|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 51
In a few days Julius followed; he came to see the presents, and to read,
with personal illustrations and comments, the letters that had
accompanied them. Sophia's ideas of her own importance grew constantly
more pronounced; indeed, there was a certain amount of "claim" in them,
which no one liked very well to submit to. And yet it was difficult to
resist demands enforced by such remarks as, "It is the last time I shall
ask for such a thing;" "One expects their own people to take a little
interest in their marriage;" "I am sure Julius and _his_ family have
done all _they_ can;" "They seem to understand what a girl must feel and
like at such an eventful time of her life," and so on, and so on, in
variations suited to the circumstances or the occasion.
Every one was worn out before July, and every one felt it to be a relief
when the wedding-day came. It was ushered in with the chiming of bells,
and the singing of bride-songs by the village children. The village
itself was turned upside down, and the house inside out. As for the
gloomy old church, it looked like a festal place, with flowers and gay
clothing and smiling faces. It was the express wish of Sophia that none
of the company should wear white. "That distinction," she said, "ought
to be reserved for the bride;" and among the maids in pink and blue and
primrose, she stood a very lily of womanhood. Her diaphanous, floating
robe of Dacca muslin; her Indian veil of silver tissue, filmy as light;
her gleaming pearls and feathery fan, made her
"A sight to dream of, not to tell."
The service was followed by the conventional wedding-breakfast; the
congratulations of friends, and the rattling away of the bridal-carriage
to the "hurrahing" of the servants and the villagers; and the
_tin-tin-tabula_ of the wedding-peals. Before four o'clock the last
guest had departed, and the squire stood with his wife and Charlotte
weary and disconsolate amid the remains of the feast and the dying
flowers; all of them distinctly sensitive to that mournful air which
accomplished pleasures leave behind them.
The squire could say nothing to dispel it. He took his rod as an excuse
for solitude, and went off to the fells. Mrs. Sandal was crying with
exhaustion, and was easily persuaded to go to her room, and sleep. Then
Charlotte called the servants, men and women, and removed every trace of
the ceremony, and all that was unusual or extravagant. She set the
simplest of meals; she managed in some way, without a word, to give the
worried squire the assurance that all the folly and waste and hurryment
were over for ever; and that his life was to fall back into a calm,
regular, economical groove.
He drank his tea and smoked his pipe to this sense, and was happier than
he had been for many a week.
"It is a middling good thing, Alice," he said, "that we have only one
more daughter to marry. I should think a matter of three or four would
ruin or kill a man, let alone a mother. Eh? What?"
"That is the blessed truth, William. And yet it is the pride of my heart
to say that there never was such a bride or such a bridal in Sandal-Side
before. Still, I am tired, and I feel just as if I had had a trouble.
Come day, go day; at the long end, life is no better than the preacher
called it--_vanity_."
"To be sure it is not. We laugh at a wedding, we cry at a burying, a
christening brings us a feast. On the Sabbath we say our litany; and as
for the rest of the year, one day marrows another."
"Well, well, William Sandal! Maybe we will both feel better after a
night's sleep. To-morrow is untouched."
And the squire, looking into her pale, placid face, had not the heart to
speak out his thought, which was, "Nay, nay; we have mortgaged
to-morrow. Debt and fear, and the penalties of over-work and over-eating
and over-feeling, will be dogging us for their dues by dayshine."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ENEMY IN THE HOUSEHOLD.
"There is a method in man's wickedness,
It grows up by degrees."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|