VI
Hardy turned his back upon Mr. Plummer, and looked out of the window. It was a cold, rainy day. The people far below on the street were hurrying by under umbrellas.
“In that case, Hardy,” said Mr. Plummer, “I’m sorry, but—”
“Yes, sir,” said Hardy.
He couldn’t, at that moment, say anything more. Something had risen into his throat and silenced him. He would have liked to speak, to tell the man who had shown so kindly an interest in him that he regretted his hasty and violent words. He hadn’t meant all that he said. He had come to tell Mr. Plummer that he wanted to sell his stock. He had listened, as patiently as he could, while his employer remonstrated with him. He had endured a pretty stiff lecture upon his recent slackness and lack of attention to work, because[Pg 157] he knew he deserved it; but when Mr. Plummer undertook to warn him about “entangling” himself with that “young woman in the auditing department;” all his genuine respect for his chief had vanished in an overwhelming anger. That “young woman” was his Edith!
He didn’t like, now, to recall what he had said.
“I’m sorry, Hardy,” said Mr. Plummer again. He was looking at the boy with an odd expression on his lined face, a look half respectful, half sorrowful. As a man, he liked Hardy the better for his outburst, but as a business man he deplored it.
“I wish you the best of luck, my boy,” he said. “Refer to me at any time.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Hardy.
Off he went, with his words of apology unsaid, with five years of friendly interest unrewarded, and with his own heart like lead. He walked through the office for the last time, and into the corridor, leaving so much behind him.
Edith was waiting for him in the lobby.
“Oh, Joe!” she cried. “I found a place uptown where they promised to deliver the furniture this afternoon. Imagine! And I got the dearest material for curtains! I brought a sample to show you.”
She was opening her hand bag, but he stopped her.
“No, don’t,” he said curtly. “Not just now.”
Here she was, chattering about curtains, after all that had happened! He remembered how he had left her the evening before, after a horrible interview with her aunt. He remembered her pitiful attempts to soothe and comfort that hysterical old demon, and her anguish when she failed so utterly, and was told that if she married “that man” she would be cast off—except for the trifling communications necessary to continuing her support of the martyr.
“And I couldn’t sleep for worrying about her!” he thought bitterly. “I thought she’d be ill, and look at her now—perfectly happy, talking about curtains!”
“Come on!” he said aloud, and then stopped, with a frown. “Haven’t you any umbrella?” he asked.
“I have one,” she replied, “but not here. It wasn’t raining when I started.”
“Edith!” he said suddenly. “Don’t you remember?”
How could he have imagined that she was happy, or that her mind was filled with thoughts of curtains? That small, gallant, smiling thing, so pale, so troubled, with the shadow of her suffering dark in her eyes!
“It’s nearly twelve, Joe,” she said, looking at her watch. “We haven’t much time.”
“Oh, yes, we have!” he told her. “We have any amount of time, for I’m never going back there.”
“Joe!” she cried. “Oh, Joe! Oh, no, no! Don’t tell me you’ve—”
He drew a long breath, and then looked down at her with a grin.
“You’ve got a young man with a remarkably uncertain future,” he said. “Never mind—we’ll start a new future. Anyhow, I shan’t have to go to Europe now, and leave you.”
“Oh, Joe! What have I done?”
“I did it myself,” he said sturdily, “and I’m glad. Thank Heaven, we’ve got time, now, for a nice, peaceful wedding![Pg 158]”
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
JULY, 1924
Vol. LXXXII NUMBER 2
His Own People
MRS. DENIS LANIER’S FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH HER HUSBAND’S FAMILY PROVES TO BE A TRYING ORDEAL
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
AFTER each stroke of the brush her bright hair flew out in glittering threads, and in the strong light that centered upon the mirror her vivid little face seemed framed in a sort of unearthly radiance. She looked at the reflected image, at her great, solemn amber eyes, at her white shoulders, at that sparkling flood of hair.
A brief moment of joy that was, however, for almost at once came other thoughts that put an end to it. She grew disconsolate and troubled. With a sigh she threw down the hairbrush, and, going over to the table, picked up her book. Being pretty wasn’t going to do her any good. On the contrary, it might well be another charge against her, another offense in a list already very long.
“They’ll say he married me just because I’m pretty,” she reflected.
And it was not so! Her incomparable Denis had seen and loved and praised all those things in her heart of which she was honestly proud. He loved her because she was valiant and loyal and tender.
“Of course, he does like my looks,” she thought; “but even when I’m old and ugly, he’ll still feel the same toward me. He said so—and I know it!”
But how was she to make these terrible people see all that? What she needed for the ordeal before her was dignity, assurance, poise—that was it. She had even gone so far as to buy a book on etiquette, to find the secret. Useless! No situation like hers was mentioned in the portentous volume. The bride received a visit from her husband’s family, or he brought her to visit them, but there was no help offered to a bride who was suddenly commanded to go all alone to meet her new people for the first time.
She looked through the pages again. “The Etiquette of Weddings”—there had been precious little of that about their wedding—just she and Denis and a strange clergyman, with a deaconess and the sexton for witnesses. “The Bride’s Family”—hers was hundreds of miles away, in Maine. “The Groom’s Family”—she closed the book violently.
“I ought to be ashamed of myself!” she cried.
It seemed like treachery toward her own people, this fear of Denis’s family. There was no reason on earth why she shouldn’t go to them with her head high, no reason why she shouldn’t have poise. She must; she would summon it up from the depth of her anxious heart, so that she might do credit to her Denis.
“And they may be very nice to me,” she said to herself, without for an instant believing in the probability.
She remembered the letters that Denis had received from his mother after he had written to tell her of his engagement. He had never read a word of them to Emily, but his face told her enough, and the black gloom that settled over him. He admitted that his mother wanted him to wait—he didn’t say how long, or for what, but Emily knew very well. His mother was hoping that time would cure his deplorable and unaccountable folly of wishing to marry an American stenographer.
Well, it hadn’t. Their engagement had lasted five months—not a very happy time for either of them, because of the depression that seized Denis every time he had a letter from his people, or was in any way reminded of them. Emily had endured this with admirable patience. She knew that he loved her with all his honest heart, that he was proud of her, and that he could[Pg 160]n’t help his queer, tribal notions about his family. He was always saying that “a fellow owes it to his family” to do this or that, and it was the strongest possible proof of his love for Emily that he clung to her in spite of their opposition.
Still, no matter how willing she was to understand Denis’s point of view, Emily couldn’t be expected to share his reverence for his relatives. On the contrary, she often found it very hard to hold her tongue—as, for instance, on the day when he came to her with the air of an absolutely desperate man, and told her that he was ordered off to New Orleans on forty-eight hours’ notice, to survey a damaged hull, and that they must be married before he left.
When she objected, he threatened to throw up the whole business—that flourishing business as a marine surveyor which was the very apple of his eye—because he could not and would not leave Emily unless he left her as his wife. She was secretly delighted by this impetuous and domineering conduct, and sorry for him, too, because he was so obviously upset; and yet she was exasperated. He couldn’t hide the fact that he was making a tremendous sacrifice in affronting his sacrosanct people for her sake.
After the wedding he had sent a cable announcing it to his mother. Then a reckless gayety had come over him, like that of a man who has nothing more to lose.
“I don’t care!” said Emily to herself, with tears in her eyes. “It’s all part of his darlingness. He’s so terribly loyal!”
Of course, he hadn’t imagined that his family would descend upon Emily like this, when he was away. He had expected them to stay in England, where they belonged. He would have been appalled at the thought of this meeting.
The latest development had come upon Emily like a thunderbolt. That morning a letter had been brought up to her, and, without the faintest suspicion, she had opened it to read:
My Dear Emily:
I should be very pleased if you would dine with us this evening at half past seven.
Most sincerely yours,
Maude Lanier.
She had sent a messenger boy with her acceptance, because she knew that that was what Denis would have wished; but she couldn’t make the best of it, couldn’t recapture the smiling, careless bravery that Denis so loved in her. She had had courage enough to leave her dear, shabby old home at eighteen and go off to try her luck in the wide world. She had been able to give Denis the most gallant, bright farewell. She had faced more than one black moment in her twenty years, but she could not face Denis’s family untroubled.
She had given herself two hours to dress in, and she needed every second of the time. Her prettiness seemed to ebb away with every breath she drew. That radiant hair was an unruly tangle when she tried to put it up. The brightness fled from her face, leaving it pale and strained. The dark dress that Denis had admired so much was admirable no longer, but austerely plain and grievously unbecoming. Emily could have wept at her own image in the mirror.
“I look so—so mean!” she cried, with a sob. “Such a meek, scared, silly little object!”
This wouldn’t do. The thing that the serious Denis had loved best of all in her was her absurd, delightful gayety. She straightened her shoulders and drew a long breath.
“You know,” she said to her own reflection, “Denis picked you out from all the other girls in the world, and now you’ve simply got to show the reason why. Even if you’re hideous, you needn’t be dismal. Here goes!”
So she managed a smile, after all.
She had been Mrs. Denis Lanier for only five weeks, had had a check book and money to spend for the same short time, and it was still a little intoxicating. She ordered a taxi from her room by telephone, and when it was announced she went down into the lobby almost her own debonair self again. Think of Mrs. Denis Lanier, in a fur coat and a pearl necklace, getting into her taxi!
Her father was a professor in a small New England college, and Emily had been brought up with a full understanding of the woeful discrepancy between the tastes and the incomes of professors and their families. She had learned to be happy without any of the things for which her young heart thirsted. It was the very essence of her nature to be happy; but it cannot be denied that she was a hundred times more happy now that she possessed some share of worldly goods. She wished[Pg 161] and tried to be high-minded, and still she couldn’t forget her pearl necklace.