THE WOOING OF A WIDOW
"Jack," Mrs. Neligage observed one morning when her son had dropped in, "I hope you won't mind, but I've decided to marry Harry Bradish."
Jack frowned slightly, then smiled. Probably no man is ever greatly pleased by the idea that his mother is to remarry; but Jack was of accommodating temper, and moreover was not without the common sense necessary for the acceptance of the unpalatable. He trimmed the ashes from the cigarette he was smoking, took a whiff, and sent out into the air an unusually neat smoke-ring. He sat with his eyes fixed upon the involving wreath until it was shattered upon the ceiling and its frail substance dissolved in air.
"Does Bradish know it?" he inquired.
"Oh, he doesn't suspect it," answered she. "He'll never have an idea of such a thing till I tell him, and then he won't believe it."
Jack laughed, blew another most satisfactory smoke-ring, and again with much deliberation watched it ascend to its destruction.
"Then you don't expect him to ask you?" he propounded at length.
"Ask me, Jack? He never could get up the courage. He'd lie down and die for me, but as for proposing—No, if there is to be any proposing I'm afraid I should have to do it; so we shall have to get on without."
"It wouldn't be decorous for me to ask how you mean to manage, I suppose."
"Oh, ask by all means if you want to, Jacky dear; but never a word shall I tell you. All I want of you is to say you aren't too much cut up at the idea."
"I've brought you up so much to have your own way," Jack returned in a leisurely fashion, "that I'm afraid it's too late to begin now to try to control you. I wish you luck."
They were silent for some minutes. Mrs. Neligage had been mending a glove for her son, and when she had finished it, she rose and brought it to him. She stood a minute regarding him with an unwonted softness in her glance.
"Dear boy," she said, with a tender note in her voice, "I haven't thanked you for the money you sent Langdon."
He threw his cigarette away, half turning his face from her as he did so.
"It's no use to bring that up again," he said. "I'm only sorry I couldn't have the satisfaction of kicking him."
She shook her head.
"I've wanted you to a good many times," returned she, "but that's a luxury that we couldn't afford. It would cost too much." She hesitated a moment, and added: "It must have left you awfully hard up, Jack."
"Oh, I'm going into the bank. I'm a reformed man, you know, so that doesn't matter. If I can't play polo what good is money?"
His mother sighed.
"I do wish Providence would take my advice about giving the money round," she remarked impatiently. "Things would be a great deal better arranged."
"For us they would, I've no doubt," he assented with a grin.
"When do you go into that beastly old bank?" she asked.
"First of the month. After all it won't be so much worse than being married."
"You must be awfully hard up," she said once more regretfully.
"Oh, I'm always hard up. Don't bother about that."
She stooped forward and kissed him lightly, an unusual demonstration on her part, and stood brushing the crisp locks back from his forehead. He took her hand and pulled her down to kiss her in turn.
"Really, mater," he observed, still holding her hand, "we're getting quite spoony. Does the idea of marrying Harry Bradish make you sentimental?"
She smiled and did not answer, but withdrew her hand and returned to her seat by the window. She took up a bit of sewing, and folded down on the edge of the lawn a tiny hem.
"When I am married," she observed, the faint suspicion of a blush coming into her cheek, "I can pay that money back to you. Harry is rich enough, and generous enough."
Jack stopped in the lighting of a fresh cigarette, and regarded her keenly.
"Mother," he said in a voice of new seriousness, "are you marrying him to get that money for me?"
"I mean to get it for you," she returned, without looking up.
Again he began to send rings of smoke to break on the ceiling above, and meanwhile she fixed her attention on her sewing. The noise of the carriages outside, the profanity of the English sparrows quarreling on the trees, and the sound of a distant street-organ playing "Cavalleria" came in through the open window.
"Mother," he said, "I won't have it."
"Won't have what?"
"I won't have you marry Harry Bradish."
"Why not?"
"Do you think," he urged, with some heat, "that I don't see through the whole thing? You are bound to help me out, and I won't have you do it."
The widow let her sewing fall into her lap, and turned her face to the window.
"How will you help it?" she asked softly.
"I'll stop it in one way or another. I tell you—"
But she turned toward him a face full of confusion and laughter.
"Oh, Jack, you old goose, I've been fond of Harry Bradish for years, only I didn't dare show it because—"
"Because what?"
"Because Sibley Langdon was so nasty if I did," she returned, her tone hardening. "You don't know," she went on, the tone changing again like a flute-note, "what a perfect dear Harry is. I've teased him, and snubbed him, and bullied him, and treated him generally like a fiend, and he's been as patient, and as sweet—Why, Jack, he's a saint beside me! He's awkward, and as stupid as a frog, but he's as good as gold."
Jack's face had darkened at the mention of Langdon, but it cleared again, and his sunny smile came back once more. He sent out a great cloud of smoke with an entire disregard of the possibilities of artistic ring-making which he sacrificed, and chuckled gleefully.
"All right, mater," he said, "if that's the state of things I've nothing more to say. You may even fleece him for my benefit if you want to."
He rose as he spoke, and went over to where his mother was sitting. With heightened color, she had picked up her sewing, and bent over it so that her face was half hidden.
"Who supposed there was so much sentiment in the family," he remarked. "Well, I must go down town. Good-by. I wish you joy."
They kissed each other with a tenderness not customary, for neither was much given to sentimental demonstrations; and Jack went his way.
It has been remarked by writers tinged with cynicism that a widow who wishes to remarry is generally able to do a large part of whatever wooing is necessary. In the present case, where the lady had frankly avowed her intention of doing the whole, there was no reason why the culmination should be long delayed. One day soon after the interview between Mrs. Neligage and her son, the widow and Harry Bradish were at the County Club when they chanced to come into the parlor just in time to discover May Calthorpe and Dick Fairfield, when the lover was kissing his lady's hand. Mrs. Neligage was entirely equal to the situation.
"Yes, Mr. Bradish," she observed, looking upward, "you were right, this ceiling is very ugly."
"I didn't say anything about the ceiling," he returned, gazing up in amazement, while Dick and May slipped out at another door.
She turned to him with a countenance of mischief.
"Then you should have said it, stupid!" she exclaimed. "Didn't you see Dick and May?"
"I saw them go out. What of it?"
"Really, Harry," she said, falling into the name which she had called him in her girlhood, "you should have your wits about you when you stumble on young lovers in a sentimental attitude."
"I didn't see what they were doing. I was behind you."
"Oh, he had her hand," explained she, extending hers.
Bradish took it shyly, looking confused and mystified. The widow laughed in his face.
"What are you laughing at?" he asked.
"What do you suppose he was doing?" Mrs. Neligage demanded. "Now you have my hand, what are you going to do with it?"
He dropped her hand in confusion.
"I—I just took it because you gave it to me," he stammered. "I was only going—I was going to—"
"Then why in the world didn't you?" she laughed, moving quickly away toward the window which opened upon the piazza.
"But I will now," he exclaimed, striding after.
"Oh, now it is too late," she declared teasingly. "A woman is like time. She must be taken by the forelock."
"But, Mrs. Neligage, Louisa, I was afraid of offending you!"
"Nothing offends a woman so much as to be afraid of offending her," was her oracular reply, as she flitted over the sill.
All the way into town that sunny April afternoon Harry Bradish was unusually silent. While Mrs. Neligage, in the highest spirits, rattled on with jest, or chat, or story, he replied in monosyllables or in the briefest phrases compatible with politeness. He was evidently thinking deeply. The very droop of his yellow mustaches showed that. The presence of the trig little groom at the back of the trap was a sufficient reason why Bradish should not then deliver up any confidential disclosures in regard to the nature of his cogitations, but from time to time he glanced at the widow with the air of having her constantly in his thoughts.
Bradish was the most kindly of creatures, and withal one of the most self-distrustful. He was so transparent that there was nothing surprising in the ease with which one so astute as Mrs. Neligage might read his mood if she were so disposed. He cast upon her looks of inquiry or doubt which she gave no sign of perceiving, or now and then of bewilderment as if he had come in his thought to a question which puzzled him completely. During the entire drive he was obviously struggling after some mental adjustment or endeavoring to solve some deep and complicated problem.
The day was enchanting, and in the air was the exciting stir of spring which turns lightly the young man's fancy to thoughts of love. Whether Bradish felt its influence or not, he had at least the air of a man emotionally much stirred. Mrs. Neligage looked more alert, more provoking, more piquant, than ever. She had, it is true, an aspect less sentimental than that of her companion, but nature had given to Harry Bradish a likeness to Don Quixote which made it impossible for him ever to appear mischievous or sportive, and if he showed feeling it must be of the kindly or the melancholy sort. The widow might be reflecting on the effectiveness of the turnout, the fineness of the horses, the general air of style and completeness which belonged to the equipage, or she might be ruminating on the character of the driver. She might on the other hand have been thinking of nothing in particular except the light things she was saying,—if indeed it is possible to suppose that a clever woman ever confines her thoughts to what is indicated by her words. Bradish, however, was evidently meditating of her.
When he had brought the horses with a proper flourish to Mrs. Neligage's door, Bradish descended and helped her out with all his careful politeness of manner. He was a man to whom courtesy was instinctive. At the stake he would have apologized to the executioner for being a trouble. He might to-day be absorbed and perplexed, but he was not for that less punctiliously attentive.
"May I come in?" he asked, hat in hand.
"By all means," Mrs. Neligage responded. "Come in, and I'll give you a cup of tea."
Bradish sent the trap away with the satisfactory groom, and then accompanied his companion upstairs. They were no sooner inside the door of her apartment than he turned to the widow with an air of sudden determination.
"Louisa," he said with awkward abruptness, "what did you mean this afternoon?"
He grasped her hands with both his; his hat, which he had half tossed upon the table, went bowling merrily over the floor, but he gave it no heed.
"Good gracious, Harry," she cried, laughing up into his face, "how tragic you are! Pick up your hat."
He glanced at the hat, but he did not release her hands. He let her remark pass, and went on with increasing intensity which was not unmixed with wistfulness.
"I've been thinking about it all the way home," he declared. "You've always teased me, Louisa, from the days we were babies, and of course I'm an old fool; but—Were you willing I should kiss your hand?"
He stopped in speechless confusion, the color coming into his cheeks, and looked pathetically into her laughing face.
"Lots of men have," she responded.
He dropped her hands, and grew paler.
"But to-day—" he stammered.
"But what to-day?" she cried, moving near to him.
"I thought that to-day—Louisa, for heaven's sake, do you care for me?"
"Not for heaven's sake," she murmured, looking younger and more bewitching than ever.
Some women at forty-five are by Providence allowed still to look as young as their children, and Mrs. Neligage was one of them. Her airs would perhaps have been ridiculous in one less youthful in appearance, but she carried them off perfectly. Bradish was evidently too completely and tragically in earnest to see the point of her quip. He looked so disappointed and abashed that it was not strange for her to burst into a peal of laughter.
"Oh, Harry," she cried, "you are such a dear old goose! Must I say it in words? Well, then; here goes, despite modesty! Take me!"
He stared at her as if in doubt of his senses.
"Do you mean it?" he stammered.
"I do at this minute, but if you're not quick I may change my mind!"
Then Harry Bradish experienced a tremendous reaction from the excessive shyness of nearly half a century, and gathered her into his arms.