Ah, these unended buts! what mischief they make in this world of ours!
Then Isoult talked to Hugh, and found that if his description were to be trusted, Alice Wikes would be no woman at all, but an angel from Heaven. Bessy offered to take her sister to visit the bride, and Isoult accepted the offer. Meanwhile, she sketched a mental portrait of Alice. She would be short, and round-faced, and merry: the colour of her hair and eyes Isoult discreetly left blank.
So, three days before the wedding, her future sisters-in-law called upon the bride.
They found Alice’s mother, Mrs Wikes, busy with her embroidery; and as soon as she saw who her guests were, she desired Mrs Alice to be summoned. After a little chat with Mrs Wikes upon things in general, the door opened to admit a girl the exact opposite of Isoult’s imaginary picture. Alice proved tall, oval-faced, and grave.
The wedding was three days later, and on Sunday. Blue was the colour of the bride’s costume, and favel-colour—a bright yellowish-brown—that of the bridesmaids. After the ceremony there was a banquet at Wynscote, and dancing, and a Maypole, and a soaped pig, and barley-break—an old athletic sport, to some extent resembling prisoner’s base. Then came supper, and the evening closed with hot cockles and blind-hoodman—the latter being blindman’s buff. And among all the company, to none but John and Isoult Avery did it ever occur that in these occupations there was the least incongruity with the Sabbath day. For they only were Gospellers; and at that time the Gospellers alone remembered to keep it holy. Rome strikes her pen through the third and fourth commandments, if less notoriously, yet quite as really, as through the second.
The Averys returned home about the 20th of May. They had left all well, and they found all well. And neither they nor any one else saw on the horizon a little cloud like a man’s hand, which was ere long to break in a deluge of hail and fire upon Devonshire and Cornwall.
One evening in the beginning of June, when John Avery sat at the table making professional notes from a legal folio before him, and Isoult, at work beside him, was beginning to wonder why Barbara had not brought the rear-supper, a knock came at the door. Then the latch was lifted, and Mr Anthony Tremayne walked in.
“Heard you the news in Bodmin?” was the question which followed close upon his greeting.
“No,” answered John. “I have not been in Bodmin for nigh a week, nor hath any thence been here.”
“One Master Boddy, the King’s Commissioner for Chantries,” saith he, “came hither o’ Friday; and the folk be all up at Bodmin, saying they will not have the chantries put down; and ’tis thought Father Giles is ahead of them. I much fear a riot, for the people are greatly aggrieved.”