While Mrs. Blodgett flounced out to find the clerk, and the good parson in the height of his courtesy poured out the gooseberry-wine and served us with it, Cynthia and I fell to talking at the top of our voices about nothing at all, since we were certain that as soon as the parson got an opportunity he would furnish us with a criticism of Strabo's geographies, which, however damaging to that worthy ancient, would be even more so to us; or prove that it was a vulgar error to speak of Castor as the twin of Pollux; and proceed to demonstrate that Achilles was vulnerable in other places than his heel.

CHAPTER VIII
WE GET US TO CHURCH

By the time the parson had served us solemnly with our refection, I deemed it proper to give him some relation of our circumstances. I was emboldened to do so because his simple, honest character made him easy to talk to; it was also essential that he should be let some little way into the state of our affairs, since we had but the sum of twelvepence halfpenny with which to requite him for his services and to vail the clerk. And again I talked to him the more readily because while he was engaged with these matters, he was not so likely to revert to those that concerned us less.

He received the confessions of our bankrupt condition with a breadth of generosity that was truly noble in its magnitude.

"I am grieved that you should have thought fit to name that matter," says he. "What a world it is for pounds, shillings, and pence, to be sure! One cannot come into it, nor go out of it, nor even enter into a highly natural and commendable contract for its advantage, but what somebody has to be feed. And I blush to say that that somebody is generally some old rogue of a parson; but I hope, sir, you agree with Tully when he says – "

"Yes, sir," says I hastily, "I quite agree with Tully, I have ever been of Tully's opinion. And, sir, let me say that we are overcome with your generosity. But there is yet another matter that irks us; we have no ring by which we can be wed into matrimony."

"An even more trivial thing," says the parson, "the good Blodgett, honest widow that she is, shall lend you hers."

It was bravely resolved of the parson, but I dare swear we both shuddered at the same instant, when we conceived of the courage required to put it into practice. To think of us "vagrant beggars" summoning that redoubtable dragon to deliver up her marriage ring! It would be perilously like commanding an ogre to cut off his own head. I'll vow that Cynthia trembled a little; whilst she goes even farther and says I grew as pale as death.

"Do you think, sir," said Cynthia fearfully, "that good Mrs. Blodgett will be so kind?"

"She will be delighted, my dear madam," says the parson. "She will be delighted!"

We were still wrestling with our honest doubts on the score of Mrs. Blodgett's delight, when lo and behold! that formidable fair burst into the room, redder in the face than ever, for she was out of breath. She had seen the clerk, and he had gone that minute to open the door of the church. And she conveyed this piece of news in such a brisk and important tone as seemed a good deal out of keeping with her severity of character. She had an air of interest which we had certainly not expected her to betray in our humble affairs. And when the parson without a word of preface had the audacity to prefer his proposal in regard to the ring she bore on her finger, an audacity that caused us both to hold our breaths, since we were fully persuaded that Blodgett would at least break into a most violent diatribe against the impudence of some people, drawing an affecting parallel with the late departed saint whose relict she was, and how wild horses should not tear her and this venerable sanctified token of their marital harmony apart, to our surprise her reply was mercifully brief.

"Humph!" says she. Having glanced at us for a very embarrassing period, during which time a good deal of perplexity distorted her harsh features, says she: "Well, I never did! Is it a runaway?"

"You can take it at that," says I.

A very singular change was being wrought in this stern matron. Where is the female bosom that can resist a wedding, or a touch of the romantical? Not even that of the Spartan Blodgett. The more she pondered the matter in hand the less terrible she became. She began to ask a dozen questions of us in a greatly mollified voice. Nay, the tone she used to Cynthia might even be called indulgent.

"Well," says she, "seeing as how it is an emergency, you shall have my ring this once, but it goes against my conscience, I am sure. You are doing a very wicked thing, young woman. To think of a little chit like you running away to get married! I am sure I ought not to countenance it. Oh, what will your mother say?"

"I have not a mother," says Cynthia, putting her hands to her eyes, and smiling at me through her fingers.

This admission seemed considerably to ease the mind of Mrs. Blodgett, and forthwith she began wrestling with the wedding-ring on her fat finger. In the meantime her master was very fortunately engrossed in another matter, and we were therefore spared his comments.

It seemed that Blodgett had brought him that day's London Gazette, which had been left by the coach at the village alehouse. It was the newspaper that claimed the parson's attention while his housekeeper struggled with her wedding-ring. I vow it was as whimsical a sight as ever was seen to witness the good lady growing redder and redder in her face, and puffing, grunting, and twisting her countenance into the most fantastical shapes, while she freely "dratted the thing," and called down a murrain upon it. But strive as she might, the precious ring still clung faithfully to her finger. Presently Cynthia was fain to take a hand at hauling it off, but she fared not a whit better than Mrs. Blodgett. Whereon I was called on, and after several very natural and becoming protestations on my part as to my inability and so forth, even I was pressed into the service. I tugged and hauled away with what gravity I might, but never an inch would that wretched ring budge. In the height of this deadlock, I was seized with a brilliant expedient.

"One of the rings round the curtain-pole," says I. "Surely one of them will do most admirably well, and at least there will be no difficulty about getting it off, nor on neither."

Now when I proffered this suggestion Mrs. Cynthia blushed such a colour and looked so ill at ease, that I half began to doubt whether this idea was so fine after all. And indeed, Blodgett took me up warmly.

"Wedded in a curtain-ring indeed!" says she. "I'facks, that she never shall be. Who ever heard of such a thing! Has the man no decency! Rather than that, my dear, I will run to neighbour Hodge's and borrow hers. As she's a thin body it should slip off easy."

There and then the scandalized Blodgett was as good as her word. Favouring me with a glance of such scorn and contempt that a person more impressionable would have been rooted to the spot, she flounced out of the room all in a moment, and directly afterwards passed by the library window, running quite excitedly down the garden path. Surely a whole chapter of dissertation might be written on the metamorphosis of Mrs. Blodgett. From openly deriding Cynthia she had passed to an almost motherly tenderness towards her. She had become as concerned for her as though she had been her own daughter. She was no longer "wench," or "vagrant beggar," nay nor even "young woman," but just "my dear." And why was this? Do you think it was because she had suddenly lighted on some latent virtues in my little madam, some strain of moral loveliness, some unexpected beauty in her mind and heart? I am sure I crave the pardon of her ladyship, but it was devil a one of these things that had such a magic effect on Mrs. Blodgett. It was simply that she had run away to get married, and that this was her wedding morning. Oh, woman, woman! where is the daughter among you that can resist the blandishments of Hymen?

While this was going forward, and we were congratulating ourselves in secret on the most fortunate course this portentous affair was like to take, an incident happened that shook me dreadfully, and recalled to my mind much more sharply than I cared, the kind of fortune I was about to endow my bride with. For the time being I had forgotten the colour of my reputation, the character of my past, and my black prospects for the future, in the cheerful topsy-turvy madness of the last twelve hours. But now all of a sudden, in the least expected fashion, I was reminded as to who I was, and what I was. The parson, who all the time had been deeply involved in his news-sheet, suddenly cast it down, uttered a loud exclamation, and with tears in his honest eyes began striding down in his agitation, and knocked down many an unoffending book.

"O tempera! O mores!" says he, "In what degenerate days do we live! To think that this should be the grandson of such a grandsire! No; I cannot believe it of him; nay, I will not believe it of him."

You may guess that as there was a grandfather in the case I pricked up my ears at once, and on looking at the newspaper saw that which confirmed my premonition. There was a paragraph in the column of "Newest Intelligence" that ran in this wise:

"On Tuesday evening in the near neighbourhood of divers well-known coffee-and-chocolate-houses in Saint James's Street, Piccadilly, was found the body of Mr. Richard Burdock, of His Majesty's 4th Regiment of Horse Guards. The unfortunate gentleman had been done to death by a sword-wound in the upper part of the chest. Precisely in what manner the deceased came by his end is not at present known, but we are informed that on the following day an information was laid against the Earl of Tiverton, a nobleman whose name has been most unhappily notorious of late. A warrant was at once procured for the arrest of Lord Tiverton, and on an attempt being made to put it in force at his lordship's residence later in the day, a most desperate struggle ensued, and his lordship with the assistance of his household succeeded in effecting, for the time being, his escape. We learn, however, that the celebrated Mr. John Jeremy of Bow Street has the matter in hand; that Mr. Jeremy with his world-famed acumen is in possession of a clue as to Lord Tiverton's whereabouts; that Mr. Jeremy is already actively following up the same, and that presently an event may transpire that shall set all the town by the ears."

I directed Cynthia's attention to this account, and she was so startled by it that she changed colour, and offered so many visible evidences of her distress, that I feared she would have excited the suspicions of the parson, yet after all that must have been an impossible feat, for I am sure the honest parson was a man so utterly without guile, that he was incapable of harbouring any sort of suspicion against a fellow-creature. Besides he was still fully occupied in lamenting the low repute into which our name had fallen, with a grief so genuine that I did not know whether to be touched or amused by it.

However, I could not pay much heed to the parson at that minute, being deeply concerned for little Cynthia. I began to fear that I had done an ill-considered thing in allowing her to see the news-sheet. I had never tried to find out how far she was acquainted with my history of the past few years – my gaming, duels, intrigues and debts. That she must have known of it to some extent was certain. She had heard of them from my own lips in a haphazard sort of way; and again, they were too well known to be suppressed, as witness the conduct of her father in the matter of my suit. At his hands, and those of my friends, and of my rival too, they would certainly lose nothing of their magnitude. Whatever she had heard of me, she had been able to condone. But now confronted with a more circumstantial charge against me, clothed in all the authority of black and white, a charge of the most terrible character that can be preferred against any person, it came on her with a cruel force that almost crushed her down. She stood faltering, with the newspaper still clutched in her hands; her lips trembled, and the tears gathered slowly in her eyes.

"I don't believe it," said she, in a low, shaking voice.

She held out her hand, and I, despite the presence of the parson, took it to my lips with the same passion with which she had extended it to me. If a man in the midst of all the contumely and detraction of the world, can yet get one woman to believe in him, it is enough!

Meantime the parson, whatever he may have thought of our behaviour, not that it is altogether certain that he happened to witness it, was so strangely ingenuous that he took my little one's distress to spring from the same source as his own. He laid it all to that precious Commentary on the Analects of Confucius!

"Your grief does you honour, my dear madam, allow me to say," says he, wiping the memorials of his own from his red eyes. "It honours you vastly. It is something in this benighted age to know that the reverence for polite letters has not yet died out amongst us. And I, on my part, will never be persuaded that the descendant of so noble and learned a gentleman, whatever the errors of his youth, could fall into an act of such a hideous kind. I blame the publick press too for disseminating such a story. If it is false, as I believe it to be, oh, the pity of it! But if it should be true, the pity is the greater. With your permission, I will destroy this newspaper, lest this scandalous thing it contains should come under the eye of Blodgett, and she should spread it amongst the village folk."

I protest with all my settled views on life, and my arbitrary way of looking at things, I did not know whether to burst out into a shout of laughter, or fall a-weeping too, for, ecod! there was an affecting side to the affair when our simple old parson tore up the offending newspaper in a hundred pieces, all to preserve the fair name of that philosopher who had perished of the gout a full thirty years ago.

Cynthia was so greatly shaken, that to defend her from his observation I was even moved to indulge in the parson's fondness for the dead languages and abstruse theories. However, I had just induced him to quarrel with Cicero on the strength of something that Cicero ought to have said and yet had not said at all, when Blodgett returned, bearing the ring.

That redoubtable lady observed Cynthia's distress at once, but did not put the same construction on it that her master had.

"Very natural to be sure," says she. "Weddings are strange, exciting things, and apt to upset the strongest of us. I remember the first time I went through the ceremony. I was mortal worried by it."

Mrs. Blodgett having by this time fully entered into the affair, took Cynthia in hand. She insisted that Cynthia should go with her upstairs, "to tidy herself like," and be accomplished generally in a manner more befitting the occasion. Indeed so enthusiastic had the housekeeper become about it that she even proposed to search for some of her own discarded nuptial garments, which she ventured to say with a bit of fettling and contriving, a pleat here and a tuck there, Cynthia after all might not lack for a wedding-gown. The conceit of a young lady who a week ago had been of the first fashion, appearing as a bride in a gown that had once done duty for the admirable Blodgett, convulsed me with laughter. And this behaviour was heightened rather than depressed when I recollected that such an attire would consort very aptly with the hobnailed appearance of the bridegroom.

During the absence of the ladies upstairs, the parson had the forethought to give me a two-shilling-bit, for the purpose of feeing the clerk. I was so struck by this further instance of his generous courtesy, that I asked the name of my benefactor, for I swore that I would not rest content until I had repaid him. It seemed that this obscure country clergyman bore the name of Scriven. It is a name as far as I can make out, that has not yet come to any eminence in letters or the humane arts; nor has it attained to any signal preferment in that Church of which it is so true an ornament. His great learning, his simple ingenuous character, his notable generosity, his tenderness of heart, his implicit courtesy have never advanced him one step, so far as I can gather, in the world's opinion. For aught I know he is still the country parson on his forty pounds or so a year, whilst many a sleek old worldling with half of his learning and a tithe of his humanity is my lord Bishop riding by in his gilt coach with footmen behind it, the recipient of a hundred times more kudos and emolument.

When Cynthia came down again she looked wonderfully spic and span. Her hair had been done into a becoming rustic mode, most admirably neat, and showed off its qualities of abundance, gloss and curliness to true advantage. She had not thought fit to call in the aid of Mrs. Blodgett's gown it is true, but her own became her as well as another, and happily at the same time afforded no index to her degree. It was a plain and simple country dress, sober in hue and severe in its style. Yet it fell so exactly into the exquisite lines of her shape, that she and the dress became one as it were; and if there was a woman's tailor who could have exhibited a lovely figure more artfully than that, she must have been good Mrs. Nature herself. Cynthia, for all her country clothes, looked so sweet, arch and dainty too, so much the gentlewoman without the affectations that go with ton and "fine," that by their absence the breeding that lurked in every inch of her, the carriage of her person, slender and small as it was, the set of her head, and the cast of her features became more apparent.

These evidences had even an effect on Mrs. Blodgett. She was mightily pleased with her protégée.

"I don't know who you are, young man," says she, "and I won't say all that's in my mind about you, but I hope you know that you are taking a real born lady to wife. Such white hands I never did see, and such pretty ways, saving her presence, as she 'ave too. You are not a quarter good enough, young man, for the likes of her, and just keep that in your mind and live up to it. But I gravely misdoubt me as to whether you will, for take you all round you are about as disreppitable and low a fellow as ever I saw. To think that such as you should have lured the pretty lamb from her father's house. But as I've told her, it is not yet too late for her to go back again."

Although neither Cynthia nor I was greatly inconvenienced by this crude statement of the case, except in the matter of the smiles we strove in vain to control, the parson, good, honest man, was not a little disconcerted by it.

"Tut, tut!" says he, "my good Blodgett, your tongue runs too fast. However excellent the motives may be that inspire you, I could wish you had a somewhat less direct manner of expressing them. I really cannot have you intervene between plighted lovers, at the very steps of the altar. And whatever the personality of our young lady, if truth compels us to admit that our young gentleman is scarcely so fortunate in his physical semblance, I am sure he hath a very nice mind."

With these panegyrics we ultimately got us to church. Now it is not to be expected, I hope, that a man should describe his own nuptials. If there are three acts in his life on which he is the least qualified to speak, are not those his birth, his marriage, and his burial? For in not one of them can he testify with any certainty as to whether he went through them on his heels or his head. Besides, I am one who holds that there should be a becoming reticence in these things.

I can recall perhaps an empty, musty-smelling church, and the clerk, a solemn, unctuous man, with a graveyard cough. Some little wind of the affair had evidently got abroad in the village, owing to the exertions of Mrs. Blodgett in quest of the wedding-ring. Thus the ceremony was not so entirely private as we could have wished. A few women in aprons, and some with babes in their arms kept the porch and the immediate interior of the church. It seemed that they did not venture to go further owing to their awe of the clerk. Various ragamuffin children of tender years played hide-and-seek round the gravestones and their mothers' gowns. When however the wedding party came along in a kind of little procession, they desisted for a minute, and having safely seen the parson precede us into the sacred edifice, they put out their tongues at Cynthia and myself, and made several references of a nature uncomplimentary to us couched in the form of rustic wit.

Mrs. Blodgett had undertaken the office of chief bridesmaid. She would have undertaken that of groomsman too, had I given her the least encouragement. She made an impressive figure at the altar rails, clad in a severe black hood; whilst she was quite conscious of her conspicuous position, and stood calm and erect in the dignity of her infinite experience. What whispered but animated counsel she proffered to Cynthia during the brief period in which we waited for the parson to emerge from the vestry, I know not, but I would have given a good deal to have been a party to it, for I am sure that if the look on Mrs. Cynthia's countenance was any index to its character, it would well have been worth setting down in this place.

At the last moment when the tension of our minds was very great, the clerk became obstreperous. He asked parson Scriven in a significant undertone for the special licence that was to marry us, as the banns had not been put up and cried in church. Of course we were not furnished with anything of the kind.

Parson Scriven, as became his amiable casual character, was not at all disconcerted by such an informality.

"Pooh and faugh!" says he. "Banns and licence, John, stuff and nonsense! Why should an honest couple be hedged about in this way? If they have no licence, upon my soul I will marry them without."

The clerk was scandalized. The parson, however, would hear no argument. He was not the person to allow his head to interfere with the dictates of his heart.

"Parson's main obstinate," said the clerk, scratching his head. "And I do believe he cares no more for law an' regulation than the gypsies on the common. It won't be legal, this won't, but bless you what'll parson care!"

So long as we could get this awkward business over we cared as little for law and regulation as this singular old clergyman. Therefore, when he disdained the opinions of the clerk, and reiterated his intention to marry us, we breathed again.

At last all was ready, and the parson came out of the vestry with his book and his gown, and smiled upon us with benevolent self-possession. We strung ourselves for the great ordeal. Yet as a preliminary we were confronted with one that we found vastly the more awkward of the two, and one that we had not anticipated either. How we both came to overlook it, I know not, unless the palpitation that our minds were in was the secret of it. It had never occurred to us that the parson could not marry us unless he was informed of our names. But when he made that very obvious and natural stipulation it came upon us as a thunderbolt. What a pair of arrant fools we were, not to have thought of that contingency, and to have provided for it!

When the parson bluntly demanded this of us, we stood staring open-mouthed at one another, a pair of zanies. I pursued a bold course, however. To give our own was out of the question in that public place, and more particularly as the newspaper had just acquainted the reverend gentleman of my black history. Therefore, says I, with an impudent assurance:

"John Smith and Jane Jones."

"How truly national!" says the officiating clergyman in a rapture of sentiment. "How exquisitely English are these names, to be sure!"

I durst not look at my poor little Cynthia. But somehow I felt that she was trembling and deadly pale, and ready to sink to the ground under this humiliation to her native delicacy. I fear that I was of a much coarser grain. I had suffered too much from the world already to be easily bowed with a sense of shame. "Needs must when the devil drives," was a good enough motto for me. We were in a pretty tight corner, and if we ever came out of it at all, we must expect to lose a little of our tender skins in doing so.

My little one was most monstrous brave. Having recovered the possession of herself, she set her teeth and went through the thing gallantly. I'faith she was of a good mettle. In spite of Mrs. Blodgett's opinion of my worth, my little miss answered the all-important query in such a clear affirmative voice as never was heard, and entered into vows of a sort that argued some degree of rashness on her part. Even at the time I was inclined to raise a doubt of her ability to be the equal of them. Nor hath aught subsequently transpired to cause me to forego this estimate of the matter. When we had been duly put through these trials, we were led into the vestry to write our names in the marriage register.

"Oh, Jack," whispers Cynthia, as we went, "whatever shall we do? I am sure it cannot be legal."

"I am sure I don't know," says I. "What a folly of mine not to have thought of it sooner!"

"It was my place to think of it," says Cynthia. "The folly is mine."

"No, not at all," says I. "What have you to do with it, a chit as you are? The folly is mine, I tell you."

"Then I tell you it's not," says Cynthia flatly, and stamping her petulant shoe on the very steps of the altar.