He knew no more about the business than the veriest schoolboy; but he had a vague idea that you could buy a license somewhere in that strange locality, and that armed with that he could marry Leslie right away at once. At once! The thought sent the blood rushing to his handsome face, and made St. Paul's Cathedral, hard by which is Doctors' Commons, waver before his eyes.
A seedy-looking gentleman led him to the Faculty office where the mystic license was to be obtained, and a grave and sedate clerk got off a high stool at a desk and put several questions to Yorke, who for the first time in his life—or the second, perhaps, for he was nervous when he had asked Leslie to be his wife—felt embarrassed and agitated.
"Is it an ordinary license you require, or a special?" asked the clerk.
Yorke looked doubtful.
"What is the difference?" he asked, almost shyly, and struggling with an actual blush.
The clerk eyed him with cold superiority.
"By an ordinary license," he explained, "you can marry in the church of the parish in which one of the parties resides; and only there. And he or she must have resided there fifteen days. With a special license you can marry in a particular church without having resided in the parish fifteen days; but you would have to give sufficient reasons for requiring this special license."
Yorke stared at the dingy floor while he thought the matter out.
He knew of a quiet little church near Bury Street—a "little church around the corner," so to speak, to which he and Leslie could go, the morning after her arrival in London; and with no one but the parson, the clerk, and pew-opener the wiser. Yes, an ordinary license would do, he said.
The clerk inclined his head—just as if he were a shopman selling gloves!—and went off to another clerk at another desk, and presently appeared with an affidavit.