Henry Dunbar

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"In that case," thought the Major, as he went back to the ring, "I
shall sleep at Lisford to-night; I shall make Lisford my quarters for
the present, and I shall follow up Henry Dunbar."

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BRIDE THAT THE RAIN RAINS ON.

There was no sunshine upon Laura Dunbar's wedding morning. The wintry
sky was low and dark, as if the heavens had been coming gradually down
to crush this wicked earth. The damp fog, the slow, drizzling rain shut
out the fair landscape upon which the banker's daughter had been wont to
look from the pleasant cushioned seat in the deep bay-window of her
dressing-room.

The broad lawn was soddened by that perpetual rain. The incessant
rain-drops dripped from the low branches of the black spreading cedars
of Lebanon; the smooth beads of water ran off the shining laurel-leaves;
the rhododendrons, the feathery furze, the glistening
arbutus--everything was obscured by that cruel rain.

The water gushed out of the quaint dragons' mouths, ranged along the
parapet of the Abbey roof; it dripped from every stone coping and
abutment; from window-ledge and porch, from gable-end and sheltering
ivy. The rain was everywhere, and the incessant pitter-patter of the
drops beating against the windows of the Abbey made a dismal sound,
scarcely less unpleasant to hear than the perpetual lamentation of the
winds, which to-day had the sound of human voices; now moaning drearily,
with a long, low, wailing murmur, now shrieking in the shrilly tones of
an angry vixen.

Laura Dunbar gave a long discontented sigh as she seated herself at her
favourite bay-window, and looked out at the dripping trees upon the lawn
below.

She was a petted heiress, remember, and the world had gone so smoothly
with her hitherto, that perhaps she scarcely endured calamity or
contradiction with so good a grace as she might have done had she been a
little nearer perfection. She was hardly better than a child as yet,
with all a child's ignorant hopefulness and blind trust in the unknown
future. She was a pampered child, and she expected to have life made
very smooth for her.

"What a horribly dismal morning!" Miss Dunbar exclaimed. "Did you ever
see anything like it, Elizabeth?"

Mrs. Madden was bustling about, arranging her young mistress's breakfast
upon a little table near the blazing fire. Laura had just emerged from
her bath room, and had put on a loose dressing-gown of wadded blue silk,
prior to the grand ceremonial of the wedding toilet, which was not to
take place until after breakfast.

I think Miss Dunbar looked lovelier in this _deshabille_ than many a
bride in her lace and orange-blossoms. The girl's long golden hair, wet
from the bath, hung in rippling confusion about her fresh young face.
Two little feet, carelessly thrust into blue morocco slippers, peeped
out from amongst the folds of Miss Dunbar's dressing-gown, and one
coquettish scarlet heel tapped impatiently upon the floor as the young
lady watched that provoking rain.

"What a wretched morning!" she said.

"Well, Miss Laura, it is rather wet," replied Mrs. Madden, in a
conciliating tone.

"Rather wet!" echoed Laura, with an air of vexation; "I should think it
was _rather_ wet, indeed. It's miserably wet; it's horribly wet. To
think that the frost should have lasted very nearly three weeks, and
then must needs break up on my wedding morning. Did ever anybody know
anything so provoking?"

"Lor', Miss Laura," rejoined the sympathetic Madden, "there's all manner
of provoking things allus happenin' in this blessed, wicked, rampagious
world of ours; only such young ladies as you don't often come across
'em. Talk of being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, Miss Laura; I
do think as you must have come into this mortal spear with a whole
service of gold plate. And don't you fret your precious heart, my
blessed Miss Laura, if the rain _is_ contrairy. I dare say the clerk of
the weather is one of them rampagin' radicals that's allus a goin' on
about the bloated aristocracy, and he's done it a purpose to aggeravate
you. But what's a little rain more or less to you, Miss Laura, when
you've got more carriages to ride in than if you was a princess in a
fairy tale, which I think the Princess Baltroubadore, or whatever her
hard name was, in the story of Aladdin, must have had no carriage
whatever, or she wouldn't have gone walkin' to the baths. Never you mind
the rain, Miss Laura."

"But it's a bad omen, isn't it, Elizabeth?" asked Laura Dunbar. "I seem
to remember some old rhyme about the bride that the sun shines on, and
the bride that the rain rains on."

"Laws, Miss Laura, you don't mean to say as you'd bemean yourself by
taking any heed of such low rubbish as that?" exclaimed Mrs. Madden;
"why, such stupid rhymes as them are only made for vulgar people that
have the banns put up in the parish church. A deal it matters to such as
you, Miss Laura, if all the cats and dogs as ever was come down out of
the heavens this blessed day."

But though honest-hearted Elizabeth Madden did her best to comfort her
young mistress after her own simple fashion, she was not herself
altogether satisfied.

The low, brooding sky, the dark and murky atmosphere, and that
monotonous rain would have gone far to depress the spirits of the gayest
reveller in all the universe.

In spite of ourselves, we are the slaves of atmospheric influences; and
we cannot feel very light-hearted or happy upon black wintry days, when
the lowering heavens seem to frown upon our hopes; when, in the
darkening of the earthly prospect, we fancy that we see a shadowy
curtain closing round an unknown future.

Laura felt something of this; for she said, by-and-by, half impatiently,
half mournfully,--

"What is the matter with me, Elizabeth. Has all the world changed since
yesterday? When I drove home with papa, after the races yesterday,
everything upon earth seemed so bright and beautiful. Such an
overpowering sense of joy was in my heart, that I could scarcely believe
it was winter, and that it was only the fading November sunshine that
lit up the sky. All my future life seemed spread before me, like an
endless series of beautiful pictures--pictures in which I could see
Philip and myself, always together, always happy. To-day, to-day, oh!
_how_ different everything is!" exclaimed Laura, with a little shudder.
"The sky that shuts in the lawn yonder seems to shut in my life with it.
I can't look forward. If I was going to be parted from Philip to-day,
instead of married to him, I don't think I could feel more miserable
than I feel now. Why is it, Elizabeth, dear?"

"My goodness gracious me!" cried Mrs. Madden, "how should I tell, my
precious pet? You talk just like a poetry-book, and how can I answer you
unless I was another poetry-book? Come and have your breakfast, do,
that's a dear sweet love, and try a new-laid egg. New-laid eggs is good
for the spirits, my poppet."

Laura Dunbar seated herself in the comfortable arm-chair between the
fireplace and the little breakfast-table. She made a sort of pretence at
eating, just to please her old nurse, who fidgeted about the room; now
stopping by Laura's chair, and urging her to take this, that, or the
other; now running to the dressing-table to make some new arrangement
about the all-important wedding-toilet; now looking out of the window
and perjuring her simple soul by declaring that "it"--namely, the winter
sky--was going to clear up.

"It's breaking up above the elms yonder, Miss Laura," Elizabeth said;
"there's a bit of blue peepin' through the clouds; leastways, if it
ain't quite blue, it's a much lighter black than the rest of the sky,
and that's something. Eat a bit of Perrigorge pie, or a thin wafer of a
slice off that Strasbog 'am, Miss Laura, do now. You'll be ready to drop
with feelin' faint when you get to the altar-rails, if you persist on
bein' married on a empty stummick, Miss Laura. It's a moriel impossible
as you can look your best, my precious love, if you enter the church in
a state of starvation, just like one of them respectable beggars wot
pins a piece of paper on their weskits with 'I AM HUNGRY' wrote upon it
in large hand, and stands at the foot of one of the bridges on the
Surrey side of the water. And I shouldn't think as you would wish to
look like _that_, Miss Laura, on your wedding-day? _I_ shouldn't if _I_
was goin' to be own wife to a baronet!"

Laura Dunbar took very little notice of her nurse's rambling discourse;
and I am fain to confess that, upon this occasion, Mrs. Madden talked
rather more for the sake of talking than from any overflow of animal
spirits.

The good creature felt the influence of the cold, wet, cheerless morning
quite as keenly as her mistress. Mrs. Madden was superstitious, as most
ignorant and simple-minded people generally are, more or less.
Superstition is, after all, only a dim, unconscious poetry, which is
latent in most natures, except in such very hard practical minds as are
incapable of believing in anything--not even in Heaven itself.

Dora Macmahon came in presently, looking very pretty in blue silk and
white lace. She looked very happy, in spite of the bad weather, and Miss
Dunbar suffered herself to be comforted by her half-sister. The two
girls sat at the table by the fire, and breakfasted, or pretended to
breakfast, together. Who could really attend to the common business of
eating and drinking on such a day as this?

"I've just been to see Lizzie and Ellen," Dora said, presently; "they
wouldn't come in here till they were dressed, and they've had their hair
screwed up in hair-pins all night to make it wave, and now it's a wet
day their hair won't wave after all, and their maid's going to pinch it
with the fire-irons--the tongs, I suppose."

Miss Macmahon had brown hair, with a natural ripple in it, and could
afford to laugh at beauty that was obliged to adorn itself by means of
hair-pins and tongs.

Lizzie and Ellen were the daughters of a Major Melville, and the special
friends of Miss Dunbar. They had come to Maudesley to act as her
bridesmaids, according to that favourite promise which young ladies so
often make to each other, and so very often break.

Laura did not appear to take much interest in the Miss Melvilles' hair.
She was very meditative about something; but her meditations must have
been of a pleasant nature, for there was a smile upon her face.

"Dora," she said, by-and-by, "do you know I've been thinking about
something?"

"About what, dear?"

"Don't you know that old saying about one wedding making many?"

Dora Macmahon blushed.

"What of that, Laura dear?" she asked, very innocently.

"I've been thinking that perhaps another wedding may follow mine. Oh,
Dora, I can't help saying it, I should be so happy if Arthur Lovell and
you were to marry."

Miss Macmahon blushed a much deeper red than before.

"Oh, Laura," she said, "that's quite impossible."

But Miss Dunbar shook her head.

"I shall live in the hope of it, notwithstanding," she said. "I love
Arthur almost as much--or perhaps quite as much, as if he were my
brother--so it isn't strange that I should wish to see him married to my
sister."

The two girls might have sat talking for some time longer, but they were
interrupted by Miss Dunbar's old nurse, who never for a moment lost
sight of the serious business of the day.

"It's all very well for you to sit there jabber, jabber, jabber, Miss
Dora," exclaimed the unceremonious Elizabeth; "you're dressed, all but
your bonnet. You've only just to pop that on, and there you are. But my
young lady isn't half dressed yet. And now, come along, Miss Laura, and
have your hair done, if you mean to have any back-hair at all to-day.
It's past nine o'clock, and you're to be at the church at eleven."

"And papa is to give me away!" murmured Laura, in a low voice, as she
seated herself before the dressing-table. "I wish he loved me better."

"Perhaps, if he loved you too well, he'd keep you, instead of giving you
away, Miss Laura," observed Mrs. Madden, with evident enjoyment of her
own wit; "and I don't suppose you'd care about that, would you, miss?
Hold your head still, that's a precious darling, and don't you trouble
yourself about anything except looking your very best this day."

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE UNBIDDEN GUEST WHO CAME TO LAURA DUNBAR'S WEDDING.

The wedding was to take place in Lisford church--that pretty, quaint,
old church of which I have already spoken.

The wandering Avon flowed through this rustic churchyard, along a
winding channel fringed by tall, trembling rushes. There was a wooden
bridge across the river, and there were two opposite entrances to the
churchyard. Pedestrians who chose the shortest route between Lisford and
Shorncliffe went in at one gate and out at another, which opened on to
the high-road.

The worthy inhabitants of Lisford were almost as much distressed by the
unpromising aspect of the sky as Laura Dunbar and her faithful nurse
themselves. New bonnets had been specially prepared for this festive
occasion. Chrysanthemums and dahlias, gay-looking China-asters, and all
the lingering flowers that light up the early winter landscape, had been
collected to strew the pathway beneath the bride's pretty feet. All the
brightest evergreens in the Lisford gardens had been gathered as a
fitting sacrifice for the "young lady from the Abbey."

Laura Dunbar's frank good-nature and reckless generosity were well
remembered upon this occasion; and every creature in Lisford was bent
upon doing her honour.

But this aggravating rain balked everybody. What was the use of throwing
wet dahlias and flabby chrysanthemums into the puddles through which the
bride must tread, heiress though she was? How miserable would be the
aspect of two rows of damp charity children, with red noses and no
pocket-handkerchiefs! The rector himself had a cold in his head, and
would be obliged to omit all the _n_'s and _m_'s in the marriage
service.

In short, everybody felt that the Abbey wedding was destined to be more
or less a failure. It seemed very hard that the chief partner in the
firm of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby could not, with all his wealth, buy
a little glimmer of sunshine to light up his daughter's wedding. It grew
so dark and foggy towards eleven o'clock, that a dozen or so of
wax-candles were hastily stuck about the neighbourhood of the altar, in
order that the bride and bridegroom might be able, each of them, to see
the person that he or she was taking for better or worse.

Yes, the dismal weather made everything dismal in unison with itself. A
wet wedding is like a wet pic-nic. The most heroic nature gives way
before its utter desolation; the wit of the party forgets his best
anecdote; the funny man breaks down in the climactic verse of his great
buffo song; there is no brightness in the eyes of the beauty; there is
neither sparkle nor flavour in the champagne, though the grapes thereof
have been grown in the vineyards of Widow Cliquot herself.

There are some things that are more powerful than emperors, and the
atmosphere is one of them. Alexander might conquer nations in very
sport; but I question whether he could have resisted the influence of a
wet day.

Of all the people who were to assist at Sir Philip Jocelyn's wedding,
perhaps the father of the bride was the person who seemed least affected
by that drizzling rain, that hopelessly-black sky.

If Henry Dunbar was grave and silent to-day, why that was nothing new:
for he was always grave and silent. If the banker's manner was stern and
moody to-day, that stern moodiness was habitual to him: and there was no
need to blame the murky heavens for any change in his temper. He sat by
the broad fireplace watching the burning coals, and waiting until he
should be summoned to take his place by his daughter's side in the
carriage that was to convey them both to Lisford church; and he did not
utter one word of complaint about that aggravating weather.

He looked very handsome, very aristocratic, with his grey moustache
carefully trimmed, and a white camellia in his button-hole.
Nevertheless, when he came out into the hall by-and-by, with a set smile
upon his face, like a man who is going to act a part in a play, Laura
Dunbar recoiled from him with an involuntary shiver, as she had done
upon the day of her first meeting with him in Portland Place.

But he offered her his hand, and she laid the tips of her fingers in his
broad palm, and went with him to the carriage. "Ask God to bless me upon
this day, papa," the girl said, in a low, tender voice, as these two
people took their places side by side in the roomy chariot.

Laura Dunbar laid her hand caressingly upon the banker's shoulder as she
spoke. It was not a time for reticence; it was not an occasion upon
which to be put off by any girlish fear of this stern, silent man.

"Ask God to bless me, father dearest," the soft, tremulous voice
pleaded, "for the sake of my dead mother."

She tried to see his face: but she could not. His head was turned away,
and he was busy making some alteration in the adjustment of the
carriage-window. The chariot had cost nearly three hundred pounds, and
was very well built: but there was something wrong about the window
nevertheless, if one might judge by the difficulty which Mr. Dunbar had,
in settling it to his satisfaction.

He spoke presently, in a very earnest voice, but with his head still
turned away from Laura.

"I hope God will bless you, my dear," he said; "and that He will have
pity upon your enemies."

This last wish was more Christianlike than natural; since fathers do not
usually implore compassion for the enemies of their children.

But Laura Dunbar did not trouble herself to think about this. She only
knew that her father had called down Heaven's blessing upon her; and
that his manner had betrayed such agitation as could, of course, only
spring from one cause, namely, his affection for his daughter.

She threw herself into his arms with a radiant smile, and putting up her
hands, drew his face round, and pressed her lips to his.

But, as on the day in Portland Place, a chill crept through her veins,
as she felt the deadly coldness of her father's hands lifted to push her
gently from him.

It is a common thing for Anglo-Indians to be quiet and reserved in their
manners, and strongly adverse to all demonstrations of this kind. Laura
remembered this, and made excuses to herself for her father's coldness.

The rain was still falling as the carriage stopped at the churchyard.
There were only three carriages in this brief bridal train, for Mr.
Dunbar had insisted that there should be no grandeur, no display.

The two Miss Melvilles, Dora Macmahon, and Arthur Lovell rode in the
same carriage. Major Melville's daughters looked very pale and cold in
their white-and-blue dresses, and the north-easter had tweaked their
noses, which were rather sharp and pointed in style. They would have
looked pretty enough, poor girls, had the wedding taken place in
summer-time; but they had not that splendid exceptional beauty which can
defy all changes of temperature, and which is alike glorious, whether
clad in abject rags or robed in velvet and ermine.

The carriages reached the little gate of Lisford churchyard; Philip
Jocelyn came out of the porch, and down the narrow pathway leading to
the gate.

The drizzling rain descended on him, though he was a baronet, and though
he came bareheaded to receive his bride.

I think the Lisford beadle, who was a sound Tory of the old school,
almost wondered that the heavens themselves should be audacious enough
to wet the uncovered head of the lord of Jocelyn's Rock.

But it went on raining, nevertheless.

"Times has changed, sir," said the beadle, to an idle-looking stranger
who was standing near him. "I have read in a history of Warwickshire,
that when Algernon Jocelyn was married to Dame Margery Milward, widow to
Sir Stephen Milward, knight, in Charles the First's time, there was a
cloth-of-gold canopy from the gate yonder to this porch here, and two
moving turrets of basket-work, each of 'em drawn by four horses, and
filled with forty poor children, crowned with roses, lookin' out of the
turret winders, and scatterin' scented waters on the crowd; and there
was a banquet, sir, served up at noon that day at Jocelyn's Rock, with
six peacocks brought to table with their tails spread; and a pie, served
in a gold dish, with live doves in it, every feather of 'em steeped in
the rarest perfume, which they was intended to sprinkle over the company
as they flew about here and there. But--would you believe in such a
radical spirit pervadin' the animal creation?--every one of them doves
flew straight out of the winder, and went and scattered their perfumes
on the poor folks outside. There's no such weddin's as that nowadays,
sir," said the old beadle, with a groan. "As I often say to my old
missus, I don't believe as ever England has held up its head since the
day when Charles the Martyr lost his'n."

Laura Dunbar went up the narrow pathway by her father's side; but Philip
Jocelyn walked upon her left hand, and the crowd had enough to do to
stare at bride and bridegroom.

The baronet's face, which was always a handsome one, looked splendid in
the light of his happiness. People disputed as to whether the bride or
bridegroom was handsomest; and Laura forgot all about the wet weather as
she laid her light hand on Philip Jocelyn's arm.

The churchyard was densely crowded in the neighbourhood of the pathway
along which the bride and bridegroom walked. In spite of the miserable
weather, in defiance of Mr. Dunbar's desire that the wedding should be a
quiet one, people had come from a very long distance in order to see the
millionaire's beautiful daughter married to the master of Jocelyn's
Rock.

Amongst the spectators who had come to witness Miss Dunbar's wedding was
the tall gentleman in the high white hat, who was known in sporting
circles as the Major, and who had exhibited so much interest when the
name of Henry Dunbar was mentioned on the Shorncliffe racecourse. The
Major had been very lucky in his speculations on the Shorncliffe races,
and had gone straight away from the course to the village of Lisford,
where he took up his abode at the Hose and Crown, a bright-looking
hostelry, where a traveller could have his steak or his chop done to a
turn in one of the cosiest kitchens in all Warwickshire. The Major was
very reserved upon the subject of his sporting operations when he found
himself among unprofessional people; and upon such occasions, though he
would now and then condescend to lay the odds against anything with some
unconscious agriculturalist or village tradesman, his innocence with
regard to all turf matters was positively refreshing.

He was a traveller in Birmingham jewellery, he told the land lady of the
quiet little inn, and was on his way to that busy commercial centre to
procure a fresh supply of glass emeralds, and a score or so of gigantic
rubies with crinkled tinsel behind them. The Major, usually somewhat
silent and morose, contrived to make himself very agreeable to the
jovial frequenters of the comfortable little public parlour of the Rose
and Crown.

He took his dinner and his supper in that cosy apartment; and he sat
there all the evening, listening to and joining in the conversation of
the Lisfordians, and drinking sixpenn'orths of gin-and-water, with the
air of a man who could consume a hogshead of the juice of the
juniper-berry without experiencing any evil consequences therefrom. He
ate and drank like a man of iron; and his glittering black eyes kept
perpetual watch upon the faces of the simple country people, and his
eager ears drank in every word that was spoken. Of course a great deal
was said about the event of the next morning. Everybody had something to
say about Miss Dunbar and her wealthy father, who lived so lonely and
secluded at the Abbey, and whose ways were altogether so different from
those of his father before him.

The Major listened to every syllable, and only edged-in a word or two
now and then, when the conversation flagged, or when there was a chance
of the subject being changed.

By this means he contrived to keep the Lisfordians constant to one topic
all the evening, and that topic was the manners and customs of Henry
Dunbar.

Very early on the morning of the wedding the Major made his appearance
in the churchyard. As for the incessant rain, that was nothing to _him_;
he was used to it; and, moreover, the wet weather gave him a good excuse
for buttoning his coat to the chin, and turning the poodle collar over
his big red ears.

He found the door of the church ajar, early though it was, and going in
softly, he came upon the Tory beadle and some damp charity children.

The Major contrived to engage the Tory beadle in conversation, which was
not very difficult, seeing that the aforesaid beadle was always ready to
avail himself of any opportunity of hearing his own voice. Of course the
loquacious beadle talked chiefly of Sir Philip Jocelyn and the banker's
daughter; and again the sporting gentleman from London heard of Henry
Dunbar's riches.

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