The dinner we had at the inn was not a success. The waiters evidently settled that we were a wedding-party, and charged accordingly. Mary tried hard to keep Revitts from taking any more to drink; but he said it was necessary on a day like that, and ordered wine accordingly.
He drank slowly, and never once showed the slightest trace of intoxication; but the wine also produced a strange irritability, which made him angry, even to being fierce at times; and over and over again I saw the tears in poor Mary’s eyes.
Ever and again that bigamy case—real or imaginary—of which he had heard as we came down kept cropping up, and the more Mary tried to turn the conversation, the more eager he became to discuss it. The wedding-day, his wife, my remarks, all were forgotten or set aside, so that he might explain to us, with a vast amount of minutiae, how he would have got up such a case, beginning with the preliminary inquiries and ending with the culprit’s sentence.
We had it over the dinner, with the waiters in the room; we had it in culs-de-sac in the maze; and we had it over again in Bushy Park, as we sat under the shade of a great chestnut; after which Revitts lay down, seeming to drop asleep, and Mary said to me, piteously:
“I do believe, dear, as he’s took it into his head that I’ve committed big-a-mee?”
The words were uttered in a whisper, but they seemed to galvanise Revitts, who started up into a sitting posture, and exclaimed sharply:
“I don’t know as you ain’t. I never cross-examined you before we was married. But look here, Mary Revitts, it’s my dooty to tell you as what you say now will be took down, and may be used as evidence against you.”
After which oracular delivery he lay down and went off fast asleep, leaving Mary to weep in silence, and wish we had never come away from home.
I could not help joining her in the wish, though I did not say so, but did all I could to comfort her, as Mr Peter Rowle’s moral aphorisms about drink kept coming to my mind. Not that poor Revitts had, in the slightest degree, exceeded; and we joined in saying that it was all due to over-excitement consequent upon his illness.
“If I could only get him home again, poor boy, I wouldn’t, care,” said Mary; and we then comforted ourselves with the hope that he would be better when he awoke, and that then we would go to one of the many places offering, have a quiet cup of tea, which would be sure to do him good, and then go back home, quietly, inside the omnibus.