If that meant elaborate display in dress and decorations, and provision for the bridal breakfast and dinner, then the face exhibited was a shining one. Mrs. Hodgson, the fashionable mantua-maker and milliner of Oldham Street (where two or three of the private houses had already been converted into shops), had kept her apprentices at work almost night and day for weeks, executing bridal orders from the Ashtons and their friends. A very snowstorm might have passed through the work-room, such heaps of white French-crape and satin, lace and organdi, lute-string and gauze, littered and covered available space, putting matronly brocade, velvet, and llama quite into the shade.
The warehouse saw little of Mrs. Ashton for a week or ten days previously. Cicily, who had gone over to the Aspinalls, had begged to be allowed to help Kezia for that occasion; and she roasted her own face in spinning gold and silver webs and baskets from sugar for the table, making “floating islands,” syllabubs, trifles, jellies, and blanc-mange to supplement the solid dishes Kezia dressed with so much skill. And Mr. Mabbott sent in a sugary “Temple of Hymen” and a bride’s cake prepared six weeks in advance.
The bride, alternately radiant and tearful like an April day, veiled with lace, and crowned with white rose-buds and orange-blossoms, wore a low-bodiced dress of white satin, festooned round the narrow skirt with costly lace, whilst on neck and arms, and in her tiny ears, were negligé, bracelets, and earrings of pearl, the gift of the gallant bridegroom’s gallant father.
The bridegroom was scarcely less resplendent in his high-collared blue coat and gold buttons, his white waistcoat buttoned to match, his glossy white trousers, and low shoes tied with a bunch of silk ferret. An oblong brooch set with a rim of pearls held down his broad fine shirt-frills; from his fob hung a huge bunch of gold seals pendant from a flat gold watch chain; and in his hand (not crushing his elaborate curls, now clustering richly as ever) he carried a hat of white beaver of the newest shape.
To Mr. and Mrs. Ashton it was a matter of open regret that Joshua Brookes, who had christened Augusta, should not have lived to marry her also; but Mr. Aspinall, whose reminiscences of the old chaplain were of another order, was much better satisfied to see his own personal friend Parson Gatliffe, the bon vivant, behind the altar-rails.
If the bride was tall and graceful, with sunshine in her eyes and in her classic curls, tall and stately was the bride’s mother, whose long train of purple silk velvet swept the aisles, though trains had ceased to be general. There was no faltering over the responses. There was a glow of modest pride on the cheek of Augusta; a look of mingled ardour and exultation on the face of Laurence; his “I will” was pronounced with a force which was almost fierce, yet, as she faintly promised to “obey,” he pressed her hand with smiling significance.
The ceremony over, the bride did not faint, but turning to her tearful-eyed father, threw her arms around his neck and clung to him, whispering how grateful she was that he had given her the man of her choice, and that he should see what a good wife she would make; and the impromptu embrace sent a shower of snuff over white satin and lace.
Yet some one fainted, whom Ben Travis caught in his strong arms and carried to the church door for air; a dark-haired, black-eyed bridesmaid, whose face was white and skin transparent as her own robe.
Custom had not set its imperative seal on the wedding tour as a necessity, but after a magnificent solid dinner, to which the party did full justice, and an elaborate dessert, during which the cake was cut, and Mr. Aspinall proposed the health of the bride in an inflated toast, demanding that it should be drunk in bumpers, “and no heel-taps,” the wedded pair drove off in Mr. Aspinall’s carriage to the family mansion at Fallowfield, there to spend the honeymoon.
“Good-bye, Jabez,” said Augusta, putting her small soft hand into his as they left the house; “you will comfort my father and mother, will you not? I trust them to you.”