The Preliminaries Part 1

The Preliminaries.

by Cornelia A. P. Comer.

I

Young Oliver Pickersgill was in love with Peter Lannithorne's daughter. Peter Lannithorne was serving a six-year term in the penitentiary for embezzlement.

It seemed to Ollie that there was only one right-minded way of looking at these basal facts of his situation. But this simple view of the matter was destined to receive several shocks in the course of his negotiations for Ruth Lannithorne's hand. I say negotiations advisedly. Most young men in love have only to secure the consent of the girl and find enough money to go to housekeeping. It is quite otherwise when you wish to marry into a royal {4} family, or to ally yourself with a criminal's daughter. The preliminaries are more complicated.

Ollie thought a man ought to marry the girl he loves, and prejudices be hanged! In the deeps of his soul, he probably knew this to be the magnanimous, manly att.i.tude, but certainly there was no condescension in his outward bearing when he asked Ruth Lannithorne to be his wife.

Yet she turned on him fiercely, bristling with pride and tense with overwrought nerves.

"I will never marry any one," she declared, "who does n't respect my father as I do!"

If Oliver's jaw fell, it is hardly surprising. He had expected her to say she would never marry into a family where she was not welcome. He had planned to get around the natural {5} objections of his parents somehow--the details of this were vague in his mind--and then he meant to rea.s.sure her warmly, and tell her that personal merit was the only thing that counted with him or his. He may have visualized himself as wiping away her tears and gently raising her to share the safe social pedestal whereon the Pickersgills were firmly planted. The young do have these visions not infrequently. But to be asked to respect Peter Lannithorne, about whom he knew practically nothing save his present address!

"I don't remember that I ever saw your father, Ruth," he faltered.

"He was the best man," said the girl excitedly, "the kindest, the most indulgent--that's another thing, Ollie. I will never marry an indulgent man, nor one who will let his wife manage {6} him. If it had n't been for mother--" She broke off abruptly.

Ollie tried to look sympathetic and not too intelligent. He had heard that Mrs. Lannithorne was considered difficult.

"I ought n't to say it, but can't explain father unless I do. Mother nagged; she wanted more money than there was; she made him feel her illnesses, and our failings, and the overdone beefsteak, and the underdone bread,--everything that went wrong, always, was his fault.

His fault--because he did n't make more money. We were on the edge of things, and she wanted to be in the middle, as she was used to being.

Of course, she really has n't been well, but I think it's mostly nerves," said Ruth, with the terrible hardness of the young. "Anyhow, she might just as well have stuck {7} knives into him as to say the things she did. It hurt him--like knives. I could see him wince--and try harder--and get discouraged--and then, at last--" The girl burst into a pa.s.sion of tears.

Oliver tried to soothe her. Secretly he was appalled at these squalid revelations of discordant family life. The domestic affairs of the Pickersgills ran smoothly, in affluence and peace. Oliver had never listened to a nagging woman in his life. He had an idea that such phenomena were confined to the lower cla.s.ses.

"Don't you care for me at all, Ruth?"

The girl crumpled her wet handkerchief. "Ollie, you're the most beautiful thing that ever happened except my father. He was beautiful, too; indeed, indeed, he was. I'll never {8} think differently. I can't. He tried so hard."

All the latent manliness in the boy came to the surface and showed itself.

"Ruth, darling, I don't want you to think differently. It's right for you to be loyal and feel as you do. You see, you know, and the world doesn't. I'll take what you say and do as you wish. You must n't think I'm on the other side. I'm not. I'm on your side, wherever that is.

When the time comes I'll show you. You may trust me, Ruth."

He was eager, pleading, earnest. He looked at the moment so good, so loving and sincere, that the girl, out of her darker experience of life, wondered wistfully if it were really true that Providence ever let people just live their lives out like that being good, and prosperous, and generous, advancing {9} from happiness to happiness, instead of stubbing along painfully as she felt she had done, from one bitter experience to another, learning to live by failures.

It must be beautiful to learn from successes instead, as it seemed to her Oliver had done. How could any one refuse to share such a radiant life when it was offered? As for loving Oliver, that was a foregone conclusion. Still, she hesitated.

"You re awfully dear and good to me, Ollie," she said. "But I want you to see father. I want you to go and talk to him about this, and know him for yourself. I know I'm asking a hard thing of you, but, truly, I believe it's best. If _he_ says it's all right for me to marry you, I will if your family want me, of course," she added as an after thought.

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"Ought n't I to speak to your mother?" hesitated Oliver.

"Oh,--mother? Yes, I suppose she'd like it," said Ruth absent-mindedly. "Mother has views about getting married, Ollie. I dare say she'll want to tell you what they are. You must n't think they're my views, though."

"I'd rather hear yours, Ruth."

She flashed a look at him that opened for him the heavenly deeps that lie before the young and the loving, and he had a sudden vision of their life as a long sunlit road, winding uphill, winding down, but sunlit always--because looks like that illumine any dusk.

"I'll tell you my views--some day," Ruth said softly. "But first--"

"First I must talk to my father, your mother, your father." Oliver checked them off on his fingers. "Three of them. Seems to me that's a lot of {11} folks to consult about a thing that does n't really concern anybody but you and me!"

II

After the fas.h.i.+on of self-absorbed youth, Oliver had never noticed Mrs. Lannithorne especially. She had been to him simply a sallow little figure in the background of Ruth's vivid young life; some one to be spoken to very politely, but otherwise of no particular moment.

If his marital negotiations did nothing else for him, they were at least opening his eyes to the significance of the personalities of older people.

The things Ruth said about her mother had prepared him to find that lady querulous and difficult, but essentially negligible. Face to face with Mrs. Lannithorne, he had a very {12} different impression. She received him in the upstairs sitting-room to which her semi-invalid habits usually confined her. Wrapped in a white wool shawl and lying in a long Canton lounging-chair by a suns.h.i.+ny window, she put out a chilly hand in greeting, and asked the young man to be seated.

Oliver, scanning her countenance, received an unexpected impression of dignity. She was thin and nervous, with big dark eyes peering out of a pale, narrow face; she might be a woman with a grievance, but he apprehended something beyond mere fretfulness in the discontent of her expression. There was suffering and thought in her face, and even when the former is exaggerated and the latter erroneous, these are impressive things.

"Mrs. Lannithorne, have you any objection to letting Ruth marry me?"

{13}

"Mr. Pickersgill, what are your qualifications for the care of a wife and family?"

Oliver hesitated. "Why, about what anybody's are, I think," he said, and was immediately conscious of the feebleness of this response. "I mean," he added, flus.h.i.+ng to the roots of his blond hair, "that my prospects in life are fair. I am in my father's office, you know. I am to have a small share in the business next year. I need n't tell you that the firm is a good one. If you want to know about my qualifications as a lawyer why, I can refer you to people who can tell you if they think I am promising."

"Do your family approve of this marriage?"

"I have n't talked to them about it yet."

"Have you ever saved any money {14} of your own earning, or have you any property in your own name?"

Oliver thought guiltily of his bank account, which had a surprising way of proving, when balanced, to be less than he expected.

"Well,--not exactly."

"In other words, then, Mr. Pickersgill, you are a young and absolutely untried man; you are in your father's employ and practically at his mercy; you propose a great change in your life of which you do not know that he approves; you have no resources of your own, and you are not even sure of your earning capacity if your father's backing were withdrawn. In these circ.u.mstances you plan to double your expenses and a.s.sume the whole responsibility of another person's life, comfort, and happiness. Do you think that you have shown {15} me that your qualifications are adequate?"

All this was more than a little disconcerting. Oliver was used to being accepted as old Pickersgill's only son which meant a cheerfully accorded background of eminence, ability, and comfortable wealth. It had not occurred to him to detach himself from that background and see how he looked when separated from it. He felt a little angry, and also a little ashamed of the fact that he did not bulk larger as a personage, apart from his environment. Nevertheless, he answered her question honestly.

"No, Mrs. Lannithorne, I don't think that I have."

She did not appear to rejoice in his discomfiture. She even seemed a little sorry for it, but she went on quietly:--

{16}

"Don't think I am trying to prove that you are the most ineligible young man in the city. But it is absolutely necessary that a man should stand on his own feet, and firmly, before he undertakes to look after other lives than his own. Otherwise there is nothing but misery for the women and children who depend upon him. It is a serious business, getting married."