CHAPTER LXXI.THE CHIMES OF SAXTONNext morning Miss Wagget was busy, in a great fuss, writing the news to her brother and the sergeant, and for the benefit of the latter she drew such a picture of William Maubray’s virtues and perfections in general as must have made that sagacious man long to possess such a son-in-law. The good lady enclosed a dutiful little note to him from Violet, and wound up with an eloquent lecture, in which she demonstrated that if the sergeant were to oppose this palpable adjustment of Providence, he should be found to fight against Heaven, the consequences of which enterprise she left him to conjecture.William also spent the entire forenoon over a letter to the same supreme authority; and the letters despatched, there intervened a few days of suspense and wonderful happiness, notwithstanding.William was waiting in the little post-office of Saxton when the answering letters came. Mrs. Beggs having sorted the contents of the mail with an anxious eye, delivered his letters, and at his desire, those for the Rectory, to William. There was a letter from the sergeant for him. There was no mistaking the tall and peculiarhand. There were two others addressed severally to the ladies at the Rectory. William did not care to read his in Mrs. Beggs’s little parlour, so he took his leave cheerfully, even gaily, with an awful load at his heart.In his pocket lay his fate sealed. Hardly a soul was stirring in the drowsy little street. Here and there a listless pair of eyes peeped through the miniature panes of a shop window. He could not read the letter where any eye could see him. He hurried round the corner of Garden Row, got on the road leading to Gilroyd, crossed the style that places you upon the path to the Rectory, and in the pretty field, with only half a dozen quiet cows for witnesses, opened and read his London letter.It told him how well Mr. Sergeant Darkwell liked him, that he believed wedded happiness depended a great deal more on affection, honour, and kindness, than upon wealth. It said that he had aptitudes for the bar, and would no doubt do very well with exertion. It then mentioned what the sergeant could do for his daughter, which William thought quite splendid, and was more, Miss Wagget afterwards said, than she had reckoned upon.For some years at least they were to live with the sergeant, “putting by your income, my dears, and funding at least five or six hundred a year,” interposed Miss Wagget, who was in a wonderful fuss. “You’ll be rich before you know where you are—you will, indeed! He’s an admirable man—your father’s anadmirableman, my dear! I don’t know such a man, except my brother, who’s a man by himself, you know. But next after him your papa, my dear, is the very best man I ever heard of. And you’ll be married here, at Saxton—you shall, indeed. You must remain with us, and be married from this, and I wonder my brother stays so long away, he’ll be as gladas I. The sergeant shall come down to us for the wedding, and give you away at Saxton, and there’s that beautiful spot Wyndel Abbey, so romantic and charming, the very place for a honeymoon, and only fifteen miles away.”And so, on and on, ran good Miss Wagget, arranging everything for the young people, and as it were, counting the turnpikes, and packing their trunks for the happy excursionists, and making them comfortable in the pretty little inn at Wyndel Abbey, where she had once spent a week.Well would it be for castle-builders in general if their dreams proved all as true as those of fanciful and kindly Miss Wagget did, on this occasion.It was agreed it was to be a very quiet wedding. At secluded Saxton, indeed, it would not have been easy to make it anything else. Sergeant Darkwell of course gave pretty Violet away.Honest Dr. Drake was there, in an unprofessional blue coat and buff waistcoat, and with a bouquet in his button-hole, in which not a single camomile flower figured. Miss Drake, too, in a lavender silk; and wishing the gay couple every good from her heart, notwithstanding her surprise that Sergeant Darkwell should have permitted hischildto marry at so early an age as eighteen—nineteen? Well, one year here or there doesn’t signify a great deal, she fancied. Good old Winnie Dobbs, too, in a purple silk and new bonnet, which must have been quite in the fashion, for all Saxton admired it honestly. A little way from the communion rails, behind the gentlefolks, she stood or kneeled, edified, only half credulous, smiling sometimes, and crying a great deal—thinking, I am sure, of kind old Aunt Dinah, who was not to seethat hour. Winnie, I mention parenthetically,is still housekeeper at Gilroyd, and very happy, with nothing but a little rheumatism to trouble her.Here every year William and Violet pass some time, and the happiest month of all the twelve, though the estates and title have come to him, and he is Sir William and she Lady Maubray. But the change has not spoiled either.The honest affections and friendly nature delight in the old scenes and associates; and in summer sunsets, under the ancient chestnuts, they ramble sometimes, her hand locked in his; and often, I dare say, he runs over those delightful remembrances, still low—still in a lover’s tone, she looking down on the grass and wild flowers, as she walks beside him and listens as she might to a sweet air, always welcome, the more welcome that she knows it so well; and they read the inscription on the beech tree, time has not effaced it yet, they read it smiling, in their happy dream, with that something of regret that belongs to the past, and all the tenderness that tones the uncertain mortal future.Sometimes William says a word of Trevor, and she laughs, perhaps a little flattered at the remembrance of a conquest. Vane Trevor is very well, not married yet, they say, grown a little stout, not often at Revington. He does not put himself much in the way of Sir William, but is very friendly when they correspond on Saxton matters, workhouse, and others. He has not renewed his attentions at Kincton. Clara has grown “awfully old,” he has been heard to remark. She has latterly declined gaieties, has got to the very topmost platform of High-churchism, from which a mere step-ladder may carry her still higher. Dean Sancroft, who fought the Rev. John Blastus in the great controversy, you must remember, on credence tables, candles, and superaltars,is not unfrequently an inmate of Kincton, and people begin to canvass probabilities.But whither have I drifted? Let us come back to quiet old Saxton Church, and the marriage service. The Miss Mainwarings and a pretty Miss Darkwell, a cousin of the bride’s, attended as bridesmaids. And with Sergeant Darkwell had arrived the “silent woman.” She could not help her taciturnity any more than her steady gray eyes, which used to terrify William so, while he haunted the drawing-room in town. She attended, in very handsome and appropriate costume, and made Vi a very pretty present of old-fashioned jewellery, and was seen to dry her gray eyes during the beautiful “solemnisation of matrimony,” as good Doctor Wagget, in the old church, under the oak-roof which had looked down for so many centuries on so many young kneeling couples, in the soft glow of the old stained windows whose saints looked smiling on with arms crossed over their breasts, read the irrevocable words aloud, and the village congregation reverently listening, heard how these two young mortals, like the rest, had “given and pledged their troth, either to other, and declared the same by giving and receiving of a ring, and by joining of hands,” and how the good rector pronounced that “they be man and wife together,” in the name of the glorious Trinity.As we walk to the village church, through the church-yard, among the gray, discoloured headstones that seem to troop slowly by us as we pass, the lesson of change and mortality is hardly told so sublimely as in the simple order of our services. The pages that follow the “Communion” open on the view like the stations in a pilgrimage. The “Baptism of Infants”—“A Catechism”—“The Order of Confirmation”—“The Solemnisation ofMatrimony”—“The Visitation of the Sick”—“The Burial of the Dead.” So, the spiritual events of life are noted and provided for, and the journey marked from the first question—“Hath this child been already baptised or no?” down to the summing up of life’s story—“Man that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down as a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”And so Doctor Wagget, after the blessing invoked, and his beautiful office ended, smilingly bids William “Kiss your wife,” and there is a fluttering of gay ribbons, and many smiling faces, and a murmuring of pleased voices, and greetings and good wishes, as they go to the vestry-room to sign Dr. Wagget’s ancient ledger of all such doings.And now while the sun is shining and the bells of Saxton trembling in the air, I end my story.the end
CHAPTER LXXI.
THE CHIMES OF SAXTON
THE CHIMES OF SAXTON
THE CHIMES OF SAXTON
Next morning Miss Wagget was busy, in a great fuss, writing the news to her brother and the sergeant, and for the benefit of the latter she drew such a picture of William Maubray’s virtues and perfections in general as must have made that sagacious man long to possess such a son-in-law. The good lady enclosed a dutiful little note to him from Violet, and wound up with an eloquent lecture, in which she demonstrated that if the sergeant were to oppose this palpable adjustment of Providence, he should be found to fight against Heaven, the consequences of which enterprise she left him to conjecture.
William also spent the entire forenoon over a letter to the same supreme authority; and the letters despatched, there intervened a few days of suspense and wonderful happiness, notwithstanding.
William was waiting in the little post-office of Saxton when the answering letters came. Mrs. Beggs having sorted the contents of the mail with an anxious eye, delivered his letters, and at his desire, those for the Rectory, to William. There was a letter from the sergeant for him. There was no mistaking the tall and peculiarhand. There were two others addressed severally to the ladies at the Rectory. William did not care to read his in Mrs. Beggs’s little parlour, so he took his leave cheerfully, even gaily, with an awful load at his heart.
In his pocket lay his fate sealed. Hardly a soul was stirring in the drowsy little street. Here and there a listless pair of eyes peeped through the miniature panes of a shop window. He could not read the letter where any eye could see him. He hurried round the corner of Garden Row, got on the road leading to Gilroyd, crossed the style that places you upon the path to the Rectory, and in the pretty field, with only half a dozen quiet cows for witnesses, opened and read his London letter.
It told him how well Mr. Sergeant Darkwell liked him, that he believed wedded happiness depended a great deal more on affection, honour, and kindness, than upon wealth. It said that he had aptitudes for the bar, and would no doubt do very well with exertion. It then mentioned what the sergeant could do for his daughter, which William thought quite splendid, and was more, Miss Wagget afterwards said, than she had reckoned upon.
For some years at least they were to live with the sergeant, “putting by your income, my dears, and funding at least five or six hundred a year,” interposed Miss Wagget, who was in a wonderful fuss. “You’ll be rich before you know where you are—you will, indeed! He’s an admirable man—your father’s anadmirableman, my dear! I don’t know such a man, except my brother, who’s a man by himself, you know. But next after him your papa, my dear, is the very best man I ever heard of. And you’ll be married here, at Saxton—you shall, indeed. You must remain with us, and be married from this, and I wonder my brother stays so long away, he’ll be as gladas I. The sergeant shall come down to us for the wedding, and give you away at Saxton, and there’s that beautiful spot Wyndel Abbey, so romantic and charming, the very place for a honeymoon, and only fifteen miles away.”
And so, on and on, ran good Miss Wagget, arranging everything for the young people, and as it were, counting the turnpikes, and packing their trunks for the happy excursionists, and making them comfortable in the pretty little inn at Wyndel Abbey, where she had once spent a week.
Well would it be for castle-builders in general if their dreams proved all as true as those of fanciful and kindly Miss Wagget did, on this occasion.
It was agreed it was to be a very quiet wedding. At secluded Saxton, indeed, it would not have been easy to make it anything else. Sergeant Darkwell of course gave pretty Violet away.
Honest Dr. Drake was there, in an unprofessional blue coat and buff waistcoat, and with a bouquet in his button-hole, in which not a single camomile flower figured. Miss Drake, too, in a lavender silk; and wishing the gay couple every good from her heart, notwithstanding her surprise that Sergeant Darkwell should have permitted hischildto marry at so early an age as eighteen—nineteen? Well, one year here or there doesn’t signify a great deal, she fancied. Good old Winnie Dobbs, too, in a purple silk and new bonnet, which must have been quite in the fashion, for all Saxton admired it honestly. A little way from the communion rails, behind the gentlefolks, she stood or kneeled, edified, only half credulous, smiling sometimes, and crying a great deal—thinking, I am sure, of kind old Aunt Dinah, who was not to seethat hour. Winnie, I mention parenthetically,is still housekeeper at Gilroyd, and very happy, with nothing but a little rheumatism to trouble her.
Here every year William and Violet pass some time, and the happiest month of all the twelve, though the estates and title have come to him, and he is Sir William and she Lady Maubray. But the change has not spoiled either.
The honest affections and friendly nature delight in the old scenes and associates; and in summer sunsets, under the ancient chestnuts, they ramble sometimes, her hand locked in his; and often, I dare say, he runs over those delightful remembrances, still low—still in a lover’s tone, she looking down on the grass and wild flowers, as she walks beside him and listens as she might to a sweet air, always welcome, the more welcome that she knows it so well; and they read the inscription on the beech tree, time has not effaced it yet, they read it smiling, in their happy dream, with that something of regret that belongs to the past, and all the tenderness that tones the uncertain mortal future.
Sometimes William says a word of Trevor, and she laughs, perhaps a little flattered at the remembrance of a conquest. Vane Trevor is very well, not married yet, they say, grown a little stout, not often at Revington. He does not put himself much in the way of Sir William, but is very friendly when they correspond on Saxton matters, workhouse, and others. He has not renewed his attentions at Kincton. Clara has grown “awfully old,” he has been heard to remark. She has latterly declined gaieties, has got to the very topmost platform of High-churchism, from which a mere step-ladder may carry her still higher. Dean Sancroft, who fought the Rev. John Blastus in the great controversy, you must remember, on credence tables, candles, and superaltars,is not unfrequently an inmate of Kincton, and people begin to canvass probabilities.
But whither have I drifted? Let us come back to quiet old Saxton Church, and the marriage service. The Miss Mainwarings and a pretty Miss Darkwell, a cousin of the bride’s, attended as bridesmaids. And with Sergeant Darkwell had arrived the “silent woman.” She could not help her taciturnity any more than her steady gray eyes, which used to terrify William so, while he haunted the drawing-room in town. She attended, in very handsome and appropriate costume, and made Vi a very pretty present of old-fashioned jewellery, and was seen to dry her gray eyes during the beautiful “solemnisation of matrimony,” as good Doctor Wagget, in the old church, under the oak-roof which had looked down for so many centuries on so many young kneeling couples, in the soft glow of the old stained windows whose saints looked smiling on with arms crossed over their breasts, read the irrevocable words aloud, and the village congregation reverently listening, heard how these two young mortals, like the rest, had “given and pledged their troth, either to other, and declared the same by giving and receiving of a ring, and by joining of hands,” and how the good rector pronounced that “they be man and wife together,” in the name of the glorious Trinity.
As we walk to the village church, through the church-yard, among the gray, discoloured headstones that seem to troop slowly by us as we pass, the lesson of change and mortality is hardly told so sublimely as in the simple order of our services. The pages that follow the “Communion” open on the view like the stations in a pilgrimage. The “Baptism of Infants”—“A Catechism”—“The Order of Confirmation”—“The Solemnisation ofMatrimony”—“The Visitation of the Sick”—“The Burial of the Dead.” So, the spiritual events of life are noted and provided for, and the journey marked from the first question—“Hath this child been already baptised or no?” down to the summing up of life’s story—“Man that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down as a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”
And so Doctor Wagget, after the blessing invoked, and his beautiful office ended, smilingly bids William “Kiss your wife,” and there is a fluttering of gay ribbons, and many smiling faces, and a murmuring of pleased voices, and greetings and good wishes, as they go to the vestry-room to sign Dr. Wagget’s ancient ledger of all such doings.
And now while the sun is shining and the bells of Saxton trembling in the air, I end my story.
the end
PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD, LONDON.
PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD, LONDON.
PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD, LONDON.
Transcriber’s NotesItemized changes from the original text:p. 10: Period changed to comma after “direction”p. 15: Corrected “by-and-bye” to “by-and-by”p. 19: Corrected “pormanteau” to “portmanteau”p. 24: Corrected “somewat” to “somewhat”p. 24: Missing semicolon supplied after “a woman who resists”p. 26: Remove paragraph break after “whispered the doctor”p. 33: Missing period supplied after “Speak out”p. 36: Single quote changed to double quote after “It ends withdie”p. 42: Missing period supplied after “the night”p. 53: Missing period supplied after “said William”p. 58: Single quote changed to double quote after “joined their party”p. 62: Missing commas supplied after “desired to know” and “young people”p. 76: Missing quotation mark supplied after “know what you mean”p. 91: Period changed to colon after “just think now”p. 95: Missing comma supplied after “Trevor very chatty”p. 102: Missing quotation mark supplied after “my grand-uncle”p. 103: Corrected “sickenly” to “sickeningly”p. 117: Missing period supplied after “position of obligation”p. 118: Superfluous quotation mark omitted before “No, he had no resource”p. 118: Missing quotation mark supplied after “periodicals”p. 119: Missing comma supplied after “full of fancies, you know”p. 121: Added quotation marks after “and vows” and before “he’ll cut him off” to clarify parenthetical asidep. 128: Additional block formatting used to clarify the letter text and separate the interruptionsp. 130: Missing quotation mark supplied before “I suppose, as something”p. 133: Missing period supplied after “in the distance”p. 138: Corrected “confidently” to “confidentially”p. 154: Missing period supplied after “as he had proposed”p. 171: Missing quotation mark supplied before “Everyone says”p. 176: Missing comma supplied after “abandoned to Mr. Kincton Knox”p. 188: Missing quotation mark supplied after “just to rally”p. 192: Missing comma supplied before “he hates his father”p. 192: Missing comma supplied before “stuff!”p. 216: Missing period supplied after “nothing—that is”p. 218: Missing period supplied after “never despair”p. 218: Missing quotation mark supplied after “Get up”p. 227: Corrected “Let there an end” to “Let there be an end”p. 235: Missing comma supplied after “explain, I suppose”p. 238: Corrected “Maburay” to “Maubray”p. 250: Missing dash supplied in “H’m—did I?”p. 255: Remove paragraph break before “The time is near”p. 266: Missing period supplied after “in my life”p. 279: Corrected “make a man” to “makes a man”p. 280: Superfluous quotation mark omitted before “The cab, or whatever”p. 294: Corrected “run” to “rung”p. 315: Single quote changed to double quote after “fame of Revington”p. 317: Missing quotation mark supplied before “Anywhere. Wherever you like”p. 326: Missing quotation mark supplied after “as mad as”p. 327: Missing quotation mark supplied before “as a March hare”p. 332: Missing comma supplied after “conformable to God’s will”p. 340: Corrected “Docter” to “Doctor”p. 347: Corrected “vexed to and” to “vexed to find”p. 350: Corrected “potentiousy” to “portentously”p. 351: Missing period supplied after “a bit, man”p. 352: Missing quotation mark supplied after “ha, ha, ha”p. 353: Corrected “goo” to “good”p. 356: Corrected “winks” to “wings”p. 371: Missing period supplied after “that hour”Hyphenation/spacing of the following words, inconsistent in the original, was standardized: “chimneypiece” to “chimney-piece”; “old fashioned” to “old-fashioned”; “churchyard” to “church-yard”; “arm-chair” to “armchair”; “hearth-rug” to “hearthrug”; “bon-bons” to “bonbons”; “goodnight” to “good-night”; “tea table” to “tea-table”; “back-stair” to “back stair”; “finger tips” to “finger-tips”; “drawing room” to “drawing-room”; and “dressing gown” to “dressing-gown.” Spacing was standardised in initials (“W.M.”).
Transcriber’s Notes
Transcriber’s Notes
Transcriber’s Notes
Itemized changes from the original text:
Hyphenation/spacing of the following words, inconsistent in the original, was standardized: “chimneypiece” to “chimney-piece”; “old fashioned” to “old-fashioned”; “churchyard” to “church-yard”; “arm-chair” to “armchair”; “hearth-rug” to “hearthrug”; “bon-bons” to “bonbons”; “goodnight” to “good-night”; “tea table” to “tea-table”; “back-stair” to “back stair”; “finger tips” to “finger-tips”; “drawing room” to “drawing-room”; and “dressing gown” to “dressing-gown.” Spacing was standardised in initials (“W.M.”).