A Song Twice Over by Brenda Jagger

Author:Brenda Jagger [Jagger, Brenda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Chapter Fifteen

The marriage between Rachel Colclough and her Rochdale cotton spinner was celebrated, with as much pomp and circumstance as seemed compatible with her brother Uriah’s Christian conscience, on a clear morning in September, the bridegroom looking well satisfied with his lot, the bride somewhat pale and bemused although few people paid any attention to that, being far too busy staring at her dress, the skirt stitched in overlapping layers like the petals of a flower, a water-lily with a pearl-encrusted stem rising from its centre, between two feathery, beaded waterfalls that were the sleeves.

And the whole congregation rose, it seemed, for the dress alone with a gasp of wonder, a murmur that, in another place – the Palace Theatre, for instance – would have been applause, no one sparing a second glance for Rachel’s scared eyes and aching head which were well hidden in any case by the silver lilies and roses embroidered on her veil.

The mother of the bride, Mrs Maria Colclough herself, looked very well with far more black braiding on her cinnamon brown dress than had ever been intended. Her friend, Mrs Lizzie Braithwaite, was attired as usual in purple while her daughter, young Mrs Amanda Lord, known affectionately as her mother’s ‘little shadow’came in pale lavender. Mrs Tristan Gage, usually overshadowed by her splendid husband, seemed – due no doubt to some artifice of Miss Adeane’s – to have lost much of the stiffness which had always marred her figure, looking, indeed, so very well that a rumour was soon started that she might be in that special ‘interesting condition’again. Frizingley’s ladies knowing of no other cause which could bring such a bloom to a woman’s cheek, nor give her that particular air of dreamy, languorous bliss.

Mrs Amabel Dallam, her mother, was dressed very sweetly in pale blue lace over pale blue taffeta, Mrs Ethel Lord of the brewery in an outfit of dove grey designed, by Miss Adeane, for the express purpose of showing off a magnificent new rope of pearls. Mrs Ben Braithwaite – who had been Miss Magda Tannenbaum – presented a startling appearance, it was generally considered – and one not likely to please her mother-in-law – in a gown of gold and orange stripes, also by Miss Adeane, an artfully placed arrangement of gold satin chrysanthemums hiding the deficiencies of her bosom, the skirt so wide that there had been trouble with the carriage. While of the eight bridesmaids in their lily-of-the-valley dresses of white tulle with pale green watered-silk sashes – made, on the strict instructions of Mrs Maria Colclough, to a pattern which could in no way overshadow the bride – the loveliest, although also, by no means the youngest, was held to be Miss Linnet Gage.

Certainly Mr Uriah Colclough thought so, her presence behind him at the altar affecting him so profoundly that he had to be asked twice to give his sister away. Mr Ben Braithwaite evidently thought so too – more than one person remarked

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