Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green. Jerome Klapka Jerome
Читать онлайн книгу.
mentioned, and the suggestion of immediate marriage was listened to without remonstrance. Wiser folk would have puzzled their brains, but both her ladyship and ex-Contractor Hodskiss were accustomed to find all things yield to their wishes. The countess saw visions of a rehabilitated estate, and Clementina’s father dreamed of a peerage, secured by the influence of aristocratic connections. All that the young folks stipulated for (and on that point their firmness was supernatural) was that the marriage should be quiet, almost to the verge of secrecy.
“No beastly fuss,” his lordship demanded. “Let it be somewhere in the country, and no mob!” and his mother, thinking she understood his reason, patted his cheek affectionately.
“I should like to go down to Aunt Jane’s and be married quietly from there,” explained Miss Hodskiss to her father.
Aunt Jane resided on the outskirts of a small Hampshire village, and “sat under” a clergyman famous throughout the neighbourhood for having lost the roof to his mouth.
“You can’t be married by that old fool,” thundered her father – Mr. Hodskiss always thundered; he thundered even his prayers.
“He christened me,” urged Miss Clementina.
“And Lord knows what he called you. Nobody can understand a word he says.”
“I’d like him to marry me,” reiterated Miss Clementina.
Neither her ladyship nor the contractor liked the idea. The latter in particular had looked forward to a big function, chronicled at length in all the newspapers. But after all, the marriage was the essential thing, and perhaps, having regard to some foolish love passages that had happened between Clementina and a certain penniless naval lieutenant, ostentation might be out of place.
So in due course Clementina departed for Aunt Jane’s, accompanied only by her maid.
Quite a treasure was Miss Hodskiss’s new maid.
“A clean, wholesome girl,” said of her Contractor Hodskiss, who cultivated affability towards the lower orders; “knows her place, and talks sense. You keep that girl, Clemmy.”
“Do you think she knows enough?” hazarded the maternal Hodskiss.
“Quite sufficient for any decent woman,” retorted the contractor. “When Clemmy wants painting and stuffing, it will be time enough for her to think about getting one of your ‘Ach Himmels’ or ‘Mon Dieus’.”
“I like the girl myself immensely,” agreed Clementina’s mother. “You can trust her, and she doesn’t give herself airs.”
Her praises reached even the countess, suffering severely at the moment from the tyranny of an elderly Fraulein.
“I must see this treasure,” thought the countess to herself. “I am tired of these foreign minxes.”
But no matter at what cunning hour her ladyship might call, the “treasure” always happened for some reason or other to be abroad.
“Your girl is always out when I come,” laughed the countess. “One would fancy there was some reason for it.”
“It does seem odd,” agreed Clementina, with a slight flush.
Miss Hodskiss herself showed rather than spoke her appreciation of the girl. She seemed unable to move or think without her. Not even from the interviews with Lord C- was the maid always absent.
The marriage, it was settled, should be by licence. Mrs. Hodskiss made up her mind at first to run down and see to the preliminaries, but really when the time arrived it hardly seemed necessary to take that trouble. The ordering of the whole affair was so very simple, and the “treasure” appeared to understand the business most thoroughly, and to be willing to take the whole burden upon her own shoulders. It was not, therefore, until the evening before the wedding that the Hodskiss family arrived in force, filling Aunt Jane’s small dwelling to its utmost capacity. The swelling figure of the contractor, standing beside the tiny porch, compelled the passer-by to think of the doll’s house in which the dwarf resides during fair-time, ringing his own bell out of his own first-floor window. The countess and Lord C- were staying with her ladyship’s sister, the Hon. Mrs. J-, at G- Hall, some ten miles distant, and were to drive over in the morning. The then Earl of – was in Norway, salmon fishing. Domestic events did not interest him.
Clementina complained of a headache after dinner, and went to bed early. The “treasure” also was indisposed. She seemed worried and excited.
“That girl is as eager about the thing,” remarked Mrs. Hodskiss, “as though it was her own marriage.”
In the morning Clementina was still suffering from her headache, but asserted her ability to go through the ceremony, provided everybody would keep away, and not worry her. The “treasure” was the only person she felt she could bear to have about her. Half an hour before it was time to start for church her mother looked her up again. She had grown still paler, if possible, during the interval, and also more nervous and irritable. She threatened to go to bed and stop there if she was not left quite alone. She almost turned her mother out of the room, locking the door behind her. Mrs. Hodskiss had never known her daughter to be like this before.
The others went on, leaving her to follow in the last carriage with her father. The contractor, forewarned, spoke little to her. Only once he had occasion to ask her a question, and then she answered in a strained, unnatural voice. She appeared, so far as could be seen under her heavy veil, to be crying.
“Well, this is going to be a damned cheerful wedding,” said Mr. Hodskiss, and lapsed into sulkiness.
The wedding was not so quiet as had been anticipated. The village had got scent of it, and had spread itself upon the event, while half the house party from G- Hall had insisted on driving over to take part in the proceedings. The little church was better filled than it had been for many a long year past.
The presence of the stylish crowd unnerved the ancient clergyman, long unaccustomed to the sight of a strange face, and the first sound of the ancient clergyman’s voice unnerved the stylish crowd. What little articulation he possessed entirely disappeared, no one could understand a word he said. He appeared to be uttering sounds of distress. The ancient gentleman’s infliction had to be explained in low asides, and it also had to be explained why such an one had been chosen to perform the ceremony.
“It was a whim of Clementina’s,” whispered her mother. “Her father and myself were married from here, and he christened her. The dear child’s full of sentiment. I think it so nice of her.”
Everybody agreed it was charming, but wished it were over. The general effect was weird in the extreme.
Lord C- spoke up fairly well, but the bride’s responses were singularly indistinct, the usual order of things being thus reversed. The story of the naval lieutenant was remembered, and added to, and some of the more sentimental of the women began to cry in sympathy.
In the vestry things assumed a brighter tone. There was no lack of witnesses to sign the register. The verger pointed out to them the place, and they wrote their names, as people in such cases do, without stopping to read. Then it occurred to some one that the bride had not yet signed. She stood apart, with her veil still down, and appeared to have been forgotten. Encouraged, she came forward meekly, and took the pen from the hand of the verger. The countess came and stood behind her.
“Mary,” wrote the bride, in a hand that looked as though it ought to have been firm, but which was not.
“Dear me,” said the countess, “I never knew there was a Mary in your name. How differently you write when you write slowly.”
The bride did not answer, but followed with “Susannah.”
“Why, what a lot of names you must have, my dear!” exclaimed the countess. “When are you going to get to the ones we all know?”
“Ruth,” continued the bride without answering.
Breeding is not always proof against strong emotion. The countess snatched the bride’s veil from her face, and Mary Susannah Ruth Sewell stood before her, flushed and trembling, but looking none the