AYALA'S MARRIAGE
Now we have come to our last chapter, and it may be doubted whether any reader -- unless he be someone specially gifted with a genius for statistics -- will have perceived how very many people have been made happy by matrimony. If marriage be the proper ending for a novel -- the only ending, as this writer takes it to be, which is not discordant -- surely no tale was ever so properly ended, or with so full a concord, as this one. Infinite trouble has been taken not only in arranging these marriages but in joining like to like -- so that, if not happiness, at any rate sympathetic unhappiness, might be produced. Our two sisters will, it is trusted, be happy. They have chosen men from their hearts, and have been chosen after the same fashion. Those two other sisters have been so wedded that the one will follow the idiosyncrasies of her husband, and the other bring her husband to follow her idiosyncrasies, without much danger of mutiny or revolt. As to Miss Docimer there must be room for fear. It may be questioned whether she was not worthy of a better lot than has been achieved for her by joining her fortunes to those of Frank Houston. But I, speaking for myself, have my hopes of Frank Houston. It is hard to rescue a man from the slough of luxury and idleness combined. If anything can do it, it is a cradle filled annually. It may be that he will yet learn that a broad back with a heavy weight upon it gives the best chance of happiness here below. Of Lord John's married prospects I could not say much as he came so very lately on the scene;but even he may perhaps do something in the world when he finds that his nursery is filling.
For our special friend Tom Tringle, no wife has been found. In making his effort -- which he did manfully -- he certainly had not chosen the consort who would be fit for him. He had not seen clearly, as had done his sisters and cousins. He had fallen in love too young -- it being the nature of young men to be much younger than young ladies, and, not knowing himself, had been as might be a barn-door cock who had set his heart upon some azure-plumaged, high-soaring lady of the woods. The lady with the azure plumes had, too, her high-soaring tendencies, but she was enabled by true insight to find the male who would be fit for her. The barndoor cock, when we left him on board the steamer going to New York, had not yet learned the nature of his own requirements. The knowledge will come to him. There may be doubts as to Frank Houston, but we think that there need be none as to Tom Tringle. The proper wife will be forthcoming; and in future years, when he will probably have a Glenbogie and a Merle Park of his own, he will own that Fortune did well for him in making his cousin Ayala so stern to his prayers.
But Ayala herself -- Ayala our pet heroine -- had not been yet married when the last chapter was written, and now there remains a page or two in which the reader must bid adieu to her as she stands at the altar with her Angel of Light. She was at Stalham for a fortnight before her marriage, in order, as Lady Albury said, that the buxom lady's-maid might see that everything had been done rightly in reference to the trousseau. "My dear," said Lady Albury, "it is important, you know. I dare say you can bake and brew, because you say so; but you don't know anything about clothes." Ayala, who by this time was very intimate with her friend, pouted her lips, and said that if "Jonathan did not like her things as she chose to have them he might do the other thing."But Lady Albury had her way, inducing Sir Harry to add something even to Uncle Tom's liberality, and the buxom woman went about her task in such a fashion that if Colonel Stubbs were not satisfied he must have been a very unconscionable Colonel. He probably would know nothing about it -- except that his bride in her bridal array had not looked so well as in any other garments, which, I take it, is invariably the case -- till at the end of the first year a glimmer of the truth as to a lady's wardrobe would come upon him. "I told you there would be a many new dresses before two years were over, Miss," said the buxom female, as she spread all the frocks and all the worked petticoats and all the collars and all the silk stockings and all the lace handkerchiefs about the bedroom to be inspected by Lady Albury, Mrs Gosling, and one or two other friends, before they were finally packed up.
Then came the day on which the Colonel was to reach Stalham, that day being a Monday, whereas the wedding was to take place on Wednesday. It was considered to be within the bounds of propriety that the Colonel should sleep at Stalham on the Monday, under the same roof with his bride; but on the Tuesday it was arranged that he should satisfy the decorous feeling of the neighbourhood by removing himself to the parsonage, which was distant about half a mile across the park, and was contiguous to the church.
Here lived Mr Greene, the bachelor curate, the rector of the parish being an invalid and absent in Italy.
"I don't see why he is to be sent away after dinner to walk across the park in the dark," said Ayala, when the matter was discussed before the Colonel's coming.
"It is a law, my dear," said Lady Albury, "and has to be obeyed whether you understand it or not like other laws. Mr Greene will be with him, so that no one shall run away with him in the dark.
Then he will be able to go into church without dirtying his dress boots.""But I thought there would be half a dozen carriages at least.""But there won't be room in one of them for him. He is to be nobody until he comes forth from the church as your husband.
Then he is to be everybody. That is the very theory of marriage.""I think we managed it all very well between us," said Lady Albury afterwards, "but you really cannot guess the trouble we took.""Why should there have been trouble?"
"Because you were such a perverse creature, as the old lady said.
