‘And after that?’
’He took down from the shelves a volume of some
sermons which his father published many years ago,
and presented to me. I have it now under my arm.
It hath the old bishop’s manuscript notes, which
I will study carefully.’ And thus the archdeacon
had hit his bird on both wings.
It now only remains for me to gather together a few
loose strings, and tie them together in a knot, so
that my work may not become untwisted. Early
in July, Henry Grantly and Grace Crawley were married
in the parish church of Plumstead—a great
impropriety, as to which neither Archdeacon Grantly
nor Mr Crawley could be got to assent for a long time,
but which was at last carried, not simply by a union
of Mrs Grantly and Mrs Crawley, nor even by the assistance
of Mrs Arabin, but by the strong intervention of Lady
Lufton herself. ’Of course Miss Crawley
ought to be married from St Ewold’s vicarage;
but when the furniture has only been half got in,
how is it possible?’ When Lady Lufton thus spoke,
the archdeacon gave way, and Mr Crawley hadn’t
a leg to stand on. Henry Grantly had not an opinion
on the matter. He told his father that he expected
that they would marry him among them, and that that
had been enough for him. As for Grace, nobody
even thought of asking her; and I doubt whether she
would have heard anything about the contest, had not
some tidings of it reached her from her lover.
Married they were at Plumstead—and the
breakfast was given with all that luxuriance of plenty
which was so dear to the archdeacon’s mind.
Mr Crawley was the officiating priest. With his
hands dropping before him, folded humbly, he told
the archdeacon—when that Plumstead question
had been finally settled in opposition to his wishes—that
he would fain himself perform the ceremony by which
his dearest daughter would be bound to her marriage
duties. ‘And who else should?’ said
the archdeacon. Mr Crawley muttered that he had
not known how far his reverend brother might have
been willing to waive his rights. But the archdeacon,
who was in high good-humour—having just
bestowed a little pony carriage on his new daughter-in-law—only
laughed at him; and, if the rumour which was handed
about the families be true, the archdeacon, before
the interview was over, had poked Mr Crawley in the
ribs. Mr Crawley married them; but the archdeacon
assisted—and the dean gave the bride away.
The Rev Charles Grantly was there also; and as there
was, as a matter of course, a cloud of curates floating
in the distance, Henry Grantly was perhaps to be excused
for declaring to his wife, when the pair had escaped,
that surely no couple had ever been so tightly buckled
since marriage had first become a Church ceremony.
