Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [10]
A cheer went up from the three older men.
"You do me the greatest honour, Miss Knox," the captain babbled, and took another long swig of poteen to steady himself. "We could wed next week, perhaps, at St. Michael's in Ballina."
"Sure what need a moment's delay, when Providence has so arranged it that we've the holy vicar of St. Michael's sitting here across the table?" said Knox, pointing with an air of wonder. "He could do it right this minute. It's the Irish custom, you see," he explained, "to many at home."
"Tonight?" faltered the captain. "But—" He turned towards Miss Knox.
Her uncle creased his brow and put the question to the attorney. "Here we have two young Protestant persons of sound mind, past the age of majority—it'd be legal enough, surely?"
"Indeed, indeed so." The attorney nodded over his glass.
"Let's do it, then," said Knox, leaping to his feet and tugging open a bureau drawer. "You can draft them a simple contract; here's a clean sheet of paper. Of course," he threw in the captain's direction, "the poor sweet girl is sowerless, and I couldn't rob my own, but as the poet once said, Do phósfainn—hey, how does it go?"
He appealed to the attorney, who recited sonorously,
Do phósfainn-se gan feoirling thú
Is nl iarrfainn ba ná spré
"Beautiful," sighed Knox.
"Is that Gaelic? What does it mean?" asked the captain, bewildered.
"I'd wed you without a farthing, and ask no cow nor dowry," Knox translated. "Such a noble and timeless sentiment! Tell you what," he added suddenly, "tell you what I'll do, I'll pay the marriage dues out of my own pocket this minute."
"That's very handsome of you, Knox, " said the parson.
"No bother. Sure don't I love the girl like my own? Start up now, Reverend, now's as good a time as any. Do you, etc...."
At a gesture from her uncle, Miss Knox stood up. The captain clambered to his feet beside her. He couldn't stop giggling; his cheeks were hot. He had never thought to be married before tonight. It was all so fast, so funny, so unexpected, and yet, as the apothecary said, so clearly destined by Providence.
The parson said no more than a few fluent lines. The groom hiccuped in the middle of his I do, but the words came out clearly enough. The bride murmured her answer without moving her lips. He was too drunk and excited to read the contract; it looked well enough. Their signatures on the bottom of the page almost touched.
"I give you a toast, now," Knox roared, when the brief ceremony was over. "To a most glorious union between two young persons, two families, two nations under God!"
In the morning light the young captain thought his head would crack open. He was lying in a strange room, sunken into a very bad mattress. There was a dark shape, a woman sitting on the edge of the bed, with her back to him. He remembered now. He leaned the other way, tugged the chamber pot towards him, and threw up violently, spattering the floor. "Pray excuse me," he gasped. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. And remembered the rest of it.
She turned her white face to him, and it was traced with faint lines around the eyes, around the down-turned mouth.
"You're no twenty-three." In his wretchedness, it was all he could think to say.
"I am thirty-four years old." Her voice was low, but clear.
"What's your name? I don't know your name, even!"
She watched him coolly.
"I was drunk. I was poisoned with that foul poteen," he ranted. "I didn't know what I was doing. I only rode over from Ballina yesterday for some medicine." He bent and scrabbled for his clothes on the floor. "That was no valid wedding!"
"You gave your consent. There was a parson," she added, "and an attorney."
"Oh, how damnably convenient! Does your uncle invite that pair to dinner every night, just in case a suitor for his spinster niece might ride by?" And then as the young captain heard himself say those words, the truth hit him. He looked into her pale eyes. "It was a trap."
She did not deny it.
"Knox