There was no sunshine upon Laura Dunbar’s wedding morning. The wintry sky was low and dark, as if the heavens had been coming gradually down to crush this wicked earth. The damp fog, the slow, drizzling rain shut out the fair landscape upon which the banker’s daughter had been wont to look from the pleasant cushioned seat in the deep bay-window of her dressing-room.
The broad lawn was soddened by that perpetual rain. The incessant rain-drops dripped from the low branches of the black spreading cedars of Lebanon; the smooth beads of water ran off the shining laurel-leaves; the rhododendrons, the feathery furze, the glistening arbutus — everything was obscured by that cruel rain.
The water gushed out of the quaint dragons’ mouths, ranged along the parapet of the Abbey roof; it dripped from every stone coping and abutment; from window-ledge and porch, from gable-end and sheltering ivy. The rain was everywhere, and the incessant pitter-patter of the drops beating against the windows of the Abbey made a dismal sound, scarcely less unpleasant to hear than the perpetual lamentation of the winds, which to-day had the sound of human voices; now moaning drearily, with a long, low, wailing murmur, now shrieking in the shrilly tones of an angry vixen.
Laura Dunbar gave a long discontented sigh as she seated herself at her favourite bay-window, and looked out at the dripping trees upon the lawn below.
She was a petted heiress, remember, and the world had gone so smoothly with her hitherto, that perhaps she scarcely endured calamity or contradiction with so good a grace as she might have done had she been a little nearer perfection. She was hardly better than a child as yet, with all a child’s ignorant hopefulness and blind trust in the unknown future. She was a pampered child, and she expected to have life made very smooth for her.
“What a horribly dismal morning!” Miss Dunbar exclaimed. “Did you ever see anything like it, Elizabeth?”
Mrs. Madden was bustling about, arranging her young mistress’s breakfast upon a little table near the blazing fire. Laura had just emerged from her bath room, and had put on a loose dressing-gown of wadded blue silk, prior to the grand ceremonial of the wedding toilet, which was not to take place until after breakfast.
I think Miss Dunbar looked lovelier in this déshabille than many a bride in her lace and orange-blossoms. The girl’s long golden hair, wet from the bath, hung in rippling confusion about her fresh young face. Two little feet, carelessly thrust into blue morocco slippers, peeped out from amongst the folds of Miss Dunbar’s dressing-gown, and one coquettish scarlet heel tapped impatiently upon the floor as the young lady watched that provoking rain.
“What a wretched morning!” she said.
“Well, Miss Laura, it is rather wet,” replied Mrs. Madden, in a conciliating tone.
“Rather wet!” echoed Laura, with an air of vexation; “I should think it was rather wet, indeed. It’s miserably wet; it’s horribly wet. To think that the frost should have lasted very nearly three weeks, and then must needs break up on my wedding morning. Did ever anybody know anything so provoking?”
“Lor’, Miss Laura,” rejoined the sympathetic Madden, “there’s all manner of provoking things allus happenin’ in this blessed, wicked, rampagious world of ours; only such young ladies as you don’t often come across ’em. Talk of being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, Miss Laura; I do think as you must have come into this mortal spear with a whole service of gold plate. And don’t you fret your precious heart, my blessed Miss Laura, if the rain is contrairy. I dare say the clerk of the weather is one of them rampagin’ radicals that’s allus a goin’ on about the bloated aristocracy, and he’s done it a purpose to aggeravate you. But what’s a little rain more or less to you, Miss Laura, when you’ve got more carriages to ride in than if you was a princess in a fairy tale, which I think the Princess Baltroubadore, or whatever her hard name was, in the story of Aladdin, must have had no carriage whatever, or she wouldn’t have gone walkin’ to the baths. Never you mind the rain, Miss Laura.”
“But it’s a bad omen, isn’t it, Elizabeth?” asked Laura Dunbar. “I seem to remember some old rhyme about the bride that the sun shines on, and the bride that the rain rains on.”
“Laws, Miss Laura, you don’t mean to say as you’d bemean yourself by taking any heed of such low rubbish as that?” exclaimed Mrs. Madden; “why, such stupid rhymes as them are only made for vulgar people that have the banns put up in the parish church. A deal it matters to such as you, Miss Laura, if all the cats and dogs as ever was come down out of the heavens this blessed day.”
But though honest-hearted Elizabeth Madden did her best to comfort her young mistress after her own simple fashion, she was not herself altogether satisfied.
The low, brooding sky, the dark and murky atmosphere, and that monotonous rain would have gone far to depress the spirits of the gayest reveller in all the universe.
In spite of ourselves, we are the slaves of atmospheric influences; and we cannot feel very light-hearted or happy upon black wintry days, when the lowering heavens seem to frown upon our hopes; when, in the darkening of the earthly prospect, we fancy that we see a shadowy curtain closing round an unknown future.
Laura felt something of this; for she said, by-and-by, half impatiently, half mournfully —
“What is the matter with me, Elizabeth. Has all the world changed since yesterday? When I drove home with papa, after the races yesterday, everything upon earth seemed so bright and beautiful. Such an overpowering sense of joy was in my heart, that I could scarcely believe it was winter, and that it was only the fading November sunshine that lit up the sky. All my future life seemed spread before me, like an endless series of beautiful pictures — pictures in which I could see Philip and myself, always together, always happy. To-day, to-day, oh! how different everything is!” exclaimed Laura, with a little shudder. “The sky that shuts in the lawn yonder seems to shut in my life wi............