All in the dark

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

And so, on and on, ran good Miss Wagget, arranging everything for the young people, and as it were, counting the turnpikes, and packing their trunks for the happy excursionists, and making them comfortable in the pretty little inn at Wyndel Abbey, where she had once spent a week.

Well would it be for castle-builders in general if their dreams proved all as true as those of fanciful and kindly Miss Wagget did, on this occasion.

It was agreed it was to be a very quiet wedding. At secluded Saxton, indeed, it would not have been easy to make it anything else. Sergeant Darkwell of course gave pretty Violet away.

Honest Dr. Drake was there, in an unprofessional blue coat and buff waistcoat, and with a bouquet in his button-hole, in which not a single camomile flower figured. Miss Drake, too, in a lavender silk; and wishing the gay couple every good from her heart, notwithstanding her surprise that Sergeant Darkwell should have permitted his child to marry at so early an age as eighteen—nineteen? Well, one year here or there doesn’t signify a great deal, she fancied. Good old Winnie Dobbs, too, in a purple silk and new bonnet, which must have been quite in the fashion, for all Saxton admired it honestly. A little way from the communion rails, behind the gentlefolks, she stood or kneeled, edified, only half credulous, smiling sometimes, and crying a great deal—thinking, I am sure, of kind old Aunt Dinah, who was not to see that hour. Winnie, I mention parenthetically, is still housekeeper at Gilroyd, and very happy, with nothing but a little rheumatism to trouble her.

Here every year William and Violet pass some time, and the happiest month of all the twelve, though the estates and title have come to him, and he is Sir William and she Lady Maubray. But the change has not spoiled either.

The honest affections and friendly nature delight in the old scenes and associates; and in summer sunsets, under the ancient chestnuts, they ramble sometimes, her hand locked in his; and often, I dare say, he runs over those delightful remembrances, still low—still in a lover’s tone, she looking down on the grass and wild flowers, as she walks beside him and listens as she might to a sweet air, always welcome, the more welcome that she knows it so well; and they read the inscription on the beech tree, time has not effaced it yet, they read it smiling, in their happy dream, with that something of regret that belongs to the past, and all the tenderness that tones the uncertain mortal future.

Sometimes William says a word of Trevor, and she laughs, perhaps a little flattered at the remembrance of a conquest. Vane Trevor is very well, not married yet, they say, grown a little stout, not often at Revington. He does not put himself much in the way of Sir William, but is very friendly when they correspond on Saxton matters, workhouse, and others. He has not renewed his attentions at Kincton. Clara has grown “awfully old,” he has been heard to remark. She has latterly declined gaieties, has got to the very topmost platform of High-churchism, from which a mere step-ladder may carry her still higher. Dean Sancroft, who fought the Rev. John Blastus in the great controversy, you must remember, on credence tables, candles, and superaltars, is not unfrequently an inmate of Kincton, and people begin to canvass probabilities.

But whither have I drifted? Let us come back to quiet old Saxton Church, and the marriage service. The Miss Mainwarings and a pretty Miss Darkwell, a cousin of the bride’s, attended as bridesmaids. And with Sergeant Darkwell had arrived the “silent woman.” She could not help her taciturnity any more than her steady gray eyes, which used to terrify William so, while he haunted the drawing-room in town. She attended, in very handsome and appropriate costume, and made Vi a very pretty present of old-fashioned jewellery, and was seen to dry her gray eyes during the beautiful “solemnisation of matrimony,” as good Doctor Wagget, in the old church, under the oak-roof which had looked down for so many centuries on so many young kneeling couples, in the soft glow of the old stained windows whose saints looked smiling on with arms crossed over their breasts, read the irrevocable words aloud, and the village congregation reverently listening, heard how these two young mortals, like the rest, had “given and pledged their troth, either to other, and declared the same by giving and receiving of a ring, and by joining of hands,” and how the good rector pronounced that “they be man and wife together,” in the name of the glorious Trinity.

As we walk to the village church, through the church-yard, among the gray, discoloured headstones that seem to troop slowly by us as we pass, the lesson of change and mortality is hardly told so sublimely as in the simple order of our services. The pages that follow the “Communion” open on the view like the stations in a pilgrimage. The “Baptism of Infants”—“A Catechism”—“The Order of Confirmation”—“The Solemnisation of Matrimony”—“The Visitation of the Sick”—“The Burial of the Dead.” So, the spiritual events of life are noted and provided for, and the journey marked from the first question—“Hath this child been already baptised or no?” down to the summing up of life’s story—“Man that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down as a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”

And so Doctor Wagget, after the blessing invoked, and his beautiful office ended, smilingly bids William “Kiss your wife,” and there is a fluttering of gay ribbons, and many smiling faces, and a murmuring of pleased voices, and greetings and good wishes, as they go to the vestry-room to sign Dr. Wagget’s ancient ledger of all such doings.