“Oh! Yes, now I recognize him! He belongs to Dr. Grant! It’s the one he sends into town to fetch the mail!”
“Now, do you suppose if I let this poor old pony go, he will find his way home again, as he does from the post office? No matter, I shall return him myself and make amends to Dr. Grant so soon as I can. Because when I saw him nibbling dandelions by the side of the road—the pony that is, not Dr. Grant—I grabbed his halter and pulled myself on him and off we went! I could not wait another moment to see you, Julia. I was in dread, in case I should hear the church bells ringing this morning, and for aught I knew, today was your wedding day....”
“My wedding day is today, William, if Edmund will marry us!”
Fortunately, there was no one else on the road, and he could kiss her to his heart’s content.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When a young lady has just experienced a most ardently desired, but unlooked for, lover’s reunion, she might be forgiven for quailing a little when she subsequently realizes the first witness of her happiness would be—Aunt Norris.
But even if Julia had wanted to withhold the news from her aunt, the faces of the two lovers as they entered the yard, transfigured by love and happiness, testified for them.
Mrs. Norris never cared to have anything she endorsed to be changed or re-arranged, and “what of Mr. Meriwether?—the disappointment—the scandal—the banns—the gown—the neighbours—the imprudence—” made all of the conversation for the first quarter of an hour.
Edmund was also perturbed for Mr. Meriwether’s sake, but loyalty to a man he had never met, stood little chance when confronted with the happiness of a William Price, the cousin he knew and esteemed highly. When William told of his promotion and that he was to have command of his own ship, assigned to duty near England’s shores, Edmund had nothing but the heartiest congratulations for them both.
Edmund could not help feeling a pang of envy when he saw his sister with the man she loved, as secure in the knowledge of his affection, as she was confident of her wish to return it, while he, Edmund, had allowed his desire for Mary to overcome his scruples, and was paying a mortifying price. But of course he allowed nothing of his own feelings to cloud their happiness.
“Shall I read the first banns for you this morning, Julia?” he asked. “It is not every day I have it in my power to so thoroughly disconcert my parishioners.”
Julia gave William a beseeching look and he, speaking for the first time on behalf of himself and his life’s partner, declined the offer, explaining, “I must be back to Portsmouth in five days—and Julia is coming with me. We must swear our oaths and you must give us a license, Edmund.”
“What!” exclaimed Mrs. Norris. “Julia, are you going to live in Portsmouth?”
“No, Aunt Norris, I shall go with William—aboard the Protector.”
“Have you gone mad? Live aboard a ship?”
William’s grin stretched from ear to ear, and he nearly smothered his aunt in an enormous hug, then picked her up by the waist and twirled her around in circles. “Yes, my dear auntie, by all that’s wonderful, she is to run away with me to sea!”
He set her down again and she tottered about, momentarily silenced.
Edmund had the unhappy duty of bringing William and Julia down from their heavenly flight by saying, “My dear sister and my soon-to-be-brother, I am sorry, but I have not the authority to marry you by license. Only my bishop can issue a license, and he is in Peterborough.”
“Well!” exclaimed William, “We are off for Peterborough, then.”
“And a license may take as long as a week to arrange.”
“But what about Maria?” Julia demanded. “You obtained a license for her in one day, when she married Henry Crawford.”
“Not I—it was a special license from the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, through the intervention of some powerful friends in London. And I think, the payment of an extraordinarily large fee.”
“There, you see,” added Mrs. Norris, “the church is no friend of impetuous marriages!”
“But what about the bishop in Peterborough?” asked William. “Once we explain the situation to him, he would act swiftly for us, I am sure.”
“I do not pretend to know the romantic inclinations of my bishop, but I can tell you that he is eighty-three years old and you will not find a tortoise with a greater fondness for studied deliberation than he.”
Julia looked up at William with confident expectation; this was the first test of his ingenuity and resourcefulness as a husband, and she relied on him to discover a way to make the trip to Peterborough and back, with a license in their pocket, in time for him to report for duty in Plymouth. He paced, considering and calculating, and she saw with dismay that his shoulders slumped.
“I could not venture to risk it,” he said. “I could not be certain of reporting back in time.”
“Oh Edmund, what are we to do!” exclaimed Julia, turning to her brother. “It is very trying that you cannot marry us.”
William paced about the parlour some more, lost in thought, then said, “Julia, I will not suggest a Scottish
