“Wicked to get married!” said Frederic; “not according to my idea of the Christian religion.”
“Oh! but you know what I mean,” and she gave his arm a slight caressing pinch.
At this time her uncle had gone to his own room; her cousins had gone to their studies, by which I believe they intended to signify the proper smoking of a pipe of tobacco in the rectory kitchen; and Mrs. Granger, seated in her easy chair, had gone to her slumbers, dreaming of the amount of fuel with which that kitchen boiler must be supplied.
“I shall bring a breach of promise against you,” said Frederic, “if you don’t appear in church with bridal array on Monday, the 12th of January, and pay the penalty into the war-treasury. That would be a spoiling of the Amalekite.”
Then he got hold of the fingers which had pinched him.
“Of course I shan’t put it off, unless you agree.”
“Of course you won’t.”
“But, dear Fred, don’t you think we ought?”
“No; certainly not. If I thought you were in earnest I would scold you.”
“I am in earnest, quite. You need not look in that way, for you know very well how truly I love you. You know I want to be your wife above all things.”
“Do you?”
And then he began to insinuate his arm round her waist; but she got up and moved away, not as in anger at his caress, but as showing that the present moment was unfit for it.
“I do,” she said, “above all things. I love you so well that I could hardly bear to see you go away again without taking me with you. I could hardly bear it—but I could bear it.”
“Could you? Then I couldn’t. I’m a weaker vessel than you, and your strength must give way to my weakness.”
“I know I’ve no right to tax you, if you really care about it.”
Frederic F. Frew made no answer to this in words, but pursued her in her retreat from the sofa on which they had sat.
“Don’t, Fred. I am so much in earnest! I wish I knew what I ought to do to throw in my two mites.”
“Not throw me over, certainly, and break all the promises you have made for the last twelve months. You can’t be in earnest. It’s out of the question, you know.”
“Oh! I am in earnest.”
“I never heard of such a thing in my life. What good would it do? It wouldn’t bring the cotton in. It wouldn’t feed the poor. It wouldn’t keep your aunt’s boiler hot.”
“No; that it wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Granger, starting up; “and coals are such a terrible price.”
Then she went to sleep again and ordered in large supplies in her dreams.
“But I should have done as much as the widow did. Indeed I should, Fred. Oh, dear! to have to give you up! But I only meant for a year.”
“As you are so very fond of me—”
“Of course I’m fond of you. Should I let you do like that if I was not?”
At the moment of her speaking he had again got his arm round her waist.
“Then I’m too charitable to allow you to postpone your happiness for a day. We’ll look at it in that way.”
“You won’t understand me, or rather you do understand me, and pretend that you don’t, which is very wrong.”
“I always was very wicked.”
“Then why don’t you make yourself better? Do not you too wish to be a widow? You ought to wish it.”
“I should like to have an opportunity of trying married life first.”
“I won’t stay any longer with you, Sir, because you are scoffing. Aunt, I’m going to bed.” Then she returned again across the room, and whispered to her lover, “I’ll tell you what, Sir, I’ll marry you on Monday, the 12th of January, if you’ll take me just as I am now; with a bonnet on, and a shawl over my dress, exactly as I walked out with you before dinner. When I made the promise, I never said anything about fine clothes.”
“You may come in an old red cloak, if you like it.”
“Very well; now mind I’ve got your consent. Good night, Sir. After all it will only be half a mite.”
She had turned towards the door, and had her hand upon the lock, but she came back into the room, close up to him.
“It will not be a quarter of a mite,” she said. “How can it be anything if I get you!” Then she kissed him, and hurried away out of the room, before he could again speak to her.
“What, what, what!” said Mrs. Granger, waking up. “So Nora has gone, has she?”
“Gone; yes, just this minute,” said Frew, who had turned his face to the fire, so that the tear in his eyes might not be seen. As he took himself off to his bed, he swore to himself that Nora Field was a trump, and that he had done well in securing for himself such a wife; but it never occurred to him that she was in any way in earnest about her wedding dress. She was a trump because she was so expressive in her love to himself, and because her eyes shone so brightly when she spoke eagerly on any matter; but as to her appearing at the altar in a red cloak, or, as was more probable, in her own customary thick woollen shawl, he never thought about it. Of course she would be married as other girls are married.
Nor had Nora thought of it till that moment in which she made the proposition to her lover. As she had said before, her veil was ordered, and so was her white silk dress. Her bonnet also had been ordered, with its bridal
