“Well,” said Dominick, “mother ought to be satisfied with this marriage. It’s a good thing one of her children is going to settle down the way she likes.”
“Oh, she’s delighted. She’s not been in such good spirits for a long time, and she’s as interested as I am in arranging everything. We want to have a large house wedding; the two families and all their connections, and all our intimate friends, and all the people who’ve entertained us,—and—and—the whole crowd. Of course, it’ll be a lot of people. Mommer said she didn’t see how we could cut it down to less than five or six hundred. But I don’t see why we need to, the house is big enough.”
“Plenty,” said Dominick. He set down his knife and fork and looked at his sister. “Our family don’t take up much room. There’s just three of us.”
“Then you’re coming?” she said quickly, her anxiety flashing out into an almost pained intensity of eagerness. “You’ll come? You must, Dominick. You’ve got to give me away.”
He looked away from her in moody discomfort. The eternal discussions created by his marriage were becoming more and more hateful to him. Why should his unloved and unloving wife perpetually stand between him and his own people—his mother and sister—women to whom he owed allegiance, even as he did to her? The call of his home and the binding ties of kin were growing stronger as the obligation of his marriage had weakened and lost its hold.
Cornelia leaned across the table and spoke with low-toned, almost tremulous earnestness:
“You know that if it were I, I’d ask your wife. You know that all the hard feelings I may once have had against her have gone. If it were for me to say, I’d have received her from the start. What I’ve always said is, ‘What’s the good of keeping up these fights? No one gets anything by them. They don’t do any one any good.’ But you know mommer. The first thing she said when we talked about the house wedding, and I said you’d give me away, was, ‘If he’ll come without his wife.’ Those were her very words, and you know when she says a thing she means it. And, Dominick, you will come? You’re the only brother I’ve got. You’re the only man representative of the family. You can’t turn me down on my wedding day.”
There were tears in her eyes and Dominick saw them and looked down at his plate.
“All right,” he said quietly. “I’ll come. When is it to be?”
“Oh, Dominick,” his sister breathed in an ecstasy of relief and gratitude. “I knew you would. And I’ll do anything for you I can. If mommer wouldn’t get so dreadfully angry, I’d call on your wife, but you know I can’t offend her. She’s my mother, and I can’t stand up against her. But some day I’ll pay you back—I will indeed.”