CHAPTER XVIII.
Poor mother! She had a double task to do—double and contrary. To carry a daughter to the altar, and to tear a son from its perilous precincts. Monica wondered that Agatha—but then she was always such a selfish, giddy thing!—would not insist upon deferring her marriage with the Baronet until her elder sister should wed her beloved. For Candituft had made good—seeming good—his cause of delay. He had suddenly discovered some dormant right to some long-forgotten property; and he would first secure that to lay it as an offering at the feet of his bride. Monica, in her warm affection, would have gladly married at once, content to wait for after prosperity as it might follow; but her mother thought it best to tarry. Great good might come of a little delay; and Mr. Jericho could not be hurried to name the exact amount of dowry. Now, with respect to Agatha, the case was wholly different. She had not her sister’s strength of mind; and the Baronet was in the full enjoyment of his full fortune; moreover, with a liberality worthy of imitation, he would have been content to marry Agatha even with no other dowry than the first bride brought to the first bridegroom.
Therefore Jericho’s house hummed in every nook and corner with the note of preparation; with the tuning prelude to hymeneal song. Nevertheless, in Jericho’s house great and torturing was the sacrifice of heart. For was it nothing for Monica to plate her anxious face with smiles; to hover about her sister with looks and words of gentle meaning; of sweet congratulation, when her own breast was misery? Was it nothing to gather a marriage garland for another, when she was yet smarting from nettles? Nothing to forego the robe of the bride and to don the meaner garments—made robes of sorrow and humiliation by disappointment—of the bridesmaid?
And there was another victim, another heroine who, with the fortitude of an Amazon, would smile at self-suffering.—We mean, the Hon. Miss Candituft. Can it be believed that that heroic young lady consented to be second bridesmaid to her rival? Of course, the simple Agatha dreamt not of the agony she inflicted when she prayed such grace of her bosom friend; the rather that the devotion was accorded with the sweetest, the most touching alacrity. Agatha was to wear the nuptial wreath, and Miss Candituft the willow. Nevertheless, the rejected one would carry it like a martyr, turning the reproach to glory.
Our Man of Money—absolved of the liability of dowry—was in the best of moods. His opinion of the merits of Hodmadod continually increased, though Candituft had somehow to pay for the growth. The Baronet became every day a finer fellow; Candituft every day a meaner dog. The excellence accorded to one, was remorselessly taken from the other. Thus, pending the nuptial preparation, Hodmadod was the favoured creature at the hearth of Jericho, whilst Candituft was coldly allowed an unconsidered corner. Nevertheless, Candituft had too much benevolence, too much affection for the brotherhood of man to resent the neglect. Indeed, how should he, since he would not behold it? Some men will not see an affront, even when big as a street-door in their face: as there have been philosophers, so raised above human weakness, who have not felt the violence of a leg, have not discovered when they were kicked.
Now let us for a while leave the nuptial loves, busied with the best and the finest, at Jericho House; and look in upon a certain second floor, in Primrose Place.
It is plain enough that Basil has told his story—won his wife. The happy, altered looks of Bessy speak a new and deep content of heart. Indeed, every person present—there are four women, all busy, hence the room at Primrose Place may be considered full—gives indication of a coming ceremony. Bessy is at work, it would appear with all her heart in her sewing.—And Bessy’s mother is earnest, grave, in her appeal to the better judgment of Mrs. Topps who, it is plain, has just returned upon her errand, bringing a skein of silk that can in no way be made to match with the colour of the piece to be made up. Miss Barnes is appealed to—Miss Barnes is the young sempstress, the lodger of the attic, who all unconsciously received the benison of Basil, and who has come down to assist in the work—and Miss Barnes joins her verdict against Mrs. Topps; who, a little vexed with herself, ties her riband strings with an angry snatch, and descends to amend her serious error, by changing the skein.
The most innocent and the most hardened bachelor of threescore, brought into the room, would at once divine the sort of work prepared by those three women. He would at once know their cutting and their sewing to be spells preparatory to the tying of a knot that should, for the term of natural life, hold tight together two fellow creatures. The women worked so earnestly—so readily; whilst unseen little loves fluttered up and down; now running along the edge of a hem, and now giving a flourishing caper with some final stitch.
The room—Mrs. Carraways had a dozen times said as much—was in a dreadful litter. Calicos and flannels, and stuffs, and brown holland, and cotton webs with blue stripes lay heaped about, in very homely contrast to the pretty lilac-coloured satin carefully worked at by Miss Barnes; a satin that Bessy would now and then glance at as though she felt towards it a living tenderness. And still looking, she seemed all the happier with every look.