IV

The next day was Sunday; Peter Bream took it for some Sunday, and came

to the tea on Mrs. Forsyth's generalized invitation. She pulled her

mouth down and her eyebrows up when his card was brought in, but as

he followed hard she made a lightning change to a smile and gave him a

hand of cordial welcome. Charlotte had no choice but to welcome him,

too, and so the matter was simple for her. She was pouring, as usual,

for her mother, who liked to eliminate herself from set duties and

walk round among the actual portraits in fact and in frame and talk

about them to the potential portraits. Peter, qualified by long

sojourn in England, at once pressed himself into the service of

handing about the curate's assistant; Mrs. Forsyth electrically

explained that it was one of the first brought to New York, and that

she had got it at the Stores in London fifteen years before, and it

had often been in the old ancestral room, and was there on top of the

trunks that first day. She did not recur to the famous instance of

Charlotte's infant indecision, and Peter was safe from a snub when he

sat down by the girl's side and began to make her laugh. At the end,

when her mother asked Charlotte what they had been laughing about, she

could not tell; she said she did not know they were laughing.

The next morning Mrs. Forsyth was paying for her Sunday tea with a

Monday headache, and more things must be got out for the country.

Charlotte had again no choice but to go alone to the storage, and yet

again no choice but to be pleasant to Peter when she found him next

door listing the contents of his mother's trunks and tagging them as

before. He dropped his work and wanted to help her. Suddenly they

seemed strangely well acquainted, and he pretended to be asked which

pieces she should put aside as goods selected, and chose them for her.

She hinted that he was shirking his own work; he said it was an

all-summer's job, but he knew her mother was in a hurry. He found the

little old trunk of her playthings, and got it down and opened it and

took out some toys as goods selected. She made him put them back, but

first he catalogued everything in it and synopsized the list on a tag

and tagged the trunk. He begged for a broken doll which he had not

listed, and Charlotte had so much of her original childish difficulty

in parting with that instead of something else that she refused it.

It came lunch-time, and he invited her to go out to lunch with him;

and when she declined with dignity he argued that if they went to the

Woman's Exchange she would be properly chaperoned by the genius of the

place; besides, it was the only place in town where you got real

strawberry shortcake. She was ashamed of liking it all; he besought

her to let him carry her hand-bag for her, and, as he already had it,

she could not prevent him; she did not know, really, how far she

might successfully forbid him in anything. At the street door of the

apartment-house they found her mother getting out of a cab, and she

asked Peter in to lunch; so that Charlotte might as well have lunched

with him at the Woman's Exchange.

At all storage warehouses there is a season in autumn when the

corridors are heaped with the incoming furniture of people who have

decided that they cannot pass another winter in New York and are

breaking up housekeeping to go abroad indefinitely. But in the spring,

when the Constitutional Safe-Deposit offered ample space for

thoughtful research, the meetings of Charlotte and Peter could recur

without more consciousness of the advance they were making toward the

fated issue than in so many encounters at tea or luncheon or dinner.

Mrs. Forsyth was insisting on rather a drastic overhauling of her

storage that year. Some of the things, by her command, were shifted to

and fro between the more modern rooms and the old ancestral room, and

Charlotte had to verify the removals. In deciding upon goods selected

for the country she had the help of Peter, and she helped him by

interposing some useful hesitations in the case of things he had put

aside from his mother's possessions to be sold for her by the

warehouse people.

One day he came late and told Charlotte that his mother had suddenly

taken her passage for England, and they were sailing the next morning.

He said, as if it logically followed, that he had been in love with

her from that earliest time when she would not give him the least of

her possessions, and now he asked her if she would not promise him the

greatest. She did not like what she felt "rehearsed" in his proposal;

it was not her idea of a proposal, which ought to be spontaneous and

unpremeditated in terms; at the same time, she resented his

precipitation, which she could not deny was inevitable.

She perceived that they were sitting side by side on two of those

white-and-gold thrones, and she summoned an indignation with the

absurdity in refusing him. She rose and said that she must go; that

she must be going; that it was quite time for her to go; and she would

not let him follow her to the elevator, as he made some offer of

doing, but left him standing among his palatial furniture like a

prince in exile.

By the time she reached home she had been able to decide that she must

tell her mother at once. Her mother received the fact of Peter's

proposal with such transport that she did not realize the fact of

Charlotte's refusal. When this was connoted to her she could scarcely

keep her temper within the bounds of maternal tenderness. She said

she would have nothing more to do with such a girl; that there was but

one such pearl as Peter in the universe, and for Charlotte to throw

him away like that! Was it because she could not decide? Well, it

appeared that she could decide wrong quickly enough when it came to

the point. Would she leave it now to her mother?

That Charlotte would not do, but what she did do was to write a letter

to Peter taking him back as much as rested with her; but delaying so

long in posting it, when it was written, that it reached him among the

letters sent on board and supplementarily delivered by his room

steward after all the others when the ship had sailed. The best Peter

could do in response was a jubilant Marconigram of unequaled cost and

comprehensiveness.

His mother had meant to return in the fall, after her custom, to find

out whether she wished to spend the winter in New York or not. Before

the date for her sailing she fell sick, and Peter came sadly home

alone in the spring. Mrs. Bream's death brought Mrs. Forsyth a vain

regret; she was sorry now that she had seen so little of Mrs. Bream;

Peter's affection for her was beautiful and spoke worlds for both of

them; and they, the Forsyths, must do what they could to comfort him.

Charlotte felt the pathos of his case peculiarly when she went to make

provision for goods selected for the summer from the old ancestral

room, and found him forlorn among his white-and-gold furniture next

door. He complained that he had no association with it except the

touching fact of his mother's helplessness with it, which he had now

inherited. The contents of the trunks were even less intimately of his

experience; he had performed a filial duty in listing their contents,

which long antedated him, and consisted mostly of palatial bric-à-brac

and the varied spoils of travel.

He cheered up, however, in proposing to her that they should buy a

Castle in Spain and put them into it. The fancy pleased her, but

visibly she shrank from a step which it involved, so that he was, as

it were, forced to say, half jokingly, half ruefully, "I can imagine

your not caring for this rubbish or what became of it, Charlotte, but

what about the owner?"

"The owner?" she asked, as it were somnambulantly.

"Yes. Marrying him, say, sometime soon."

"Oh, Peter, I couldn't."

"Couldn't? You know that's not playing the game exactly."

"Yes; but not--not right away?"

"Well, I don't know much about it in my own case, but isn't it usual

to fix some approximate date? When should you think?"

"Oh, Peter, I _can't_ think."

"Will you let me fix it? I must go West and sell out and pull up, you

know, preparatory to never going again. We can fix the day now or we

can fix it when I come back."

"Oh, when you come back," she entreated so eagerly that Peter said:

"Charlotte, let me ask you one thing. Were you ever sorry you wrote me

that taking-back letter?"

"Why, Peter, you know how I am. When I have decided something I have

undecided it. That's all."

From gay he turned to grave. "I ought to have thought. I haven't been

fair; _I_ haven't played the game. I ought to have given you another

chance; and I haven't, have I?"

"Why, I suppose a girl can always change," Charlotte said,

suggestively.

"Yes, but you won't always be a girl. I've never asked you if you

wanted to change. I ask you now. Do you?"

"How can I tell? Hadn't we better let it go as it is? Only not hurry

about--about--marrying?"

"Certainly not hurry about marrying. I've wondered that a girl could

make up her mind to marry any given man. Haven't you ever wished that

you had not made up your mind about me?"

"Hundreds of times. But I don't know that I meant anything by it."

He took her hand from where it lay in her lap as again she sat on one

of the white-and-gold thrones beside him and gently pressed it. "Well,

then, let's play we have never been engaged. I'm going West to-night

to settle things up for good, and I won't be back for three or four

months, and when I come back we'll start new. I'll ask you, and you

shall say yes or no just as if you had never said either before."

"Peter, when you talk like that!" She saw his brown, round face dimly

through her wet eyes, and she wanted to hug him for pity of him and

pride in him, but she could not decide to do it. They went out to

lunch at the Woman's Exchange, and the only regret Peter had was that

it was so long past the season of strawberry shortcake, and that

Charlotte seemed neither to talk nor to listen; she ought to have done

one or the other.

They had left the Vaneckens busy with their summer trunks at the far

end of the northward corridor, where their wireless station had been

re-established for Charlotte's advantage, though she had not thought

of it the whole short morning long. When she came back from lunch the

Vaneckens were just brushing away the crumbs of theirs, which the son

and brother seemed to have brought in for them in a paper box; at any

rate, he was now there, making believe to help them.

Mrs. Forsyth had promised to come, but she came so late in the

afternoon that she owned she had been grudgingly admitted at the

office, and she was rather indignant about it. By this time, without

having been West for three months, Peter had asked a question which

had apparently never been asked before, and Charlotte had as newly

answered it. "And now, mother," she said, while Mrs. Forsyth passed

from indignant to exultant, "I want to be married right away, before

Peter changes his mind about taking me West with him. Let us go home

at once. You always said I should have a home wedding."

"What a ridiculous idea!" Mrs. Forsyth said, more to gain time than

anything else. She added, "Everything is at sixes and sevens in the

flat. There wouldn't be standing-room." A sudden thought flashed upon

her, which, because it was sudden and in keeping with her character,

she put into tentative words. "You're more at home _here_ than

anywhere else. You were almost born here. You've played about here

ever since you were a child. You first met Peter here. He proposed to

you here, and you rejected him here. He's proposed here again, and

you've accepted him, you say--"

"Mother!" Charlotte broke in terribly upon her. "Are you suggesting

that I should be married in a storage warehouse? Well, I haven't

fallen quite so low as that yet. If I can't have a _home_ wedding, I

will have a _church_ wedding, and I will wait till doomsday for it if

necessary."

"I don't know about doomsday," Mrs. Forsyth said, "but as far as

to-day is concerned, it's too late for a church wedding. Peter, isn't

there something about canonical hours? And isn't it past them?"

"That's in the Episcopal Church," Peter said, and then he asked, very

politely, "Will you excuse me for a moment?" and walked away as if he

had an idea. It was apparently to join the Vaneckens, who stood in a

group at the end of their corridor, watching the restoration of the

trunks which they had been working over the whole day. He came back

with Mr. Vanecken and Mr. Vanecken's mother. He was smiling radiantly,

and they amusedly.

"It's all right," he explained. "Mr. Vanecken is a Presbyterian

minister, and he will marry us now."

"But not here!" Charlotte cried, feeling herself weaken.

"No, certainly not," the dominie reassured her. "I know a church in

the next block that I can borrow for the occasion. But what about the

license?"

It was in the day before the parties must both make application in

person, and Peter took a paper from his breast pocket. "I thought it

might be needed, sometime, and I got it on the way up, this morning."

"Oh, how thoughtful of you, Peter!" Mrs. Forsyth moaned in admiration

otherwise inexpressible, and the rest laughed, even Charlotte, who

laughed hysterically. At the end of the corridor they met the Misses

Vanecken waiting for them, unobtrusively expectant, and they all went

down in the elevator together. Just as they were leaving the building,

which had the air of hurrying them out, Mrs. Forsyth had an

inspiration. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed, and then, in deference to

Mr. Vanecken, said, "Good gracious, I _mean_. My husband! Peter, go

right into the office and telephone Mr. Forsyth."

"Perhaps," Mr. Vanecken said, "I had better go and see about having my

friend's church opened, in the meanwhile, and--"

"By all means!" Mrs. Forsyth said from her mood of universal

approbation.

But Mr. Vanecken came back looking rather queer and crestfallen. "I

find my friend has gone into the country for a few days; and I don't

quite like to get the sexton to open the church without his authority,

and-- But New York is full of churches, and we can easily find another,

with a little delay, if--"

He looked at Peter, who looked at Charlotte, who burst out with

unprecedented determination. "No, we can't wait. I shall never marry

Peter if we do. Mother, you are right. But _must_ it be in the old

ancestral five-dollar room?"

They all laughed except Charlotte, who was more like crying.

"Certainly not," Mr. Vanecken said. "I've no doubt the manager--"

He never seemed to end his sentences, and he now left this one broken

off while he penetrated the railing which fenced in the manager alone

among a group of vacated desks, frowning impatient. At some murmured

words from the dominie, he shouted, "_What!_" and then came out

radiantly smiling, and saying, "Why, certainly." He knew all the group

as old storers in the Constitutional, and called them each by name as

he shook them each by the hand. "Everything else has happened here,

and I don't see why this shouldn't. Come right into the

reception-room."

With some paintings of biblical subjects, unclaimed from the storage,

on the walls, the place had a religious effect, and the manager

significantly looked out of it a lingering stenographer, who was

standing before a glass with two hatpins crossed in her mouth

preparatory to thrusting them through the straw. She withdrew, visibly

curious and reluctant, and then the manager offered to withdraw

himself.

"No," Charlotte said, surprisingly initiative in these junctures, "I

don't know how it is in Mr. Vanecken's church, but, if father doesn't

come, perhaps you'll have to give me away. At any rate, you're an old

friend of the family, and I should be hurt if you didn't stay."

She laid her hand on the manager's arm, and just as he had

protestingly and politely consented, her father arrived in a taxicab,

rather grumbling from having been obliged to cut short a sitting. When

it was all over, and the Vaneckens were eliminated, when, in fact, the

Breams had joined the Forsyths at a wedding dinner which the bride's

father had given them at Delmonico's and had precipitated themselves

into a train for Niagara ("So banal," Mrs. Forsyth said, "but I

suppose they had to go somewhere, and _we_ went to Niagara, come to

think of it, and it's on their way West"), the bride's mother remained

up late talking it all over. She took credit to herself for the whole

affair, and gave herself a great deal of just praise. But when she

said, "I do believe, if it hadn't been for me, at the last, Charlotte

would never have made up her mind," Forsyth demurred.

"I should say Peter had a good deal to do with making up her mind for

her."

"Yes, you might say that."

"And for once in her life Charlotte seems to have had her mind ready

for making up."

"Yes, you might say that, too. I believe she is going to turn out a

decided character, after all. I _never_ saw anybody so determined not

to be married in a storage warehouse."