The Best Man (24 page)

“But the announcements,” said Celia catching her breath laughingly, “I never thought of that. We’ll just have to have some kind of announcements or my friends will not understand about my new name; and we’ll have to send him one, won’t we?”

“Why, I don’t know. Couldn’t we get along without announcements? You can explain to your intimate friends, and the others won’t ever remember the name after a few months – we’ll not likely to meet many of them right away. I’ll write to my chief and tell him informally leaving out the date entirely. He won’t miss it. If we have announcements at all we needn’t send him one. He wouldn’t be likely ever to see one any other way, or to notice the date. I think we can manage that matter. We’ll talk it over with your –” he hesitated and then smiling tenderly added, “we’ll talk it over with Mother. How good it sounds to say that. I never knew my mother, you know.”

Celia nestled her hands in his and murmured, “Oh, I am so happy, - so happy! But I don’t understand how you got a wedding trip without telling your chief about our marriage.”

“Easy as anything. He asked me if I would mind running across the water to attend to a matter for the Service and said I might have extra time while there for a vacation. He never suspects that vacation is to be used as a wedding trip. I’ll write him, or ’phone him the night we leave New York. I may have to stay in the city two or three days to get this Holman matter settled, and then we can be off. In the meantime you can spend the time reconciling your mother to her new son. Do you think we’ll have a very hard time explaining matters to her?”

“Not a bit,” said Celia, gaily. “She never did like George. It was the only thing we ever disagreed about, my marrying him. She suspected all the time I wasn’t happy and couldn’t understand why I insisted on marrying him when I hadn’t seen him for ten years. She begged me to wait until he had been back in the country for a year or two, but he would not hear such a thing and threatened to carry out his worst at once.”

Gordon’s heart suddenly contracted with righteous wrath over the cowardliness of the man who sought to gain his own ends by intimidating a woman – and this woman, so dear, so beautiful, so lovely in her nature. It seemed the man’s heart must indeed be black to have done what he did. He mentally resolved to search him out and bring him to justice as soon as he reached New York. It puzzled him to understand how easily he seemed to have abandoned his purposes. Perhaps after all he was more of a coward than they thought, and had not dared to remain in the country when he found that Celia had braved his wrath and married another man. He would find out about him and set the girl’s heart at rest just as soon as possible, that any embarrassment at some future time might be avoided. Gordon stooped and kissed his wife again, a caress that seemed to promise all reparation for the past.

But it suddenly occurred to the two that trains did not wait for lovers’ long loitering, and with one accord they went to work. Celia of course had very little preparation to make. Her trunk was probably in Chicago and would need to be wired for. Gordon attended to that the first thing, looking up the number of the check and ordering it back to New York by telegraph. Turning from the telephone he rang for the man and asked Celia to give the order for lunch while he got together some things that he must take with him. A stay of several weeks would necessitate a little more baggage than he had taken to New York.

He went into the bedroom and began pulling out things to pack but when Celia turned from giving her directions she found him standing in the bedroom doorway with an old-fashioned velvet jewel case in his hand which he had just taken from the little safe in his room. His face wore a wonderful tender light as if he had just discovered something precious.

“Dear,” he said. “I wonder if you will care for these. They were mother’s. Perhaps this ring will do until I can buy you a new one. See if it will fit you. It was my mother’s.”

He held out a ring containing a diamond of singular purity and brilliance in quaint old-fashioned setting.

Celia put out her hand with its wedding ring, the ring that he had put upon her finger at the altar, and he slipped the other jeweled one above it. It fitted perfectly.

“It is a beauty,” breathed Celia, holding out her hand to admire it, “and I would far rather have it than a new one. Your dear little mother!”

“There’s not much else here but a little string of pearls and a pin or two. I have always kept them near me. Somehow they seemed like a link between me and mother. I was keeping them for –” he hesitated and then giving her a rare smile he finished:

“I was keeping them for you.”

Her answering look was eloquent, and needed no words, which was well, for Henry appeared at that moment to serve luncheon and remind his master that his train left in a little over two hours. There was no further time for sentiment.

And yet, these two, it seemed, could not be practical that day. They idled over their luncheon and dawdled over their packing, stopping to look at this and that picture or bit of bric-a-brac that Gordon had picked up in some of his travels; and Henry finally had to take things in his own hands, pack them off and send their baggage after them. Henry was a capable man and rejoiced to see the devotion of his master and his new mistress, but he had a practical head and knew where his part came in.

The journey back to New York seemed all too brief for the two whose lives had just been blended so unexpectedly, and every mile was filled with a new and sweet discovery of delight in one another; and then, when they reached the city they rushed in on Mrs. Hathaway and the eager young Jeff like two children who had so much to tell they did not know where to begin.

Mrs. Hathaway settled the matter by insisting on their going to dinner immediately and leaving all explanations until afterward; and with the servants present of course there was little that could be said about the matter that each one had most at heart. But there was a spirit of deep happiness in the atmosphere and one couldn’t possibly entertain any fears under the influence of the radiant smiles that passed between mother and daughter, husband and wife, brother and sister.

As soon as the meal was concluded the mother led them up to her private sitting room, and closing the door she stood facing them all as half breathless with the excitement of the moment they stood in a row before her:

“My three dear children!” she murmured. Gordon’s eyes lit with joy and his heart thrilled with the wonder of it all. Then the mother stepped up to him and placing her hand on his arm led him over to the couch and made him sit beside her, while the brother and sister sat down together close by.

“Now, Cyril, my new son,” said she, deliberately, her eyes resting approvingly upon his face, “you may tell me your story. I see my girl has lost both head and heart to you and I doubt if she could tell it connectedly.”

And while Celia and Jeff were laughing at this, Gordon set about his task of winning a mother, and incidentally an eager-eyed young brother who was more than half committed to his cause already.

Celia watched proudly as her handsome husband took out his credentials, and began his explanation.

“First, I must tell you who I am, and these papers will do it better than I could. Will you look at them, please?”

He handed her a few letters and papers.

“These papers on the top show the rank and position that my father and my grandfather held with the government and in the army. This is a letter from the president to my father congratulating him on his approaching marriage with my mother. The paper contains my mother’s family tree, and the letters with it will give an idea of the honor in which my mother’s family was held in Washington and in Virginia, her old home. I know these matters are not of much moment, and say nothing whatever about what I am myself, but they are things you would have been likely to know about my family if you had known me all my life; and at least they will tell you that my family was respectable.”

Mrs. Hathaway was examining the papers, and suddenly looked up exclaiming: “My dear! My father knew your grandfather. I think I saw him once when he came to our home in New York. It was years ago and I was a young girl, but I remember he was a fine looking man with keen dark eyes and a heavy head of iron gray hair.”

She looked at Gordon keenly.

“I wonder if your eyes are not like his. It was long ago of course.”

“They used to say I looked like him. I do not remember him. He died when I was very young.”

The mother looked up with a pleased smile.

“Now tell me about yourself,” she said and laid a gentle hand on his.

Gordon looked down, an embarrassed flush spreading over his face.

“There’s nothing great to tell,” he said, “I’ve always tried to live a straight true life, and I’ve never been in love with any girl before –” he flashed a wonderful, blinding smile upon Celia.

“I was left alone in the world when quite young and have lived around in boarding-schools and college. I’m a graduate of Harvard and I’ve travelled a little. There was some money left from my father’s estate, not much. I’m not rich. I’m a Secret Service man, and I love my work. I get a good salary and was this morning promoted to the position next in rank to my chief, so that now I shall have still more money. I shall be able to make your daughter comfortable and give her some of the luxuries, if not all, to which she has been accustomed.”

“My dear boy, that part is not what I am anxious about –” interrupted the mother.

“I know,” said Gordon, “But it is a detail you have a right to be told. I understand that you care far more what I am than how much money I can make, and I promise you I am going to try to be all that you would want your daughter’s husband to be. Perhaps the best thing I can say for myself is that I love her better than my life, and I mean to make her happiness the dearest thing in life to me.”

The mother’s look of deep understanding answered him more eloquently than words could have done, and after a moment she spoke again.

“But I do not understand how you could have known one another and I never have heard of you. Celia is not good at keeping things from her mother, though the last three months she has had a sadness that I could not fathom, and was forced to lay to her natural dread of leaving home. She seemed so insistent upon having this marriage just as George planned it – and I was so afraid she would regret not waiting. How could you have known one another all this time and she never talked to me about it, and why did George Hayne have any part whatever in it if you two loved one another? Just how long have you known each other any way? Did it begin when you visited Washington last spring, Celia?”

With dancing eyes Celia shook her head.

“No, Mamma. If I had met him then I’m sure George Hayne would never had had anything to do with the matter, for Cyril would have known how to help me out of my difficulty.”

“I shall have to tell you the whole story from my standpoint, and from the beginning,” said Gordon, dreading now that the crisis was upon him, what the outcome would be. “I have wanted you to know who and what I was before you know the story, that you might judge me as kindly as possible, and know that however I may have been to blame in the matter it was through no intention of mine. My story may sound rather impossible. I know it will seem improbable, but it is nevertheless true, everything that I have to tell. May I hope to be believed?”

“I think you may,” answered the mother searching his face anxiously. “Those eyes of yours are not lying eyes.”

“Thank you,” he said simply, and then gathering all his courage he plunged into his story.

Mrs. Hathaway was watching him with searching interest. Jeff had drawn his chair up close and could scarcely restrain his excitement, and when Gordon told of his commission he burst forth explosively:

“Gee! But that was a great stunt! I’d have liked to have been along with you! You must be simply great to be trusted with a thing like that!”

But his mother gently reproved him:

“Hush, my son, let us hear the story.”

Celia sat quietly watching her husband with pride, two bright spots of color of her cheeks, and her hands clasping each other tightly. She was hearing many details now that were new to her. Once more, when Gordon mentioned the dinner at Holman’s Jeff interrupted with:

“Holman! Holman! Not J.P.? Why of course – we know him! Celia was one of his daughter’s bridesmaids last spring! The old lynx! I always thought he was crooked! People hint a lot of things about him –”

“Jeff, dear, let us hear the story,” again insisted his mother, and the story continued.

Gordon had been looking down as he talked. He dreaded to see their faces as the truth should dawn upon them, but when he had told all he lifted honest eyes to the white-faced mother and pleaded with her:

“Indeed, indeed, I hope you will believe me, that not until they laid your daughter’s hand in mine did I know that I was supposed to be the bridegroom. I thought all the time her brother was the bridegroom. If I had not been so distraught, and trying so hard to think how to escape, I suppose I would have noticed that I was standing next to her, and that everything was peculiar about the whole matter, but I didn’t. And then when I suddenly knew that she and I were being married, what should I have done? Do you think I ought to have stopped the ceremony then and there and made a scene before all those people? What was the right thing to do? Suppose my commission had been entirely out of the question, and I had had no duty toward the government to keep entirely quiet about myself, do you think I ought to have made a scene? Would you have wanted me for your daughter’s sake? Tell me please,” he insisted, gently.

And while she hesitated he added:

“I did some pretty hard thinking during that first quarter of a second that I realized what was happening, and I tell you honestly I didn’t know what was the right thing to do. It seemed awful for her sake to make a scene, and to tell you the truth I worshipped her from the moment my eyes rested upon her. There was something sad and appealing as she looked at me that seemed to pledge my very life to save her from trouble. Tell me, do you think I ought to have stopped the ceremony then at the first moment of my realization that I was being married?”