Poor Janet spoke very calmly when she said they could take him a little further; but her lips quivered slightly. The lady spoke to a man who was feeding calves in a stable; and asked him to help to dip the bridegroom's head in a cistern by the road-side, and then take him into the house.
"How far is it from his home?" the lady inquired of Sally. "The High House in Wathendale! You will not get him there to-night at this rate."
The farm-house people promised a cart, if the party could wait till it came by.
"How could such a thing happen?" said the lady. "Is there no one to teach this man his duty better than this? Does he know the clergyman?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Sally, adding very simply, "but there would be no use in the clergyman speaking to him now, he would not understand."
"No, indeed," replied the lady. "But he will feel ill enough to-morrow, and then I hope somebody that he respects will speak to him in a way that he will remember."
"To think," she said to her companions, as they walked away past the cistern where the groveling bridegroom was undergoing his ducking, "that that is the creature whom the poor girl bound herself this morning to love, cherish, and obey! What a beginning of the cherishing!"
Fell and his wife had not expected the young people home early; but it was much later than the latest time they had fixed, before they heard any thing of them. When at last the party appeared, emerging from the night mist, all the three sober ones were dreadfully weary. The ascent had been terrible; for Raven had not yet begun to recover.
No fine sentiment was wasted upon the occasion; for the indifference which had rather shocked the ladies, was the real state of mind of people too much accustomed to the spectacle of intemperance. Mrs. Fell declared she was vexed with him—that she was; and then she put on her bedgown, in order to sit up with her daughter, for Raven was now so sick that he must be waited on all night. Mrs. Fell said repeatedly, as so often before, that all men were apt to take too much now and then; and it would happen less often now he had come to live up here. Yet, her husband's words would run in her head, that it was all right, and very pleasant. When, in the dawn of the morning, her daughter made her go to bed, she dropped asleep with those words in her ears; while poor Janet, chilly, sick at heart, and worn out, was at length melting into tears.
When, the next afternoon, her husband sat nursing his aching head beside the fire-place, he was struck with some compunction at the sight of her red eyes. Of course, he declared, as drunkards always do, it should never happen again. Of course, he laid the blame, as drunkards always do, on other people. Of course, he said, as drunkards always do, that it was no habit of his; and that this was an accident—for once and away. Of course, his wife believed him, as young wives always do.