Nancy Part 12

On the bright gravel walk stands the jackdaw, looking rather a funereal object in his black suit, on this gaudy-colored day; his gray head very much on one side, his round, sly eyes turned upward in dishonest meditation. A worse bird than Jacky does not hop. His life is one long course of larceny, and I know that if he had the gift of speech, he would also be a consummate liar. I kneel on the walk, and, holding out a bit of cake, call him softly and clearly, "Jacky! Jacky!" He s.n.a.t.c.hes it rudely, with a short hoa.r.s.e caw, puts one black foot on it, and begins to peck.

"Jacky! Jacky!" say I, sorrowfully, "I am going to be married! Oh, you know that? You may thank your stars that you are not."

As I speak, my tears fall on his sleek black wings and his dear gray head. I try to kiss him; but he makes such a spiteful peck at my nose, that I have to give up the idea. Thus one of my good-byes is over. By the time that they are all ended, and we have returned to the house, I am drowned in tears, and my appearance for the day is irretrievably damaged. My nose is certainly _very_ red. It surprises even myself, who have known its capabilities of old. Bobby, always prosaic, suggests that I shall hold it in the steam of boiling water, to reduce the inflammation. But I have not the heart to try this remedy. It may be sky blue, for all I care. Nose or no nose, I am dressed now.

Instead of the costly artificial wreath that Madame Elise sent me, Barbara has made a little natural garland of my own flowers--my Nancies.

I smell them all the time that I am being married. I have no female friends--Barbara has always been friend enough for me--so I have stipulated that I shall have no other bridesmaids but her and Tou Tou.

They are not much to brag of in the way of a match. Algy indeed suggested that in order to bring them into greater harmony, Tou Tou shall clothe her thin legs with long petticoats, or Barbara abridge her garments to Tou Tou's length; but the proposition has met with as little favor in the family's eyes as did Squire Thornhill's proposal, that every gentleman should sit on a lady's lap, in the Vicar of Wakefield.

The guests are all off to the church. I follow with my parents. Mother is inclined to cry, until snubbed and withered into dry-eyedness by her consort. He is, however, all benignity to me. I catch myself wondering whether I _can_ be his own daughter; whether I am not one of the train of neighboring misses who have sometimes made me the depository of their raptures about him.

We reach the church. I am walking up the aisle on red cloth: the wedding-hymn is in my ears, gayly and briskly sung, though it _is_ a hymn, and not an _Epithalamium_: a vague idea of many people is in my head. I am standing before the altar--the altar smothered in flowers.

The old vicar who christened me is to marry me. I have declined the intervention of all strange bishops and curates whatsoever. He is a clergyman of the old school, and spares us not a word of the ritual.

Truly in no squeamish age was the marriage-service composed! I know--that is, I could have told you if you had asked me--that I am standing beside a large and stately person, to whom, if neither G.o.d nor man interpose to prevent it, I shall, within five minutes, be lawfully wed; but I do not in the least degree realize it.

Now and again a strong sense of the ludicrous rushes over me. There seems to me something acutely ridiculous in the idea of myself standing here, so finely dressed--of the boys, demure and prim in their tall hats and Sunday coats, gathered to see _me_ married--_me_ of all people!

Like lightning-flash there darts into my head the recollection of the _last time that I was married_! when, long ago we were little children, one wet Sunday afternoon, for want of a job, I had espoused Bobby; and Algy, standing on a chair, with his night-gown on for a surplice, had married us. It is over now. I am aware that several persons of different genders have kissed me. I have signed my name. I am walking down the church-yard path, the bells jangling gayly above my head, drowning the sweet thrushes; and the school-children flinging bountiful garden flowers before my feet. It seems to me a sin to tread upon them. It goes to my heart. We reach the house. Vick comes out to meet us in a crawling, groveling manner, which owes its birth to the _shame_ caused in her mind by the huge favor which my maid has tied round her little neck. We go into breakfast and feed--the _women_ with easy minds; the _men_, with such appet.i.tes as the fear of impending speeches, of horrible shattered commonplaces leaves them.

I suppose that, despite my change of name, I cannot yet be wholly a Tempest; for, while I remain perfectly serene and calm during Sir Roger's few plain words, I am one red misery while Algy is returning thanks for the bridesmaids, which he does in so appallingly lame, stammering, and altogether agonizing a manner, that I have serious thoughts of slipping from my bridegroom's side under the friendly shade of the table, among its sheltering legs.

Thank G.o.d it is over, and I am gone to put on my traveling-dress! The odious parting moment has come. The carriage is at the door: the maid and valet are in the d.i.c.key. What a pity that they are not bride and bridegroom too! Vick has jumped in--alert and self-respecting again now that she has bitten off her favor.

I have begun my voluminous farewells. I have kissed them all round once, and am beginning again. How can one make up one's mind where to stop?

with whom to end?

"Never you marry, Barbara!" say I, in a sobbing whisper, as I clasp her in my last embrace, greatly distorting my new bonnot, "it is _so_ disagreeable!"

We are off, followed by a tornado of shoes--one, aimed with dexterous violence by that unlucky Bobby, goes nigh to cut the bridegroom's left eye open, as he waves his good-byes.

As we trot smartly away, I turn round in the carriage and look at them through my tears. There they all are! After all, what a nice-looking family! Even Tou Tou! there is something pretty about her, and standing as she is now, her legs look quite nice and thick.

We reach Dover before dinner-time. Sir Roger has gone out to speak to the courier who meets us there. I am left alone in our great stiff sitting-room at the Lord Warden. Instantly I rush to the writing-materials.

"What, writing already?" says my husband, reentering, and coming over with a smile toward me. "Have you forgotten any of your finery?"

"No, no!" cry I, impulsively, spreading both hands over the sheet; "do not look! you must not look!"

"Do you think I _should_?" he says, reproachfully, turning quickly away.

"But you may," cry I, with one of my sudden useless remorses, holding out the note to him. "Do! I should like you to!--I do not know why I said it!--I was only sending them a line, just to tell them how _dreadfully_ I missed them all!"

CHAPTER X.

I have been married a week. A _week_ indeed! a week in the sense in which the creation of the world occupied a week!--seven geological ages, perhaps, but _not_ seven days. We have been to Brussels, to Antwerp, to Cologne. We have seen--(with the penetrating incense odor in our nostrils, and the kneeling peasants at our feet)--the Descent from the Cross, the Elevation of the Cross--dead Christs manifold. Can it be possible that the brush which worthily painted Christ's agony, can be the same that descended to eternize redundant red fishwives, and call them G.o.ddesses? We have given ourselves cricks in the necks, staring up at the divine incompleteness of Cologne Cathedral. And all through Crucifixions, cathedrals, table d'hotes, I have been deadly, _deadly_ homesick--homesick as none but one that has been a member of a large family and has been out into the world on his or her own account, for the first time, can understand. When first I drove away through the park, my sensations were something like those that we all used to experience, on the rare occasions when father, as a treat, took one or other of us out on an excursion with him--the _honor_ great, but the _pleasure_ small.

It seems to myself, as if I had not laughed once since we set off!--yes--_once_ I did, at the recollection of an old joke of Bobby's, that we all thought very silly at the time, but that strikes me as irresistibly funny now that it recurs to me in the midst of strange scenes, and of jokeless foreigners.

After forty, people do not laugh at absolutely _nothing_. They may be very easily moved to mirth, as, indeed, to do him justice, Sir Roger is; but they do not laugh for the pure physical pleasure of grinning. The weight of the absolute _tete-a-tete_ of a honey-moon, which has proved trying to a more violent love than mine, is oppressing me.

At home, if I grew tired of talking to one, I could talk to another. If I waxed weary of Bobby's sea-tales, I might refresh myself with listening to the Brat's braggings about Oxford--with Tou Tou's murdered French lesson:

J'aime, I love.

Tu aimes, Thou lovest.

Il aime, He loves.

How many thousand years ago, the labored conjugation of that verb seems to me!

_Now_, if I do not converse with Sir Roger, I must remain silent. And, somehow, I cannot talk to him now as fluently as I used. Before--during our short previous acquaintance--where I used to pester the poor man with filial aspirations that he could not reciprocate, there seemed no end to the things I had to say to him. I felt as if I could have told him any thing. I bubbled over with silly jests.

It never occurred to me to think whether I pleased him or not; but _now_--_now_, the sense of my mental inferiority--of the gulf of years and inequalities that yawns between us--weighs like a lump of lead upon me.

I am in constant fear of falling below his estimate of me. Before I speak, I think whether what I am going to say will be worth saying, and, as very few of my remarks come up to this standard, I become extremely silent. Oh, if we could meet some one we knew--even if it were some one that we rather disliked than otherwise: some one that would laugh and have as few wits as I, and be _young_.

But it is too early in the year for many people to be yet abroad, and, so far, we have fallen upon no acquaintances. Once, indeed, at Antwerp, I see in the distance a man whose figure bears a striking resemblance to that of "Toothless Jack," and my heart leaps--detestable as I have always thought Barbara's aspirant; but on coming nearer the likeness disappears, and I relapse into depression.

Long ago, I had told my husband--on the first day I had made his acquaintance indeed--that I had no conversation, and now he is proving experimentally the truth of my confession. At home, our talk has always been made up of allusions, half-words, petrified witticisms, that have become part of our language. Each sentence would require a dictionary of explanation to any strange hearer. _Now_, if I wish to be understood, I must say my meaning in plain English, and very laborious I find it.

To-day, we are on our way from Cologne to Dresden; sixteen hours and a half at a stretch. This of itself is enough to throw the equablest mind off its balance.

We have a _coupe_ to ourselves. This is quite opposed to my wishes, nor is it Sir Roger's doing, but Schmidt, the courier, knowing what is seemly on those occasions--what he has always done for all former freshly-wed couples whom he has escorted--secured it before we could prevent him. As for me, it would have amused me to see the people come in and out, to air my timid German in little remarks about the weather; albeit I have thus early discovered that the German, which we have been exhorted to talk among ourselves in the school-room, to perfect us in that tongue, bears no very p.r.o.nounced likeness to the language as talked by the indigenous inhabitants. They _will_ talk so fast, and they never say any thing in the least like Ollendorff.

_Sixteen hours and a half_ of a _tete-a-tete_ more complete and unbroken than any we have yet enjoyed. All day I watch the endless, treeless, hedgeless German flats fly past; the straight-lopped poplars, the spread of tall green wheat, the blaze of rape-fields--the villages and towns, with two-towered German churches, over and over, and over again. Oh, for a hill, were it no bigger than a molehill! Oh, for a broad-armed English oak!

At Minden we stop to lunch. The whole train pushes and jostles into the refreshment-room, and, in ten galloping minutes, we devour three filthy _plats_; a nauseous potage, a terrible dish of sickly veal, and a ragged Braten. Then a rush and tumble off again.

The day rolls past, dustily, samely, wearily. There have been flying thunder-storms--lightning-flashes past the windows. I hide my face in my dusty gloves to avoid seeing the quick red forks, and leave a smear on each grimy cheek. Every moment, I am a rape-field--a corn-field, a bean-field, farther from Barbara, farther from the Brat, farther from the jackdaw.

"This is rather a long day for you, child!" says Sir Roger, kindly, perceiving, I suppose, the joviality of the expression with which I am eying the German landscape. "The most tedious railway-journey you ever took, I suppose?"

"Yes," reply I, "far! It seems like three Sundays rolled into one, does not it? What time is it now?"

He takes out his watch and looks.

"Twenty past five."

"_Seven_ hours more!" say I, with a burst of desperateness.

"I am so sorry for you, Nancy! what can one do for you?" says my husband, looking thoroughly discomfited, concerned, and helpless. "Would you care to have a book?"

"I cannot read in a train," reply I, dolorously, "it makes me _sick_!"