“Dear, dear!” repeated Mrs Marston. “A clergyman should have more power; what is the good of being a clergyman if you cannot stop a marriage in your own church? I call that tyranny. Do you mean to tell me you will be compelled to marry them, whether you approve of it or not?”
“Well, Mary, it is not usual to ask the clergyman’s consent, is it?” he said with a laugh, momentarily tickled by the suggestion. But this did not throw any light upon what was to be done, or upon the question whether anything was to be done; and with a mind quite unsatisfied he retired again to the study, seeing that it was out of all reason to ring the bell at half-past three for tea. He drew down his blind with a sigh as he went back to his room, shutting out the colourless paleness which did duty for sky, and resigning himself to the close little room though it was too warm. Mr Marston tried his best to compose himself, to take up his work, such as it was, to put away from his mind the remembrance of a world which was not wrapt in fog, and where wholesome breezes were blowing. St Alban’s was a good living; it had endowments enough to furnish two or three churches, and to get it had been a wonderful thing for him; but sometimes he asked himself whether two hundred a-year and a country parish with cottages in it instead of warehouses would not have been better. However, all that was folly, and here was something exciting to amuse his mind with, which was always an advantage. He had laid down his book (for he thought it right to keep up his reading) for the fourth or fifth time, to ask himself whether sending for the bridegroom, as his wife suggested, or going out in search of him, might not be worth his while, when Mrs Marston came suddenly bursting into the study with, in her turn, a big volume in her arms. The Rector looked up in surprise and put away his theology. She came in, he said to himself, like a whirlwind; which was not, however, a metaphor at all adapted to describe the movements of a stout and comfortable person of fifty, with a great respect for her furniture. But she did enter with an assured, not to say triumphant air, carrying her book, which she plumped down before him on the table, sweeping away some of his papers. “There!” she cried, breathless and excited. The page was blazoned with a big coat of arms. It was in irregular lines like poetry, and ah, how much dearer than poetry to many a British soul! It was, need we say, a Peerage, an old Peerage, without any of the recent information, but still not too old for the purpose. “There!” said Mrs Marston, again flourishing her forefinger. The Rector, bewildered, looked and read. He read and he grew pale with awe and alarm. He looked up in his wife’s face with a gasp of excitement. He was too much impressed even to say, “I told you so,” for, to be sure, a duke’s daughter was a splendour he had not conceived. But his wife was more demonstrative in the delight of her discovery. “There!” she cried, for the third time. “I felt sure, of course, it must be in the Peerage, if it was what you thought; and there it is at full length, ‘Lady Jane Angela Pendragon Plantagenet Fitz-Merlin Altamont.’ It fairly took away my breath. To think you should have made such a good guess! and me talking about Mrs Singer’s baby! Why, I suppose it is one of the greatest families in the country,” Mrs Marston said.
“There is no doubt about that,” said the Rector. “I have heard the present Duke was not rich, but that would make it all the worse. Poor young lady! poor misguided—for of course she can know nothing about life nor what she is doing. And I wonder who the man is. He must be a scoundrel,” said Mr Marston, hotly, “to take advantage of the ignorance of a girl.”
“My dear,” said Mrs Marston, “all that may be quite true that you say, but if you reckon up you will see that she must be twenty-eight. Twenty-eight is not such a girl. And Reginald Winton is quite a nice name.”
“Just the sort of name for a tutor, or a music-master, or something of that sort,” said the Rector, contemptuously. He had been a tutor himself in his day, but that did not occur to him at the moment. He got up from his chair and would have paced about the room as he did in his wife’s quarters had the study been big enough; but failing in this, he planted himself before the fire, to the great danger of his coat-tails and increase of his temperature, but in his excitement he paid no attention to that. “And now the question is, what is to be done?” he said.
“I thought you told me there was nothing to be done. I shall come to church myself to-morrow, William, and if you think I could speak to the poor young lady——: perhaps if she had a woman to talk to—most likely she has no mother. That’s such an old book, one can’t tell; but I don’t think a girl would do this who had a mother. Poor thing! Do you think if I were there a little before the hour and were to talk to her, and try to get into her confidence, and say how wrong it was——”
“Talk to a bride at the altar!” said the Rector; the indecorum of the idea shocked him beyond description. “No, no, something must be done at once—there is no time to be lost. I must write to the Duke.”
“To the Duke!” This suggestion took away Mrs Marston’s breath.
“I hope,” said her husband, raising his head, “that we both know a duke is but a man: and I am a clergyman, and I want nothing from him, but to do him a service. It would be wicked to hesitate. The question is, where is he to be found, and how can we reach him in time? He is not likely to be in town at this time of the year; nobody is in town I suppose except you and me, and a few millions more, Mary; but that doesn’t help us—the question is, where is he likely to be? Thank heaven there is still time for the post!” Mr Marston cried, and threw himself upon his chair, and pulled his best note-paper out of his drawer.
But, alas! the question of where the Duke was puzzled them both. Grosvenor Square; Billings Castle, ——shire; Hungerford Place, in the West Riding; Cooling, N.B.; Caerpylcher, North Wales. As his wife read them out one after another, with a little hesitation about the pronunciation, the Rector wrung his hands. The consultation which the anxious pair held on the subject ran on to the very limits of the post-hour, and would take too long to record. Now that it had come to this, Mrs Marston was inclined to hold her husband back. “After all, if it was a real attachment,” she said, between the moments of discussing whether it was in his seat in Scotland, or in Wales, or at his chief and most ducal of residences that a duke in November was likely to be. “After all, it might be really for her happiness—and what a dreadful shock for them, poor things, if they came to be married, thinking they had settled everything so nicely, and walked into the arms of her father!” Her heart melted more and more as she thought of it. No doubt, poor girl, she had been deprived early of a mother’s care; and, on the other hand, at twenty-eight a girl ought to know her own mind. She could not be expected to give in to her father for ever. And if it should be that this was a real attachment, and the poor young lady’s happiness was concerned——