Chapter Thirty.

The Rev. Walter Errol, removing, his surplice in the little vestry at the finish of one of the simplest and most pleasing ceremonies at which he had ever been required to officiate, looked forth through the mullioned window to watch his oldest and best-loved friend passing along the gravelled path in the sunlight with his bride upon his arm.

The sight of John Musgrave married gave him greater satisfaction than anything that had befallen since his own happy marriage-day. The one thing lacking to make his friend the most lovable of men was supplied in the newly-made contract which bound him for good and ill to the woman at his side. There would be, in the vicar’s opinion, so much of good in the union that ill would be crowded out and find no place in the lives of this well-assorted pair, who, during the brief period of their engagement, had practised so successfully that deference to each other’s opinions which smooths away difficulties and prevents a dissimilarity in ideas from approaching disagreement. The future happiness of Mr and Mrs John Musgrave was based on the sure foundation of mutual respect.

While the vicar stood at the window, arrested in the business of disrobing by the engrossment of his thoughts, Robert, having finished rolling up the red carpet in the aisle, entered the vestry and approached the window and stood, as he so often did, at the vicar’s elbow, and gazed also after the newly-married couple, a frown knitting his heavy brows, and, notwithstanding the handsome fee in his pocket, an expression of most unmistakable contempt in his eyes as they rested upon the bridegroom.

“They be done for, sir,” he said, with a gloomy jerk of the head in the direction of the vanishing pair.

The vicar turned his face towards the speaker, the old whimsical smile lighting his features.

“Not done for, Robert. They are just beginning life,” he said.

“They be done for,” Robert persisted obstinately, and stared at the open register which John Musgrave and his wife had signed. “Ay, they be done for.”

“When you married Hannah were you done for?” the vicar inquired.

“Yes, sir, I were,” Robert answered with sour conviction.

It passed through Walter Errol’s mind to wonder whether the non-success of Robert’s marital relations was due solely to Hannah’s fault.

“How came you to marry Hannah?” he asked.

“Did I never tell you ’ow that came about?” Robert said. “I didn’ go wi’ Hannah, not first along. I went wi’ a young woman from Cross-ways. Me an’ ’er had been walking out for a goodish while when ’er says to me one night, ‘Will ’ee come in a-Toosday?’ I says, ‘Yes, I will.’ Well, sir, you never seed rain like it rained that Toosday. I wasn’t goin’ to get into my best clothes to go out there an’ get soaked to the skin in; so I brushed myself up as I was, an’ changed my boots; an’ when I got out ’er turned up ’er nose at me. So I went straight off an’ took up with Hannah.”

“I think,” observed the vicar, “that you were a little hasty.”

“I’ve thought so since, sir,” Robert admitted. “The mistake I made was in ’avin’ further truck wi’ any of them. Leave the wimmin alone, I says, if you want to be comfortable. A man when ’e marries is done for.”

Walter Errol, having finished disrobing, took his soft hat and went out to the motor, which had returned from the Hall to fetch him, and was driven swiftly to the scene of the festivities, the joyous pealing of the bells sounding harmoniously in the lazy stillness of the summer day. Past John Musgrave’s home the motor bore him; past Miss Simpson’s comfortable house, where the blinds were jealously lowered as though a funeral, instead of a wedding, were in progress. And, indeed, for the Moresby spinster the chiming of the marriage-peal was as the funeral knell ringing the last rites over the grave of her dead hopes. Miss Simpson was the only person in Moresby who sympathised with the sexton’s opinion that John Musgrave was done for.

At the Hall only the immediate members of both families were present, with the exception of the vicar and his wife. John Musgrave had stipulated for a quiet wedding. Very proud and happy he looked as, with his wife beside him, he greeted his oldest friend; and the vicar, with an affectionate hand on his shoulder, exclaimed:

“It isn’t Coelebs any longer, John. You were a wise man and waited patiently for the right woman.”

“I hope I shall prove to be the right woman, John,” Peggy whispered, drawing more closely to him as the vicar passed on, and looking up in her husband’s face with wide, diffident grey eyes, eyes that were wells of happiness, despite their anxious questioning.

“My only doubt,” John Musgrave answered gently, “is whether I shall prove worthy of your love, my wife.”

The End.