I was unable to apply in person at Doctors' Commons, for Lurana insisted that I should leave the whole matter in Chuck's hands, but I impressed upon him the necessity of absolute candour with the officials.
Whether he told them all, whether they were remiss in making full inquiry, or whether--as I would rather not think--he intentionally deceived them, I cannot say, but at all events he came back triumphantly with the special licence.
Wooker and Sawkins had fixed an early date, and wished the wedding to take place at night, so as to figure in the evening programme, but the Surrogate, or somebody at the office, had insisted that it must be in the afternoon, which would, of course, oblige Mr Sawkins to introduce it at a _matinée_ performance.
Miss Rakestraw proved herself a born journalist. She placed her news at the disposal of an enterprising evening journal, whose bills that very same evening came out with startling and alliterative headlines such as:
_Canonbury Couple to Marry in Cageful of Carnivora._
and from that moment, as the reader will recollect, Lurana and I became public characters.
There were portraits--quite unrecognisable--of us in several of the illustrated weeklies, together with sketches of and interviews with us both, contributed by Miss Ruth's facile stylograph, and an account of the Professor, contributed by himself.
As for the daily papers there was scarcely one, from the _Times_ downwards, which did not contain a leader, a paragraph, or a letter on the subject of our contemplated wedding. Some denounced me violently for foolhardy rashness, others for the selfishness with which I was encouraging an impressionable girl to risk her life to gratify my masculine vanity. Several indignantly demanded whether it was true that the Archbishop had sanctioned such a scandalous abuse of marriage rites, and if so, what the Home Office were about?
There was a risk that all this publicity would end in the authorities being compelled to interfere and countermand the ceremony, and yet I cannot honestly say that I disliked the fuss that was made about it. In the City, to be sure, I had to put up with a certain amount of chaff; facetious inquiries as to whether I intended to present the leonine bridesmaids with bones or pieces of raw meat, and the precise locality in which my wife and I thought of spending our honeymoon. But such _badinage_ covered a very genuine respect for my intrepidity, and I was looked upon as a credit to the tea trade.