“I shall love it,” he replied, with enthusiasm.
“Ah, you don’t know how expensive they are,” she hesitated. “You see, it isn’t only what shows on top”—her voice died down to a luscious whisper—“it’s all the things underneath as well. Women’s clothes are rather wonderful, you know.”
She smiled shyly, and at that moment their marriage was to him a thing most fervently to be desired.
Events moved quickly, and it was decided that the engagement should not be of long duration. The news of the coming wedding caused a great stir in the village; and when the banns were read in the little church all eyes were turned upon them as they sat, he in the Squire’s pew, and she with her mother near by. They formed a curious contrast in type: she, with her fair hair, her childlike face, and her dainty little figure; and he with his swarthy complexion, his dark, restless eyes, and his rather untidy clothes. People wondered whether they would be happy, and the general opinion was that the little lamb had fallen into the power of a wolf. The village, in fact, had not taken kindly to the new Squire and his “foreign” ways; and Mrs. Spooner, the doctor’s wife, had voiced the general opinion by nicknaming him “Black Rupert.”
The weeks passed by rapidly, and soon Christmas was upon them. The wedding was fixed for the end of January, and during that month Jim caused various alterations to be made in the furnishing of the manor, in accordance with Dolly’s wishes, for she held very decided views in this regard, and did not agree with his retention of so many of the mid-Victorian features in the drawing-room and the bedrooms. He himself had intended at first to be rid of most of these things, but later he had begun to feel, as Mr. Beadle had said he would, that he owed a certain homage to the past.
“Men don’t understand about these things,” Dolly said to him, patting his face; “but, if you want to please me, you’ll let me make a list of the pieces of furniture that ought to be got rid of and sell them.”
The consequence was that a van-load left the manor a few days later, and Miss Proudfoote and the vicar held one another’s hand as it passed, and choked with every understandable emotion, while Mr. and Mrs. Longarm wept openly at the gates.
The wedding-day at length arrived, and the ceremony proved a very trying ordeal to Jim; for Mr. Glenning had organized the village demonstrations of goodwill, with the result that the school children, blue with cold, were lined up at the church door, the pews inside were packed with uncomfortably-dressed yokels with burnished faces and creaking boots, and a great deal of rice was thrown as the happy couple left the building.
Afterwards there was a reception at the Darling’s cottage; and Jim, wearing a tail-coat and a stiff collar for the first time in his life, suffered torments which were not entirely ended by a later change into a brand-new suit of grey tweed. Throughout this trying time Mrs. Darling, fat and flushed, proved to be his comforter and his stand-by; and it was through her good offices that the hired car, which was to take them to the railway station at Oxford, claimed them an hour too early.
Dolly, who had looked like an angel of Zion in her wedding dress, appeared, in her travelling costume, like a dryad of the Bois de Boulogne, and Jim, who had seen something of her trousseau, turned to Mrs. Darling in rapture.