At Millbank there was also dressmaking proceeding on a grand scale, and though Mrs. Walter Scott’s wardrobe differed somewhat from Bell’s, inasmuch as it was soberer and older,—the silks were just as heavy and rich, and the laces just as expensive. New furniture, new table-linen, and new silver came almost daily to Millbank, together with new pictures, for one of which the sum of two thousand dollars was paid. When old Hester Floyd heard of that she could keep quiet no longer, but vowed “she would go to Belvidere and visit Mrs. Peter Slocum, who was a distant connection, and would be glad to have her a spell, especially as she meant to pay her way.”
When Hester resolved to do a thing she generally did it, and as she was resolved to go to Belvidere she at once set herself to prepare for the journey.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
THE WEDDING, AND HESTER FLOYD’S ACCOUNT OF IT.
Roger had written to Frank, congratulating him upon his approaching marriage, but declining to be present at the wedding. He wished to know as little as possible of the affairs at Millbank, and tried to dissuade Hester from her visit to Mrs. Slocum. But Hester would go, and three days before the great event came off she was installed in Mrs. Slocum’s best chamber, and had presented that worthy woman with six bottles of canned fruit, ten yards of calico, and an old coat of Aleck’s, which, she said, would cut over nicely for Johnny, Mrs. Slocum’s youngest boy. After these presents, Hester felt that she was not “spunging,” as she called it, and settled herself quietly to visit, and to reconnoitre, and watch the proceedings at Millbank. And there was enough to occupy her time and keep her in a state of great excitement.
The house had been painted brown, and Hester inveighed against that, and scolded about the shrubbery, which had been removed, and cried a little over the trees which, at Bell’s instigation, had been cut down to open a finer view of the river from the rooms appropriated to the bride. Into these rooms Hester at last penetrated, as well as into all parts of the house. Mrs. Walter Scott had gone to Boston, and Frank had gone with her. Hester saw them as they drove by Mrs. Slocum’s in their elegant new carriage, with their white-gloved colored driver on the box, and she had represented her blood as “bilin’ like a caldron kettle, to see them as had no business a-ridin’ through the country and spending Roger’s money.”
She knew where they were going, and that the coast was clear at Millbank, and with Mrs. Slocum, who was on good terms with the housekeeper, she went there that afternoon and saw “such sights as her eyes never expected to see while she lived.”
“I mean to write to Magdalen and let her know just what carryin’s on there is here,” she said to Mrs. Slocum; and she commenced a letter that night, telling Magdalen where she was, and what she was there for, and not omitting to speak of the “things” she had brought, and which would pay for what little she ate for a week or two.
“Such alterations!” she wrote. “The house as brown as my hands, and a picter in it that cost two thousan’ dollars, the awfullest daub, I reckon, that ever was got up. Why, I had rather a hundred times have that picter in my room of Putnam goin’ in after the wolf; that means somethin’, and this one don’t. But the rooms for the bride, they are just like a show-house, I’m sure, with their painted walls and frisky work, I b’lieve, they call it, and the lam-kins at the winders, fifty dollars a winder, as I’m a livin’ woman, and a naked boy in one of ’em holdin’ a pot of flowers on his head; and then her boode’r or anything under heavens you are a mind to call that little room at the end of the upper south hall, and which opens out of her sleepin’ room. There’s a glass as long as she is set in a recess like, and in the door opposite is a lookin’-glass, and in the door on t’other side,—three lookin’-glasses in all, so that you can see yourself before and behind and beside, and silk ottermans, and divans and marble shelves and drawers, and a chair for her to sit in and be dressed, and she’s got a French waitin’-maid, right from Paris, they say, and some of her underclothes cost a hundred dollars apiece, think of that, when three yards of factory would make plenty good enough and last enough sight longer. I’m glad I don’t have to iron ’em; they’ve got a flutin’-iron they paid thirty dollars for, and Miss Franklin’s bed, that is to be, is hung with silk curtains. I should s’pose she’d want a breath of air; the dear knows I should; and one of the rooms they’ve turned into a picter gallery, and the likenesses of the Burleighs is there now, ‘cause Mrs. Franklin must have ’em to look at. There’s her granny, a decent-lookin’ woman enough, with powdered hair, and her husband took when he was younger, and her mother in her weddin’ close, exactly the fashion, I remember, and her father and herself when she was younger by a good many years than she is now, for them as has seen her says she’s thirty if she’s a day, and Frank ain’t quite twenty-eight.”
There was a break just here in Hester’s epistle. She had decided to remain with Mrs. Slocum until after the party which was to be given for the bride at Millbank as soon as she returned from her wedding trip, and so she concluded not to finish her letter until she had seen and could report the doings. The wedding day was faultlessly fair; not a cloud broke the deep blue of the summer sky, and the air had none of the sultry heat of July, but was soft and balmy, and pure from the effects of the thunder-shower of the previous day. If the bride be blessed on whom the sun shines, Bell Burleigh was surely blessed and ought to have been happy. There was no cloud on her brow, no brooding shadow of regret in her dark eyes, and if she sent a thought across the seas after the Fred whose life of toil she would once have shared so gladly, it did not show itself upon her face, which belied Hester’s hint of thirty years, and was all aglow with excitement. She made a beautiful bride, and the length of her train was for days and days the theme of gossip among the crowd who saw it as she walked from the carriage to the church upon the carpets spread down for the occasion. She wore no ornaments, but flowers. Her diamonds, and pearls, and rubies, and amethysts were reserved for other occasions, and she looked very simple and elegant and self-possessed, and made her responses in a firmer, clearer voice than Frank. He was nervous, and thought of Magdalen, and was glad she and Alice had made their mother’s recent death an excuse for not being present, and wondered if her voice would have been as loud and steady as Bell’s when she said, “I, Isabel, take thee, Franklin,” and so forth. On the whole, the occasion was a trying one for him; his gloves were too tight, and his boots were tighter and made him want to scream every time he stepped, they hurt his feet so badly. He took them off when he returned from the church, and thus relieved, felt easier, and could see how beautiful his new wife was, and how well she bore her honors, and felt proud and happy, and did not think again of Magdalen, but rather what a lucky fellow he was to have all the money he wanted and such a bride as Bell.