"It's the same thing."

"It's not!" Which was true enough--it was a different thing entirely.

"Ellen, can you not see that I was never more in earnest in my life.

If you do not marry me, something tells me that that woman will, and for all I know that wretched parent of hers may be the occupant of a dissenting pulpit; he looks disreputable enough for anything. What with her and her father, and my aunt, I am as a reed in their hands. I do entreat you--be my wife."

The offer was not put in the most flattering form. Still, it was an offer.

"If you really want me--" began Miss Bayley.

"Want you! I want nothing so much in all the world."

"And if you think I can be of use to you in the parish--"

"Parish! it's not the parish I'm thinking of, it's--it's that wretched woman."

Miss Bayley did not like this way of putting it at all.

"I will consider what you say, Mr Macleod, and will let you have an answer--say in a month."

"In a month!" the curate was aghast. "I want your answer now. Ellen, I do entreat you, if you do not wish to see me disgraced in the face of all the world, promise to be my wife."

"But, Mr Macleod, you do not even pretend to care for me."

"Care for you! I care for you more than I ever cared for any woman yet."

"Then in that case"--the lady was a little coy--"it shall be just as you will."

At this point the ordinary lover would have taken her in his arms, and here would follow a number of crosses denoting what we have seen termed "osculatory concussions." But the Rev. Alan was not an ordinary lover at all. He continued his frenzied pacing round the room.

"It is not enough to promise to be my wife, you must be my wife."

"Mr Macleod, what do you mean?"

"Miss Bayley--Ellen--those two persons are at the rectory, awaiting my arrival at this moment. She is a disreputable woman, he is a ruffianly man. They are quite capable of coercing me into some dreadful entanglement from which I may find it impossible to release myself. My only hope lies in an immediate marriage."

"I do not understand you in the least."

"Then let me endeavour to make myself quite plain. I will not return to the rectory; you will put on your hat and jacket and come up at once with me to town. I will get a special licence. And we will be married before anyone has an inkling of what it is that we intend."

"Mr Macleod, is it an elopement you propose?"

"Ellen, it is."

The little man was shaking like a leaf.

"I never heard of such a thing in my life."

"Nor did I dream that I should make such a proposition to a living woman--but needs must when the devil drives."

The lady began to cry.

"Alan, I must say you have not a flattering way of putting things."

"What avails flattery at such a moment as this. For Heaven's sake, don't cry. I have heard you say yourself that you don't believe in long engagements."

"Yes--but when one has not been engaged five minutes!"

"What matters five minutes or five years, when one has once resolved?

It seems to me that when there is nothing to gain by waiting--but everything to lose--the sooner one marries the better."

There was something in this; she told herself that he was not such a nincomp.o.o.p after all when he was driven to bay--poor, dear little man!

Amidst her tears she thought of other things. A regular marriage would involve a trousseau. She was quite sure that she should get no money out of her father for that--for the best of reasons, he had none to give. And then she knew her curate. She thought it quite possible that if that other woman--the brazen hussy!--did once get him in her hands, he might at any rate be lost to her. Better a good deal than to run the risk of such an end to all her hopes as that!

The end of it was that the Rev. Alan Macleod and Miss Bayley went up together by the next train which left the neighbouring station--eight miles off--for town.

CHAPTER IV.--HIS AUNT EXPLAINS

Shortly after his marriage Alan Macleod received the following curious letter from his aunt,--

"NEPHEW ALAN,--Don't talk fiddlesticks about giving up the Church because you're married, though _I_ never could understand why you ever became a parson, unless it was because your father was the devil's own.

"I meant all along that you should marry the doctor's daughter. Of course, as a Macleod of Pittenquhair, you might have had the best in the land, but then--what a Macleod you are! Have you ever heard of the Irishman's pig? They pull him by the tail when they want him to follow his snout. That is what I have done with you. I heard all about the girl and about your philanderings together, and how you thought it was the Church she worshipped, when the curate was the object of her adoration. Don't you ever believe about single young women worshipping the Church when there's a bachelor inside it! I heard she was a decent body, so I said that, sooner than leave you, the last of the Macleods of Pittenquhair, a barren stock, the girl should have you.

"The thing was how--with you and your 'celibate-priest' stuff and nonsense. But Providence helps those who help themselves--so 'Miss Vesey' tumbled from the skies.

"I saw her first at a thought-reading _seance_. She did some very funny things, and she plays the piano like an angel. She certainly had a gift that way, for, with the aid of her music, she played all sorts of tricks on the fools who were there. I thought to myself, what tricks she might play on you if you came within her range! Then, all of a sudden, the whole thing was hatched in my brain. I made her acquaintance. I took her home to supper. Afterwards, inspired by the largest quant.i.ty of champagne I ever saw a woman drink, she told me all about herself. She was the most candid young woman I ever met.

"She was married--to an unfrocked parson. But, according to her own account, she was more than his match. A perfect limb! And as clever as she was wicked--one of those wicked women who are born, not made, for she was not yet twenty-one. I told her all about you. I said that if, through her, you married the doctor's daughter at Swaffham-on-Sea, she should have five hundred pounds upon your wedding-day. She came into the scheme at once. So we arranged it all together.

"Among other things, her husband was one of those scamps who pose, in the advertis.e.m.e.nt sheets, as distressed clergymen whose large families depend for sustenance on their being able to dispose of some article or other at one-third of its cost price. Just then his line was apostle spoons--which he bought for five shillings and sold for twenty. I was to summon you up to town. I was to bully you about your marriage. And then, when I had thoroughly upset you--which, I explained to her, it was the easiest thing in the world to do--I was to call your attention to his advertis.e.m.e.nt of the apostle spoons. I was to march you off then and there to buy them. When I had got you into her house I was to leave the rest to her.

"She was to pose as her husband's daughter, which she was young enough to be--in years, at any rate. She said that if I brought you to her in a state of agitation and confusion bordering on imbecility--which I undertook to do--and if you were the sort of man I had described to her, within half an hour she would induce you to use language which might be construed into an offer of marriage. Then, with her husband's aid, she would so drive you to distraction as to send you flying into Miss Bayley's arms as into a harbour of refuge.

"I need not describe to you how she succeeded--though we had neither of us bargained that you would be _quite_ the fool you were. When I heard of your eloping with the doctor's daughter the instant 'Miss Vesey' put in an appearance on the scene, I owned that I had at last attained to one article of faith--an implicit belief in the infinite capacity for folly to be found in the human animal in trousers.

"It is unnecessary, under these circ.u.mstances, to say that I congratulate you upon your marriage. I hope that your wife will be a sensible woman, and present you, without loss of time, with a son--or, better still, with half a dozen, so that I may have an opportunity of finding at least _one_ among them who shall not be _quite_ such a fool as his father.--Your affectionate aunt,

"JANET MACLEOD (of Pittenquhair)."

When Miss Macleod's nephew had finished reading this letter, he wiped the perspiration from his brow. Then he wiped his gla.s.ses. Then he sat thinking, not too pleasantly. Such a letter was a bitter pill to swallow. Then, not desirous that his aunt's epistle should be read by his wife, he tore it into strips, and burned them one by one. He told himself that he would never forgive his aunt--never! and that, willingly, he would never look upon her face again.

But to so resolve was only to add another to his list of follies.

Within twenty-four hours of his marriage--fortunately for him--his wife had proved that the grey mare was once more the better horse. Now she had got her man, at last, the strong vein of common sense that was in her came to the front. When Miss Macleod came to see her, she received her with open arms; and, as a matter of course, where she led her husband followed.

To one thing Alan had been constant--to the doctrine of the "celibate priest." According to him, a "priest" married was not a "priest" at all. Immediately after his marriage, therefore, n.o.body offering the least objection, he quitted the "priesthood." He is now a gentleman of leisure. Probably with a view of providing him with some occupation his wife bids fair to come up to his aunt's standard of a sensible woman, and to present him with half a dozen sons.