Part 75 (1/2)
”Mind you are a dutiful niece,” said Miss Dunstable. ”And now let me go and finish dressing.”
In the course of the afternoon, an answer was sent back to Greshamsbury, in these words:--
DEAR DR. THORNE,--I do and will trust you in everything; and it shall be as you would have it. Mary writes to you; but do not believe a word she says. I never will again, for she has behaved so bad in this matter.
Yours affectionately and very truly,
MARTHA DUNSTABLE.
”And so I am going to marry the richest woman in England,” said Dr.
Thorne to himself, as he sat down that day to his mutton-chop.
CHAPTER XL.
INTERNECINE.
It must be conceived that there was some feeling of triumph at Plumstead Episcopi, when the wife of the rector returned home with her daughter, the bride elect of the Lord Dumbello. The heir of the Marquis of Hartletop was, in wealth, the most considerable unmarried young n.o.bleman of the day; he was noted, too, as a man difficult to be pleased, as one who was very fine and who gave himself airs,--and to have been selected as the wife of such a man as this was a great thing for the daughter of a parish clergyman. We have seen in what manner the happy girl's mother communicated the fact to Lady Lufton, hiding, as it were, her pride under a veil; and we have seen also how meekly the happy girl bore her own great fortune, applying herself humbly to the packing of her clothes, as though she ignored her own glory.
But nevertheless there was triumph at Plumstead Episcopi. The mother, when she returned home, began to feel that she had been thoroughly successful in the great object of her life. While she was yet in London she had hardly realized her satisfaction, and there were doubts then whether the cup might not be dashed from her lips before it was tasted. It might be that even the son of the Marquis of Hartletop was subject to parental authority, and that barriers should spring up between Griselda and her coronet; but there had been nothing of the kind. The archdeacon had been closeted with the marquis, and Mrs. Grantly had been closeted with the marchioness; and though neither of those n.o.ble persons had expressed themselves gratified by their son's proposed marriage, so also neither of them had made any attempt to prevent it. Lord Dumbello was a man who had a will of his own,--as the Grantlys boasted amongst themselves. Poor Griselda! the day may perhaps come when this fact of her lord's masterful will may not to her be matter of much boasting. But in London, as I was saying, there had been no time for an appreciation of the family joy. The work to be done was nervous in its nature, and self-glorification might have been fatal; but now, when they were safe at Plumstead, the great truth burst upon them in all its splendour.
Mrs. Grantly had but one daughter, and the formation of that child's character and her establishment in the world had been the one main object of the mother's life. Of Griselda's great beauty the Plumstead household had long been conscious; of her discretion also, of her conduct, and of her demeanour there had been no doubt. But the father had sometimes hinted to the mother that he did not think that Grizzy was quite so clever as her brothers. ”I don't agree with you at all,”
Mrs. Grantly had answered. ”Besides, what you call cleverness is not at all necessary in a girl; she is perfectly ladylike; even you won't deny that.” The archdeacon had never wished to deny it, and was now fain to admit that what he had called cleverness was not necessary in a young lady.
At this period of the family glory the archdeacon himself was kept a little in abeyance, and was hardly allowed free intercourse with his own magnificent child. Indeed, to give him his due, it must be said of him that he would not consent to walk in the triumphal procession which moved with stately step, to and fro, through the Barchester regions. He kissed his daughter and blessed her, and bade her love her husband and be a good wife; but such injunctions as these, seeing how splendidly she had done her duty in securing to herself a marquis, seemed out of place and almost vulgar. Girls about to marry curates or sucking barristers should be told to do their duty in that station of life to which G.o.d might be calling them; but it seemed to be almost an impertinence in a father to give such an injunction to a future marchioness.
”I do not think that you have any ground for fear on her behalf,”
said Mrs. Grantly, ”seeing in what way she has. .h.i.therto conducted herself.”
”She has been a good girl,” said the archdeacon, ”but she is about to be placed in a position of great temptation.”
”She has a strength of mind suited for any position,” replied Mrs.
Grantly, vain-gloriously.
But nevertheless even the archdeacon moved about through the close at Barchester with a somewhat prouder step since the tidings of this alliance had become known there. The time had been--in the latter days of his father's lifetime--when he was the greatest man of the close. The dean had been old and infirm, and Dr. Grantly had wielded the bishop's authority. But since that things had altered. A new bishop had come there, absolutely hostile to him. A new dean had also come, who was not only his friend, but the brother-in-law of his wife; but even this advent had lessened the authority of the archdeacon. The vicars choral did not hang upon his words as they had been wont to do, and the minor canons smiled in return to his smile less obsequiously when they met him in the clerical circles of Barchester. But now it seemed that his old supremacy was restored to him. In the minds of many men an archdeacon, who was the father-in-law of a marquis, was himself as good as any bishop. He did not say much of his new connection to others beside the dean, but he was conscious of the fact, and conscious also of the reflected glory which shone around his own head.
But as regards Mrs. Grantly it may be said that she moved in an unending procession of stately ovation. It must not be supposed that she continually talked to her friends and neighbours of Lord Dumbello and the marchioness. She was by far too wise for such folly as that.
The coming alliance having been once announced, the name of Hartletop was hardly mentioned by her out of her own domestic circle. But she a.s.sumed, with an ease that was surprising even to herself, the airs and graces of a mighty woman. She went through her work of morning calls as though it were her business to be affable to the country gentry. She astonished her sister, the dean's wife, by the simplicity of her grandeur; and condescended to Mrs. Proudie in a manner which nearly broke that lady's heart. ”I shall be even with her yet,” said Mrs. Proudie to herself, who had contrived to learn various very deleterious circ.u.mstances respecting the Hartletop family since the news about Lord Dumbello and Griselda had become known to her.
Griselda herself was carried about in the procession, taking but little part in it of her own, like an Eastern G.o.d. She suffered her mother's caresses and smiled in her mother's face as she listened to her own praises, but her triumph was apparently within. To no one did she say much on the subject, and greatly disgusted the old family housekeeper by declining altogether to discuss the future Dumbello _menage_. To her aunt, Mrs. Arabin, who strove hard to lead her into some open-hearted speech as to her future aspirations, she was perfectly impa.s.sive. ”Oh, yes, aunt, of course,” and ”I'll think about it, aunt Eleanor,” or ”Of course I shall do that if Lord Dumbello wishes it.” Nothing beyond this could be got from her; and so, after half-a-dozen ineffectual attempts, Mrs. Arabin abandoned the matter.
But then there arose the subject of clothes--of the wedding _trousseau_! Sarcastic people are wont to say that the tailor makes the man. Were I such a one, I might certainly a.s.sert that the milliner makes the bride. As regarding her bridehood, in distinction either to her girlhood or her wifehood--as being a line of plain demarcation between those two periods of a woman's life--the milliner does do much to make her. She would be hardly a bride if the _trousseau_ were not there. A girl married without some such appendage would seem to pa.s.s into the condition of a wife without any such line of demarcation. In that moment in which she finds herself in the first fruition of her marriage finery she becomes a bride; and in that other moment, when she begins to act upon the finest of these things as clothes to be packed up, she becomes a wife.
When this subject was discussed Griselda displayed no lack of a becoming interest. She went to work steadily, slowly, and almost with solemnity, as though the business in hand were one which it would be wicked to treat with impatience. She even struck her mother with awe by the grandeur of her ideas and the depth of her theories. Nor let it be supposed that she rushed away at once to the consideration of the great fabric which was to be the ultimate sign and mark of her status, the quintessence of her briding, the outer veil, as it were, of the tabernacle--namely, her wedding-dress. As a great poet works himself up by degrees to that inspiration which is necessary for the grand turning point of his epic, so did she slowly approach the hallowed ground on which she would sit, with her ministers around her, when about to discuss the nature, the extent, the design, the colouring, the structure, and the ornamentation of that momentous piece of apparel. No; there was much indeed to be done before she came to this; and as the poet, to whom I have already alluded, first invokes his muse, and then brings his smaller events gradually out upon his stage, so did Miss Grantly with sacred fervour ask her mother's aid, and then prepare her list of all those articles of under-clothing which must be the substratum for the visible magnificence of her _trousseau_.
Money was no object. We all know what that means; and frequently understand, when the words are used, that a blaze of splendour is to be attained at the cheapest possible price. But, in this instance, money was no object;--such an amount of money, at least, as could by any possibility be spent on a lady's clothes, independently of her jewels. With reference to diamonds and such like, the archdeacon at once declared his intention of taking the matter into his own hands--except in so far as Lord Dumbello, or the Hartletop interest, might be pleased to partic.i.p.ate in the selection. Nor was Mrs.