“If you don’t get up out of your chair,” she said, “and be off to Father McFadden to tell him what’s wanted, it’ll never be done either to-day or any other day.”
Andrew roused himself with a sigh. He took his hat from a peg, and a stout walking-stick from behind a porter barrel. Then, politely but firmly, he put the two women out of the house and locked the door behind them. He was ready to marry Mary Nally—and her shop. He was not prepared to trust her among his porter barrels and his whisky bottles until the ceremony was actually completed.
The law requires that a certain decorous pause shall be made before the celebration of a marriage. Papers must be signed or banns published in church. But Father McFadden had lived so long on Inishrua that he had lost respect for law and perhaps forgotten what the law was. Besides, Andrew was King of the island by right of popular assent, and what is the use of being a king if you cannot override a tiresome law? The marriage took place that afternoon, and Miss Clarence was present, acting as a kind of bridesmaid.
No sheep or heifers were killed, and no inordinate quantity of porter was drunk. There was, indeed, no special festivity on the island, and the other inhabitants took very little notice of what was happening. They were perhaps, as Michael Kane said, too sleepy to be stirred with excitement. But in spite of the general apathy, Miss Clarence was fairly well satisfied with her experience. She felt that she had a really novel subject for the first of her articles on the life and customs of the Irish islanders.
The one thing that vexed her was the thought that Michael Kane had been laughing at her while he talked to her on the way out to the island. On the way home she spoke to him severely.
“You’ve no right,” she said, “to tell a pack of lies to a stranger who happens to be a passenger in your boat.”
“Lies!” said Michael. “What lie was in it? Didn’t I say they’d be married to-day, and they were?”
Miss Clarence might have retorted that no sheep or heifers had been killed and very little porter drunk, but she preferred to leave these details aside and stick to her main point.
“But they didn’t mean to be married,” she said, “and you told me——”
“Begging your pardon, Miss,” said Michael, “but they did mean it. Old Andrew has been meaning it ever since Mrs. Nally died and left Mary with the shop. And Mary was willing enough to go with him any day he asked her. It’s what I was telling you at the first go off. Them island people is dying out for the want of being able to keep from going to sleep. You seen yourself the way it was. Them ones never would have been married at all only for your going to Inishrua and waking them up. It’s thankful to you they ought to be.”