With his editorial duties and with the plans of his campaign for Mr. Killam's seat in the Senate, Evans Rutledge was as busy a man as Washington knew. However, he dropped his work long enough to attend upon Lola DeVale's marriage. He was no little surprised when Oliver Hazard asked him to stand by at his wedding. He was on friendly terms with the bride—and with Hazard, too, for that matter; but he did not know the strength and sincerity of Lola DeVale's friendship for him.
"We must have Mr. Rutledge," she had said to Hazard when they were choosing their attendants; "and he shall be paired with Elise. I have set my heart on that match, for if it fails I have been kissed for nothing."
"Certainly we'll have him if you wish. He's a great fellow, I think, and he'll be a winner all right, don't worry yourself. He'll win out on naked luck, for any man who can just stumble along and kiss you by mistake is evidently a special protégé of the gods." ...
The score or more of young people in the bridal party met at Grace Church on the afternoon before the event to get the details of their marching and countermarching in order. Lola was there to overlook putting them through their paces, but she left the details of straightening out the chattering, rollicking bridesmaids and groomsmen to Elise and Hazard. Rutledge soon learned his role and stood to it like a schoolboy when he was ordered, but he spent most of the time in sympathetic talk with the bride-to-be.
That night when the other girls who filled the house were scattered to their rooms and Elise and Lola were snuggled up in bed, Lola put her arm around her friend and began to say what was on her mind.
"I think it's very rude to refuse to answer a civil question, don't you, Elise?"
Elise was thinking of something else, but she heard enough of what Lola said to answer "yes" in an absent-minded way.
"That would be so with any question. But if it was about a matter of importance the refusal to answer would be more than rude, it would be—exasperating, don't you think?"
"What are you talking about?" Elise asked.
"And if it were a matter of the very greatest importance," Lola continued, "and by every right and custom an answer of some sort was due, and one was flatly told there was no answer, then such unpardonable rudeness should be resented, and self-respect would demand that the question be not repeated."
"Lola DeVale," said Elise, turning to face her, "in the name of sense, have you gone daffy?"
"I agree with Mr. Rutledge," said Lola in the same monotone, as she in turn faced away from Elise, "self-respect forbids."
"Here," exclaimed Elise, "turn back over here and say all that again."
"Haven't time," said Lola with a yawn. "I must be getting my beauty-sleep. Good night."
Elise was quiet half a minute.
"Of all the silly people!"—she stirred Lola up with a poke in the ribs—"when did he tell you that?"
"I'm not divulging any confidences," said Lola.
"And what, pray, are you divulging?" asked Elise.
"My opinion that a civil question demands an answer of some sort—a good round 'no,' if nothing else—not the dismissal one gives a telegraph messenger."
"There you go again—-and I don't understand; but you said something of 'self-respect'?"
"I'm glad he has it. A man's not made for a woman to wipe her feet on, even if he does love her."
"For goodness sake, Lola, quit making riddles. Just what do you think you are talking about?"
"Do you mean to tell me," demanded Lola, turning toward her, "that Mr. Rutledge did not ask you to marry him and that you didn't tell him there was no answer,—that you didn't treat him with contempt, with indifference, with just about as much consideration as you would a clerk who gave you a hand-bill of a cut-price sale? There now!"
"So that's the cause of all this—this self-respect, the reason for all this religious silence of his lips—while his eyes work overtime? I thought it was becau—that it—that there was really something; and is that all!" Elise laughed merrily.
"I think it's shameful, myself!" said Lola severely. "I glory in his resentment."
"I have never noticed any resentment, and—I did not treat him so," replied the quick-witted Elise combatively. Quietly her heart laughed on.
"You deny it?" asked Lola.
"Yes, I deny it. He did not ask me to marry him. He simply told me—quite abruptly—that he loved me, and, after some time, asked me for my answer. What was I to answer? When there is no question there can be no answer. So I told him there was no answer. If a man will insist upon an answer he must not be so stupid as to forget to put a question."
Elise chuckled inwardly as she constructed this specious defence. She was in very good humour with herself,—and with Lola.
"But promise me," she hurried on to say, "that you will not intimate to Mr. Rutledge that it is his stupidity that has swelled his bump of self-respect for these last four years."
Lola demurred to this form of statement: bless her, she was a loyal friend. But Elise insisted.
"Not a word to Mr. Rutledge! Let him discover his mistakes unaided. Promise me. Promise," she demanded.
Lola promised.
"Cross your heart and hope you may die," Elise added.
Lola laughingly went through these binding formalities.
"Now the goblins will get you if you ever tell him and besides that I would know it at once. If you do I'll send him packing for good and all."
Lola protested that she would leave Mr. Rutledge entirely to his own devices,—and she kept her promise.
Lola had insisted on retiring early for a good night's rest, but it was long after midnight before she and her school-day chum grew sleepy over their confidences. Along at the last Elise pressed her face down in the pillow beside Lola's cheek and whispered:
"Honey, if it wasn't very dark and our last night together I couldn't tell you; but do you know if Mr. Rutledge were to ask me to marry him to-morrow I would have to tell him there was no answer."
Lola lay still till she caught the meaning of this confession. Then she softly kissed Elise good-night.
"Let your heart decide, dearest," she said.
At the wedding breakfast next morning, and at the church at noon, Rutledge was bewildered by the softness, the gentleness of Elise's manner toward him. There was nothing of the cold brilliance, nor of the warm combativeness, nor of the lukewarm indifference of her moods for such a long time past. Like the breath of long forgotten summers, of one particular halcyon summer, was her simple-hearted friendliness on that day. He harked back by a conscious effort to keep in touch with his grievance, but it seemed to be eluding his grasp.
For a great part of five hours on the train returning to Washington he sat beside her and steadily forgot everything that had come to pass since the days when he first knew and loved this adorable girl. His resentment and his resolutions were toppling and falling, despite his efforts at reserve in his few scattering lucid intervals of "self-respect."
Elise, outrageously well-informed of the reasons and resources and weaknesses of his resistance, almost laughed outright at the ease with which she scattered his forces and at his spasmodic attempts to regather them. She recalled the rigour of her treatment of him, the contempt she had had for the quality of his love, the apparent heartless lack of appreciation of his championship of her name in the Smith affair: and she was of a mind to make amends. In making amends she tore Rutledge's resentment and "self-respect" to tatters, and set his love a-fire. She really did not intend to overdo it. She sincerely wished only to make amends.
At last he turned to her with a look which scared her. She saw that the last shred of his "self-respect" was gone, and that only the crowded car prevented a precipitate, outspoken surrender. She felt very generous toward that "self-respect" now that it was defeated. She did not care to humiliate it. She was also in a temper to be mischievous and a mite reckless. And, further, she was not ready to have Rutledge putting any questions. As the train was rolling under the shed at Washington she said to him in the very friendliest and most serious way:
"Mr. Rutledge, it seems that you are under the delusion that once upon a time you asked me a question which has never been answered. In order that I may not appear rude or unappreciative I will say that my answer to that question would have been 'no.'"
And she left him to think over that.