Maid of the Mist Part 56

"Not if I know it. Sooner in my rags. But, to the best of my belief, these belonged to your friend the Duke of Kent. Macro would have them, but little he dreamed of the high use to which they would be put. I borrow them for the occasion. His Highness would make no objection I am sure."

"I am sure he would not, and they become you well. But still I like you best as I have known you best."

"I will doff them presently. But you are so like a queen that I did not like to come to you like a beggar."

In his hand he had brought the Prayer-book, with the quill in a certain place.

He stepped up to her and lifted her hand to his lips.

"You do not repent you of this we are about to do?"

"I shall never repent it," she said, with dancing eyes.

"Please G.o.d, and as far as in me lies, you shall never have cause to repent it.... We are here, our two selves, with none to witness this that we do but G.o.d.... We are doing what we believe to be right for our own great happiness and well-being.... It would suffice, I believe, for a Scots wedding, simply to declare ourselves man and wife.

But I have thought it would please us both to do something more. We are not entering upon this new estate lightly or without due thought.... It will, I know, be to both our minds and comforting to both our hearts, to think that in our loneliness here we have done all we could to supply the deficiencies for which we are not to blame."

He spoke with very great emotion. She rejoiced in this fresh evidence of the heights and depths of his nature and his essential goodness of heart, though indeed she had not needed it.

Her great dark eyes, fixed on his, were abrim with happy tears.

"So," he continued, "We will read together the Form for the Solemnization of Matrimony in this Prayer-book, and then we will inscribe on the front leaf of it the fact that this day we have become man and wife. We will sign our names to it, and we can do no more to comply with man's law.... Is that your will, my dear?"

"Yes."

"Then here we will kneel and wed," and down they knelt in the sand, with a clear sky and bright sun above, and the blue sea that held them captive dancing and laughing in front; and holding the book between them he read the Service aloud in a deep and reverent voice.

Parts of it were of course somewhat incongruous to their situation, but he would not slur or miss a word. The statement that they were gathered together in the face of this congregation almost provoked her to an explosion. For out of the corner of her eye, as she followed his reading, a slight movement on the side of an adjacent sandhill showed her a rabbit, sitting up and watching them with critical attention, and it looked to her just like the frowsy old female in black she had seen hovering about the skirts of a wedding in a London church.

And there were parts that brought the colour to her face, though she was familiar with them. Applied to oneself they seemed to hold new point and meaning.

However, he read bravely on. No one interfered to show any just cause why they should not lawfully be joined together, nor had either of them any confession of impediment to make.

At the "Wilt thou----?" he answered heartily, "I will." And waited for her to do the same when her turn came.

When it came to--"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?"--he answered boldly,--"G.o.d."

Then they took hands and plighted their troth, reciting the words in the book.

But when it came to the putting on of the ring there came an interlude not provided for in the Marriage Service.

He had duly provided a plain gold wedding ring.

"Where did you get it?" she asked with a look of surprise.

"I found it among Macro's treasures."

"It must be some dead woman's, then. I would sooner not. Can we not leave that out? Will it make any difference?"

"No, dear. It will make no difference to our being truly wed."

"Then please go on without it."

So they left the ring out and read on to the end together.

He closed the book and drew her to him as they knelt, and kissed her as his wife.

"Now," he said, lifting her up. "We will put on record the most wonderful thing that has ever happened on this island, and then we will go home and prepare the marriage-feast.... I wonder now if James Elwes, M.A., late of Brasenose College, Oxford, is aware of the high use to which his Prayer-book is being put,"--as he pointed to the name inscribed on the fly-leaf, and turned over to the blank on the other side.

"Do you think they know?"

"I do not see why not. But as we never knew him, nor he us, it is possible he is not present."

And suddenly those words at the beginning of the Marriage Service a.s.sumed a new and mighty significance for her. "In the face of this congregation" might mean more than she had ever dreamed of. Perhaps her mother had been there---- If she had, if she should be here now--it, was somewhat startling to think of--she would be glad, for she would know how good and true a man this was.

But he was busily writing, and at the sight she cried, "Oh!"--for the writing was red and the ink was drawn from a little jag he had made in his arm.

"In blood," she said, with a touch of dismay.

"It could not be put to better use," he laughed. "It is all at your service ... to the very last drop.... How begin better than by setting down here that we are one till death?"

"What you said made me think that perhaps my mother had been with us----"

"I am sure she was, and mine too.... They will both approve, you may be sure.... Here is what I have written--

"'I, Wulfrey Dale, do hereby declare that I have this day taken Avice Drummond to be my lawful wedded wife.' And for you, 'I, Avice Drummond, do hereby declare that I have this day taken Wulfrey Dale to be my lawful wedded husband.' Now I will sign.... And you will sign there ... and I will add the date as far as we know it ... and our present place of abode--Sable Island."

He held the book till the writing was dry, then kissed her signature.

"It is the first time I have set eyes on your handwriting," he said.

"It is like yourself--clear and strong and true ... Mistress Dale,"--with a smiling bow, as he handed her the book,--"your marriage-lines! You will like to keep them."

"And the pen, please," she said, holding out her hand for it, and wrapping it and the book in a fold of her white robe. "These will be more to me than all the treasures of the world."

He put his arm round her and they went slowly home--man and wife.

BOOK V

GARDEN OF EDEN

LXI

Happy? If all newly-married folk could find such happiness as was theirs, what a wonderful world it would be!

From every worldly point of view they had nothing. They were outcasts, paupers, dependent for the food they ate and the clothes they wore, on Nature and the caprice of the sea. Yet, having nothing, they had everything, since they had one another.