CHAPTER XI
THE SECRET
THE first problem confronting the great adventure was the question of publicity. They discussed it seriously on the iron settee beside the fountain on Ellen’s roof Monday evening when they came in from dinner. They had unconsciously stumbled on the crux of the marriage problem.
Ellen was emphatic in her views.
“I loathe the idea of a public announcement of so intimate a personal thing as the union of two human beings in love. Why must our sisters and our cousins and our aunts and the great unwashed public break into this, the sweetest and holiest hour of all life, with their grins and jokes and cheap congratulations? What business is it of theirs? It’s our life, not theirs.”
“True, dear love-woman,” he answered seriously, “and yet in a very real sense, the record of the establishment of a family is the most important piece of book-keeping human society ever makes. If the family is the unit of civilization----”
“But it’s not in the new civilized world in which modern woman proposes to live. We proclaim the era of universal democracy. We proclaim the advent of woman as a conscious human being possessed of an individual soul.”
“All right; it’s nobody’s business then but ours.”
“Certainly not.”
“Only, I’ve an old-fashioned hatred for sneaking and secrecy,” he admitted.
“You think that secrets are degrading?”
“I’ve sometimes felt that way.”
“Secrets are degrading only to shallow and untrained minds.”
He broke into a hearty laugh.
“God knows, mine has been shallow at times and it’s yet untrained.”
“Come, now, vain creature, don’t pin bouquets on your manly chest with your left hand while you scorn them with your right! Your mind is not shallow and you know it. Your mind is trained and you know it. Your feelings are simply the inheritance of centuries of foolish teaching. It’s our business to teach the world the truth about our bodies and our souls. Secrets are not degrading. I never lived as deeply or as keenly as I did the week I was preparing that little cabin for our honeymoon. Did you feel the contaminating influence of my deception?”
“I don’t know,” he fenced. “I felt two white round arms slipping about my neck closer and closer until at last I couldn’t breathe!”
“Which is precisely as God ordered it should be. You’re my man and I’m your woman. My arms were made for your neck. Our secret makes life dramatic.”
“Quite so,” he observed, “if my Big Boss Brown ever finds out that I have won you----”
“But you didn’t, dear boy, I won you.”
“Well, have it your own way. If he ever finds out that you’re mine----”
“But I’m not yours.”
“No?”
“No; I’m as free as a young eagle and so are you and so you’re going to be to the end of life.”
“All right, then. If he ever discovers that you’ve kidnapped me----”
“Well, I like that!” she protested.
“I’m trying to say it your way, anyhow, if he ever finds out our secret, I’ll be looking for another job.”
“Pish-tush!”
“You know that he’s in love with you.”
“Who cares?”
“I’d like to give him notice to keep off the grass.”
“You would, eh?”
“Surest thing you know. It’s devilish awkward, such a secret.”
“We’ll not announce our wedding.”
He seized and kissed her impulsively.
“Let’s do it, sweetheart; let’s go right now and have the old-fashioned ceremony just for the sake of our own peace of mind. I want to tell the world you’re mine and I’m yours for time and eternity. Confound them all, I want ’em to know. I don’t want Brown making love to you again. I don’t want Field pecking on your wall or Bridges making calf-eyes at you----”
“Did a marriage ceremony ever stop that sort of love-making?” she interrupted.
“It will break it up for a while, anyhow, until the habit becomes fixed and that fixes life. Habit is character, honest to God it is. I want you to get the habit of utterly loving me without the thought of another man. Then it’ll come easy and the habit will stick. I want to get in the habit of loving you with utter devotion. When I get the habit it’ll stick for life--I’ll go on about my work and not know that another woman lives.”
“Rubbish, man, if you want another woman I’ll not want you.”
“I can’t honestly say as much,” he protested. “I want you with a passion that hurts and I’d come pretty near wringing the neck of any man who dares to make eyes at you now.”
“Jealousy’s the most degrading of all human passions. I’ll never stoop to it,” she broke in dreamily.
“Well, I may. I’m just common clay when it comes to that, and I’ve a pretty strong idea that I’d fight for my woman.”
“Listen to the Big Chief again--‘My Woman!’ Haven’t I told you that I’m not _yours_? That you’re not _mine_?”
“Theoretically, yes,” he admitted. “But, by the Lord, you _are_ just the same and you know it.”
He drew her to his heart with passionate tenderness and smothered her protests with kisses, until she lay in his arms without a struggle.
“A secret, then, it shall be, if you wish it, dear love-woman,” he said at last.