Bright shone the day that gave Diana to her husband, and very beautiful looked the bride in her simple dress. Gustave Lenoble's marriage was no less quietly performed than that union which had secured the safety of Charlotte Halliday and the happiness of Valentine Hawkehurst. The shadow of death hovered very near bride and bridegroom; for they knew full well that he who was to preside that day at their simple marriage-feast would soon have tasted that last sacred cup which has no after-flavour of bitterness.
The breakfast promised by the Captain was arranged with much elegance. Hothouse flowers and fruits; wines with the icedew sparkling on the dark glass; chickens and tongue, idealized by the confectioner's art, and scarcely recognizable beneath rich glazings and embellishments of jellies and forcemeats; the airiest and least earthly of lobster salads, and a pyramid of coffee-ice, testified to the glory of the Belgravian purveyor. It had been pleasant to Captain Paget to send his orders to Gunter, certain of funds to meet the bill. It was almost a glimpse of that land of milk and honey, that Canaan in Normandy, which he was never to inhabit.
He was very weak, very ill; but the excitement of the occasion in some measure sustained and revivified him. The man who had been engaged to nurse and wait upon him had attired him with much care in a dressing-gown as elegant as the robe in which he had disported himself, a penniless young cornet, in his luxurious garrison quarters, some fifty years before. His loose white locks were crowned with an embroidered smoking-cap; his patrician instep was set off by a dainty scarlet slipper. He had put away the Gospel, and all thoughts of that dread reckoning which he had really some shadowy desire and hope to settle satisfactorily, by some poor dividend which might discharge his obligations to that merciful Creditor who forgives so many just debts. To-day he was of the world, worldly. It was a kind of ante-mortem lying-in-state—his last levee; and he was equal to the occasion.
The prettily adorned table was drawn near the sofa where the invalid host reclined, supported by numerous pillows. His daughter and her husband, Valentine, Charlotte, and Georgy, made a little circle about him. His own man, and a clerical-looking person from Gunter's, assisted at the airy banquet. Very little was eaten by any of the guests, and it was a relief to every one when the clerical personage and Captain Paget's factotum retired, after serving tea and coffee with funereal solemnity.
Valentine Hawkehurst was all gentleness and cordiality towards his old taskmaster. The wrong must indeed be dire which is considered in such an hour as this. Valentine remembered only that with this old man he had seen many troubled days; and that for him the end of all earthly wanderings was very near.
The little banquet was not served in Captain Paget's ordinary sitting-room. For this distinguished occasion the landlady had lent a dining-room and drawing-room on the ground floor, just deserted by a fashionable bachelor lodger who had left town at the close of the season. This drawing-room on the ground floor, like the room above, overlooked the Park, and to this apartment the Captain requested his guests to adjourn, with the exception of Mr. Hawkehurst, some little time after the departure of the servants.
"I want to have a few words with Val in private," he said; "I have a secret to communicate. Diana, show Mrs. Hawkehurst the Drive. You can see the Bow from my room, but not from these lower windows. There are a good many carriages still, but it is too late for the crême de la crême. I remember when the West End was a desert at this time of year; but I have lived to see the levelling of all distinctions, those of time as well as of class."
Charlotte and Diana retired to the adjoining room with Mrs. Sheldon and M. Lenoble. Valentine was at a loss to imagine what manner of confidential communication his late patron and employer could desire to impart to him. The cautious Horatio waited until the rest of the party were quite out of hearing, talking gaily by the open window, beyond which appeared all the fluttering life and motion of summer leaves, all the brightness of summer green below, and deep blue sky above. When they seemed to him to be quite engaged with their own conversation, Captain Paget turned to his old companion.
"Val," he said, "we have seen hard times together; we've roughed it among strange places and strange people, you know and so on; and I think there is a friendly kind of feeling between us?"
He held out his poor wasted hand, and Valentine grasped it firmly in his own with prompt cordiality.