CHAPTER VII.
A QUAKER WEDDING, AND ANOTHER WEDDING.
“Well, Frank Leroy is not only back again,” said Thorsby, at the Grange on Sunday after the trial of Hopcraft, “but he is amazing jolly. I think some little bird must have whistled to him out in India there, and sent him home so nimbly; don’t you think so, Letty?”
“Likelier things have happened,” said Letty, with a merry smile in her eyes.
“And unlikelier too,” added Thorsby. “Frank has taken the very largest and handsomest house in the Park, too, with a charming large garden and pleasure-grounds running down to the little river, and looking across to Rockville; and, really, I could fancy we couldsee it from here. What does that mean, Letty? Do young bachelors require now-a-days such great houses?”
Letty laughed. “Young men are rather ambitious now-a-days, it must be confessed. Perhaps Dr. Leroy thinks he will secure thy little bird, which lured him back, in a fine cage before long.”
“That is just what I was thinking,” said Thorsby; “and somehow I have been continually meeting Mrs. Heritage and Millicent going about the town amongst the shops, and Millicent looks as spry as ever,—quite killing with those dark eyes and eyelashes of hers. It is really delightful.”
“They are buying up remnants and bargains, I dare say,” said Letty, archly, “for making up for the poor against winter.”
“I dare say,” said Thorsby. “However, I am charmed above everything to have Frank back.”
“He must be astonished,” said Mr. Woodburn,“at the exact truth of his dream. I shall be for ever obliged to him for the effect of it.”
“Oh,” said Thorsby, “you should have seen him blush the other day in court, where we were sitting together, when the judge began asking about it. And when he asked whether the gentleman was called Bunyan! Frank is rather afraid thatsobriquetmay stick to him; but no matter, I can see he will have his consolations. I don’t know when I have enjoyed myself so much as the other evening when, after dinner with us, he, I, and Letty put our feet on the fender, and got into a great talk on old times. The doctor gave us some touches out of his apprentice days, that were regular fun. You know that great fellow, Surgeon Green, who rides this way sometimes on a great dark bay horse. Frank was apprentice to him, and of all the precious cowards, he is the primest. One night, Frank said he came to his chamber-door, and said in a whisper, ‘Get up, Frank,directly; there are thieves in the house! they are in the garret—come in through the skylight, no doubt. Up in a minute!’ Frank tumbled out all in a tremble, got his clothes on in the dark, after putting his arm first into one pocket and then into another, instead of into the sleeves, shaking all over like a man with an ague. When he got into the passage, there stood Green, and said, in a scared whisper, ‘Hark! they are in the garret amongst the bottles!’—(they kept all their stock of physic-bottles there)—‘Don’t you hear them? There! down goes a lot more! Run up, Frank, and see how many of them there are.’
“‘No, sir,’ said Frank, ‘you had better go. They would not make a mouthful of me; but you’re so strong.’
“‘No,’ said Green, ‘go this instant, and I’ll stop them here if they offer to come down.’
“He struck a light, and gave Frank acandle, and said, ‘Just look in, and see who is there, and then lock the door outside, if you can.’
“Frank went trembling up; the candle wagged about in his hand as if he had been switching about a whip. His heart was in his mouth every time he heard a fresh crash amongst the bottles. At length, he was at the door, but he was too much afraid to open it. ‘Quick! Quick!’ said his master from below, in a wild, loud whisper. Frank pushed open the door. Out went his candle with a strong wind, but not before he saw the cause of all the alarm—their great tom-cat, who had been shut up in the room, and was trying to find a way out, dart out of the door, and down the stairs.
“‘There! he is coming!’ shouted Frank, and the next moment he heard Dr. Green’s chamber-door slammed to, and the key turned inside. Frank sat down on the top step of the stairs, and laughed outrageously.”
“What a coward must that Green be!” said Mr. Woodburn.
“Another time, Green called up Frank, and said he was sure thieves were not only in the house this time, but they were murdering the old cook; he could hear her groans. ‘Run, then!’ said Frank; ‘my dear sir, don’t let her be murdered!’
“‘No,’ said Green, ‘do you run up, Frank. You’re much less than I am. If they fired at me, they could not possibly miss me. There, run up, there’s a good fellow. And here’s a pistol for you. Shoot the first rogue you see, without mercy.’
“He thrust a pistol into Frank’s trembling hand, and pushed him up-stairs. This time it appeared really awful. At the next floor he distinctly heard frightful groans from the cook’s chamber. The door stood partly open, and, by the dim light from a window beyond her bed, he could see something moving to and fro near the bed. ‘They are murderingthe old woman, and no mistake!’ said Frank to himself; and in a voice so strange with fear that it doubly frightened him to hear it, he cried out, ‘Who are you, there?’
“A shriek from the cook made the blood run through him with an icy shiver, and a start.
“‘What is it?’ cried Frank.
“‘O Lor’, sir,’ said the cook, in a tone of terror, ‘it is only me, sir! I have such a nasty pain in my—my—stomach, and I’ve been downstairs for a little peppermint-water.’
“‘But what are you doing out of bed now, with a pain in your stomach? That will only make it worse,’ said Frank.
“‘Oh, Mr. Frank!’ said the cook, ‘I am only holding on to the bed-post a little, to help me to abide the pain.’
“‘I’ll fetch you something,’ said Frank; but, first of all, he shouted downstairs to his master. ‘Come hither, directly, master, for I think it’s all up with the cook.’ Whereupon Green, as he expected, banged to hischamber-door, and locked it inside, to Frank’s infinite delight. Presently Frank came up with a good dose of compound tincture of cardamoms for the cook, which soon set her all right; and he tumbled into his bed again, to laugh himself asleep.”
“What an arrant coward,” said Mr. Woodburn again, “is that Green!”
“When Frank was nearly out of his time,” Thorsby went on, “Green’s brother—a doctor in a country place in Yorkshire—wanted to go to the sea-side for a month. And then, the country people being too busy with their harvests to be sick, he got this valiant Mr. Green of ours to send Frank Leroy to look after any casual patient that should turn up. Frank enjoyed it wonderfully. It was a very fine country, and he had a good horse to ride, and it was quite a treat for him to go cantering about amongst the jolly farmers there.
“One day he was sent for to a farm-house,to see some one, and said he would make up the physic, and they could send a boy for it. He made it up, and set it in the surgery properly addressed. The boy came when he was just gone into a neighbour’s, and the servant sent the lad into the surgery to wait for him. When he came home, soon after, the servant said the boy had bolted out of the house as if his head was on fire, and gone away without the medicine. Frank was a little astonished; but on looking round the surgery, he soon perceived the cause. The lad, with a lad’s curiosity, had been looking into things; and, amongst others, had opened a cupboard-door where hung a skeleton. He had evidently had such a fright, that he did not stop to shut the door again, or the door of the surgery, or of the house after him. The medicine had to be sent.
“A day or two after, as Frank was riding towards the farm to see his patient again, in a deep, narrow lane, he met the boy comingtowards him. Now, he thought, I shall hear all about it. But he was mistaken; for the moment the lad recognised the tall, slender figure of the young doctor, he scrambled up the lofty bank, like a cat or a monkey, and bolted through the hedge into the field above.
“‘Hillo, hillo, there, boy!’ cried Frank, ‘I want to speak to you.’
“‘Nay, nay,’ cried the boy, ‘I’ll na come near thee. I knaw thee, I knaw thee! though thou’s got thy claiths on. I seed thee i’ th’ cupboard!’”
After a hearty laugh of the whole company, Thorsby said, “Well, take my word for it, the man who tells such stories, and enjoys them, is no despairing swain.”
“Not a bit of it,” said George Woodburn.
One fine May morning that spring, the sun was shining over the dewy landscape as genially as it used to shine before the dark days fell on Woodburn Grange. The larks were caroling as high and inspiringly in theblue air. The young corn was growing as greenly, and the weeders were in the midst of it with their spuds, rooting up the thistles, and with their hands pulling the bright yellow charlock out of it. From tree to tree rung the notes of the thrush and blackbird, and the cuckoo shouted her musical, quaint monotone from the new amber-coloured foliage of the spreading oak. The brooks rippled and tinkled so sweetly down the shadowy glens to the river, and the river glid along as fair and as peacefully as if it had never seen a winter or a crime. There was a glow of flowers along the luxuriant hedge-row banks. There was a golden fire of flowers all over the pastures, and a spirit of tranquil joy lay over all the scene, the outward image of the peace and joy which had once more returned to that pleasant neighbourhood.
All at once the bells of Hillmartin burst out with a merry peal, as if they had caught the contagion of happy nature, and sent theirmusical cadences over wood and valley, giving them the voice of delight, which seemed only wanting to communicate their full tide of new-born pleasure to the hearts of men. The next instant, the three old jangling bells of Cotmanhaye broke out into the best music that they could make, which was but indifferent, but yet had a note of gladness in it, like the voice of some uncouth labourer, whom nature never meant for a musician, but who goes homeward over the dusky slopes of evening, chanting discordantly some rude country song,—there was a happy heart in its limping clangour, which made it welcome. The discord mingling with the harmony of the bells of Hillmartin was toned down into a symphony which was familiar to the ears of the people of the neighbourhood, who knew that it meant, at least, rejoicing. At once the weeders in the corn, and the cottagers in the villages of Hillmartin and Woodburn, stood still, and said, “What isthat for?” And presently, from one quarter or another came the answer, “It is a peal of welcome for Mr. George Woodburn, who last night brought home his wife to Bilts’ Farm.”
“Wife to Bilts’ Farm! Why, what wife?”
“Why, Miss Drury, to be sure!” was the answer of women’s unerring instincts. “Who else should it be?”
“And all forgotten and forgiven?” said the simple people, thoughtfully.
“There was nothing to forgive,” said one clear-headed village woman. “But there are things, no doubt, which can never be forgotten; and Miss Drury must have a stout heart to come back after what has passed here.”
“There’s that in the case,” said an old, grey-headed fellow, “that has the stoutest heart of all—and that is, true love for a true man; and if there be a true man, it is our sober, steady, sensible George Woodburn.May God bless him as he deserves; and He has surely begun it in giving him such a sweet, brave-hearted wife as Elizabeth Drury. You may see it in her face, the very first time you look in it, that she’s one of nature’s true women—loving, and kind, and sensible. Thank God, for sending another such a lady here.”
The event was a holiday in Woodburn, and Hillmartin, and Cotmanhaye, though nobody stopped their work for it; but there was a talking, and a burst of good wishes, and a flush of pleasure in the women’s eyes, and a bright, hearty look about the men, that showed that by everybody’s consent George Woodburn had made the right choice.
Soon there were seen horsemen, and carriages full of ladies, driving up towards Bilts’ Farm—Claverings and Woodburns, Heritages and Thorsbys, Degges and Fairfaxes. Coming and going they were, and all looking as if some good thing had happened to them all.“Who could have thought it,” said the villagers, “only two years ago?” Soon were seen George Woodburn and his tall, buxom, cheery-looking wife, walking soberly down towards the Grange, and all the heads of Woodburn Green put out to have a look after the handsome couple. And to see Letty Thorsby spring out of the porch of the Grange, and fly half down towards the garden-gate to meet her new sister, and such an embracing and kissing. And then, little Leonard Thorsby, with his flaxen locks, like a little burst of sunshine, scampering after his mother, and snatched up and kissed, and held out at arm’s-length, and admired, heavy as he was, by George! And then, Mr. and Mrs. Woodburn hurrying out, and then such hugging and kissing again, and all hurrying into the house, for George says, laughing, “Do just look! all the Green is out watching you!” So in they pop in a crowd. “Well!” say the villagers, “there never wasa woman welcome to a house, if that one is not.”
But in the midst of Elizabeth Woodburn’s joy, there was a dark spot from which she shrunk, as it ever and anon came into her mind. There was somewhere down below the Grange a dreadful place, called Wink’s Ferry, which she and everyone wished could be obliterated from the country. All that could be done, George Woodburn had done. He had had put up a board by the river, with the large wordsWoodburn Ferryupon it; and all the people both there and at Rockville and at Cotmanhaye were requested never more to utter the hateful word Wink’s. It was to be buried in deepest oblivion, so that it should never fall like a sudden knell on the heart of his beloved bride.
Yet mighty as is the power which says in the heart of woman, “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy Godmy God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me,”—yet it was many a long day, yea, long year, before Elizabeth Woodburn could descend to the river-side below the Grange. There was a spot of horror there that made her whole nature shrink. There was a dark shadow which hung over that spot, which was a spectre lurking beneath the otherwise sunny pleasantness of her fate, which she would have given some years of her life to have banished.
Her mother remained in Yorkshire, and would never come near the fatal neighbourhood.
But one fine summer’s evening, as Elizabeth and George were wandering in the orchard of the Grange, Elizabeth said, with a sad seriousness, to him, “George, I have a mind to go down to the ferry—it haunts me continually. I cannot get rid of it. I dream of it as darkand dreadful; and I think, if I could see it on such an evening as this, I should be less affected by it afterwards.”
George looked anxiously at her, and then said—“My dear Elizabeth, weigh well your strength; if youcouldbear it, I think, too, it might have a good effect.” He gave her his arm, and they proceeded down the orchard; he opened the little gate, of which each member of the family carried a key, and they passed out to the river side. Without a word, they walked down to the ferry; a more tranquil scene it was impossible for the human eye to look upon; the river ran full and peacefully, gliding on, the clear gravel seen through its translucent waters. On all sides green meadows, and peaceful banks, overhung with the verdurous trees, the thrush and blackbird chanting as if the whole were ground hallowed to repose, presented anything but a revolting aspect.
Notwithstanding George saw Elizabeth’seye run excitedly from object to object, he knew she was calculating where everything had occurred that she had read of. He felt her shudder by his side; and he said,—“Let us go back, my dear Elizabeth.”
“No, no,” said she, in a voice firm, but full of deep feeling; “let us go on, let us cross, it will do me good.” They went on, George pulled the boat across, and Elizabeth looked around over those expansive meadows. She then proposed to return, and in the same silence they retraced their steps, and went up the orchard to the summer-house in the garden. Elizabeth sat down, and looked pale and faint.
“I will run for some wine,” said George.
“No, no wine, George; bring me Letty’s Eau-de-Cologne.”
George was quickly back. Elizabeth bathed her forehead and inhaled the odour, and then faintly smiling, said,—“I am better, and I shall be better; I am glad I have forcedmyself to cross that ferry, it has given me a different picture in my mind. I shall gradually get to see that only, and I shall be so much happier.”
And this eventually became the case. The ferry was not a place that Elizabeth ever desired to see; there was indeed scarcely any reason that she should go near it; but in her mind the horrible images of the fatal event, as she had read them, had now been softened and concealed, to a certain degree, by the summer evening tranquillity which she had seen, and in the ordinary life at home, the most painful sensations had disappeared on any mention of Woodburn Ferry. “In a country which we both love so much,” she said to her husband, “I would not have a single thing which can cause me a pang or a regret.”
Not many weeks after the marriage of George Woodburn, one morning there was grave bustle in the streets of Castleborough. The tide was observed to be tending towardsthe Friends’ Meeting, and on arriving there, a number of handsome carriages were seen drawn up before the usually so quiet door of that simple tabernacle of silent worshippers. On entering the somewhat large, but very simple meeting-house, with its white-washed walls and plain deal benches, a very different congregation to its usually grave-faced and gravely-dressed one, was seen assembled. Every part of it was crowded with people whose gay costume, especially those of the ladies, made the members of the Society, who were scattered amongst them, look but like little dottings in a lively picture. The walls of the meeting-house were panelled with plain unpainted deal about five feet high, and a raised seat ran along them, on which many of the best known Friends had taken their places, intermingled with some of the most distinguished people of the town and neighbourhood. Along the whole front of the meeting-house ran a gallery raised some steps abovethe body of the place, breasted in front by a balustered railing. In this gallery, which was accessible from both the centre and each end, sat conspicuous in the costliest but plainest of silks, Mrs. Heritage, and by her side her sister-in-law, a most silential and antique-looking personage—Dorothy Qualm, wife of that great professor of Silence, David Qualm, whose solemn face and exactly triangular hat were seen under this gallery on a seat fronting the whole of the assembly. In front of this seat stood a rather large table, with pens and ink and blotting-paper; and a vacancy was left on the seat itself of considerable extent.
All was evidently curiosity and expectation. Never had so gay and crowded a gathering appeared in that house, not even when the most noted Public Friend, that is, ministering Friend, or preacher, from London, Ireland, America, or elsewhere, had had the whole town called together, to hear what he, or she,expected, but was not sure, that the Spirit would give him or her to say. To-day, the brilliant assembly appeared pretty certain of something of interest turning up, and every time that the door behind them opened, there was a general turning round, and often to a disappointment. At length, however, there was certainly an unusual bustle in the lobby; the door was opened with an air of importance by the tall, quaint figure of William Theobold, the drab three-corner-hatted coachman of the eccentric Mr. Barthe, dentist and wit; and in walked up the centre aisle, if it might be so called, no other, arm in arm, than Dr. Frank Leroy and Miss Millicent Heritage. They were followed by their immediate relatives, and advanced and seated themselves in the centre of the seat under the gallery facing the people. There was a general stir and excitement amongst the whole spectator body, and many bright smiles and knowing nods to one another amongstthe ladies,—soon, however, subsiding into a deep silence. The bride and bridegroom had to-day conformed, in a great measure, to the costume of the Society. Millicent was dressed in a lovely dress of richest white satin, and a jaunty though Quaker bonnet of the same material. A white veil covered but did not completely obscure her face, in which her peculiarly oriental style of beauty appeared the more piquant from that simple but truly bridal costume. The Doctor had a plain suit of black, with his coat collarless, certainly, but cut, it might have been, by a Court tailor, for appearance at a royal levee. He appeared at once a very handsome, intellectual young man, a gentleman and a Friend.
“What a lucky fellow!—such a wife, and such a fortune!” was the thought of most of the spectators; and there was no doubt that Frank Leroy thought the same. It was clearly enough written on his grave buthappy face. Around and about the young couple might be seen Mr. Heritage, Mr. Fairfax, the humorous-looking George Barthe, Sir Henry and Lady Clavering, Thorsby and his Letty, Mr. and Mrs. Woodburn, and George and Elizabeth, and with them the Degges.
After a little pause Mrs. Heritage took off her bonnet, dropped softly on her knees in the gallery, and put up a short but fervent prayer for God’s blessing on the ceremony about to take place. Then another little pause of expectation, and the bridegroom took the bride by the hand; they rose, and in the simple formula of words prescribed by the Society, declared that they took each other as husband and wife, and promised mutual love and fidelity till death did them part. On sitting down, there was soon a bustle of unrolling paper on the table, and the clerk of the meeting laid the certificate of marriage before the contracting parties for their signatures.Then the parents and immediate relatives signed it in attestation; after which there was a crowding and a moving up from all quarters of those who were desirous of appending their names to so peculiar a document. Whilst this was doing the newly-married pair, and their nearest of kin, withdrew, and then was heard a rapid rolling away of carriages.
After a short time spent amongst the pleasant hills and rocky dales of Derbyshire, Dr. Leroy and his wife returned to their handsome house in Castleborough Park. If appearances might be relied on, Millicent Leroy had, after all, found in Frank Leroy, the man of her heart. The little season of illusion which had once enwrapped her had left no traces behind it, but such as time had already very much obliterated, and which the affection and merits of a most highly esteemed and popular husband were likely to render ever less perceptible. A very sunny and velvet path was theirs. Vast wealth, a married home and aparental one existed for them, for, like Woodburn Grange, Fair Manor was the resort of the younger branches in almost daily intercourse. A sphere of great usefulness, as well as of a splendid future, lay before Dr. and Millicent Leroy; and those who believe they will show themselves worthy of such superb advantages, we may venture to prognosticate will not be deceived.