Chapter VIII.
If there was a Dieden in 1777, she has gone with the braves who lived before Agamemnon, and like them is forgotten.
If there had been a Dieden in little New York of those days, she would not have been called in to make Miss Brothertoft’s san-benito, her wedding-dress.
The resources of the Manor were sufficient. Mrs. Brothertoft could plan the robe. Mrs. Dewitt could execute it. Sally Bilsby also lent a ’prentice hand. The silk, white, stiff, and with a distinct bridal rustle, had been bought to order by Bilsby junior, on one of his traitorous trips to New York.
Lucy, leaving Voltaire in the pantry, as was described, ran up stairs and faced her wedding-dress without flinching. It is not generally a sight to blanch the cheeks of a young lady. Indeed, one may fancy that a rose finer than roses might bud in the heart, and bloom from neck to forehead, when a bride first beheld the lily-white drapery of her hour of immolation.
Lucy neither blanched nor blushed.
“Be brave! be prudent!” the warning of her unseen protector was ringing in her ears. She saw it, inscribed on a label, and hanging from the lips of her vision of his face. The brave do not blanch. The prudent do not blush. So she quietly joined the busy circle, took a needle and stabbed the wedding-dress without mercy.
It was a monstrous relief thus to kill time. She did herself, for the hour, “her quietus make with a bare bodkin,” and the other weapons of a modiste.
- “Stitch, stitch, stitch! Seam, and gusset, and band!”
“Ah!” she thought, “what a blessing is this distraction of labor! I have shed my tears. If I were to sit inactive, I might brood myself into despair. If I were to think over my wrong, I might flame out too soon. If I look at my mother, I begin to dread her again. I know she could master me still. O my God! sustain me through these last hours of my peril! I never knew how great it was until now. I foresaw a misery; but the degradation of giving myself up to this man, I never even dreamed of. I am ashamed, ashamed to recall that there have been instants when I tolerated him, — when I thought that he was not so very gross and coarse. I pray God that the sacredness of my soul is not spoilt.”
A great agony stirred in her maidenly bosom at this thought. She bent closer to her work. She knew that her mother’s eyes were upon her. She heard, without marking, the tattle of the maids.
“Fly, little needle!” she said to herself. “Measure off this pause in my life! Every stitch is a second. Sixty are a minute. Minutes make hours, and hours wear out the weary day. Evening must come. If I can but be brave and prudent, I shall see my father and his noble friend, and be safe.”
Her needle galloped at the excitement of the thought.
Mrs. Brothertoft looked at her, and said to her heart, with a sneer, — “Pretty creature! she consoles herself, it seems. Our boozy, rubicund bridegroom begins to look quite pale and interesting, seen through a bridal veil. The touch of white silk cures her scruples easily. Ah! the blushing bride will be resigned to her bliss. Bah! that I — I should dread such a pretty, silly trifler! What a fool I was to think her different from other simpering girls! So, this is the meaning of all her coy little wiles and her headaches. Headaches! she may have as many as she pleases now, in her pensive bower. Ah! I comprehend thee now, fair hypocrite. The slender fingers are impatient for the ring. Fly, little bird, to the bosom of thy spouse. Perhaps he will not quite crush thy poor, silly heart. And I have been afraid of her! She is so tickled with her wedding favors, that she will presently be kissing me again for gratitude with more fervor than ever. But I am sick of her simplicity. I am tired of her ‘Dearest mammas!’ I should strangle her, I dare say, if she were not taken off. She grows more like that Edwin Brothertoft lately.”
“Your dress is ready to try on, Miss Lucy,” said Mrs. Jierck Dewitt.
So there was a mighty rustle, and a headless, armless torso of stiff white silk rose up and stood on its skirt. It did Dewitt great credit. Ah! if her character had only been equal to her skill! But she was a brazen hussy, and Sally, her sister, no better. Tel maître, tel valet. One positively bad woman spoils many negatively bad ones. It would not seem at all unfair if Destiny took advantage of the harm done Jierck Dewitt’s wife in punishing the lady of the Manor through her means.
Lucy still faced her wedding-dress without flinching. She may even have thought that, if the worst came, it was better to go to the guillotine in becoming array. It is perhaps woman to say, “My heart is broken; but my bodice fits without a fold.”
It is woman, no doubt, but there are women and Women. Lucy could safely admire the robe, and tranquilly criticise it, because she knew that she and it were not to see marriage together.
“Now shall I unlace you, Miss Lucy?” says the abigail.
Yes, abigail; as soon as these masculine eyes, whose business is with the young lady’s soul, not with her toilette, can take themselves decorously out of the room.