Part 8 (1/2)
It appears he likes thick toast in preference to thin, and thick soups; also that a habit he has of taking Welsh rarebit and stout for a late supper when he sits up alone is not good for his digestion and is to be discouraged. She hopes I will see that he wears his second thinnest Jager vests in Paris, not _the_ thinnest--which ought to be kept for August warmth--as once before when there he caught a bad catarrh of the chest through this imprudence.
Lady Tilchester is coming down from London in a special train on purpose to grace our bridal ceremony. She has sent me the prettiest brooch and such a nice letter.
I hope she will be a consolation in the future. For me life must be a thing of waking in the morning, and eating and drinking, and taking exercise, and going to bed again, and deadening all emotions, or else I feel sure I shall get a dreadful disease I once read about in an American paper Hephzibah takes in. It is called ”spontaneous combustion,” and it said in the paper that a man caught it from having got into a compressed state of heat and rage for weeks, and it made him burst up at last into flames like an exploding sh.e.l.l.
Well, at all events, I have kept my word, and grandmamma is content with me.
Miss Hoad--I shall have to call her Amelia now--is enchanted with the whole entertainment. She is to be the only bridesmaid, and has chosen the dress herself. It is coffee lace with a mustard-yellow sash. It mill match her complexion. And Augustus is presenting her with a huge bouquet, no doubt of the cauliflower shape, like my famous one, besides a diamond-and-ruby watch.
I wonder if Sir Antony will be at the wedding--he was asked.
The Marquis de Rochermont will give me away--grandmamma is too feeble now to stand. The ceremony is to be in the village church here, and the choir, composed of village youths unacquainted with a note of music, is to meet us at the lich-gate and precede us up the aisle, singing an encouraging wedding-hymn, while school-children spread forced white roses, provided by the Tilchester rose-growers.
Augustus explained that patronizing local resources like this will all come in useful when he stands for Parliament later on.
Grandmamma stipulated that there should be no wedding feast, her health and our small house being sufficient excuse. It is a great disappointment to Mrs. Gurrage, I am sure, but we go away to Paris as soon as I can change my dress after the church ceremony.
Think of it! This time to-morrow my name will be Gurrage! And Augustus will have the right to--Merciful G.o.d! stop my heart from beating in this sickening fas.h.i.+on, and let me remember the motto of my race--”_Sans bruit_.”
Oh, grandmamma, if I could go on your journey with you! The first jump out into the dark might be fearful, but afterwards it would be quiet and still, and there would be no caterpillars!
That was a beautiful flash of lightning! The storm is coming nearer. Sparks flew from my diamond fender on the dressing-table.
Well--well--I--I wish I had seen Sir Antony again. Just now he sent me a present. It is a knife for my chatelaine, the hilt studded with diamonds, and there is a note which says that there is still time to cut the Gordian knot.
What does it mean? I feel cold, as if I could not understand things to-night.
The Marquis gave me some _conseils de mariage_ this afternoon.
”Remain placid,” he said, ”_fermez les yeux et pensez a autrui--apres vous aurez les agrements_.”
Grandmamma has not even kissed me. Her eyes resemble a hawk's still, but have the look of a tortured tiger as well sometimes. She has grown terribly feeble, and has twice had fainting-fits like the one that changed my destiny. I believe she is remaining alive simply by strength of will and that she will die when all is over.
She has given me the greatest treasure of her life, the miniature of Ambrosine Eustasie. I have it here by my side for my very own.
Yes, Ambrosine Eustasie, for me to-morrow there is also the guillotine; and perhaps I, too, could walk up the steps smiling if I were allowed a rose to keep off the smell of the common people; Augustus's mother uses patchouli.
BOOK II
I
No one can possibly imagine the unpleasantness of a honey-moon until they have tried it. It is no wonder one is told nothing at all about it. Even to keep my word and obey grandmamma I could never have undertaken it if I had had an idea what it would be like.
Really, girls' dreams are the silliest things in the world. I can't help staring at all the married people I see about. ”You--poor wretches!--have gone through this,” I say to myself; and then I wonder and wonder that they can smile and look gay. I long to ask them when the calmness and indifference set in; how long I shall have to wait before I can really profit by grandmamma's lesson of the caterpillar.
It was useful for the _fiancailles_, but it has not comforted me much since my wedding.
In old-fas.h.i.+oned books, when the heroine comes to anything exciting, or when the situation is too difficult for the author to describe, there is always a row of stars. It seems to mean a jump, a break to be filled up as each person pleases. I feel I must leave this part of my life marked with this row of stars.
It is two weeks now since I wrote my name Ambrosine de Calincourt Athelstan for the last time, two weeks since I walked down the rose-strewn guillotine steps on Augustus's arm, two weeks since he--Ah, no! I will never look back at that. Let these hideous two weeks sink into the abyss of oblivion!