Misery Loves Company
by
“But, Win,” remonstrated the bride-elect, “I really don’t think we could. Wouldn’t it look awfully strange? I don’t think I ever heard of its being done.”
“Neither did I,” he agreed. “And yet I want you to do it. Look at it from my point of view. I persuade John Mead to stop wandering around the world and to take an apartment with me here in New York. Then I meet you. The inevitable happens and in less than a year John is to be left desolate. You know how eccentric he is, and how hard it will be for him to get on with any other companion–“
“I know,” said Patty, “that he never will find any one–but you–to put up with his eccentricities.”
“And then, as if abandoning him were not bad enough, I go and maim the poor beggar: blind him temporarily–permanently, if he is not taken care of–and disfigure him beyond all description. Honestly, Patty, you never saw anything like him.”
“I know,” said she, “I know. A pair of black eyes.”
“Black!” he cried, “why, they’re all the colors of the rainbow and two more beside, as the story-book says. All the way from his hair to his mustache he is one lurid sunset. I don’t want to minimize this thing. It has only one redeeming feature: he will be a complete disguise. No amount of rice or ribbon could counteract his sinister companionship. No bridal suspicions could live in the light of it. Doesn’t that thought help?”.
The conversation wandered into personalities and back again, as a conversation may three days before a wedding, but Patty was not entirely won over to Hawley’s view of his responsibility for having with unprecedented dexterity and precision planted a smashing “right” on the bridge of his friend’s nose in the course of an amicable “bout.”
“And the oculist chap says,” Winthrop urged, “that he simply must not be allowed to use his eyes. I’m the only one who takes any interest in him or has any control over him, and to abandon him now would be an awful responsibility. Can’t you see that, dear? If we stay at home to take care of him he will understand why we’re doing it, and he’d vanish. Do let me put him into a motor mask and attach him to the procession.”
“Well, of course, Win,” Patty answered, “of course we must have him if you feel so strongly about it. It’s a pity,” she ended mischievously, “that he dislikes me so much.”
“That’s because you dislike him. But just wait till you know one another.”
“I will,” she answered with a spirit which promised well for the future. “I’ll wait.”
And Winthrop was so touched and gratified by her complaisance that he had no alternative, save to duplicate it, when the following evening brought him this communication:
“Kate Perry and I were playing golf this morning. And, oh! Win, it seems just too dreadful! I banged her between the eyes with my driver. I can’t think how I ever did it. She’s not fit to be seen. Awful! worse than Mr. Mead can possibly be. She can’t stay here and she can’t go home to Washington.
“So, now, if you will consent, we shall be four instead of three. Let me take poor Kate. She can wear a thick veil and sit in behind with Mr. Mead, in his goggles, and leave the front seats for us. They’ll be company for one another.”
Winthrop questioned this final sentence. A supercilious, spoiled beauty–a beauty now doubly spoiled and presumedly bad tempered–was hardly an ideal companion for the misanthropic Mead.
* * * * *
The wedding took place in the morning and the beginning of the honeymoon was prosaic enough. Winthrop and Patty sat in the front seat of the throbbing touring car, while hysterical bridesmaids and vengeful groomsmen showered the requisite quantities of rice, confetti and old slippers upon them.