A man made of money

by Douglas William Jerrold

To-morrow morning, the church of St. Asphodel—Bessy, from her window in Primrose Place, could see its spire tapering above the distant trees—would hold within its walls a happy couple. To-morrow, Basil and Bessy were to be writ in the church-books one. It would be a magnificent wedding; hopes and affections would so adorn and elevate the ceremony. But, when the time arrives, we will endeavour as faithfully as we may, to chronicle the doings of the hour. As the day before a wedding will to some parties seem the longest day that ever dawned and died, so to others it will appear the shortest day imaginable; a day that just shows itself and is gone. However Basil and Bessy may have measured the day of which we write, thinking it a day without an end, sure we are that Mrs. Carraways more and more believed it impossible that the wedding could take place on the morrow, so much had still to be completed.

“How ever I shall get through what I have to do, I can’t tell,” said the good woman to her incredulous husband. “I only hope, we shan’t have to put it off.” Carraways laughed. “Yes, my dear, it’s all very well. You men think that things can do themselves; but Bessy can’t go if her luggage isn’t packed.”

“Why not? I suppose she doesn’t want to take her trunk to church,” said the aggravating Carraways, and again he laughed with such a want of consideration! And here, Miss Barnes came full of meaning into the room; and suddenly paused, seeing Carraways. It was of no use; Mrs. Carraways would at once assert her authority. Therefore she set herself face to face with her husband.

“Now, my dear Gilbert; you must go out; you must indeed. And, there’s a dear, don’t let me see you again until the evening.” Miss Barnes, of course, said nothing: but her looks eloquently and stedfastly seconded the wishes of the matron.

“What! I’m in the way? Well, Bessy and I are going upon a little business.”

“Bessy,” cried her mother, rather astonished; and then she complacently added—“to be sure; why not? We can do everything better without her, can’t we, Miss Barnes? And poor thing, she’s as pale,—for she hasn’t been out these three days. So, you’d better go; both of you.”

In a very short time, considering that Bessy had only to put on her bonnet, the bride and her father had left the house; surrendered the field to Mrs. Carraways and Miss Barnes made happy by their employment. And leaving them deep in trunks, let us accompany father and daughter.

Bessy had resolved upon carrying with her to her new country, a very swarm of illustrious strangers: constant, untiring labourers that should fill the air with sweetest music—music that should murmur of her English home—still winning from the fields the most delicious gains. It appeared that this order of labourers—wonderful workers, at once singers, chemists and masons,—we mean, in a word, the honey-bee—had not yet travelled to the Antipodes.[1] Honey-bee had yet to cross the ocean to a new world. Though his great progenitors—the Adam and Eve bees—had sung and worked in the roses of Eden—none of their million million descendants, to the time of a certain lady—and let the name of the benefactress shine like a star in future Antipodean history—had touched upon the other side of the Pacific. The flowers and blossoms of ages had budded and fallen, and not a bee had drunk of their honey-cups.—This, become known to Bessy, she determined to carry with her a swarm of colonists to her new home: to people the waste with millions of workers; the toiling, happy bond-folk—(pity there should be any other!)—of imperial man.

And the bees were of the old Jogtrot stock. Of the family that had worked in the gardens and orchards of Marigolds; descendants in right regal descent of the same line that had sung and worked about Bessy’s childhood; that had awakened her infant thought, had engaged her youthful care. We believe that Robert Topps had been Bessy’s silent agent in the work; and with consummate skill and secresy had conveyed away a hive of the old household from their native village, taking them to nurse at a certain gardener’s, some three or four miles distant from Primrose Place. And thither, to learn how fared the little ones, wended Bessy and her father. The old man, though doubtful of the prosperity of the scheme, nevertheless entered into it with all the cordiality of his nature. “There’s always a sure comfort about attempting good; delight if you succeed, and consolation if you fail.” With this creed, Carraways listened with pleasure to the plan of Bessy who had kept the scheme a secret from her mother and Basil.

“Won’t they be surprised, when they see them aboard the ship,” cried Bessy, glowing with pleasure. (And by the way, in the course of the two past paragraphs, Bessy and her father have reached the gardener’s, and are now in front of the very hive; close to the swarm of insect colonists, the pilgrim bees, the emigrant honey-makers.) “Won’t they be surprised!” repeated Bessy.