which no one resented, not even the old gentleman with the pale daughter,
and the unctuous wheeze of the clarionette floated through the palms of
the court where the fountain was flinging diamonds into the sunlight of a
Southern February. The Spanish banners flapped lazily at the gate. No one
resented them either, for it was a good six months since we had been at
war with Spain. Moreover, St. Augustine never had been at war with Spain.
It wouldn’t have been right.
The old gentleman was reading a St. Louis newspaper. The pale daughter
was looking out through the arch toward the Alcazar. Near at hand were
two youngish women with books in their laps. I could hear one saying
to the other: “You see Virgil stole from Homer, and Dante was Virgil’s
pupil. Dante gave credit to Virgil, but Virgil didn’t give credit to
anybody.” Evidently this fellow Virgil was a rascal.
[Illustration]
The Druggles party had returned from the links, and the general had a
story about a tremendous drive of his that carried his ball among the
prisoners at San Marco, and his little brush, afterward, with the guard
at the gate. Mrs. Willie Roysell of Boston was complaining at the news
that if you went to any of the hotels further South you would have to
sleep on the steps.
I had just parted from Mrs. Roysell when I saw Madge Emmerton pass under
the portcullis. I knew her despite the veil and the shadow of her broad
hat. With one hand she held the loose of her white piqué. In the other
she was managing a purse and some small packages that suggested the
bazars down the street.
When we each had said how surprised we were, and had taken chairs in the
shade, she looked at me suddenly and said, “I don’t believe you know.”
“Know what?” I bluntly returned, looking into her radiant face.
“Of course you don’t. You never could do it so well. And you would have
had the grace to ask after him.”
“Well,” I said, “I haven’t had time to ask after anybody yet. Please
explain, so that I can ask intelligently. Are you married or anything of
that sort?”
She nodded frankly.
It all came back to me then. Two of the handsomest young men in
Philadelphia were in a state of intense willingness when I last saw her.
But she was not one of whom it ever was possible to guess whom or when
she would marry. And I never had heard a word of the engagement. There
was a great disparity in the financial resources of the two men, and,
as it had seemed from informed comment, some disparity also in their
intellectual resources. It is only fair to Providence to say that it had
generously given the great talents to the man without money.
“Which one did you marry?” I asked. “The poor one or the rich one?”
“The rich one,” she replied with an entirely unembarrassed laugh.
“So that the poor one is now doubly poor, and the rich one doubly rich.”
“No,” she said, “that wouldn’t be fair. I shall make the rich one a
little poorer and leave the poor one to be richer.”
“Oh, I dare say it is pure altruism. But where is he? The new idea of
marriage may imply strictly preserved personalities, but I always have
fancied that husband and wife were quite indivisible on their bridal tour
at least.”
“How absurd! As if it wouldn’t be more dangerous to have him tire of me
now than at any later time. I send him away every afternoon somewhere.”
“Poor fellow!”
“And I have been off buying St. Augustine souvenirs made in Philadelphia.
Then I had a lot of little commissions. I promised my brother Cliff to
send him a live alligator. I have just been buying it in that funny St.
George’s Street.”
“I didn’t notice it as you came in. Have you hitched him at the gate?”
“Oh, no! he’s only a baby and goes by mail.”
I glanced at her purse. “‘In her left hand riches.’”
“Which is to say, ninety cents. Think of you quoting Scripture!”
“You should be glad I didn’t say ‘Yielding pacifieth great offences.’”
“I have more than a suspicion that you are thinking things you won’t say.”
“Which would be futile, for you would know what I was thinking.”
[Illustration]
“What were you thinking?”
“Perhaps of an inappropriate topic—marriage.”
“How interesting! Tell me about it!”
“It would be more sensible of me to go and find your husband and tell him
he may come back, that you are dying to see him, and that you have spent
all but ninety cents.”
“Do you really think I am mean to send him away? Isn’t that a good idea
of mine?”
“It is an excellent theory. I like it. But I hate to see either of you
able to carry it out.”
“He isn’t able. He isn’t carrying it out. He is only doing what he is
told.”
“You have begun well.”
“It is great fun—he never will obey so implicitly again.”
“I doubt that. The habit of obedience once formed is tenacious in
husbands as in others.”
“I hope not. I should hate to have him stay so obedient. Don’t you think
it nice of him to recognize my claims that on a bridal tour the bride
must have her own way?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I do, and not the less nice of him because letting
you have your own way is so dangerous.”
“He seems to be utterly insensible to danger. It is charming.”
“It is interesting to find that you have begun to understand him already.
Dr. Johnson once said that few people who have lived with a man know what
is remarkable about him. Probably he was right. Mrs. Johnson is known to
have said that her husband was the most remarkable man she ever met, but
there is no evidence that she knew _what_ was remarkable about him.”
“There is nothing remarkable about Bert. It is one of his charms. I
remember once that when mother was telling me I should acquire certain
practical accomplishments upon which I might fall back in case of
accident, I said that none of the professions attracted me, and that
I preferred to be ‘just a plain lady.’ Well, Bert is just a plain
gentleman. Are you laughing to hear me praise him?”
“I was not laughing. I was wondering whether you said such nice things to
him—whether you thought it would be good for discipline.”
“Of course I say those things to him. When a woman marries a man she pays
him the biggest compliment one human creature can pay another. Nothing
that she can _say_ after that can seem excessive, can it?”
“And yet, it will make quite a difference to him, I fancy, whether you do
say those things or not. He paid you a compliment when he asked you to
marry him, as large a one as he could possibly. Yet you will like to have
him say things once in a while.”
She gave a little unreadable laugh. “Somehow I don’t expect to spoil
Bert. Because he is just a plain gentleman, and not a genius or anything
like that, I am not so nervous about him.”
“He ought to be very grateful. I have no doubt but that he is
grateful. Do you know, I think you are quite as practical as if you
were fashionably flippant and cynical? We always are drawing on our
imaginations or our bank account. Undoubtedly we should be careful to
avoid an overdraft. Marriage is a sort of promissory note.”
“That sometimes goes to protest?”
“That sometimes go to protest. It is a kind of duet, too, a duet in which
it is not so important that the quality of the voices shall be the same
as that they shall agree, first, to sing the same tune, and second, to
sing it in the same key.”
“Yes,” she said, “I can see that the key is very important, even if he
had to hum or whistle. Which reminds me that Bert can scarcely tell one
tune from another. It was General Grant, wasn’t it, who only recognized
two tunes?—one was ‘Yankee Doodle’ and the other wasn’t. But Bert likes
music—my music.”
“I believe you—I believe him. And that will always be a great help when
it comes to managing him.”
“Yes, Bert will need considerable managing,—what you might call minor
managing. I don’t pretend that he is free from that necessity.”
“He will just need managing enough to keep you pleasantly occupied. It is
not good for man to be unmanaged. Let none that wait on thee be ashamed.”
“Are you quite sure you are not agreeing with me about everything just to
be nice?”
“Quite sure. Though it is true that no one should or could quarrel with a
bride.”
“Except the bridegroom. You would be surprised to know how many
bridal-tour quarrels I have heard of.”
“Who tells?”
“The participants—long afterward; and not always so long afterward
either. I have a friend who told me when she came home from her tour. And
guess what it was about?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Whether he or she should pay for some caramels. So you see there are
bridal quarrels, and they are confessed.”
“It is a pity.”
“The quarrels or the telling?”
“Both. But I suppose people who are low enough to quarrel would be low
enough to tell.”
“It doesn’t seem likely that I shall quarrel with Bert. You see we are
such good friends.”
“That should make a difference. Perhaps that isn’t a common situation.
To be sure, you American girls are credited with inventing that idea—the
idea of marrying a friend.”
“Whom should we marry—our enemies? We are told to love them, but not to
marry them.”
[Illustration]
“They once seemed to divide society for a woman into friends, enemies,
and husbands. The husband was—just a husband. When a husband has been a
friend—”
“I see. You make marriage a sort of post-graduate course in friendship. I
must tell Bert that I shall have something to add to his M. A.”
“Yes,” I said, “Master of Hearts.”
“I should like that better if it were not plural. It sounds too
promiscuous. Bert isn’t at all promiscuous.”
“Let me see—_Magister amoris_: that is scarcely definite enough either.
But Bert has acquired something more important than a degree—he has
acquired a detached and supplemental conscience to which he may look for
a candor even greater than that of his own.”
“I am to be a conscience to him, am I?” she asked.
“But a proper and effective conscience, a conscience that acquires a
controlling power, has, I need not tell you, a still, small voice. In
this, minor managing of yours, in the process of which you will act as
Bert’s detached conscience, you must be very dexterous. It has been said
that the secret of being a bore is to tell everything. It is the same way
with consciences. A conscience that told everything, that didn’t know
when to be inaudible, would get to be—ineffective. All of which it is
quite unnecessary to say to you.”
“O, I don’t know!” laughed the bride. “I enjoy being warned a little. It
makes it all seem excitingly difficult.”
“You mean being warned a little more, for you must have been warned a
great deal already.”
“Yes. All of one’s friends help a little. Marriage is like a country
surprise party each guest of which has been asked to ‘Please furnish
Advice.’ Aunt Levina said: ‘My dear, marriage is like medicine—it isn’t
so much what you take as what you believe it is going to do.’ Papa said:
‘Madge, girl, ask your mother how she hypnotized me. That is the most
painless way it can possibly be done.’ Mother said simply: ‘Always be
his sweetheart;’ which amounts to about the same, I suppose, as Mrs.
Kansett’s counsel: ‘Make all other women seem less interesting to him
than yourself.’ Major Carringward said: ‘Boss him, Madge; boss him. But
never boss him when he is bossing you.’ You see it was all nice and easy.
I shouldn’t have any trouble at all.”
“I was wondering,” I said, “while you were enumerating these items of
advice, what sort of directions they gave to Bert—I mean beyond ‘Be
good to her, my boy.’ If they give a man less advice, perhaps it is
because there is less latitude for advice to him. ‘Be good to her’ is a
comprehensive gospel for him. Then it may be that she gets more advice
because the situation really is more in her hands. Anyway, it begins to
look as if the world had begun to insist that he shall be good to her.
Even the world’s advice to her is advice looking to that end. That all
the world loves a lover means nothing more than that. The lover who stops
loving has lost the world’s love as well as everything else.”
“I must tell you,” said the bride, “what brother Cliff said not long ago.
He had been sitting at the window studying _Life_ a long time, when he
looked up and said: ‘Mama, aren’t there any happy married people?’ We all
laughed. Probably that didn’t make the matter any clearer to Cliff.”
“We shouldn’t draw too severe an inference from satire. Perhaps satire
is like news—it exploits the variations, the unusual. It takes happy
marriages for granted, which is what nature does about everything that
goes rightly. That’s what my friend the editor tells me. ‘Why!’ he says,
‘the biggest compliment we can pay virtue is to advertise vice. Can’t
you see that we stamp vice as exceptional when we class scandals with
accidents?’ Yet it is too bad that we have to hear so much more about
the failures than the successes. It is likely to have an effect upon us
at times such as you observed in your young brother. Marriage is not
only what they that marry make it. It is also what the onlookers make
it. To paraphrase Dr. Johnson’s saying about books, marriage should help
us either to enjoy life or to endure it, and if it is to go on filling
that great office it is quite important that you American girls, who are
credited with introducing so many modifications, should keep this in
mind.”
“I don’t know that I should feel quite comfortable,” said the bride,
“if I thought that so much really was left to me. It would be a great
responsibility—greater, I think, than I should care to take up. You and
the rest must forgive me if I forget all the advice.”
“That is just what we all should hope that you will do. A woman’s
reason is the best of all reasons—especially for friendship and love. A
friendship that could be explained would be stamped with inferiority. We
love our friend—because. We marry whom we marry—because, and we may thank
Providence that it is so.”
“Yes,” she said, looking very earnestly at me, “when it is ‘because,’ it
is more likely to last, I think.”
Then a sudden change came into her face, the loveliest change that ever
can come into a girl’s face. I knew that he was walking up the path.
“There’s Bert! And I don’t think I have told you yet—definitely,” she
said, leaning forward and speaking with her eyes toward the path, “that
I liked him much better than the other from the very beginning. I only
waited long enough to be quite sure that that was true.”
There was something he wanted to show her in one of the bazars, something
he wanted to get for her if she liked it, and presently they went down
the path, under the palms, and out under the portcullis, the bride and
the groom laughing together....
And the fountain is still flinging diamonds into the sunlight. The
shadows are a little longer. I wonder if the band has played its last
piece? I wonder if _my_ bride isn’t really through with all those letters
over there in the writing room? I just found myself staring across the
court, past the palms, and the fountain, and the loggia. I fancied the
bride of long ago coming under the portcullis on her palfrey, a shining
knight by her side. I saw the bride of peasant Europe, wreathed and
radiant, her strong hand on her husband’s arm. I saw the Puritan bride on
John Alden’s “snow white bull” riding happily home. I saw the bride of
the young Republic laughing from under her bonnet into the smooth face
of her Revolutionary soldier. I saw the bride of the South at the door
of the family coach, the proud old black driver in his seat, the air
full of sweet odors and merry cries. I saw the bride of the West riding
her mustang over fresh trails to the miner’s cabin, or over the silent
prairie to the ranch of hope. I saw the bride of the farm go away to the
noise and smoke of the city. I saw the bride of the city follow her hero
unquestioningly into bleak and lonesome solitudes. I saw the bride who
had won the honors of the world put aside trophies and prizes for the
simple joy of creating a home....
Ah! here are the bride and the groom coming back! I knew their silhouette
in a moment under the arch. And how fortunate—it was not the last piece!
The band is playing again! I wonder if they are too absorbed to notice
that it is playing the most important part of “Lohengrin”?
[Illustration]