Lady Betty Across the Water Part 25

She had always wanted to be married at Grace Church in New York, but New York is no place for August weddings, if an August wedding you must have; so Carolyn's invitations, which appeared almost immediately after the engagement was announced, told everyone that Mr. and Mrs. Pitchley begged them to be present at their daughter's marriage in the drawing room of the Chateau de Plaisance.

I didn't know that you could be married in a drawing room, but it seems you can, quite properly. However, when I go home I don't think I'd better say much about that part of Mohunsleigh's wedding, or some of the old-fashioned people mightn't understand. I should hate them to get the idea just because of the drawing room, that poor Carolyn was morganatic, or something.

She seemed ecstatically happy, more than I could imagine any girl being if she had to marry Mohunsleigh, who, although a dear good fellow when you know him, isn't a bit romantic. But he suddenly blossomed out into all sorts of pleasant American ways, sent Caro flowers and things every day, though I fancy he couldn't afford it, gave her a lovely solitaire diamond ring, which I'm _sure_ he couldn't, and a "guard," an heirloom in his family.

It would have been shocking, Carolyn said, for her to be seen anywhere after the invitations were out, though I can't think why, as she didn't seem at all ashamed of marrying Mohunsleigh, but rather the contrary, and asked me hundreds of questions about what she would have to do when she was a Countess. Fortunately, though, she had lots of things to keep her busy indoors, trying on such frocks as she could get made in a hurry, and writing letters to every girl she knew, announcing her engagement.

The funniest things about the whole affair were--for me--the ushers, the rehearsals for the wedding, and having a married woman as a sort of head bridesmaid. Carolyn's best girl chum was married herself in the spring, so she had to be what they call a Matron of Honour.

It seemed horribly irreverent to rehea.r.s.e for the ceremony, but n.o.body else thought so, except Mohunsleigh and me, and Mohunsleigh said in confidence, that he'd found out the bridegroom was a mere lay figure at a wedding,--anyhow in America,--and he intended to let Caro do exactly as she liked until after they were married. Then she might have to find out that once in a while it would be just as well if she did what he liked. But he asked me not to mention this to Carolyn and her stepmother, so I didn't. And in spite of my objection, the rehearsals were interesting. I felt as if I oughtn't to laugh and joke, but the others all did tremendously, so I did too in the end.

Mohunsleigh was disappointed because that Californian friend of his (whom he would have visited if it hadn't been for falling in love unexpectedly and getting married) couldn't come and be his best man. He urged him, but something interfered, Mohunsleigh didn't tell us what, and Mr. Jameson B. Harborough wasn't even able to come to the wedding.

I was disappointed, too, as Mohunsleigh had told us such romantic things about his friend, that we all wanted to see him. Mr. Harborough had been a sailor, and a cowboy, and had left everything to fight in the Spanish war, where he'd done brave and splendid things, and might have stayed in the army afterwards as a Captain, if he had liked. But he preferred to go back to his old, free life, and was still a poor young man until two or three years ago, when some land in which he'd invested a few savings, turned out to have gold in it--quant.i.ties of gold, gold enough to make a famous mine, and give Mr. Harborough a great fortune. Sally knew a good deal about the new millionaire, too.

It seemed that cousins of his in the West somewhere were acquaintances of hers, and had told her how immensely he had been sought out and flattered in San Francisco and other places, since he'd become rich. He hated it so much that he'd gone abroad and stopped a long time wandering about in strange Eastern countries making friends with Bedouins and people like that, who love horses better than money, and on account of certain experiences with women, he'd got almost a morbid horror of falling in love with some girl who would only pretend to like him, while in reality, all she cared about was his money. n.o.body in Mrs. Ess Kay's set knew Jameson B. Harborough, though everybody would like to, so it was a blow to others beside Mohunsleigh and me that he couldn't or wouldn't show himself at Newport for the wedding.

With the exception of this one hitch, nothing went wrong so far as the wedding party was concerned, but with me things began to go very wrong several days before Caro and Mohunsleigh were married. There was a fuss of some sort between Sally and Mrs. Ess Kay, and Sally came to me, very much upset, to say that she would have to leave The Moorings immediately, she couldn't stand it twenty-four hours longer, even for my sake. She had promised to visit a friend in Chicago, sooner or later, so she would go straight to her, and if anything too tiresome should happen before I was ready to sail for home, I had better run out there;--the friend would be delighted to have me. Sally gave me the address, and I told her I would write often, but of course I didn't dream of having to accept her invitation. I missed her badly, but not as much as if the wedding had not been so near.

Poor old Mohunsleigh--who knows more about the manners of polar bears than etiquette in American society,--was coached by Potter; and the night before the wedding rehearsal reluctantly gave an elaborate dinner to his best man, (an officer in Stan's regiment who happened to turn up) and the six ushers. The same day Carolyn had her Matron of Honour and the bridesmaids to lunch, and we did have fun talking over things.

I should have thought a luncheon with all girls and no men might have been a little tame, and perhaps it would in England, but in America girls are not at all shy. They say just as funny things as men, and take the most beautiful pains to amuse each other, so that it's impossible to be bored, and for hours on end you forget there is such a creature as Man.

At home, Mohunsleigh would have had to give us things, of course; but in America, it appears that the bridegroom makes presents to the best man and the ushers; so it was from Carolyn that I got a duck of a brooch, like an American flag, with stripes of diamonds and rubies, and the blue part sapphires. Mohunsleigh said that, as he was awfully hard up, it was bad luck for him to have to provide each of the bridesmaids with bouquets and chiffon m.u.f.fs, and he could not see at all that it was a pretty idea for everything they carried in their hands to come from the bridegroom. But as Sally had told me that Carolyn's father had settled ten million dollars on her, I don't think Mohunsleigh need have complained.

Although it was in a house, the wedding was very picturesque, and the bride and groom stood under a bell of white roses about as large as Big Ben.

I enjoyed it all immensely, for it was my first time as bridesmaid, and I had a lovely frock and hat (copied from an old picture) for which--when I wanted the bill--I found Sally had paid. There was a crush at the reception, but it only lasted two hours. After the bride and groom had gone, with showers of rice and satin slippers, we stayed and had a dance--just the ushers and bridesmaids and a few young people, who were intimate friends of Carolyn's.

It was then that my greatest troubles began. On a pretence of showing some wedding presents which he said I hadn't seen because they were in a different room from the others, Potter got me alone and proposed again. This time he didn't laugh and joke, as he had before, so that I could take it half in fun even while it made me uncomfortable, but was very serious indeed. When I wanted to go out he stood in front of the door, and wouldn't let me pa.s.s; and his chin and eyes looked so horribly determined that he was more like Mrs. Ess Kay than ever.

"My dear little ladyship," he said, "you're not going to get away until you've given me my answer."

"But I have given it," said I.

"I don't call what you've given me an answer, because you see, I want you so much, and I've made up my mind so hard and fast to have you, that I shan't take 'no' for an answer."

"I don't see how you can help it, as it's the only one I have to give, and I've told you that two dozen times at least," I said, beginning to feel irritable, as I always have from the first, whenever Potter talked about love.

"I know you have, but that doesn't count. There's no such word as fail in the bright lexicon of my youth. Look here, dear girl, you don't quite realise perhaps what a good time I'd give you if you married me.

I've got as much money as my sister has, and I'd do just as you liked about staying in the army. You could have a house in New York, and a whole, real live castle in your own country, if you liked. I wouldn't care a rap how much you spent on clothes, and there isn't a woman in America who's got better jewels than you should have--I'd see to that.

Besides, you could do what you chose--for your own people. I couldn't stint you; I want to be friends with them. I never talked like this to you before, but you see what I mean; and now, isn't what I've said any inducement?"

"I wouldn't need any such inducements if I loved you," I answered. "But I don't, and can't; and somehow I never have been able to believe that you really loved me."

"If that's the trouble, you can make your mind easy. I want you badly."

"Then I'm sorry, for--I simply _can't_ marry you. I should be miserable, and so would you."

"I'll risk that. You're too much of an English rosebud to understand anything about love. What you must do is to trust others who know what you ought to want better than you do yourself. Your mother, for instance. You'd like to please her--and your sister and brother, wouldn't you? Well, they all want you to say 'yes' to me."

"How do you know?" I broke out.

"I _do_ know. You can ask Kath if it isn't true."

"I don't want to talk to her about it."

"You needn't, if you'll only be a good girl and do what everybody expects you to do. Come now, do say yes, and let's be happy."

That did make me furious.

"Anyone would think I was a naughty child, and you were some kind of medicine the whole family was waiting for me to take!" I exclaimed.

"It's a wonder you don't get out your watch and give me five minutes to do it in."

His eyes began to sparkle with anger. I believe he would have liked to box my ears, and I know I could have boxed his.

"I thought English girls were brought up to be sensible," said he, "and amiable."

"I can't help what you thought," I answered, rudely, for I was getting desperate. "You've no right to keep me here like this, and it won't do you a bit of good, for if you stand there till we're both in our second childhood, I won't change my mind. You ought to know that now, Mr.

Parker. Please let me go."

He didn't move.

"If you don't, I'll scream at the top of my lungs," I said. And he must have seen that I meant it, for he flung open the door with a slam and I swept past him, with my nose in the air, trying to look like Mother.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_I swept past him with my nose in the air, trying to look like Mother_"]

I didn't see him again till it was time to go home. Then he drove back with Mrs. Ess Kay and me to The Moorings in the shut-up motor car, and didn't open his mouth once on the way--which was wonderful for him, and seemed somehow ominous.

I had been too angry and excited after that scene of ours to feel unhappy, or to worry much about what might come next, but that drive, short as it was, with Potter freezingly silent, and Mrs. Ess Kay alarmingly polite, made me feel that the end had come. I was sure she had been told by her brother what an obstinate, ungrateful girl I was, and I had a guilty sinking of the heart, as if I really had been both.

There was no Sally to protect me now, no one to advise me what to do, and there was a big lump in my throat as I said good night and went to my own room.

I hadn't been there long when there came a knock at the door--the same determined kind of inexorable knock which Mother gives when I've been found out in something which she thinks it her duty to make me sorry for.

I'd locked the door, and would have liked to make some excuse not to open it; but it was Mrs. Ess Kay's door, and Mrs. Ess Kay's room, just as much as it was Mrs. Ess Kay's brother I had refused.

She sailed in all in black, like an executioner, though of course, executioners don't go down into history wearing chiffon trimmed with jet.

"My dear Betty," said she, subsiding into a large armchair, "I want to have a serious talk with you."

It would have been stupid pretending not to understand, so I just looked at her, and waited.

"I daresay, you can guess what it's about?" she went on.

"I suppose so," I said. "I'm very sorry about everything. But I can't help not being in love with Mr. Parker, can I?"

"I should have thought," said Mrs. Ess Kay, "that your Mother's daughter would have attached very little importance to being in love.

Apparently she hasn't been as successful with you as with Lady Victoria. Believe me, Betty, there's nothing in it--nothing at all."

"In what?"