CHAPTER III.
OUR MARRIAGE.
So it was that I brought my darling’s mother around to consent, if not with a very good grace, still with apparent cheerfulness, and she at once took the direction of the nuptial preparations. I made a show of consulting her about many things, but she invariably gave me to understand that her experience and superior knowledge in such matters were not to be gainsaid. I was willing to leave to her all the fuss and frippery of preparing clothes for her daughter. It always seemed to me that she had clothes enough, and clothes that were good enough for married life. I couldn’t understand why a young woman, on becoming a wife, should need a lot of new and elaborate dresses, such as she had never worn and never cared to wear, and an endless variety of under-garments of mysterious and incomprehensible make, with frills and fringes and laces and edgings, as if, up to that time, she had never had anything next to her precious person, except what was visible to the exterior world. And even assuming that she donned these things for the first time as parts of a manifold and complicated wedding garment, why should so much fine needle-work and delicate trimming be prepared to be stowed away out of sight of prying mortals, for whose vision women are presumed to dress themselves? Are they got up to show to friends and excite envy, and to fill the minds of other young people with a sense of the difficulties of getting married?
One day, when I happened in,—by accident, of course,—and the mother happened to be out on one of her many pilgrimages to town, Bessie took me up to her room in a half-frightened way, as if doing something that she was afraid was terribly improper, and showed me a bewildering profusion of these things, neatly tucked away in bureau drawers. I laughed outright, and asked her who was to see all that finery. She was vexed and bit her lip, and I was sorry and voted myself a brute. From that moment, I determined not to say a word about the clothes, except to express unstinted admiration.
There was not only clothing, but blankets and quilts and bed linen, though we were to live in her old home, which was already well supplied. One would suppose that a large and sudden increase of family was expected at once. These things annoyed me as senseless, and as absorbing so much of my Bessie’s attention that we didn’t have half the blissful times together that we had before our engagement was an acknowledged thing. But I knew that it was the mother’s doings. Bessie did not really have any foolish care for dress, though always beautifully arrayed without any apparent effort; but she supposed it was the proper thing, and submitted to her mother.
But there was one thing I set my heart on. I wanted a quiet wedding, without display or pretence. It did seem to me that this was a private occasion in which the wishes of the persons chiefly concerned should be consulted. It was their business and should be conducted in their own way. Bessie sympathized with me, and wanted of all things to go to church quietly and privately, and then, after a leave-taking with a few intimate friends at home, start right off on our proposed trip to the White Mountains. But no; we were inexperienced, and the widow knew what the occasion demanded much better than we did. She was a little grand in her ideas, and felt the importance of keeping on good terms with society. I was disposed to apply profane epithets to society, and to insist that this marriage was mine and Bessie’s, and nobody’s else. But what was the use? There would be unpleasant feelings, and the mamma must be conciliated, and so I yielded after a warm but altogether affectionate little controversy with Bessie.
Every time I came to the house now, I was informed of some new feature which Mrs. P. had decided upon as indispensable to the gorgeousness of the occasion.
“Have you ordered your dress suit yet?” she asked one evening.
“Dress suit? Oh yes. I had almost forgotten that.”
“And, by the way, those cards? I think you had better send them out: you write such a good, legible hand.”
“Y-e-s, oh yes. With pleasure.”