On the morning of Monday, the 28th of July, Miss Gwilt — once more on the watch for Allan and Neelie — reached her customary post of observation in the park, by the usual roundabout way.
She was a little surprised to find Neelie alone at the place of meeting. She was more seriously astonished, when the tardy Allan made his appearance ten minutes later, to see him mounting the side of the dell, with a large volume under his arm, and to hear him say, as an apology for being late, that “he had muddled away his time in hunting for the Books; and that he had only found one, after all, which seemed in the least likely to repay either Neelie or himself for the trouble of looking into it.”
If Miss Gwilt had waited long enough in the park, on the previous Saturday, to hear the lovers’ parting words on that occasion, she would have been at no loss to explain the mystery of the volume under Allan’s arm, and she would have understood the apology which he now offered for being late as readily as Neelie herself.
There is a certain exceptional occasion in life — the occasion of marriage — on which even girls in their teens sometimes become capable (more or less hysterically) of looking at consequences. At the farewell moment of the interview on Saturday, Neelie’s mind had suddenly precipitated itself into the future; and she had utterly confounded Allan by inquiring whether the contemplated elopement was an offense punishable by the Law? Her memory satisfied her that she had certainly read somewhere, at some former period, in some book or other (possibly a novel), of an elopement with a dreadful end — of a bride dragged home in hysterics — and of a bridegroom sentenced to languish in prison, with all his beautiful hair cut off, by Act of Parliament, close to his head. Supposing she could bring herself to consent to the elopement at all — which she positively declined to promise — she must first insist on discovering whether there was any fear of the police being concerned in her marriage as well as the parson and the clerk. Allan, being a man, ought to know; and to Allan she looked for information — with this preliminary assurance to assist him in laying down the law, that she would die of a broken heart a thousand times over, rather than be the innocent means of sending him to languish in prison, and of cutting his hair off, by Act of Parliament, close to his head. “It’s no laughing matter,” said Neelie, resolutely, in conclusion; “I decline even to think of our marriage till my mind is made easy first on the subject of the Law.”
“But I don’t know anything about the law, not even as much as you do,” said Allan. “Hang the law! I don’t mind my head being cropped. Let’s risk it.”
“Risk it?” repeated Neelie, indignantly. “Have you no consideration for me? I won’t risk it! Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We must find out the law for ourselves.”
“With all my heart,” said Allan. “How?”
“Out of books, to be sure! There must be quantities of information in that enormous library of yours at the great house. If you really love me, you won’t mind going over the backs of a few thousand books, for my sake!”
“I’ll go over the backs of ten thousand!” cried Allan, warmly. “Would you mind telling me what I’m to look for?”
“For ‘Law,’ to be sure! When it says ‘Law’ on the back, open it, and look inside for Marriage — read every word of it — and then come here and explain it to me. What! you don’t think your head is to be trusted to do such a simple thing as that?”
“I’m certain it isn’t,” said Allan. “Can’t you help me?”
“Of course I can, if you can’t manage without me! Law may be hard, but it can’t be harder than music; and I must, and will, satisfy my mind. Bring me all the books you can find, on Monday morning — in a wheelbarrow, if there are a good many of them, and if you can’t manage it in any other way.”
The result of this conversation was Allan’s appearance in the park, with a volume of Blackstone’s Commentaries under his arm, on the fatal Monday morning, when Miss Gwilt’s written engagement of marriage was placed in Midwinter’s hands. Here again, in this, as in all other human instances, the widely discordant elements of the grotesque and the terrible were forced together by that subtle law of contrast which is one of the laws of mortal life. Amid all the thickening complications now impending over their heads — with the shadow of meditated murder stealing toward one of them already from the lurking-place that hid Miss Gwilt — the two sat down, unconscious of the future, with the book between them; and applied themselves to the study of the law of marriage, with a grave resolution to understand it, which, in two such students, was nothing less than a burlesque in itself!
“Find the place,” said Neelie, as soon as they were comfortably established. “We must manage this by what they call a division of labor. You shall read, and I’ll take notes.”
She produced forthwith a smart little pocket-book and pencil, and opened the book in the middle, where there was a blank page on the right hand and the left. At the top of the right-hand page she wrote the word Good . At the top of the left-hand page she wrote the word Bad . “‘Good’ means where the law is on our side,” she explained; “and ‘Bad’ means where the law is against us. We will have ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ opposite each other, all down the two pages; and when we get to the bottom, we’ll add them up, and act accordingly. They say girls have no heads for business. Haven’t they! Don’t look at me — look at Blackstone, and begin.”
“Would you mind giving one a kiss first?” asked Allan.
“I should mind it very much. In our serious situation, when we have both got to exert our intellects, I wonder you can ask for such a thing!”
“That’s why I asked for it,” said the unblushing Allan. “I feel as if it would clear my head.”
“Oh, if it would clear your head, that’s quite another thing! I must clear your head, of course, at any sacrifice. Only one, mind,” she whispered, coquettishly; “and pray be careful of Blackstone, or you’ll lose the place.”
There was a pause in the conversation. Blackstone and the pocket-book both rolled on the ground together.
“If this happens again,” said Neelie, picking up the pocket-book, with her eyes and her complexion at their brightest and best, “I shall sit with my back to you for the rest of the morning. Will you go on?”
Allan found his place for the second time, and fell headlong into the bottomless abyss of the English Law.
“Page 280,” he began. “Law of husband and wife. Here’s a bit I don’t understand, to begin with: ‘It may be observed generally that the law considers marriage in the light of a Contract.’ What does that mean? I thought a contract was the sort of a thing a builder signs when he promises to have the workmen out of the house in a given time, and when the time comes (as my poor mother used to say) the workmen never go.”
“Is there nothing about Love?” asked Neelie. “Look a little lower down.”
“Not a word. He sticks to his confounded ‘Contract’ all the way through.”
“Then he’s a brute! Go on to something else that’s more in our way.”
“Here’s a bit that’s more in our way: ‘Incapacities. If any persons under legal incapacities come together, it is a meretricious, and not a matrimonial union.’ (Blackstone’s a good one at long words, isn’t he? I wonder what he means by meretricious?) ‘The first of these legal disabilities is a prior marriage, and having another husband or wife living —’”
“Stop!” said Neelie; “I must make a note of that.” She gravely made her first entry on the page headed “Good,” as follows: “I have no husband, and Allan has no wife. We are both entirely unmarried at the present time.”
“All right, so far,” remarked Allan, looking over her shoulder.
“Go on,” said Neelie. “What next?”
“‘The next disability,’” proceeded Allan, “‘is want of age. The age for consent to matrimony is, fourteen in males, and twelve in females.’ Come!” cried Allan, cheerfully, “Blackstone begins early enough, at any rate!”
Neelie was too business-like to make any other remark, on her side, than the necessary remark in the pocket-book. She made another entry under the head of “Good”: “I am old enough to consent, and so is Allan too. Go on,” resumed Neelie, looking over the reader’s shoulder. “Never mind all that prosing of Blackstone’s, about the husband being of years of discretion, and the wife under twelve. Abominable wretch! the wife under twelve! Skip to the third incapacity, if there is one.”
“‘The third incapacity,’” Allan went on, “‘is want of reason.’”
Neelie immediately made a third entry on the side of “Good”: “Allan and I are both perfectly reasonable. Skip to the next page.”
Allan skipped. “‘A fourth incapacity is in respect of proximity of relationship.’”
A fourth entry followed instantly on the cheering side of the pocket-book: “He loves me, and I love him — without our being in the slightest degree related to each other. Any more?” asked Neelie, tapping her chin impatiently with the end of the pencil.
“Plenty more,” rejoined Allan; “all in hieroglyphics. Look here: ‘Marriage Acts, 4 Geo. IV., c. 76, and 6 and 7 Will. IV., c. 85 (q ).’ Blackstone’s intellect seems to be wandering here. Shall we take another skip, and see if he picks himself up again on the next page?”
“Wait a little,” said Neelie; “what’s that I see in the middle?” She read for a minute in silence, over Allan’s shoulder, and suddenly clasped her hands in despair. “I knew I was right!” she exclaimed. “Oh, heavens, here it is!”
“Where?” asked Allan. “I see nothing about languishing in prison, and cropping a fellow’s hair close to his head, unless it’s in the hieroglyphics. Is ‘4 Geo. IV.’ short for ‘Lock him up’? and does ‘c. 85 (q )’ mean, ‘Send for the hair-cutter’?”
“Pray be serious,” remonstrated Neelie. “We are both sitting on a volcano. There,” she said pointing to the place. “Read it! If anything can bring you to a proper sense of our situation, that will.”
Allan cleared his throat, and Neelie held the point of her pencil ready on the depressing side of the account — otherwise the “Bad” page of the pocket-book.
“‘And as it is the policy of our law,’” Allan began, “‘to prevent the marriage of persons under the age of twenty-one, without the consent of parents and guardians’”—(Neelie made her first entry on the side of “Bad!” “I’m only seventeen next birthday, and circumstances forbid me to confide my attachment to papa”)—”‘it is provided that in the case of the publication of banns of a per............