Van Bibber as Best Man
by
Young Van Bibber came up to town in June from Newport to see his lawyer about the preparation of some papers that needed his signature. He found the city very hot and close, and as dreary and as empty as a house that has been shut up for some time while its usual occupants are away in the country.
As he had to wait over for an afternoon train, and as he was down town, he decided to lunch at a French restaurant near Washington Square, where some one had told him you could get particular things particularly well cooked. The tables were set on a terrace with plants and flowers about them, and covered with a tricolored awning. There were no jangling horse-car bells nor dust to disturb him, and almost all the other tables were unoccupied. The waiters leaned against these tables and chatted in a French argot; and a cool breeze blew through the plants and billowed the awning, so that, on the whole, Van Bibber was glad he had come.
There was, beside himself, an old Frenchman scolding over his late breakfast; two young artists with Van Dyke beards, who ordered the most remarkable things in the same French argot that the waiters spoke; and a young lady and a young gentleman at the table next to his own. The young man’s back was toward him, and he could only see the girl when the youth moved to one side. She was very young and very pretty, and she seemed in a most excited state of mind from the tip of her wide-brimmed, pointed French hat to the points of her patent- leather ties. She was strikingly well-bred in appearance, and Van Bibber wondered why she should be dining alone with so young a man.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he heard the youth say earnestly. “How could I know he would be out of town? and anyway it really doesn’t matter. Your cousin is not the only clergyman in the city.”
“Of course not,” said the girl, almost tearfully, “but they’re not my cousins and he is, and that would have made it so much, oh, so very much different. I’m awfully frightened!”
“Runaway couple,” commented Van Bibber. “Most interesting. Read about ’em often; never seen ’em. Most interesting.”
He bent his head over an entree, but he could not help hearing what followed, for the young runaways were indifferent to all around them, and though he rattled his knife and fork in a most vulgar manner, they did not heed him nor lower their voices.
“Well, what are you going to do?” said the girl, severely but not unkindly. “It doesn’t seem to me that you are exactly rising to the occasion.”
“Well, I don’t know,” answered the youth, easily. “We’re safe here anyway. Nobody we know ever comes here, and if they did they are out of town now. You go on and eat something, and I’ll get a directory and look up a lot of clergymen’s addresses, and then we can make out a list and drive around in a cab until we find one who has not gone off on his vacation. We ought to be able to catch the Fall River boat back at five this afternoon; then we can go right on to Boston from Fall River to-morrow morning and run down to Narragansett during the day.”
“They’ll never forgive us,” said the girl.
“Oh, well, that’s all right,” exclaimed the young man, cheerfully. “Really, you’re the most uncomfortable young person I ever ran away with. One might think you were going to a funeral. You were willing enough two days ago, and now you don’t help me at all. Are you sorry?” he asked, and then added, “but please don’t say so, even if you are.”
“No, not sorry, exactly,” said the girl; “but, indeed, Ted, it is going to make so much talk. If we only had a girl with us, or if you had a best man, or if we had witnesses, as they do in England, and a parish registry, or something of that sort; or if Cousin Harold had only been at home to do the marrying.”