The Five-Minute Marriage

by Joan Aiken

  “Shall you be able to manage without Jenny in the shop for a couple of days, though, Miss Anne?” inquired Delphie, smiling at Jenny’s enthusiasm.

  “Why, bless you, yes, miss. To tell truth, she’s no more use half the time than a wet hen, so harum-scarum and shatter-brained as she is, always running into the street if a hurdy-gurdy or a funeral goes by—and it’s only right she should bear you company, seeing as ‘twas her totty-headedness got you into this fix in the first place.”

  So that was settled. Then came the question of some reliable person to watch over Mrs. Carteret for two days.

  “At least, poor lady, she’s not like to get out of bed and run off to St Paul’s now,” sighed Miss Anne.

  This was true, and though Delphie grieved to see her mother so quiet, docile, and biddable, it did mean that Mrs. Carteret could be left without apprehension of any more disastrous excursions at the present time.

  “Can you suggest any kind, reliable woman with nursing experience who would take charge of her?” Delphie inquired.

  “Say, Sister,” exclaimed Jenny, “how about Aunt Andrews from Edmonton? ‘Tis about time for her town visit, any road, and the old lady might as well make herself useful while she is here. By the same token, she dotes on cosseting folk and coddling ‘em—she’s never happier than when she had some poor soul in bed and can make them up all her Panaceas and Elixatives.”

  “For once, Sister, you have struck on a sensible notion,” said Miss Anne, and she assured Delphie that Aunt Andrews would be the most kindly and capable person in the world to look after an invalid. So a note was dispatched to the old lady (who lived with a married son) and at the same time Delphie wrote to Mr. Browty’s coachman in Russell Square, bidding him be in readiness to drive her to Kent on the third day from then.

  “Ah, you poor dear, and you can do with an outing yourself,” said Miss Anne sympathetically, “so tired and hagged-looking as you’ve been ever since your Ma took sick.”

  “Indeed if my relatives accept me, it certainly won’t be for my looks,” agreed Delphie, whose mirror told her that her face had become as thin and pale as an almond and that her gray eyes appeared overlarge in their shadowed sockets.

  But she still could hardly regard the journey to Kent as a restorative outing or an excursion of pleasure. Too much hung on its outcome.

  “Tell you what,” proposed Miss Anne, looking her up and down. “What you need is a new gown (asking your pardon for the liberty, Miss Delphie), for every stitch on your back you’ve had since I dunno when, and, when all’s said and done, there’s nowt like new clothes for making a body feel more the thing.”

  “Lor, yes, Sister, what a famous notion!” struck in Jenny. “Let’s rig up Miss as fine as fivepence! It’s a downright shame she should be going about all the time in threadbare bombazine and linsey-woolsey when she’s a figure as would set off the finest silks and velvets.”

  Delphie demurred very much at this.

  “My relations must take me as they find me,” she said. “Besides, if I were rigged out very fine, they would hardly believe in the necessity of my application.”

  “Ay; very true,” said Anne. “But there’s a difference (asking your pardon again, miss) betwixt being too fine, and being barely decent, and the back breadth of that gown you have on, Miss Delphie, is so rubbed I can just about see my face in it.”

  Reluctantly, Delphie was brought to agree that if she were too shabby her grand relatives might take her in scorn; and, as Aunt Andrews, when she arrived, proved to be a cheerful, friendly old countrywoman with a white-covered basket, who was astonished that she should be offered payment for looking after a sick person, since this was a most particular treat to her, and could with the utmost difficulty be brought to accept a fee of two guineas, the sisters managed to persuade Delphie to lay out a couple more of Mr. Browty’s guineas on clothes. They escorted her to the Pantheon Bazaar, where the most amazing bargains were to be found, and gave her the benefit of their experience in selecting some lengths of French cambric in a very pretty dark blue shade, for a carriage dress, and a piece of upholstery velvet in French gray which, said Miss Anne, “will make up into as fine a pelisse as you please and I daresay Miss’s kin will never notice the difference if it’s properly trimmed.” Buttons, thread, and a plain bonnet of basket willow completed their purchases, for Delphie already possessed a very respectable pair of navy-blue jean half boots (good footwear she regarded as a practical economy since she had to spend so much of her time walking to lessons) and a plain white crape dress for holidays or evening occasions, very little worn.

  Next ensued a frenzy of dressmaking. Aunt Andrews was fetched into this, and proved to be an exquisite needlewoman, setting stitches so tiny “that they could hardly be seen except through a quizzing glass,” as Jenny said. In twenty-four hours the dress and the pelisse were made, more plainly than the sisters would have wished, but Delphie was adamant on this point.

  “It would not be suitable for someone circumstanced as I am to be laying out money on French floss, or silk fringe,” she pointed out.

  “Ay, very likely that’s so,” sighed Anne, “though it’s a shame not to use that beautiful beading, only three farthings the yard! Still, Miss has very choice taste, and always looks the lady, no matter what, so I daresay she’s right. You could take a lesson or two from her, Jenny!”

  So the gray velvet pelisse was trimmed merely with French braid of a darker gray, and the cambric dress (which was made regrettably high to the neck in Jenny’s view), with deep frills of its own material. And the bonnet was adorned with one curled black ostrich plume which Miss Anne “had had by her this age, and never could seem to find a use for, somehow.” Thus equipped, and with a small carpetbag of needments for the night, Delphie was ready to set off on the Thursday morning when Mr. Browty’s carriage rolled around to the door.

  She bade a tender good-by to her mother, who was under the impression that Delphie was merely going into the country for a night to recruit her strength after so much nursing.

  “I hate to deceive her so,” Delphie said to Mrs. Andrews, “but she becomes so very excited and distressed at the least mention of her family that I do not dare run the risk of upsetting her by speaking of them,, particularly when it may be all for nothing!”

  “Quite right, Miss. He that lives in hope danceth to an ill tune,” remarked Mrs. Andrews, who was full of proverbs. “Best not tell the lady anything unless you can give her fair news. Call me not an apple till you see me gathered. Sickness of the body is cured by health of the soul. Don’t you worrit your Ma with possibles; she’s happy as a lark to think you’re a-jauntering into the country, and I’ll have her so tended with panadas and my toast-gruel that she’ll be a new person by the time you come home.”

  Thus encouraged, Delphie ran down to the carriage, where Jenny was already impatiently waiting for her, rigged up in a stunning outfit of bright green cloth with velvet sleeves and gold buttons and a floss fringe, an enormous green velvet bonnet, a parasol, and a cloak to match. Anne waved from the doorway, Mrs. Andrews fluttered a handkerchief from the window upstairs, the coachman cracked his whip, and they were off.

  “Off to seek your fortune,” sighed Jenny ecstatically. “Lor, Miss Delphie, ain’t it romantical!”

  Delphie laughed. She could not help feeling many apprehensions as to the outcome of her expedition, but, insensibly, from the fineness of the morning and the smooth motion of the carriage, her spirits had taken an upward turn. Mr. Browty’s carriage was so very comfortable! It was deeply upholstered, a thick sheepskin rug muffled any possible drafts on the floor, and besides that there was a fur carriage-rug, which was hardly needed on a bright May morning.

  “But so grand!” sighed Jenny. “My stars! I feel as if I was a duchess.”

  They took their way along the Kent Road, and then through Maidstone and Charing. At Delphie’s request Bodkin drove the horses at an easy pace; she by no means wished to exhaust Mr. Browty’s team
by unnecessary fast work, for Bodkin had given her to understand that they could comfortably reach Chase by late afternoon. So they paused here and there to breathe the horses, and took a nuncheon at the inn of a small village called Hollingbourne; Jenny would have preferred a grander place, perhaps the Angel at Maidstone, which had greatly taken her fancy by its handsome appearance, but Delphie, always practical, wished to conserve as much as possible of Mr. Browty’s money, in case her relations were unwilling or unable to receive them, and they were obliged to spend the night at an inn. Besides, she felt that she herself would greatly prefer the humbler, more unassuming establishment. She was not at all used to going about and dining in public places. In fact, to Delphie, who had been obliged to keep steadily at work in London, day in, day out, ever since she had left school, the country was a complete and delightful novelty: every object interested her; she exclaimed over the beauty of the green thorn hedges, still pearled and spangled with white; she was enchanted by the birdsong, the burgeoning woods, the late primroses and early bluebells along the banks of the highway, the white roads of Kent, and the neat thatched and timbered villages through which they passed.

  “Pho, pho!” said the traveled Jenny. “This is nothing, let me tell you! You ought to see South End, where Sister and I went for a few days last August. There’s a place for you! There’s bands—and donkeys—and a promenade—and a Kiosk—why this is just fields and fields full of sheep—there’s nothing to it.”

  But Delphie could not imagine anything prettier than the green and flowery Kentish landscape.

  However, when they passed a signpost that said, “Cow Green 7 miles,” and presently came to another pointing sideways off the highway along what was evidently a private roadway through parkland, which simply said, “Chase,” her good spirits abated and her courage began to falter.

  “Never mind, dearie,” said Miss Baggott, observing that the bright color whipped into Delphie’s cheeks by fresh air and interest in the things about her had vanished again, leaving them uncommonly pale. “Ne’mind! Perhaps your great kinsfolk are from home, and there will be nowt to worry about. Didn’t you say that Lord Bollington had a mort of other houses? He might be at any of ‘em. Then,” she added hopefully, “we could go back to Maidstone and stop at the Angel!”

  But when the narrow white road took a turn, elbowing past a stand of oak woods all misty with bluebells, and brought them in sight of Chase Place, she changed her tune.

  “A moat! A real moat! Battlements! A tower! Why, it’s better than Hampton Court. Lor bless me, only think that I should be coming to stop in such a bang-up place!”

  Chase Place was not precisely a castle, but it had some of a castle’s adjuncts; it was certainly much more than a mere house. Big, rambling, many-chimneyed, and gray, it lay inside an indubitable moat; there was a keep, with turrets, evidently left over from a Norman residence on the same spot; the main part of the building looked to be sixteenth-century, however. It sat snugly in a hollow, facing southward, and the approach road had to describe a half-circle to reach the front entrance. The surrounding green land was studded all over with sheep and half-grown lambs, and their bleating filled the air. The gardens of Chase, if gardens there were, must, Delphie surmised, be on the western or northern side of the house; from this aspect the green pastureland swept right to the moat.

  At length Bodkin, slowing down, pulled his team to a halt on this side of the bridge over the moat.

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he said, turning and touching his hat to Delphie, “but this ‘ere carriage is too wide to pass over that ‘ere bridge.”

  Delphie stepped down into the road and agreed. The bridge (not, to Jenny’s disappointment, a drawbridge, merely a plain stone arch) was certainly too narrow for Mr. Browty’s coach, which was extremely wide. Moreover there were no railings at the sides of the bridge.

  Mr. Bodkin was very apologetic. “Mr. Browty did say as ‘ow I was to drive you right up to the door and wait to see how you got on, miss,” he said, “but, seeing I can’t do that, I’ll send Jem Postilion to bang on the knocker, shall I, and I’ll walk the hosses here, till you find out if your folks are home? I’m right sorry not to take you up to the door in style, miss, but I don’t see what’s to be done about it.”

  “Thank you, Bodkin, but pray don’t distress yourself,” Delphie said with a friendly smile. (She had a shrewd suspicion, from the encouraging expressions on their faces, that both Bodkin and the postilions had somehow learned the nature of her journey, and wished her well.) “The fault is certainly not yours, but that of this very narrow bridge, and Mr. Browty’s very stylish carriage! Do you walk the horses here; that will serve admirably, for anyone looking through the arch will be able to see what a handsome equipage I have come in. And Miss Baggott and I will send word back to you in a very few minutes, either that we should like our baggage brought in because we are staying here, or that we intend to continue with you, and find accommodation at an inn in Cow Green.”

  Jenny had jumped out of the carriage in time to hear this last, and her face fell considerably. To stay in a castle, or at the Angel in Maidstone, was one thing; to be putting up at some village hostelry in a place called Cow Green was quite another, and not at all the kind of evening’s entertainment that she had proposed for herself.

  “Look—there’s folk about—I daresay his lordship is in residence,” she said hopefully, nudging Delphie’s arm. “I can see a gig standing in the courtyard through that arch. And I just noticed a couple of dogs run across.”

  “So did I. There is certainly somebody in the place. But of course Lord Bollington may keep it staffed with servants even when he is from home. In any case, let us go forward and see! We shall not be long, Bodkin.”

  Delphie walked swiftly across the narrow stone bridge, glancing about her, in spite of her growing nervousness, with considerable interest. A high stone wall rose on the far side of the moat, which did not look to be very deep, but might be about twenty feet wide. It was full of water-lily pads, with the flowers just coming into bloom, among which ducklings and moorhens swam and paddled and splashed.

  Through a stone arch at the far end of the bridge could be seen a wide, grassy inner courtyard, on the distant side of which wide stone steps led up to an imposingly massive wooden door under a Gothic arch. This door, encouragingly, stood open, and a black-clad man, who appeared to have alighted from the stationary gig, was just passing through it. Delphie had only a brief glimpse of him but decided that he did not look like a lord (not that she had any very clear notion of what a lord should look like); she thought he might be a lawyer, clergyman, bailiff, or some other person from the professional classes.

  Having crossed the bridge she was just about to pass under the stone arch when she was arrested by the sound of a loud splash, followed by a series of ear-piercing shrieks, from just behind her.

  Spinning around she saw with the utmost astonishment and consternation that Jenny, through some unimaginable mischance—perhaps from staring about her and not looking where she set her feet—had fallen off the bridge and landed plump in the water.

  There she was, bobbing about among the lily leaves, thrashing the water with her velvet-clad arms, and shrieking at the top of a pair of exceptionally powerful lungs:

  “Help! Help! I shall be drowned. I shall die for certain. Help, help! Oh, why does nobody save me? Help! Help! Will no kind soul come to my aid?”

  Bodkin and the postilions were gazing at Jenny in stupefaction. All seemed reluctant to take action. Then Bodkin, evidently unwilling to ruin his livery by jumping into the water, if it could be avoided, ran to the carriage boot, and pulled out the rope which was always carried there in case of an overturn.

  “Here, miss! Try if you can catch hold of the rope’s end!” he shouted, and hurled the rope so accurately that it knocked off Miss Baggott’s green velvet Waterloo hat.

  “Oh, help—bubble bubble—my hat, my hat! Oh help me—I can’t reach the rope!”


  Amid Jenny’s deafening cries, Bodkin drew back the rope, recoiled it, and threw it again; but the sufferer in the moat, either out of anxiety not to lose her hat, which she now grasped with one hand, or because her eyes were full of water, seemed very unhandy at catching the end of the rope; she missed it a second time and then a third. Meanwhile she continued to splash and flounder among the lily pads, sometimes submerged and silent, sometimes half out of the water and shrieking, insensibly all the time drawing nearer to the inner margin of the moat and the archway that gave onto the courtyard.

  At this juncture reinforcements arrived in the shape of three men running over the grass, evidently alerted by all the cries and commotion.

  “Merciful heavens! What in the devil’s name is going on?” demanded one of them. “Is somebody being murdered? Or is a pig being killed?”

  At the instant when they came through the archway and emerged onto the bridge, Jenny had finally just succeeded in catching hold of the rope’s end, and had suffered herself to be towed through the lilies to the outer bank, and then drawn slowly up it.

  She stood then, dripping, gasping, hysterically laughing, crying, and exclaiming on the bridge, ruefully regarding her draggled plumage and streaming apparel.

  “Oh, my feathers! Oh, my fringe! Oh, my dear, dear Miss Carteret, I thought I was a goner! I thought I should be drowned for sure! Oh, Mr. Bodkin, my preserver! How can I ever thank you for saving me from a watery death?”

  “I scarcely think you could have achieved a watery death in three feet of moat,” dryly observed one of the three men who had come through the archway.

  Miss Baggott gazed at him reproachfully, and Delphie turned to look at him.

  He was unusually tall, a strongly built individual with a profusion of jet-black hair, somewhat carelessly arranged, and a decidedly sardonic expression on his long face. He wore a riding costume of drab buckskins, a plain but well-cut jacket, highly polished top boots, and a neckcloth of dazzling whiteness. He was much too young to be Lord Bollington—in his middle thirties at the outside. Perhaps Lord Bollington had a son? speculated Delphie, and realized how little she knew about her hypothetical cousins.