The Rev. Walter Errol, removing, his surplice in the little vestry at the finish of one of the simplest and most pleasing ceremonies at which he had ever been required to officiate, looked forth through the mullioned window to watch his oldest and best-loved friend passing along the gravelled path in the sunlight with his bride upon his arm.
The sight of John Musgrave married gave him greater satisfaction than anything that had befallen since his own happy marriage-day. The one thing lacking to make his friend the most lovable of men was supplied in the newly-made contract which bound him for good and ill to the woman at his side. There would be, in the vicar’s opinion, so much of good in the union that ill would be crowded out and find no place in the lives of this well-assorted pair, who, during the brief period of their engagement, had practised so successfully that deference to each other’s opinions which smooths away difficulties and prevents a dissimilarity in ideas from approaching disagreement. The future happiness of Mr and Mrs John Musgrave was based on the sure foundation of mutual respect.
While the vicar stood at the window, arrested in the business of disrobing by the engrossment of his thoughts, Robert, having finished rolling up the red carpet in the aisle, entered the vestry and approached the window and stood, as he so often did, at the vicar’s elbow, and gazed also after the newly-married couple, a frown knitting his heavy brows, and, notwithstanding the handsome fee in his pocket, an expression of most unmistakable contempt in his eyes as they rested upon the bridegroom.
“They be done for, sir,” he said, with a gloomy jerk of the head in the direction of the vanishing pair.
The vicar turned his face towards the speaker, the old whimsical smile lighting his features.
“Not done for, Robert. They are just beginning life,” he said.
“They be done for,” Robert persisted obstinately, and stared at the open register which John Musgrave and his wife had signed. “Ay, they be done for.”
“When you married Hannah were you done for?” the vicar inquired.
“Yes, sir, I were,” Robert answered with sour conviction.
It passed through Walter Errol’s mind to wonder whether the non-success of Robert’s marital relations was due solely to Hannah’s fault.