Chapter Five
I can give you my advice gratis, in the formula of an old Scotch song—
‘'Tis good to be merry and wise, 'Tis good to be honest and true,
'Tis good to be off with the old love, Before you are on with the new.’
“Well, I enjoyed having a brother,” said Austin Ellsworth, “for as long as Providence granted one to me.”
“Oh, do shut your trap,” Benjamin urged crossly, tossing a few more books in his box alongside the writing paraphernalia.
“The question is who will murder you first,” his younger brother continued from where he lay on the bed regarding the ceiling, arms crossed behind his reddish-blond head.
“Will it be my mother, when she hears the news? Or my father, because you made Maman cry? (For she will shed gallons of tears not to be invited to the wedding, nor to be asked for her approval beforehand.) Or will you be long dead by that point, ambushed by all the needy Bachelors of Arts who covet our fellowships? Their hopes must have soared to learn you were going to be married, only to find you have talked Gauntlett into granting you a year’s grace before you relinquish your post.”
“It wasn’t I who did that,” sighed Benjamin. “It was the baron, Lord Dere.”
“Even worse!” cried Austin, sitting up. “Not only do you get to keep your fellowship, in flagrant inconsistency with the rules, but you do so because you, in your good fortune, now have a baron taking your part! The very one who should have murdered you, since you say the young lady’s father is too dead to do it and the brother too young.
Instead of slicing you to ribbons, this Lord Dere arranges things with the bishop and, through his secret, baronial ways, helps you find better lodgings than you thought you could afford on your income.
” Austin’s wide, humorous mouth pursed in a low whistle.
“Until you are a dead man, Ben, you are a made one.”
“Lord Dere didn’t do any of those things for my sake, you blockhead. He did them for Miss Barstow and her family.”
“Tell me the truth, then,” his brother adjured him.
“Is something wretchedly wrong with her, that they didn’t shoot you on the spot, to find you in her bed?
Why are they so eager to make the best of this?
Is she ugly? Lumpish? Dowdy? Ill-spoken?
Old? Any and all of these? If she is to be my sister I promise I will love her in spite of all, but if she truly be a monster, you had better run for it and devil take the consequences. ”
“She is no monster,” Benjamin returned with a grimace.
But the lukewarmness of his denial vexed him more than Austin’s goading.
It was churlish of him, he knew, to compare Miss Barstow to Miss Allen (whom no one but his mother yet knew about and whom he ought not, in honor, to remember anymore), but he could not help it.
And there was no denying that, in a direct comparison, Miss Allen had the advantage.
With misgivings he allowed himself to think of her again, dancing lightly beside him, honey hair curled and neatly dressed, smiling like an angel as she made conversation…
Not that Miss Allen smiled like an angel when Benjamin’s mother stumbled against her in the aisle of St. Mary Magdalen.
But would any young lady do so, when accosted by and entangled with some strange woman?
If Miss Allen had been austere, she could hardly be blamed.
And she had not known then Mrs. Ellsworth’s relation to him, nor how attached he was to her.
Miss Allen is lost to you.
Yes, utterly lost, and tomorrow was his wedding day. Tomorrow he would make vows to another in church, but before he did, he must make one to himself. A vow to give preference to brown hair in an untidy cloud and relinquish all fondness for honey hair, neatly curled.
Be fair, Benjamin corrected himself. After all, Miss Barstow’s hair had been tidy enough when he first saw her outside the Mitre Inn and again when he called in St. Lawrence. Or, at least, it had been tidy enough that he didn’t notice it being untidy, if that made sense. Still, Miss Allen—
No more of that. No more.
“She is no monster, Miss Barstow,” he said again, more firmly this time. “In fact, she seems a pleasant, cheerful, family-minded young lady. Not given to theatricalness. Others in her situation, waking up beside a stranger, might have dropped dead from shock.”
Watching him, his brother’s eyes narrowed in skepticism. “I see. No wonder you’re willing to go through with it. Charmed by her pleasant, phlegmatic disposition.”
“That’s not what I said, Austin.”
“No, you were even less enthusiastic. Listen, Ben—I swear, in your place I couldn’t do it. I’d run to the ends of the earth before I married a girl I didn’t love, whether or not her whole family came after me, and whether or not one of them was a baron.”
“Then it’s fortunate you’re not the one this happened to.
Because even if Miss Barstow is not a charmer of the first water, she nonetheless doesn’t deserve to be ruined.
” Coming to sit beside his brother on the bed, Benjamin tossed a cushion at him, chuckling.
“How selfish of you! Why do I feel like I must comfort you? You’ll see when you meet her tomorrow.
There are worse fates which might befall me. ”
“And better fates,” insisted Austin.
It wasn’t worth arguing.
“And possibly better fates,” he conceded. “But this fate is mine. So help out a brother and a lost cause and stand by me tomorrow?”
The Norman Church of St. Lawrence, built of limestone rubble with a stone-tiled roof, stood in a quiet churchyard.
Though the tower boasted six bells, they were of course not rung for this wedding, and the only witness besides members of the bride’s family and the groom’s brother was the sexton, who stood in the light rain outside to peer in the little clear window of the nave’s south wall.
Both the baron and Mrs. Barstow would have Maria outfitted with a trousseau, as became a bride, but even with all her sisters sewing away, there was only time for less ambitious undertakings: the tea-stained gown dyed a uniform fawn color; new shifts and petticoats hemmed and trimmed; a muslin shawl sparsely embroidered.
Her sister Frances raided the costumes and properties of the Abingdon theatre to produce a tiara with sparkling paste jewels, around which she twined silk flowers.
Even her younger brother Gordon contributed, setting himself and several Keele’s schoolmates to knotting yards and yards of fringe that Maria might use to ornament her curtains in her new home.
Whatever the shortcomings of her trousseau, however, Della and Jane put forth their utmost efforts to beautify her on her wedding day.
As Della whispered to her second sister, “Maria’s reputation might be in tatters, but the same will not be said of her person, if we have anything to say in the matter. ”
Jane brushed her hair a hundred times and wound it becomingly in a crown, nestling the tiara in its shining waves.
And though the bride’s dress might not be new, it was as white as Friese’s labors could make it, the ribbon laid along its gathers matching the purple-grey of the dried lavender in her bouquet.
Maria shivered. “My skin will be blue as the lavender, your church is so cold, Jane.”
“Philip and I thought of that, and we will have portable braziers,” Jane reassured her. “And until the moment Lord Dere walks you up the aisle, we will wrap you in flannel.”
“Not to mention, with Mrs. Dere refusing to attend, the church will be that much warmer,” Adela added with a twinkle.
All these factors answered, or else Maria’s own nerves brought the roses to her cheeks, for when the baron deposited her beside her groom, and Charles Ellsworth threw his first glance her way, he was startled to find as blushing and pretty a bride as any man could hope for.
Next to him, his brother Austin leaned forward a degree, determined to judge for himself just how ugly, lumpish, dowdy, or old his new sister might be, only to draw back the next instant, just managing to quash the whistle which rose to his lips.
Maria saw none of this. Her head felt light and unsteady all of a sudden, her bouquet of dried lavender and ivy chattered in her quivering grasp, and she fixed alarmed eyes on her brother-in-law Philip in his surplice, as if begging him to save her.
But he, naturally, being a very moral man, thought a speedy union the best remedy for Maria’s ills.
While everyone present had heard the marriage service read a dozen times before, it was impossible that Philip should pronounce, “It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body” without his hearers fidgeting.
The rest of the Solemnization of Matrimony was a blank to bride and groom, though they made the appropriate responses at the appropriate times.
Even when required to take hands, hers was stiff as a board and his little better.
Only one moment stuck in Maria’s memory, and not for a good reason: it was when Mr. Ellsworth produced the ring he would place upon her finger.
She had been struggling to remove her glove, fingers nerveless with cold, but when she succeeded and awkwardly thrust out her hand, he placed upon her fourth finger… an unadorned gold band.
No stone. No jewel. No anything.
She would not have cared one bit about its plainness, not one little bit, except that her mind turned instantly to the Other Ring.
How could it not? She knew of his visit to Gray’s in Sackville Street.
She knew of his mother’s ring and of his wanting to re-set the stone.
Why had she assumed he would give his mother’s ring to her, when he had intended it for another?
His trip to the jeweler’s had taken place before he staggered to his doom at the Bolt in Tun, of course. She knew that as well.
But still it hurt.