The Merivale banks

by Mary Jane Holmes

“Asked me to be your wife?” she said at last. “Oh, no, you can’t mean it. I am too young, not quite seventeen; and your father would not like it. He looks upon us as dirt, I know, and has said mean things of my father, and made insinuations worse than lies, which can be met and contradicted.”

She was growing warm in her defence of her father, and as her warmth increased so did Herbert’s.

“I don’t care for a hundred fathers when you are in the scale,” he said. “I know he has acted mean at times, but after yesterday he will do better, and if he don’t, I want you and am going to have you!”

Then very rapidly he repeated in substance and with some additions what he had said to her when she was asleep. She was listening attentively, and managing to get a tolerably clear idea of his meaning and wishes, although they were somewhat confusing. She was to promise to marry him as soon as he was graduated, when they would go abroad for a year or more, and see everything there was to see in the Old World. In the meantime she was to persuade her father to send her to some finishing school, either in Boston or New York, where she would be rooted and grounded in everything his wife ought to know of the society into which she would be introduced. He did not say this in so many words, but that was what he meant, and he went on to say that the engagement must be kept a secret, partly because his father would make it unpleasant for him and for her if he knew it, and partly because if either he or she changed her or his mind, it would be better not to have a prior engagement known; not that he could change—that was impossible; and it was equally impossible that she could; but it was well to guard against contingencies.

He further intimated that during the years of their engagement she was to receive but little attention from the other sex, but keep herself wholly for him. Just what he was to do in that respect was not quite plain, and it struck Louie as a kind of one-sided affair. A secret engagement did not commend itself to her, and she said so at once, and that she did not like the way Herbert talked, as if she were not quite his equal and must be polished to become so.

“You had better leave me and take some city girl, who is up to your standard and your father’s,” she said hotly, with a flash in her eyes which Herbert knew was dangerous.

He had blundered somehow and must commence again. “I say, Lou,” he began, “don’t be so peppery. I mean all right, but am awkward telling it. I love you. I want you to be my wife. I don’t care for father, nor anything. Listen to me,” he continued, as she made a movement to get up. He put her back in her chair and urged his cause, until her scruples began to give way. He seemed a part of her life. He was young, and handsome, and masterful in his pleading. He was Judge White’s son, and that went for something. The trip to Europe was very alluring, although four long years in the distance, and she was at last overcome by his eloquence, and by the fatigue which made her weak to resist or to reason clearly.

“Then it is settled,” he said, triumphantly. “You are to be my wife, and for the present no one is to know it but ourselves. We are to appear to the world as we always have, the best of friends—lovers, if they choose to call us so; they have done that, you know, but the secret is ours.”

He stooped to kiss her, as a seal to their betrothal, but she drew her head back quickly and put up her hands, with a warning gesture.

“No, Herbert,” she said. “You cannot kiss me till the world knows we are engaged. I do not consider myself fully pledged till then, although I shall keep my promise.”