After each stroke of the brush her bright hair flew out in glittering
threads, and in the strong light that centered upon the mirror her vivid
little face seemed framed in a sort of unearthly radiance. She looked at
the reflected image, at her great, solemn amber eyes, at her white
shoulders, at that sparkling flood of hair.
A brief moment of joy that was, however, for almost at once came other
thoughts that put an end to it. She grew disconsolate and troubled. With
a sigh she threw down the hairbrush, and, going over to the table,
picked up her book. Being pretty wasn’t going to do her any good. On the
contrary, it might well be another charge against her, another offense
in a list already very long.
“They’ll say he married me just because I’m pretty,” she reflected.
And it was not so! Her incomparable Denis had seen and loved and praised
all those things in her heart of which she was honestly proud. He loved
her because she was valiant and loyal and tender.
“Of course, he does like my looks,” she thought; “but even when I’m old
and ugly, he’ll still feel the same toward me. He said so--and I know
it!”
But how was she to make these terrible people see all that? What she
needed for the ordeal before her was dignity, assurance, poise--that was
it. She had even gone so far as to buy a book on etiquette, to find the
secret. Useless! No situation like hers was mentioned in the portentous
volume. The bride received a visit from her husband’s family, or he
brought her to visit them, but there was no help offered to a bride who
was suddenly commanded to go all alone to meet her new people for the
first time.
She looked through the pages again. “The Etiquette of Weddings”--there
had been precious little of that about _their_ wedding--just she and
Denis and a strange clergyman, with a deaconess and the sexton for
witnesses. “The Bride’s Family”--hers was hundreds of miles away, in
Maine. “The Groom’s Family”--she closed the book violently.
“I ought to be ashamed of myself!” she cried.
It seemed like treachery toward her own people, this fear of Denis’s
family. There was no reason on earth why she shouldn’t go to them with
her head high, no reason why she shouldn’t have poise. She must; she
would summon it up from the depth of her anxious heart, so that she
might do credit to her Denis.
“And they may be very nice to me,” she said to herself, without for an
instant believing in the probability.
She remembered the letters that Denis had received from his mother after
he had written to tell her of his engagement. He had never read a word
of them to Emily, but his face told her enough, and the black gloom that
settled over him. He admitted that his mother wanted him to wait--he
didn’t say how long, or for what, but Emily knew very well. His mother
was hoping that time would cure his deplorable and unaccountable folly
of wishing to marry an American stenographer.
Well, it hadn’t. Their engagement had lasted five months--not a very
happy time for either of them, because of the depression that seized
Denis every time he had a letter from his people, or was in any way
reminded of them. Emily had endured this with admirable patience. She
knew that he loved her with all his honest heart, that he was proud of
her, and that he couldn’t help his queer, tribal notions about his
family. He was always saying that “a fellow owes it to his family” to do
this or that, and it was the strongest possible proof of his love for
Emily that he clung to her in spite of their opposition.
Still, no matter how willing she was to understand Denis’s point of
view, Emily couldn’t be expected to share his reverence for his
relatives. On the contrary, she often found it very hard to hold her
tongue--as, for instance, on the day when he came to her with the air of
an absolutely desperate man, and told her that he was ordered off to New
Orleans on forty-eight hours’ notice, to survey a damaged hull, and that
they must be married before he left.
When she objected, he threatened to throw up the whole business--that
flourishing business as a marine surveyor which was the very apple of
his eye--because he could not and would not leave Emily unless he left
her as his wife. She was secretly delighted by this impetuous and
domineering conduct, and sorry for him, too, because he was so obviously
upset; and yet she was exasperated. He couldn’t hide the fact that he
was making a tremendous sacrifice in affronting his sacrosanct people
for her sake.
After the wedding he had sent a cable announcing it to his mother. Then
a reckless gayety had come over him, like that of a man who has nothing
more to lose.
“I don’t care!” said Emily to herself, with tears in her eyes. “It’s all
part of his darlingness. He’s so terribly loyal!”
Of course, he hadn’t imagined that his family would descend upon Emily
like this, when he was away. He had expected them to stay in England,
where they belonged. He would have been appalled at the thought of this
meeting.
The latest development had come upon Emily like a thunderbolt. That
morning a letter had been brought up to her, and, without the faintest
suspicion, she had opened it to read: