CHAPTER XXVIII.
There is that in a wedding which appeals to a universal sympathy. No
other event in the lives of their superiors in rank creates an equal
sensation amongst the humbler classes.
From the moment the news that Miss Jemima was to be married had spread
throughout the village, all the old affection for the squire and his
House burst forth the stronger for its temporary suspension. Who could
think of the stocks in such a season? The stocks were swept out of
fashion,--hunted from remembrance as completely as the question of Repeal
or the thought of Rebellion from the warm Irish heart, when the fair
young face of the Royal Wife beamed on the sister isle.
Again cordial courtesies were dropped at the thresholds by which the
squire passed to his own farm; again the sunburned brows uncovered--no
more with sullen ceremony--were smoothed into cheerful gladness at his
nod. Nay, the little ones began again to assemble at their ancient
rendezvous by the stocks, as if either familiarized with the phenomenon,
or convinced that, in the general sentiment of good-will, its powers of
evil were annulled.
The squire tasted once more the sweets of the only popularity which is
much worth having, and the loss of which a wise man would reasonably
deplore,--namely, the popularity which arises from a persuasion of our
goodness, and a reluctance to recall our faults. Like all blessings, the
more sensibly felt from previous interruption, the squire enjoyed this
restored popularity with an exhilarated sense of existence; his stout
heart beat more vigorously; his stalwart step trod more lightly; his
comely English face looked comelier and more English than ever,--you
would have been a merrier man for a week to have come within hearing of
his jovial laugh.
He felt grateful to Jemima and to Riccabocca as the special agents of
Providence in this general /integratio amoris/. To have looked at him,
you would suppose that it was the squire who was going to be married a
second time to his Harry!
One may well conceive that such would have been an inauspicious moment
for Parson Dale's theological scruples to have stopped that marriage,
chilled all the sunshine it diffused over the village, seen himself
surrounded again by long sulky visages,--I verily believe, though a
better friend of Church and State never stood on a hustings, that, rather
than court such a revulsion, the squire would have found jesuitical
excuses for the marriage if Riccabocca had been discovered to be the Pope
in disguise! As for the stocks, its fate was now irrevocably sealed. In
short, the marriage was concluded,--first privately, according to the
bridegrooms creed, by a Roman Catholic clergyman, who lived in a town
some miles off, and next publicly in the village church of Hazeldean.
It was the heartiest rural wedding! Village girls strewed flowers on the
way; a booth was placed amidst the prettiest scenery of the Park on the
margin of the lake--for there was to be a dance later in the day. Even
Mr. Stirn--no, Mr. Stirn was not present; so much happiness would have
been the death of him! And the Papisher too, who had conjured Lenny out
of the stocks nay, who had himself sat in the stocks for the very purpose
of bringing them into contempt,--the Papisher! he had a lief Miss Jemima
had married the devil! Indeed he was persuaded that, in point of fact,
it was all one and the same. Therefore Mr. Stirn had asked leave to go
and attend his uncle the pawnbroker, about to undergo a torturing
operation for the stone! Frank was there, summoned from Eton for the
occasion--having grown two inches taller since he left--for the one inch
of which nature was to be thanked, for the other a new pair of
resplendent Wellingtons. But the boy's joy was less apparent than that
of others. For Jemima, was a special favourite with him, as she would
have been with all boys,--for she was always kind and gentle, and made
him many pretty presents whenever she came from the watering-places; and
Frank knew that he should miss her sadly, and thought she had made a very
queer choice.
Captain Higginbotham had been invited; but to the astonishment of Jemima,
he had replied to the invitation by a letter to herself, marked "private
and confidential."
"She must have long known," said the letter, "of his devoted attachment
to her! motives of delicacy, arising from the narrowness of his income
and the magnanimity of his sentiments, had alone prevented his formal
proposals; but now that he was informed (he could scarcely believe his
senses or command his passions) that her relations wished to force her
into a BARBAROUS marriage with a foreigner of MOST FORBIDDING APPEARANCE,
and most abject circumstances, he lost not a moment in laying at her feet
his own hand and fortune. And he did this the more confidently, inasmuch
as he could not but be aware of Miss Jemima's SECRET feelings towards
him, while he was proud and happy to say, that his dear and distinguished
cousin, Mr. Sharpe Currie, had honoured him with a warmth of regard which
justified the most brilliant EXPECTATIONS,--likely to be soon realized,
as his eminent relative had contracted a very bad liver complaint in the
service of his country, and could not last long!"
In all the years they had known each other, Miss Jemima, strange as it
may appear, had never once suspected the captain of any other feelings
to her than those of a brother. To say that she was not gratified by
learning her mistake would be to say that she was more than woman.
Indeed, it must have been a source of no ignoble triumph to think that
she could prove her disinterested affection to her dear Riccabocca by a
prompt rejection of this more brilliant offer. She couched the
rejection, it is true, in the most soothing terms. But the captain
evidently considered himself ill used; he did not reply to the letter,
and did not come to the wedding.
To let the reader into a secret, never known to Miss Jemima, Captain
Higginbotham was much less influenced by Cupid than by Plutus in the
offer he had made. The captain was one of that class of gentlemen who
read their accounts by those corpse-lights, or will-o'-the-wisps, called
expectations. Ever since the squire's grandfather had left him--then in
short clothes--a legacy of L500, the captain had peopled the future with
expectations! He talked of his expectations as a man talks of shares in
a Tontine; they might fluctuate a little,--be now up and now down,--but
it was morally impossible, if he lived on, but that he should be a
millionnaire one of these days. Now, though Miss Jemima was a good
fifteen years younger than himself, yet she always stood for a good round
sum in the ghostly books of the captain. She was an expectation to the
full amount of her L4000, seeing that Frank was an only child, and it
would be carrying coals to Newcastle to leave him anything.
Rather than see so considerable a cipher suddenly sponged out of his
visionary ledger, rather than so much money should vanish clean out of
the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken what he conceived, if a
desperate, at least a certain, step for the preservation of his property.
If the golden horn could not be had without the heifer, why, he must take
the heifer into the bargain. He had never formed to himself an idea that
a heifer so gentle would toss and fling him over. The blow was stunning.
But no one compassionates the misfortunes of the covetous, though few
perhaps are in greater need of compassion. And leaving poor Captain
Higginbotham to retrieve his illusory fortunes as he best may among "the
expectations" which gathered round the form of Mr. Sharpe Currie, who was
the crossest old tyrant imaginable, and never allowed at his table any
dishes not compounded with rice, which played Old Nick with the captain's
constitutional functions, I return to the wedding at Hazeldean, just in
time to see the bridegroom--who looked singularly well on the occasion--
hand the bride (who, between sunshiny tears and affectionate smiles, was
really a very interesting and even a pretty bride, as brides go) into a
carriage which the squire had presented to them, and depart on the
orthodox nuptial excursion amidst the blessings of the assembled crowd.
It may be thought strange by the unreflective that these rural spectators
should so have approved and blessed the marriage of a Hazeldean of
Hazeldean with a poor, outlandish, long-haired foreigner; but besides
that Riccabocca, after all, had become one of the neighbourhood, and was
proverbially "a civil-spoken gentleman," it is generally noticeable that
on wedding occasions the bride so monopolizes interest, curiosity, and
admiration that the bridegroom himself goes for little or nothing. He is
merely the passive agent in the affair,--the unregarded cause of the
general satisfaction. It was not Riccabocca himself that they approved
and blessed,--it was the gentleman in the white waistcoat who had made
Miss Jemima Madam Rickeybockey!
Leaning on his wife's arm (for it was a habit of the squire to lean on
his wife's arm rather than she on his, when he was specially pleased; and
there was something touching in the sight of that strong sturdy frame
thus insensibly, in hours of happiness, seeking dependence on the frail
arm of woman),--leaning, I say, on his wife's arm, the squire, about the
hour of sunset, walked down to the booth by the lake.
All the parish-young and old, man, woman, and childwere assembled there,
and their faces seemed to bear one family likeness, in the common emotion
which animated all, as they turned to his frank, fatherly smile. Squire
Hazeldean stood at the head of the long table: he filled a horn with ale
from the brimming tankard beside him. Then he looked round, and lifted
his hand to request silence; and ascending the chair, rose in full view
of all. Every one felt that the squire was about to make a speech, and
the earnestness of the attention was proportioned to the rarity of the
event; for (though he was not unpractised in the oratory of the hustings)
only thrice before had the squire made what could fairly be called "a
speech" to the villagers of Hazeldean,--once on a kindred festive
occasion, when he had presented to them his bride; once in a contested
election for the shire, in which he took more than ordinary interest, and
was not quite so sober as he ought to have been; once in a time of great
agricultural distress, when in spite of reduction of rents, the farmers
had been compelled to discard a large number of their customary
labourers, and when the squire had said, "I have given up keeping the
hounds because I want to make a fine piece of water (that was the origin
of the lake), and to drain all the low lands round the Park. Let every
man who wants work come to me!" And that sad year the parish rates of
Hazeldean were not a penny the heavier.
Now, for the fourth time, the squire rose, and thus he spoke,--at his
right hand, Harry; at his left, Frank; at the bottom of the table, as
vice-president, Parson Dale, his little wife behind him, only obscurely
seen. She cried readily, and her handkerchief was already before her
eyes.
