explain, and hardly to endure. How could she love animals in the
way she did? Four great Persian cats haunted her every footstep in
the house; there they lay on their cushions in the drawing-rooms,
in the music-room, in the library; a sleepy, snowy creature, like
some half-animated ostrich plume; a satanic black thing with fiery
eyes that to Mr. Chipperley’s perception were informed with the very
bottomless flames; another like a golden fleece, caressing, half human;
and a little mouse-colored imp, whose bounds and springs and feathery
tail-lashings not only did infinite damage among the Venetian and
Dresden knick-knackerie, but among Mr. Chipperley’s nerves. And Mr.
Chipperley hated cats. They gave him nausea; they made him sneeze;
he had an indescribable antipathy to them; he was, as Honor said to
Marian, afraid of them. He schooled himself to lay a very gingerly hand
on the white one, feeling a chill up and down his spine as he did so;
to suffer the yellow one to rub against his shoe, although that also
made his flesh creep; he said nothing about certain scratches given
him by the little gray Astarte devil, as he called it, for Honor’s
eye was on him; but when the black Asmodeus looked him in the face,
Mr. Chipperley quailed. Then, too, there was a great buff-bodied and
black-muzzled mastiff, and a spitz, and a poodle, and goodness knows
what else; a parrot, an owl no bigger than your fist, a little silken
marmoset. Sometimes, when Mr. Chipperley saw her, in a gown the hue
of a pomegranate, with her cats in her arms or on her chair, and her
dogs fawning around her, he had a moment of such feeling as he might
have had were she Circe and he another lover just undergoing the
enchantment, and about to become one of them himself.
“Well, it’s of no use,” Circe had said. “He admires the colors he
hates; he caresses the cats he fears; he loves the dogs he detests. It
does look as if he were hypnotized. Can’t I undo the spell?”
“You talk like a silly girl,” said her father. “Mr. Chipperley does you
the honor to make you a proposal of marriage--”
“A proposal? Twenty proposals!”
“And I wish you, I advise you, I command you to accept it.” And General
Humphreys looked at her with eyes accustomed to authority, gleaming
from the shadow of a pair of brows like epaulets that gave a military
force to his glance. But his daughter had seen that glance before, and
knew just how much it meant.
“The Humphreys, papa,” said the young rebel, “have not been in the
habit of being commanded. I should hardly like to break the family
traditions.”
“You are a disobedient and insolent girl!”
“Nor have the Humphreys been bought and sold in the past--do you think
I will be the first one placed upon the market? I wouldn’t marry Mr.
Chipperley if he were made of diamonds and set in the sky!”
“I don’t know how you could in that case,” said her father. “But you
know, without any more words about it, what the circumstances are, what
is likely to become of your mother and the rest of the children at my
death, and that it is in your power, with the settlements I call for,
to make their condition all that it has been.”
“That is to say, you sell me and my happiness for their ease and
comfort. It is pleasant to know which you care for the most. It leaves
me quite free. No, Mr. Papa Humphreys, you needn’t promise to deliver
what you can’t get hold of! You will have to go very long indeed on
this particular block! I heard De Puy say once it was a good plan to go
short on a rising market!” And just then the name of Mr. Theodore Dane
was announced, and the father’s eyes flashed fire at the daughter, and
the daughter’s eyes flashed fire in return, and cousin Marian was not
the only one who knew how much Mr. Theodore Dane had to do with the
fortunes of Honor.
“Oh,” said Honor to Marian, when this conversation and struggle with
her father had been reported and summed up with her mother’s dark hints
that her supplies should be cut off, that she should be sent into the
country, or shut up in her room till she promised different fashions,
and balanced against her own declaration that mediæval customs were
impossible in this _fin de siècle_ period--“oh,” said Honor, “if I
could only dress you in my clothes and make you pass for me, and marry
you off to Mr. Chipperley, how I should like it!”
“And I, too,” said the poor Marian.
“Marian! Could you really endure the thought of marrying that man, for
one instant?”
“What an idiot I should be if I couldn’t!”
Honor looked at her a moment, large-eyed and silent. “Marian Marcy!”
she cried, then, “you shall! You shall marry Mr. Chipperley, you
shameless dear!”
“How strangely fate moves,” said Honor to her mother a little later.
“Here is Marian Marcy, pale and drab, just like all the women he
naturally prefers, wearing pale and drab gowns, thinking pale and drab
thoughts, doing pale and drab things--exactly the one Mr. Chipperley
ought to marry; she would melt into that composite wife of his without
a wrinkle. And here he is possessed to marry one who sets all his
ideals at defiance, whose whims and ways would eventually drive him
mad, whose colors would startle him blind, who would be as much a
blight on his life as strong sun on tender grass.”
“I never heard such indelicate and improper remarks from a young girl’s
mouth before. Marian think of marrying Mr. Chipperley when he has not
asked her!”
“My goodness! Oh, my goodness!” cried Honor, teeth and eyes flashing
out of that brown face in one dazzle of light along with her ringing
laugh. “Oh!” she cried, running from the room, “if I die the next
minute I shall have had my share of satisfaction! I mean to make Marian
do the one thing in her life that shall be neither pale nor drab!”
But if Marian was a timid and conventional person in the main, she had
more than once proved herself capable of rising to the occasion, and
certainly she was doing something unusual and daring when uninvited she
took Ted Dane’s arm one night as he stood, rather dark and dour in the
face, leaning against a window, and walked with him into Mrs. Roberts’s
orchid-house. “Oh, there is Honor!” she said, as they paused where a
swarm of rosy flower-butterflies fluttered in their faces. “Is it not
wicked that such a girl should be sacrificed--”
“Should be sold!” said Ted, suddenly beaming on her, with his blue eyes
shining and his manner for the first time showing, as he bent from his
lofty height, that here was an unexpectedly delightful person in that
Humphreys family. “It is infamous!”
“I dare say he would make a very good husband.”
“He ought. He has had enough experience in that line.”
“Then I should think he’d see how very unfit she is.”
“Unfit? For that beggar? No, no; Chipperley’s a good fellow--but
there’s no one good enough for her.”
“At any rate, she doesn’t love him,” hiding her face in the butterfly
flowers.
“She doesn’t? Look at her, then!” gazing at Honor down a vista, where
she stood graciously extending her hand like some young queen, with Mr.
Chipperley bending over it like some seigneur swearing fealty.
“Very well. They are obliging her. It isn’t worth while for her to
quarrel with a man on whom she may be forced to rely for all the
happiness she can have.”
“Forced! Who can force her?”
“Father, mother, a whole household. And break her heart.”
“Has she any heart?” biting his mustache as if he meant it an injury.
“Heart? Honor Humphreys! She--well, _you_ are the last person to deny
it!”
“I? What have I to do with it?”
“Oh, certainly--if you have been meaning nothing”--frightened into the
propriety she had forsaken in her desire to help both Honor and herself.
“Meaning nothing? I? What do you mean?” exclaimed Ted, suddenly facing
her. “You know I am meaning something! You know I love Honor with all
my heart and soul! You know I would spend my life for her! You know I
haven’t a dollar in the world--”
“I know she loves you, whether you have a dollar in the world or not!”
And the next instant Ted Dane, in a thoughtless, breathless ecstasy,
had clasped Marian to his heart for one swift second. On such an avowal
it was impossible not to embrace some one.
“Oh, Marian,” he said, “you are the best friend a man ever had.”
“No, no, no!” she gasped, pink with her blushes. “What do you do such
things for? Oh, I am sure Mr. Chipperley saw you.”
“What if he did? What do I care for Chipperley? Oh, Marian, you have
made me the happiest man in the world!” And Mr. Chipperley, whom some
dancing fellow had robbed of Honor, saw the act and heard the words,
as he came down the orchid-house, and noticed for the first time
that Marian Marcy, in her misty toilet of lavender satin and tulle,
was really a most attractive person and most becomingly dressed. He
knew that Marian had little or nothing of her own except her mother’s
jewels, and that it was owing to Honor’s determined insistence that she
had everything as if she were a daughter of the house, and it only made
Honor seem more charming still. How well that young woman would spend a
big income, with what generosity, what nobility!
As for Ted, when Honor had finished that dance he was awaiting her.
And what took place out in the grand hall where two people sat on
the pedestal of the Psyche and Eros group, in the broad glare of the
candles, one opening and shutting her fan, the other leaning towards
her eagerly and taking the fan into his own hands at last, all the
world might see, but only two of all the world might know.
“It is time,” said old General Humphreys to his daughter, a week,
perhaps, after that night, “that Mr. Chipperley had a definite answer.
He is very impatient. Your mother thinks your conduct is fast becoming
scandalous.” And he cleared his throat and straightened his collar in
preparation for the fray. “Yes, fast becoming scandalous.”
“She will think it is quite scandalous before I am through, I fear.”
“I can’t imagine your objection to a man of Mr. Chipperley’s worth--”
“Oh, he is worth too much.”
“This is not an occasion for trifling, Honor.”
“Well, then, the chief objection is that I prefer some one else,” said
Honor, carelessly swinging her lorgnon.
“Some one else!” and the eyebrows, like epaulets, lifted themselves and
fell again ominously.
“Yes. I presume that at least my preferences are my own.”
“May I ask who this some one is?”
“How can I hinder your asking, papa?”
“Let me know the name at once!”
“It is Theodore Dane.”
“Great heavens!” cried the general. “A fellow with nothing but a
pedigree! A man of family without a penny, a lawyer without a brief,
an idle, dancing, driving, shiftless--”
“I wouldn’t talk so, papa, about a man to whom you may by-and-by stand
in the relation of a father,” said Honor, calmly.
“Never! The day you married that fellow you would cease to be my
daughter!”
“Nonsense, papa; you are just like my mastiff! Old Proudfoot’s bark
is very much worse than his bite. How can I ever cease being your
daughter?” And then she had her arm about the old hero’s neck. “You
know very well, papsy, you would never wish to make your dear unhappy.”
“No, certainly, no; of course not, no,” disengaging himself. “And this
is the very reason I wish you to marry a man quite suitable in himself,
and who can indulge all your extravagant tastes, and hinder you
by-and-by from the unhappiness of seeing your mother and your sisters
deprived of all their gratifications on my death.”
“How absurd, papa! As if you were going to die! It’s perfectly
ridiculous!”
“I’m glad you find it so amusing.”
“Hale and hearty and strong and good, with a father and mother that
lived to be ninety, and their father and mother before them. I won’t
listen to such talk! Besides, if worse came to worse, mamma and the
others could live with us. We shall have a home of some sort--”
“Shall?”
“Yes, we shall live in an old house of Ted’s in the country--an old
place on a river--quite a place once--and had such lovely gardens.
He will come into town to his office every day, and I shall raise
asparagus.”
“You, Honor!” he groaned. “Do you know what you are saying? Is it all
cut and dried?”
“Yes, papa,” she said, “the plan, not the asparagus.” And again she
made the movement to imprison him. But General Humphreys caught her in
time, and held her off at arm’s-length, looking straight into her eyes.
“Do you mean to say you can talk this way without a blush--”
“You know I can’t blush, papa. I’m too dark. I can turn purple, if you
want me to.”
“I’ve as good a mind as ever I had to eat to call in a justice of the
peace and marry you out of hand.”
“I wish you would,” she exclaimed, “to Theodore.”
But as he released her she flung herself upon his breast. “Papa, papa!”
she cried. “You must help me! I love Ted--I hate that old Mormon! And
oh--I should think you would find it such fun to get the better of
mamma--and you remember the traverse she worked on you when you wanted
De Puy to marry Kate Appleton, and she arranged it all for Henrietta
von Frump--”
“I don’t know what that has to do with this case. Your mother has much
the best sense of all of us. De Puy’s has turned out a very comfortable
marriage, if he is a little hen-pecked. Yours--”
“Oh, papa, I shall simply throw myself in front of the train if you
make me marry Mr. Chipperley! I should like to have some identity of
my own. Just think of my being a band of sisters with those three poor
ghosts hovering round old Chipperley!” And as the ghosts did not seem
to move her father, she had resort to the last argument--tears.
“There, there, there!” said her father. “You know very well that I
abhor tears,” taking her in his arms. “I--I will confess that I had
just as lief let your mother see that I had a will of my own as not.
But the fact is, you will be a pauper. And I can’t think of that.”
“I told you, papa, that we--that Ted has a house. It will be the
greatest pleasure in the world to make it habitable. And you’ve no idea
how profitable my asparagus beds are going to be.”
“Honor!”
“Oh, we have figured it all out. It’s a delightful old place. Maddy and
I went out to see it.”
“Maddy--there’s another thing. What is to become of Marian, as well as
all the rest, if you persist in this course?”
“Why shouldn’t Marian marry Mr. Chipperley, papa, and keep the money in
the family?”
“Simply because he doesn’t want her.”
“He does. She is just and exactly the very thing he wants. Only he
doesn’t know it yet. He would find it out. For Marian is precisely
the sweet, pale, quiet nun that would make him feel as if it were all
a bad dream that he had ever had any other wife--as if they were all
nothing but different phases of one woman. He is bejuggled with me
just now, but oh, he would so regret it in a little; my canary and
ruby colors would drive him wild, and he wouldn’t live a year with all
the exactions and exasperations that I should bring to him. Can’t you
reason with him, papsy?”
“I could reason with him a great deal better than I could with your
mother.”
“Well, we won’t try to reason with mamma. I’ve heard you say many a
time that she never would hear reason. Of course you know, darling, I’m
not doing anything imprudent. Ted is only waiting for Mr. Lorton to
come home to have his appointment as attorney to the Creamery Trust,
with a salary of I don’t know how many thousand a year; and a family
that can’t live on that ought to starve. And, besides, that is only a
beginning. When people see what Ted is the big cases will come in,
and we shall have an income to astonish you. That ought to content
mamma. And it isn’t as if Helen and Teresa wouldn’t marry. Now, Papa
Humphreys, you are an old soldier, you named me Honor because Honor
was the dearest thing on earth to you. And I’m not going to ask you
to do a living thing contrary to your principles, only to take mamma
on a little journey, to Washington or to New Orleans--anywhere. You
press that button, and I’ll do the rest.” And it was at the end of a
delightful half-hour that Mrs. Humphreys found Honor sitting on her
father’s knees, all smiles and tears and tangles.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Humphreys, “from the appearance of things,
that your good sense has come to the rescue, my child. Of course, Mr.
Chipperley’s fortune is our last consideration. It is himself, his
intelligence, his breeding, his goodness that we think calculated to
make you happy. But it is outside of the possibilities that a young
girl should refuse the settlements he offers--”
“Well, mamma,” said Honor, moving from her pleasant seat and twisting
up her hair, “I give you fair warning that when I marry Mr. Chipperley
I will not accept a settlement of any sort.”
“My child!”
“No. No man shall think I marry him for his money.”
“But, Honor, what an absurd, high-flown notion!”
“No matter, mamma. I give you my ultimatum. If you want me to marry Mr.
Chipperley, no settlement, no gifts, not a ring, not a flower. And you
may tell him so.”
“Humph! I suppose he can give it to you afterwards, just the same. But
I must say it is the most quixotic nonsense--”
“Never mind about that. You are willing to sell me--but I have some
rights, some feelings--I will arrange the terms myself!” And she swept
out of the room.
“Well,” said her mother to the old general, who stared confused, not
quite accommodating his ideas to Honor’s words, but keeping a wise
silence in the presence of his superior officer, “I am so glad, so
relieved that she consents at all, that I will say no more at present.
You had best see Mr. Chipperley at once, and give him to understand
that she must be approached most delicately.”
“My love, you would do all that much better yourself--a man’s
blundering bludgeon--your dainty rapier--”
“Very well, then; leave it all to me,” said Mrs. Humphreys, with great
good-nature. And, satisfied that events were shaping to her mind,
she wrote a note summoning Mr. Chipperley, and when he came she gave
him to understand that at last his suit was accepted, but that, in
fact, as some one in _Shirley_ said of all women, Miss Honor was very
kittle-kattle, and there must be no mention of gifts or settlements,
or, in fact, of the understanding itself. “My daughter is exceedingly
sensitive, and the idea that it might be thought your wealth was a
factor in this happy conjunction--”
“Oh, precisely, exactly,” said the delighted Mr. Chipperley. “I
understand, I understand,” and did not understand in the least.
Poor Mr. Chipperley! It was not really a blissful period to him that
followed this rather peculiar betrothal in which the bride had given
no promise, signified no assent, and expressed no feeling. He would
have liked to press that hand of hers, but it was snatched away before
he had more than icily touched it. He would have liked to drop the
opera-cloak on those lovely shoulders, but that officious Ted Dane was
allowed to be before him. He longed to fold his arms about her and
press one kiss upon those luscious lips--he would as soon have offered
such a familiarity to the Tinted Venus. When he saw her at a charity
concert, playing on the violin, looking like one of Fra Angelico’s
angels, in a long red gown, spangled with golden stars, with the loose
sleeves falling open over an arm fit for a tawny young Cleopatra, he
wanted to cry out to all the world, “She is mine! She is mine!” But you
would have thought she had never seen him before. All the same, he was
quite positive that when she was his wife, fast and sure, she should
never wear a red gown again. In this red gown she was so unlike his
dreams, so brilliant, so overpowering, so effacing, that she gave Mr.
Chipperley the singular sensation of being unfaithful to a wife; he
felt as if there really was something unlawful in his passion, and it
was far from being agreeable to him. “If it were anything but herself,”
he thought, “I should declare that gown could be worn only by the
Scarlet Lady. It puts out a man’s sight. It almost puts out his love.
How much more womanly, how much fairer and softer that silvery thing
her cousin wore--a very sweet woman, that Marian Marcy. I must really
speak to Honor about her vivid toilets. As for the gentle cousin, she’s
altogether too nice to waste on Ted Dane! ‘A creature, not too bright
or good for human nature’s daily food.’” And then vaguely and obscurely
Mr. Chipperley thought what a pity it was that a man might not marry
two women at once.
Somehow or other Marian Marcy was always in the room now when Mr.
Chipperley was admitted to the presence. It was not so much of an
effort to follow Marian as he had found it to keep up with Honor’s
flights and vagaries; she soothed him after the attempt; she always
agreed with him; and he felt with half an uncertain sigh that Ted Dane
was going to have a very restful person for a wife.
“Mr. Lorton has returned, and we are talking of their domino party,”
said Honor. “A wilderness of flowers and Seidl’s orchestra. Maud Van
Wieck is going as Catherine de’ Medici, and Rose as Catherine of
Russia, and Belle Devers as Catherine of Aragon--”
“And you?” said Mr. Chipperley.
“We thought first of Petrucio’s Katherine and Camoens’s Catharina--”
“‘Sweetest eyes were ever seen,’” quoted he.
“And then of Iris and Charmien, pearls and asps, and all that, you
know. But it’s too much trouble. We will go just in our brown dominos.”
“‘I’ll wear my brown gown, and never dress too fine,’” quoted Marian.
“Yes, we will just go in our brown dominos. That is exactly the way
I should like to be married,” Honor said, suddenly, looking up with
a flash of eyes and teeth. “No fuss, no feathers, no company, no
cards. Just Ted and you and Marian and I, all at one time, all our own
witnesses--stealing out from the ball, going to the minister’s, and
going our own way afterwards!”
“It would be admirable!” cried Mr. Chipperley. “It is one of your
brilliant thoughts. No need of waiting for paraphernalia; that can be
had in Paris. A hand-bag in the carriage, and over to the _Utopia’s_
dock directly afterwards; she sails at sunrise that night--I mean
morning.”
“What do you say to it, Ted?” asked Marian, as that young man joined
them.
“What do you say to it?”
“Oh, whatever Mr. Chipperley thinks best.”
And to Mr. Chipperley it seemed that he was about to enter a charming
family, where even the remote cousins were so engaging.
“A capital notion,” said Ted. “For of all things to be dreaded the
marriage ceremony is chief. If one could take ether now, or nitrous
oxide, and wake up and find it all over--”
“Pshaw!” said Mr. Chipperley, before he thought, “it’s nothing at all,
nothing at all.”
Still, Mr. Chipperley was not displeased with the anticipated privacy
and quietness. For, feel as you may, the world will have a little
fun over a man’s fourth nuptial. And then the elopement-like process
gave a color of poetry to the affair which it otherwise lacked. When
they parted, Mr. Chipperley made haste to send his berth-trunk and
steamer-chairs and rugs on board the _Utopia_, and to secure the best
state-room to be had for money, and Ted to see about the licenses and
the minister. It gave Mr. Chipperley a jolly feeling of being young and
rash and reckless and romantic.
“I shall wear my glory gown,” said Honor, when she and Marian were
alone. “It will stun him out of his wits when I open my domino. You
have the hardest part, Marian. Oh, how I pity you!”
“You needn’t,” said Marian, quietly. “I am equal to it.”
“But you dread it--just a little.”
“Just a little. I would rather not, if it could be arranged in any
other way. But I sacrifice myself,” she said, with a quiet laugh, “to
my aunts and cousins.”
“Marian, to say you are a trump is to say nothing at all. You are a
whole straight flush!”
The day before the Lortons’ domino party Mrs. Humphreys saw two of
Honor’s trunks taken down on an expressman’s back before her very eyes,
under the supposition that they were either Pinky’s or her own packed
for the Washington trip with the General, which her cold had deferred.
Another trunk was sent later from the house of the Humphreys to the
steamer. And it wanted hardly a couple of hours to sunrise when Ted and
Mr. Chipperley, with two dominos masked _au marveil_, left the Lortons’
lights and flowers and music, entered the coach in waiting, and drove
across to the Church of St. Peter-cum-Paul.
There was but a dim and solitary light burning at the altar. The
rector, who had been napping in his study, was hardly more than half
awake now. He examined the licenses perfunctorily, and hurried through
the service, as he had been begged to do, as if he were expecting a
policeman to interrupt him. For the first time Mr. Chipperley took with
permitted tenderness the hand, he thought, that he had so often longed
to take. Joyful moment when it returned the pressure, when he heard a
whispering voice in the responses, when those swift and sleepy tones
pronounced them husband and wife. He hastened down the dusky aisle with
a trembling, clinging shadow beside him. Ted delayed a moment or two
for the certificates, following with the other domino, and then, the
curtains of the carriage closely drawn, they drove through the gray
morning twilight of the empty streets that seemed to belong to some
other life, breathless, wordless, over the ferry and to the pier.