Pomona's Travels: A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former HandmaidenStockton, Frank R.
General
Pomona's Travels: A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former Handmaiden
Stockton, Frank R.
Americans -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Epistolary fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
I had not seen old Snortfrizzle again, but late that night I had heard
a row in the hotel, and I expect it was him back from the Cat and
Fiddle. Whether he was inquiring for me or not I don't know, or what he
was doing, or what he did.
Jone thought I had done a good deal of meddling in other people's
business, but he agreed to go to Gretna Green, and we got there in the
afternoon. I left Jone to take a smoke at the station, because I
thought this was a business it would be better for me to attend to
myself, and I started off to look up the village blacksmith and ask him
if he had lately wedded a pair; but, will you believe it, madam, I had
not gone far on the main road of the village when, a little ahead of
me, I saw two bath-chairs coming toward me, one of them pulled by
Robertson, and the other by Pomeroy's man, and in these two chairs was
the happy lovers, evidently Mr. and Mrs.! Their faces was filled with
light enough to take a photograph, and I could almost see their hearts
swelling with transcendent joy. I hastened toward them, and in an
instant our hands was clasped as if we had been old friends.
They told me their tale. They had reached the station in plenty of
time, and Robertson had got a carriage for them, and he and the other
man had gone with them third class, with the bath-chairs in the goods
carriages. They had reached Gretna Green that morning, and had been
married two hours. Then I told my tale. The eyes of both of them was
dimmed with tears, hers the most, and again they clasped my hands.
"Poor father," said Angelica, "I hope he didn't go all the way to the
Cat and Fiddle, and that the night air didn't strike into his joints;
but he cannot separate us now." And she looked confiding at the other
bath-chair.
"What are you going to do?" said I, and they said they had just been
making plans. I saw, though, that their minds was in too exalted a
state to do this properly for themselves, and so I reflected a minute.
"How long have you been in Buxton?"
"I have been there two weeks and two days," said she, "and my
husband"--oh, the effulgence that filled her countenance as she said
this--"has been there one day longer."
"Then," said I, "my advice to you is to go back to Buxton and stay
there five days, until you both have taken the waters and the baths for
the full three weeks. It won't be much to bear the old gentleman's
upbraiding for five days, and then, blessed with health and love, you
can depart. No matter what you do afterward, I'd stick it out at Buxton
for five days."
"We'll do it," said they; and then, after more gratitude and
congratulations, we parted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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