Chapter XVIII I forbid the Banns
“There you are!” said a soft, musical voice above us, and glancing up I saw Phyllis Rose. She was in truth a beautiful girl, dressed in her Sunday clothes, looking the pink of health and happiness.
“I’ve watched you ever so long, dear Dan; and this is your dear, dear grandmother? Oh, I hope she will let me love her for your sake.”
She kissed me, and, I confess, my heart warmed to her. She was as pretty and tender a little soul as ever lived to make sunshine for other people. I soon found that she worshipped the ground my grandfather trod upon. She slipped her little hand into his as she walked up to her father’s cottage, and talked pleasantly and happily with a London accent.
At her modest habitation an excellent meal and a bottle of very passable red wine were prepared. The girl’s parents seemed delighted to see us, and welcomed me in a most hearty, but at the same time respectful manner. I tried to banish the real, fatal aspect of the position and live in the passing hour. Grandpapa seemed very cheerful.
“Were the banns called again to-day?” he asked.
“That they was,” said Mr. Rose; “and Phyllis, the little silly, got as red as a peony, and her mother, no better, blushed like a school-girl, too. That’s the second time of asking. Don’t you have no more fruit pie, Dan. Remember Henley.”
But my grandfather explained he had not gone into regular training yet. “Sam Sturgess and I begin hard work together on Monday week,” he said. “We’re both very fit, and if I don’t pull off the ‘Diamonds,’ I ought to go near winning the ‘double sculls’ with Sam. It’s a month next Monday.”
The young things went off together presently, and I had a thimbleful of cold punch with Mr. and Mrs. Rose, and chatted to them. It was seldom I got an opportunity to talk to my fellow-creatures now, and I must admit that I enjoyed doing so. They were quite willing to listen, and tried to turn our talk to grandfather; but I said as little on that head as possible.
“What d’ you think of her?” my grandfather asked, as he rowed me home in the evening.
“She is a pearl of a girl. But it must not be, grandfather. You contemplate a most wicked action. I pray you abandon the idea. Stop till Henley, if you must; then let us hurry away. We can write and break it off, and send her a present in money. They are poor, and it would be very welcome.”
“You may talk yourself inside out, Martha, but it won’t alter me,” he said, with quiet determination. “This is the only girl I’ve ever really loved, and the Devil himself won’t stop me. For that matter, he’s the last who ’d try to, no doubt.”
“It is necessary to have your banns called in your own parish as well, grandpapa.”
“I know, I know. I wasn’t married three times without getting a pretty good knowledge of the ropes. My banns have been called twice at St. Jude’s. You never go to church now, or you’d have heard ’em.”
“St. Jude’s is not much patronised. The service is long and low, and the church half empty.”
“So much the better.”
Then he changed the subject, and as the moon rose and made the river look romantic, grandpapa tried to invent a bit of poetry about Phyllis, and failed.
“Oh, Phyllis mine, come let us twine our arms about each other’s necks,” he began. Then he turned to me and said—
“Put that flask away, Martha; you think I can’t see you, but I can. ‘Our arms about each other’s necks.’ Then, let me see, what rhymes with ‘necks’?”
“Cheques,” I answered, humouring him.
“Ah, that would come in if this was an ordinary, modern sort of love match, but it isn’t. I want something pastoral or idyllic. Let me see, where ‘d I got to? ‘Come, Phyllis mine, and let us twine our arms about each other’s necks.’ Wrecks, decks, specks, flecks, pecks. Necks is ’off.’ Let’s try ’each other’s waists.’ Waste, raced, paste, taste, graced, laced, haste——”
Then he ran into the bank and abandoned verse, and fell back upon lurid prose, which he applied to me and my management of the rudder lines.
“What d’ you think you’re doing, you muddle-headed old mummy? Sit straight and look at the river, not at the moon. I’ll make you sign the pledge to-morrow, blessed if I don’t! You’ll have more water with your whisky than you want in a moment. Oh, Lord! never again—never. Pull the right string—the right. Holy mouse! On Sunday evening too!”
Finally I gave up the lines, being really far from well, and he unshipped the rudder and made me sit in the bottom of the boat. I don’t know what possessed me, but I felt quite happy in spite of my passing dizziness, and when a boat went by us, with a young man in it playing on a banjo and singing, I sang too. It was the first time I had done so for forty years.
“Shut up, you ruin!” gasped grandfather. “Stop it, for the love of the Lord. D’ you think I want the whole river to know? It’s like a cargo of corncrakes. You’re enough to frighten a steam launch!”
I stopped then and cried at his cruelty.
“Don’t be harsh, grandfather—don’t be brutal to your only grandchild,” I sobbed.
“Behave yourself, then. When you take to singing in public it’s about time I spoke out.”
We got home somehow, and never returned to the subject. He did not desire to be reminded of his poetry, and therefore was careful not to allude to my passing indisposition.
But I never hesitated to speak on the subject of poor Phyllis. I implored him, by everything that was sacred, to abandon this undertaking. Each day throughout that week I attacked him, until in sheer despair and rage he would take his hat and fly from the house. But nothing availed—grandfather would not alter his intention; and I therefore determined to forbid the banns. The thought was naturally very distasteful to me, but I could see no alternative. Grandpapa, never dreaming of such a thing, rowed up the river as usual on the following Sunday, and I went to St. Jude’s.
In due course the minister published the banns of marriage “between Daniel Dolphin, of this parish, bachelor, and Phyllis Rose, of”—somewhere else, I forget the name of the place—“spinster.” It was for the third and last time of asking.
I got up, grasped the pew in front of me, and exclaimed:
“This—this mustn’t go on. I forbid the banns!”
“Which?” asked the minister. He had read out a string of names.
“Those between my grand—between Daniel Dolphin and Phyllis Rose.”
“Will the individual who has forbidden these banns of marriage meet me in the vestry at the end of the service?” said the clergyman. Then he proceeded.
In the vestry he asked me for particulars.
“In the first place,” I answered, “Mr. Dolphin is not a bachelor at all. He is married. He has been married three times.”
“D’ you mean to say that mere boy’s been married three times?”
“It’s the solemn truth.”
“No wife alive, I trust?”
“Oh, no—the last died sixty years ago—at least—that is——”
“Woman,” said the pastor sternly, “what do you mean? Mr. Dolphin came to see me himself. He is twenty, so he says, but does not look that. You have told me a transparent lie. Do you know Mr. Dolphin?”
“Know him! He’s my grandfather.”
The Vicar looked round to see if the coast was clear. He prepared to escape if I should grow violent. His manner instantly changed.
“Keep cool, dear madam. I quite understand. Let me get you a glass of water to drink.”
Then he withdrew, and I heard him whispering to an old woman who opened the pews. He bid her run for a doctor and a policeman. Upon this I rose and came home.
To my surprise, grandpapa rowed back pretty early in the afternoon. He was in a terribly depressed and agitated condition, so I did not tell him just then what I had clone.
“What’s the matter, grandfather? Phyllis is well?”
“No, she’s not well. A brute got up at her wretched church and forbid the banns. She fainted, and her father met the person and somebody else afterwards. Whether it was Tomkins, or Talbot, or Rogers, or the Princess, I don’t know. But it’s all up. Old Rose is going to arrange an action for breach of promise. His wife came home from church and gave me the particulars, and some pretty peppery criticism at the same time. We must clear out of this, but I’ll row for the ‘Diamonds’ if the heavens fall. Get your traps. We’ll go up the river by easy stages, and lie low in the day-time. I can enter for the regatta under a feigned name.”
Thus had my poor grandparent’s banns been forbidden at both places of worship simultaneously.