University of Virginia Library

8. 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.

“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.