mind, she went downstairs again, and was in such good spirits, and so radiant with smiles for the rest of the evening, that Mr. Daintree remarked to his wife, when they had retired into their conjugal chamber, that he had never seen Vera look so well or so happy.
"Dear child," he said, "it is a great comfort to me to see it, for just at first I feared that she had been influenced by the money and the position, and that her heart was not in it; but now she has evidently become much attached to Sir John, and is perfectly happy; and he is a most excellent man, and in every way worthy of her. Did I tell you, Marion, that he told me the chancel should be begun immediately after the wedding? It is a pity it could not have been done before; but we shall just get it finished by Easter."
"I am glad of that. We must fill the church with flowers for the 27th, and then its appalling ugliness will not be too visible. Of course, the building could hardly have been begun in the middle of winter."
But if Mrs. Eustace Daintree differed at all from her husband upon the subject of her sister's serene and perfect happiness, she, like a wise woman, kept her doubts to herself, and spoke no word of them to destroy the worthy vicar's peace of mind upon the subject.
The next morning Sir John came down from the Hall to the vicarage with a cloud upon his brow, and requested Vera to grant him a few minutes' private conversation. Vera put on her sable cloak and hat, and went out with him into the garden.
"What is the matter?"
"I am exceedingly vexed with my brother," he answered.
"What has Maurice done?"
"He tells me this morning that he will not stop for the wedding, nor be my best man. He talks of going away to-morrow."
Vera glanced at him. He looked excessively annoyed; his face, usually so kind and placid, was ruffled and angry; he flicked the grass impatiently with his stick.
"I have been talking to him for an hour, and cannot get him to change his mind, or even to tell me why he will not stay; in fact, he has no good reason for going. He must stay."
"Does it matter very much?" she asked, gently.
"Of course it matters. My mother is not able to be present; it would not be prudent after her late attack of bronchitis. My only brother surely might make a point of being at my wedding."
"But if he has other engagements——"
"He has no other engagement!" he interrupted, angrily; "He cannot find any but the most paltry excuses. It is behaving with great unkindness to myself, but that is a small matter. What I do mind and will not submit to is, that it is a deliberate insult to you."
"An insult to me! Oh! John, how can that be?" she said, in some surprise; and then, suddenly, she flushed hotly. She knew what he meant. There had been plenty of people to say that Sir John Kynaston was marrying beneath himself—a nobody who was unworthy of him: these murmurs had reached Vera's ears, but she had not heeded them since Lady Kynaston had been on her side. She saw, however, that Sir John feared that the absence of his mother and his brother at his wedding might be misconstrued into a sign that they also disapproved of his bride.
"I don't think Maurice would wish to slight me," she said, gently.
"No; but, then, he must not behave as though he did. I assure you, Vera, if he perseveres in his determination, I shall be most deeply hurt. I have always endeavoured to be a kind brother to him, and, if he cannot do this small thing to please me, I shall consider him most ungrateful."
"That I am sure he is not," she answered, earnestly; "little as I know him, I can assure you that he never loses an occasion of saying how much he feels your goodness and generosity to him."
"Then he must prove it. Look here, Vera, will you go up to the Hall now and talk to him? He is not hunting to-day; you will find him in the library."
"I?" she cried, looking half frightened; "what can I do? You had much better ask him yourself."
"I have asked him over and over again, till I am sick of asking! If you were to put it as a personal request from yourself, I am sure he would see how important to us both it is that he should be present at our wedding."
"Pray don't ask me to do such a thing; I really cannot," she said, hastily.
Sir John looked at her in some surprise; there was an amount of distress in her face that struck him as inadequate to the small thing he had asked of her.
"Why, Vera! have you grown shy? Surely you will not mind doing so small a thing to please me? You need not stay long, and you have your hat on all ready. I have to speak to your brother-in-law about the chancel; I have a letter from the architect this morning; and everything must be settled about it before we go. If you will go up and speak to Maurice now, I will join you—say in twenty minutes from now," consulting his watch, "at the lodge gates. You will go, won't you, dear, just to please me?"
She did not know how to refuse; she had no excuse to give, no reason that she could put into words why she should shrink with such a dreadful terror from this interview with his brother which he was forcing upon her. She told him that she would go, and Sir John, leaving her, went into the house well satisfied to do his business with the vicar.
And Vera went slowly up the lane alone towards the Hall. She did not know what she was going to say to Maurice; she hardly knew, indeed, what it was she had been commissioned to ask of him; nor in what words her request was to be made. She thought no longer of her wedding-day, nor of the lover who had just parted with her. Only before her eyes there came again the little wintry copse of birch-trees; the horses standing by, the bare fields stretching around, and back into her heart there flashed the memory of those quick, hot kisses pressed upon her outstretched hand; the one short—and alas! all too perilous—glimpse that had been revealed to her of the inner life and soul of the man whose lightest touch she had learnt that day to fear as she feared no other living thing.