VIII.
Not a little discouraged at his experience in announcing his engagement by word of mouth, Jerry wrote the news to the rest of his friends, among whom were Peale and Miss Lee. Both answered with very cordial letters; Prixley’s praised Marie Louise; Miss Lee dwelt more upon Jerry’s own qualities. And Jerry liked Prixley’s the best.
The world at large, as so often happens, was less surprised at the news than were the contracting parties themselves. The general opinion was that, while the engagement was fitting enough, Jerry might have done better.
Miss Bowles was perhaps the only person frankly and wholly delighted.
“I have no patience with you, Anne,” she exclaimed to Mrs. Orvice, to whose house she had hurried as soon as the information reached her; “your saying ‘yes, so nice,’ in that martyred tone. I should think it was nice. A fine, handsome, generous young woman like that, with all that money. It will be the making of Jerry.”
“I am partial enough to think he doesn't need any making,” returned his mother.
“Well, I suppose you'll admit he needs supporting. And she loves him—she adores him.”
“If that were the only requirement, I should have had several daughters-in-law already.”
“And would you have preferred them? Barbara Leg, and that crazy little girl who afterward ran away with the Austrian?”
“At least, they had been brought up by people of my own standards,” began Mrs. Orvice. “Their mothers”
But Miss Bowles interrupted. “Oh, mothers! Well, I concede the mother. I’ve never seen ‘mommer,’ but they all say she is a strange old party. However, you must remember that it isn’t she with whom Jerry is in love.”
Mrs. Orvice did not disturb herself to answer this at all. It had never occurred to her that any one, least of all one so sophisticated as Miss Bowles, could suppose Jerry’s feelings to be engaged in the matter. But Miss Bowles did not notice her silence, and went on:
“Of course, you’ve met the mother.”
“I visit her by appointment this afternoon,” returned Mrs. Orvice, with unmistakable distaste.
“Well,” said Miss Bowles, “your dislike of it all makes me feel very badly, for I suppose I had more to do with bringing it about than any one else. It was at my house that they first met, and I said to Jerry at the time: “There is the girl for you.” I remember that I was awfully afraid that she was going to prefer Prixley.”
“Prixley!” cried Mrs. Orvice, who had always had the greatest confidence in Peale’s judgment. “Much good that would have done her. Of all women, she seems to me about the least likely to attract Prixley.”
“Don’t be too sure, my dear, until you know her better; for she has one quality that none of the rest of us have; not you, nor I, nor Prixley; no, nor Jerry, for all his charm. She is lovable.”
At this preposterous assertion Mrs. Orvice could only smile.
The visit that afternoon was not a great success. Mrs. Orvice had never before seen the black and green marble hall, the tiger skins and gas-logs, These began, even at the doorway, to affect her unpleasantly. She was angered, too, at the glimpse she caught of the cards of those who had been denied admittance in order to give her audience. Every one was utterly mercenary, she thought.
She was received in the large salon, all gilt and modern tapestry, by Marie Louise, beaming with happiness and a desire to be approved.
In her own room, the girl had revolved the propriety of addressing Mrs. Orvice as “mother.” For, after all, what could be tenderer than her relation to Jerry’s parent? Fortunately, however, she decided that the title, though endearing, was premature.
Nevertheless, it was distinctly as the future daughter-in-law that she insisted on meeting Mrs. Orvice; only unhappily, in Marie Louise’s estimation, the filial relations entailed not so much respect as protection. She desired that Mrs. Orvice should have the most comfortable of the gilt-chairs, hoped she wasn’t tired, feared there was a draft, and finally wanted to order the carriage to send her home.
Mrs. Orvice, who had come intending to be merely gracious, refused with some decision to be either petted or, as she put it to herself, “blessed.” She was driven to mentioning that if she had not preferred walking she could have sent for a cab.
Baffled in this manifestation, Marie Louise turned to their only common interest, Jerry; and quoted and explained him, until the lady who had borne him hardly recognized him as her son,
Nor did matters very much improve with the entrance of Mrs. Carman. She had begged not to be made to appear, but Marie Louise had now seen enough of the world to know that, when there was any question of marriage, parents were given a certain fictitious prominence, and she insisted upon her mother’s presence.
Even Mrs. Carman was overcome by the mixture of graciousness, simplicity, and aloofness which Mrs. Orvice contrived to present. The poor woman tried to take refuge in silence, but Mrs. Orvice, who kept count, noticed that out of the five sentences uttered, three began: “Well, I presume”
As she walked out between the marble columns, Mrs. Orvice was saying to herself that she had been grossly deceived, that the girl was not lovable, and the mother was nothing but a dreadful old woman.
At her own house she found Miss Lee waiting for her. The two ladies did not begin their conversation with any expressions of despair or even of disapproval. On the contrary, they both said how satisfactory it would be to see Jerry safely married, how fitted he was to make a woman happy, how admirably adapted he himself was to enjoy the wealth which nature had so evidently intended for him.
Only after she rose to go, did Miss Lee refer faintly to their last fevered interview on the subject of Jerry’s intentions.
“I see how wrong I was,” she observed, smiling. “Either he loves her or else”
“Or else what?”
“Or else we shall never get him to the altar.”
She left Mrs. Orvice’s brains busy, not altogether disagreeably busy, with the scandals of a broken engagement. Was it still possible that Jerry might back out? Would she blame him? Would she be glad or sorry?
Miss Lee contrived to suggest the same idea to Jerry the next time she saw him. Engagements were, apparently, in her estimation, mere hints of one’s inclinations; intimations of a temporary state of mind. “If you are married,” some of her sentences began, meaning, as she explained, only that nothing was ever really settled until the cards were out—not always then.
Finding in Jerry’s eyes no answering gleam at the temptation, she next allowed herself a somewhat bolder stroke.
Not so very apropos to something he had just said she answered: “Ah, you would not say that if you had ever been in love.”
“Ever been in love,” cried Jerry. “My dear girl, as if I had not tried my prentice-hand on you.”
Now this was extremely disagreeable of Jerry, for he must have known that she cherished not a little tenderness for the incident he referred to so casually. She answered bitingly:
“From me to May Emmons—something of a decline, dear Jerry.”
“Not at all, Barbara. An excellent training—a capital preface.”
“But preface to what? Ah, Jerry, I sometimes wonder if you are capable of really loving.”
“Isn’t every one capable of loving the right person?”
“But shall you ever find her?”
“I thought you knew that the search was over.”
She turned from him in disgust. He was not being candid, and she could make nothing of him.
Miss Lee even attempted a word or two to Marie Louise herself, but without success. It would have taken a good deal to shake her confident happiness. If she had admired and loved Jerry before her engagement, she now loved him a great deal more, and with better cause.
She felt vaguely that his mere presence made her, somehow, a different creature, that she no longer uttered the follies that in old times had turned her hot to remember, or if by chance one of her characteristic crudities did escape her, its good-natured reception by Jerry seemed to render it amusing and original rather than blatantly ridiculous. Certainly the change in her was not accomplished by any conscious effort on her part. On the contrary, Jerry, always so unruffled and so completely himself, helped her to be natural, and to slough off her former conception of the grand manner fit for a great heiress.
So infatuated was she that she did not even resent the left-handed compliments of some of her friends, who insisted on telling her how much she had improved since her engagement.
“I’m sure I don’t know what would improve me if that didn’t,” she would answer, with her sudden smile.
It was no wonder that she was happy. Alone with her, he was so amazingly kind and understanding. Poor Marie Louise, who had never been really understood, or, at least, admiringly understood, which is the only kind worth having, expanded with gratitude and affection under Jerry’s discerning warm approval.
So true was this, that, after some weeks of her engagement, she summoned courage to confess something that had long weighed upon her conscience.
“You know, Jerry,” she broke out one evening after dinner, when Mfrs. Carman, in accordance with the good old American custom, had left the lovers to themselves, “I think I ought to tell you something.”
“Nothing about your past, my dear,” returned Jerry lightly. “My own, of course, is hideous, and the mere boastfulness of man might urge me into similar confidences.”
“No, it’s about the present, too.”
“All the worse. If I haven’t found it out for myself, I do not deserve to hear.”
“But I must tell you.”
He protested, but she was firm, and said finally, with some difficulty: “I blacken my eyebrows.”
He looked at her gravely, while her heart beat with terror.
“So, my darling, I was told six months ago.”
“You don’t mean that every one knows?”
“Almost every one, I think. And what is the result? A perfect outbreak of blackened eyebrows among the blondes of our acquaintance. What higher compliment could you have?”
“How wonderful you are not to despise me! Most men would, I’m sure.”
“Bobby Peters wouldn’t have stood it for a minute,” said Orvice reflectively.
Marie Louise giggled. “He remonstrated with me about it the day of his wedding. I kept wondering then what you would say.”
“Why, what could any sensible man say, except that I had heard it already, that I might have found it out for myself, and that I cling to everything that goes to make up your very charming appearance? However, if you'll give me your pencil, I think I could show you how the effect might be made even more delightful.”
And, a few minutes later, he might have been seen elongating very slightly the line of those wonderful brows, by the aid of Marie Louise’s greased crayon.
“There,” he said, “that is quite perfect.” And he kissed her to show his complete satisfaction before he turned her to the glass so that she also might admire his handiwork.
The wedding, which was to take place in town early in April, was to be very quiet. Marie Louise had always conceived of her wedding as the very grandest of occasions; the sort of affair that would exclude all other news from the papers for weeks. Nothing showed better the intensity of her feeling for Jerry than her desire for simplicity in the arrangements. It was as if her love of him had raised the ceremony from a social function to a rite.
Early in March the yacht bearing the Amazon party, delayed in starting, was to put in at Baltimore. Jerry, whose desertion had been taken very ill, had promised to meet them at that port and see them off.
He was to be absent from New York for four days. It was the greatest grief that Marie Louise had yet known.
“Oh, I know I’m foolish,” she said to her mother, “but I don’t see how I’m to live through the time. I wish I could take an opiate and sleep. I did think when we were once engaged that we should never have to be separated again.”
In deference to her wish, Jerry stopped on his way to the train to bid her good-by for the third time.
Holding the lapel of his coat in both hands, with tears in her eyes, she besought him not to let his friends carry him off.
“It’s just the sort of thing they might do, and think it a joke—those Englishmen! Of course, their whole expedition is spoiled by your not going. Oh, yes, it is. I believe they have come here to kidnap you.”
Jerry assured her that he would escape in the gig and row himself ashore.
“Then you’d be drowned, and that would be worse.” She was half in fun, but her emotion was so genuine that Orvice caught her to him, comforting her like a child. After a moment she raised her head.
“And you won’t notice those Baltimore girls, will you, dear? Some one told me they were the prettiest in the world.”
“You expect me to be met at the train by a delegation of picked Baltimore beauties?”
“Four days is a long time.”
“Not quite long enough to make me forget you.”
Presently, since trains are uncompromising things, he was obliged to take his departure. She watched him drive away, and then, turning from the window and wiping her eyes, she found her mother at her elbow.
“Isn’t it awful, mommer?” she broke out. “I did not know it would be so bad. I keep saying ‘only four days.’ But it’s all to-day and to-morrow, and But how selfish I am, thinking only of myself! It’s just as hard for him, isn’t it?”
“Oh, no,” returned Mrs. Carman coolly, “it isn’t ever as hard for men, even if they do love you as much as you love them.”
“Now, mommer, what do you mean by that? If he does Oh, how can you say such things when I’m so unhappy already? Don’t you believe that he loves me?”
“Well,” answered her mother candidly, “I used to think he did not, but now I’ve about changed my mind. I rather guess he does.”
“Of course he does,” said Marie Louise. “Why, I don’t know how you could have thought such a thing! Did you think he wanted my money?”
“No.”
“Then why should he have wanted to marry me?”
“That’s just it. That’s what made me change my mind. Why did he, as long as he couldn’t know how fond you were of him?”
Marie Louise stared at her mother with large, tearful eyes. She did not answer, but she had taken in the full significance of the speech.