Posted by Bardines Chapter Five
“Of course, I’ll marry you!” snapped Peleg, immediately apologizing – taken aback by his harsh tone. “But, moving on, there remains the problem of how we marry without anyone knowing that we arrived in Benedict unmarried, are still unmarried, and, if we are honest, never intended to get married!”
“Well, how hard can it be? We go down to the church, ask to see the Reverend, tell him that we’d like to get married as soon as possible and Bob’s your uncle. I can see that a prolonged courtship is probably out of the question.” Maggie outlined this plan while trying to project an air of confidence that began to erode the moment she finished. It hadn’t happened to her but a few times in her life, and it took her a moment to realize that she was scared. Their new life gave her a kind of comfort and security she had only ever experienced as a very small child.
“You’re not listening,” said Peleg. Say, we go right down to the church, right now, ask to see the padre, and tell him that we want to get married. What’s the first thing that comes into his mind?”
“Ah,” said Maggie, “he stumbles on the fact that we must not be married, have not been married and consequently have been living in sin certainly for the whole time we have been in Benedict if not long before we arrived.”
“Exactly!”
As they had done many times, the pair sat at the table pondering how they might get through this dilemma. And as they thought, they felt the crushing weight of the respectability they so dearly wished to maintain.
Peleg struck a match to relight his pipe which turned out to be the stimulus to a solution.
“I’ve got it,” he announced, “I’ll tell the truth!”
Maggie was stunned and looked it. Over the years they had spent together, Peleg had developed many skills most of them honed to perfection, but she couldn’t truthfully say that “telling the truth” was one of them.
“Do what? Tell the truth! To whom and about what? I would have thought both of us a little rusty in that area. We’ve made a whole profession out of not telling the truth except to each other. Frankly, you have me worried.”
“No need to worry, really, tomorrow, first thing, I’m going to review our dilemma with Ira and ask him what he thinks we should do.”
“I imagine he’ll tell us to pack our bags and get the hell out town.”
“I don’t think so,” replied Peleg, “I don’t think Ira would want that at all. Right from the start he has shown a lot of faith in us mostly, I suspect,
from instinct. I caught him looking that first day when I was picking his front door lock; I think he knew we were, at least, a couple of checkered characters if not outright grifters. But he never asked or seemed hesitant and very soon we had work, a place to live, and a friend who has helped us escape all the anxiety and danger of our city life. No, Mag, I trust him to be concerned and to do his best for us. Just as, I hope, we will do for him if the chance arises.”
Maggie was slack-jawed and stupent-utterly beside herself. She struggled to regain her bearings. Certainly, she agreed completely with her Sardine’s assessment of their relationship with Ira. Had Ira been her father, instead of the entitled, tyrannical sot who had been, she never would have felt compelled to flee her home, by chance, on the back of a milk wagon. And “by chance” had certainly been the chief theme of her life ever since.