"I would much rather they had stayed as they were, before you touched them; but, as it is, if you could find a good plausible pretext—and there is an excellent one at hand;—the sternest kings open prisons, and grant favors, upon joyful occasions. Now a marriage in the royal family is of course a joyful occasion!—and so it should be in that of the King of Hazeldean." Admire that artful turn in the Parson's eloquence!—it was worthy of Riccabocca himself. Indeed, Mr. Dale had profited much by his companionship with that Machiavellian intellect.
"A marriage—yes; but Frank has only just got into long tails!"
"I did not allude to Frank, but to your cousin Jemima!"
CHAPTER XXV.
The Squire staggered as if the breath had been knocked out of him, and, for want of a better seat, sat down on the stocks.
All the female heads in the neighboring cottages peered, themselves unseen, through the casements. What could the Squire be about?—what new mischief did he meditate? Did he mean to fortify the stocks? Old Gaffer Solomons, who had an indefinite idea of the lawful power of squires, and who had been for the last ten minutes at watch on his threshold, shook his head and said—"Them as a cut out the mon, a-hanging, as a put it in the Squire's head!"
"Put what?" asked his granddaughter.
"The gallus!" answered Solomons—"he be a-goin' to have it hung from the great elm-tree. And the Parson, good mon, is a-quoting Scripter agin it—you see, he's a taking off his gloves, and a putting his two han's togither, as he do when he pray for the sick, Jeany."
That description of the Parson's mien and manner, which, with his usual niceness of observation, Gaffer Solomons thus sketched off, will convey to you some idea of the earnestness with which the Parson pleaded the cause he had undertaken to advocate. He dwelt much upon the sense of propriety which the foreigner had evinced in requesting that the Squire might be consulted before any formal communication to his cousin; and he repeated Mrs. Dale's assurance, that such were Riccabocca's high standard of honor and belief in the sacred rights of hospitality, that, if the Squire withheld his consent to his proposals, the Parson was convinced that the Italian would instantly retract them. Now, considering that Miss Hazeldean was, to say the least, come to years of discretion, and the Squire had long since placed her property entirely at her own disposal, Mr. Hazeldean was forced to acquiesce in the Parson's corollary remark, "That this was a delicacy which could not be expected from every English pretender to the lady's hand." Seeing that he had so far cleared ground, the Parson went on to intimate, though with great tact, that, since Miss Jemima would probably marry sooner or later, (and, indeed, that the Squire could not wish to prevent her,) it might be better for all parties concerned that it should be with some one who, though a foreigner, was settled in the neighborhood, and of whose character what was known was certainly favorable, than run the hazard of her being married for her money by some adventurer or Irish fortune-hunter at the watering-places she yearly visited. Then he touched lightly on Riccabocca's agreeable and companionable qualities; and, concluded with a skilful peroration upon the excellent occasion the wedding would afford to reconcile Hall and parish, by making a voluntary holocaust of the stocks.
As he concluded, the Squire's brow, before thoughtful, though not sullen, cleared up benignly. To say truth, the Squire was dying to get rid of the stocks, if he could but do so handsomely and with dignity; and if all the stars in the astrological horoscope had conjoined together to give Miss Jemima "assurance of a husband," they could not so have served her with the Squire, as that conjunction between the altar and the stocks which the Parson had effected!