‘Law sir! The post-boy, he told me. But, beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Napeer, my daughter, she lives in Holkham willage; and I’ve heard you preach afore now.’
‘Let’s have the dinner by all means,’ said I.
‘If the Bishop sequesters my living,’ cried Napier, with solemnity, ‘I’ll summon the landlord for defamation of character. But time’s up. You must make for the boat-house, which is on the other side of the park. I’ll go with you to the head of the lake.’
We had not gone far, when we heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. What did we see but an open carriage, with two ladies in it, not a hundred yards behind us.
‘The aunt! by all that’s—!’
What— I never heard; for, before the sentence was completed, the speaker’s long legs were scampering out of sight in the direction of a clump of trees, I following as hard as I could go.
As the carriage drove past, my Friar Lawrence was lying in a ditch, while I was behind an oak. We were near enough to discern the niece, and consequently we feared to be recognised. The situation was neither dignified nor romantic. My friend was sanguine, though big ardour was slightly damped by the ditch water. I doubted the expediency of trying the boat-house, but he urged the risk of her disappointment, which made the attempt imperative.
The padre returned to the inn to dry himself, and, in due course, I rejoined him. He met me with the answer to my note. ‘The boat-house,’ it declared, ‘was out of the question. But so, of course, was the possibility of change. We must put our trust in Providence. Time could make no difference in our case, whatever it might do with others. She, at any rate, could wait for YEARS.’ Upon the whole the result was comforting—especially as the ‘years’ dispensed with the necessity of any immediate step more desperate than dinner. This we enjoyed like men who had earned it; and long before I deposited my dear friar in his cell both of us were snoring in our respective corners of the chaise.
A word or two will complete this romantic episode. The next long vacation I spent in London, bent, needless to say, on a happy issue to my engagement. How simple, in the retrospect, is the frustration of our hopes! I had not been a week in town, had only danced once with my fiancée, when, one day, taking a tennis lesson from the great Barre, a forced ball grazed the frame of my racket, and broke a blood vessel in my eye.
For five weeks I was shut up in a dark room. It was two more before I again met my charmer. She did not tell me, but her man did, that their wedding day was fixed for the 10th of the following month; and he ‘hoped they would have the pleasure of seeing me at the breakfast!’ [I made the following note of the fact: N.B.—A woman’s tears may cost her nothing; but her smiles may be expensive.]