Happiest man on earth married only woman on earth yesterday please send your blessings and forgiveness and five hundred dollars.
Bret’s mother fainted with a little wail and his father’s weak heart indulged in wild syncopations. When Mrs. Winfield was resuscitated she lay on a couch, weeping tiny old tears and whimpering:
“The poor boy! The poor boy!”
The father sat bronzed with sick anger. He had built up a big industry and the son he had reared to carry it after him had turned out a loafer, a chaser of actresses, and now the worthless dependent on one of them.
Charles Winfield pondered like an old Brutus if it were not his solemn duty to punish the renegade with disinheritance; to divert his fortune to nobler channels and turn over his industry to a nephew who was industrious and loyal to the factory.
But he sent the five hundred dollars. In his day he had eloped with his own wife and alienated his own parents and hers. But that had been different. Now his mouth was full of the ashes of his hopes.
Reben was yet to be told. Sheila said that he had troubles enough on his mind and was in such a state of temper, anyway, that it would be kinder to him not to tell him. This was not altogether altruism.
She dreaded the storm he would raise and longed for a portable cyclone-cellar. She knew that he would denounce her for outrageous dishonor in her treatment of him, and from his point of view there was no justifying her unfealty. But she felt altogether assured that she had accomplished a higher duty. In marrying her true love she was fulfilling her contract with God and Nature and Life, far greater managers than any Reben.
She had, therefore, for her final rapture the exquisite tang of stolen sweets. And to the mad completeness of the escapade was added the hallowing sanction of law and the Church.
It was a honeymoon, indeed, but pitilessly interrupted by the tasks of departure, and pitifully brief.