Chapter LVIII.

Otago Witness, Issue 1539, 7 May 1881, Page 25

Chapter LVIII.

Wedding Bolls.

' Did I not prophecy that my dearest Winifred would be Lady Brackenbury, after all ? My child, I knew it as well as if I had peeped into the Book of the Future ! '

' How could you know what I did not know myself]' said Winifred, laughing and colouring. ' Having eyes, my dear ; and not being in the habit of going about with them shut, like the majority of my friends and neighbours, how could I help seeing a drama that was enacted under my very nose ? And yet, when you overwhelmed me with that outburst of virtuous indignation Ah, that was the very day when you pinned that five-pound note to baby's cob, you darling, as if I could ever forget it ! And we thought some fairy godmother had come down the chimney. Do you remember how angry you were with poor me, and how I begged for forgiveneas But there ! lam too happy to care to tease you. How good it is to see you again ! I declare I was never half so happy in my life. Missed you 1 To say that I have missed you ia to convey no idea of the gap your absence has made in my little world ; and as for the children Well, my dear, it has been enough to make any mother jealous. However, here you are — tho same dear Winifred ; and here am I, happier and more prosperous than I ever expected to be in this world. Now I shall tell you

when I missed you most, dear ! — when our great good fortune befel us. After having pelted you for years with all my worries and grievances, it did seem hard hot to be able to go to you with my joy and gratitude — not to be able to say to you, " See all that your noble Lancelot has done for us." And now he crowns it by bringing us to Munich for your wedding ! Why, my dear, we had no more notion of coming here than you had of seeing us. But Lord Brackenbury insisted that you would like Derwent to perform the ceremony, and that the change would do us all the good in the world — and here we are. It couldn't have happened at a better moment, you see ; for we had done, thank Heaven ! with the Oaldicotts ; and the new church on the moor cannot be opened till the fall of the year ; and baby is just weaned ; and we have been able to pack off the children en masse to my sister Barbara at Chester ; so we really had our time free for a holiday. And then there was your trousseau ! I confess I did long to be with you when you should open the boxes — five of them, my dear, and full of such beautiul things ! Nothing ostentatious, you know— nothing extravagant, but all of the very best. There is a morningrobe of pearl-grey Indian cashmere lined with salmon-pink, and trimmed with old Abruzzi lace, that brought tears of spite to Mrs Caldlcott's eyes when she saw it ! And as for the under-linen, all marked with your initials in cypher surmounted by an angelic little coronet— Well, I can't trust myself to speak of it in vulgar prose. The Oastelrosso herself, at all events, has none more exquisite. The one thing that has grieved me is your wedding-dress. I had set my heart on white satin— that creamy white which Rubens and Vandyke painted, you know, with gold -coloured reflections in the folds ! It was a blow to me to be tied down to plain white grosgrain. But you would have it so, and I could only submit under protest. Then, to be candid, I must say I think the affair ought to come off at the British Embassy— people in your position, you know Ah, well, the circumstances, of course, are exceptional j but, for all that, I cannot help wishing the marriage wasn't going to be so dreadfully private.' ' Now tell me some of your own news,' said Winifrod, when Mrs Pennefeather, punctuating her discourse at arbitrary intervals with hugs and kisses, stopped at last from sheer want of breath.

' Happy is the nation, my dear, that has no history. I have no news of my own, except what you know already, and that is as good as it can well be. Our troubles are all over, and we have begun to live happy ever after. The Hermitage ? No— we have not yet given up The Hermitage, because we don't know how soon our beautiful new vicarage will be ready for occupation ; but we have shut the house up, serenely conscious that there's nothing in it which the least ambitious burglar would care to steal. If only the children keep well, and Barbara will submit to be bored by them for a few weeks longer, I hope to get Derwent in the mind to go back by way of the Rhine and Brussels. It has been one of my dreams to see the Rhine — " the caatled crag of Drachenfels," you know, and " the peasant girls with deep-blue eyes," and all the rest of it. Do for the scene of a novel ? Ah no ! my dear. Once settled on Burfield Moor, I shall have something better to do than to write third-rate novels for second-rate publishers. Oh, I have never deceived myself as to the worth of my own productions. They are nothing but potboilers, my dear — pot-boilers of the thorny and brambly sort, crackling dismally under a pot which never had too much in it. Some day — perhaps years to come, when the children are grown up, and I have discovered the true meaning and application of that obscure word, " Leisure, 1 ' I may write one more story, just to show people that, after all, I am not quite such a fool as they take me for. But for literature, leisure and industry in equal parts is your only genuine prescription. What good book was ever written under pressure of haste and poverty? It's all very well to talk of necessity being the mother of invention ; but J never found a sedimentary deposit of pure fiction at the bottom of a file of unpaid bills, or drew deep draughts of romantic inspiration from an empty larder ! No, my dear Winifred, I have done with novel-writing as a drudgery, and if ever I take it up again, it shall be as a luxury. But what were we talking about — news ? Well, I have none of my own, and none of my neighbours' — that is to say, none worth repeating. You know, of course, that Viscount Frenchay is dead — the horrid old reprobate ! Such a funeral as they gave him, too ! Plumes and trappings, and all the panoply of humbug, with seventeen private carriages bringing up the rear ! But such is fashionable woe, Instead of shedding tears for you, Society sheds carriages. Then there's Lady Symes, just returned from London, as old — and as young — as ever, looking as if she might have been born any time between the Mammiferous Period and the day before yesterday. She called to congratulate us upon Derwent's preferment, and did it, of course, as spitefully as ever she knew how. " You'll be buried alive, Mrs Pennefeather," she said ; " but then, you know, the man who wants to live at peaco with ltis neighbours must inhabit a desert island. You'll at all events be out of the way of such tiresome people as myself." To which I replied that even the advantages of premature interment would be dearly purchased at the price of her lady-

ship's visits. She inquired after you, and I told her you were still in Munich j and then she said that Mr Fink and the Countess had last been heard of at Constantinople, and were not expected home before midsummer. Now I think I have told you all the gossip of Langtreyand its neighbourhood.' This conversation—or, more correctly, this monologue — took place in an upper chamber of the Hotel Mauliok, where Lancelot had retained rooms for his guests. And his guests Mr and Mrs Pennefeather were to be as long as they remained in Munich.

They stayed just one fortnight, at the end of which time Lancelot Braokenbury and Winifred Savage were married one morning in the Bavarian Protestant Ohapel, then an ugly little red-brick building in a by-street opening from the Schrannen Platz, in the Old Quarter of the city. Mr Pennefeather read the service ; Pastor Kreutzmann gave the bride away ; and Katchen and Brenda did duty as bridesmaids. Guests, musicians, cards, rejoicings, there were none. Not even the marriage of Oesare Donato and Giulietta Beni was more absolutely private.

In the meanwhile, carefully as their secret had been guarded by the high contracting parties, it leaked out somehow or another, up in the 'North Oountree;' and, despite all Lancelot's precautions the bells of Brackenbury and Singleton rang at joyous intervals throughout his wedding day.

To he continued— Commenced in No. 1517.)