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Updated: June 9, 2025
All Bess's bridesmaids and groomsmen were dining with her to rehearse her wedding and to have a sort of farewell bat with Matthew and me. "What about your and Ann's wedding to Matthew, Miss Polly?" I heard Cale Johnson ask Polly as she and Matthew were untangling a bolt of wide, white-satin ribbon that I had tangled. "All the show to be of rustics?"
The ceremony was performed at her father's house on Georgetown Heights, and was a regular May and December affair throughout. There were eight groomsmen, six of whom were well advanced in life, and as many bridesmaids, all of them young girls from fourteen to sixteen years of age, wearing long dresses of white satin damask, donated by the bridegroom.
The "bridal pair" stand together, of course, to receive, and as many of the original party of the groomsmen and bridesmaids as can be got together should be induced to form a part of the group. There can be no objection to the sending of flowers, and particular friends who wish can, of course, send other gifts, but there should be no obligation.
The bridesmaids took the six chairs on the right of the altar, facing the audience and before the mass of greenery, which made an effective background for so much youth, beauty, and elegance; and the groomsmen took the corresponding chairs on the left.
It was a brilliant, unreal scene; with military bands clashing triumphant music, elegant vehicles, high-stepping horses, and lovely women richly appareled. Wedding cards have been pouring in till the contagion has reached us; Edith will be married next Thursday. The wedding dress is being fashioned, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen have arrived.
During the epizoötic epidemic we had at our stables innumerable calls from doctors and judges and clergymen. Everybody asked about our health. Groomsmen bathed our throats, and sat up with us nights, and furnished us pocket-handkerchiefs. For the first time in years we had quiet Sundays.
There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait for or marshal; none but Mr. Rochester and I. I wonder what other bridegroom looked as he did so bent up to a purpose, so resolutely grim. Our place was taken at the communion rails. All was still; two shadows only moved in a remote corner of the church.
Everard, meanwhile, had been undergoing a terrible ordeal down stairs, and was truly glad when Isabel made her appearance. She was met now with a worse storm of grief than any previously encountered; as for Amy, she flew into the carriage after her. So they drove off, amid thundering cheers from the young groomsmen.
'Tis approaching midnight and the "owl train" leaves within the hour; and they hang about the stairways waiting for her reappearance, and hover in mysterious fascination about Captain Ray as he comes in his travelling suit of mufti, and wonder why he should discard his uniform and sword, and the carriage is now at the door, and great store of rice and old slippers are got in readiness, and presently down the broad stairway she comes, metamorphosed as to raiment, but radiant, winsome as ever; and they seize upon her and bear her off bodily into the great parlor, and throng about her and pull her this way, that way, every way, and kiss and maul and squeeze and rumple, and never seem to exhaust her infinite patience or their own extravagant capacity; but at last they begin to surge towards the door-way, and the bridesmaids hover in circle for the closing ceremony, and she tosses her bouquet to the ceiling amid shouts and scurry, and, marvel of marvels! it is captured by her of the rosy cheeks and dancing eyes who has already secured the ring and fascinated the artilleryman, and they reach the door, and Ray has squeezed out to the steps, and some of the emotional cousins have retreated sobbing to deserted nooks and corners about the house, and at last she comes forth and springs lightly down the stairs, and the rice rattles after her along the broad walk, and the groomsmen line the gate-way and usher her into the carriage, and stand there ready to volley them with old slippers, and Ray is just about springing in beside her, when down comes Blake with his seven-league strides, bearing a sobbing little sunny-haired maiden of seven in his arms.
Jim was dressed in a new pepper-and-salt suit, his Christmas present from his master, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen all looked very fine. Mamma arranged the bridal party in the back parlor, and the folding-doors were thrown open. Both rooms and the large hall were full of negroes.
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