The Preliminaries, and Other Stories

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 attitude, 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 reassure 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 passion 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 classes.

"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.

{10}

"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!"