A Marriage in High Life, Volume I — Background and Themes

A mon avis, l’Hymen et ses liens Sont les plus grands, ou des maux, ou des biens; Point de milieu; l’état du mariage Est des humains le plus cher avantage. Quand le rapport des esprits, des cœurs Des sentimens, des gouts, et des humeurs, Serre ces liens tissus par la nature Que l’amour forme, et que l’honneur épure. L’ENFANT PRODIGUE.

TOWARDS the end of a London spring, that is to say, about the middle of August, was married by special license, at her father’s house in Harley Street, Emmeline Benson to Ernest, Lord Fitzhenry, only son of the Earl of Arlingford.

The ceremony was like most others of its kind; the drawing-room was crowded with relations and friends on both sides, dressed in congratulatory smiles, and new bridal finery.

Emmeline’s father, an opulent city merchant and banker, appeared arrayed in a complete new suit for the occasion. The first gloss was not off his coat, which hung stiff upon him, as if not yet reconciled to the homely person to which it was destined to belong, while each separate bright button reflected the collected company. His countenance glowing with happiness, he busied himself in attentions to his guests, provoking, by his remarks, those congratulations which flattered his pride and parental fondness; and, with bustling joy, making the necessary preliminary arrangements for the ceremony about to take place, which was to raise his only and beloved child to that elevated situation in life, in which it had ever been the first wish of his heart to see her placed, and which his partial affection thought her so well fitted to grace.

Mrs. Benson’s feelings seemed of a less joyous nature, and sometimes, even a tear started into her eye, in spite of herself, when she endeavoured to smile in return to the kind wishes of her friends. She was too fond a mother not to feel painfully the loss of her daughter; and that feeling was not unmixed with anxiety, in giving her to one of whom (of late years at least) she personally knew but little.

All were now assembled excepting the bride and bridegroom. The father of the latter, apparently as much delighted as Mr. Benson himself with the intended union, being of course among the company. But Lord Fitzhenry did not appear! Various conjectures were formed as to his absence. One person declared he had observed his carriage at the door of his lodgings as he had passed; another, that he was certain he had seen him in a distant part of the town not long before. The delay was beginning to be awkward, and at every distant sound of wheels, both fathers looked anxiously along the street, but in vain.

Gradually the conversation of the guests lowered itself into whispers, as some new surmise was started with regard to the possible cause of this strange absence of the most important personage at so important a moment. But even these whispers died away from lack of new ideas on the subject, and the now total silence was only occasionally broken by the rustling of the clergyman’s surplice, when he left his post before the large family prayer-book (laid open ready at the marriage ceremony) with the benevolent wish, by some commonplace observation, to dissipate the unpleasant feelings which seemed to infect all present; or when he followed Mr. Benson to the window, whither he had taken up his station of observation in the hopes of being the first to give the much wished-for news of the approaching bridegroom. Poor Mrs. Benson’s cheeks became momentarily of a deeper and deeper dye, and she betrayed her anxious agitation by the nervous twitching of the gold chain round her neck, to which was suspended her daughter’s portrait, and the constant arranging of her lace shawl, which she regularly each time pulled off her shoulders. At last, the welcome rattle of a carriage driving furiously was heard. It stopped at Mr. Benson’s door, and in a minute Lord Fitzhenry, with a flushed cheek, hurried into the drawing-room.

Awkward as such an entrance must naturally be, still his agitation seemed even beyond what the circumstances of the moment would have been likely to produce on a young man of the world.

Lord Fitzhenry, at twenty-seven, was remarkably good-looking; and on his countenance and whole figure was that stamp of high birth, which, even where beauty does not exist, more than compensates for its absence. The general character of his countenance was that of openness and good humour; but an agitated, even a melancholy expression now clouded it, which all noticed.