The Three Brides Read online

  "Firenze-Florence," she said, deigning to translate; and finding her own reply. "Ah, yes, the Medusa!" then, as more than one exclaimed in indignant dismay, she said, "No, not the Gorgon, but the beautiful winged head, with only two serpents on the brow and one coiled round the neck, and the pensive melancholy face."

  "I know," said Julius, shortly; while the other gentlemen entered into an argument, some defending the beauty of the younger sister, some of the elder; and it lasted till they entered the park, where all were glad to partake of their well-earned meal, most of the gentlemen having been at work since dawn without sustenance, except a pull at the beer served out to the firemen.

  Cecil was not at all shy, and was pleased to take her place as representative lady of the house; but somehow, though every one was civil and attentive to her, she found herself effaced by the more full-blown Rosamond, accustomed to the same world as the guests; and she could not help feeling the same sense of depression as when she had to yield the head of her father's table to her step-mother.

  Nor could she have that going to church for the first time in state with her bridegroom she had professed to dread, but had really anticipated with complacency; for though Julius had bidden the bells to be rung for afternoon service, Raymond was obliged to go back to Wil'sbro' to make arrangements for the burnt-out families, and she had to go as lonely as Anne herself.

  Lady Tyrrell and her sister were both at Compton Church, and overtook the three sisters-in-law as they were waiting to be joined by the Rector.

  "We shall have to take shelter with you," said Lady Tyrrell, "poor burnt-out beings that we are."

  "Do you belong to Wil'sbro'?" said Rosamond.

  "Yes; St. Nicholas is an immense straggling parish, going four miles along the river. I don't know how we shall ever be able to go back again to poor old Mr. Fuller. You'll never get rid of us from Compton."

  "I suppose they will set about rebuilding the church at once," said Cecil. "Of course they will form a committee, and put my husband on it."

  "In the chair, no doubt," said Lady Tyrrell, in a tone that sounded to Rosamond sarcastic, but which evidently gratified Cecil. "But we will have a committee of our own, and you will have to preside, and patronize our bazaar. Of course you know all about them."

  "Oh yes!" said Cecil, eagerly. "We have one every year for the Infirmary, only my father did not approve of my selling at a stall."

  "Ah! quite right then, but you are a married woman now, and that is quite a different thing. The stall of the three brides. What an attraction! I shall come and talk about it when I make my call in full form! Good-bye again."

  Cecil's balance was more than restored by this entire recognition to be prime lady-patroness of everything. To add to her satisfaction, when her husband came home to dinner, bringing with him both the curates, she found there was to be a meeting on Tuesday in the Assembly-room, of both sexes, to consider of the relief of the work- people, and that he would be glad to take her to it. Moreover, as it was to be strictly local, Rosamond was not needed there, though Raymond was not equally clear as to the Rector, since he believed that the St. Nicholas parishioners meant to ask the loan of Compton Poynsett Church for one service on a Sunday.

  "Then I shall keep out of the way," said Julius. "I do not want to have the request made to me in public."

  "You do not mean to refuse?" said Cecil, with a sort of self-identification with her constituents.

  "The people are welcome to attend as many of our services as they like; but there is no hour that I could give the church up to Mr. Fuller on a Sunday."

  "Nor would the use of St. Nicholas be very edifying for our people," added Mr. Bindon.

  His junior clenched it by saying with a laugh, "I should think not! Fancy old Fuller's rusty black gown up in our pulpit!"

  "I rejoice to say that is burnt," rejoined Mr. Bindon.

  "What bet will you take that a new one will be the first thing subscribed for?" said the deacon, bringing a certain grave look on the faces of both the elder clergy, and a horror-stricken one upon Anne's; while Cecil pronounced her inevitable dictum, that at Dunstone Mr. Venn always preached in a gown, and "we" should never let him think of anything nonsensical.

  Rosamond was provoked into a display of her solitary bit of ecclesiastical knowledge-"A friar's gown, the most Popish vestment in the church."

  Cecil, thoroughly angered, flushed up to the eyes and bit her lips, unable to find a reply, while all the gentlemen laughed. Frank asked if it were really so, and Mr. Bindon made the well-known explanation that the Geneva gown was neither more nor less than the monk's frock.

  "I shall write and ask Mr. Venn," gasped Cecil; but her husband stifled the sound by saying, "I saw little Pettitt, Julius, this afternoon, overwhelmed with gratitude to you for all the care you took of his old mother, and all his waxen busts."

  "Ah! by the bye!" said Charlie, "I did meet the Rector staggering out, with the fascinating lady with the long eyelashes in one arm, and the moustached hero in the other."

  "There was no pacifying the old lady without," said Julius. "I had just coaxed her to the door, when she fell to wringing her hands. Ah! those lovely models, that were worth thirty shillings each, with natural hair-that they should be destroyed! If the heat or the water did but come near them, Adolphus would never get over it. I could only pacify her by promising to go back for these idols of his heart as soon as she was safe; and after all, I had to dash at them through the glass, and that was the end of my spectacles."

  "Where was Pettitt himself?"

  "Well employed, poor little fellow, saving the people in those three cottages of his. No one supposed his shop in danger, but the fire took a sudden freak and came down Long Street; and though the house is standing, it had to be emptied and deluged with water to save it. I never knew Pettitt had a mother till I found her mounting guard, like one distracted, over her son's bottles of perfumery."

  "And dyes?" murmured Raymond under his breath; but Frank caught the sound, and said, "Ah, Julius! don't I remember his inveigling you into coming out with scarlet hair?"

  "I don't think I've seen him since," said Julius, laughing. "I believe he couldn't resist such an opportunity of practising his art. And for my part, I must say for myself, that it was in our first holidays, and Raymond and Miles had been black and blue the whole half-year from having fought my battles whenever I was called either 'Bunny' or 'Grandfather.' So when he assured me he could turn my hair to as sweet a raven-black as Master Poynsett's, I thought it would be pleasing to all, forgetting that he could not dye my eyes, and that their effect would have been some degrees more comical."

  "For shame, Julius!" said Rosamond. "Don't you know that one afternoon, when Nora had cried for forty minutes over her sum, she declared that she wanted to make her eyes as beautiful as Mr. Charnock's. Well, what was the effect?"

  "Startling," said Raymond. "He came down in shades of every kind of crimson and scarlet. A fearful object, with his pink-and-white face glowing under it."

  "And what I had to undergo from Susan!" added Julius. "She washed me, and soaped me, and rubbed me, till I felt as if all the threshing-machines in the county were about my head, lecturing me all the time on the profanity of flying against Scripture by trying to alter one's hair from what Providence had made it. Nothing would do; her soap only turned it into shades of lemon and primrose. I was fain to let her shave my head as if I had a brain fever; and I was so horribly ashamed for years after, that I don't think I have set foot in Long Street since till to-day."

  "Pettitt is a queer little fellow," said Herbert. "The most truculent little Radical to hear him talk, and yet staunch in his votes, for he can't go against those whose hair he has cut off from time immemorial."

  "I hope he has not lost much," said Julius.

  "His tenements are down, but they were insured; and as to his stock, he says he owes its safety entirely to you, Julius. I think he would present you with both his models as a testimonial, if you could only
take them," said Raymond.

  Cecil had neither spoken nor laughed through all this. She was nursing her wrath; and after marching out of the dining-room, lay in wait to intercept her husband, and when she had claimed his attention, began, "Rosamond ought not to be allowed to say such things."

  "What things?"

  "Speaking in that improper way about a gown."

  "She seems to have said what was the fact."

  "It can't be! It is preposterous! I never heard it before."

  "Nor I; but Bindon evidently is up in those matters."

  "It was only to support Rosamond; and I am quite sure she said it out of mere opposition to me. You ought to speak to Julius."

  "About what?" said Raymond.

  "Her laughing whenever I mention Dunstone, and tell them the proper way of doing things."

  "There may be different opinions about the proper way of doing things." Then as she opened her eyes in wonder and rebuke, he continued, in his elder-brotherly tone of kindness, "You know I told you already that you had better not interfere in matters concerning his church and parish."

  "We always managed things at Dunstone."

  Hang Dunstone! was with some difficulty suppressed; but in an extra gentle voice Raymond said, "Your father did what he thought his duty, but I do not think it mine, nor yours, to direct Julius in clerical matters. It can only lead to disputes, and I will not have them."

  "It is Rosamond. I'm sure I don't dispute."

  "Listen, Cecil!" he said. "I can see that your position may be trying, in these close quarters with a younger brother's wife with more age and rank than yourself."

  "That is nothing. An Irish earl, and a Charnock of Dunstone!"

  "Dunstone will be more respected if you keep it in the background," he said, holding in stronger words with great difficulty. "Once for all, you have your own place and duties, and Rosamond has hers. If you meddle in them, nothing but annoyance can come of it; and remember, I cannot be appealed to in questions between you and her. Julius and I have gone on these nine-and-twenty years without a cloud between us, and I'm sure you would not wish to bring one now."

  Wherewith he left her bewildered. She did not perceive that he was too impartial for a lover, but she had a general sense that she had come into a rebellious world, where Dunstone and Dunstone's daughter were of no account, and her most cherished notions disputed. What was the lady of the manor to do but to superintend the church, parsonage, and parish generally? Not her duty? She had never heard of such a thing, nor did she credit it. Papa would come home, make these degenerate Charnocks hear reason, and set all to rights.

  CHAPTER VI. Wedding Visits

  Young Mrs. Charnock Poynsett had plenty of elasticity, and her rebuffs were less present to her mind in the morning than to that of her husband, who had been really concerned to have to inflict an expostulation; and he was doubly kind, almost deferential, giving the admiration and attention he felt incumbent on him to the tasteful arrangements of her wedding presents in her own sitting- room.

  "And this clock I am going to have in the drawing-room, and these Salviati glasses. Then, when I have moved out the piano, I shall put the sofa in its place, and my own little table, with my pretty Florentine ornaments."

  Raymond again looked annoyed. "Have you spoken to my mother?" he said.

  "No; she never goes there."

  "Not now, but if ever she can bear any move it will be her first change, and I should not like to interfere with her arrangements."

  "She could never have been a musician, to let the piano stand against the wall. I shall never be able to play."

  "Perhaps that might be contrived," said Raymond, kindly. "Here you know is your own domain, where you can do as you please."

  "Yes; but I am expected to play in the evening. Look at all those things. I had kept the choicest for the drawing-room, and it is such a pity to hide them all up here."

  Raymond felt for the mortification, and was unwilling to cross her again, so he said, "I will ask whether my mother would object to having the piano moved."

  "This morning?"

  "After eleven o'clock-I never disturb her sooner; but you shall hear before I go to Backsworth."

  "An hour lost," thought Cecil; but she was too well bred to grumble, and she had her great work to carry on of copying and illustrating her journal.

  Mrs. Poynsett readily consented. "Oh yes, my dear, let her do whatever she likes. Don't let me be a bugbear. A girl is never at home till she has had her will of the furniture. I think she will find that moving out the piano betrays the fading of the rest of the paper, but that is her affair. She is free to do just as she likes. I dare say the place does look antediluvian to young eyes."

  So Raymond was the bearer of his mother's full permission; and Cecil presided with great energy over the alterations, which she carried out by the aid of the younger servants, to the great disgust of their seniors. She expected the acclamations of her contemporaries; but it happened that the first of them to cross the room was Julius, on his way to his mother's room after luncheon, and he, having on a pair of make-shift glasses, till the right kind could be procured from London, was unprepared for obstacles in familiar regions, stumbled over an ottoman, and upset a table with the breakage of a vase.

  He apologized, with much regret; but the younger brothers made an outcry. "What has come to the place? Here's the table all over everything!"

  "And where are the bronzes?"

  "And the humming-birds? Miles's birds, that he brought home after his first voyage."

  "And the clock with the two jolly little Cupids? Don't you remember Miles and Will Bowater dressing them up for men-of-war's men? Mother could not bring herself to have them undressed for a year, and all the time the clock struck nohow!"

  "This is an anatomical study instead of a clock," lamented Frank. "I say, Cecil, do you like your friends to sit in their bones, like Sydney Smith?"

  "I never saw such a stupid old set of conservatives!" broke in Rosamond, feeling for Cecil's mortification. "In an unprejudiced eye the room looks infinitely better, quite revivified! You ought to be much obliged to Cecil for letting you see all her beautiful things."

  "Why don't you favour us with yours?" said Charlie.

  "I know better! Mine aren't fit to wipe the shoes of Cecil's! When I get into the Rectory you'll see how hideous they are!" said Rosamond, with the merriest complacency. "Couvre-pieds to set your teeth on edge, from the non-commissioned officers' wives; and the awfullest banner-screen you ever saw, worked by the drum-major's own hands, with Her Majesty's arms on one side, and the De Courcy ones on the other, and glass eyes like stuffed birds' to the lion and unicorn. We nearly expired from suppressed laughter under the presentation."

  Then she went round, extorting from the lads admiration for Cecil's really beautiful properties, and winning gratitude for her own cordial praise, though it was not the artistic appreciation they deserved. Indeed, Cecil yielded to the general vote for the restoration of the humming-birds, allowing that, though she did not like stuffed birds in a drawing-room, she would not have banished them if she had known their history.

  This lasted till Charlie spied a carriage coming up the drive, which could be seen a long way off, so that there was the opportunity for a general sauve qui peut. Cecil represented that Rosamond ought to stay and receive her bridal visits; but she was unpersuadable. "Oh no! I leave all that for you! My time will come when I get into the Rectory. We are going in the dog-cart to the other end of the parish.-What's its name-Squattlesea Marsh, Julius?"

  "Squattlesford!" said Charlie. "If Julius means to drive you, look out for your neck!"

  "No, it's the other way, I'm going to drive Julius!-Come along, or we shall be caught!"

  Cecil stood her ground, as did Anne, who was too weary and indifferent to retreat, and Frank, who had taken another view of the carriage as it came nearer.

  "I must apologize for having brought nothing but my father's card," said Lady Tyrrell, enterin
g with her sister, and shaking hands: "there's no such thing as dragging him out for a morning call."

  "And Mr. Charnock Poynsett is not at home," replied Cecil. "He found so much county business waiting for him, that he had to go to Backsworth."

  "It is the better opportunity for a little private caucus with you," returned Lady Tyrrell, "before the meeting to-morrow. I rather fancy the gentlemen have one of their own."

  "Some are to dine here to-night," said Cecil.

  "We ladies had better be prepared with our proposals," said Lady Tyrrell.

  At the same time Frank drew near Miss Vivian with a large book, saying, "These are the photographs you wished to see."

  He placed the book on the ottoman, and would thus have secured a sort of tete-a-tete; but Eleonora did not choose to leave Mrs Miles Charnock out, and handed her each photograph in turn, but could only elicit a cold languid "Thank you." To Anne's untrained eye these triumphs of architecture were only so many dull representations of 'Roman Catholic churches,' and she would much rather have listened to the charitable plans of the other two ladies, for the houseless factory women of Wil'sbro'.

  The bazaar, Lady Tyrrell said, must be first started by the Member's wife; and there should be an innermost committee, of not more than three, to dispose of stalls and make arrangements.

  "You must be one," said Cecil. "I know no one yet."

  "You will, long before it comes off. In fact, I am as great a stranger as yourself. Ah! there's an opportunity!" as the bell pealed. "The Bowaters, very likely; I saw their Noah's ark as I passed the Poynsett Arms, with the horses taken out. I wonder how many are coming-worthy folks!"

  Which evidently meant insufferable bores.

  "Is there not a daughter?" asked Cecil.

  "You need not use the singular, though, by the bye, most of them are married."

  "Oh, pray stay!" entreated Cecil, as there were signs of leave-taking.

  "I should do you no good. You'll soon learn that I am a sort of Loki among the Asagotter."

  Cecil laughed, but had time to resume her somewhat prim dignity before the lengthened disembarkation was over, and after all, produced only four persons; but then none were small-Mrs. Bowater was a harsh matron, Mr. Bowater a big comely squire, the daughters both tall, one with an honest open face much like Herbert's, only with rather less youth and more intelligence, the other a bright dark glowing gipsy-faced young girl.