No, I didn’t remember—Ridley attends to all those little matters for me. But I said, “To be sure,” and patted her on the shoulder—and let her kiss me, and then sent her away. For a moment I envied the men whose humble station enables them to enjoy more of such intercourse as that. I confess I have my moments when all this striving and struggling after money and power seems miserably unsatisfactory, and I picture myself and my fellow strugglers as so many lunatics in a world full of sane people whom we toil for and give a bad quarter of an hour now and then as our lunacy becomes violent.
But that is a passing mood.
The next I heard of Helen she had set the whole house in an uproar. Two days before the wedding she shut herself in her apartment and sent out word by her maid that she would not be maid of honour—would not attend the wedding. “I can do nothing with her,” said my wife; “she’s been beyond my control for two years.”
“I’ll go to her,” I said. “We’ll see who’s master in this house.”
She herself opened her sitting-room door for me. She had a book in her hand and was apparently calm and well prepared. The look in her eyes made me think of what my wife had once said to me: “Be careful how you try to bully her, James. She’s like you—and Jim.”
“What’s this I hear about you refusing to appear in your first long dress?” I asked—a very different remark, I’ll admit, from the one I intended to open with.
She smiled faintly, but did not take her serious eyes from mine. “I can’t go to the wedding,” said she. “Please, father, don’t ask it! I—I hoped they wouldn’t tell you. I told them they might say I was ill.”
I managed to look away from her and collect my thoughts. “You are the youngest,” I began, “and we have been foolishly weak with you. But the time has come to bring you under control and save you from your own folly. Understand me! You will go to the wedding, and you will go as maid of honour.” I was master of myself again and I spoke the last words sternly, and was in the humour for a struggle. She had roused one of my strongest passions—the passion for breaking wills that oppose mine.
There was a long pause, and then she said, quietly: “Very well, father. I shall obey you.”
I was like a man who has flung himself with all his might against what he thinks is a powerful obstacle and finds himself sprawling ridiculously upon vacancy. I lost my temper. “What do you mean,” I exclaimed, angrily, “by making all this fuss about nothing? You will go at once and apologise to your mother and sister.”