She was, of course, to see the wedding, in her Sunday white and broad pink sash, of the appropriateness of which she was satisfied when, at Beechcroft, they met Miss Mohun’s young friend, Miss Vanderkist, in the same garb. She and her brother had been put under Magdalen’s protection, as Miss Mohun was too much wanted at Cliffe House to look after them; but Sir Adrian, a big boy of twelve, wanted to go his own way, and only handed her over with “Hallo, Miss Prescott! you’ll look after this pussy-cat of ours while Aunt Jane is dosing Aunt Ada with salts and sal volatile. She—I’ll introduce you! Miss Prescott, Miss Felicia Vanderkist! She wants to be looked after, she is a little kitten that has never seen anything! I’m off to Martin’s.”
The stranger did look very shy. She was a slight creature, not yet seventeen, with an abundant mass of long golden silk hair tied loosely, and a very lovely face and complexion, so small that she was a miniature edition of Lady Ivinghoe.
Her name was Wilmet Felicia, but the latter half had been always used in the family, and there was something in the kitten grace that suited the arbitrary contractions well. In fact, Jane Mohun had been rather startled to find that she had the charge of such a little beauty, when she saw how people turned around at the station to look, certainly not at Valetta, who was a dark bright damsel of no special mark.
At church, however, every one was in much too anxious a state to gaze at the coming procession to have any eyes to spare for a childish girl in a quiet white frock. St. Andrew’s had never seen such a crowded congregation, for it was a wedding after Mr. White’s own heart, in which nobody dared to interfere, not even his wife, whatever her good taste might think. So the church was filled, and more than filled, by all who considered a wedding as legitimate gape seed, and themselves as not bound to fit behaviour in church. On such an occasion Magdalen, being a regular attendant, and connected with the bridesmaids, was marshalled by a churchwarden into a reserved seat; but there they were dismayed by the voices and the scrambling behind them, which, in the long waiting, the Vicar from the vestry vainly tried to subdue by severe looks; and Felicia, whose notions of wedding behaviour were moulded on Vale Lecton and Beechcroft, looked as if she thought she had got into the house of Duessa, amid all Pride’s procession, as in the prints in the large-volumed “Faërie Queene.”
And when, on the sounds of an arrival, the bridegroom stood forth, the resemblance to Sans Foy was only too striking, while the party swept up the church, the bride in the glories of cobweb veil, white satin, &c., becomingly drooping on her uncle’s arm, while he beamed forth, expansive in figure and countenance, with delight. Little Jasper Henderson, anxious and patronising to his tiny brother Alexis, both in white pages’ dresses picked out with cerise, did his best to support the endless glistening train.
The bridesmaids’ costumes taxed the descriptive powers of the milliners in splendour and were scarcely eclipsed by the rich brocade and lace of Mrs. White, as she sailed in on Captain Henderson’s arm; but her elaborate veil and feathery bonnet hardly concealed the weary tedium of her face, though to the shame, well nigh horror, of her sister, she was rouged. “I must, I must,” she said; “he would be vexed if I looked pale.”
It was true that “he” loved her heartily, and that he put all the world at her service; but she had learnt where he must not be offended, and was on her guard. Hers had been the last wedding that Jane had attended in St. Andrew’s. “Did she repent?” was Jane’s thought. No, probably not. She had the outward luxuries she had craved for, and her husband was essentially a good man, though not of the caste to which her instincts belonged—very superior in nature and conscience to him to whom his blinded vanity was now giving his beautiful niece, a willing sacrifice.
It was over! More indecorous whispering and thronging; and the procession came down the aisle, to be greeted outside by a hail of confetti and rice; the schoolboys, profiting by the dinner interval, and headed by Adrian, had jostled themselves into the foreground, and they ran headlong to the portico of Cliffe House to renew the shower.
And there, unluckily, Mr. White recognised the boy, and, pleased to have anything with a title to show, turned him round to the bridegroom, with, “Here, Lord Roger, let me introduce a guest, Sir Adrian Vanderkist.”
“Ha, I didn’t know poor Van had left a son. I knew your father, my boy. Where was it I saw him last? Poor old chap!”