All went well at first; Phœbe was jubilant and extremely audible in her replies, Daniel gruff and sheepish as it behoved a rustic bridegroom to be, but just as the Rector uplifting his voice inquired “Dost thou take this woman to be thy wedded wife?” a certain scuffling sound was heard at the further end of the church, and the half-made husband might have been seen to start and falter. “Daniel, wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?” repeated the Rector sternly.
Suppressed titters were heard, not only from the direction of the porch, but actually from the aisles. For the life of him, Daniel could not resist turning his head right and left with an anguished gaze. Horror! There was Abel Bolt peering from behind one pillar, and surely that was Jarge’s impudent face grinning at him from the opposite side. The Rector glared through his spectacles and uplifted his voice yet more.
“Daniel!” he cried emphatically, “wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?”
The best man cleared his throat warningly, and the bride turning a reproachful glance somewhere in the direction of the west window, nudged him with her elbow.
“Speak up!” she whispered. This was the last straw.
Hardly knowing what he did, Daniel started away from her, and whisking round charged through the bridal party, down the nave, thrust aside the knot of gaping onlookers in the porch, descended the flight of steps apparently with one stride, and bounding over the lychgate fled into the fields on the opposite side of the road.
Phœbe, with a stifled shriek, hastened after him with all the speed that her distress of mind and amplitude of person would admit of, but was almost knocked over by her brother Dick, who had started in hot pursuit of the fugitive. Mary Ann, not to be outdone, gallopaded in the rear, and Mr. Cosser with muttered threats of vengeance hobbled in her wake at a considerable distance.
“Yoicks! Gone away!” shouted Abel Bolt, tumbling out of the church followed by Jarge and the whole of the idle crew who had brought about the catastrophe. In another minute, the whole party joined in the chase, and the church was left entirely deserted except for the astonished and scandalised Rector, his clerk and poor old Mrs. Cosser, who remained dissolved in tears in the front bench. Even Daniel’s own relations had joined in pursuit, his sister announcing breathlessly, as she hastened forth, that he must have gone out of his mind.
Meanwhile the fugitive, in spite of the tightness of his wedding boots and the stiffness of his new clothes, careered across country, with almost incredible speed. Now his blue-coated form might be seen leaping a hedge, now scudding over a stretch of pasture. Dick, the best man, was the nearest to him, family pride lending wings to his long legs, but even he was soon distanced, and by the time he had reached the second bank and forced his way through the thorns and briars which topped it, the runaway bridegroom was nowhere to be seen. Dick was at fault, and though when the rest of the pursuers came up they scoured the fields, and “drew” the thickets, and hunted up and down by the banks, and even searched the willow-bed by the river, no trace of the fugitive was to be found. Phœbe had come to a standstill in the midst of the third field, where her father presently joined her. They stood panting opposite each other for a moment or two, after which Phœbe, unfolding a lace-bordered handkerchief, wiped her brow; then restoring it to her pocket, she remarked in a tone of conviction:
“I d’ ’low he’ve a-changed his mind.”