CHAPTER LXXI.
THE CHIMES OF SAXTON
Next morning Miss Wagget was busy, in a great fuss, writing the news to her brother and the sergeant, and for the benefit of the latter she drew such a picture of William Maubray’s virtues and perfections in general as must have made that sagacious man long to possess such a son-in-law. The good lady enclosed a dutiful little note to him from Violet, and wound up with an eloquent lecture, in which she demonstrated that if the sergeant were to oppose this palpable adjustment of Providence, he should be found to fight against Heaven, the consequences of which enterprise she left him to conjecture.
William also spent the entire forenoon over a letter to the same supreme authority; and the letters despatched, there intervened a few days of suspense and wonderful happiness, notwithstanding.
William was waiting in the little post-office of Saxton when the answering letters came. Mrs. Beggs having sorted the contents of the mail with an anxious eye, delivered his letters, and at his desire, those for the Rectory, to William. There was a letter from the sergeant for him. There was no mistaking the tall and peculiar hand. There were two others addressed severally to the ladies at the Rectory. William did not care to read his in Mrs. Beggs’s little parlour, so he took his leave cheerfully, even gaily, with an awful load at his heart.
In his pocket lay his fate sealed. Hardly a soul was stirring in the drowsy little street. Here and there a listless pair of eyes peeped through the miniature panes of a shop window. He could not read the letter where any eye could see him. He hurried round the corner of Garden Row, got on the road leading to Gilroyd, crossed the style that places you upon the path to the Rectory, and in the pretty field, with only half a dozen quiet cows for witnesses, opened and read his London letter.
It told him how well Mr. Sergeant Darkwell liked him, that he believed wedded happiness depended a great deal more on affection, honour, and kindness, than upon wealth. It said that he had aptitudes for the bar, and would no doubt do very well with exertion. It then mentioned what the sergeant could do for his daughter, which William thought quite splendid, and was more, Miss Wagget afterwards said, than she had reckoned upon.
For some years at least they were to live with the sergeant, “putting by your income, my dears, and funding at least five or six hundred a year,” interposed Miss Wagget, who was in a wonderful fuss. “You’ll be rich before you know where you are—you will, indeed! He’s an admirable man—your father’s an admirable man, my dear! I don’t know such a man, except my brother, who’s a man by himself, you know. But next after him your papa, my dear, is the very best man I ever heard of. And you’ll be married here, at Saxton—you shall, indeed. You must remain with us, and be married from this, and I wonder my brother stays so long away, he’ll be as glad as I. The sergeant shall come down to us for the wedding, and give you away at Saxton, and there’s that beautiful spot Wyndel Abbey, so romantic and charming, the very place for a honeymoon, and only fifteen miles away.”