“And what a wedding we’ll have, Baby!” he said in parting. “I’ll fix all the details and send for you to be married just before my term is up. If all goes well, you’ll have both a priest and a president at your ceremony! A lover couldn’t do more.
“But don’t tell anyone anything about my plans, or they may go wrong. Get your clothes ready. Write to your family very secretly in Oshkosh to join you in Chicago. I’ll have a private car put on there for you just about a week before March 4.
“And you’ll be the most beautiful and talked-of bride in the world. Just you wait and see.”
Chapter Four
My wedding day! A lavish, historic wedding that was famous around the world and was to be talked of for years to come—that was the marriage I had.
Toward the end of Tabor’s thirty-day stay in the senate in Washington, he sent for me. In the meantime, I had left Denver and gone back to Oshkosh to visit my family. Mama was elated with the dazzling good fortune that had befallen me. She wept with excitement and joy; Papa was gradually becoming reconciled to the idea of a second marriage provided the ceremony could be performed by a priest. Tabor wrote he thought he could arrange this.
“I’d certainly like to run smack into Mrs. Doe,” Mama sniffed. “Here she thought you weren’t good enough for Harvey—and now you’re marrying one of the richest men in the United States and may end up living in the White House!”
In some ways, I shared Mama’s spitefulness but I was too absorbed in anticipation of my jewelled future to spend much time looking backward. Mama couldn’t understand how Tabor and my love for him had completely blotted out everything that had gone before. In fact, I don’t think she understood then that I really was in love with Tabor, a man twenty-four years my senior. Later, she learned that I was sincere in this great overwhelming emotion of my life.
Papa and Mama, two of my sisters, two of my brothers and two brothers-in-law arrived at the Willard Hotel the last week in February to be with me. The wedding invitations had quarter-inch silver margins and engraved superscriptions, also in silver. I addressed them in my own handwriting, sending them to President Arthur, Secretary of the Interior and Mrs. Henry M. Teller, Senator and Mrs. Nathaniel P. Hill, Senator-elect Tom Bowen, Judge and Mrs. James Belford (he was Colorado’s only congressman at the time), Senator Jerome B. Chaffee and others with Colorado affiliations.
I had them delivered personally by a liveried coachman in the rich victoria which Tabor had engaged for his stay in Washington, and which I, as Miss McCourt, was now using.