CHAPTER XXI
In this world of lies the good and the bad are so closely intermingled that frequently one is the means of obtaining the other. Therefore, I wish very freely to express my obligations to the Celebrity for any share he may have had in contributing to the greatest happiness of my life.
Marian and I were married the very next month, October, at my client's palatial residence of Mohair. This was at Mr. Cooke's earnest wish: and since Marian was Mrs. Cooke's own niece, and an orphan, there seemed no good reason why my client should not be humored in the matter. As for Marian and me, we did not much care whether we were married at Mohair or the City of Mexico. Mrs. Cooke, I think, had a secret preference for Germantown.
Mr. Cooke quite over-reached himself in that wedding. “The knot was tied,” as the papers expressed it, “under a huge bell of yellow roses.” The paper also named the figure which the flowers and the collation and other things cost Mr. Cooke. A natural reticence forbids me to repeat it. But, lest my client should think that I undervalue his kindness, I will say that we had the grandest wedding ever seen in that part of the world. McCann was there, and Mr. Cooke saw to it that he had a punchbowl all to himself in which to drink our healths: Judge Short was there, still followed by the conjugal eye: and Senator Trevor, who remained over, in a new long black coat to kiss the bride. Mr. Cooke chartered two cars to carry guests from the East, besides those who came as ordinary citizens. Miss Trevor was of the party, and Farrar, of course, was best man. Would that I had the flow of words possessed by the reporter of the Chicago Sunday newspaper!
But there is one thing I must mention before Mrs. Crocker and I leave for New York, in a shower of rice, on Mr. Cooke's own private car, and that is my client's gift. In addition to the check he gave Marian, he presented us with a huge, 'repousse' silver urn he had had made to order, and he expressed a desire that the design upon it should remind us of him forever and ever. I think it will. Mercury is duly set forth in a gorgeous equipage, driving four horses around the world at a furious pace; and the artist, by special instructions, had docked their tails.
From New York, Mrs. Crocker and I went abroad. And it so chanced, in December, that we were staying a few days at a country-place in Sussex, and the subject of The Sybarites was broached at a dinner-party. The book was then having its sale in England.
“Crocker,” said our host, “do you happen to have met the author of that book? He's an American.”
I looked across the table at my wife, and we both laughed.
“I happen to know him intimately,” I replied.
“Do you, now?” said the Englishman; “what a very entertaining chap he is, is he not? I had him down in October, and, by Jove, we were laughing the blessed time. He was telling us how he wrote his novels, and he said, 'pon my soul he did, that he had a secretary or something of that sort to whom he told the plot, and the secretary elaborated, you know, and wrote the draft. And he said, 'pon my honor, that sometimes the clark wrote the plot and all,—the whole blessed thing,—and that he never saw the book except to sign his name to it.”