A MARRIAGE PROPOSAL.
“Marry you!” cried Fair, starting back, half frightened. “Why, I’ve
scarcely known you a month, Mr. Lorraine!”
They were alone in the room, for Mrs. Fielding had discreetly left the
room. The evening was warm, and Fair was sitting by the open window,
dressed in white, with her red-gold curls loose on her shoulders, and
a pink rose in her belt, a lovely picture of youth and innocence--and
George Lorraine appeared to think so, for he looked very earnest as he
bent over her, begging for the gift of her heart and hand.
“Yes, I’ve only known you for a month,” he said, “and, my dear girl, if
you were rich and fashionable, I should wait longer before I asked you
to marry me; but it is for your sake and your mother’s, as much as for
my own. Do you not know, dearest, that I am anxious to remove you from
these humble surroundings”--and he flashed a glance of disdain around
the shabby little room--“to my beautiful Fifth Avenue home, where you
will have such surroundings as befit your beauty and your worth?”
The beautiful face before him grew pale with emotion. Fair was
frightened at the thought of marrying George Lorraine, yet dazzled at
the glittering prospect he held out to her. Besides, what would her
mother say if she refused him? Fair knew quite well that she would be
bitterly disappointed, even angry.
“I do not think you are indifferent to me, Fair,” continued her lover.
“You have accepted my attentions, and you have seemed to take pleasure
in my company and conversation.”
It was all true; she could not deny it. Yet what would he say if she
dared tell him that she had welcomed his coming, listened to him with
delight, because he talked so much of his cousin--of Bayard Lorraine,
whose image filled her heart, whom she loved with the maddest, most
foolish love the world ever knew--since, for the one hope of meeting
her ideal again, she was thinking of giving her hand to George Lorraine?
“It is not so much his wealth, poor as I am, that tempts me, as
the thought that, being his wife, I should meet Bayard Lorraine
again--meet him on equal terms, with a name as proud as his own,” she
thought, finding a strange balm for her wounded pride in the prospect.
“He despises the poor working girl, they say; but, as his cousin’s
wife, he cannot look down on me. I shall meet him in society. I shall
meet his haughty bride. And when I am dressed in jewels and satins
and laces I shall, perhaps, be as beautiful as she is,” ran the tenor
of her thoughts; and she was so young, so innocent, so untaught that
she did not know that to marry George Lorraine in such a mood would
be deadly sin. What did she know of the sanctity of marriage? Her
mother had always railed against it as having been the cause of all her
trouble.
She kept a little journal, to which alone she confided her girlish,
romantic thoughts, and to which the struggles of these days were freely
told. It would have brought tears to any eyes to have read there the
story of her hopeless love, the tender little verses that flowed from
her full heart, and the last entry that was made that night, which ran
simply:
“I have promised to marry George Lorraine. He is not the rose,
but he has lived near it.”
Poor Fair--a child in her knowledge of life and the world, a woman in
her love--was trying to cheat her heart with a fatal delusion, and one
that she paid for most bitterly in the dark days yet to come.
But at present she believed that she was doing what was best and right
for herself and her mother, and as far as that mother was concerned she
would not have permitted her daughter to turn back if she had desired
to do so.
So it was all settled, and George Lorraine begged that a very early
date might be named for the marriage, and Mrs. Fielding seconded the
motion.
In vain, Fair pleaded that it should not take place until winter. They
laughed at her petition, and declared that a month’s time was quite
sufficient for her to prepare her simple trousseau.
“For you can buy all you want as soon as we are married,” said her
lover.
Mrs. Fielding thought it was very strange that George Lorraine should
be willing for his bride-elect to go on working at the factory after
their betrothal. But he made no request that Fair should stop; so
things went on much the same as before.
She worked all day, and in the afternoon Mr. Lorraine was usually on
hand to take her home, creating quite a sensation among the factory
girls by his fine clothes and foppish airs, and entirely squelching
the pretensions of Waverley Osborne, who, having heard it rumored that
Fair was engaged to marry a very rich young man, resigned himself to
despair, and talked gloomily to his best friend on the topic of putting
an end to a blighted existence by means of pistols or poisons.
Fair’s approaching marriage became known speedily to the working girls,
and many of them were pleased with her good fortune, while others were
consumed with envy and malice.
As for Mrs. Jones, the sensible forewoman, who had declared that no
rich man would marry a working girl, she became quite unpopular with
the majority, and had many a sly reminder of her false prophecy from
one or another of the ambitious ones who hoped to do as well as Fair
some day.
The lovely Fair bore her honors very meekly, and did not seem elated by
the brilliant prospect before her.
Indeed, some of the girls decided that her heart was not in the affair,
and that it was purely a mercenary match.
“I do not believe it,” said another. “I think she is very much in love
with him.”
“But she is always so serious nowadays--always in a brown study,” said
Sadie Allen, who was one of those who declared it was a mercenary match.
One of the knowing ones, a girl who had had several love affairs,
answered that that was one of the best signs of love.
“She is always thinking of her lover, and pays no attention to anything
else; that is all,” she declared.
“Young ladies, please attend to your work!” put in the forewoman, a
little sharply, and the merry girls who had been discussing love and
marriage so gayly became mute as their fingers took up their tasks
again.
It was arranged that Fair should be married at church, and that the
newly married pair, with the happy mother, should go at once to the
elegant Fifth Avenue residence, where they were to spend a few weeks
getting acquainted with their new life; then, leaving Mrs. Fielding in
charge of the house, they were to start upon a European tour.
“After the ceremony, we will hold a reception at home,” Mr. Lorraine
said, adding: “As it is August, and all my fashionable friends are out
of town, we will only ask a few people.”
“Oh, George!” Fair exclaimed, then looked at him pleadingly.
“Well, dearest?” he asked encouragingly, and she faltered:
“I should like--like--to invite--some of the working girls to my
reception.”
He frowned slightly.
“But, Fair, you know you will move in a different circle hereafter.
And, besides, what would my cousin, Bayard Lorraine, say if he knew
that, in addition to the crime of marrying a working girl, I actually
invited sewing girls to my wedding reception?”
The hot color flew to the creamy, fair cheeks, as it always did when
he spoke that name, and Fair exclaimed angrily:
“Who cares what he thinks? I hate him, and I wish he had not saved my
life, so there!” And, to his consternation, she burst into a babyish
fit of crying.