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CHAPTER XXXII
BARTON APPEARS

The details of the wedding Mrs. Halliday decided to take over into her own hands.

“You two can just leave that to me,” she informed them.

“But look here,” protested Don, “I don’t see why we need bother with a lot of fuss and–”

“What business is this of yours?” Mrs. Halliday challenged him.

“Only we haven’t much time,” he warned.

“There’s going to be time enough for Sally to be married properly,” she decided.

That was all there was to it. It seems that tucked away up in the attic there was an old trunk and tucked away in that a wedding dress of white silk which had been worn by Sally’s mother.

“It’s been kept ag’in’ this very day,” explained Mrs. Halliday, “though I will say that I was beginnin’ to git discouraged.”

The dress was brought out, and no more auspicious omen could have been furnished Mrs. Halliday than the fact that, except in several unimportant details, Sally could have put it on and worn it, just as it was. Not only did it fit, but the intervening years had brought back into style again the very mode in which it had been designed, so that, had she gone to a Fifth Avenue dressmaker, she could have found nothing more in fashion. Thus it was possible to set the wedding date just four days off, for Saturday. That was not one moment more of time than Mrs. Halliday needed in which to put the house in order–even with the hearty coöperation of Don, who insisted upon doing his part, which included the washing of all the upper windows.

Those were wonderful days for him. For one thing he discovered that not only had there been given into his keeping the clear-seeing, steady-nerved, level-headed woman who had filled so large a share of his life this last year, but also another, who at first startled him like some wood nymph leaping into his path. She was so young, so vibrant with life, so quick with her smiles and laughter–this other. It was the girl in her, long suppressed, because in the life she had been leading in town there had been no playground. Her whole attention there had been given to the subjection of the wild impulses in which she now indulged. She laughed, she ran, she reveled in being just her care-free, girlish self. Don watched her with a new thrill. He felt as though she were taking him back to her early youth–as though she were filling up for him all those years of her he had missed.

At night, about the usual time he was dining in town, Mrs. Halliday insisted that Sally should go to bed, as she herself did, which, of course, left Don no alternative but to go himself. There was no possible object in his remaining up after Sally was out of sight. But the early morning belonged to her and to him. At dawn he rose and when he came downstairs, he found her waiting for him. Though Mrs. Halliday protested that Sally was losing her beauty sleep she was not able to produce any evidence to prove it. If any one could look any fresher or more wonderful than Sally, as she stepped out of the house by his side into the light of the newborn day, then there was no sense in it, because, as she was then, she filled his eyes and his heart to overflowing. She wore no hat, but except for this detail he was never conscious of how she was dressed. There was always too much to occupy him in her brown eyes, in her mouth, which, while losing nothing of its firmness, had acquired a new gentleness. He had always thought of her lips as cold, but he knew them better now. At the bend in the road where he had kissed her first, he kissed her again every morning. She always protested. That was instinctive. But in the end she submitted, because it always seemed so many hours since she had seen him last, and because she made him understand that not until the next day could he expect this privilege.

“What’s the use of being engaged if I can’t kiss you as often as I wish?” he demanded once.

“We’re engaged in order to be married,” she explained.

“And after we are married–”

“You wait and see,” she answered, her cheeks as red as any schoolgirl’s.

“But that’s three days off,” he complained.

Even to her, happy as she was, confident as she was, the interval to Saturday sometimes seemed like a very long space of time. For one thing, she felt herself at night in the grip of a kind of foreboding absolutely foreign to her. Perhaps it was a natural reaction from the high tension of the day, but at night she sometimes found herself starting to her elbow in an agony of fear. Before the day came, something would happen to Don, because such happiness as this was not meant for her. She fell a victim to all manner of wild fears and extravagant fancies. On the second night there was a heavy thunderstorm. She did not mind such things ordinarily. The majesty of the darting light and the rolling crash of the thunder always thrilled her. But this evening the sky was blotted out utterly and quick light shot from every point of the compass at once. As peal followed peal, the house shook. Even then it was not of herself she thought. She had no fear except for Don. This might be the explanation of her foreboding. It happened, too, that his room was beneath the big chimney where if the house were hit the bolt would be most apt to strike. Dressing hastily in her wrapper and bedroom slippers, she stole into the hall. A particularly vicious flash illuminated the house for a second and then plunged it into darkness. She crept to Don’s very door. There she crouched, resolved that the same bolt should kill them both. There she remained, scarcely daring to breathe until the shower passed.

It was a silly thing to do. When she came back to her own room, her cheeks were burning with shame. The next morning she was miserable in fear lest he discover her weakness. He did not, though he marveled at a new tenderness in her that had been born in the night.

The fourth day broke fair and Don found himself busy until noon helping with the decorations of green and of wild flowers; for though only a dozen or so neighbors had been asked, Mrs. Halliday was thorough in whatever she undertook. Had she been expecting a hundred she could have done no more in the way of preparation except perhaps to increase the quantity of cake and ices.

Don himself had asked no one except old Barton, of Barton & Saltonstall, and him he did not expect, although he had received no reply to his invitation. What, then, was his surprise when toward the middle of the forenoon, as he was going into the house with an armful of pine boughs, he heard a voice behind him,–

“How do, Don?”

Turning, he saw Barton in a frock coat and a tall hat that he might have worn last at Pendleton, Senior’s, wedding.

“For Heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Don, dropping his pine boughs on the doorstep and rushing to meet him. “I call this mighty good of you.”

“I could hardly do less for Pendleton’s boy,” answered Barton.

“Well, sir, you’re mighty welcome. Come right in. Oh, Sally,” he called.

Sally came on the run, not knowing what had happened. She wore a calico apron and had not found time to do her hair since morning. It was not exactly the costume she would have chosen in which first to meet Mr. Barton. Her cheeks showed it.

“Sally,” said Don, “this is Mr. Barton–my father’s lawyer. Mr. Barton, this is Miss Winthrop.”

Barton bowed low with old-fashioned courtesy. Then he allowed his keen gray eyes to rest a moment upon hers.

“I am very glad to meet you,” he said.

“Will you come in?” she asked. “I’m afraid the house is very much in disorder just now, but I want you to meet my aunt.”

Mrs. Halliday was scarcely more presentable than Miss Winthrop, but the latter found a certain relief in that fact.

“I’m glad to know you,” Mrs. Halliday greeted him cordially.

But what to do with him at just this time was a problem which would have baffled her had he not solved it for himself.

“Please don’t let me interrupt the preparations,” he begged. “I should not have ventured here–at just this time–except that I wanted to see Don about a few legal matters.”

“Mr. Barton,” explained Don to Sally, “is the man who had the pleasant duty thrust upon him of telling me that I was cut off without a cent.”

“It was an unpleasant duty,” nodded Barton, “but I hope it may be my good fortune to make up for that.”

“I’m afraid the only place you can sit is on the front doorstep,” laughed Sally.

“As good a place as any,” answered Don, leading the way.

“Well,” asked Don good-naturedly as soon as they were seated there, “what’s the trouble now? I tell you right off it’s got to be something mighty serious to jar me any at just this time.”

“There was still another codicil to your father’s will,” explained Barton at once–“a codicil I have not been at liberty to read to you until now. It had, in fact, no point except in the contingency of your marriage.”

“I hope you aren’t going to take the house away from me,” scowled Don.

“No,” answered Barton slowly. “It has to do rather with an additional provision. The substance of it is that in case you married any one–er–meeting with my approval, you were to be given an allowance of two thousand a year.”

“Eh?”

“Two thousand a year. After that, one thousand a year additional for each child born of that marriage until the total allowance amounts to five thousand dollars. At that point the principal itself is to be turned over to you.”

“Oh, Sally!” called Don.

She came running again. It was still four hours before they would be safely married and many things might happen in four hours.

“Sit down here and listen to this,” he commanded. “Now, do you mind saying that all over again?”

Barton repeated his statement.

“What do you think of that?” inquired Don. “It’s just as though I had my salary raised two thousand a year. Not only that–but the rest is up to you.”

“Don!”

“Well, it is.”

“And besides,” she gasped, “Mr. Barton has not yet said he approves.”

Mr. Barton arose.

“May I say that at once?” he smiled. “I do not think I have always given Don as much credit for his good judgment as I feel he should have been given.”

“Good old Barton!” choked Don.

“There’s one thing more,” said Barton–“a–a little present for myself.”

He handed Don an envelope.

“Thank you, sir,” said Don, thrusting it unopened in his pocket. “And now it seems to me the least the bride can do is to let you kiss her.”

“I’m not a bride yet,” answered Sally demurely, “but–”

She came to Barton’s side and he kissed her on the cheek.

“It’s too bad that Pendleton couldn’t have lived to know his son’s wife,” he said.

A little later Don gave Sally the envelope to open. It contained a check for five hundred dollars.

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Don, “we’re rolling in wealth. I guess when we get back to town we’ll have to buy a car.”

“When we get back to town we’ll open a bank account,” corrected Sally.

CHAPTER XXXIII
A BULLY WORLD

As Sally came down the stairs at a quarter of three in her white silk wedding gown the wonder was how, after a morning of such honest hard work as she had put in, it was possible for her to look so fresh. Many a town bride, after spending the entire morning resting in preparation for such an event, has at the last moment failed to turn up with such apple-red cheeks or brilliant eyes. There was a gently serious expression about her mouth, to be sure, but that was not due to fatigue. In spite of her light-heartedness during the last few days she had been all the while keenly conscious that she was accepting a great responsibility. She was about to marry not only a lover, but a man whose future was to be in her keeping. Among other things he was to be a future partner in the firm of Carter, Rand & Seagraves, and that meant several years of very hard work ahead of them. Then there were the secret responsibilities–the unborn responsibilities. These were not very definite, to be sure, but she felt them, timidly, gravely, in queer little tuggings at her heart.

When finally she stood in front of the clergyman with Don by her side, she felt, not that she was in a bower of wild flowers, but before an altar. The ritual for her had a deeply religious significance. She made her responses in a steady voice heard by every one in the room. When she made the promise “to love, cherish, and obey,” she spoke it as though she meant it. It did not disturb her in the slightest to utter the word “obey,” because she knew well that whatever commands came to her from Don would be of her own inspiring. To her this promise was no more than an agreement to obey her own best impulses.

The service seemed almost too brief for so solemn an undertaking, but when it was over, she reached for Don’s hand and took it in a hearty grip that was more of a pledge than the ring itself. It sent a tingle to his heart and made his lips come together–the effect, a hundred times magnified, of the coach’s slap upon the back that used to thrill him just before he trotted on the field before a big game. He felt that the harder the obstacles to be overcome for her dear sake, the better. He would like to have had a few at that moment as a relief to his pent-up emotions.

He remembered in a sort of impatient daze the congratulations that followed–with the faces of Mrs. Halliday and Barton standing out a trifle more prominently–and then the luncheon. It seemed another week before she went upstairs to change into her traveling-dress; another week before she reappeared. Then came good-byes and the shower of rice, with an old shoe or so mixed in. He had sent her trunk the day before to the mountain hotel where they were to be for a week, but they walked to the station, he carrying her suitcase. Then he found himself on the train, and in another two hours they were at the hotel. It was like an impossible dream come true when finally they stood for the first time alone–she as his wife. He held out his arms to her and she came this time without protest.

“Heart of mine,” he whispered as he kissed her lips again and again,–“heart of mine, this is a bully old world.”

“You’ve made it that, Don.”

“I? I haven’t had anything to do about it except to get you.”

CHAPTER XXXIV
DON MAKES GOOD

They had not one honeymoon, but two or three. When they left the hotel and came back to town, it was another honeymoon to enter together the house in which she had played so important a part without ever having seen it. When they stepped out of the cab she insisted upon first seeing it from the outside, instead of rushing up the steps as he was for doing.

“Don,” she protested, “I–I don’t want to have such a pleasure over with all at once. I want to get it bit by bit.”

There was not much to see, to be sure, but a door and a few windows–a section similar to sections to the right and left of which it was a part. But it was a whole house, a house with lower stories and upper stories and a roof–all his, all hers. To her there was something still unreal about it.

He humored her delay, though Nora was standing impatiently at the door, anxious to see the Pendleton bride. But when she finally did enter, Nora, at the smile she received, had whatever fears might have been hers instantly allayed.

“Gawd bless ye,” she beamed.

Sally refused to remove her wraps until she had made her inspection room by room, sitting down in each until she had grasped every detail. So they went from the first floor to the top floor and came back to the room which he had set apart for their room.

“Does it suit you, wife of mine?” he asked.

With the joy of it all, her eyes filled.

“It’s even more beautiful than I thought it would be,” she trembled.

For him the house had changed the moment she stepped into it. With his father alive, it had been his father’s home rather than his; with his father gone, it had been scarcely more than a convenient resting-place. There had been moments–when he thought of Frances here–that it had taken on more significance, but even this had been due to Sally. When he thought he was making the house ready for another, it had been her dear hand who had guided him. How vividly now he recalled that dinner at the little French restaurant when he had described his home to her–the home which was now her home too. It was at that moment she had first made her personality felt here.

Sally removed her hat and tidied her hair before the mirror in quite as matter-of-fact a fashion as though she had been living here ever since that day instead of only the matter of a few minutes. When she came downstairs, Nora herself seemed to accept her on that basis. To her suggestions, she replied, “Yes, Mrs. Pendleton,” as glibly as though she had been saying it all her life.

They returned on a Saturday. On Monday Don was to go back to the office. Sally had sent in her resignation the day of her marriage and had received nice letters from both Carter and Farnsworth, with a check enclosed from the former for fifty dollars and from the latter for twenty-five dollars.

“What I’ll have to do,” said Don, as he retired Sunday night, “is to get a larger alarm-clock. It won’t do to be late any more.”

“You’re right,” agreed Sally. “But you won’t need an alarm-clock.”

“Eh?”

“You wait and see.”

Sally was awake at six the next morning and Don himself less than one minute after.

“Time to get up,” she called.

“I’m sleepy,” murmured Don.

“Then to-morrow night you’ll get to bed one hour earlier. But–up with you.”

“Right-o,” he answered as he sprang from bed. “But there’s no need of your getting up.”

“I’d be ashamed of myself if I didn’t.”

She had breakfast with him that first work morning as she planned to do every morning of her life after that.

“Now, Don,” she warned as he was ready to leave, “mind you don’t say anything about a raise in salary for a little while yet. I know Farnsworth, and he’ll give it to you the moment he feels you’ve made good. Besides, we can afford to wait and–I don’t know as I want you to have any more money than you have now. It’s ridiculous for you to have that two thousand from your father.”

“I guess we can use it, little woman,” he laughed.

“We can save it,” she insisted. “And, of course, it’s pretty nice to have an emergency fund, only it sort of takes half the fun out of life to be so safe.”

“It takes half the worry with it, too,” he reminded her.

She thought a moment. Then she kissed him.

“Maybe it’s good for people to worry a bit,” she answered.

“You’ve already done your share,” he returned. “You’re going to meet me for lunch at twelve?”

“Yes, Don.”

“Sure?”

“Of course, it’s sure.”

“I wish it were twelve now.”

“You’re not to think of me again until twelve comes–not once. You’re to tend to business.”

“I know, but–”

She kissed him again.

“Along with you.”

She took his arm and led him to the door and there–where, for all he cared, the whole street might have seen him–he turned quickly and kissed her once more.

Don was decidedly self-conscious when he stepped briskly into the office of Carter, Rand & Seagraves, with a brave attempt to give the impression that nothing whatever out of the ordinary had happened to him during his brief vacation. But Blake, as he expressed it to her later, was there with bells on. He spied him the moment he came through the door and greeted him with a whistled bar from the “Wedding March.” Not content with that, he tore several sheets of office stationery into small bits and sprinkled him with it. He seemed to take it as more or less of a joke.

“You certainly put one over on us,” exclaimed Blake.

“Well, let it go at that,” Don frowned.

He was willing to take the horse-play, but there was something in the spirit with which it was done that he did not like.

“Always heard bridegrooms were a bit touchy,” returned Blake.

Don stepped nearer.

“Touchy isn’t the word, Blake,” he said; “proud comes nearer it. Remember that I’m proud as the devil of the girl you used to see here. Just base your future attitude toward her and me on that.”

A few minutes later Farnsworth restored his good humor. As he came into the private office, Farnsworth rose and extended his hand.

“I want to congratulate you, Pendleton,” he said sincerely.

“Thank you,” answered Don.

“We feel almost as though we had lost a partner in the firm,” he smiled. “But I’m mighty glad for both of you. She was fitted for something a whole lot bigger than Wall Street.”

“She taught me all I know about the game,” confessed Don.

“You couldn’t have had a better teacher. Sit down. I want to talk over a change I have in mind.”

Don felt his heart leap to his throat.

“I’ve wanted for some time another man to go out and sell,” said Farnsworth. “Do you think you can handle it?”

“You bet,” exclaimed Don.

Farnsworth smiled.

“You see,” ran on Don in explanation, “I’ve been selling bonds to Sally–er–Mrs. Pendleton, for a month or more now.”

“Selling her?”

“Imaginary bonds, you know.”

Farnsworth threw back his head and laughed.

“Good! Good! But the true test will come when you try to sell her a real one. I’ll bet it will have to be gilt-edged.”

“And cheap,” nodded Don.

“Well,” said Farnsworth, “I want to try you on the selling staff for a while, anyway. Now, about salary–”

“Sally told me to forget that,” said Don.

“I guess because she knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t forget it. My intention is to pay men in this office what they are worth. Just what you may be worth in your new position I don’t know, but I’m going to advance you five hundred; and if you make good you’ll be paid in proportion as you make good. That satisfactory?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then we’re off,” concluded Farnsworth.

Don met Sally at noon at the dairy lunch where they had gone so often.

“Come on, little woman,” he greeted her. “This place may be all right for the wife of a clerk, but now you’re the wife of a bond salesman.”

“Don!”

“On a five-hundred-dollar raise.”

“We’ll stay right here,” she said; “but I’m going to celebrate by having two chocolate éclairs.”