A Bride Elect

Front matter

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Chapter I

"Dear Godmamma Dorcas, — You promised Dad when I was a child, — before I could run alone, I believe — that you would come to my wedding, and we are going now to claim fulfilment, so you must pack up your boxes forthwith. I am to be married in a fortnight, very quietly, in the church at home. It has all been fixed in a great hurry • Dick wanted to wait till the spring, but I said no, I was not going to stand another winter in Ditchborough if I could help it. I told him he could take me or leave me, so he is going to take me, — of course. It is to be as quiet as possible, — indeed nobody has been told in the neighbourhood ; but the village people are so inquisitive and the servants will talk, so I am afraid it is not as secret as I should wish. Not a soul is to be asked but Dick's father and mother, and one of his married sisters and yourself.

Janie will be my only bridesmaid ; and there will be nobody to pair with her, as Dick is not having a best man. It is all nonsense about best men ; they are no good for anything. Mother says I must have a white dress and a veil, and she is getting her way - but for my own part I would like better to wear a garden hat and an ulster, and go ofF from the church-door. Dick would not care. Besides if a girl is ever to have her own way, it should be when she is married - for that only happens once as a rule, — „ ® B like being born, or dying at the end of everything when one is old. Mother sends her love to you, and hopes you will come on Wednesday week. She is going to write to you to-morrow to give the invitation properly, — not necessary I tell her, as you will take it from me. Besides you know you promised, — twenty years ago.

There is nothing to stand in the way, as you are giving up your old women and dirty children and close courts. — What a place the East End must be, with nothing but docks and warehouses and people out of work ! How you have stood it for five years I can't imagine, — and never a hohday to come and see us, or go anywhere else ! "Your affectionate god-daughter, and cousin once removed, " Barbara Alleyne." I took off my spectacles, and laid down the letter. I had not needed them indeed, for the writing was big and black, and took up so much space it ought to have been plain, even to more failing eyes than mine. There was not a great deal in the letter, and yet it had managed to sprawl over three sheets of note-paper, and the dashing signature did not come till quite at the bottom of the last page.

I was conscious of a certain sense of discomfort with the writer, — of disappointment even — which did not sit upon me easily. I had to take myself to task with a reminder that I was behind my age, and had little in common with the new generation so fast growing up ; but it seemed strange that a girl should write so flippantly of the most solemn event in her life, — strange she should be the one to press for immediate marriage when the bridegroom proposed delay, — strange she should have no regrets to express over quitting the safe shelter of home, the father and mother who idolised her if ever a child yet had been idolised by doting parents. It was not like the Barbara Alleyne I remembered, — the long-legged, fresh hearted hoyden with whom I had been much in sympathy; a Barbara of many scrapes and quick affections, hardly at all sobered but much encumbered by the womanly length of skirt with which she had lately been endued, more to her embarrassment than pride.

But five years work changes in all of us, — even from forty-three to forty-eight, and much more so from fifteen to twenty, the age Barbara had now attained. I must be prepared for that blossoming into young maturity which does not always unfold the colour of the bud. My name is not Dorcas at all, but Susan Varney ; and I am first cousin to Barbara's parents, standing in equal relation to them both, for the Varneys intermarried on either side, both with the Aileynes and the Frosts. Gregory Alleyne, Eleanor Frost, and I were much together as children, being nearly of an age, and with a degree of brotherly and sisterly intimacy all round which is generally thought to prevent the sequence of nearer ties. But when Gregory went into the Church and was able to look about him early for a wife, being in moder ately affluent circumstances, unlike the ordinary run of young clergymen, it was Eleanor Frost whom he asked to share his parsonage and his prospects, and stop the war of pulling caps for him which was being waged by the maiden ladies of the parish.

A town parish in those days, not Ditchborough ; for Ditchborough has been the retirement of his middle life. When I say there was always a certain rivalry between Eleanor Frost and me (not incompatible with cousinly friendship), I must be distinctly understood that the rivalry was never in Gregory's affections. • I might have thought, and did think, that my cousin could have chosen more wisely when he threw his clerical handkerchief to Eleanor ; but I had never entertained the least wish or expectation that it should fall in my direction. That I am a single woman is by no means because Gregory Alleyne passed me by. I do not say there has been no hidden reason, but the history of it is quite apart from anything I have now to tell. I never came near Eleanor in appearance. She was a handsome, stately girl, a sort of ideal Juno, full and rounded in figure and locking older than her years.

I was thin and brown like all the Varneys, and with crisp hair which could not be brushed into the satin smoothness fashionable in our early youth. I think Eleanor was secretly annoyed that her one daughter resembled the Varneys rather than herself; though it was natural enough, seeing that Barbara inherited Varney blood on both sides of her descent, which doubtless accounted for her opening a pair of dark eyes on the world, while her thick brown hair curled closely over her pretty head, and could not be induced to grow long. I am, as I have said, a single woman; and having in these later days no ties or duties to anchor me domestically, I sought them for myself by joining a lay sisterhood working in the parish of St. Cyprian's in the East. I pledged myself for five years, — the five years Barbara wrote about, — and that is why she took it into her head to dub me Dorcas.

For four out of the five year< my work prospered, and I found it almost as engrossing as I hoped ; but in the fifth my health broke down, and after weeks of hospital (as a patient this time and not a helper) I resolved to take back my libertv now that my term of service was fulfilled. Barbara's invitation happened opportunely, and it was endorsed the day following by a letter from Mrs. Alleyne, begging me to remain with them for a time after the wedding, and take a real rest under their roof. 1 had never been to Ditchborough. Gregory Alleyne had proved a rolling-stone, and this country parish was his fourth remove from the town-parsonage of which Eleanor had consented to be mistress. Very dull it had been described to me, and absolutely rural ; but it had the advantage of good emolument and a large commodious house, as well as diminished work, which would give Gregory more leisure for his literary labours.

I did not think much of these, but his wife did, as was natural. As for the rural dulness of Ditchborough, I confess this appeared to me its chiefest attraction. After years of bricks and mortar and crowded courts, I longed inex pressibly for woods and furzy wastes, green fields and lanes with thick embowering hedges, the country stillness and sweet air, the homely farmyards and the breath of kine. I used to dream of them in my narrow hospital bed between the heats of fever, and wake with a sick longing which in the depression of that time would fill my eyes with tears. All this would now be mine to enjoy; and though chill December was upon us, and the long winter had still to be worn through, I should be in the midst of the gradual quickening and unfolding of spring, and perhaps see the full glory of summer and the gold of autumn, if I stayed out the year of which my cousins had spoken.

It was a bitter cold day in the week before Christmas when at last I turned my back on London, and with good store of luggage and books, as befitted a visit of the length proposed to me, set out northwards for Blankshire. Everything was locked in a black frost which promised well for the skaters, and the clear pale sky did not as yet threaten any downfall of snow. Christmas fell on a Thursday in this year, and Barbara's wedding was fixed for the Saturday before, the third day after my arrival. I knew the parents were both approving her choice ; Eleanor had mentioned it as a matter of congratulation when she wrote at the end of October to announce the engagement. Sir Richard and Lady Sudeleigh were old friends, and Dick, their second son, had inherited a good fortune from a distant relative, and could afford the life of a country gentleman, though he had been educated for a profession.

I knew later that his tastes were chiefly nautical ; he had a large and well-found yacht, and his honeymoon was to be spent mainly in the Mediterranean. The young people had been thrown together in the autumn at the seaside ; and the whole family seemed, by Eleanor's account, to have fallen in love with Barbara, so her reception was a cordial one. " It was no surprise to me," Eleanor wrote ; " I had foreseen it from the beginning, and felt certain of all but my child's feelings ; Barbara is so very reserved. But to Gregory it was quite unexpected, for he had taken the odd notion into his head that Dick was attracted by Janie. As if any one would look at Janie when Barbara was by ! " Perhaps I had better explain that Janie was also a cousin, on the Frost side of the family. She was the daughter of Alice Frost, who had married Colonel Moor house and lived only a year to bear the altered name.

Colonel Moorhouse did not long remain a widower, and there came to be a large second family. Janie was supposed not to be very happy with her stepmother; so when Eleanor was arranging for her daughter's education at home, and wished it to be shared by a girl about her own age, Janie was installed at the Aileynes' as Barbara's companion, and as such had now lived with them for ten years. I was glad to hear the marriage would not deprive her of her home, for I believe the Moorhouses had made it very plain they did not want her, and considered her quite a graft into the Alleyne stock. She called Mr. and Mrs. Alleyne uncle and aunt, though the real relation was only cousinship. I had been sorry for the girl formerly, but had never noticed her much ; Eleanor did not like it, and evidently entertained the idea that it was wholesome for Janie to be kept in the background.

Nothing irritated her so much as praise of the alien nestling, as by some curious process of mind she always interpreted it as censure on Barbara, or at least as a slight to her idol. Barbara, though kind in the main, was not too considerate, and the careless superiority she assumed might at times be galling. I wondered, as I watched from the window of the railway-carriage the wintry landscape flying past me, how Janie would appear under these altered conditions, and what amount of modest shining she would contribute now the eclipse of the greater luminary was to be withdrawn. I had left London early, but it was close on four o'clock when after sundry changes I was put down at the small wayside station nearest to Ditchborough. The station-master seemed quite stirred up to interest by any arrival out of the usual run of market traffic, and touched his hat very civilly as he helped to collect my parcels and boxes, which the guard was banging out upon the platform with every appearance of desperate haste.

Mr. Alleyne was waiting outside for me, he told me confidentially, for the horse was a young and fidgety one, and he did not like to leave it. I might be easy about my belongings, as he would see them put into the cart which would be along by and by. I left with him a tangible expression of my gratitude, and betook myself outside, where I found Mr. Alleyne and the dog-cart, with the young horse apparently reluctant to stand on all four legs at once, somewhat to the embarrassment of his charioteer. " How-do, Susan ! He'll be all right directly — quiet, will you ! No vice about him, but I am breaking him in to trains ; as gentle as a lamb to drive ; — you could manage him yourself; and you are not afraid of anything, or used not to be. Hi, Joe ! just stand at his head for a moment while the lady gets in."

I managed to scramble up in a brief interval of quies cence ; and when the fidgety young creature was released and speeding away with us along a level stretch of road, I found leisure to look at my companion. He was not much changed in the five years ; the closely trimmed whiskers had grown a little greyer perhaps, but the same sweetness of expression and weakness of outline character ised the clean-shaven mouth and chin. He was keeping a close hand and watchful eye on his pupil, but found time for a spasmodic remark or two, — questions about my health, and whether I was afraid of an open carriage ; there was some reason why the brougham could not be sent for me. Presently, as Red Saxon sobered to his work, conversation became easier, and of course the approaching wedding at once suggested itself.

"I am glad you and Eleanor like Mr. Sudeleigh so much ; and knowing all his people as you do, you must feel happy about Barbara's prospects. And is she verv much in love ? " " Dick is a good fellow. Yes ; I am satisfied, and Eleanor is delighted. She has wished for it a long time, she tells me, before Barbara came to a marriageable age even ; and his mother has always been her greatest friend. I believe this was one reason why she objected so much to the other affair. As for Barbara being very much in love,— well, I don't profess to understand girls. She is altered in many ways, — not half so lively as she used to be ; but I suppose it is only natural. Dick is very devoted ; he follows her about like her shadow, and she won't stir without him. She has quite given up her old active habits out-of-doors.

I think she has felt all this being hurried on so, and I am sorry for it myself. They are both young, and could very well have waited ; and I was in no haste to lose my daughter." I thought of Barbara's letter, and the avowal that the haste had been her own; but one thing Gregory said had aroused my curiosity, — the other affair ! Our correspondence had, it is true, been irregular; but no hint had reached me of another suitor for Barbara, though Eleanor was not a person likely to be reticent about her daughter's conquests. We had been climbing a hill, and at the summit found ourselves on a wide heathy waste, crisped white with the hoar-frost, and with the sun going down behind it, a broad shield of crimson in the west. Just beyond the cross-roads a horseman rode rapidly past us, and I saw that he and Mr. Alleyne exchanged salutations.

I did not notice him particularly in the dusk, except that he seemed to sit his horse well, but looked elderly. " That is one of my parishioners, but not one of my flock," said Gregory, as the sound of hoof-beats died away in the distance. "An alien in religion?" I asked. " Well, yes. I believe Redworth belongs to the Greek Church; he was brought" up in Armenia, and hinted as much to me on one occasion. But he has been my very good friend ever since he came to Ditchborough, which was not long after I was presented to the living." " It is not a large parish, Eleanor tells me. I am glad you have a neighbour of your own class." " Yes, Redworth is the sole representative of the resi dent gentry ; the farms are all small holdings. But he is only the tenant of Coldhope, and may not continue there much longer.

You see his house among the trees, and the church and rectory are at the foot of the hill." We were now on the brow of another descent, which led down into a wide valley. I could see a large red brick mansion half hidden among the sere woods, while the grey squat tower of the church rose below. " Rather a handsome house," went on Gregory; " ofthe Oueen Anne period, I believe, or else the early Georgian. It belongs to the Beryngtons, a Roman Catholic family; but they cannot afford to keep it up, and are obliged to let." " And what brought Mr. Redworth to Ditchborough?" " Ah, that is a question which has been asked before. I believe the true answer is our absolute rural stagnation; the very reason why most people would stay away ! Redworth is a scholar and an experimental chemist to boot, a man of very advanced views on most subjects.

He is pursuing some researches for which absolute retire ment and quiet are essential; and I imagine the low rent and the big rooms attracted him. He leads a solitary kind of life there ; his servants are all foreigners and all men, — there is not a woman in the house." " There is no Mrs. Redworth, then ? " " No. You did not hear that he wished to marry Barbara ? " This then was the other affair, to which allusion had been made. I replied in the negative, and Gregory went on, while Red Saxon was picking his way down the first steep pitch of hill. " I was sorry about it — very; but I am glad to say Redworth took it very sensibly, and it has not made any breach between us. It is more than a year ago now. Barbara was barely nineteen; and with fifty years' dis parity between them, and he not a Churchman, it was of course out of the question.

Eleanor was right ; I felt that all through; it was only when with him that I was inclined to waver. He is a curious man ; most per suasive and fascinating, and young for his age, — in every way but the mere count of years a younger man than I am. He made me feel that I might be wrong in sacri ficing my child's happiness to the world's opinion; for when pressed home it was that which was against him rather than my own, — the knowledge that such a union was unusual and might be condemned. And he thought the stupid prejudice of the village people had affected Eleanor." " But Barbara ! You say her happiness ; surely she did not care for him ? " " No ; she did not, as it turned out. But she was much attracted by him, — fascinated I think, and flattered by having a man of the world as her lover, and the romance of the thing altogether.

Not much romance you will say, when the lover was hard upon seventy; but wait till you see him, wait till you know him, as you will do, before you flout the idea. I am sure she was favourable to him at the beginning ; but they had a quarrel of some kind. I don't know what it was about ; I don't know who was to blame, and I don't think Eleanor does. The child came to me in one of her passions, — she is very high-spirited, — with her cheeks white and her eyes shining, and said it must be all over; she would never marry him if she lived to be a hundred, and I was to tell him so. Then she broke down and cried her heart out, like the child she was ; but she told us no more. I gathered afterwards, when 1 spoke to him, that she had given him some en couragement and a promise, conditional on my approval of course; but he never said a syllable of blame.

All this happened a year ago ; and he has continued to visit us, though not so frequently as before. I go now and then to spend the evening with him at Coldhope ; he is a delightful companion, — has been all over the world, and has a wonderful store of out-of-the-way knowledge. He sent Barbara a wedding-present, though we had naturally avoided mention of her prospects. But I wish Eleanor would be more cordial." I knew of old how immovable Eleanor was in her opinions, and smiled a little to myself. " You said the prejudice ofthe village people had affected her. What is that?" "Oh, some ridiculous gossip about the supernatural. You would hardly think in this nineteenth century that people could be so credulous. Eleanor would never seriously believe in it, though the fact that such things had been said mignt affect her in a way, — you under stand.

Some nonsense about Redworth being a sort of male witch and having the evil eye ; altogether too trivial to repeat. And he is exceedingly liberal to those about him, which makes it all the stranger ; he sub scribes to all our charities and church repairs, and quite lately sent me a substantial cheque for distribution among the poor. We are nearly home now, Susan : there is the Rectory; and I wanted to say a word to prepare you. Eleanor has become quite an invalid latterly; she suffers very much at times. I had a first-rate opinion some time since, and it was very unfavourable ; there is serious internal mischief. She was not told fully, but I believe she divined all I would have kept from her ; and now her great anxiety is to conceal her state from Barbara; she does not want the child saddened now that she is leaving home.

Say nothing before Barbara if you think her changed. Janie knows, and I expect she will tell you herself, though she would not mention it by letter. — Here we are ! "

Chapter II

The Rectory was a big rambling house that ought to have been kept alive by the usual overflowing clerical family; it seemed to me over-large for this one middle aged couple whose only child was leaving them. It had been enlarged by a former rector who took pupils, and so was somewhat incongruous in design. But the general effect was one of abounding comfort on the evening of my arrival ; with the lighted windows shining out into the winter dusk, and the cheerful fires in the hall and in the drawing-room, where I was presently taken to see Eleanor. This was a double room with two doors and two fireplaces, each burning brightly; but the only light in it other than the glow*ing hearths came from a shaded lamp on the table at Eleanor's elbow. She was changed undoubtedly; there was a drawn look about her hand some face, and she rose from her chair to greet me with an infirmity quite other than the old indolence.

She gave me a kind welcome, and I was put near the fire to thaw after my cold drive, and assured tea would be in directlv to assist the process. The young people were out ; they had hardly expected me so soon. Barbara and Dick were skating, and Janie had some parochial visiting to do for her uncle. The lovers were making the most of their time together, Eleanor said, for Dick had to go to Lynnchester that evening to stay the night, and would not be back till late on the morrow. It was some business errand as I understood, and he had also to make arrangement for his relatives' accom- !2 modation at the hotel on Friday night ; they were driving over on the morning of the wedding, and would stay Sunday at the Rectory. She was glad Barbara had gone out, she said. No one could get her out but Dick, and she thought in the five weeks they had been at home she had hardly crossed the threshold except to church unless he was with her.

Of course there had been a great deal to do, and though almost everything was ordered from town, it had been quite a difficulty to get the trcusseau ready in so short a time. I must see Barbara's things, for they were very nice ; and the wedding-dress was spread out on the bed in the little room at the head of the stairs, which was to be Sir Richard's dressing-room during his stay. "Janie will show it you," she said ; " for I go up and down as little as I can help." It was not long before the young couple came in ; quick steps outside, and gay young voices and laughter heralding their return. Barbara came first into the quiet room and the firelight, all flushed with exercise and the keen air. Such a handsome Barbara ! The child I had left had grown into a beautiful young woman, tall and slender and upright as a dart, but with enough of the full development inherited from her mother to soften all her angles and round her into beauty; as tall as I when we stood up face to face, and I kissed the damask of her cheek in return for her hearty embrace of welcome.

The father and mother both beamed at her with over flowing pride and tenderness, and the lines of pain smoothed out of Eleanor's face in her delight over her daughter. " Take off your hat, child," said Gregory, " and show your cousin Susan what you are like." Laughing and blushing she removed it and stood bareheaded, the crisp dusk hair pushed away from her white forehead, and curling thickly behind her ears in defiance of fashion. But no one would have thought of calling her un fashionable ; she had a style of her own, and was per fection in it in her own way. " I always said it. She is like what you used to be, Susan. You two might be mother and daughter," broke out Gregory in his blundering way. Of course I made haste to disclaim ; with truth and not with truth, for there was a likeness ; but the girl stood before me, the substance of which I had been a shadow, original in all the beauty and brightness and the rose of complexion which I had lacked.

If there was a moment of embarrassment it passed quicklv, as she turned to present Mr. Sudeleigh. He shook hands and fell back into the shadow beside the chair she had taken, so I had onlv a brief impression of a pleasant smile which revealed a good set of teeth, and the general outline of a well dressed figure. The servant came in with the tea-tray, and Barbara signed to have it set beside her, and began to busy herself over the cups. " Don't trouble yourself with that, my darling," said her mother rather fretfully. "Janie ought to be here to do it. I wonder where she is ; she knew I wished to be punctual." ■ " And Janie wished to be punctual," said Barbara, dropping in her lumps of sugar with her lover at her elbow. "She did not by any means desire the detention, — did she, Dick ? We found her on our way back sitting in the hedge, and looking just about to faint ; you know how feint she turns when anything is the matter.