“No, Carry, I will not; but you see I have not been able to arrange matters. You see I never thought the old man would have held on so long, and then we could have done it publicly; but, as it is, I will see about getting it done privately.”
“You are not deceiving me, Fred? You have disappointed me so often. Oh, Fred! if it is found out, what shall I do, what shall I do? I would much rather die—oh, how much rather. Oh, Fred! marry me in some out of the way chapel, anywhere. I swear to you that I will never tell anyone but father till you give me leave, and we will go away and live anywhere, so that it can never be found out. Only marry me, Fred, so that I may be able to tell him I am a wife. If not, it will kill him! Oh, Fred! dear, dear Fred, have pity upon me!”
“Now, my dear Carry, don't be unreasonable. You know how fond I am of you, and you may be sure that I will keep my word and make it all right. There, I promise you I will see about it at once, and in a few days I will write and tell you what the arrangements are. It is no use your fretting so, Carry, you only make yourself pale and ill.”
“I try not to, Fred; but oh, I am so, so miserable. I have to try to talk and laugh, and to seem careless and happy, when God knows I am wishing I was dead. I am obliged to listen and smile when my father talks to me, and when every kind word hurts me so that I can hardly help screaming out. I shall go mad, Fred, if it goes on much longer. You have disappointed me week after week, and month after month; and though I know so well how you love me, and that you are only detained for a while from marrying me, still I can't help being very miserable. But you will not this time, will you? You won't put me off any more?” she said pleadingly.
“No, no, Carry, I mean what I say. But you don't make allowance enough for me. I am so harassed, and I have so much to do, and have been disappointed in—but there, it will all be right now, and before very long you shall hear from me. I am going into the country on business, but will make all my arrangements for the affair to come off as soon as I get back. There, good-bye, Carry, do not fret, child, it will be all right soon.”
So he kissed her and walked off hastily before she could say anything more. When he looked round and saw that she was going away in the opposite direction, he sat down on a bench by the water, and, picking up some small stones, threw them viciously at the ducks who swam up to his feet for crumbs. “It is a great annoyance,” he said, “and the deuce of it is the worst has not come yet. I have a good mind to take her to some out of the way place and get married and send her away, as she proposes, into the country, where I could run down and see her sometimes. I have no doubt she would live quietly enough for years, and her old fool of a father with her. The betting is ten to one it would never come out, and would be pleasant enough. But then it is a nasty risk. Bigamy does not sound well—case of imprisonment. Still it might be managed somehow, of course after the other. I might get some one to manage it—get some fellow to act as a registrar, and do a civil marriage.” And he laughed unpleasantly as he hit a duck upon the head. “It's lucky her old father is such an arrant idiot. But there, I can think it over while I am away. I shan't be gone more than a fortnight, and I will carry out this little drama somehow a day or two after I get back. I know a billiard marker who would do well enough, and then all I have got to do is to get them away from that den into the country. She will never know of the other affair. They know no one, and she never reads the papers. At any rate it need not come out for years. Still it is rather a nuisance altogether. Take that, you little brute.”
The last observation was addressed to a child who had bowled his hoop against the speaker's legs. Fred Bingham accompanied the words by taking the hoop and throwing it far out into the middle of the Long water; and then, with his unpleasant laugh, he strolled off, pursued by the loud roaring of the child and the indignant scoldings and threatenings of its nurse.