‘For I am to be sent away to-morrow to my aunt’s in Gloucestershire—fancy in Gloucestershire!’ as if there was something specially diabolical in that county.
‘You shall not be sent away; the time has come for us to take it into our own hands,’ said Walter soberly, with a strain of resolution.
He had to tell her of not unsimilar barbarities on his side. His mother had written to her trustees. She expected Mr. Wadsett from Edinburgh, who was also her man of business (for her property was in Scotland), next day.
‘To-morrow is the crisis for both of us; we must simply take it into our own hands and forestall them,’ said Walter. ‘I knew that one day it would come to this. If they force it on us it is their own doing,’ he said, with a look of determination enough to make any trustee tremble.
‘Oh, Walter!’ cried Kitty, rubbing her head against his shoulder like the kitten she was.
His resolute air gave her a thrill of frightened delight. Usually she was the first person in all their conjoint movements; to be carried along now, and feel it was not her doing, but his, was a new, ecstatic, alarming sensation, which words could not express.
They then began to consider without more ado (both feeling themselves elevated by the greatness of the crisis) what was to be done. Kitty had fondly hoped for a postchaise, which was the recognised way of romance; but Walter pointed out that on the railway—still a new thing in that district—there was an early train going to Edinburgh, which they could enter far more easily and with less fear of being arrested than a postchaise, and which would waft them to Gretna Green in less time than it would take to go ten miles in a carriage. Gretna Green was still the right place to which lovers flew; it was one of the nearest points in Scotland, where marriage was so easy, where the two parties to the union were the only ones concerned.
Kitty was slow to give up the postchaise, but she yielded to Walter’s argument. The train passed very early, so that it would be necessary for her to start out of the house in the middle of the night, as it were, to join her lover, who would be waiting for her; and then a walk of a mile or two would bring them to the station—and then! Their foolish hearts beat high while they made all the arrangements. Kitty shivered at the idea of the long walk in the chill dark morning. She would have so much preferred the sweep of the postchaise, the probable rush in pursuit, the second postchaise rattling after them, probably only gaming the goal ten minutes too late. She had imagined that rush many a time, and how she might see her father or brother’s head looking out from the window, hurrying on the postilion, but just too late to stop the hasty ceremony. The railway would change it all, and would be much less triumphant and satisfactory; but still, if Walter said so, it must be done, and her practical imagination saw the conveniences as well as the drawbacks.
Walter walked back with Kitty as near as he dared to The Leas, and then Kitty walked back again with him. They thus made a long afternoon’s occupation of it, during which everything was discussed and over again discussed, and in which all the responsibility was laid on the proper shoulders, i.e., on those of the parents who had driven them to this only alternative. Neither of them had any doubt as to the certainty of this, and they had at the same time fair hopes of being received back again when it was all over, and nothing could be done to mend it. After this, their people must acknowledge that it was no manner of use struggling, and that it behoved them to think of making some provision for the young pair, who after all were their own flesh and blood.
Kitty did not undress at all, considering the unearthly hour at which she was to set out. She flung off her evening dress into a corner, reflecting that though it must be prepared after, instead of before, her marriage, she must have a trousseau all the same, and that no bride puts on again her old things after that event. Kitty put on her new winter dress, which was very becoming, and had a pretty hat to match it, and lay down to snatch an hour or two’s rest before the hour of starting. She woke reluctantly to the sound of a handful of pebbles thrown against her window, and then, though still exceedingly sleepy and greatly tempted to pay no attention to the summons, managed at last to rouse herself, and sprang up with a thump of her heart when she recollected what it was—her wedding morning! She lighted a candle and put on her hat, studying the effect in the glass, though she knew that Walter was blowing his fingers with cold below; and then, with a fur cloak over her arm, she stole downstairs. How dark it was, and how cold! The country black with night, nothing visible but the waving, close to the house, of some spectral trees. But Walter pulled her hand through his arm the moment she slipped out, and her spirits rose. Two can face the darkness where one would shrink before it. They had the strangest, merriest walk—stumbling in the maddest way, jolting over stiles, going astray into ploughed fields, rousing all the dogs in all the farms and cottages for miles round—but at last found their way, worn out with stumbling and laughing, to the station, where the train had not yet arrived. And then came the rush and sweep through the night, the arrival in the gray morning at the station, the rousing up of the grim priest known as ‘the blacksmith’—though I am not sure that this was his trade. Kitty found time to smarten herself up a little, to straighten the brim of her hat and put it on as if she had taken it fresh out of its bandbox, and to put on her white gloves—the only things truly bride-like, which she had put in her pocket before she left home—and then the ceremony, whatever it was, was performed, and the boy and girl were made man and wife.