1
IT appeared that Mrs. Cowan, the plump neighbour who was cooking Clive’s dinner, had heard his telephonic arrangements for a wedding, and was, according to Clive, much flustered. A few minutes later she disappeared from the kitchen, with a brief warning to Clive to keep his eye on the oven, and presently returned, breathless and sparkling-eyed, wearing her Sunday shawl, and bearing one of her own cakes.
“We’ll give them the best wedding we can, Mr. Bangs!” she said.
Clive came in to report this speech, and thus reminded that Mrs. Cowan was a human being, and a woman, with a prescriptive right to share in this occasion, he took the bridal pair to the kitchen and introduced them. Mrs. Cowan’s warm friendliness pleased as well as embarrassed them. Rose-Ann exclaimed over the cake, and putting on an apron, commenced to help with the last stages of dinner.
Clive and Felix wandered back to the Franklin stove. “Oh, yes,” said Clive. “I must build a fire in your room. Come along,” and he set Felix to chopping kindling in the woodshed while he carried up a load of cannel coal. Felix followed him to the great room at the top of the stairs, occupying almost the whole of the upstairs space, with a fireplace at one end. “I built that fireplace myself when I had the house remodeled,” said Clive. “It’s quite an art, building a fireplace so that it will draw properly. I’m very proud of it.”
Felix knelt and stuffed the kindling into the grate. “No,” said Clive, “let me do it—you don’t know how.”
While they waited for the kindling to get well ablaze before putting on the coal, Clive took Felix to a French window that opened on a balcony. “Here you have a view of the lake,” he said, and then going to one end of the balcony, “these steps lead down to my shower-bath, which unfortunately only functions in summer. You must come out here then—you’ll like it. It’s really wonderful country. I love it even in the winter. I’ll tell you: Why don’t you and Rose-Ann stay out here this week? I’ve got to be in town next week anyway, and I’ll clear out tonight when the fuss is all over and leave you to yourselves. Everything is shipshape, and Rose-Ann will have no difficulty in finding where things are—and I’ll arrange with Mrs. Cowan to get your dinners. You haven’t a place in town yet, have you?”
Felix thanked him, with the sense that the dedication of this house to another honeymoon than the one for which it was originally intended gave Clive a kind of painful and ironic pleasure. But there seemed to be no good reason for refusing the offer.
“Do you suppose my job will still be open for me when I come back married?” he asked.
“Not merely that, but you’ll probably get a raise,” said Clive. “That’s the custom. They figure that a young man who has married and settled down will be a more faithful slave. Usually they’re right. Only in this case, taking Rose-Ann into consideration, I would say that ‘settling down’ wasn’t the correct term.”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“I mean that Rose-Ann is much more likely to keep you in mischief than to keep you out of it. You know that.”
“You’ve got a funny idea of Rose-Ann,” said Felix.
“Oh, not at all. You know yourself she’s not the ordinary girl by any means. And she won’t make an ordinary wife—for which you can be thankful.”
He put the coal on the fire, set up the fire-screen in front of the fireplace, and they went downstairs.
“You needn’t eye me like the basilisk,” said Clive, taking a cigarette, “I’m not saying anything against your beloved.”
“All the same, I think you’ve got some kind of curious and erroneous notion about her. She’s not interested in these damned theories of ours. She’s a real person,” Felix protested.
“She’s real, all right,” said Clive. “But she’s not a simple person. She’s very complex. I think she’s just as complicated—as mixed up—as you or I.”
“Heaven forbid!” said Felix.
Rose-Ann came in just then, and Felix looked at her guiltily, ashamed of discussing her with his friend.
“Things are getting along very well,” she said. “I just ran in for a moment to see my lover.” She came up to him, with a shy frankness, to be kissed. “That ought to show Clive what sort of a person she is!” he thought.
She turned from his embrace to Clive. “It’s curious,” she said, “the pleasure people take in other people’s weddings! There’s Mrs. Cowan—she doesn’t know me and Felix. She hasn’t any reason to believe we are going to be happy. It’s just because it’s a wedding! I was thinking about it, and I realized that if this were a secret love-affair, she would be shut out of it. But a wedding lets her in. In a way, it’s really more her wedding than it is ours!”
“Well,” said Felix, “I don’t mind! I haven’t that damnable instinct of privacy that some people seem to regard as essential to love-affairs. I’d as soon the whole world knew we’re in love.”
“All right, Felix—but you haven’t had to discuss the nuptial couch with her, and I have! She’s upstairs now getting the room fixed up, and putting my clothes in the bureau; I left her to avoid an argument about which nightgown I should wear—as a matter of fact, she doesn’t think any of them are equal to the occasion, they’re all too plain! Perhaps you’d as soon everybody knew all about those details, which is what a wedding seems to amount to—but I don’t like it!” And she made a face and left the room.
“Well?” said Clive, rather triumphantly.
“Well?” said Felix, stolidly. He really had not liked that last speech of Rose-Ann’s. If she didn’t want her nightgowns discussed in public, then why—?
“You’re really rather conventional, at the bottom of your soul, aren’t you?” Clive remarked thoughtfully.
“Of course I am. And so is everybody else. So are you, if you only knew it.”
“Then,” said Clive, coolly, “why do you marry Rose-Ann? She isn’t. It you want a conventional wife and conventional married happiness, why don’t you marry some simple little country girl, and have a houseful of babies? Why—”
There was a knock at the door.
“That’s my other witness,” said Clive, and hurried into the hall.