CHAPTER XXIII.
To-morrow morning, the church of St. Asphodel—Bessy, from her window in Primrose Place, could see its spire tapering above the distant trees—would hold within its walls a happy couple. To-morrow, Basil and Bessy were to be writ in the church-books one. It would be a magnificent wedding; hopes and affections would so adorn and elevate the ceremony. But, when the time arrives, we will endeavour as faithfully as we may, to chronicle the doings of the hour. As the day before a wedding will to some parties seem the longest day that ever dawned and died, so to others it will appear the shortest day imaginable; a day that just shows itself and is gone. However Basil and Bessy may have measured the day of which we write, thinking it a day without an end, sure we are that Mrs. Carraways more and more believed it impossible that the wedding could take place on the morrow, so much had still to be completed.
“How ever I shall get through what I have to do, I can’t tell,” said the good woman to her incredulous husband. “I only hope, we shan’t have to put it off.” Carraways laughed. “Yes, my dear, it’s all very well. You men think that things can do themselves; but Bessy can’t go if her luggage isn’t packed.”
“Why not? I suppose she doesn’t want to take her trunk to church,” said the aggravating Carraways, and again he laughed with such a want of consideration! And here, Miss Barnes came full of meaning into the room; and suddenly paused, seeing Carraways. It was of no use; Mrs. Carraways would at once assert her authority. Therefore she set herself face to face with her husband.
“Now, my dear Gilbert; you must go out; you must indeed. And, there’s a dear, don’t let me see you again until the evening.” Miss Barnes, of course, said nothing: but her looks eloquently and stedfastly seconded the wishes of the matron.
“What! I’m in the way? Well, Bessy and I are going upon a little business.”
“Bessy,” cried her mother, rather astonished; and then she complacently added—“to be sure; why not? We can do everything better without her, can’t we, Miss Barnes? And poor thing, she’s as pale,—for she hasn’t been out these three days. So, you’d better go; both of you.”
In a very short time, considering that Bessy had only to put on her bonnet, the bride and her father had left the house; surrendered the field to Mrs. Carraways and Miss Barnes made happy by their employment. And leaving them deep in trunks, let us accompany father and daughter.
Bessy had resolved upon carrying with her to her new country, a very swarm of illustrious strangers: constant, untiring labourers that should fill the air with sweetest music—music that should murmur of her English home—still winning from the fields the most delicious gains. It appeared that this orderof labourers—wonderful workers, at once singers, chemists and masons,—we mean, in a word, the honey-bee—had not yet travelled to the Antipodes.[1]Honey-bee had yet to cross the ocean to a new world. Though his great progenitors—the Adam and Eve bees—had sung and worked in the roses of Eden—none of their million million descendants, to the time of a certain lady—and let the name of the benefactress shine like a star in future Antipodean history—had touched upon the other side of the Pacific. The flowers and blossoms of ages had budded and fallen, and not a bee had drunk of their honey-cups.—This, become known to Bessy, she determined to carry with her a swarm of colonists to her new home: to people the waste with millions of workers; the toiling, happy bond-folk—(pity there should be any other!)—of imperial man.
And the bees were of the old Jogtrot stock. Of the family that had worked in the gardens and orchards of Marigolds; descendants in right regal descent of the same line that had sung and worked about Bessy’s childhood; that had awakened her infant thought, had engaged her youthful care. We believe that Robert Topps had been Bessy’s silent agent in the work; and with consummate skill and secresy had conveyed away a hive of the old household from their native village, taking them to nurse at a certain gardener’s, some three or four miles distant from Primrose Place. And thither, to learn how fared the little ones, wended Bessy and her father. The old man, though doubtful of the prosperity of the scheme, nevertheless entered into it with all the cordiality of his nature. “There’s always a sure comfort about attempting good; delight if you succeed, and consolation if you fail.” With this creed, Carraways listened with pleasure to the plan of Bessy who had kept the scheme a secret from her mother and Basil.
“Won’t they be surprised, when they see them aboard the ship,” cried Bessy, glowing with pleasure. (And by the way, in the course of the two past paragraphs, Bessy and her father have reached the gardener’s, and are now in front of the very hive; close to the swarm of insect colonists, the pilgrim bees, the emigrant honey-makers.) “Won’t they be surprised!” repeated Bessy.
“Well, I doubt,” said Carraways, smiling down upon the hive, “I doubt, if Queen Dido—yes, I think it was Dido—carried with her more useful colonists; and I take it, say what they will, few so innocent.” Bessy looked inquiringly.—“I don’t think you know much of Queen Dido, my dear; and to say the truth, my school knowledge with the lady was at the best a nodding acquaintance. But, if you can only preserve them!” and the old gentleman folded his hands thoughtfully.
“Oh, I have no fear of that. I am certain, dear father—I feel so sure of it—they will arrive with us all safe and well. And then”—
“And then, my love,”—said the old man—“you will not have lived in vain. No, my child, you will have done your share in the great human work—have obeyed the behest that lays it as a solemn task on all to share with all the good that, for some wise end, was only meted to a few. Only land the bees safe; let the swarm be but well upon the wing; let them once set to work, making honey—the new manna in the wilderness—where honey was never made before,—why do this, Bessy, and you are greater than any of the men Queens, that ever lived—greater than any of the topping masculine ladies out of place in petticoats. Catherine and Christina and such folks—humph! very great no doubt,—but their memory is not exactly kept in honey. And Queen Elizabeth—yes, an extraordinary virgin—but what a small stinging insect in a stomacher—how useless to the world is Queen Elizabeth against Queen Bee!”
“I am sure they will live,” repeated Bessy; “and ’twill besuch nice employment, during the voyage, to take care of them. And then, in a little time when they swarm and swarm”—
“Why, then, my dear—yes, I see it all”—and the old man, with a thoughtful smile, and as though dallying with a fancy, continued—“I see it all, and can prophesy. In some hundred years or so, when men think it the true glory to build up, not to destroy; when work, not slaughter, is the noble thing; when, in a word, the eagles of war shall be scouted as carrion fowl, and the bees of the garden shall be the honoured type of human wisdom,—why, then, Bessy—then, my child—that is some hundred years to come—in the city that will then flourish, I predict that the people will raise a statue to the memory of the woman, who gave to the Antipodes the household glory of the honey bee.”
“Oh, father!” cried Bessy.
“If the bees prosper, why you and Basil shall in the new country take a bee for your crest; by the way, not at all bad emigrant heraldry,” laughed the old man. “Let me see; a beeoron a thistle proper. And the motto, ‘Honey from suffering!’ A good Christian legend,” said Carraways. “And then, in a hundred years, as I predict, a statue”—
“A statue!” and Bessy laughed.
“Well,” said the father with a gentle seriousness, “I’m getting old, Bessy. But I feel ’tis good—very good—to gain hope for the world, even as we gain years. It makes the sweeter sunset for our human day.”
And now anticipating awhile, we have only to say that at the proper season the hive was tenderly conveyed on board theHalcyon, there to await the cares of its coming mistress.
Looking in—as we are permitted to do—at the chamber-window of Basil, we find him assorting friends and companions for his future home. Though a wild sportive lad—bouncing through the early chapters of this veracious history,—he was so deeply touched by his love of Bessy; so suddenly pulled upto a serious contemplation of the world, by the strange events of his family,—that, after a brief pause, he sprang, as at a bound, to a nobler, higher view of human dealings. Hence, he had soon gathered some glorious books. A blessed companion is a book! A book that, fitly chosen, is a life-long friend. A book—the unfailing Damon to his loving Pythias. A book that—at a touch—pours its heart into our own.
And some of these friends, with looks that may not alter, with tones that cannot change,—Basil set apart for his companions in the wilds. As he chose them one by one—for some must remain behind, he might not take them all—he looked gravely down upon them; with almost a tenderness of touch laid them aside,—his fellow-voyagers. Some twoscore were selected; special friends. There they lay; motionless and dumb. And yet the chamber was filled with lovely presences; was sounding with spiritual voices: the beautiful and mighty populace, evoked by the memory of the living friend—the friend in the flesh, the companion and the scholar of the souls of the dead.
And this was Basil’s last employment, the day before his bridal. He marshalled a magnificent array of friends to bear him company in the wilderness. He carried with him an invisible host of bright spirits; spirits of every kind and degree; and all friends—sound friends;—of friendship made in solitude; and without patch or lacker, lasting to the grave.
Five minutes, reader; and your company to the once decent lodging—now turned topsy-turvy—of Mr. and Mrs. Topps. They, too, are in the very fury of packing-up. Or rather, Mrs. Topps and two or three friends. For Robert and his father-in-law—Goodman White, late and future schoolmaster—remain passively in the way; both of them discussing the apparent merits of some score of young rooks; that Bob, on his own account, and as a special offering to his old master Carraways, had with some difficulty and danger, kidnapped from the high-top elmsthat surround Jogtrot Hall. Bob, in his snatch of reading, had learned that rooks were at the Antipodes precious as birds of paradise. He had therefore obtained some twenty nestlings, “very sarcy upon their legs, indeed.” They would be worth their weight in gold, he declared to his father-in-law, to pick up the worms and the grubs.
“It’s a capital thing for a bird or a brute,” said Bob, “to be born to be of some use. Eh?” The schoolmaster assented. “Now, I shouldn’t have liked to be born a magpie—or a weasel; it’s like being born a thief”—
“I doubt, aye, I more than doubt whether anybody’s born a thief,” said White.
“I’m not a scholar,—that is, compared to you; I can’t say. But a rook is a serviceable cretur; he earns his living; and nobody can’t grudge it him. Theyareprecious hearty, arn’t they,” and Bob, with an eye of pride surveyed the nestlings. “There’s only one thing that I’m sorry about: but it’s impossible—and this it is; I am only sorry we couldn’t take the trees from the Hall, too.”
“Ha! We shall find trees enough, there,” said White, intent upon the birds. “Well, theyarestrong!”
“No fear of they’re making capital sailors. And they’ll be quite company, won’t they, to feed ’em, and watch their ways? And what’s more, when we get reg’larly settled, why their noise will always remind us of England. How they will caw and caw, eh! Rather have ’em with us”—and Bob slapt his leg to emphasise the preference,—“rather have ’em than a band of music.”
And the sun set and rose and shone out the bridal morning. As the good folks of Primrose Place had determined that the ceremony should be performed with the best quiet and simplicity, we are left but little to do as chroniclers of the marriage. We may merely observe that Bessy flushed into a positive beauty; and her mother, as Carraways said, had somehow flung cleanaway twelve or fourteen years from her face, determined on that occasion only to look the bride’s elder sister. Miss Barnes, the bridesmaid—for Carraways would have none other—was, despite of herself, sad. The event seemed to bring into her face, a past history. Of Basil we have nothing to say; the bridegroom is so rarely interesting.
Topps claimed the privilege of driving the bride to church. (The slim Mrs. Topps, with riband and bows, had burst out in white like a cherry-tree in brilliant blossom). Topps, however, to the passing—very passing disquiet—of Carraways, who wished everything to be so simple, drove to the door with a white favour in his hat, as big as a ventilator; a favour in his coat; and four favours to match on the heads of the horses.
“A stupid fellow!” said Carraways.
“Well, after all, my dear,” said his wife, “I don’t know if Robert isn’t right. There’s no harm in a bit of riband; and why should we steal to church as if we were ashamed of what we’re doing? What do you think, Miss Barnes?”
“It’s quite right,” said Carraways; for he well knew what Miss Barnes would think. “Drive on, Robert.”
In a short time the bridal party reached St. Asphodel’s church. A short time and Basil and Bessy stand hand in hand at the altar. The minutes pass; and the lovers’ destinies—as before their hearts—grow into one. The priest is silent; and “amen” like consecrating balm, hallows the mystery.
And then father and mother, and humble friends, gather close to the wedded; press them and bless them. And the spirits that await on human trustfulness, and human hope, when plighted to each other to make the best and lightest of the world’s journey, be it through a garden or over a desert; arrayed with roses, or strown with flint—the spirits that sanctify and strengthen simple faith and all unworldly love,—hover about bride and bridegroom, and as they take their way from the church, bless them on their pilgrimage.
Another hour, and Robert Topps is again in attendance atPrimrose Place. Trunks are brought to the door, and packed on the carriage; and in a few minutes Basil hands his wife to her seat. There has been a shower of tears within at the separation; though mother and daughter are to meet again in so short a time. For be it known that Basil and his bride are westward bound, to pass the first three or four days of the honeymoon on the coast; to be duly taken thence by the good shipHalcyoncalling there on the voyage out.
It may have been at the very minute that Basil and his bride quitted Primrose Place, that a letter was delivered at Jericho House. The letter was for Miss Pennibacker, written in the pangs of disappointment, in the agony of a broken heart, by the Hon. Cesar Candituft. We sum up the meaning of the epistle, gladly avoiding the fulness of its contents—gladly, too, avoiding any attempted description of the profound astonishment, disgust, and horror, of poor Monica. It may be remembered that the lover, baulked of the dowry by the loathsome avarice of Mr. Jericho, was fain to trust to the successful issue of some vague law-suit for the means of married life in its required magnificence. Well, the uncertainty of the law, is a grim joke that generations of men have suffered and bled under. And—to be brief—Candituft after his late visit to Jericho House, discovered that, with the best of causes he had the worst of luck, and so—and so—with a bleeding heart he released from all her vows the betrayed Monica. He was about to leave London, to seek consolation in the society of his brother-in-law and his sweet sister.
“The villain!” cried Monica, “and after I had been brought to promise him my hand! To leave me, and perhaps for another.”
“The cruel creature!” little Agatha spoke of Hodmadod—“after I had cured his hand, to go before my face, and give it to that—that little scorpion!”
FOOTNOTES:[1]The earliest attempt to introduce bees from England was made by Mrs. Wills, in May 1842; but this first colony died on the passage. Shortly afterwards, a healthy hive sent by Mrs. Allom, of London, arrived safely, and was established at Nelson.—Handbook for New Zealand.
[1]The earliest attempt to introduce bees from England was made by Mrs. Wills, in May 1842; but this first colony died on the passage. Shortly afterwards, a healthy hive sent by Mrs. Allom, of London, arrived safely, and was established at Nelson.—Handbook for New Zealand.
[1]The earliest attempt to introduce bees from England was made by Mrs. Wills, in May 1842; but this first colony died on the passage. Shortly afterwards, a healthy hive sent by Mrs. Allom, of London, arrived safely, and was established at Nelson.—Handbook for New Zealand.