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Show CHAPTER XX. THE FAIR APOSTATE. MERRILY rang the bells of Church, Herefordshire, in the merry month of May, 1847; for Nixy James, the belle of the hamlet, was that day to be married to Elwood Briarly, the sturdiest young yeoman on all the country side. The elder James and Elwood's father had grown from childhood together: intimate companions and fierce rivals for the lead among the village politicians, partners in public sports and at the village tavern, but never, by any possibility, on the same side of any exciting question. Thomas James, cobbler, was often heard to declare that Yeoman Briarly would " contradict for contradiction's sake he'd argefy wi' t' clock on t' church steeple, rather than go wi'out argefying;" while the yeoman, on his part, in-sisted that James " was aye runnin' after every dashed new- fangled notion that come along." He couldn't see why simple folk like us couldn't be content wi' t' old church and t' old laws, and not take up wi' every outlanguaged kickshaw from France or ' Merica or other foreign parts." For his part, give him the British Constitution. Nay, the difference was in the blood; for James' great- grandfather was a hot adherent of the Prince of Orange, while the Briarlys had stood by the " Lord's Anointed," and remained zealous Jacobites even down to the coming in of the House of Brunswick. They held to legitimacy long after Church, Lords, and Commons had forgotten it; but the James' had ever three bogies: a papist king, an Irish rising and a French invasion. Now it so happens that a whole people can not always be scared into submission by Irish risings and French in-vasions ; and so, by and by, new and perplexing questions arose, and certain pestilent fellows began to talk about " more liberty," and " household suffrage," and the " rights of the people." It was an ex-traordinary proceeding on their part, and x Yeoman Briarly stoutly pro-tested no good could come of it; but, in spite of him, he would have told you the James' family and all their adherents went crazy. But it never shook him. Oh, no ; he planted himself firmly on the Con-stitution, and defied the world to move ; and, when the others became Chartists, he declared, with great positiveness, over his pipe in the vil-lage ale- house, what Parliament ought to do to stop this sort of thing. ( 317) |
