GI Brides (74 page)

But Mr. Bonniwell was not considering the stateliness and perfection of wedding ceremonies. Instead he was looking sharply at the young man who was talking, wondering if it was just his prejudice and imagination that made him suddenly feel that there was a great weakness in Dan’s chin. A weak chin! And that man with a weak, selfish chin and conceited eyes wanted to marry his little girl!

Then he noticed the lazy voice. “I was trying to do the proper thing according to the old-fashioned acceptance of that term. That is why I came to you first. That, and because I felt that I would be in a stronger position with your daughter if I brought your okay with me, and also would save much trying discussion of a matter that I have already worked out to perfection. I didn’t want to run the risk of having to wait around for formalities, so I’m taking them ahead of time and arranging things for myself. That is why I came to you to get your consent right from the start.”

Mr. Bonniwell continued to look the young man over carefully, sadly. And at last he spoke.

“Why do you want to marry my daughter?”

“
Why?
Well, that’s some question. You act as if it was a surprise to you. Surely you’ve seen us going together for years. I’ve been coming to your house in and out since I was a child. Everybody has always known we were meant for each other, Blythe and I have gone together so long. We’re pretty well used to one another. It’s rather late for you to be asking
why
I want to marry her, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps so. Nevertheless, I’m asking you. Just why do you want to marry my daughter?”

Mr. Bonniwell looked keenly into the young man’s eyes. His own mouth was very firm, and it was evident he wanted an answer.

“Well,” laughed Dan, “if you insist, of course. Why, I decided she was the one best suited to my needs in a wife. She’s good-looking and graceful and well bred. She has an easy manner and will make an excellent hostess. I would never need to be ashamed of her when I chose to entertain, even royalty. She knows how to dress well. Her education is all right, and she’s very adaptable. Besides, she isn’t set in her way. She wouldn’t be always insisting on having her own way. And then, she has—we both have—plenty of money. We wouldn’t be troubled financially. I could always be proud of her in any situation. Say! Isn’t that enough reasons why I want to marry her?”

“No!” said the father, suddenly straightening up and turning his eyes to the window, looking off as if he were seeing a vision of other days. “No, that isn’t enough! You’ve left out the main thing. You talk of her looks and her education and her money, and her position and breeding; you talk of her ability to exercise social duties and to yield her own wishes to yours, and you think on the strength of just that that a marriage can be made! No sir, young man, you are all wrong. I’m older than you are, and I’ve lived through a good many years of marriage, and if I had had only what you have named, it would have been a mighty poor chance of happiness I’d have had. You’ve got to have more than that, boy, before I’ll ever endorse your marriage with my daughter. She’s worth more than that. This isn’t a mere commercial transaction, you know. No true marriage is. There’s got to be something more than that, or you’ll go on the rocks for sure before many years.”

Dan looked at the man whom he desired to make his father-in-law haughtily and in some perplexity.

“I don’t understand you,” he said in a tone of annoyance. “Is there something more that you require?”

“Yes, there is,” said the father, shutting his firm lips with decision. “You haven’t said anything about your personal feeling for my daughter, and true love is the only foundation for a successful marriage. No father would be willing to see a beloved child go into a loveless marriage. Dan, do you love my daughter?”

“Oh!
That!
Why, of course, that goes without saying,” said Dan amusedly. “I’ve always been nuts about Blythe, and I’m sure she’s crazy about me. But that is entirely a matter between Blythe and myself, isn’t it? At least, she’s always seemed very happy in my company. I don’t think you need have any hesitation on that score. Of course I’m very fond of her.”

“That isn’t enough,” said the father decidedly. “No, boy, just being fond, or even ‘being nuts’ isn’t enough. It’s got to be more than that. It’s got to be something that will stand when trouble comes; tribulation and poverty, and death.”

“
Poverty!
” laughed Dan contemptuously. “I guess there’s no danger of that!” And he lifted his patrician chin haughtily.

“It’s quite possible to have poverty come to anyone,” said Mr. Bonniwell soberly. “Things happen in this world, and you can’t ever be sure any of them won’t come to you. And when they come, I’d want to be sure that there was gentleness and loving-kindness and tenderness and a world of protection for my girl. Sickness and suffering, too, may be anybody’s lot.”

“Oh, I’ll take the chance,” said Dan, with a shrug and a laugh.

“But that isn’t enough. You’ve got to be sure you will be all that my girl needs to help her weather these things, if, or when, they come. I don’t want my girl to take a chance.”

Dan smiled in a superior way.

“Oh, don’t be a pessimist!” he said. “You don’t need to worry about that. I’ll look after her. She’ll be all right. Come, Mr. Bonniwell, don’t let’s draw this thing out. You know you can bank on me all right. Give me your okay now, and I won’t bother you any longer.”

Mr. Bonniwell straightened up with that firm set of his lips that his business associates knew meant serious disagreement and shook his head.

“Sorry, Dan, I can’t comply at present. I’ve got to have time to think this thing over, so you needn’t go any further in your plans until you hear from me, and that’s final. I’ll bid you good morning now, for I’ve got to get back to work.”

“But—Mr. Bonniwell—” began Dan, leaning forward with a wheedling manner.

“No buts, Dan Seavers! I meant what I said.”

“Mr. Bonniwell, you wouldn’t like it very well if Blythe and I
eloped,
would you?” asked the young man, flashing his eyes with a look that he meant to convey dangerous threats.

“No,” said Blythe’s father, “but my daughter would never do that.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were you. Your daughter might do just that thing if the right arguments were brought to bear upon her. If I know her at all, I’m sure she would if you made it necessary by withholding your consent.”

“If my daughter did that, young man, she would have to take the consequences. Now, I will bid you good morning again, and this is final.”

While he was speaking he pressed the buzzer on his desk, and his secretary promptly appeared at the door, pencil and pad in hand, ready to take dictation. She took her regular seat near Mr. Bonniwell’s desk, and the business magnate swung around, reached for a letter tray, and began to dictate a letter, so Dan Seavers perceived that the interview was ended, at least for the present. He rose and stood hesitantly a moment, but perceiving no further notice as to be taken of him, he spoke again, in a quiet, rather haughty tone:

“When can I hope to have that answer from you, Mr. Bonniwell?”

The father finished the sentence he was dictating and then said, lifting his eyes briefly to his persistent caller, “I will let you know when I have had sufficient time to think the matter over.” And then he went on with the letter he was dictating.

Dan Seavers turned angrily toward the door, and then with his hand on the doorknob he flung back, “I think you will be sorry, Mr. Bonniwell, that you have taken this attitude.”

This time Mr. Bonniwell did not even lift his eyes as he answered almost meditatively, “It may be so. And then again, I might be even more sorry if I should take any other.”

Furious at the failure of what he considered a stroke of genius calculated to put his future father-in-law forever in his debt, Dan Seavers stalked from the room and closed the door forcefully. Mr. Bonniwell went calmly on with his dictation, though he was by no means calm within himself. This idea of his little girl grown up and somebody trying to marry her in a hurry and take her away, was entirely a new thought to him, and that somebody a young snob with a weak chin and a way of trying to act superior! What did it matter that he was handsome and had a lot of money in his own right? The young scoundrel hadn’t even had the grace to say that he loved her! Bah! Was it possible that Blythe had had so little insight into character as to fall in love with that poor excuse of a man? Well, if she had, he probably would have to give in, but
poor child
! Wasn’t there some way to save her from a future like that? And so he went on thinking, and trying to dictate with the other half of his brain. It was well he had a smart secretary who knew his ways and framed her sentences with a view to his usual habits of diction.

But as the morning went on, he grew more and more opposed to the plans that Dan Seavers had outlined to him, and less and less able to concentrate on his business. And at last about lunchtime he called up his wife and asked her what time she was going to be at the house, saying he had something important he wanted to talk over with her. But when he found that she was not to be back from a committee meeting until late in the afternoon, he settled back grimly to work again, getting a lot of important trifles out of the way and giving definite orders about matters of business to his efficient secretary, planning the morrow’s work pretty fully for her, with the idea in mind that he simply couldn’t do any real work down here at the office himself until this matter of Dan’s proposition was settled one way or the other.

As the day wore on he felt much as if there were a sudden and calamitous illness in the house, the outcome of which could not yet be foretold.

He tried to tell himself that this was ridiculous. That he simply must not get so upset at the idea of Blythe’s belonging to anybody else but her parents. He tried to tell himself that probably all loving parents felt the same way when called upon to give up a beloved daughter and let her go away to make a new home of her own. And of course it was right that she should. He wasn’t a fool, and he had always counted on such a possibility. But somehow it seemed too soon. Why, she was just home from college, and they had so counted on her coming back to them! And then to have her marrying this unsatisfactory playmate of her childhood, this Seavers fellow he had never quite liked. It was unthinkable! It was unbearable! He couldn’t
stand
it!

Over and over these thoughts ran through his mind, winding in and out of the business he was forcing upon himself. He would resolutely put all thoughts of this fantastic proposition of Dan’s out of his mind, and then the next moment it would come blasting back into the depths of his soul again, threatening to disarm him utterly.

And then that phrase of having a wedding almost immediately! Why, it was preposterous! A war wedding!
His
daughter. A wedding was a sacred thing that should be approached deliberately and with solemnity, and consideration. Not rushed into with a frenzy of enthusiasm to keep up with the times. It certainly was not going to help the war to be won to have a host of young people mating off in droves, merely because everybody else was doing it. Even if a man were going out to die, it would not help him any better to die to have gone through a hasty ceremony. But this young man was not even going off to die. He was taking over a comfortable berth in an office, and there was no rush about it. There was plenty of time for Blythe to be sure what she was doing. No marrying in haste to repent at leisure for
his
daughter. She must be
sure
she had the right man, and be sure there was mutual love. Not just fondness!

Again and again he would come back to that unfortunate word “nuts,” and his lip would curl with distaste at the thought of the way Dan had said it, with a casual tolerance in his attitude. Oh, he couldn’t stand it to have Blythe go off with that young man! He would never be able to trust her with him.

Then he would get up and pace across his office, back and forth, and dictate with all the feverishness that a most momentous business proposition might have caused, out of all proportion to the importance of the letter he happened to be dictating.

He sent his secretary out to her lunch early and had a cup of coffee sent up from the restaurant for himself, but still his unhappy musings continued. The situation seemed to grow more and more impossible as the day went by.

When the late afternoon drew on he began to wonder about his wife. Did Alice know about this? Had Dan talked to her? Had she talked with Blythe about it? Did Blythe have any inkling of Dan Seavers’s feeling for her?

Fondness, indeed! You needn’t tell him that even the modern young people had got to the place where they were contemplating an immediate and hasty marriage without some preliminary courtship? The world couldn’t have changed that much since he and Alice were courting. But then the thought of courtship between his daughter and a man who merely professed a “fondness” for her became so obnoxious to him that he could scarcely contain himself, and though it was a full half hour before the time he had promised himself he might with self-respect go home and go into this matter most thoroughly, he finally told his secretary that she had done well and might go home and finish the last few letters that he had dictated in the morning. She had worked hard and must be tired.

The secretary gave him a puzzled, half-worried look but thanked him and departed, and eagerly he got into his overcoat, took his hat and briefcase, and started on his way, the same old thoughts thrashing themselves out in the weary brain.

When he reached home he found that neither his wife nor daughter had as yet arrived, and in despair he put on his dressing gown and slippers and went and lay down on his couch and went to sleep!

W
hen Mrs. Bonniwell came in half an hour later, she saw her husband asleep and tiptoed around, not to waken him. Poor Father! He was working so hard these days, he must be all worn out, or perhaps he was sick. She found a light shawl and softly spread it over him, drew the shades down so that the light would be dim, preparing to get quietly out of the room and keep the house still. But Bonniwell wasn’t so sound asleep but that he heard her and felt her ministrations, and his spirit underneath the light sleep was still so troubled that he came sharply awake and sat up.