“Oh,” said Carrie calmly. She removed her hand from her mother’s clasp and straightened herself in her chair. “I have no idea how you’ve come to know of this, but Scott’s told me already.”
“He has?”
“Moreover, Mother, I’ve forgiven him. He’s made amends. He has promised me that his profligate days are behind him.”
Ada stood abruptly. She gripped the back of her own chair to steady herself. “I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the character of your fiancé, darling, but I can’t possibly think it an easy thing for a man who has exhibited such debauched behavior in the past to transform his character by simple proclamation.”
“And that is where we are different, Mother. I take him at his word. He loves me and will not disappoint me.”
Mrs. Wilmer put her hands upon her daughter’s head. Slowly she began to smooth the tresses with a gentle application of the fingertips. “Oh darling, darling daughter. We’ve done too good a job of sheltering you from the world. I should have been more honest with you about the ease with which some men fall victim to temptation.”
“Scott is sorry for what he did, Mother. Very, very sorry. Do you not believe in forgiveness? In redemption? Or is it the idea of trust that you find so equivocal?”
“Your father and I want only for you to be happy, darling. Both now and forever.”
“My happiness — the only thing? Do be honest, Mother. Is it not also terribly important that no shame should come to our good family name?”
“Do we not owe that to your father for everything he has done for us, my darling?”
Roland Wilmer had started his career as a teacher of the deaf. He had worked alongside the famed teacher Sarah Fuller, who had taught Helen Keller, among many others. Mr. Wilmer had used his familiarity with the needs of the deaf and his scientific background to start a business that specialized in ear trumpets, ear tubes, acoustic table urns, and other devices that assisted the hard-of-hearing. Most recently he had filed for patents and begun developing hearing aids that employed electrical amplification. The business was destined to grow and thrive, especially under the shrewd stewardship of Wilmer’s son, Darius. But for the present, Carrie’s older brother, a hydraulic engineer, was helping to build the Panama Canal. “I appreciate very much what Father has done for us,” said Carrie, thoroughly chastened.
“I know you do,” replied Mrs. Wilmer, before placing a delicate kiss upon her daughter’s forehead.
Not another word was exchanged between mother and daughter, and Mr. Wilmer did not raise the matter with Carrie.
Saturday came — the day of Carrie’s much-anticipated wedding. The February sky, typically cinerous and dreary, was powder blue with hardly a cloud in sight. Even without the foliage that served as natural adornment to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Newton, the Federal Style meeting house was the chromo-perfect picture of New England simplicity and charm. Inside, the high box pews and square columns of the colonial sanctuary were festooned with smilax berries, the altar graced with white Easter lilies and white and pink rhododendrons. Pots of hothouse azaleas were distributed generously.
In one of the bedrooms of the rectory, Carrie’s toilette was being prepared by her mother and her bridesmaids in a giddy, fussy pinwheel of activity. Roland Wilmer stood in the doorway not quite believing that the little girl he had once bounced upon his knee was now the beautiful young woman who stood radiant before him. Roland had spared no expense in giving his daughter all she desired, including the dress both she and her mother had sought from the finest couturière in Boston: a princess-style gown of white satin, trimmed with point lace. Atop Carrie’s head was a pompadour large enough to hold a lengthy tulle veil and orange blossoms that replicated the blooms in the lace upon her shoulders and her silver brocade shoes.
Carrie caught her father’s eye and the two smiled at one another. But a different look passed between her parents — a look of only slightly disguised apprehension. Mr. Wilmer shut the door and proceeded to another room, assigned to the groom and his attendant groomsmen. He opened the door to find his potential son-in-law arrayed in a species of sartorial splendor that perfectly complimented the look of his bride. Standing before him in Prince Albert frock coat over a gleaming white Marseilles waistcoat, his pearl gray cravat tied with perfection in the puff style, Scott demonstrated that it wasn’t merely a prodigious knowledge of salted and frozen fish that defined him; he also knew how to dress well, especially when it counted.
“I’m wondering if I might have a word in private,” said Roland.
“Skidoo, fellas. The old man wants to give his soon-to-be-son-in-law ‘the talk.’” The four young men, two of whom had been playing mumbletypeg with a pocketknife upon the rectory’s wooden floorboards, took their hasty leave.
“I’ll save you the breath, Mr. Wilmer,” said Scott, slapping a hand on Wilmer’s shoulder. “I promise to love, honor, and yes, even to obey your remarkable daughter.”
“Goodhue, I don’t want you to marry her.”
A stunned silence. Then,
“You’re joking. But you aren’t, are you?”
Wilmer shook his head. “I won’t beat around the bush, young man. I know what you’ve done.”
“What have I done?”
“Don’t sport with me. You have a bastard child.”
Scott looked about for a place to sit down. There were hymnals stacked upon a chair. He removed them. “You may wish to sit down, as well, Mr. Wilmer. This may take a moment.”
Roland cleared a chair for himself and pulled it over to Scott.
“The maid was in the employ of my father. Did your private dick tell you this? Did he tell you that the woman died in childbirth?”
“He did not, but that makes your crime all the more reprehensible. Where is your child now?”
“An orphanage. But she isn’t my child.”
“You expect me to believe this?”
“I do. I expect you to believe it — though you are never to let this fact escape your lips — when I tell you that the bastard child’s father was my own father. When the maid became pregnant, a rumor began to be circulated among the servants that it was I who was responsible, because I used to give the maid a bit of flirting attention from time to time. We — my father and mother and my two sisters — we let the rumors stand. We decided that should word ever get out, I would take the fall for my father. I would take the fall, Mr. Wilmer, because the damage to my reputation would be far less onerous than that which would come to him, especially as he planned to put himself before the Massachusetts General Court as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1906. I had never intended to marry, Mr. Wilmer. It was the bachelor’s life for me, sir, though I must emphasize that I would never, could never live the sexually degenerate life which you ascribe to me by your accusation. Of course, I didn’t foresee that someone as wonderful as your daughter would come along and steal my heart as she did.”
Roland Wilmer shook his head. He could not contain his skeptical and cynical nature. He was forever fearful that his laboratory might become infiltrated by industrial spies working for Mr. Alexander Graham Bell, whom he believed had a larcenous nature, since there was widespread contention that Bell had appropriated from Mr. Elisha Gray crucial details of sound transmission which facilitated his invention of the telephone.
“You will have to do better than that, Goodhue.”
“I’m prepared to give you the proof you require. That is, should you wish to see it. Latch the door behind you, sir, and I’ll show you the reproductive wound I sustained with the Rough Riders in Cuba. It impedes my ability to sire any children, bastard or otherwise.”
Roland cleared his throat with a nervous cough. “You’re being serious.”