Under One Flag Part 16

"I suppose it would be too late to get anyone to take their places?"

"At the eleventh hour--practically at the church door? And who is to get into their dresses? They are both of them so ridiculously small."

"You would have them like that in order to make you look tall. It seems as if it were a judgment."

"How can you say such awful things? Why don't you suggest something?"

"The only thing I am able to suggest is that you should do without them and put up with Ellen and me.

"You know very well that I only asked Ellen Mackenzie because I knew that her mother was going to give me a diamond brooch--and now it's stolen. It's not alone that she's hideous, but she won't harmonise with me in the very least; and, anyhow, having only two bridesmaids will spoil everything."

"Then there's nothing for you to do except postpone the wedding, unless you know of some establishment where they hire out bridesmaids of all shapes and sizes on the shortest notice."

"If it were your wedding day I wouldn't talk to you so heartlessly. How can you be so unkind?"

"Pray, Maud, don't start crying. Red eyes and a red nose won't improve either your appearance or anything else. You are perfectly aware how your nose does go red on the slightest provocation."

Talk about the affection of an only sister! Mamma came in just as I felt like shaking Eveleen.

"Oh, mamma," I burst out, "Bertha Ellis has the measles, and Constance Farrer is almost sure to have them, so I shall be two bridesmaids short, and I had set my heart on having four."

Mamma was, if anything, less demonstrative in the way of sympathy even than Eveleen.

"Be so good, Maud, as not to excite yourself unnecessarily. You will have need of all your self-control before the day is over. Anything more unreasonable than your father's conduct I cannot imagine. He insists on going to the City."

At that both Eveleen and I jumped up.

"But, mamma, he's to give me away at half-past twelve!"

"That makes not the smallest difference to your father. It seems that there's some absurd foreign news which he says will turn that ridiculous City upside down, and he simply insists on going."

I was beginning to put some clothes on anyhow.

"Then he sha'n't!--I won't let him! Mamma, you mustn't let him!"

"It's all very well for you to say that, and goodness knows I have done my best; but you might as well talk to a wooden figure-head as to your father when he is in one of his moods. He's gone already."

"Gone! Mamma!"

"He said that if he was not back at twelve he would meet you at the church door at half-past; but you know how he may be relied upon to keep an appointment of that kind; especially as he went out of his way to inform me--not for the first time--that the whole business is a pack of rubbish."

There are fathers, no doubt, who take the tenderest interest in everything which concerns their children; especially when they have only two, and both of them are daughters. But if my father has any tenderness in him he manages to conceal the fact from the knowledge of his family. And as for interest, I doubt if he takes any real interest in either of us. When George was coming to the house about seven times a week mamma dropped a hint to papa to sound George as to what was the object of his dropping in so often. But papa could not be induced to take it.

"Don't you try to induce me to ask the man if he intends to make a fool of himself, because I won't do it." That was all that papa could be induced to say.

When, after all, without any prompting from anyone, George put to me the question on which hinged so much of my life's happiness, it was ever so long before anyone said a word about it to papa. As to referring George to him, as some daughters, more fortunately situated, might have done, I knew better. At last, one evening, when I was alone with him in the drawing-room after dinner, I managed to find courage enough to tell him.

"Papa, I think you ought to know that I am engaged to be married."

He looked up from the book which he was reading.

"What's that? Rubbis.h.!.+"

He looked down again. It was a promising beginning.

"It may be rubbish, but it is a simple fact. I am engaged to be married."

"How old are you?"

"I should have thought you would have known my age. I was eighteen last birthday."

"In another ten years it will be time enough to think of nonsense of that sort."

"Ten years! I am going to be married in six weeks from to-day."

"Be so good as not to interrupt me when I'm reading with nonsensical observations of that kind."

That was the form my father's congratulations took. It may easily be imagined what trouble we had with him. He could not be brought to regard things seriously. It was not merely because he thought I was too young; if I had been fifty it would have been exactly the same. It was simply because he hated being bothered. And yet when, after repeated trials, it was driven home to his understanding that I was going to be married, and that George was a respectable person, he surprised me by the generosity which he all at once displayed. One morning, as he was leaving the breakfast-table to start for the City, he slipped a piece of paper into my hand.

"That's to buy clothes."

When I had looked at it, and saw it was a cheque, and the figures which were on it, I jumped up and ran after him into the hall, and kissed him.

"What's that for?" he demanded. I explained. Putting his hand on my shoulder he turned me towards the light and looked me up and down. Then he remarked, "Perhaps, after all, that young man's not such a fool as I thought him." It was the nearest approach to a compliment he had ever paid me.

What we had to endure from him on the great question of the wedding!

His ideas on the subject were barbarian.

"Let us all go in a four-wheeler--we can put the young man on the box--and drive round the corner to the nearest registrar. It will all be done in a business-like manner inside ten minutes."

That was his notion of what a wedding ought to be. I need scarcely say that mine was entirely different. I had made up my mind to have a really pretty wedding. May Harvey had been married the year before.

Hers was a pretty wedding; I had resolved that mine should be prettier still. Mamma, Eveleen and I arranged everything. By degrees we persuaded him, if not exactly to agree, then at least to wink at what was going to happen. On one point I was firm--that he should give me away. He promised that he would. But when he began to realise what a pretty wedding really meant he became restless and more and more trying, and he said the most horrid things. And now on the very day itself he had gone off to the City! If I could have relied on his returning at twelve, or even on his meeting me at the church at half-past, I should not have minded. But I was perfectly aware that if business was at all pressing he would think nothing of sending one of his clerks to take his place; on some absolutely essential matters I knew to my cost that he had not the slightest sense of propriety. As, however, all I could do was to hope for the best, there was nothing left but to appear resigned.

"I presume if my own father doesn't care enough about me to trouble himself to be present at my marriage it's not of the slightest consequence."

Just as I was about to sigh Eliza, the housemaid, appeared in the doorway, addressing mamma.

"If you please, ma'am, cook's going."

Mamma turned round to her with a start.

"Cook's going--where?"

"She's leaving the situation."

"Eliza! What do you mean?"

"If you please, ma'am, Mary and she have been having words about who it was left the drawing-room window open last night; and then Mary she said she believed as how it was cook's young man who broke in and stole Miss Maud's presents; and then cook, she said that after that she wouldn't stay with her in the same house not another minute; so she's gone upstairs to put her things together."