The Hillsborough Recorder

WEDDINGS:
BY A PARISH CLERK.

There were at least five carriages in the street filled with relations and friends. To judge from outward appearances, the rank and fortune on each side were quite equal, the ages suitable; the lady might be six and twenty, the gentleman four or five years older: he was a very handsome man, and she not ugly, but certainly much set off by the costly elegance of her dress. Dignified decorum seemed to be the order of the day, and the greetings in the vestry room were more polite than cordial. They were fine people, and too well bred to show their secret feelings in company. The whole assembly arranged themselves around the altar: the ceremony had already commenced, when suddenly a fearful scream rang through the church, and a female, young, beautiful, pale, and wild with agony, rushed up the centre-aisle. Her eye was haggard; her dress disordered; she must have passed the whole of the preceding day and night in concealment within the walls: she was so dreadfully agitated that she could only exclaim, "No! no! no!" and flinging herself between the bride and bridegroom, she clung to the rails for support, and looked up at the perjured seducer with such beseeching anguish, that hardened as he was, he was touched, and covered his face with his hand. She then turned round to the lady—"He is mine!" she said, "indeed he is mine. Oh, if you knew by what vows and sacred oaths he won me, you would not have met him here." The bride drew up her dainty head, tossed her plumes, and whispered something to her brother, but stirred not from the spot. Meantime, the gentleman had recovered himself, and seemed resolved to face the matter out. Exhausted by her efforts, the intruder, who appeared to be reduced by her sufferings to an alarming state of weakness, had sunk upon the steps of the altar, and was now weeping bitterly. A consultation took place amongst the male portion of the party, and one of them asked the prostrate girl whether she had been married to the person whose union with another she now sought to prevent. "His wife," she cried, "certainly his wife, by every law of heaven." "That is no answer to my question," replied the unfeeling speaker. She was silent, but, urged a third time, arose, and with a glance of scorn, exclaimed; "I thought to have encountered men of honour, or humanity. Those who would have espoused an injured, unprotected, helpless woman's cause. Is there nothing binding save those legal ties, whose infraction would be followed by disgraceful punishment: and cannot I obtain justice in this sacred place, pity in this holy edifice, a something balm to heal my breaking heart? Oh, Henry!" she continued, again appealing to her betrayer, "I came not here to reproach, to expose you, but to save you from the commission of a fearful crime, I do not ask you to fulfil those broken promises so often and so solemnly plighted, but pledge them not to another, false and forsworn as thou art; pause here, in compassion to me, in mercy to yourself" "I believe," said the bridegroom, addressing the clergyman, "that it cannot be necessary for me to say any thing to convince you of the impertinence of this interruption. This person has no claims upon me, that cannot be settled by my purse, and I therefore beg that the ceremony may go on." The forbidder of the banns was unprepared for an act of such determined cruelty, and she dropped immediately upon the ground, like one who had received a mortal wound, and was conveyed out of the church in a state of insensibility. The bridegroom coughed and wiped his face with his handkerchief; the bride took out her smelling bottle; there were whispers among the bridesmaids, and one of the gentlemen left the party and walked off but, in a moment, the utmost composure was restored to this highbred company, and the nuptial knot was tied.