The best man

by Grace Livingston Hill

“Mother, I’m taking good care of her, just as I promised, and I’m going to bring her for a flying visit up to see you to-morrow. Yes, I’ll take good care of her. She is very dear to me. The best thing that ever came into my life.”

Then a mother’s blessing came thrilling over the wires, and touched the handsome, manly face with tenderness.

“Thank you,” he said. “I shall try always to make you glad you said those words.”

They returned to looking in each other’s eyes, after the receiver was hung up, as if they had been parted a long time. It seemed somehow as if their joy must be greater than any other married couple, because they had all their courting yet to do. It was beautiful to think of what was before them.

There was so much on both sides to be told; and to be told over again because only half had been told; and there were so many hopes and experiences to be exchanged; so many opinions to compare, and to rejoice over because they were alike on many essentials. Then there were the rooms to be gone through, and Gordon’s pictures and favorite books to look at and talk about, and plans for the future to be touched upon—just barely touched upon.

The apartment would do until they could look about and get a house, Gordon said, his heart swelling with the proud thought that at last he would have a real home, like his other married friends, with a real princess to preside over it.

Then Celia had to tell all about the horror of the last three months, with the unpleasant shadows of the preceding years back of it. She told this in the dusk of evening, before Henry had come in to light up, and before they had realized that it was almost dinner-time. She told it with her face hidden on her husband’s shoulder, and his arms close about her, to give her comfort at each revelation of the story. They tried also to plan what to do about George Hayne; and then there was the whole story of Gordon’s journey and commission from the time the old chief had called him into the office until he came to stand beside her at the church altar and they were married. It was told in careful detail with all the comical, exasperating and pitiful incidents of white dog and little newsboy; but the strangest part about it all was that Gordon never said one word about Julia Bentley and her imaginary presence with him that first day, and he never even knew that he had left out an important detail.

Celia laughed over the white dog and declared they must bring him home to live with them; and she cried over the story of the brave little newsboy and was eager to visit him in New York, promising herself all sorts of pleasure in taking him gifts and permanently bettering his condition; and it was in this way that Gordon incidentally learned that his wife had a fortune in her own right, a fact that for a time gave him great uneasiness of mind until she had soothed him and laughed at him for an hour or more; for Gordon was an independent creature and had ideas about supporting his wife by his own toil. Besides it seemed an unfair advantage to have taken a wife and a fortune as it were unaware.

But Celia’s fortune had not spoiled her, and she soon made him see that it had always been a mere incident in her scheme of living; comfortable and pleasant incident to be sure, but still an incident to be kept always in the background, and never for a moment to be a cause for self-gratulation or pride.

Gordon found himself dreading the explanation that would have to come when he reached New York and faced his wife’s mother and brother. Celia had accepted his explanations, because, somehow by the beautiful ways of the spirit, her soul had found and believed in his soul before the truth was made known to her, but would her mother and brother be able also to believe? And he fell to planning with Celia just how he should tell the story; and this led to his bringing out a number of letters and papers that would be worth while showing as credentials, and every step of the way, as Celia got glimpse after glimpse into his past, her face shone with joy and her heart leaped with the assurance that her lot had been cast in goodly places, for she perceived not only that this man was honored and respected in high places, but that his early life had been peculiarly pure and true.