第2章

"You could not have loved me very much," she complained, "if you'd let a little thing like money make you hesitate.""It's not a little thing," suggested Carter. "They say it's several millions, and it happens to be YOURS. If it were MINE, now!""Money," said Dolly sententiously, "is given people to make them happy, not to make them miserable.""Wait until I sell my stories to the magazines," said Carter, "and then I will be independent and can support you."The plan did not strike Dolly as one likely to lead to a hasty marriage. But he was sensitive about his stories, and she did not wish to hurt his feelings.

"Let's get married first," she suggested, "and then I can BUY you a magazine. We'll call it CARTER'S MAGAZINE and we will print nothing in it but your stories. Then we can laugh at the editors!""Not half as loud as they will," said Carter.

With three thousand dollars in bank and three stories accepted and seventeen still to hear from, and with Dolly daily telling him that it was evident he did not love her, Carter decided they were ready, hand in hand, to leap into the sea of matrimony. His interview on the subject with Mrs. Ingram was most painful. It lasted during the time it took her to walk out of her drawing-room to the foot of her staircase. She spoke to herself, and the only words of which Carter was sure were "preposterous" and "intolerable insolence." Later in the morning she sent a note to his flat, forbidding him not only her daughter, but the house in which her daughter lived, and even the use of the United States mails and the New York telephone wires. She described his conduct in words that, had they come from a man, would have afforded Carter every excuse for violent exercise.

Immediately in the wake of the note arrived Dolly, in tears, and carrying a dressing-case.

"I have left mother!" she announced. "And I have her car downstairs, and a clergyman in it, unless he has run away. He doesn't want to marry us, because he's afraid mother will stop supporting his flower mission. You get your hat and take me where he can marry us. No mother can talk about the man I love the way mother talked about you, and think I won't marry him the same day!"Carter, with her mother's handwriting still red before his eyes, and his self-love shaken with rage flourished the letter.

"And no mother," he shouted, "can call ME a 'fortune-hunter' and a 'cradle-robber' and think I'll make good by marrying her daughter!

Not until she BEGS me to!"

Dolly swept toward him like a summer storm. Her eyes were wet and flashing. "Until WHO begs you to?" she demanded. "WHO are you marrying; mother or me?""If I marry you," cried Carter, frightened but also greatly excited, "your mother won't give you a penny!""And that," taunted Dolly, perfectly aware that she was ridiculous, "is why you won't marry me!"For an instant, long enough to make her blush with shame and happiness, Carter grinned at her. "Now, just for that," he said, "Iwon't kiss you, and I WILL marry you!" But, as a matter of fact, he DID kiss her. Then he gazed happily around his small sitting-room.

"Make yourself at home here," he directed, "while I pack my bag.""I MEAN to make myself very much at home here," said Dolly joyfully, "for the rest of my life."From the recesses of the flat Carter called: "The rent's paid only till September. After that we live in a hall bedroom and cook on a gas-stove. And that's no idle jest, either."Fearing the publicity of the City Hall license bureau, they released the clergyman, much to the relief of that gentleman, and told the chauffeur to drive across the State line into Connecticut.

"It's the last time we can borrow your mother's car," said Carter, "and we'd better make it go as far as we can."It was one of those days in May. Blue was the sky and sunshine was in the air, and in the park little girls from the tenements, in white, were playing they were queens. Dolly wanted to kidnap two of them for bridesmaids. In Harlem they stopped at a jeweler's shop, and Carter got out and bought a wedding-ring.

In the Bronx were dogwood blossoms and leaves of tender green and beds of tulips, and along the Boston Post Road, on their right, the Sound flashed in the sunlight; and on their left, gardens, lawns, and orchards ran with the road, and the apple trees were masses of pink and white.

Whenever a car approached from the rear, Carter pretended it was Mrs. Ingram coming to prevent the elopement, and Dolly clung to him. When the car had passed, she forgot to stop clinging to him.

In Greenwich Village they procured a license, and a magistrate married them, and they were a little frightened and greatly happy and, they both discovered simultaneously, outrageously hungry. So they drove through Bedford Village to South Salem, and lunched at the Horse and Hounds Inn, on blue and white china, in the same room where Major Andre was once a prisoner. And they felt very sorry for Major Andre, and for everybody who had not been just married that morning. And after lunch they sat outside in the garden and fed lumps of sugar to a charming collie and cream to a fat gray cat.

They decided to start housekeeping in Carter's flat, and so turned back to New York, this time following the old coach road through North Castle to White Plains, across to Tarrytown, and along the bank of the Hudson into Riverside Drive. Millions and millions of friendly folk, chiefly nurse- maids and traffic policemen, waved to them, and for some reason smiled.

"The joke of it is," declared Carter, "they don't know! The most wonderful event of the century has just passed into history. We are married, and nobody knows!"But when the car drove away from in front of Carter's door, they saw on top of it two old shoes and a sign reading: "We have just been married." While they had been at luncheon, the chauffeur had risen to the occasion.