A Double Knot

“Didn’t – er – er – she didn’t say anything about – about my dress – my personal appearance, did she?”

“Now, wasn’t I right when I called you a conceited man? Really, Elbraham, it is shocking! I declare you are one of the most anxious lovers I ever met, and I won’t tell you a word she said.”

“Oh yes; come now, do.”

“It would be a breach of confidence, and I really cannot give way – no, not on any consideration.”

“You are hard upon me,” said Elbraham. “Oh, by the way, I haven’t forgotten you, Lady Littletown. Would you wear this to oblige me?”

“Oh no, I could not think of taking it, Mr Elbraham really. It looks so like a bribe, too.”

“No, no, that it don’t,” said the financier. “I wouldn’t give it to you at first, for fear your ladyship should think I meant it in that way; but now it is all settled, and you have been so kind to me, I thought perhaps you would not mind accepting that little marquise ring just as a remembrance of, etcetera, etcetera – you know.”

“Well, if you put it like that,” said Lady Littletown, “I suppose I must take it, and wear it as you say. But it is too good, Elbraham – it is, really. What a lovely opal!”

“Yes, ’tis a good one, isn’t it?”

“Charming! And what regular diamonds!”

“I thought you’d like it,” chuckled Elbraham; and then, to himself, “They’re all alike.”

“Do you know, Elbraham,” said her ladyship, holding the ring up to the light for him to see, as she fitted it upon her finger over her glove – “lovely, isn’t it? – do you know, Elbraham, that I was going to ask you to do me a kindness?”

“Were you, though? What is it?”

“Well, you see, Elbraham, living, as I do, a woman’s life, I am so ignorant of business matters.”

“Of course you are,” he responded. “Want to make your will?”

“No, no, no, no! horrid man! How can you?” she cried, whipping him playfully with her sunshade. “I want you to tell me what it means when a gentleman is short of money and he goes to somebody to get a bill discounted.”

“Simplest thing in the world. If the paper’s good,” said Elbraham, “discount accordingly. I never touch bills now.”

“No?” she said sweetly; “but then you are so rich. But that is it, Elbraham – if the paper’s good, discount accordingly? What do you call it – the bill? Well, it is easy to have it on the very best note-paper.”

“Haw, haw, haw! bless your ladyship’s innocence!” cried Elbraham, with a hoarse laugh. “By paper being good I mean that the man who signs his name is substantial – can pay up when it comes to maturity.”

“Oh!” said Lady Littletown, drawing out the interjection in a singularly long way, “I see now. And that is how a gentleman raises money, is it?”

“Yes, that’s it,” said Elbraham, eyeing her ladyship curiously.

“Would not a lady do?” asked Lady Littletown.

“To be sure she would!” said the financier. “Lookye here – does your ladyship want a hundred or two?”

“Not to-morrow, dear Mr Elbraham; but my rents do not come in for another month, and I must confess to having been rather extravagant lately – I have had a great deal of company, and I thought I might – might – might – what do you call it?”

“Do a bill.”

“Yes, that’s it – do a bill,” said her ladyship, “if some kind friend would show me how.”

“It’s done,” said Elbraham. “What would you like – two-fifty?”

“Well, yes,” said her ladyship.

“Better make it three hundred – looks better,” said the financier.

“But you are not to advance the money, dear Mr Elbraham. I could not take it of you.”

“All right; I shan’t have anything to do with it. Someone in the City will send your ladyship a slip of paper to sign, and the cheque will come by the next post. I say, though, what did Clotilde say?”

“Oh, I daren’t tell you. Really, you know – pray don’t press me – I couldn’t confess. Dear Clotilde would be so angry if I betrayed her – dear girl! I could not do that, you know.”

“Honour bright, I wouldn’t say a word for the world.”

“Well, it’s very shocking, you know, Elbraham, and I was quite astonished to hear her say it; but she is so innocent and girlish, and it came out so naturally that I forgave her.”

“But what did she say?”

“Oh, dear child,” she clapped her hands together with delight, and then covered her blushing face and cried, “Oh, Lady Littletown, I wish it was to-morrow!”

“By Jingo!” exclaimed the financier to himself, “so do I!”

Everybody being in the same mind, the wedding was hurried on. The trousseau was of the most splendid character, and Marie entered into the spirit of the affair with such eagerness that the sisters forbore to quarrel.

Mr Montaigne came and went far more frequently, and seemed to bless his pupils in an almost apostolic fashion.

“I would give much,” he said, with a gentle, pious look of longing, “to be able to perform the ceremony which joins two loving hearts.”

But three eminent divines were to tie that knot, and even if Mr Paul Montaigne had been in holy orders according to the rites and ceremonies of the English Church, his services would not have been demanded, and he contented himself with smiling benignly and offering a few kindly words of advice.

Miss Dymcox and the Honourable Isabella were rather at odds on the question of intimacy, and Captain Glen would have been religiously excluded from the precincts of Hampton Court Palace private apartments if the Honourable Philippa had had her way; but Lady Littletown took it as a matter of course that several of the officers of the barracks should be invited, to add éclat to the proceedings, and as the Honourable Isabella sided with her, invitation-cards were sent, and, for reasons that Glen could not have explained to himself, were accepted.

“Yes, I’ll go, if it’s only to show her that I am not cast down. I’ll go and see her married. I’ll see her sell herself into slavery, and I hope she may never repent her step.”

The next hour, though, he said he would not go, and he was about to keep to his determination, when Dick came in, and announced that he had received an invitation.

“You’ll go, of course?”

“Go? No; why should I?”

“Just to show that you are a man of the world; no woman should fool me and make me seem like the chap in the song – ‘wasting in despair – die, because a woman’s fair’ – you know. Oh, I’d go.”

Glen sat thinking for awhile.

“I wouldn’t be cut up, you know.”

“If I thought that she threw me over of her own free will, Dick, I would not care a sou; but I believe that wicked old hag, her aunt Philippa, has forced her into it.”

“Then you need not care a sou.”

“How do you know?”

“Marie told me she accepted Elbraham for his coin.”

“Yes; she intimated as much to me.”

“She did! When?”

“Oh, the other day – the last time I saw her – when I had been to the private apartments, you know.”

“Oh yes. Ah, to be sure,” said Dick, who seemed much relieved. “Oh, I’d go, dear boy; I would indeed.”

“I will go,” said Glen with energy; and on the appointed day he went.

Hampton Court had not seen a more brilliant wedding for years, and the preparations at the Honourable Misses Dymcox’s apartments so completely put Joseph off his head that he, the reputable young man who preached temperance to Buddy the flyman, and was carefully saving up all his money to add to the savings of Markes for the purpose of taking a lodging-house, was compelled to fly to stimulants to sustain him.

The very way in which the dining-room was “done up,” as he called it, “with flowers and things” staggered him, and it seemed no wonder that the greeny stone basin in the middle court should sound quite noisy as the big squirt in the centre made more ambitious efforts than usual to mount the sky, and the old gold and silver fish stared more wonderingly as they sailed round and round.

But Joseph was not alone in being off his head and flying to stimulants; even cook was as bad, and was found by Markes standing at the door and talking to a soldier – the greatest treason in Markes’ eyes that a woman could commit – and reprimanded thereon, with the consequence that cook rebounded like a spring, and struck the austere, temperate, unloving Markes.

It was no wonder, for the sacred department of cook had been invaded by strange men in white apparel to such an extent that from being angry she grew hysterical, and went to Markes, apologetic and meek, for comfort, vowing that she couldn’t “abear” soldiers; but she was so humbled by the austere damsel that she turned to Joseph, who administered to her from the same cup as that wherefrom he obtained his relief.

The wearers of the white caps and jackets brought a batterie de cuisine, bombarded and captured the room set apart for cooking, and then and there proceeded to build up strange edifices of sugar, concoct soups, sweets, and all and sundry of those meats which are used to furnish forth a wedding feast.

The cases of wines that came in took away Joseph’s breath, but he revived a little at the sight of the flowers, and shortly afterwards relapsed, staying in a peculiarly misty state of mind and a new suit of livery to the end of the proceedings, during which time he had a faint recollection of seeing the Honourable Philippa greatly excited and the Honourable Isabella very tremulous, as they went about in new dresses, made in the style worn by the late Queen Adelaide, making them both bear some resemblance to a couple of human sprigs of lavender, taken out, carefully preserved, from some old box, where they had been lying for the past half-century.

It was a very troublous time, and Joseph wished his head had been a little clearer than it was. Those wide-spreading Queen Adelaide bonnets and feathers seemed to dance before his eyes and to confuse him. So did the constantly arriving company; but, still, he recalled a great deal. For instance, he had a lively recollection of the smell of his “bokay,” as he called it; of the young ladies going to the service at the church and coming back in a carriage, behind which he stood with an enormous white favour and the bouquet in his breast, while some boys shouted “Hurray!” He remembered that, but it did not make him happy, for he could never settle it thoroughly in his own mind whether that “hurray” was meant for him or for the bride.

That affair of the bride, too, troubled Joseph a good deal, and, but for the respect in which he held the family, or the awe in which he stood of the Honourable Philippa, he would have resented it strongly.

Certainly there were only two horses to the carriage behind which Joseph stood, but it was a particularly good carriage, hired from a London livery stables, with capital horses and a superior driver, who looked quite respectable in the hat and coat kept on purpose for Buddy the fly-driver, although he grumbled at having to put them on, as Buddy had been intoxicated upon the last occasion of his wearing them, and had somewhat taken off their bloom through going back to his stables and wearing them while he lay down in the straw for a nap.

Upon that occasion Joseph had seriously lectured Buddy upon the evils of intemperance.

“Look at me,” he said; “I can drink a glass of ale without its hurting me.”

“Well, the things ain’t improved, suttenly,” said Buddy in a repentant tone. Then scornfully: “But as to you and your slooshun of biled brewer’s aperns that you calls ale, why, you might wet-nuss babies on it, and it wouldn’t hurt ’em so long as you didn’t do it when it’s sour.”

“But it’s a very, very bad habit, Buddy,” exclaimed Markes; “just look at that hat.”

“Ah, you’ll have worse jobs than that some of these days when you marries a sojer.”

Mrs Markes bounced out in disgust.

“How she do hate to hear the soldiers mentioned, surely,” chuckled Buddy. “Why, she can’t abear ’em. But she needn’t be so hard about a fellow getting a drop; it’s a great comfort. She don’t know what it is, and never got to that stage, Joe, when everything about you as you taste and touch and smell feels as if it was soft and nice, and as if you’d tumbled into a place as was nothing else but welwet.”

The result was that Buddy’s hat and coat were thoroughly taken in hand by Markes and furbished up, the overcoat having to be rubbed and turpentined and brushed till it was more in keeping with the style of a wedding garment, while the hat was ‘gone over’ with a sponge and flat-iron, to the production of a most unearthly gloss, anent which Buddy chaffed the new driver. But of course that was on account of jealousy, that he, the regular ladies’ coachman, and his musty-smelling, jangling fly and meagrimed horse should be set aside upon an occasion when there would have been “a bite to get and a sup o’ suthin’ just to wash out a fellow’s mouth,” For Buddy had a laudable desire to keep his mouth clean by washing it out; and he resented the insult to his dignity upon this occasion by going to the Mitre Tap, and washing out his mouth till he was unable to take this clean mouth home.

As the Dymcoxes sported so dashing a turn-out, and Joseph handed in the bride and took her to church, what he wanted to know was why Elbraham should take her back in his four-horse chariot. Of course he would take her away in it afterwards; but according to Joseph’s idea it would have been far more respectful to the Honourable Dymcoxes if Elbraham had come with his young wife in the hired carriage along with him.

This was a trouble to Joseph, which he objected to largely, wearing a soured and ill-used look on the way back from Hampton Church; and he was not a great deal better when, meeting Elbraham on the staircase, that gentleman slipped a five-pound note in his hand.

The bride looked very beautiful, and Joseph heard that she wore real lace, and it covered her nearly from top to toe. The white satin dress, too, was wonderfully stiff and good, while her bouquet, sent, with those for the bridesmaids, in so many neat wooden boxes from the central avenue of Covent Garden, was “quite a picter,” so Joseph said.

But somehow it was all a muddle, and Joseph could make neither head nor tail of it. He felt as if he must seize and ring the dinner-bell, or carry in the form for prayers. For instance, there was that Lord Henry Moorpark there, and Captain Glen and Mr Richard Millet, who had tipped him over and over again, and ought to have married the ladies. They were there, and so was that tall, dark Major Malpas, who always “looked at him as if he had been a dorg; and lots more people crowding into the rooms, and a-eating and drinking and talking till the place was a regular bubble.”

Joseph either meant Babel or a state of effervescence, both similes being applicable to the condition of the private apartments on the auspicious day, as it was called by Lord Henry, who played the part of “heavy father” in the genteel comedy in course of enactment.

Then Joseph – who told himself he had never seen such a set-out since he came, a hungry page from the orphan school – wanted to know why Captain Glen, who had been so huffed about Miss Clotilde’s marriage, should be there, and look so jolly, and propose the health of the bride. “It seemed rum,” Joseph said, “though certainly him and Miss Marie looked pretty thick now, while little Mr Millet sat next to Miss Ruth,” who, to the man’s notions, was “the prettiest of the lot.”

Joseph saw and heard a good deal. He saw Major Malpas place his glass in his dark eye, and, bringing the thick brow over it, stare very hard at the bride, who did not seem to mind it in the least – a fact which made the philosopher declare that “Miss Clo had got face enough for anything.”

He also heard Major Malpas, who was perfect in his dress and handsome bearing, say to one of the guests who had made some remark respecting Glen’s appearance, that the Captain was a fine animal, that was all. “Too big for a soldier, sah. Looks like a big mastiff, sah, taking care of that little toy-terrier Millet.”

Joseph’s notions of the wedding feast were very much after the fashion of the celebrated coat of his ancient namesake, of many colours, and those colours were terribly muddled up in his brain. They were bad enough before the matter of that five-pound note occurred; after that the unfortunate young man’s ideas were as if shaken up in a bottle to a state of neutral tint in which nothing was plain.

He put that five-pound note, crumpled as it was, either in his breeches or his behind coat-pocket, but what became of it afterwards he could not tell. He might have taken it out to hold a hot plate, to use as a d’oyley, or to wipe his nose, or to dab up the wine that Mr Elbraham spilt when he upset his champagne-glass. He might or he mightn’t. He couldn’t say then. All he knew was that it muddled him, and that the dinner-bell hadn’t been rung, nor the form carried in for prayers.

There was another idea came into his head, too, acting like so much leaven, or as an acid powder poured into the neutral alkaline solution already shaken up in his brain. There were those two waiters from Bunter’s standing by when Mr Elbraham gave him the five-pound note, and one of them winked at the other. Joseph could not say that one of those young men took that five-pound note. He was not going so far as to say it. What he was going to say was that they weren’t above taking two bottles of champagne back into the pantry and drinking them out of tumblers, and that a man who would take a bottle of wine that didn’t belong to him might go so far as a five-pound note.

Joseph grew worse as the morning wore on. He felt as if he must go and quarrel with Markes, and a great deal of what he recalled after may have been nothing but the merest patchwork of nebulous theories of his own gathered together in a troublous time. For it was not likely that Captain Glen would have been standing holding Miss Ruth’s hand, and making her blush, as he called her his dear child, and said she was the best and sweetest little thing he had ever met, and that he should never forget her kindness and sympathy.

Joseph certainly thought he heard Captain Glen say that, and he was near enough to have heard him say it; but he remembered afterwards that when he turned he caught sight of Mr Montaigne smiling in a peculiar way, but whether at him (Joseph), or at Captain Glen and Miss Ruth, he was not sure. It was a curious sort of smile, Joseph thought, exactly like that which Buddy’s old horse gave, drawing back its teeth before it tried to bite, and it made Joseph shiver.

He might have been in everybody’s way or he might not, but the Honourable Philippa said that he was to stop about and make himself useful, and of course he did; for if cook chose to give up her kitchen to a set of foreign chiefs – he meant chefs– he was not going to be ousted by Bunter’s waiters, even if some of them were six feet high, and one of them looked like a nobleman’s butler. Miss Philippa said he was to make himself useful, and see that the visitors had plenty, and he did, though it was very funny to see how little some people took, though that wasn’t the case with others.

It was while busying himself directly after the company had left the table that he came upon Captain Glen talking to Miss Ruth.

No, it wasn’t Miss Ruth that time; it was Miss Marie. Yes, of course it was; and Captain Glen was saying:

“No, Marie; I hope I am too much of a man to break my heart about a weak, vain woman. You saw how I behaved this morning? Well, I behaved as I felt – a little hurt, but heart-whole. Poor foolish girl! I trust that she will be happy.”

“I hope so, too,” Marie had answered. “I am sorry, Captain Glen, and I am very glad.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I am sure that Clotilde would never have made you happy.”

She gazed up at him in a curious way as she spoke, and it seemed to Joseph that Captain Glen looked puzzled and wondering. Then his face lit up, and he was going to speak to Miss Marie, when little Richard Millet came rushing up, saying:

“I say, Glen, hang it all! play fair. Don’t monopolise the company of all the ladies. Miss Marie, may I have the pleasure?”

He offered his arm as if he were going to take her through some dance instead of from the big landing amongst the flowers into the drawing-room; but instead of taking the offered arm, Joseph seemed to see that Miss Marie bowed gravely, and, looking handsome and queen-like, laid her hand upon the arm of Lord Henry Moorpark, who, very quiet and grave, had been hovering about ever since they rose from the table. Then the old gentleman had walked off with her, leaving little Mr Millet very cross, and it seemed to Joseph that he said something that sounded like a bar across a river, but whether it was weir or dam, Joseph’s brains were too much confused to recall.

In fact, all this came out by degrees in the calm and solitude of his pantry, when he had recovered next day from a splitting headache; and then it was that he recalled how foolishly everybody behaved when Miss Clotilde – Mrs Elbraham, he meant – went off with her rich husband: how Miss Philippa wept upon her neck, and Miss Isabella trembled, and her hands shook, when she kissed the young wife; how Mr Montaigne seemed to bless her, and afterwards go and stand by Miss Ruth, taking her hand and drawing it through his arm, patting the hand at the same time in quite a fatherly way.

Lady Anna Maria Morton, too, was there, standing with that stuck-up Mr “Rawthur” Litton, and Miss Marie with Lord Henry, and Lady Littletown, who seemed to have the management of the whole business, with Captain Glen; and at last, after the Honourable Philippa had kissed Mrs Elbraham once again, and then nearly fainted in little Dick Millet’s arms, the bride and bridegroom passed on towards the carriage, while people began to throw white slippers at them, and shower handfuls of rice, some of which fell on the bride’s bonnet and some upon the bridegroom, a good deal going down inside his coat-collar and some in his neck. But he went on smiling and bowing, and looking, Joseph thought, very much like a publican who had been dressed up in tight clothes, and then in consequence had burst into a profuse perspiration.

Glen was standing close by the carriage with a half-laugh upon his face as the bridegroom passed, and Joseph thought he looked very tall and strong and handsome, and as if he would like to pitch Mr Elbraham into the middle of the fountain.

And then, just as they were getting into the carriage, it seemed to Joseph that Miss Clotilde – he meant Mrs Elbraham, the rich financier’s wife – turned her head and looked at Captain Glen in a strange wild way, which made him turn aside and look at Miss Marie, when the bride went for the first time into a hysterical fit of sobbing as she was helped into the carriage, where Mr Elbraham followed her smiling red smiles. The steps were rattled up, the door banged, the footman waited a moment as the chariot moved away; and then sprang up into the rumble beside Mrs Elbraham’s maid, and away went the chariot as fast as four good post horses could take it towards London, bound for Charing Cross Station.

What took place at the private apartments afterwards Joseph did not know, for long before the chariot had reached Richmond, the honest serving-man’s head was wedged in a corner between the press bedstead in the pantry and the wall, and his confused ideas had gone off into dreamland, apparently on the back of a snorting horse, bent on recovering a certain five-pound note which was required for tying up a white satin slipperful of rice, which had been emptied out of Mr Elbraham’s glass into a Lincoln and Bennett hat.