The incumbent was hovering near in his surplice, and the pew-opener was
all in a fluster at the idea of a runaway marriage. Brian came out of the
dusky background--the daylight being tempered by small painted windows in
heavy stone mullions--as Ida entered the church. Everything was ready.
Before she knew how it came to pass, she was standing before the altar,
and the fatal words were being spoken.
'Brian Walford, wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?'
'Brian Walford!' she heard the words as in a dream. Surely Walford was
the second name of Bessie's other cousin, the poor cousin! Ida had heard
Bessie so distinguish him from the master of the Abbey. But no doubt
Walford was some old family name borne by both cousins.
Brian Walford! She had not much time to think about this, when the same
solemn question was asked of her.
And then in a low and quiet voice the priest read the rest of the
time-hallowed ceremonial, and Brian and Ida, glorified by a broad ray of
morning sunshine streaming through an open window, stood up side by side
man and wife.
Then came the signing of the register in the snug little vestry, Mrs.
Topman figuring largely as witness.
'I did not know your name was Walford,' said Ida, looking over her
husband's shoulder as he wrote.
'Didn't you? Second names are of so little use to a man, unless he has
the misfortune to be Smith or Jones, and wants to borrow dignity from a
prefix. Wendover is good enough for me.'
The young couple bade Mrs. Topman good-bye at the churchdoor. The fly was
to take them straight to the station, on the first stage of their
honeymoon trip.
'You know where to send my luggage,' Brian said to his landlady at
parting.
'Yes, sir, I've got the address all right;' and the fly drove along
another dusty high road, still within sight of the river, till it turned
at right angles into a bye road leading to the station.
At that uncongenial place they had to wait a quarter of an hour, walking
up and down the windy platform, where the porter abandoned himself to the
contemplation of occasional looks, and was sometimes surprised by the
arrival of a train for which he had waited so long as to have become
sceptical as to the existence of such things as trains in the scheme of
the universe. The station was a terminus, and the line was a loop, for
which very few people appeared to have any necessity.
'Would you mind telling me where we are going, Brian?' Ida asked her
husband presently, when they had discussed the characteristics of the
station, and Brian had been mildly facetious about the porter.
She had grown curiously shy since the ceremonial. Her lover seemed to her
transformed into another person by those fateful words. He was now the
custodian of her life, the master of her destiny.
'Would I mind telling you, my dearest? What a question! You proposed
Dieppe for our honeymoon, and we are going to Dieppe.'
'Does this train go to Newhaven?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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