BRITISH PEER WINS AMERICAN BRIDE
His Lordship Tenth Earl of Brinstead to Wed One of Red Gap"s Fairest Daughters
My hands so shook that in quick subterfuge I dropped the sheet, then stooped for it, trusting to control myself before I again raised my face. Mercifully the others were diverted by the journal. It was seized from me, pa.s.sed from hand to hand, the incredible words read aloud by each in turn. They jested of it!
"Amazing chaps, your pressmen!" Thus the tenth Earl of Brinstead, while I pinched myself viciously to bring back my lost aplomb. "Speedy beggars, what, what! Never knew it myself till last night. She would and she wouldn"t."
"I think you knew," said the lady. Stricken as I was I noted that she eyed him rather strangely, quite as if she felt some decent respect for him.
"Marriage is serious," boomed the Mixer.
"Don"t blame her, don"t blame her--swear I don"t!" returned his lordship. "Few days to think it over--quite right, quite right. Got to know their own minds, my word!"
While their attention was thus mercifully diverted from me, my own world by painful degrees resumed its stability. I mean to say, I am not the fainting sort, but if I were, then I should have keeled over at my first sight of that journal. But now I merely recovered my gla.s.s of champagne and drained it. Rather pigged it a bit, I fancy. Badly needing a stimulant I was, to be sure.
They now discussed details: the ceremony--that sort of thing.
"Before a registrar, quickest way," said his lordship.
"Nonsense! Church, of course!" rumbled the Mixer very arbitrarily.
"Quite so, then," a.s.sented his lordship. "Get me the rector of the parish--a vicar, a curate, something of that sort."
"Then the breakfast and reception," suggested Mrs. Effie with a meaning glance at me before she turned to the lady. "Of course, dearest, your own tiny nest would never hold your host of friends----"
"I"ve never noticed," said the other quickly. "It"s always seemed big enough," she added in pensive tones and with downcast eyes.
"Oh, not large enough by half," put in Belknap-Jackson, "Most charming little home-nook but worlds too small for all your well-wishers." With a glance at me he narrowed his eyes in friendly calculation. "I"m somewhat puzzled myself--Suppose we see what the capable Ruggles has to suggest."
"Let Ruggles suggest something by all means!" cried Mrs. Effie.
I mean to say, they both quite thought they knew what I would suggest, but it was nothing of the sort. The situation had entirely changed.
Quite another sort of thing it was. Quickly I resolved to fling them both aside. I, too, would be a dead sportsman.
"I was about to suggest," I remarked, "that my place here is the only one at all suitable for the breakfast and reception. I can promise that the affair will go off smartly."
The two had looked up with such radiant expectation at my opening words and were so plainly in a state at my conclusion that I dare say the future Countess of Brinstead at once knew what. She flashed them a look, then eyed me with quick understanding.
"Great!" she exclaimed in a hearty American manner. "Then that"s settled," she continued briskly, as both Belknap-Jackson and Mrs.
Effie would have interposed "Ruggles shall do everything: take it off our shoulders--ices, flowers, invitations."
"The invitation list will need great care, of course," remarked Belknap-Jackson with a quite savage glance at me.
"But you just called him "the capable Ruggles,"" insisted the fiancee.
"We shall leave it all to him. How many will you ask, Ruggles?" Her eyes flicked from mine to Belknap-Jackson.
"Quite almost every one," I answered firmly.
"Fine!" she said.
"Ripping!" said his lordship.
"His lordship will of course wish a best man," suggested Belknap-Jackson. "I should be only too glad----"
"You"re going to suggest Ruggles again!" cried the lady. "Just the man for it! You"re quite right. Why, we owe it all to Ruggles, don"t we?"
She here beamed upon his lordship. Belknap-Jackson wore an expression of the keenest disrelish.
"Of course, course!" replied his lordship. "Dashed good man, Ruggles!
Owe it all to him, what, what!"
I fancy in the cordial excitement of the moment he was quite sincere.
As to her ladyship, I am to this day unable to still a faint suspicion that she was having me on. True, she owed it all to me. But I hadn"t a bit meant it and well she knew it. Subtle she was, I dare say, but bore me no malice, though she was not above setting Belknap-Jackson back a pace or two each time he moved up.
A final toast was drunk and my guests drifted out. Belknap-Jackson again glared savagely at me as he went, but Mrs. Effie rather outglared him. Even I should hardly have cared to face her at that moment.
And I was still in a high state of muddle. It was all beyond me. Had his lordship, I wondered, too seriously taken my careless words about American equality? Of course I had meant them to apply only to those stopping on in the States.
Cousin Egbert lingered to the last, rather with a troubled air of wishing to consult me. When I at length came up with him he held the journal before me, indicating lines in the article--"relict of an Alaskan capitalist, now for some years one of Red Gap"s social favourites."
"Read that there," he commanded grimly. Then with a terrific earnestness I had never before remarked in him: "Say, listen here! I better go round right off and mix it up with that fresh guy. What"s he hinting around at by that there word "relict"? Why, say, she was married to him----"
I hastily corrected his preposterous interpretation of the word, much to his relief.
I was still in my precious state of muddle. Mrs. Judson took occasion to flounce by me in her work of clearing the table.
"A prince in his palace," she taunted. I laughed in a lofty manner.
"Why, you poor thing, I"ve known it all for some days," I said.
"Well, I must say you"re the deep one if you did--never letting on!"
She was unable to repress a glance of admiration at me as she moved off.
I stood where she had left me, meditating profoundly.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Two days later at high noon was solemnized the marriage of his lordship to the woman who, without a bit meaning it, I had so curiously caused to enter his life. The day was for myself so crowded with emotions that it returns in rather a jumble: patches of incidents, little floating clouds of memory; some meaningless and one at least to be significant to my last day.
The ceremony was had in our most nearly smart church. It was only a Methodist church, but I took pains to a.s.sure myself that a ceremony performed by its curate would be legal. I still seem to hear the organ, strains of "The Voice That Breathed Through Eden," as we neared the altar; also the Mixer"s rumbling whisper about a lost handkerchief which she apparently found herself needing at that moment.
The responses of bride and groom were unhesitating, even firm. Her ladyship, I thought, had never appeared to better advantage than in the pearl-tinted l.u.s.treless going-away gown she had chosen. As always, she had finely known what to put on her head.