The lover stood in sad contemplation, and then he remarked, ‘I am in a wilderness of uncertainty.’
Aspull carried the ‘pretty phrase’ upstairs to his mistress.
‘Tell Sir Edward that I will see him,’ said Mrs. Bennett.
When serving-man and cash-keeper had left the wooer and the wooed to themselves, the latter went methodically to matters of business and matters of sentiment. Sir Edward had the privilege which custom gave a lover, on declaring himself; he ‘saluted’ the lady. He then went into details as to his state and estate, to all of which the widow listened with interest. When he touched on the question of affection, the handsome widow looked at the handsome widower, but she answered neither yea nor nay. She kept him as he was. Indeed, the knight begged her to defer her answer till he again presented himself to her. She consented, but therewith she remarked, ‘I have no present purpose of marrying.’ She would name a second day for the meeting, after her cousin Cradock (a friend of Sir Edward’s) should come to town. Dering saw that she was desirous he should then leave her to herself. He respectfully kissed the formally offered cheek, and bowing, withdrew. He, no doubt, went and told all to Sir Heneage.
Mistress Bennett said of Dering, soon after he had retired, ‘He comes not as boisterous as Steward and Sir Peter come. Steward! As soon as I get from him the broad seal which releases my child, he may be hanged ere I have anything more to do with him.’ What she said of both these suitors was duly reported to the third. Whereupon he pressed his suit and he got friends to press it for him. The widow, however, could not be hurried. Her cousin Cradock was a man it behoved her to consult upon a family question like the present; and the Recorder, being not only her friend but her suitor’s, would be indispensable authority on matters both of law and of property.
Day after day Dering’s patience waned till there was none left. On New Year’s day, 1629, the scene was of the liveliest at the widow’s house. Sir Edward had thought to frighten her into favouring his suit by courteously asking for the returning to him of his letters. The widow sent them back without a word of comment. Her friends standing round her wondered at her decision, and, if the lady and cavalier told their respective stories to Finch he probably looked as wise as a judge while he listened.
The scene is still at the widow’s house, and there again Sir Edward treads the stage. He cannot call on Mistress Bennett, but he can on Mistress Norton, who is his good friend, and the widow’s companion. From her and other household sources he hears that the widow is often sad and silent. If she breaks silence, it is only to remark that she will never marry at all. If Mrs. Norton commends Sir Edward the widow beshrews her companion, and protests that she hears so much of him all day long, she ‘can’t sleep all night for dreaming of him.’ Perhaps in one of those night visions she confounded Dering with Raven, for she dreamed that she ran away from him in her nightgear, out of the bedroom into her great parlour, whereby she caught catarrh. However, Sir Edward could not push his renewed suit to a happy termination. He sat for an hour with Mrs. Norton, talking of the widow, when he would have preferred to be talking with the widow herself. The latter was reported to be sad, in perplexity, and not likely to marry at all—just yet. This did not render Sir Edward’s suit desperate; but he wrote himself ‘fool’ for having asked for the return of his letters, when Newman told him that she had double services of plate, for town and country use, and that she had that glory of all proudly furnished houses of the olden time, beds, worth one hundred pounds the bed.
Again, the scene shifts to the street before Sir George Croke’s house. The lady is about to descend from her chariot, and lo! the lover is there with a petition to be allowed to assist her. He does more, of course; he escorts her into the parlour, where the judge and many ladies are assembled. While general conversation went on, Sir Edward assiduously courted the widow from behind her chair. They talk in whispers, and are let alone. It is all prayer on one side, fencing prettily on the other. Prettily made accusations are humbly answered; she will not be pressed, not she. Her final reply should be made through her cousin, Cradock.
‘Pray,’ said Dering, ‘sweeten the answer with your own breath.’ And then Sir George drank to him in a glass of muscado while Sir Edward kissed the lady’s cheek. As the judge and the lover parted at the door, the former did not hesitate to declare his conviction that the widow was not to be won.
‘Won she must be,’ thought Sir Edward, ‘by one means or another.’ He rather stooped to find them. For instance, on a certain morning the widow’s four-year-old son was walking with his nursemaid, Susan, in Finsbury Fields; Susan was induced by a friend to take the boy to Sir Edward’s lodging, where Dering regaled him with cake, gave him an amber box, treated the maid to a glass of wine, hoped her mistress would not be angry with him, and put in the maid’s hand a five-shilling piece.