When the thirty-first of March arrived, Exeter had not as yet been made gay with the marriage festivities of Mr Gibson and Camilla French. And this delay had not been the fault of Camilla. Camilla had been ready, and when, about the middle of the month, it was hinted to her that some postponement was necessary, she spoke her mind out plainly, and declared that she was not going to stand that kind of thing. The communication had not been made to her by Mr Gibson in person. For some days previously he had not been seen at Heavitree, and Camilla had from day to day become more black, gloomy, and harsh in her manners both to her mother and her sister. Little notes had come and little notes had gone, but no one in the house, except Camilla herself, knew what those notes contained. She would not condescend to complain to Arabella; nor did she say much in condemnation of her lover to Mrs French, till the blow came. With unremitting attention she pursued the great business of her wedding garments, and exacted from the unfortunate Arabella an amount of work equal to her own, of thankless work, as is the custom of embryo brides with their unmarried sisters. And she drew with great audacity on the somewhat slender means of the family for the amount of feminine gear necessary to enable her to go into Mr Gibson’s house with something of the eclat of a well-provided bride. When Mrs French hesitated, and then expostulated, Camilla replied that she did not expect to be married above once, and that in no cheaper or more productive way than this could her mother allow her to consume her share of the family resources. ‘What matter, mamma, if you do have to borrow a little money? Mr Burgess will let you have it when he knows why. And as I shan’t be eating and drinking at home any more, nor yet getting my things here, I have a right to expect it.’ And she ended by expressing an opinion, in Arabella’s hearing, that any daughter of a house who proves herself to be capable of getting a husband for herself, is entitled to expect that those left at home shall pinch themselves for a time, in order that she may go forth to the world in a respectable way, and be a credit to the family.
Then came the blow. Mr Gibson had not been at the house for some days, but the notes had been going and coming. At last Mr Gibson came himself; but, as it happened, when he came Camilla was out shopping. In these days she often did go out shopping between eleven and one, carrying her sister with her. It must have been but a poor pleasure for Arabella, this witnessing the purchases made, seeing the pleasant draperies and handling the real linens and admiring the fine cambrics spread out before them on the shop counters by obsequious attendants. And the questions asked of her by her sister, whether this was good enough for so august an occasion, or that sufficiently handsome, must have been harassing. She could not have failed to remember that it ought all to have been done for her, that had she not been treated with monstrous injustice, with most unsisterly cruelty, all these good things would have been spread on her behoof. But she went on and endured it, and worked diligently with her needle, and folded and unfolded as she was desired, and became as it were quite a younger sister in the house, creeping out by herself now and again into the purlieus of the city, to find such consolation as she might receive from her solitary thoughts.
But Arabella and Camilla were both away when Mr Gibson called to tell Mrs French of his altered plans. And as he asked, not for his lady-love, but for Mrs French herself, it is probable that he watched his opportunity and that he knew to what cares his Camilla was then devoting herself. ‘Perhaps it is quite as well that I should find you alone,’ he said, after sundry preludes, to his future mother-inlaw, ‘because you can make Camilla understand this better than I can. I must put off the day for about three weeks.’
‘Three weeks, Mr Gibson?’
‘Or a month. Perhaps we had better say the 29th of April.’ Mr Gibson had by this time thrown off every fear that he might have entertained of the mother, and could speak to her of such an unwarrantable change of plans with tolerable equanimity.
‘But I don’t know that that will suit Camilla at all.’
‘She can name any other day she pleases, of course, that is in May.’
‘But why is this to be?’
‘There are things about money, Mrs French, which I cannot arrange sooner. And I find that unfortunately I must go up to London.’ Though many other questions were asked, nothing further was got out of Mr Gibson on that occasion; and he left the house with a perfect understanding on his own part and on that of Mrs French that the marriage was postponed till some day still to be fixed, but which could not and should not be before the 29th of April. Mrs French asked him why he did not come up and see Camilla. He replied, false man that he was, that he had hoped to have seen her this morning, and that he would come again before the week was over.
Then it was that Camilla spoke her mind out plainly. ‘I shall go to his house at once,’ she said, ‘and find out all about it. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it at all; and I won’t put up with it. He shall know who he has to deal with, if he plays tricks upon me. Mamma, I wonder you let him out of the house, till you had made him come back to his old day.’
‘What could I do, my dear?’
‘What could you do? Shake him out of it as I would have done. But he didn’t dare to tell me because he is a coward.’
Camilla in all this showed her spirit; but she allowed her anger to hurry her away into an indiscretion. Arabella was present, and Camilla should have repressed her rage.
‘I don’t think he’s at all a coward,’ said Arabella.
‘That’s my business. I suppose I’m entitled to know what he is better than you.’
‘All the same I don’t think Mr Gibson is at all a coward,’ said Arabella, again pleading the cause of the man who had misused her.
‘Now, Arabella, I won’t take any interference from you; mind that. I say it was cowardly, and he should have come to me. It’s my concern, and I shall go to him. I’m not going to be stopped by any shilly-shally nonsense, when my future respectability, perhaps, is at stake. All Exeter knows that the marriage is to take place on the 31st of this month.’
On the next day Camilla absolutely did go to Mr Gibson’s house at an early hour, at nine, when, as she thought, he would surely be at breakfast. But he had flown. He had left Exeter that morning by an early train, and his servant thought that he had gone to London. On the next morning Camilla got a note from him, written in London. It affected to be very cheery and affectionate, beginning ‘Dearest Cammy,’ and alluding to the postponement of his wedding as though it were a thing so fixed as to require no further question. Camilla answered this letter, still in much wrath, complaining, protesting, expostulating throwing in his teeth the fact that the day had been fixed by him, and not by her. And she added a postscript in the following momentous words ‘If you have any respect for the name of your future wife, you will fall back upon your first arrangement.’ To this she got simply a line of an answer, declaring that this falling back was impossible, and then nothing was heard of him for ten days.
He had gone from Tuesday to Saturday week, and the first that Camilla saw of him was his presence in the reading desk when he chaunted the cathedral service as priest-vicar on the Sunday.
At this time Arabella was very ill, and was confined to her bed. Mr Martin declared that her system had become low from over anxiety, that she was nervous, weak, and liable to hysterics, that her feelings were in fact too many for her, and that her efforts to overcome them, and to face the realities of the world, had exhausted her. This was, of course, not said openly, at the town-cross of Exeter; but such was the opinion which Mr Martin gave in confidence to the mother. ‘Fiddle-de-dee!’ said Camilla, when she was told of feelings, susceptibilities, and hysterics. At the present moment she had a claim to the undivided interest of the family, and she believed that her sister’s illness was feigned in order to defraud her of her rights. ‘My dear, she is ill,’ said Mrs French. ‘Then let her have a dose of salts,’ said the stern Camilla. This was on the Sunday afternoon. Camilla had endeavoured to see Mr Gibson as he came out of the cathedral, but had failed. Mr Gibson had been detained within the building no doubt by duties connected with the choral services. On that evening he got a note from Camilla, and quite early on the Monday morning he came up to Heavitree.
‘You will find her in the drawing-room,’ said Mrs French, as she opened the hall-door for him. There was a smile on her face as she spoke, but it was a forced smile. Mr Gibson did not smile at all.
‘Is it all right with her?’ he asked.
‘Well you had better go to her. You see, Mr Gibson, young ladies, when they are going to be married, think that they ought to have their own way a little, just for the last time, you know.’ He took no notice of the joke, but went with slow steps up to the drawing-room. It would be inquiring too curiously to ask whether Camilla, when she embraced him, discerned that he had fortified his courage that morning with a glass of curacoa.
‘What does all this mean, Thomas?’ was the first question that Camilla asked when the embrace was over.
‘All what mean, dear?’
‘This untoward delay? Thomas, you have almost broken my heart. You have been away, and I have not heard from you.’
‘I wrote twice, Camilla.’
‘And what sort of letters? If there is anything the matter, Thomas, you had better tell me at once.’ She paused, but Thomas held his tongue. ‘I don’t suppose you want to kill me.’
‘God forbid,’ said Thomas.
‘But you will. What must everybody think of me in the city when they find that it is put off. Poor mamma has been dreadful, quite dreadful! And here is Arabella now laid up on a bed of sickness.’ This, too, was indiscreet. Camilla should have said nothing about her sister’s sickness.
‘I have been so sorry to hear about dear Bella,’ said Mr Gibson.
‘I don’t suppose she’s very bad,’ said Camilla, ‘but of course we all feel it. Of course we’re upset. As for me, I bear up; because I’ve that spirit that I won’t give way if it’s ever so; but, upon my word, it tries me hard. What is the meaning of it, Thomas?’
But Thomas had nothing to say beyond what he had said before to Mrs French. He was very particular, he said, about money; and certain money matters made it incumbent on him not to marry before the 29th of April. When Camilla suggested to him that as she was to be his wife, she ought to know all about his money matters, he told her that she should some day. When they were married, he would tell her all. Camilla talked a great deal, and said some things that were very severe. Mr Gibson did not enjoy his morning, but he endu............