The poor cannot afford the time to be as sentimental over such things as the rich. Larry kissed his cousin two or three times on the forehead in signification of the compact they had just entered into, and then he got up and shook himself, and prepared to go back to his afternoon work.
‘That’s a good job settled,’ he thought as he did so; ‘it will make Lizzie happy, and drive a deal of nonsense may be out of my head. But if ever I can pay out that scoundrel Darley I’ll do it, if it costs me the last drop of my blood.’
The blind girl regarded what had passed between her cousin and herself with very different feelings. Condemned, by reason of her infirmity, to pass much of her young life in solitude, the privation had repaid itself by giving her the time and opportunity for an amount of self-culture which, if subjected to the rough toil and rougher pleasures of her class, she never could have attained. Her ideas regarding the sanctity of love and marriage were very different from those of other Corston girls. She could never have ‘kept company,’ as they termed it, with one man this month and another the next. Her pure mind, which dwelt so much within itself, shrank from the levity and coarseness with which she had heard such subjects treated, and believing, as she had done, that she should never be married, she had pleased herself by building up an ideal of what a husband should be, and how his wife would love and reverence him. And this ideal had always had for its framework a fancied portrait of her cousin Laurence. In reality, this young fellow was an average specimen of a fresh-faced country youth, with plenty of colour and flesh and muscle. But to the blind girl’s fancy he was perfection. Her little hands from babyhood had traced each feature of his face until she knew every line by heart, and though she had never acknowledged it even to herself, she had been in love with him ever since she was capable of understanding the meaning of the term. So that although his proposal to marry her had come as a great surprise, it had also come as a great glory, and set her heart throbbing with the pleasant consciousness of returned affection.
She was in a flutter of triumph and delight all the afternoon, whilst Larry was attending to his horses, and hardly knew how to believe in her own happiness. Her aunt brushed and plaited her long hair for her till it was as glossy and neat as possible, and tied her new cherry-coloured ribbon round the girl’s throat that she might not disgrace her son’s choice at the merry-making. And then Lizzie sat down to wait for her affianced lover’s return, the proudest maid in Corston. Larry came in punctually for his tea, and the first thing he did was to notice the improvement in his little cousin’s appearance; and indeed joy had so beautified her countenance that she was a different creature from what she had been on the sands that morning. The apathy and indifference to life had disappeared, and a bright colour bloomed in her soft cheeks. As she tucked her hand through her cousin’s arm, and they set off to walk together to Farmer Murray’s harvest-home, Mrs Barnes looked after them with pride, and declared that if poor Liz had only got her sight they would have made the handsomest couple in the parish.
Larry was rather silent as they went up to the barn together, but Liz was not exigeante, and trotted by his side with an air of perfect content. When they arrived they found the place already full, but the ‘quality’ had not yet arrived, and until they did so, no one ventured to do more than converse quietly with his neighbour, although the fiddlers from Wells were all ready and only waiting a signal to strike up. But in those days the working men did not consider their festival complete without the presence of the master, and it would have been a sore affront if the members and guests of the household had not also joined them in order to open the ball and set the liquor flowing. In these days of Radicalism perhaps they find they can get on just as well without them. Larry still kept Lizzie’s arm snugly tucked within his own as he described to her how beautiful the walls of the barn looked hung with flags and decorated with flowers and evergreens, and what a number of lamps there were, and what a lot of liquor and eatables were stowed away at the further end. He was still talking to her rapidly, and, as she imagined, somewhat uneasily, when a cheer rose up from a group of rustics outside, and Larry gave a start that almost disengaged her from his clasp.
‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded. ‘Is it the gentry coming, Larry?’
‘Yes! ’tis they, sure enough. Keep close to me, Liz—I don’t want to part from you, not for one moment.’
‘Oh, Larry! that do make me feel so happy,’ she whispered. As she spoke, the party from Mavis Farm entered the barn and were received with a shout of welcome. Mr Murray, a fine, hale old gentleman, and his sons came first; then Miss Rosa, looking rather conscious, tripping after her brothers in a white muslin dress. The farmer advanced to the beer barrel, and having filled his glass, drank success to all present, and asked them to give three cheers for a bountiful harvest. When that ceremony was completed the fiddlers struck up a merry country dance, and every one was at liberty to drink and caper about. The young people from Mavis Farm all took part in the first dance, and Rosa Murray came up and asked Larry if he would be her partner on the occasion. She ought in fairness to have opened the ball with her father’s bailiff or one of the upper servants, but she preferred the young groom, with whom she held daily intercourse, and she was accustomed to go her own way without reference to anybody’s feelings. As she approached the cousins she gave Lizzie a kindly welcome.
‘I am so glad you have come up, Lizzie; and now your cousin must get you a nice seat until this dance is ended, for I intend him to open the ball with me.’
This was considered a great honour on the part of the villagers, and the blind girl coloured with pleasure to think that her fiancé had been selected for the ceremony.