Part 60 (1/2)
”You can say what you like, but what _did_ you expect me to do? It was necessary to bring home to some people that this is the twentieth century, not the nineteenth, and I think I've done it. And anyway what are you going to do about it? Did you seriously suppose that I--_I_--was going through all the orange-blossom rigmarole, voice that breathed o'er Eden, fully choral, red carpet on the pavement, flowers, photographers, vicar, vestry, _Daily Picture_, reception, congratulations, rice, old shoes, going-away dress, 'Be kind to her, Ozzie.' Not much! And I don't think. They say that girls love it and insist on it. Well, I don't, and I know some others who don't, too. I think it's simply barbaric, worse than a public funeral. Why, to my mind it's Central African; and that's all there is to it. So there!” She laughed.
”Well,” said Mr. Prohaek, holding his hat in his hand. ”I'm a tolerably two-faced person myself, but for sheer heartless duplicity I give you the palm. You can beat me. Has it occurred to you that this dodge of yours will cost you about fifty per cent of the wedding presents you might otherwise have had?”
”It has,” said Sissie. ”That was one reason why we tried the dodge.
Nothing is more horrible than about fifty per cent of the wedding presents that brides get in these days. And we've had the two finest presents anybody could wish for.”
”Oh?”
”Yes, Ozzie gave me Ozzie, and I gave him me.”
”I suppose the idea was yours?”
”Of course. Didn't I tell you yesterday that Ozzie's only function at my wedding was to be indispensable. He was very much afraid at first when I started on the scheme, but he soon warmed up to it. I'll give him credit for seeing that secrecy was the only thing. If we'd announced it beforehand, we should have been bound to be beaten. You see that yourself, don't you, dearest? And after all, it's our affair and n.o.body else's.”
”That's just where you're wrong,” said Mr. Prohack grandly. ”A marriage, even yours, is an affair of the State's. It concerns society. It is full of reactions on society. And society has been very wise to invest it with solemnity--and a certain grotesque quality. All solemnities are a bit grotesque, and so they ought to be. All solemnities ought to produce self-consciousness in the performers. As things are, you'll be ten years in convincing yourself that you're really a married woman, and till the day of your death, and afterwards, society will have an instinctive feeling that there's something fishy about you, or about Ozzie. And it's your own fault.”
”Oh, dad! What a fraud you are!” And the girl smiled. ”You know perfectly well that if you'd been in my place, and had had the pluck--which you wouldn't have had--you'd have done the same.”
”I should,” Mr. Prohack immediately admitted. ”Because I always want to be smarter than other people. It's a cheap ambition. But I should have been wrong. And I'm exceedingly angry with you and I'm suffering from a sense of outrage, and I should not be at all surprised if all is over between us. The thing amounts to a scandal, and the worst of it is that no satisfactory explanation of it can ever be given to the world. If your Ozzie is up, produce him, and I'll talk to him as he's never been talked to before. He's the elder, he's a man, and he's the most to blame.”
”Take your overcoat off,” said Sissie laughing and kissing him again.
”And don't you dare to say a word to Ozzie. Besides, he isn't in. He's gone off to business. He always goes at eleven-thirty punctually.”
There was a pause.
”Well,” said Mr. Prohack. ”All I wish to state is that if you had a feather handy, you could knock me down with it.”
”I can see all over your face,” Sissie retorted, ”that you're so pleased and relieved you don't know what to do with yourself.”
Mr. Prohack perfunctorily denied this, but it was true. His relief that the wedding lay behind instead of in front of him was immense, and his spirits rose even higher than they had been when he first woke up. He loathed all ceremonies, and the prospect of having to escort an orange-blossom-laden young woman in an automobile to a fas.h.i.+onable church, and up the aisle thereof, and raise his voice therein, and make a present of her to some one else, and breathe sugary nothings to a thousand gapers at a starchy reception,--this prospect had increasingly become a nightmare to him. Often had he dwelt on it in a condition resembling panic. And now he felt genuinely grateful to his inexcusable daughter for her shameless effrontery. He desired greatly to do something very handsome indeed for her and her excellent tame husband.
”Step in and see my home,” she said.
The home consisted of two rooms, one of them a bedroom and the other a sitting-room, together with a small bathroom that was as dark and dank as a cell of the Spanish Inquisition, and another apartment which he took for a cupboard, but which Sissie authoritatively informed him was a kitchen. The two princ.i.p.al rooms were beyond question beautifully j.a.panese in the matter of pictures, prints and cabinets--not otherwise.
They showed much taste; they were unusual and stimulating and jolly and refined; but Mr. Prohack did not fancy that he personally could have lived in them with any striking success. The lack of s.p.a.ce, of light, and of air outweighed all considerations of charm and originality; the upper staircase alone would have ruined any flat for Mr. Prohack.
”Isn't it lovely!” Sissie encouraged him.
”Yes, it is,” he said feebly. ”Got any servants yet?”
”Oh! We can't have servants. No room for them to sleep, and I couldn't stand charwomen. You see, it's a service flat, so there's really nothing to do.”
”So I noticed when I came in,” said Mr. Prohack. ”And I suppose you intend to eat at restaurants. Or do they send up meals from the cellar?”
”We shan't go to restaurants,” Sissie replied. ”You may be sure of that.
Too expensive for us. And I don't count much on the cookery downstairs.
No! I shall do the cooking in a chaffing-dish--here it is, you see. I've been taking lessons in chafing-dish cookery every day for weeks, and it's awfully amusing, it is really. And it's much better than ordinary cooking, and cheaper too. Ozzie loves it.”
Mr. Prohack was touched, and more than ever determined to ”be generous in the grand manner and start the simple-minded couple in married life on a scale befitting the general situation.