cousins and he is, and that would have made it so much, oh, so very much
different. I'm awfully frightened!”
“Runaway couple,” commented Van Bibber. “Most interesting. Read about
'em often; never seen 'em. Most interesting.”
He bent his head over an entree, but he could not help hearing what
followed, for the young runaways were indifferent to all around them,
and though he rattled his knife and fork in a most vulgar manner, they
did not heed him nor lower their voices.
“Well, what are you going to do?” said the girl, severely but not
unkindly. “It doesn't seem to me that you are exactly rising to the
occasion.”
“Well, I don't know,” answered the youth, easily. “We're safe here
anyway. Nobody we know ever comes here, and if they did they are out of
town now. You go on and eat something, and I'll get a directory and look
up a lot of clergymen's addresses, and then we can make out a list and
drive around in a cab until we find one who has not gone off on his
vacation. We ought to be able to catch the Fall River boat back at
five this afternoon; then we can go right on to Boston from Fall River
to-morrow morning and run down to Narragansett during the day.”
“They'll never forgive us,” said the girl.
“Oh, well, that's all right,” exclaimed the young man, cheerfully.
“Really, you're the most uncomfortable young person I ever ran away
with. One might think you were going to a funeral. You were willing
enough two days ago, and now you don't help me at all. Are you sorry?”
he asked, and then added, “but please don't say so, even if you are.”
“No, not sorry, exactly,” said the girl; “but, indeed, Ted, it is going
to make so much talk. If we only had a girl with us, or if you had a
best man, or if we had witnesses, as they do in England, and a parish
registry, or something of that sort; or if Cousin Harold had only been
at home to do the marrying.”
The young gentleman called Ted did not look, judging from the expression
of his shoulders, as if he were having a very good time.
He picked at the food on his plate gloomily, and the girl took out her
handkerchief and then put it resolutely back again and smiled at him.
The youth called the waiter and told him to bring a directory, and as he
turned to give the order Van Bibber recognized him and he recognized Van
Bibber. Van Bibber knew him for a very nice boy, of a very good Boston
family named Standish, and the younger of two sons. It was the elder who
was Van Bibber's particular friend. The girl saw nothing of this mutual
recognition, for she was looking with startled eyes at a hansom that had
dashed up the side street and was turning the corner.
“Ted, O Ted!” she gasped. “It's your brother. There! In that hansom. I
saw him perfectly plainly. Oh, how did he find us? What shall we do?”
Ted grew very red and then very white.
“Standish,” said Van Bibber, jumping up and reaching for his hat, “pay
this chap for these things, will you, and I'll get rid of your brother.”
Van Bibber descended the steps lighting a cigar as the elder Standish
came up them on a jump.
“Hello, Standish!” shouted the New Yorker. “Wait a minute; where are you
going? Why, it seems to rain Standishes to-day! First see your brother;
then I see you. What's on?”
“You've seen him?” cried the Boston man, eagerly. “Yes, and where is he?
Was she with him? Are they married? Am I in time?”
Van Bibber answered these different questions to the effect that he had
seen young Standish and Mrs. Standish not a half an hour before, and
that they were just then taking a cab for Jersey City, whence they were
to depart for Chicago.
“The driver who brought them here, and who told me where they were, said
they could not have left this place by the time I would reach it,” said
the elder brother, doubtfully.
“That's so,” said the driver of the cab, who had listened curiously. “I
brought 'em here not more'n half an hour ago. Just had time to get back
to the depot. They can't have gone long.”
“Yes, but they have,” said Van Bibber. “However, if you get over to
Jersey City in time for the 2.30, you can reach Chicago almost as soon
as they do. They are going to the Palmer House, they said.”
“Thank you, old fellow,” shouted Standish, jumping back into his hansom.
“It's a terrible business. Pair of young fools. Nobody objected to the
marriage, only too young, you know. Ever so much obliged.”
“Don't mention it,” said Van Bibber, politely.
“Now, then,” said that young man, as he approached the frightened couple
trembling on the terrace, “I've sent your brother off to Chicago. I
do not know why I selected Chicago as a place where one would go on a
honeymoon. But I'm not used to lying and I'm not very good at it. Now,
if you will introduce me, I'll see what can be done toward getting you
two babes out of the woods.”
Standish said, “Miss Cambridge, this is Mr. Cortlandt Van Bibber, of
whom you have heard my brother speak,” and Miss Cambridge said she
was very glad to meet Mr. Van Bibber even under such peculiarly trying
circumstances.
“Now what you two want to do,” said Van Bibber, addressing them as
though they were just about fifteen years old and he were at least
forty, “is to give this thing all the publicity you can.”
“What?” chorused the two runaways, in violent protest.
“Certainly,” said Van Bibber. “You were about to make a fatal mistake.
You were about to go to some unknown clergyman of an unknown parish,
who would have married you in a back room, without a certificate or
a witness, just like any eloping farmer's daughter and lightning-rod
agent. Now it's different with you two. Why you were not married
respectably in church I don't know, and I do not intend to ask, but
a kind Providence has sent me to you to see that there is no talk nor
scandal, which is such bad form, and which would have got your names
into all the papers. I am going to arrange this wedding properly, and
you will kindly remain here until I send a carriage for you. Now just
rely on me entirely and eat your luncheon in peace. It's all going to
come out right--and allow me to recommend the salad, which is especially
good.”
Van Bibber first drove madly to the Little Church Around the Corner,
where he told the kind old rector all about it, and arranged to have
the church open and the assistant organist in her place, and a
district-messenger boy to blow the bellows, punctually at three o'clock.
“And now,” he soliloquized, “I must get some names. It doesn't matter
much whether they happen to know the high contracting parties or not,
but they must be names that everybody knows. Whoever is in town will be
lunching at Delmonico's, and the men will be at the clubs.” So he first
went to the big restaurant, where, as good luck would have it, he found
Mrs. “Regy” Van Arnt and Mrs. “Jack” Peabody, and the Misses Brookline,
who had run up the Sound for the day on the yacht _Minerva_ of the
Boston Yacht Club, and he told them how things were and swore them to
secrecy, and told them to bring what men they could pick up.
At the club he pressed four men into service who knew everybody and whom
everybody knew, and when they protested that they had not been properly
invited and that they only knew the bride and groom by sight, he told
them that made no difference, as it was only their names he wanted. Then
he sent a messenger boy to get the biggest suit of rooms on the Fall
River boat and another one for flowers, and then he put Mrs. “Regy” Van
Arnt into a cab and sent her after the bride, and, as best man, he got
into another cab and carried off the groom.
“I have acted either as best man or usher forty-two times now,” said Van
Bibber, as they drove to the church, “and this is the first time I ever
appeared in either capacity in russia-leather shoes and a blue serge
yachting suit. But then,” he added, contentedly, “you ought to see the
other fellows. One of them is in a striped flannel.”
Mrs. “Regy” and Miss Cambridge wept a great deal on the way up town, but
the bride was smiling and happy when she walked up the aisle to meet her
prospective husband, who looked exceedingly conscious before the eyes of
the men, all of whom he knew by sight or by name, and not one of whom he
had ever met before. But they all shook hands after it was over, and
the assistant organist played the Wedding March, and one of the club men
insisted in pulling a cheerful and jerky peal on the church bell in the
absence of the janitor, and then Van Bibber hurled an old shoe and a
handful of rice--which he had thoughtfully collected from the chef at
the club--after them as they drove off to the boat.
“Now,” said Van Bibber, with a proud sigh of relief and satisfaction, “I
will send that to the papers, and when it is printed to-morrow it will
read like one of the most orthodox and one of the smartest weddings of
the season. And yet I can't help thinking--”
“Well?” said Mrs. “Regy,” as he paused doubtfully.
“Well, I can't help thinking,” continued Van Bibber, “of Standish's
older brother racing around Chicago with the thermometer at 102 in the
shade. I wish I had only sent him to Jersey City. It just shows,” he
added, mournfully, “that when a man is not practised in lying, he should
leave it alone.”