The Three Brides

CHAPTER I

The Model And Her Copies

There is sure another Flood toward, that so many couples are coming to the Ark.

“Ah! it is a pitiable case!”

“What case, boys?”

“Yours, mother, with such an influx of daughters-in-law.”

“I suspect the daughters-in-law think themselves more to be pitied.”

“As too many suns in one sphere.”

“As daughters-in-law at all.”

“There’s a ready cure for that.  Eh, Charlie?”

“The sight of the mother-in-law.”

“Safe up on the shelf?  Ha, you flattering boys!”

“Well, each of the three bridegrooms has severally told us that his bride was a strong likeness of the mother, so she will have the advantage of three mirrors!”

“Ay, and each married solely for her benefit.  I wonder which is the truest!”

“Come, Baby Charles, don’t you take to being cynical and satirical,” said the mother.  “It would be more to the purpose to consider of the bringing them home.  Let me see, Raymond and his Cecil will be at Holford’s Gate at 5.30.  They must have the carriage in full state.  I suppose Brewer knows.”

“Trust the ringers for scenting it out.”

“Julius and Rosamond by the down train at Willansborough, at 4.50.  One of you must drive old Snapdragon in the van for them.  They will not mind when they understand; but there’s that poor wife of Miles’s, I wish she could have come a few days earlier.  Her friend, Mrs. Johnson, is to drop her by the express at Backsworth, at 3.30.”

“Inconvenient woman!”

“I imagine that she cannot help it; Mrs. Johnson is going far north, and was very good in staying with her at Southampton till she could move.  Poor little thing! alone in a strange country!  I’ll tell you what!  One of you must run down by train, meet her, and either bring her home in a fly, or wait to be picked up by Raymond’s train.  Take her Miles’s letter.”

The two young men glanced at one another in dismay, and the elder said, “Wouldn’t nurse do better?”

“No, no, Frank,” said the younger, catching a distressed look on their mother’s face, “I’ll look up Miles’s little African.  I’ve rather a curiosity that way.  Only don’t let them start the bells under the impression that we are a pair of the victims.  If so, I shall bolt.”

“Julius must be the nearest bolting,” said Frank.  “How he accomplished it passes my comprehension.  I shall not believe in it till I see him.  There, then, I’ll give orders.  Barouche for the squire, van for the rector, and the rattling fly for the sailor’s wife.  So wags the course of human life,” chanted Frank Charnock, as he strolled out of the room.

“Thanks, Charlie,” whispered his mother.  “I am grieved for that poor young thing.  I wish I could go myself.  And, Charlie, would you cast an eye round, and see how things look in their rooms?  You have always been my daughter.”

“Ah! my vocation is gone!  Three in one day!  I wonder which is the best of the lot.  I bet upon Miles’s Cape Gooseberry.—Tired, mother darling?  Shall I send in nurse?  I must be off, if I am to catch the 12.30 train.”

He bent to kiss the face, which was too delicately shaped and tinted to look old enough to be in expectation of three daughters-in-law.  No, prostrate as she was upon pillows, Mrs. Charnock Poynsett did not look as if she had attained fifty years.  She was lady of Compton Poynsett in her own right; and had been so early married and widowed, as to have been the most efficient parental influence her five sons had ever known; and their beautiful young mother had been the object of their adoration from the nursery upwards, so that she laughed at people who talked of the trouble and anxiety of rearing sons.

They had all taken their cue from their senior, who had always been more to his mother than all the world besides.  For several years, he being as old of his age as she was young, Mr. and Mrs. Charnock Poynsett, with scarcely eighteen years between their ages, had often been taken by strangers for husband and wife rather than son and mother.  And though she knew she ought to wish for his marriage, she could not but be secretly relieved that there were no symptoms of any such went impending.

At last, during the first spring after Raymond Charnock Poynsett, Esquire, had been elected member for the little borough of Willansborough, his mother, while riding with her two youngest boys, met with an accident so severe, that in two years she had never quitted the morning-room, whither she had at first been carried.  She was daily lifted to a couch, but she could endure no further motion, though her general health had become good, and her cheerfulness made her room pleasant to her sons when the rest of the house was very dreary to them.

Raymond, always the home son, would never have absented himself but for his parliamentary duties, and vibrated between London and home, until, when his mother had settled into a condition that seemed likely to be permanent, and his two youngest brothers were at home, reading each for his examination, the one for a Government clerkship, the other for the army, he yielded to the general recommendation, and set out for a journey on the Continent.

A few weeks later came the electrifying news of his engagement to his second cousin, Cecil Charnock.  It was precisely the most obvious and suitable of connections.  She was the only child of the head of the family of which his father had been a cadet, and there were complications of inheritance thus happily disposed of.  Mrs. Poynsett had not seen her since her earliest childhood; but she was known to have been educated with elaborate care, and had been taken to the Continent as the completion of her education, and there Raymond had met her, and sped so rapidly with his wooing, that he had been married at Venice just four weeks previously.

Somewhat less recent was the wedding of the second son Commander Miles Charnock.  (The younger sons bore their patronymic alone.)  His ship had been stationed at the Cape and there, on a hunting expedition up the country, he had been detained by a severe illness at a settler’s house; and this had resulted in his marrying the eldest daughter, Anne Fraser.  She had spent some months at Simon’s Bay while his ship was there, and when he found himself under orders for the eastern coast of Africa, she would fain have awaited him at Glen Fraser; but he preferred sending her home to fulfil the mission of daughterhood to his own mother.

The passage had been long and unfavourable, and the consequences to her had been so serious that when she landed she could not travel until after a few days’ rest.

The marriage of the third son had been a much greater surprise.  Compton Poynsett was not a family living; but the patron, hearing of Julius Charnock as a hard-working curate in a distant seaport, wrote to offer it to him; and the same letter to Mrs. Poynsett to offer it to him; and the same letter to Mrs Poynsett which conveyed this gratifying intelligence, also informed her of his having proposed to the daughter of the commanding officer of the regiment stationed at the town where lay his present charge.  Her father enjoyed the barren honours of the Earldom of Rathforlane, an unimprovable estate in a remote corner of Ireland, burthened with successive families of numerous daughters, so that he was forced to continue in the service, and the marriage had been hastened by the embarkation of the regiment for India only two days later.  The Rectory had, however, been found in such a state of dilapidation, that demolition was the only cure; and thus the Reverend Julius and Lady Rosamond Charnock were to begin their married life in the family home.

The two youngest sons, Francis and Charles, stood on the other side of a gap made by the loss of two infants, and were only twenty-one and nineteen.  Frank had passed through Oxford with credit, and had been promised a Government office; while Charles was intended for the army; and both had been reading with a tutor who lived at Willansborough, and was continually employed in cramming, being reported of as the best ‘coach’ in the country.  Charlie, however, had passed a week previously, and was to repair to Sandhurst in another fortnight.

At half-past four there was a light tap at Mrs. Poynsett’s door, and Charlie announced, “Here’s the first, mother!” as he brought in a gray-cloaked figure; and Mrs. Poynsett took a trembling hand, and bestowed a kiss on a cheek which had languor and exhaustion in the very touch.

“She was tired to death, mother,” said Charlie, “so we did not wait for the train.”

“Quite right!” and as the newcomer sank into the chair he offered—“My dear, you are sadly knocked up!  You were hardly fit to come.”

“Thank you, I am quite well,” answered the fagged timid voice.

“Hark!” as the crash of a peal of bells came up.  “Dear child, you will like to rest before any fresh introductions.  You shall go to your room and have some tea there.”

“Thank you.”

“Charlie, call Susan.—She is my boys’ old nurse, now mine.  Only tell me you have good accounts from my boy Miles.”

“Oh yes;” and the hand tightly clasped the closely-written letter for which the mother’s eyes felt hungry.  “He sent you his love, and he will write to you next time.  He was so busy, his first lieutenant was down in fever.”

“Where was he?”

“Off Zanzibar—otherwise the crew was healthy—the 12th of August,” she answered, squeezing out the sentences as if constrained by the mother’s anxious gaze.

“And he was quite well when you parted with him?”

“Quite.”

“Ah! you nursed my boy, and we must nurse you for him.”

“Thank you, I am quite well.”  But she bit her lip, and spoke constrainedly, as if too shy and reserved to give way to the rush of emotion; but the coldness pained Mrs. Poynsett, whose expansiveness was easily checked; and a brief silence was followed by Charlie’s return to report that he could not find nurse, and thought she was out with the other servants, watching for the arrival; in another moment, the approaching cheers caused him to rush out; and after many more noises, showing the excitement of the multitude and the advance of the bridal pair, during which Mrs. Poynsett lay with deepening colour and clasped hands, her nostrils dilating with anxiety and suppressed eagerness, there entered a tall, dark, sunburnt man bringing on his arm a little, trim, upright, girlish figure; and bending down, he exclaimed, “There, mother, I’ve brought her—here’s your daughter!”

Two little gloved hands were put into hers, and a kiss exchanged, while Raymond anxiously inquired for his mother’s health; and she broke in by saying, “And here is Anne—Miles’s Anne, just arrived.”

“Ah, I did not see you in the dark,” said Raymond.  “There, Cecil, is a sister for you—you never had one.”

Cecil was readier with greeting hand and cheek than was Anne, but at the same moment the tea equipage was brought in, and Cecil, quite naturally, and as a matter of course, began to preside over the low table, while Raymond took his accustomed chair on the further side of his mother’s sofa, where he could lean over the arm and study her countenance, while she fondled the hand that he had hung over the back.  He was describing the welcome at the station, and all through the village—the triumphal arches and shouts.

“But how they did miss you, mother,” said Charlie.  “Old Gurnet wrung my hand in tears as he said, ‘Yes, sir, ’tis very fine, but it beats the heart out of it that madam bain’t here to see.’”

“Good old Gurnet!” responded Raymond.  “They are famously loyal.  The J. C. P. crowned all above all the Cs and Rs, I was happy to see.”

“J. was for Julius—not Julia,” said the mother.

“No; J. H. C. and R. C. had a separate device of roses all to themselves.  Hark! is that a cheer beginning again?  Had we not better go into the drawing-room, mother? it will be so many for you all together.”

“Oh no, I must see you all.”

The brothers hurried out with their welcome; and in another minute, a plump soft cheek was pressed to the mother’s, devouring kisses were hailed on her, and a fuller sweeter tone than had yet been heard answered the welcome.

“Thank you.  So kind!  Here’s Julius!  I’ll not be in your way.”

“Dearest mother, how is it with you?” as her son embraced her.  “Rose has been longing to be with you.”

“And we’ve all come together!  How delicious!” cried Rosamond, enfolding Anne in her embrace; “I didn’t know you were come!—See, Julius!”

But as Julius turned, a startled look came over Anne’s face; and she turned so white, that Rosamond exclaimed, “My dear—what—she’s faint!”  And while Cecil stood looking puzzled, Rosamond had her arm round the trembling form, and disappeared with her, guided and assisted by Nurse Susan.

“Isn’t she—?” exclaimed Julius, in a voice of triumph that made all smile.

“Full of sweet kindness,” said Mrs. Poynsett; “but I have only seen and heard her yet, my dear Julius.  Susan will take her to her room—my old one.”

“Oh, thank you, mother,” said Julius, “but I hardly like that; it seems like your giving it up.”

“On the contrary, it proves that I do not give it up, since I put in temporary lodgers like you.—Now Cecil is housed as you preferred, Raymond—in the wainscot-rooms.”

“And where have you put that poor Mrs. Miles?” asked Raymond.  “She looks quite knocked up.”

“Yes, she has been very ill on the voyage, and waited at Southampton to gather strength for the journey.—I am so grateful to your good Rose, Julius.—Why, where is the boy?  Vanished in her wake, I declare!”

“His venerable head is quite turned,” said Frank.  “I had to get inside alone, and let them drive home outside together to avoid separation.”

Raymond repeated his question as to the quarters of Miles’s wife.

“I had the old schoolroom and the bedroom adjoining newly fitted up,” answered Mrs. Poynsett.  “Jenny Bowater was here yesterday, and gave the finishing touches.  She tells me the rooms look very nice.—Cecil, my dear, you must excuse deficiencies; I shall look to you in future.”

“I hope to manage well,” said Cecil.  “Had I not better go up now?  Will you show me the way, Raymond?”

The mother and her two younger sons remained.

“Haven’t I brought you home a splendid article?” was Frank’s exclamation.  “Julius has got the best of it.”

“I back my Cape Gooseberry,” returned Charles.  “She has eyes and hair and skin that my Lady can’t match, and is a fine figure of a woman besides.”

“Much you know of Rosamond’s eyes!”

“Or you either, boxed up in the van.”

“Any way, they have made roast meat of his Reverence’s heart!  The other two take it much more easily.”

“She’s a mere chicken,” said Charlie.  “Who would have thought of Raymond being caught by a callow nestling?”

“And so uncommonly cool,” added Frank.

“It would take much to transform Raymond,” interposed the mother.  “Now, boys, away with you; I must have a little quiet, to repair myself for company after dinner.”

Charlie settled her cushions with womanly skill, and followed his brother.  “Well, Frank, which is the White Cat?  Ah, I thought so—she’s yet to come.”

“Not one is fit to hold a candle to her.  You saw that as plain as I did, Charlie; Eleonora beats them all.”

“Ah, you’re not the youngest brother, remember.  It was he who brought her home at last.  Come, you need not knock me down; I shall never see any one to surpass the mother, and I’ll have no one till I do.”

CHAPTER II

The Population of Compton Poynsett

In the bright lamplight of the dining-table, the new population first fully beheld one another, and understood one another’s looks.

There was much family resemblance between the five brothers.  All were well-grown well-made men, strong and agile, the countenance pleasing, rather square of mould, eyebrows straight and thick, nose well cut and short, chin firm and resolute-looking, and the complexion very dark in Raymond, Frank, and the absent Miles.  Frank’s eyes were soft, brown, rather pensive, and absent in expression; but Raymond’s were much deeper and darker, and had a steadfast gravity, that made him be viewed as formidable, especially as he had lost all the youthful glow of colouring that mantled in his brother’s olive cheek; and he had a short, thick, curly brown beard, while Frank had only attained to a black moustache, that might almost have been drawn on his lip with charcoal.

Charlie was an exception—fair, blue-eyed, rosy, and with a soft feminine contour of visage, which had often drawn on him reproaches for not being really the daughter all his mother’s friends desired for her.

And Julius, with the outlines of the others, was Albino, with transparent skin mantling with colour that contrasted with his snowy hair, eyebrows, and the lashes, veiling eyes of a curious coral hue, really not unpleasing under their thick white fringes, but most inconveniently short of sight, although capable of much work; in fact, he was a curiously perfect pink-and-white edition of his dark and bronzed brother the sailor.

The dark eyes came from the father’s side; Cecil had them, and very observing orbs they seemed to be, travelling about from one face to another, and into every corner of the room, scrutinizing every picture or piece of plate, and trying to see into the conservatory, which had a glass door opening from one end of the room.  She was the youngest of the brides, and her features and form seemed hardly developed, nor had she attained the air of a matron; her fashionable dress of crisp white worked muslin with blue trimmings, and blue ribbons in her brown hair, only gave her the air of a young girl at her first party, in spite of her freedom from all shyness as she sat at the head of the table in contented self-possession, her little slender figure as upright as a perfect spine could make it.

Very different was the bride on Raymond’s right hand.  She was of middle height, soft, round, and plump, carrying her head a little tenderly on one side with a delightful dégagée kind of ease, and air of vivacious indolence.  Her complexion was creamy and colourless, her nose rather retroussé, her lips full and parting in a delicious roguish smile, answering to the sleepily twinkling eyes, whose irides seemed to shade so imperceptibly into the palest gray, that there was no telling where the pupils ended, especially as the lids were habitually half closed, as if weighed down by the black length of their borders.  The habit of arching up one or other of the eyebrows, in surprise or interrogation, gave a drollery to the otherwise nonchalant sweetness of the countenance.  The mass of raven black hair was only adorned by a crimson ribbon, beneath which it had been thrust into a net, with a long thing that had once been a curl on the shoulder of the white tumbled bodice worn over a gray skirt which looked as if it had done solitary duty for the five weeks since the marriage, and was but slightly relieved by a crimson sash.

Rosamond made some apology when she saw Cecil’s dainty equipment.  “Dressed, you correct little thing!  You put me to shame; but I had no notion which box my evening things are in, and it would have been serious to irritate the whole concern.”

“And she was some time with Anne,” added Julius.

“Ah! with my good will Anne should not have been here!” rejoined Rosamond.  “Didn’t I meet old Mrs. Nurse at your threshold, with an invitation from Mrs. Poynsett to dine with her in her room, and didn’t we find the bird flown at the first stroke of the gong?”

“Oh, I am very well!” repeated Anne.

Yet she was far more colourless than Julius, for her complexion was not only faded by sickness, but was naturally of the whitest blonde tint; the simple coils of her hair “lint white,” and her eyes of the lightest tint of pure blue.  The features were of Scottish type, all the more so from being exaggerated by recent illness; but they were handsome enough to show that she must have been a bonnie lassie when her good looks were unimpaired.  Her figure far surpassed in height that of both the other ladies, and was very slender, bending with languor and fatigue in spite of her strenuous attempts to straighten it.  She was clad in a perfectly plain, almost quaker-looking light dove-coloured silk dress, fitting closely, and unrelieved by any ribbon or ornament of any description, so that her whole appearance suggested nothing but the words “washed out.”

It was clear that to let her alone was merciful, and there was no lack of mutual communications among the rest.  Frank and Charlie gave their account of the condition of the game.

“Do you let your tenants shoot rabbits?” exclaimed Cecil, as if scandalized.  “We never do at Dunstone.”

“It prevents an immense amount of discontent and ill-will and underhand work,” said Raymond.

“My father never will listen to any nonsense about rabbits,” proceeded Cecil.  “If you once begin there is no end to it, they are sure to encroach.  He just sends them a basket of game at the beginning and end of the season.”

“By the bye,” said Raymond, “I hope ours have all been sent out as usual.”

“I can answer for a splendid one at our wedding breakfast,” said Rosamond.  “The mess-man who came to help was lost in admiration.  Did you breakfast on ortolans, Cecil?”

“Or on nightingales’ tongues?” added Charlie.

“You might as well say fatted dormice and snails,” said Frank.  “One would think the event had been eighteen hundred years ago.”

“Poor Frank! he’s stuffed so hard that it is bursting out at all his pores!” exclaimed Charlie.

“Ah! you have the advantage of your elder, Master Charles!” said Raymond, with a paternal sound of approbation.

“Till next time,” said Frank.  “Now, thank goodness, mine is once for all!”

The conversation drifted away to Venice and the homeward journey, which Raymond and Cecil seemed to have spent in unremitting sight-seeing.  The quantities of mountains, cathedrals, and pictures they had inspected was quite appalling.

“How hard you must have worked!” exclaimed Rosamond.  “Had you never a day’s rest out of the thirty?”

“Had we, Cecil?  I believe not,” said Raymond.

“Sundays?” gasped Anne’s low voice at his elbow.

“Indeed,” triumphantly returned Cecil, “between English service and High Mass, and Benediction, and the public gardens, and listening to the band, we had not a single blank Sunday.”

Anne started and looked aghast; and Raymond said, “The opportunity was not to be wasted, and Cecil enjoyed everything with unwearied vigour.”

“Why, what else should we have done?  It would have been very dull and stupid to have stayed in together,” said Cecil, with a world of innocent wonder in her eyes.  Then turning to her neighbour, “Surely, Julius, you went about and saw things!”

“The sea at Filey Bridge, and the Church Congress at Leeds,” he answered, smiling.

“Very shocking, is it not, Cecil?” said Rosamond, with mock gravity; “but he must be forgiven, for he was tired to death!  I used to think, for my part, that lovers were a sort of mild lunatics, never to be troubled or trusted with any earthly thing; but that’s one of the things modern times have changed!  As he was to be going, all the clerical staff of St. Awdry’s must needs have their holiday and leave him to do their work; indeed, one was sent off here.  For six weeks I never saw him, except when he used to rush in to say he couldn’t stay; and when at last we were safe in the coupé, he fairly went to sleep before we got to the first station.—Hush! you know you did!  And no wonder, for he had been up two nights with some sort of infidel who was supposed to be dying.  Then that first week at Filey, he used to bring out his poetry books as the proper sort of thing, and try to read them to me on the sands: but by the time he had got to the bottom of a page, I used to hear the words dragging out slower and slower—

Wherewith Rosamond dropped her head and closed her eyes; while the brothers shouted with mirth, except Frank, whose countenance was ‘of one hurt on a vulnerable side.’

“Disrespect to Elaine?  Eh, Frank?” said Charlie; “how many pegs has Julius gone down in your estimation?”