Volume One—Chapter Fourteen.
Like Gathering Clouds.
There is one very pleasant element in country-town life, and that is the breadth of the feeling known as neighbourly. It is often veined by scandal, disfigured by petty curiosity, but a genial feeling, like a solid stratum underlies it all, and makes it firm. Mrs White gets into difficulties, and her furniture is sold by auction; but the neighbours flock to the sale, and the love of bargains is so overridden that the old things often fetch as much as new. Mrs Black’s family are ill, and every one around takes a real and helpful interest. Mrs Scarlet’s husband dies, and a fancy fair is held on her behalf. Then how every one collects at the marriage: how all follow at the death! It must be something very bad indeed that has been committed if, after the customary unpleasant and censorious remarks about walking blindfold into such a slough, Green is not drawn out by helping hands—in fact, there is a kind of clannishness in a country-town, disfigured by the gossips, but very true and earnest all the same.
Consequently as soon as the day was fixed for Millicent Luttrell’s wedding, presents came pouring in from old patients and young friends. A meeting was held at the Corn Exchange, at which Sir Gordon Bourne was to take the chair, but at which he did not put in an appearance, and the Reverend Christie Bayle took his place, while resolutions were moved and carried that a testimonial should be presented to our eminent fellow-townsman, Robert Hallam, Esq, on the occasion of his marriage with the daughter of our esteemed and talented neighbour, Dr Luttrell.
The service of plate was presented at a dinner, where speeches were made, to which Mr Hallam, of the bank, responded fluently, gracefully, and to the point.
Here, too, Christie Bayle took the chair, and had the task of presenting the silver, after reading the inscription aloud, amidst abundant cheers; and as he passed the glittering present to the recipient, their eyes met.
As their eyes met there was a pleasant smile upon Hallam’s lip, and a thought in his heart that he alone could have interpreted, while Bayle’s could have been read by any one skilled in the human countenance, as he breathed a hope that Millicent Luttrell might be made a happy wife.
The whole town was in a ferment—not a particular state of affairs for King’s Castor—in fact, the people of that town in His Majesty’s dominions were always waiting for a chance to effervesce and alter the prevailing stagnation for a time. Hence it was that the town band practised up a new tune; the grass was mowed in the churchyard, and some of the weeds cleared out from the gravel path. Miss Heathery went to the expense of a new bonnet and silk dress, and indulged in a passionate burst of weeping in the secrecy of her own room, because she was not asked to act as bridesmaid; and though Gorringe did not obtain any order from the bridegroom, he was favoured by Mr James Thickens to make him a blue dress-coat with triple-gilt buttons—a coat so blue, and whose buttons were such dazzling disks of metal, that it was not until it had been in the tailor’s window, finished, and “on show” for three days, that James Thickens awakened to the fact that it was his, and paid a nocturnal visit to Gorringe to beg him to send it home.
“But you don’t want it till the day, Mr Thickens,” said the tailor, “and that coat’s bringing me orders.”