DETAILS
The young rush along the pathway of life cheerfully surmounting or
overturning every obstacle, while their more cautious elders
look on aghast at their nerve.
When once Harry Marksby had taken the plunge and was accepted as a lover
of Maudie's, he was determined not to let the grass grow under his feet.
May was then about three parts over, and Harry insisted that the wedding
should be, as he called it, "pulled off" before the end of July.
"But why this hurry?" asked Regina, who, in spite of her modernity,
still retained some traces of her aboriginal ways of thought.
"No hurry at all; but why waste time, Mrs. Whittaker?" said Harry. "What
is there to wait for? We have plenty of money. I always go away for
August, and, for an occasion like this, my father won't think anything
of it if I take a good share of September too. A man only gets married
now and again, you know."
"But why not leave it till the autumn?"
"Because I want to take Maudie for a good trip abroad. She wishes it--I
wish it. What do you say? Clothes? Oh, surely we needn't consider a few
clothes. Get as little as she can do with for a continental trip--lay
the wedding gown up in lavender, and let Maudie buy the rest of her
things in Paris as we come home."
"There's reason in it," said Alfred Whittaker, from the depths of his
big chair.
"I don't like my daughter being married in such a hurry as this," said
Regina, half hesitatingly.
"But why? Hurried marriages are the fashion nowadays. Royalty pulls it
off in a couple of months or so--long engagements are out of date. I
knew a man once," Harry went on--"I didn't know him very well, but I met
him--who had been engaged to a girl for thirteen years, and they somehow
or other didn't altogether hit it off when they did get married. There's
nothing to be gained by waiting. You don't really get to know one
another until the knot is actually tied. I know Maudie as well now as I
should know her if I was engaged to her for seven years."
"I don't want you to wait seven years," said Regina.
"Well, I should hope not," replied Harry.
"But as many months--" began Regina, when Harry Marksby impetuously
interrupted her.
"Oh no, Mrs. Whittaker," he exclaimed. "Maudie would be worn to
fiddlestrings long before seven months were over. The end of July, if
you please. I can work all my business up to that point--then
everything's slack, it's a sort of off-time, so to speak--and I can go
away with a clear conscience and give my wife a ripping honeymoon--get
a ripping honeymoon myself, for the matter of that."
"You have decided where you want to go?" Regina inquired.
"Yes, we're going to Switzerland, taking the Rhine on our way and the
Italian lakes as we come back; get a fortnight in Paris, or if we drive
it too late for that, stay three or four days in Paris, and perhaps go
back again for a few days in the early autumn--if Maudie wants clothes,
that is to say."
"I sha'n't," said Maudie. "I am not going to get my dresses in Paris.
I've come to see now that we made fools of ourselves when we came home
from school with everything Parisian. They were horrid, and were a full
year in advance of the fashions here. I hate being a year ahead of the
fashions--it's quite as bad as being two years behind them. I would much
rather not have all my things bought now, mother. I think Harry is quite
right. A couple of good tailor-dresses, a few muslins, my wedding dress,
and a tea-gown, and other things of that kind, are necessary, but I can
get my further trousseau as I want it."
"I call that a practical suggestion," put in Alfred Whittaker.
"Most practical," agreed Harry. "That was why I was fascinated in the
first instance by Maudie--she is so practical."
"Do you want a wife to be altogether practical?" demanded Julia, while
Maudie looked up anxiously, as if her beloved Harry was about to find
some flaw in her.
A most odd look flashed across the young man's keen face. "You'll
understand one day," he said, addressing Julia directly. "You'll
understand, and you'll sympathize with me. A fellow likes a wife who
knows how many beans make five. A fool has no charm for any man, except
he's too big a black-guard to want his wife to find him out. As regards
frocks, and the spending of money, and the business side of life, a man
does like his wife to be altogether practical."
"That implies another side of the picture," said Julia.
"Yes, it does. And the other side of the picture is me and those that
may come after me; and if a man is a straight, clean wholesome man, he
likes his wife to be altogether sentimental as regards him, and those
that come after him. You will understand me some day, Julia, my dear."
Maudie's face dropped instantly, and something like the flash of
diamonds came into her eyes. She heaved a great sigh, a tremulous sigh,
not one of pain; and hearing it, Harry Marksby caught hold of her hand
and tried to pull her ring off. And Maudie began to laugh with those
tell-tale little twinkling drops bedewing her eyelashes, and Regina
looked on, much as an elephant might regard her offspring at play, with
a look which only required a little encouragement for her to put it into
words. And if that look had been put into words, they would have been
but three--"_My noble boy!_"
"Ah, well," said Julia, now busy a few yards away, "you are not half
good enough for our Maudie, Harry. You are taking away the biggest part
of my life, and of course you are very cock o' whoop about it; but if
you're not good to her, Harry, you will have to reckon with _me_."
"All right, I'll be there when you want me," Harry replied. "Then we may
take it, Mrs. Whittaker," he continued, with a change of tone, "that the
end of July will be the date to work to?"
"I suppose so," said Regina, "if her father has no objection."
"I detest long engagements myself," said Alfred Whittaker. "I never
could see the good of them. I was engaged much too long to you, my
dear."
"It was the happiest time of my life--" Regina began, somewhat
wistfully.
"Oh, don't say that," her husband interrupted, "don't say that. It might
have been happier than any time that went before--I know it was for
me--but at best it is only a foreshadowing, it's only like water to
wine, like moonlight to sunlight. There, there, children," he said,
flinging out his hands with a deprecating gesture, "there, there, your
old dad doesn't often get so sentimental as that. The end of July let it
be, and after that we shall all go away and breathe freely."
As a matter of fact, after that Ye Dene became like a seething
whirlpool. Such a coming and going, such a dumping of parcels and
patterns and presents, such sending out of invitations and receiving of
congratulations there was, that more than once even Regina herself
admitted that two months was quite long enough for a young couple to be
engaged in these modern days.
The Marksby family were frankly and undeniably delighted and overjoyed
at the new state of affairs. They received Maudie with wide-open arms,
lavished their love and admiration and gifts upon her. Papa Marksby came
across to Ye Dene one evening, and was solemnly closeted with Alfred
Whittaker for the space of a whole hour, during which time they smoked
extremely long cigars, drank whisky-and-soda out of extremely long
tumblers, and went solemnly, although in very friendly fashion, into
extremely long figures.
And then Alfred Whittaker introduced his future son-in-law's father into
the circle in the drawing-room, and Papa Marksby informed Regina in a
voice of much satisfaction and some oiliness, that he and his good
friend and neighbor had settled all the little details of future ways
and means for the young couple.
"Fifty thousand pounds, my dear Queenie," said Alfred Whittaker, when he
found himself once more alone with his wife.
"Fifty thousand pounds, Alfie? What do you mean?"
"Fifty thousand pounds, as our neighbor across the road puts it, 'to be
tied to Maudie's tail!'"
"You mean to say he's going to settle fifty thousand pounds upon her?"
"I do. Papa Marksby isn't the man to do things by halves. He puts it
very clearly and in a very business-like manner, that he has set aside
the sum of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds to be divided equally,
on their marriage, between his two daughters and his prospective
daughter-in-law. He says he can well afford it, that it won't affect the
business the least little bit in the world, and, whatever happens, the
three girls will always be safe, they and their children after them.
It's a wonderful thing," he went on, "that two girls like Rachel and
Emmeline Marksby, with fifty thousand pounds apiece to their fortune--to
their immediate fortune, one may say--should remain unmarried, and our
little Maudie, who hasn't and never will have, more than a third of that
sum, should snap up a big prize as she has done."
"I knew they were well off," said Regina, "I knew it in many ways as
soon as they came here, but I am not surprised that Maudie has made this
wealthy marriage. She is very beautiful--_very_ beautiful. What
surprises me is that the Marksbys should turn out to have so much money.
He gave over a hundred pounds for her engagement ring, and next week
he's going to buy her a diamond necklace. Think of _my_ daughter with a
diamond necklace."
"That is as it should be," said Alfred, complacently. "Even when it is
made out of sausages."
"Dear, dear, Alfie, how you do harp on those sausages!"
"My dear, I went and lunched on them the other day--excellent,
excellent! Don't know how they do it for the money. I saw the whole
process--went over the factory. Everything as clean as a new pin; you
could eat your dinner off the floor."
"I--I--don't know," said Regina. "It seems a little.--However, having
put my hand to the plough, I am not one to look back. Once my daughter
has married sausages, I will honor sausages!"
"You will certainly be able to honor a good deal that sausages will give
her," said Alfred Whittaker. "And now, Queenie, there's a subject on
which I have been trying to get a word with you for the last week or
more. What are we going to give, Queenie, for our wedding present?"
But that was not a question to be answered off-hand. It was a matter
requiring much consideration, consultation--divination, I might say. The
major points of the coming ceremony were all arranged; the bride's
dress, the costumes of the maids, the favors for the men, and the
wording of the invitations. It was the last and greatest, and perhaps
the least easy to decide--what should be the present of the father and
mother of the bride.