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Salvage Point
by
It was at this juncture of affairs that they came to me, as fine-looking a young couple as ever I saw. They were good, as mortals go; they were loyal and upright, they wanted no scandal, no rumpus in the family, no trouble or pain for anybody else; but they wanted to belong to each other much more than they wanted to belong to any class, artistic, proletarian, or capitalist. And they were desperate because of the pertinacity of the Obstacle, whom they both respected fully as much as he deserved.
When they had stated their case, I made my answer.
“So far as I can see, the salvage of your ship of love depends entirely on yourselves. Mr. Hermann is not after a fortune, he only wants his girl; is that so? [Hermann nodded vigorously.] And Miss Mackaye does not care about being supported in the manner of living to which she has been accustomed; she only wants to live with the man whom she has chosen; is that so? [Alice blushed and nodded.] Well, then, why shouldn’t you lay your course and sail ahead together? You are both of age, aren’t you?”
They smiled at each other. “Yes, and a little over.”
“But my father!” said Alice. “You know I honor him, and I can never deny his authority over me.”
Here was the turn of the talk, the critical moment, the point where the chosen counsellor had to fall back upon the ultimate reality of his faith.
“Well,” I said, “you are absolutely correct, dear daughter, in your feeling toward your father. He has earned his money and has a right to dispose of it as he will. But, you know, there is a statute of limitations in regard to the authority of parents over the lives of their children. You have passed the limitation. What do you want to do?”
“To be married to Will Hermann,” she said, “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, I don’t care. But I don’t want a family quarrel, a runaway match, all that horrid newspaper talk.” Here she was evidently a little excited and on the verge of tears.
“Certainly not,” I hastened to reassure her, “you can’t possibly have a runaway match, because there is nothing for you to run away from. There is not a single duty in your father’s house which you have not fulfilled, and of which your sisters can not now relieve you. There is no authority in the world which has the right to command the sacrifice of your life to another’s judgment. There is only one thing that stands in your way, and that is your claim on a large inheritance. I understand you are quite willing to let that go. You are not even ‘running away’ from it–that is not the word–you are ready to jettison it.”
She looked puzzled, and murmured; “I don’t exactly understand what that means.”
“To jettison,” I said, in that learned and dispassionate manner which is sometimes useful in relieving an emotional situation, “is a seafaring phrase. It means throwing overboard a part or the whole of a cargo in order to save the ship. As far as I can see that is the question which is up to you and your best friend at the present moment. Are you prepared to jettison the claim on a big fortune for the sake of making your voyage of life together?”
They looked at each other and a kind of radiance spread over their faces. “Surely,” they answered with one voice. “But how can the marriage be arranged,” asked Alice, “without a row in the family?”
“Very easily,” I answered. “Both of you are over age, though you don’t look it. Our good lawyer friend Harrison will help you to get the license. Fix
your day for the wedding, neither secret nor notorious; invite anybody you like, and come to me on the day you have chosen. The arrangements will be made. You shall be married, all right.”
So they came, and I married them, and it was a very good job.
They had some years of difficulty and uncertainty during which I caught brief glimpses of them now and then, always cheerful and happy together. In the course of time the Obstacle, being not at all bad-hearted but only pig-headed, probably relented a little, and finally was gathered to his fathers, according to the common lot of man. The older sisters behaved very well about the inheritance, and Alice was not left portionless. She brought three fine boys into the world. The house on Salvage Point was built by her and Will together.