“Gee! But that was a great stunt! I’d have liked to have been along with you! You must be simply great to be trusted with a thing like that!”
But his mother gently reproved him:
“Hush, my son, let us hear the story.”
Celia sat quietly watching her husband with pride, two bright spots of color on her cheeks, and her hands clasping each other tightly. She was hearing many details now that were new to her. Once more, when Gordon mentioned the dinner at Holman’s Jeff interrupted with:
“Holman! Holman! Not J. P.? Why of course—we know him! Celia was one of his daughter’s bridesmaids last spring! The old lynx! I always thought he was crooked! People hint a lot of things about him—”
“Jeff, dear, let us hear the story,” again insisted his mother, and the story continued.
Gordon had been looking down as he talked. He dreaded to see their faces as the truth should dawn upon them, but when he had told all he lifted honest eyes to the white-faced mother and pleaded with her:
“Indeed, indeed, I hope you will believe me, that not until they laid your daughter’s hand in mine did I know that I was supposed to be the bridegroom. I thought all the time her brother was the bridegroom. If I had not been so distraught, and trying so hard to think how to escape, I suppose I would have noticed that I was standing next to her, and that everything was peculiar about the whole matter, but I didn’t. And then when I suddenly knew that she and I were being married, what should I have done? Do you think I ought to have stopped the ceremony then and there and made a scene before all those people? What was the right thing to do? Suppose my commission had been entirely out of the question, and I had had no duty toward the government to keep entirely quiet about myself, do you think I ought to have made a scene? Would you have wanted me to for your daughter’s sake? Tell me please,” he insisted, gently.
And while she hesitated he added:
“I did some pretty hard thinking during that first quarter of a second that I realized what was happening, and I tell you honestly I didn’t know what was the right thing to do. It seemed awful for her sake to make a scene, and to tell you the truth I worshipped her from the moment my eyes rested upon her. There was something sad and appealing as she looked at me that seemed to pledge my very life to save her from trouble. Tell me, do you think I ought to have stopped the ceremony then at the first moment of my realization that I was being married?”