Many things had been achieved before this, however, as may have been expected, from the great preparations which had been going on ever since Pringle’s proposal, ex parte the campaigner, and the settlement of the engagement.
The parsonage had been newly decorated and painted throughout from top to basement; on the campaigner’s express stipulation, the drawing-room had been refurnished in a gorgeous suite of velvet and gold; and, although Lizzie’s special domain in the garden had not been interfered with, everything else about the young incumbent’s mansion had been altered and duly prepared for the coming event. At Laburnum Cottage, too, the occasion was not disregarded.
To do her the justice, the campaigner was not stingy in her present expenditure. Whether it was the joy of marrying off one of her marriageable daughters opened her purse-strings in the same extent as it gladdened her heart, or that it arose from a desire to shine amidst the thing, or that it was owing to a union of both sentiments, cannot be exactly decided: suffice it to say that the campaigner opened her purse with a lavish hand.
For many days large boxes had come down from various haberdashers—“dry goods establishments,” the Americans call them—and milliners in London; and every little shop in Bigton had been ransacked to the same intent by Lady Inskip and her daughters. The languid Laura was provided with such a gigantic trousseau that she would probably attain the rank of grandmother before she wore out one half the number of “dozens” provided, while a perfect corps of needlewomen was kept in constant employment, basting, fitting, hemming, stitching, cutting out, felling, “goring,” and trying on, for upwards of a fortnight or more.
The campaigner had an additional motive in thus providing for her eldest darling. You see, Lady Inskip had no dôt, as she elegantly phrased it, with which to endow her “poor, portionless darlings,” and the fact of giving them a handsome “rig-out,” as their brother Mortimer said, would perhaps blind the eyes of Caelebs in search of a wife. Be that as it may, however, the needlewomen worked apace, the trousseau was fully provided, and Monday night, the eve of the wedding day, Tuesday, the seventh of January, anno domini 1868, found everything ready for the auspicious event.
Lizzie was necessarily one of the bridesmaids—that highly necessary corps d’armée, without which no bride of any pretensions will allow herself to be conducted to Hymen’s sacrificial font. Carry, the bride’s sister, was another; and the places of the two additional ladies-in-waiting (for espousal themselves) were supplied by two distant cousins of the Inskips, who had already officiated in a similar capacity so many times that they had most probably made up their maiden minds that this was the only problematical manner in which they would ever officiate at a wedding. Some people seem doomed always to play second fiddle through life, and bridesmaids are no exceptions to the rule.
The campaigner had spared no pains, as she had grudged no expense. All her influence, whether important or slight, was brought to bear on the contingent circumstances of the affair.
By back-stairs beseeching she so worked round the maternal aunt of the Bishop of Chumpchopster, that the right reverend prelate was persuaded—inasmuch as he had temporal expectations from the said maternal aunt—to accompany her to Bigton, and officiate in the tying of the matrimonial noose between Herbert Pringle, of whom his lordship was pleased to take some considerable notice, and Laura. The prelate and his maternal aunt became the honoured guests of Lady Inskip for a day and a night in consequence; but how on earth they were stowed in Laburnum Cottage, and what accommodation was provided for them, remains to this day a puzzle.
“The blushing orb of day at length gilded the sky,” and “Phoebus” announced the wedding morn.
Enormous dressings of bride and bridesmaids. White and scarlet were the colours adopted, if you’ve a fancy for knowing them, although the campaigner had a strong leaning, which she subsequently quenched, towards mauve and yellow. Multitudinous errands and scurryings to and fro of “slavies” and domestics, including “Buttons” and several hired menials, now addicted to Berlin gloves, although displaying raw, beefsteaky hands in every-day life. Manifold preparations for the déjeuner, and consequent encroachments of pastry-cook’s boys with superincumbent trays and oblong covered boxes with horizontal S handles; Laburnum Cottage turned inside out, and outside in; Bigton church bells clanging “fit to bust ’emselves,” as the villagers said; Bigton upside-down—in a word, bewitched.