A question well put, I thought. Something every woman wants to know.
"From the first moment I saw you," McGinity breathed passionately.
"But I made myself so wretchedly unhappy," he went on, "believing that
I'd no right to love you. But, somehow, seeing you at the typewriter
like that, in the stuffy and cluttered news-room, it came to me that
I had been most selfish and wrong. I realized that you had made your
interests common with mine. It was a challenge and a declaration. I
feel now that I've the right to love you, and to ask you to be my
wife...."
And the next thing that I knew was that I was dancing lightly up and
down the upper hall, in the exaltation and excitement of this wonderful
thing that had happened to Pat, to the surprise and perhaps disapproval
of the proud and stiff Royces, male and female, who looked down from
its walls. While Henry, smiles wreathing his face when I told him,
murmured: "Don't be such a colossal ass, Livingston!"
In a surprisingly short time, Pat and McGinity were married. A
quiet, informal wedding in our Washington Square house, in December,
but rather noisily emblazoned by the newspapers, which dearly love
a romance, especially when it's coupled with high adventure. A
fortnight's honeymoon in Bermuda, and McGinity returned with his bride,
to find a considerable boost in salary, and the offer of an important
sub-editorship, awaiting him at the Daily Recorder office.
Pat does all her writing at home now, still under the pen name of Nora
Nolan, with rather amazing success, while McGinity continues at his
favorite newspaper employment.
This brings me up to date about things.
One day, late in June, as I was returning from an inspection of Henry's
garden of herbs, at the rear of the castle, Mamie Sparks, our colored
laundress, called to me from the door of the servants' wing. Staring
wide-eyed and open-mouthed, she pointed at the peaked observatory
tower, with its sliding glass roof, which now houses the happily
married couple--where they can gaze up at the moon and stars, while
their hearts chant paeans of praise and thanks to their particularly
beloved and lucky star, Mars.
"Marse Livingston! Look!" Mamie exclaimed.
I looked, and saw a large, long-legged bird perched on the roof of Mr.
and Mrs. McGinity's tower bedroom. Then I turned to Mamie, and said:
"What d'you suppose it is?"
Mamie chuckled, and when she chuckled, every part of her body seemed
to synchronize. "Why, man alive!" she said; "dat's a stork. Dat's
certainly a good omen for our sweet Patricia, only it done come a
little ahead of time."
"It looks like a crane," I ventured.
"Nosah, nosah!" Mamie countered. "No crane ain't nevah roostin' up dat
high, Marse Livingston."
The strange bird flew away, and Mamie, still chuckling, returned to her
work.
The true significance of the visit of that long-legged, foretokening
bird that had perched itself on the tower roof of Pat's bedroom did
not come to me until that evening, as I stood on the terrace, enjoying
my after-dinner cigar. At first, I had regarded Mamie's prophetic
suggestion with only startled incredulity. Now, after having talked the
matter over with Jane, the thunder of the coming event seemed to crack
in my brain.
Pat's going to have a baby! My heart was overfilled with joy. I looked
proudly at the old castle that her child would some day own. Moved by
my deep happiness, I gazed up at the beautiful, star-studded night sky.
My gaze rested upon Mars, sparkling like a Burma ruby, and it occurred
to me that what was going to happen to Pat, viewed scientifically, was
more wonderful by far than a radio message or even a rocket from Mars.
And yet these little physical and spiritual manifestations of a tiny
soul being planted in a woman's body do not matter; they have become
too commonplace.