“It must be a wedding!” decided Harry.
The next moment the chariot was in motion; was soon about to pass him, the bride and bridegroom within it. A very dark but good-looking man, with an air of command in his face, he, but a stranger to Harry; she, Eliza. She wore a grey silk dress, a white bonnet, with orange blossoms and a veil, which was quite the fashionable wedding attire of the day. Her head was turned, nodding its farewells yet to the crowd, and she did not see her cousin as the chariot swept by.
“Dear me!” he exclaimed, mentally. “I wonder who she has married?”
Staying quietly where he was until the spectators should have dispersed, whose way led them mostly in opposite directions, Harry next saw the clerk come out of the church by the small vestry door, lock it and cross over to the stile: which brought him out close to the gig.
“Why, my heart alive!” he exclaimed. “Is it Captain Carradyne?”
“That’s near enough,” said Harry, who knew the title was accorded him by the rustic natives of Church Leet, as he bent down with his sunny smile to shake the old clerk’s hand. “You are hearty as ever, I see, John. And so you have had a wedding here?”
“Ay, sir, there have been one in the church. I was not in my place, though. The Captain, he ordered me to let the church go for once, and to be ready up aloft in the belfry to set the chimes going at midday. As chance had it, the party came out just at the same time; Miss Eliza was a bit late in coming, ye see; so it may be said the chimes rang ’em out. I guess the sound astonished the people above a bit, for nobody knew they were going to play.”
“But how was it all, Cale? Why should the Captain order them to chime at midday?”
John Cale shook his head. “I can’t tell ye that rightly, Mr. Harry; the Captain, as ye know, sir, never says why he does this or why he does t’other. Young William Threpp, who had to be up there with me, thought he must have ordered ’em to play in mockery—for he hates the marriage like poison.”