Some months later Gaylord, very suave in white 324 flannels, came in to tell Constantino that he was to meet Beatrice in Chicago, en route from the West, and that they were planning to announce their engagement shortly after their arrival in Hanover. At which Constantine managed to curse Gay in as horrid fashion as he knew how. But Gay was quite too happy and secure to mind the reception. Besides, there was nothing Constantine could do about it. It was a rather neat form of revenge since his daughter would bring into his family the son of one of the men he had ruthlessly ruined in his own ascent of the ladder.
Gay had done nothing but write letters to Beatrice, in which he copied all the smart sayings and quips of everyone else, purporting them as original, impoverishing himself for florists’ orders and gifts, and even taking a desperate run out to see Beatrice ensconced in state in a Western town with her tortured aunt and lady’s maid and a stout squaw to do the housekeeping. Gay knew that all this work would not count in vain. So when he proposed to Beatrice, having taken three days in which to write the love missive, he knew that he would be accepted, and therefore counted Constantine’s wrath as a passing annoyance.
Everything considered, Beatrice could do no better. She had inclined toward a minister as a second husband, she one time said, but her chances there were small since she was not a bona-fide widow. Gay would endure anything at her hands; he knew no pride, he had no purpose in existing save to have a good time, neither did he possess annoying theories about life. He was an adept at flattery, and he understood Beatrice’s sensitiveness about being 325 called stout. With a suitor at hand well trained for the part, why waste time looking further, she argued.
So the wedding in the sunken gardens with the cloth-of-gold-garbed bride was planned for the next season’s calendar and there would be all the pleasure of talking it over, the entertainments, the new clothes, and so on. His father-in-law was paralyzed and his aunt-in-law was senile. Gay was bound to be master of all he surveyed before long.
Perhaps during the breaking up of his establishment he might be unpleasantly reminded of a red-haired girl who had died unmourned and whose very ring Beatrice now wore––in exchange for one of hers which Gay wore. But he could take an extra cordial if that was the case and soon forget. After all, Trudy, like Steve, had been impossible; and Gay felt positive that impossible people would not count at judgment day.
Likewise Beatrice, who regarded the whole thing as a lark, thought sometimes of Steve, who, she understood, was superintendent of a large plant some two hundred miles removed from Hanover, and of the time when the slightest flicker of her eyes made him glad for all the day, or the suggestion of a pout brought him to the level of despair. Perhaps she thought, too, of the very few moments as his wife during which she had wished things might have been as he wanted. No, not really wished––but wondered how it would have been. And of Mary she thought a great deal––that was to be expected. No one wrote her about Mary, no one seemed to think it would be interesting. The dozen dear friends who deluged her with weekly items of local scandal never once told her of her wife-in-law, as Gay dubbed her. 326 Therefore she thought of her more than she did of any one else––even Gay.
She wondered if Mary was making simple hemstitched things for her trousseau; if she would shamelessly marry this divorced man, superintendent of a cement works; if she would go live in a brown-shingled house and belong to the town social centre and all the rest of the woman’s-column, bargain-day, sewing-society things. And Beatrice knew that Mary would. Moreover, that she would make a complete success of so doing. Whereas even now Beatrice merely regarded Gay as essential to complete her defeat.
When she reached home, in company with Gay, her aunt, the maid, and an armful of flowers, the attendant told them her father was dead. He had had a bad turn in the early morning––no pain––just drifted off. Well, the only intelligible things he had said were––should he repeat them now? Well, the two words he had said over and over again were “Steve––Hannah––Hannah––Steve.”
So the cloth-of-gold wedding with the sunken-garden setting was changed for a wedding at twilight in the conservatory, Beatrice dressed in shimmery mauve out of memory to dear papa!