GI Brides (79 page)

“Mother Bonniwell,” he said with a smoothly flattering tone, “I think I need your help and counsel.”

Now, Mrs. Bonniwell always liked to give counsel to anyone, particularly to a pleasing young man, and she beamed on him and settled down to hear what he had to say.

“You see,” he said, “Blythe and I want to be married next week, and I’ve come to you to help me get things straight. I’ve got this thing beautifully planned out, thought of simply everything, I’m sure, and even got reservations in some things, and priorities. And now, Blythe is trying to hold things up. And I thought you would know how to go about this thing with more finesse than I evidently have, smooth down Blythe’s ruffled feathers, and set her ideas straight. Will you understand and help us out?”

Mrs. Bonniwell gave the young man a startled look, lifted her well-groomed eyebrows, and said, “
Married!
You say you are planning to be
married
? Since when did this happen? Blythe has said nothing to me about it, and she always tells me everything. How long has this been going on?”

“Why, surely, you’ve understood we’ve had that in mind for several years past. Everybody else has, I know. I find it has been sort of taken for granted for a long time. And now that I have my commission and am very likely to be sent to a location very soon, I thought it would be best for us to get married at once, and be ready to go together. So I’ve set the day, and I want your help in bringing Blythe to see that it is the wisest and best thing for us to do.”

“But I don’t understand, Dan. What does Blythe say about it?”

“Well, she doesn’t say much, only that she doesn’t want to get married now. She’s too busy with war work and the like, and she thinks it’s too soon to get her trousseau ready and all that, but good night, the stores will still be here after we are married, and she can pick out her togs at her leisure. I thought you could make her see that. And lots of girls are hurrying their marriages now before their men go overseas. It’s quite the swagger thing to do. And I thought if you would just advise her about this, Mother Bonniwell, and get her to see the thing straight, it would be a great convenience to me. You see, I don’t want to be rushed at the last minute, and if Blythe would only cooperate, everything would go smoothly. You’ll help me, won’t you?”

“But Dan, this is utterly new to me. I didn’t dream you had any such move in mind. In fact, well, I would have to talk with Blythe before I made any promises.”

“Now look here, Bonny! You might as well own up at the start. You and Papa Bonny have been hashing this thing over and agreed on what you’ll say, haven’t you? That’s the same kind of hooey stuff he gave me last night. Now own up.”

Mrs. Bonniwell raised an offended chin and looked the young man in the eye.

“Certainly not, Dan! I don’t know what you mean. I don’t consider that is a very respectful way to speak to me.”

“There, there, Bonny, now don’t get your ire up! I just thought it was funny you and your man had the identical same reply ready.”

“There is nothing strange about wanting to think over as serious a thing as marriage,” said Mrs. Bonniwell, “and I couldn’t possibly agree to further your plans without being sure that my family were agreed. However, why don’t you tell me your plan in detail, and then I can think advisedly.”

So Dan adroitly painted the picture of his proposed marriage, wedding ceremony, invitations, trousseau, and honeymoon, as fully as he had done it for Mr. Bonniwell, except that he went still further into details. Gradually, as he named prominent people who were to have part, the good lady was half intrigued and sat nodding acquiescence, as she in her mind’s eye saw the wedding procession marching down the aisle of the most aristocratic church in the community and envisioned the number of full dress uniforms that would be a part of the picture.

“It sounds all very lovely, Dan, and you seem to have planned a beautiful order of things, though I’m afraid perhaps it sounds a trifle too elaborate for wartimes. However, Dan, I would have to talk with Blythe and find out just what her objections are before I could promise anything. Just what objections has she given you?”

“Well, you see, she won’t really settle down and talk it over. She says she has engagements, and I haven’t been able to get her to discuss it with me. She hasn’t comprehended that haste is a necessary factor in the whole arrangement, and there’s where I thought you would be able to help me. You know Blythe, and you know how to make her listen. So, will you talk it over with her and call me up either early this evening or tomorrow morning at the latest? It really ought to be tonight to make things work smoothly. Will you do that, Bonny?”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do, Dan, but I’m not at all sure that I can make Blythe see things as you do. However, I will endeavor to get her to give you an immediate opportunity to talk with her, and you will have to do the rest. Blythe won’t be home till late this evening. And if she’s not too tired, perhaps I can say a few words to her then, and phone you at once. Will you be home all the evening? Or at the latest, the first thing in the morning? I’ll let you know what to expect. But remember, Dan, I’m not promising anything. It’s all got to depend on Blythe.”

Dan rose with a bitter, dissatisfied look on his face, almost a sneer.

“Same old bunk!” he muttered. “You needn’t tell me that you and the old man haven’t talked it over. But I can tell you, Mamma Bonniwell, if you go against me, Blythe and I are going to elope and make a pretty scandal in the town for you and Papa Bonniwell to swallow, so keep that in the back of your mind while you think it over!”

“Well, really, Dan! I’m not accustomed to such talk. If you feel that way, I certainly don’t think you are a fit man to marry my daughter.”

“Oh, now Bonny, don’t get excited. You know I’m all right. I just want to get things going in a hurry. These are wartimes, you know, and you can’t afford to loiter, it’s so hard to get anybody to do anything these days.”

“Very well, Daniel, I’ll see what can be done and let you know, but I’m not promising anything. I feel that Blythe’s life is her own, and she must plan it the way she wants it, but I’ll endeavor to put before her what you are suggesting and then I will let you know, or ask her to let you know, when you can see her. And now, Dan, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to excuse me. I have to meet a delegation of women at quarter to eight, and I simply must snatch a few minutes of rest before they come, for I am all but worn out.”

So Dan, inwardly cursing his ill luck, yet priding himself that he had got Mamma Bonny pretty well on his side, took his way home, to await the message.

Mrs. Bonniwell went to her room and composed herself to rest, hoping still to snatch a few minutes of actual sleep, but her mind was in a turmoil, and though she closed her eyes and lay very still, she could not keep her mind off the problems that were thickening around her.

To begin with, there was Blythe and that alarming absurd obsession she had that she was in love with an absolute stranger.

Of course, it was quite possible that this proposition of Dan’s might be a very good thing to come just now and help Blythe to forget the abrupt and fanatically inclined unknown. On the other hand, might it not be too soon to hope to have that romantic happening offset by a sensible marriage into her own set? It would be comfortable, too, to think of Blythe with a husband who was wealthy in his own right, and not dependent upon her fortune. Also, Mrs. Seavers was her friend, and she certainly would like to use her influence to help with what Dan’s mother wanted, the assurance that Dan could be saved from questionable girls, girls who were beautiful perhaps, but absolutely nothing else, just gold diggers—wasn’t that what they called such girls, always out to lure some rich young man?

On the other hand, Blythe was happy and bright just now, and they certainly were enjoying her presence in the home after her long absence at college. And it would be truly beautiful to have her with them now, with that almost unnatural glow of joy in her eyes, a real lovelight, and it was utterly useless to hope that it could change into such a glow for Dan. He wasn’t the kind that could bring romance in such an enchanted form to a girl. He was solid and cheerful and good, maybe even dependable, but not one who could easily turn Blythe’s fancied romance into love for himself. It really would be wiser in him to lay this marriage business aside until Blythe had forgotten the boy Charlie, or perhaps till word had come that Charlie was “missing in action,” or something, as it likely would pretty soon, unless he had gotten up a cock-and-bull story to storm his girl’s heart. Though somehow the letters hadn’t seemed to make him that kind of a lad either. Rather too solemn, perhaps. Strange that her girl would be interested in a staid young man like that. Stranger still that she had never said much about him before, even when she was a child in school. Well, she must talk with Blythe as soon as she returned, and she must prepare her approach and not antagonize her. She simply must find out just how her daughter felt about this marriage. It wouldn’t do for her girl to miss the chance of a happy marriage with a finely set-up young man like Dan, just because of some silly romance between herself and a young man who was confessedly going out to die.

So Mrs. Bonniwell thrashed the matter over carefully and did not get her much-needed nap. She studied over what she would say to Blythe as carefully as if it were one of her popular addresses to women’s clubs, or a speech to mold the pliable opinions of her committee. And when the duties yet before her called her from the couch, she went with half her mind occupied still with what she was going to say to Blythe that evening when they got together. All through the rest of the hours as she went from one appointment to another, the arguments were growing stronger by which she intended to lead Blythe on to see that she had no right to fill her mind with a stranger when her lifelong playmate was needing her. And then, when the late evening hour came, and Blythe arrived, her face shining with a wonderful light and real joy in her eyes, the mother began hastily to consider whether she had any argument on her whole list that could combat a joy like this. At least while it lasted it was going to be hard to turn her girl aside from the ideas that seemed to possess her.

“Oh Mother,” she said as she came in, “it was really wonderful! It was just as Charlie said in his letter. That Mr. Silverthorn spoke right to the men’s souls. They sat and listened as if they were spellbound, and I listened, too, and found more wonderful hope than I have ever heard in any sermon I listened to in church.”

“Well, now, dear, that is going pretty far. I am glad you enjoyed your evening instead of being bored as I was afraid you would be, but when you go to discounting the orthodox churches, I really can’t agree with you.”

“Oh Mother, I wasn’t discounting churches, not the real kind, but this talk tonight was something that seemed to help me so much. It made God and Christ so real that you felt as if you never could doubt Him again. And you got that feeling, just as Charlie said, that Jesus Christ was right up there on the platform beside him. You saw Him being tried, you saw His eyes, so full of love and pity and suffering for a world that was sinning against Him, and
enjoying
the sinning, while He was getting ready to die for that sin as if it had been His own.”

“He must be a very magnetic speaker,” said Mrs. Bonniwell, trying to explain to herself the effect of the speaker on her daughter, forgetting for the moment the subject that had filled her mind the last half of the day. “There are not many speakers who have that dramatic power to make their audience see those about whom they are speaking. It is a wonderful gift, and would be just the way to influence young men who were hungry for something different.”

“Oh Mother, it wasn’t just that,” said Blythe, struggling eagerly for words to convey the wonderful message that had reached her own heart that night. “It was like a real message sent from heaven, just as Charlie said. He made you see yourself and how sinful you were to have ignored a love like His.”

All unseen, Mr. Bonniwell had come softly in the front door and now was standing in the hall, listening as his daughter went on, but Mrs. Bonniwell had reverted to her promise of the afternoon for which she had been preparing for several hours, and smoothly she assented to what her daughter was saying, and then skillfully slid into a different note.

“Well, that sounds very beautiful, dear,” she said graciously. “Perhaps sometime we can all go somewhere and hear this wonderful man. Such orators are always worth studying, no matter what subjects they specialize in. I’d really like to hear him myself. But in the meantime, dear, I have been staying awake to tell you something that is quite as important, and must have an immediate decision.”

“Oh! Yes?” Blythe said, with a quick flash of anxiety. What was coming now? Her mother’s voice was definitely antagonistic, somehow not in sympathy with the wonderful things she had been telling about the meeting she had been attending. She dropped into a chair, yet alert, and fixed her eyes on her mother’s.

“Dan Seavers has been over here—” began her mother, floundering around in her mind for the careful approach she had planned to this interview. But Blythe put a sudden end to the subject by the finality of the tone in which she answered:

“Oh! He
has
! I thought he wouldn’t be suppressed very easily. So he has appealed to you also, has he, as well as to Dad? Well, Mother, you can just tell him nothing doing. I do not intend to marry him—
ever
—I told him so decidedly. I will not be enticed into talking it over anymore. If worse comes to worst you can tell him I love someone else. Although I don’t really think it is any of his business until I get ready to tell it myself.”

“No! Of course not,” the mother hastened to say. The thing she really wanted least was to have anybody else know anything about this absurd obsession of her daughter’s. Let it rest in quietness until it died away of its own accord. Have no publicity about it, not even to save Dan’s feelings. That was much the best policy.