CHAPTER XLVIII
It was a note from Squire Egan which conveyed the news to Dick that caused so much surprise; the details of the case were not even hinted at; the bare fact alone was mentioned, with a caution to preserve it still a secret from Andy, and appointing an hour for dinner at “Morrison's” next day, at which hotel the Squire expected to arrive from the country, with his lady and Fanny Dawson, en route for London. Till dinner-time, then, the day following, Dick was obliged to lay by his impatience as to the “why and wherefore” of Andy's sudden advancement; but, as the morning was to be occupied with Tom Durfy's wedding, Dick had enough to keep him engaged in the meantime.
At the appointed hour a few of Tom's particular friends were in attendance to witness the ceremony, or, to use their own phrase, “to see him turned off,” and among them was Tom Loftus. Dick was holding out his hand to “the colonel,” when Tom Durfy stepped between, and introduced him under his real name. The masquerading trick of the night before was laughed at, with an assurance from Dick that it only fulfilled all he had ever heard of the Protean powers of a gentleman whom he so much wished to know. A few minutes' conversation in the recess of a window put Tom Loftus and Dick the Devil on perfectly good terms, and Loftus proposed to Dick that they should execute the old-established trick on a bridegroom, of snatching the first kiss from the bride.
“You must get in Tom's way,” said Loftus, “and I'll kiss her.”
“Why, the fact is,” said Dick, “I had proposed that pleasure to myself; and, if it's all the same to you, you can jostle Tom, and I'll do the remainder in good style, I promise you.”
“That I can't agree to,” said Loftus; “but as it appears we both have set our heart on cheating the bridegroom, let us both start fair, and 't is odd if between us Tom Durfy is not done”
This was agreed upon, and many minutes did not elapse till the bride made her appearance, and “hostilities were about to commence.” The mutual enemy of the “high contracting parties” first opened his book, and then his mouth, and in such solemn tones, that it was enough to frighten even a widow, much less a bachelor. As the ceremony verged to a conclusion, Tom Loftus and Dick the Devil edged up towards their 'vantage-ground on either side of the blooming widow, now nearly finished into a wife, and stood like greyhounds in the slip, ready to start after puss (only puss ought to be spelt here with a B). The widow, having been married before, was less nervous than Durfy, and, suspecting the intended game, determined to foil both the brigands, who intended to rob the bridegroom of his right; so, when the last word of the ceremony was spoken, and Loftus and Dick made a simultaneous dart upon her, she very adroitly ducked, and allowed the two “ruggers and rievers” to rush into each other's arms, and rub their noses together, while Tom Durfy and his blooming bride sealed their contract very agreeably without their noses getting in each other's way.
Loftus and Dick had only a laugh at their own expense, instead of a kiss at Tom's, upon the failure of their plot; but Loftus, in a whisper to Dick, vowed he would execute a trick upon the “pair of them” before the day was over.
There was a breakfast as usual, and chicken and tongue and wine, which, taken in the morning, are provocative of eloquence; and, of course, the proper quantity of healths and toasts were executed selon la règlei, it was time for the bride and bridegroom to bow and blush and curtsey out of the room, and make themselves food for a paragraph in the morning papers, under the title of the “happy pair,” who set off in a handsome chariot, &c., &c.