Chapter V: The Day of Days

“Mayn’t I come in, Honor? O, please let me! Mother said I might come and ask; and I’ve brought you such a many pretty flowers. We’ve been up, Teddy and I have, ever since five o’clock, looking for sweet orchids in the south meadow. Do, O do let me in! I’ll be as good as gold; and I won’t rumple your new frock one bit.”

It was early morning yet on the eventful day which had been appointed for Honor Blake’s nuptials. Those early daylight hours had seemed very long to the girl who, for the first time in her life, had slept a troubled sleep; and yet, when little Jenny Clay, a chubby bright-eyed child of seven, tapped at the bride’s door, and vehemently implored to be admitted, the big white-faced kitchen clock had but just struck the hour of six, and it wanted still some four hours of the time when the little girl, already half wild with excitement, would enjoy her long-promised honour--namely, that of being first bridesmaid to the heroine of the day, her dearly-loved Honor Blake.

Jenny was in her normal state a quiet rational child enough; but “the wedding” had, for the time being, turned everything (without, unfortunately, excepting the children’s brains) topsy-turvy at Clay’s Farm. A lawless time during the week preceding her wedding-day had Honor’s quondam pupils; and poor Mrs. Clay, what with the last baby, and the expectation, in the course of the summer, of a ninth visit from the widow Tamfrey, had enough to do in keeping, as she often remarked, the house from being turned out of windows.

During Jenny’s lengthened entreaty--an entreaty which had been responded to by a voice within the bolted door, begging to be left a little longer in peace--another door, the one opposite to Honor’s sleeping apartment, had been briskly opened, and a female head clothed in a many-frilled nightcap being protruded therefrom, a sharp, high-pitched voice was heard--infinitely to the relief of the bride-elect--calling Miss Jenny to order.

“Come away, you naughty girl,” cried Mrs. Clay, administering at the same time a gentle shake to the delinquent. “Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t have it? Go back to bed directly, or father’ll give you a whipping, so he will.”

At this terrible threat, and with the fear of bed in broad daylight (and on such a morning too) before her eyes, Jenny began to whimper--a sound which so moved the pity of the bride-elect, that before the awful sentence could be carried into execution a sweet face, shrouded with waving masses of light brown hair, made its appearance at the half-opened door; and Honor, pressing the soft lips, that were a trifle less rosy than their wont, on Jenny’s upturned forehead, said tenderly,

“Do what mother tells you, my sweetie. It won’t be long now before it’s breakfast-time. And, Mrs. Clay, please not to think the children have disturbed me, for I have been up and about for ever so long. What a beautiful morning it is! Such a sunrise! I have been looking at it over the Eastheigh Hills; and to think that this is the last time, the very last time, that I shall ever sit at this dear little window, and hear the birds singing in the trees, and the cows, with old Barbara after them in her blue petticoat, coming in to be milked!”

The girl was in a melting mood that bright spring morning, for she brushed a tear from her long lashes, when Mrs. Clay, in motherly fashion, told her what a foolish child she was to be low-spirited on her wedding morning. “It wasn’t like Honor,” she said, “to be down-hearted.” And the good woman was right there, for the girl’s moods were changeful as an April sky, and in another moment, stirred by a sudden memory, the sweet lips were parted by a smile.

“I saw Joe Gregg,” she said, “come across the meadow just now, with such a coat on his back! The tails trailing on the ground, and a nosegay as big as his head stuck in his waistcoat! I hope he won’t be very absurd at church, and make us laugh when we ought to be solemn.”

“Foolish fellow!” rejoined Mrs. Clay, laughing heartily as the idea of the village idiot, one of the most harmless of his unfortunate kind, obtruding himself and his hatchet-face and uncouth figure at the marriage ceremony, presented itself to her mental vision. “And now, my dear,” she added sensibly, “for goodness’ sake do put your nightcap on again, and go to bed; you’ll be as pale else, when John sees you, as if you’d had an illness; and white, you know, wants a colour. It’s very trying, as I’ve always said, to the skin, is white;” and kind-hearted Mrs. Clay, after this useful warning to the girl whom she had grown to love almost as a daughter, retired to her own apartment, and silence once more reigned throughout the narrow corridor.

The smile faded from Honor’s face as she returned to the low seat beside the open window, and allowed her eyes again to wander over the fair scene without. Over the broad meadows, stretching eastwards towards the Paddocks, a filmy haze, light as the bridal veil of a disembodied spirit, was lingering still--lingering till the jocund god of day, “rejoicing as a bridegroom to run his course,” should lift it softly from fair Nature’s face.

In other and more prosaic words, there hung--no uncommon circumstance--a mist over the low-lying lands through which a certain little winding river called the Bram pursued its devious course. The day--there was no safer prognostic than that light and silvery nebulousness--would be a glorious one, and the bonny bride of that same first of May was, it might be hoped, fated to be another of the proverbially “happy” ones on whom the sun’s sympathising rays had warmly shone.

The girl--so soon to be that thing which _man_ has made--a _woman_ (it was simply a _female_ that the hand of God created)--gazed out upon the peaceful scene--on the budding trees in which the loving birds were twittering, on the path through the meadows, trod so often by the merry children when she--scarcely more than a child herself--had headed their joyous company in merry search of the dab-chicks’ nests lying peaceably in the reeds beside the Bram, or of wild flowers, fresh and sweet, cropping up through the long grass in the sunny meadows.

It was her wedding-day--her day of days--and yet something very like a sigh broke from the Irish girl’s lips, and there was a moisture (could it be the dew of tears?) upon her cheek. She was not unhappy--no, and a thousand times no--she _could_ not be sorrowful with the love of a good man assured to her, and with the promise of such a home as it was in John Beacham’s power to give. She was certainly not unhappy. She had promised to be John’s wife unhesitatingly, and with a grateful heart. He had only done his promised bride justice when he had declared that she was neither vain nor aspiring. Honor could not be ignorant of the fact that she was beautiful, but of the power and the advantages of beauty she knew as little as did Mrs. Clay’s two-year-old child. It could hardly then be owing to a latent feeling that she was throwing her rare loveliness away--casting, so to speak, her pearls before swine--that Honor’s heart was at that moment heavy within her; and yet, could John have looked on her at that moment--could he have seen the listless attitude and the clouded brow of the girl he so fondly loved--he would have been justified in reading repentance where he would have looked for joy. And, as I said before, he would have been mistaken. There was none--no, not even the shadow of a regret on Honor’s part for the promises that had so firmly bound her to be a farmer’s wife. Only the day before her spirits were as buoyant, and her heart as light, as in the joyous days gone by; only the evening before she had, with all a young girl’s natural pleasure in self-adornment, entered into the full spirit of the _rôle_ in which her bridal costume was to play so all-important a part. The wedding-dress, pretty and pure and tasteful, although no hand more cunning than that of the humble Leigh artiste had been employed in its confection, had been pronounced by the jury of maids and matrons assembled to give judgment on its merits to be a decided success; and Honor, if the truth _must_ be told, had been so childish--should we not, however, rather say so womanlike?--as to place clandestinely upon her fair head the wreath of orange-flowers (a real London _cadeau_ from John), she blushing all the while for fear that any living soul might know what a vain silly thing she was.

All these signs and symptoms being taken into consideration, I think we are justified in the conclusion that Honor Blake did not actually experience regret that she was about to render kind, prosperous John Beacham the happiest of men. She was a trifle confused and bewildered, perhaps, on that her marriage morning. In some way--how she could not have explained--the conviction had come home to her that being bound in wedlock means something more than new clothes, the congratulations of friends, accession of dignity, and even than spoken vows. It was all very nice and pleasant, that listening to pretty speeches, and contemplating the simple presents with which her friends (they were not numerous, and she had been so little in the world) had rejoiced the heart and gratified the harmless vanity of the whilom nursery governess. But agreeable as all this was, and novel, and soul-stirring, the time came, as we have seen, when she began to look at the more serious side of this, to her, vitally interesting question: took, in short, at the eleventh hour, to overhauling her stock of comforts and necessaries previous to entering the boat in which she and John were henceforth to sail together. And the first question she put to her own heart was, whether her store of love for the voyage, that promised to be a long one, was sufficient not only to last out the time, but was moreover of a quality to withstand the changes of heat and cold, and the many unavoidable trials both of calm and of rough weather. In very plain and simple language Honor, late as it was in the day, inquired of her own heart concerning this matter. Did she in very sober and earnest truth love as he deserved to be beloved the man to whom she was about to plight her troth? Did she hang upon his words, and watch, as for a glimpse of heaven, for his smile? Had she--ah! that was the test of tests--pined for him in absence, and, pure and innocent though she was, longed with shy, sweet blushes for the moment when considerate friends, taking pity on the engaged lovers, would leave them to an undisturbed and blissful _tête-à-tête_?

The reply to these home queries was not, I greatly fear, altogether satisfactory, as how indeed could it be, when it was the near prospect of that life-long _tête-à-tête_ which first aroused the spirit of inquiry in Honor’s maiden breast? It was this prospect (could this have been so, my reader, if Love were lord of all within her?) that dimmed the lustre of her eyes, and cast a cloud over the sunshine of her spirits.

For an hour and more she sat in the same place, looking forth into the brightness of the morning, and hearing without heeding the murmurs of busy life that each moment became more audible throughout the house. For an hour and more she sat there, the light breeze fanning her flushed cheek, and cooling the full and crimson lips, which ere another sun should go down upon the earth would be part and parcel of another’s wealth!

“What is the use of thinking?” she said half aloud, and rising with a slight shiver, for the morning air was fresh, and her light wrapping-gown afforded but a thin protection from the cold. “What is the use of thinking? There is no use of tormenting myself when I ought to be happy, in this stupid senseless way.”

And Honor was right. Use there could be none now in asking herself how much she loved the excellent man who in all loyalty believed that he possessed her whole, entire heart. She had not intentionally deceived him; indeed this inexperienced girl was little likely to surmise whether or not she had so deceived him. “Thinking” was, therefore, in her case, “but idle waste of thought.” Nothing--_that_ at least was quite clear to Honor--was farther from her wish than to alter her relations with the generous lover, who, as the saying is, worshipped the very ground she trod on. For nothing that the world could offer, so she told herself, would she grieve or disappoint him; and so nothing remained for this young woman, whom so many in her own degree, and of her own sex, were envying for her good fortune, but to bestir herself, both mentally and physically, and accept the good things that had been provided for her with a grateful heart?

A little womanly vanity--could anything be more natural?--came to the aid of John Beacham’s _fiancée_ as she braided the soft brown tresses that the honest gentleman farmer was never weary of admiring. It would never do, she thought, to look dull and _ugly_ on her wedding-day; so she threw melancholy to the winds, and decked her face with smiles, and called that busy little Jenny in, to hinder rather than to help the important business of the toilet. Honor’s was not a selfish nature, and when the children threw their arms round her neck, kissing her with more zeal than discretion, and calling her their “sweet, their pretty Honey,” she almost forgot the circumstance of the “new frock,” and returned the truthful caresses in much of the spirit which dictated their bestowal.