We are to be married, she says, in three weeks.
Time out of mind we have been friends, Gertrude and I, as our mothers
had been before us. She, the highly modern spinster and I, such as I
am, have been linked for years by an engagement which is not an
engagement in the old sense at all. It is a sort of _entente cordiale_.
An engagement in the conventional meaning of the word would be as
abhorrent to Gertrude as the old-fashioned marriage. As soon would she
think of "being given in marriage" with bell, book and orange blossoms
as of calling herself "Mrs. Randolph Byrd"--or anything but Miss Bayard.
That is what we have been discussing this gloomy afternoon in my snug
little apartment before a garrulous fire. For Gertrude is not so absurd
as to hesitate to call on me at my apartment any more than I would
hesitate to call on her in Gramercy Park.
"But won't it be awkward," I ventured in mild speculation, "if after we
are married we have to stay at an hotel together, or share a cabin on a
ship--to be Miss Bayard and Mr. Byrd?"
"Don't be absurd, Ranny," retorted Gertrude, with her usual introductory
phrase. "Awkward or not, do you think I should give up my name that I
have lived under all my life, fought for and established?"
"Of course not," I hastily apologized. "I hadn't thought of that." I
could not help wondering what she meant by having established her name.
Except as regards one or two committees and vacation funds Gertrude's
name is unknown to celebrity.
"You with your H.H.," she ran on briskly, with the triumph of having
scored. "Surely you don't want to cling to the musty old formulas?"
"No, certainly not," I answered her readily. I am no match for Gertrude
in argument. Of a sudden I became aware that despite the hissing fire
in the grate there was no sparkle in the air this chill November
afternoon. The H.H. to which Gertrude had alluded was the only thing
resembling an emotion that betrayed any sign of smoldering life within
me in that discussion of ours touching matrimony.
The H.H., I would better explain, stands for Horror of Home--for my
profound repugnance toward anything resembling the fettering bonds of
domesticity. A man, I feel, should be as free to do what he pleases and
to go where he likes when and if married as when single. Otherwise who
would assume the chains and slavery of that shadowed prison-house?
To-morrow, my heart suddenly tells me, I must be off upon a journey of
unknown duration.
Once again I would see the estraded gardens of the Riviera, the olive
groves of Italy, the sacred parchments and incunabula of the Laurentian
Library in Florence. I would wander anew in the wilderness of the
Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris and on the left bank of the Seine, where
once I collected the lore of Balzac and of Sainte-Beuve. And who dare
prevent my setting off at a moment's notice for the ill-lighted rotunda
of the British Museum or the cloister precincts of the Bodleian at
Oxford? Even as Gertrude was speaking, I experienced an irresistible
longing for all those places, for the turf walks and pleached alleys of
Oxford and the beautiful "Backs" of the Cambridge Colleges. There is a
manuscript at Trinity that I must see again, and I have long promised
myself a month in Pepys's old library at Magdelene in Cambridge.
But Gertrude is not like other women.
"What I like about you, Ranny," she remarked, flicking the ash from her
cigarette with unerring aim into the hearth, "is your reasonableness.
You hate as I do to see two people handcuffed together like a pair of
convicts for life. Might as well go back to the Stone Age or to the
times of a dozen children in the house and the mother grilling herself
all day before the kitchen fire. Ugh!" and she gave a shudder.
"No fear of that with you," I laughed.
"No, I should hope not," she puffed energetically.
"Well, anyway," I found myself reassuring her quickly, "even as it is,
you have three weeks to think it over--to back out in. Three weeks is a
good long time, Gertrude. Much can happen in three weeks."
On the table before me lay a new life of Leonardo da Vinci, just arrived
from Paris that day. My fingers itched to open it and turn the pages.
But that would have been rude, so I forebore.
"I am not like that," Gertrude murmured reflectively, "and you know it,
Ranny."
"Of course not," I guiltily assented.
"I know," she tapped my cheek with a playful finger--Gertrude can be
very charming if she thinks of it--"I know perfectly what I want to do.
And when I make up my mind to do a thing I stick to it."
And so she does, the clever girl!
"I wish I were like you," I muttered. "I am a sort of drifter, I'm
afraid."
"That's why you need a manager," laughed Gertrude. "Wait till you've got
me. Then you won't be just running after books and telling yourself
what you're going to do some day. You'll be doing, publishing,
lecturing; you'll be known--famous."
"Oh my heavens!" I cried out in a terror, throwing up a defensive hand.
"I think I'll run away."
"Too late," she smiled, with a cool archness. When Gertrude smiles she
is exceedingly handsome. "I've ordered my trousseau. You wouldn't
leave me waiting at the City Hall, would you?"
"I might," I answered, smiling back at her. "If there should happen to
be a book auction that morning. And it's only a subway fare back to your
flat."
"Now, this is the program," she announced, assuming her magisterial
tone, which instantaneously reduces me to a spineless worm before her.
"You will come to my flat on the twenty-fourth at ten o'clock. Then we
shall drive down in a taxi to the City Hall and get the license--or
whatever they call it--"
"Lucky you'll be there," I could not help murmuring. "I should probably
get a dog license or a motor-car license instead of the correct one--"
"Then," went on Gertrude, very properly ignoring me, "we can have the
alderman of the day sing the necessary song."
"He may want to sing an encore--or kiss the bride," I warned her.
"He won't want to kiss me when I look at him," answered Gertrude
imperturbably. Nor will he! "Then," she added, "we can stop here at
your place and pick up your hand luggage, and mine on the way to the
Grand Central Station. You can send your trunk the day before and I'll
send mine. No time lost, you see, no waste, no foolishness."
"Perfect efficiency, in short--"
"Yes," said Gertrude, "you'll probably forget some important detail in
the arrangement, but there's time enough to drill you into it the next
three weeks."
"Forget," I repeated, somewhat dazedly, I admit. "What is there to
forget--except possibly my name, age or color?"
"You needn't worry," flashed Gertrude. "I'll remember those for
you--when you need them. I meant," she explained, "about your trunk or
railway tickets and so on. But anyway, it doesn't matter. I'll remind
you of everything the day before."