Here they come! No, they don’t; that’s only old Purkis in full uniform, plump, ruddy, glistening with moisture that he is too dignified to remove, as he rolls solemnly down the nave towards the door, waving the people back with his cane. Smile? Not he! beadles don’t smile in public life, only when out of uniform; and as to using a handkerchief, he could not do that, unless compelled by such a fleshquake or sneeze as now shakes Mr Purkis’s frame, caused by that sooty dust that pervades the church, and not by damp.
But now they do come: Patty leaning upon the arm of Harry Clayton; Timson next, rounder than ever, with Janet on his arm—bridesmaids—more friends—a bright confusion of figures, with only one here and there to be recognised in the mirror. But there is Canau; there Mr Grey, who has doffed his surplice; and, right at the back, there is Mrs Purkis, crying and laughing together, but turning solemn directly after, as becomes the pew-opener of St Runwald’s.
Peal up the wedding-march, old Jared! But Jared can’t play; not he. He has blundered several chords, though no one is a bit the wiser. He would break down, only he has known the piece by heart for years. There is music open, stave and cleff and crotchet and quaver; but the big-headed notes seem to be bobbing up and down upon their spindle bodies, and wagging their tails, and waltzing round and round. And really the book might just as well be in the locker as upon the stand; for, though Jared knows it not, it is upside down. There is dew all over Jared’s spectacles, and they refuse to be seen through, while a great tear has trickled down, gathering strength from affluents as it proceeds, till it hangs upon the tip of Jared’s nose, to go plash down at last upon the central G natural of the fingerboard. And there are more weak tears stealing down from behind his spectacles to moisten his cheeks. They might be taken for perspiration, since he is smiling as he plays mechanically, for he never performed in a more soulless fashion in his life.
But then he always was weak, and queer, and unbusinesslike; and “some people are such fools!” It could hardly be expected that at such a time he should be exact in his fingering; but his actions are so odd that one might say, “Bring a strait waistcoat,” only that he is in one already, which crackles at every motion. And now comes a dismal groan, due to the exciting event; for, probably for only the third or fourth time in his life—being, in spite of his vagaries, a most exemplary bellows-boy—Ichabod has let the wind out of the organ.
It does not matter, for the wedding-party is already in the porch, being waited on by a deputation from the Campanological Brethren, in the shape of Beaky Jem of the tenor, who grins and rubs his Roman rostrum as he growls out something about the bells. Timson is at him, though, fighting hard to get a hand into his tight pocket, and fighting just as hard to get it out with what must have been a satisfactory answer; for St Runwald’s peal asserts itself this day, far above the roar of the streets, ringing out merrily in thousands of changes, stimulated by the “sight o’ beer that there was in that belfry sewerly.”
The mirror blank, and then a tall, pale woman listening with clasped hands to a never-wearying tale told her by a strangely-wrinkled little man, who sits and pretends to smoke, and pokes at and arranges the scrubby trifle of hair by his temples with the stem of his pipe—a tale of a little gentle child whose spirit fled as he slept, holding her to his quaint but loving breast. How many times Tim Ruggles has told of little Pine it were hard to say, but neither he nor his listener ever tires; and perhaps it is due to their hands that flowers bloom so sweetly upon the little grave. The fount of tears might have been dry before now; but no! there is always one ready to fall to the child’s memory. A strange, quiet woman this, who rarely speaks, seldom smiles, save when Patty Clayton enters with a dimple-faced baby, and sits and lets the pale, silent woman kneel by her side, and gaze with a yearning love at the tiny piece of humanity, which coos and laughs in her face.
Jared again, and grown older. The man who was puzzled years before by a letter in French from a small Norman town, saying that the writer had been much surprised at not seeing Monsieur Pellet after his note appointing an interview; but that arrangements could be entered into for the reception of one lady boarder. Jared could not understand this letter, but the truth forced itself upon him at last, that it must have been intended for his brother, who was on his way to keep his appointment when that stern voice cried “Stay!”