The day will come

by M. E. Braddon

The two mothers had talked of the future with more detail and more assurance than the fathers, as men of the world, had ventured upon. Lady Cheriton was in love with her little girl’s boyish admirer. His frank, handsome face, open-hearted manner, and undeniable pluck realized her ideal of high-bred youth. His mother was the daughter of an earl, his grandmother was the niece of a duke. He had the right to call an existing duke his cousin. These things counted for much in the mind of the storekeeper’s daughter. Her experience at a fashionable Parisian convent had taught her to worship rank; her experience of English middle-class society had not eradicated that weakness. And then she saw that this fine, frank lad was devoted to her daughter with all a boy’s ardent feeling for his first sweetheart.

The years went on, and young Godfrey Carmichael and Juanita Dalbrook were sweethearts still—sweethearts always—sweethearts when he was at Eton, sweethearts when he was at Oxford, sweethearts in union, and sweethearts in absence, neither of them ever imagining any other love; and now, in the westering sunlight of this July evening, the bells of Cheriton Church were ringing a joy-peal to celebrate their wedded loves, and the little street was gay with floral archways and bright-coloured bunting, and mottoes of welcome and greeting, and Lady Cheriton’s barouche was bringing the bride and bridegroom to their first honeymoon dinner, as fast as four horses could trot along the level road from quiet little Wareham.

By a curious fancy Juanita had elected to spend her honeymoon in that one house of which she ought to have been most weary, the good old house in which she had been born, and where all her days of courtship, a ten years’ courtship, had been spent. In vain had the fairest scenes of Europe been suggested to her. She had travelled enough to be indifferent to mountains and lakes, glaciers and fjords.

“I have seen just enough to know that there is no place like home,” she said, with her pretty air of authority. “I won’t have a honeymoon at all if I can’t have it at Cheriton. I want to feel what it is like to have you all to myself in my own place, Godfrey, among all the things I love. I shall feel like a queen with a slave; I shall feel like Delilah with Samson. When you are quite tired of Cheriton—and subjection, you shall take me to the Priory; and once there you shall be master and I will be slave.”

“Sweet mastership, tyrannous slavery,” he answered, laughing. “My darling, Cheriton will suit me better than any other place in the world for my honeymoon, for I shall be near my future electors, and shall be able to study the political situation in all its bearings upon—the Isle of Purbeck.”

Sir Godfrey was to stand for his division of the county in the election that was looming in the distance of the late autumn. He was very confident of success, as a young man might be who came of a time-honoured race, and knew himself popular in the district, armed with all the newest ideas, too, full to the brim of the most modern intelligence, a brilliant debater at Oxford, a favourite everywhere. His marriage would increase his popularity and strengthen his position, with the latent power of that larger wealth which must needs be his in the future.

The sun was shining in golden glory upon grey stone roofs and grey stone walls, clothed with rose and honeysuckle, clematis and trumpet ash,—upon the village forge, where there had been no work done since the morning, where the fire was out, and the men were lounging at door and window in their Sunday clothes,—upon the three or four village shops, and the two village inns, the humble little house of call opposite the forge, with its queer old sign, “Live and Let Live,” and the good old “George Hotel,” with sprawling, dilapidated stables and spacious yard, where the mail-coach used to stop in the days that were gone.

There was a floral arch between the little tavern and the forge—a floral display along the low rustic front of the butcher’s shop—and the cottage post-office was converted into a bower. There were calico mottoes flapping across the road—“Welcome to the Bride and Bridegroom,” “God Bless Them Both,” “Long Life and Happiness,” and other fond and hearty phrases of time-honoured familiarity. But those clashing bells, with their sound of tumultuous gladness, a joy that clamoured to the blue skies above and the woods below, and out to the very sea yonder, in its loud exuberance, those and the smiling faces of the villagers were the best of all welcomes.

There were gentlefolks among the crowd—a string of pony carts and carriages drawn up on the long slip of waste grass beyond the forge, just where the road turned off to Cheriton Chase; and there were two or three horsemen, one a young man upon a fine bay cob, who had been walking his horse about restlessly for the last hour or so, sometimes riding half a mile towards the station in his impatience.

The carriage came towards the turning-point, the bride bowing and smiling as she returned the greetings of gentle and simple. Emotion had paled the delicate olive of her complexion, but her large dark eyes were bright with gladness. Her straw-coloured tussore gown and leghorn hat were the perfection of simplicity, and seemed to surround her with an atmosphere of coolness amidst the dust and glare of the road.