CHAPTER LXXXIV.
MR. MEADOWS went to the bank—into the parlor—and said he must draw seven thousand pounds of cash and securities. The partners look blank.
“I know,” said Meadows, “I should cripple you. Well, I am not going to, nor let any one else—it would not suit my book. Just hand me the securities and let me make over that sum to George Fielding and Thomas Robinson. There! now for some months to come those two men are not to know how rich they are, in fact not till I tell them.” A very ready consent to this was given by both partners; I am afraid I might say an eager consent.
“There! now I feel another man, that is off me anyway,” and Meadows strode home double the man. Soon his new top-boots were on, and his new dark blue coat with flat double-gilt buttons, and his hat broadish in the brim, and he looked the model of a British yeoman; he reached Grassmere before eleven o'clock. It was to be a very quiet wedding, but the bridesmaids, etc., were there, and Susan all in white, pale but very lovely. Father-in-law cracking jokes, Susan writhing under them.
“Now, then, is it to be a wedding without bells, for I hear none?”
“That it shall not,” cried one of the young men; and off they ran to the church.
Meantime Meadows was the life and soul of the mirthful scene. He was in a violent excitement that passed with the rustics for gayety natural to the occasion. They did not notice his anxious glances up the hill that led to Newborough; his eager and repeated looks at his watch, the sigh of relief when the church-bells pealed out, the tremors of impatience, the struggle to appear cool as he sent one to hurry the clerk, another to tell the clergyman the bride was ready; the stamp of the foot when one of the bridesmaids took ten minutes to tie on a bonnet. He walked arm in arm, with Susan waiting for this girl; at last she was ready. Then came one running to say that the parson was not come home yet. What it cost him not to swear at the parson with Susan on his arm and the church in sight!
While he was thus fuming inwardly, a handsome, dark-eyed youth came up and inquired which was the bride. She was pointed out to him. “A letter for you, Miss Merton.”
“For me? Who from?”
She glanced at the handwriting, and Meadows looked keenly in the boy's face. “A Jew,” said he to himself. “Susan, you have got your gloves on.” And in a moment he took the letter from her, but quietly, and opened it as if to return it to her to read. He glanced down it, saw “Jefferies, postmaster,” and at the bottom “Isaac Levi.” With wonderful presence of mind he tore it in pieces. “An insult, Susan,” he cried. “A mean, malignant insult to set you against me—a wife against her husband.”