It was all true. Lord Blandamer made no secret of the matter, and his engagement to Anastasia, only child of the late Martin Joliffe, Esquire, of Cullerne, was duly announced in the London papers. It was natural that Westray should have known vacillation and misgiving before he made up his mind to offer marriage. It is with a man whose family or position are not strong enough to bear any extra strain, that public opinion plays so large a part in such circumstances. If he marries beneath him he falls to the wife’s level, because he has no margin of resource to raise her to his own. With Lord Blandamer it was different: his reliance upon himself was so great, that he seemed to enjoy rather than not, the flinging down of a gauntlet to the public in this marriage.
Bellevue Lodge became a centre of attraction. The ladies who had contemned a lodging-house keeper’s daughter courted the betrothed of a peer. From themselves they did not disguise the motive for this change, they did not even attempt to find an excuse in public. They simply executed their volte face simultaneously and with most commendable regularity, and felt no more reluctance or shame in the process than a cat feels in following the man who carries its meat. If they were disappointed in not seeing Anastasia herself (for she left for London almost immediately after the engagement was made public), they were in some measure compensated by the extreme readiness of Miss Euphemia to discuss the matter in all its bearings. Each and every detail was conscientiously considered and enlarged upon, from the buttons on Lord Blandamer’s boots to the engagement-ring on Anastasia’s finger; and Miss Joliffe was never tired of explaining that this last had an emerald—“A very large emerald, my dear, surrounded by diamonds, green and white being the colours of his lordship’s shield, what they call the nebuly coat, you know.”
A variety of wedding gifts found their way to Bellevue Lodge. “Great events, such as marriages and deaths, certainly do call forth the sympathy of our neighbours in a wonderful way,” Miss Joliffe said, with all the seriousness of an innocent belief in the general goodness of mankind. “Till Anstice was engaged, I never knew, I am sure, how many friends I had in Cullerne.” She showed “the presents” to successive callers, who examined them with the more interest because they had already seen most of them in the shopwindows of Cullerne, and so were able to appreciate the exact monetary outlay with which their acquaintances thought it prudent to conciliate the Fording interest. Every form of useless ugliness was amply represented among them—vulgarity masqueraded as taste, niggardliness figured as generosity—and if Miss Joliffe was proud of them as she forwarded them from Cullerne, Anastasia was heartily ashamed of them when they reached her in London.
“We must let bygones be bygones,” said Mrs. Parkyn to her husband with truly Christian forbearance, “and if this young man’s choice has not fallen exactly where we could have wished, we must remember, after all, that he is Lord Blandamer, and make the best of the lady for his sake. We must give her a present; in your position as Rector you could not afford to be left out. Everyone, I hear, is giving something.”
“Well, don’t let it be anything extravagant,” he said, laying down his paper, for his interest was aroused by any question of expense. “A too costly gift would be quite out of place under the circumstances. It should be rather an expression of goodwill to Lord Blandamer than anything of much intrinsic value.”
“Of course, of course. You may trust me not to do anything foolish. I have my eye on just the thing. There is a beautiful set of four saltcellars with their spoons at Laverick’s, in a case lined with puffed satin. They only cost thirty-three shillings, and look worth at least three pounds.”
XIX
The wedding was quiet, and there being no newspapers at that time to take such matters for their province, Cullerne curiosity had to be contented with the bare announcement: “At Saint Agatha’s-at-Bow, Horatio Sebastian Fynes, Lord Blandamer, to Anastasia, only child of the late Martin Joliffe, of Cullerne Wharfe.” Mrs. Bulteel had been heard to say that she could not allow dear Lord Blandamer to be married without her being there. Canon Parkyn and Mrs. Parkyn felt that their presence also was required ex-officio, and Clerk Janaway averred with some redundancies of expletive that he, too, “must see ’em turned off.” He hadn’t been to London for twenty year. If ’twere to cost a sovereign, why, ’twas a poor heart that never made merry, and he would never live to see another Lord Blandamer married. Yet none of them went, for time and place were not revealed.
But Miss Joliffe was there, and on her return to Cullerne she held several receptions at Bellevue Lodge, at which only the wedding and the events connected with it were discussed. She was vested for these functions in a new dress of coffee-coloured silk, and what with a tea-urn hissing in Mr. Sharnall’s room, and muffins, toast, and sweet-cakes, there were such goings-on in the house, as had not been seen since the last coach rolled away from the old Hand of God thirty years before. The company were very gracious and even affectionate, and Miss Joliffe, in the exhilaration of the occasion, forgot all those cold-shoulderings and askance looks which had grieved her at a certain Dorcas meeting only a few weeks before.
At these reunions many important particulars transpired. The wedding had been celebrated early in the morning at
