CHAPTER XIII
The day following Rod drew his father into the library and bluntly announced his engagement to Mary Thorn, also that the date of their marriage was set for the first week in July, exactly one month ahead.
Norquay senior sat down, lighted a cigar. He did not precisely lose his poise, but he was slightly staggered.
"Well," he said at last, "the younger generation is supposed to be speedy but I didn't imagine you would ever step on the accelerator like this. Why the mad haste? Can't you at least give us a chance to get acquainted with the young woman?"
"We've had plenty of opportunities for acquaintance," Rod could not forbear saying, "since she is a close neighbor, so to speak. Besides, the family isn't marrying Miss Thorn, pater. I am. And I have known her for several years."
"I suppose she's pretty," his father observed grimly. "Has she any manners? Education? Ever been anywhere?"
Rod looked at him soberly.
"Are you trying to get my goat?" he asked. "If you want me to blow up, polite insult is as good a way as any. I'm of age and a little more. You took pains to educate me. You've granted at various times that I have good taste in many things. I should be qualified to choose a wife with—with the ordinary essentials."
"Perhaps I didn't put it very well," Norquay senior replied. "I don't mean to adopt a toplofty hypercritical attitude. I may seem unduly impertinent, my son, but marriage is important—in this family, and to this family. A wife isn't something to be put aside if she doesn't happen to suit. Remember, I've had no warning of this. Therefore, naturally, the first questions that occur to me are these: Is the girl such as we can accept into the family as one of us? Is she a person our friends can meet as one of themselves? Have you asked yourself this, Rod?"
"Yes," Rod answered. "Contrary to the general notion of what an infatuated youngster does in such circumstances, I have. Or at least I should certainly have done so if there had been any doubt in the matter. To be quite candid, Mary Thorn has equally as good manners and as much—if not a good deal more—education as any girl I know. And about fifty per cent more discrimination in most things. If the family and the family's set refuse to accept her at her face value, that will be the privilege of snobbery. It won't make any difference to me."
"Quite sure about that?"
"I meant it wouldn't make me hesitate. Of course, it would make a difference," Rod amended. "I'm not a fool. But this girl means more to me than merely pleasing my family and friends by what they regard as a suitable match."
"You're fully determined on this?"
"Absolutely," Rod confirmed.
Norquay senior half-turned in his chair to look out the window. His gaze crossed the channel, rested without change of expression on Oliver Thorn's house.
"I can scarcely conceive of a suitable mate for a Norquay arising out of such surroundings," he said gravely, "nor from such antecedents."
"I wonder if you know what you really mean by antecedents," Rod said patiently. He had to force himself to be patient. He had warned himself that he would have to encounter just such prejudice. It grated on him, but he kept his temper in hand and his wits alert. "For instance, you accepted Laska Wall as being quite worthy of the most important of your three sons. And I am sure Laska is. But you must know, pater, that if John P. Wall didn't have scads of money you would never have tolerated the Walls. Mrs. Wall herself is only passable. Wall is simply a keen, able money-grabber. His people were nobodys—petty tradesmen. Wall's father kept a little two-by-four shop in Toronto for twenty years. I learned that quite by accident. And it is nothing against them. It simply happens that in our more or less democratic West, Wall's daughters, having enjoyed every advantage of easily and quickly acquired wealth, go everywhere and are accepted. That being so, antecedents don't seem to carry so much weight as you infer. I believe myself that they do; but not in the way you mean. And though you may not credit it, Mary Thorn's people are as good, able, pioneering stock as we are. Except that they didn't take permanent root and acquire wealth."
"Acquisitive ability is a pretty good test of character, Rod," his father commented. "It takes brains, initiative, determination, sterling qualities to amass wealth and hold it. Your prospective father-in-law doesn't exhibit those traits."
"No? You've tried to buy his timber holdings, haven't you? I heard you confess irritably that you couldn't see why he would neither log it off nor sell. Perhaps it never occurred to you that he is doing precisely what we've done—on a smaller scale—acquire a natural source of wealth and hold it, benefiting by the sure increase in value. He has seventy thousand dollars' worth of timber there. He makes it produce a reasonable living. When he lets it go, he will have a moderate competence. He has managed to give his daughter a university education. If he hasn't luxury, he has something he values more—independence. That rather argues character, doesn't it?"
"The argument is yours, Rod. Special pleading. You'd have made an excellent advocate. But suppose the worst. Suppose you find you can't mix oil and water—you know what I mean—what then?"
"Well, then I won't be the first younger son of this house to break away, to go on his own and make the best of things as he finds them. Will I?" Rod asked.
"I'd be sorry to see you do that. It's so unnecessary. There's room and plenty for all of us here. Of course, if you should elect to do that, you have your inalienable income from the estate. But I'd much prefer to see you and Phil together carrying on the upcoast end of our affairs. I don't want to see my boys scattered. I may have a selfish interest in keeping the family together. I should find myself very lonely here with all my children gone."
"And you're afraid I'll ball things up by marrying a girl nobody knows, and to whom people may not take kindly, eh?"
"That's about it, my son."
"Well, it's coming off on schedule, you may be sure of that," Rod said tartly. "I think I love Hawk's Nest as dearly as any of us. I have a pretty keen sense of what's due the family. I am perhaps a little proud of belonging to it. I'd a little rather be a great-great-grandson of that adventurous old fur trader than anything I know. But I have only one life to live, and I propose to live it according to my lights. I am not going to do anything that will reflect on us. I merely intend to marry a poor man's daughter because she seems to me the most perfect woman I know."
"You are quite determined?" his father asked again.
Rod answered him with a simple "Yes."
"At any rate there is no need for such haste, is there?" Norquay senior continued, with a hint of petulance. "Next month is absurd. Give us a chance to meet your fiancée, to get acquainted with her. If she is to become one of the family, let's have a show at making her feel that she'll be welcome. Incidentally, it will give you time to think. A month's engagement is positively indecent."
"Time to think, pater?" Rod echoed. "I've had a solid year of thinking it over. It has taken me a year to persuade Mary Thorn it's the only thing to do. You want us to think it over—after twelve months of thrashing it out from every conceivable angle. No. One month from to-day. And there aren't going to be any frills. If you are at all dubious about countenancing me in this, just say so and I'll make my own arrangements. I'd be delighted to have you meet Mary, and I'm sure you'll like her immensely, but if you have any idea of adopting a 'to-be-examined-on-approval' attitude with her, why I'll introduce her as my wife and we'll make the necessary adjustments afterward."
Norquay senior smiled at his son's vehemence.
"I didn't dream you had so headlong a temperament, Rod," he said. "Speaking for myself, I wish you had chosen differently. Still, I concede you are well within your rights, and I am anxious to meet this unexpected choice of yours. I'll be courteous and cordial. You know that. But I can't promise that every one else will."
"If they aren't—" Rod shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I don't think people will be downright stupid."
"If they aren't," his father continued judicially, "you can't browbeat them into being so."
Rod agreed that this was obvious.
"In which case," his father said slowly, "I shan't be able to do much. If people won't receive your wife, Rod, on terms of equality, you can't shove her down their throats."
"You needn't be alarmed," Rod assured him stiffly. "I shan't try."