Читать книгу The Honourable Jim - Baroness Orczy - Страница 9

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Five hours later Babs, standing in her magnificent wedding robes by the side of Jim, might have thought that the whole incident had been nothing but a bad dream. She had one peep at his face as she went up the aisle of the church with Squire Brent and caught sight of her bridegroom waiting by the chancel steps. His face did not look quite normal; the features were still somewhat twisted, and the swelling on his lip had not quite gone down yet; it gave him such a funny expression that she was once more seized with a well-nigh uncontrollable desire to laugh. Fortunately, however, she did succeed in controlling herself, after which the solemnity of the proceedings reduced her to a state bordering on dreamland and all thoughts of Dina, of wasps’ nests and even of Jim and Tubal faded from her ken.

Ever after, the whole of that day—her wedding day—was as a nightmare to Babs.

She hated everything: the ceremony in the church, and the long sermon and the admonitions from old Mr. Jenkins which she did not understand. Then she hated her wedding gown. It was stiff and hard and uncomfortable. She could not have run in it if her life had depended on the swiftness of her movements, and when, just before going to church, she had wanted to throw her arms round the Squire’s neck, her huge padded sleeves had got in the way and that horrid corselet impeded her movements, and nurse, who was close by, at once said something about crushing her lace collar, or knocking off some of the pearls that adorned her satin skirt.

She hated the long, interminable meal which followed the marriage service, and all the guests who crowded round her, and who either kissed her or tweaked her ear, or patted her cheek, until she became quite giddy and everything that people said sounded so much gibberish in her ear. Above all she hated those long dull speeches, and all the noise that the guests made, and the wine she was expected to drink and the words of thanks she was expected to say, but which she invariably forgot. She could not eat properly, because the chair in which she sat was too high, because the horrid corselet pinched her and the starched collar tickled her, and because her hair had been pulled, and her shoes were too tight and, oh! because she wanted to scream and could not, and because she wanted to laugh and dared not.

From time to time she stole a glance at Jim; the swelling on his lip was certainly going down and his nose appeared quite normal again. But he took no notice of her; evidently he still felt wrathful with her because of Dina. Forsooth! As if Dina getting into a wasps’ nest had been her fault! Or was he still sulky because she could not help laughing at the time that his head came bobbing out of the water, with his hair all plastered around his face?

And then that awful banquet!

To Babs it seemed that it had lasted an eternity. At one time, in the middle of a terrible long speech from my lord Bladestone, she must have been asleep. The afternoon wore on—wearisome and interminable—through the huge bay-window immediately facing her she could see that the sun was slowly sinking toward Meon Hill.

No one now took any more notice of her. The little doll had played her part, she was no longer wanted; she missed Tubal horribly. Of course he had not been asked to sit at the table with his betters, nor could he be expected to mingle with the servants; Babs felt certain that he was eating out his heart and having no dinner out there in the creeper-clad cottage, whilst she was enduring a veritable agony of boredom and fatigue and longing for a sight of his dear face.

Her own father and Squire Brent and my lord Saye and Sele had started on one of their interminable political discussions as to the merits and demerits of His Majesty the King. Squire Brent and Sir Edward Cecil, being loyal subjects, naturally argued that the King could do no wrong; he held his crown by divine right and woe be to the traitor who dared to oppose him. At which my lord Saye and Sele openly laughed.

“The King,” he argued, “being a man and holding his crown by rights conferred on him by the people, should most undoubtedly be opposed if he abused those rights and used them in order to trample on the consciences and liberties of his people.”

Whereupon the arguments became fast and furious, some of the guests siding with Lord Saye and Sele, others loudly upholding Squire Brent’s views and vociferously proclaiming their loyalty to the King.

All of which after a while greatly wearied the youthful bride. Not that she did not understand what the subject was about; child though she was, she had been reared in loyalty to the King, and above all in thinking that whatever Squire Brent said and did was right and proper and quite beyond discussion. Wide-eyed she gazed on Nathaniel and John Fiennes, my lord Saye and Sele’s two younger sons; they did not hesitate to speak before their elders, and Nathaniel, who was two years younger than Jim, went so far as to declare that that traitor John Hampden—of whom Babs had been taught to think as of a devil incarnate—was a high-minded patriot for resisting the King’s unlawful demands for ship-money.

But Jim, though he was the eldest, said nothing at all. Every time that Babs had a peep at him he looked the same; his face was rather pale and his eyes partially closed; traces of the stings had almost vanished; but his face looked drawn and something about his whole attitude seemed mutely to be reproaching her, but for what she could not say. He took no part whatever in the discussion, and indeed he shrugged his shoulders and began whistling a silly tune when his younger brother John spoke with burning indignation of the King’s tyranny and the cruelties practised upon the martyred Lilburn, and he laughed loudly—just as if it were a huge joke—when Squire Brent, frowning with displeasure, brought his powerful fist crashing down upon the table till all the bumpers and dishes rattled and then said angrily, turning to Lord Saye and Sele:

“Take care, take care, my lord, that I do not rue the day when I gave my daughter’s hand to your son. An offence against the King’s Majesty, our sovereign lord by divine right, is in my sight like unto an offence against myself.”

Surely there was naught to laugh at in such a fine protestation of loyalty, and Barbara’s glance, which rested on her youthful lord and master, became one of wrath and contempt. Whereupon Jim lazily turned his head towards her and met her aggressively supercilious glance. It seemed, however, to cause him no manner of perturbation, only amusement; a merry twinkle lit up his somnolent grey eyes and suddenly he put out his arms and babbled half incoherently:

“Kiss me, Babs!”

An indignant exclamation escaped Barbara’s lips, and, throwing all dignity, all ceremonial to the winds, she jumped down from her chair, and before any one could stop her or inquire the cause of this extraordinary behaviour on the part of the bride she fled precipitately from the room.

Mistress Leake, her nurse, who had brought her up from babyhood and was always on the watch wherever Babs might be, or whatever she might do, followed her young mistress as quickly as she could. But already Babs had given her the slip, and was running, running as fast as her cumbersome clothes would allow her, out into the garden.