Elkton was not a big town, and it did not boast of a large railroad station. When they arrived, they discovered that only one car serviced the station, and they had to walk the length of the train to disembark. As they moved up the aisle with their battered suitcases, they were aware of heads turning, of the whispered words, “They’re eloping.”
When they got off the train, Hank took her hand and squeezed it. “You all right?” he said.
“I’m fine.” She grinned. “There’s nothing wrong with getting married, is there?”
“There certainly isn’t,” Hank said. “Let’s get the license.”
In the taxi, they rehearsed.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“When were you born?”
Over and over again, they repeated the data in whispers, lest the cabbie should overhear them and spoil the plot by informing to an official. In truth, the cabbie didn’t seem very much like an informer. He was a round little man who said as they got out of the cab. “Look me up when you’re ready. Joe that’s my name. I’ll take you where you can get a nice ceremony.”
In the clerk’s office, Hank whispered, “Think you ought to light a cigarette?”
“No,” Linda whispered back.
They filled out the license application and handed it to the clerk.
“You’re twenty-one?” he asked Hank.
“Yes, sir,” Hank said.
“Any proof of age? Birth certificate? Baptism papers?”
“Yes, I have it in my bag,” Hank said. He stooped and began unfastening his suitcase.
“Never mind,” the clerk said. He looked at Linda. “You’re twenty, little lady?”
“Yes,” she said. She smiled easily.
“Mmmm,” the clerk said, still studying her. It seemed ridiculous to Linda in that moment that this hawk-eyed clerk could, by completely arbitrary will, either ask or not ask her for proof of age, in which case she would either be or not be married.
The clerk was reaching for stamp and stamp pad, still studying Linda.
His face slightly bored, he stamped the application.
“Forty-eight-hour wait before you can get married,” he said. “No civil ceremonies allowed. Would you see the cashier, please, young man?”
As they left the office, Linda became aware of the other people in the room for the first time. All of the girls, it seemed to her, looked much younger than she. In the corridor, she looped her arm through Hank’s.
“What time is it?” she whispered.
He looked at his watch. “Two-twenty,” he said.
“By this time Friday we’ll be married.” She paused. “Do you really have a birth certificate with you?”
“Sure. I am twenty-one, you know.”
Linda giggled and pressed herself to his arm.
They spent two nights in adjoining rooms at a motel on the outskirts of town. On the first night Hank leaped out of bed when he thought he heard Linda calling him. He stood by the door between their rooms for a long time, listening. Then he opened the door and looked into the room. Linda was sleeping peacefully. He closed the door and went back to bed.
On Friday, August twenty-third, at 2:30 P.M., they were married by a Protestant minister in the back of an antique shop. They thought they might spend the night in Baltimore but decided instead to come back to New York. They had dinner in the city and then sent off wires to their parents. When they checked into the Waldorf-Astoria, they were surprised no one asked them for a marriage certificate. At 9:30 P.M., in their room on the sixth floor, they consummated their marriage. They were very happy.
It looked as if the siege in the New York apartment was going to be a long one, and so the covers were taken off the furniture.
Larry was not looking forward to a long siege. The weekend had somehow come and gone, and it was Monday already and the honey-mooners had still not been located. On Thursday night he and Maggie were supposed to leave for their trip. Nervously, he watched time rushing by as Sam Gottleib, the Harder’s attorney, tried to find Linda and Hank.
Working on the assumption that the honeymooners were in hiding, Gottleib avoided calling the better hotels. He checked the motels in New Jersey and on Long Island, the second-rate hotels nestled in New York’s West Forties, and then the hotels in the out-lying suburbs of Westchester. It was not until Tuesday morning that he reluctantly began calling the first-class New York hotels. By this time Larry’s impatience had reached the breaking point. Trapped in the Harder apartment, he had not been able to reach a telephone. Maggie still did not know that his own plans for the weekend had materialized. She didn’t even know they were meeting, no less where or when.
The first hotel Gottleib called on Tuesday morning was the Waldorf.
In two minutes, after three days of fruitless search, he was connected with Hank MacLean. As calmly as he could over the screeches of Mrs. Harder in the background, he demanded that the couple return at once to the arms of their parents. Mrs. Harder insisted on speaking to Linda, but Gottleib wisely restrained her. He did not want her to frighten the girl into real hiding.
By twelve noon on Tuesday, both families were gathered to greet the fugitives. The gathering had all the outward appearances of a wedding party, with none of the inner warmth or happiness. Mrs. Harder served sandwiches. Her brother Fred, who had been divorced twice and knew about such things as these, opened a bottle of bourbon without being invited to do so and poured himself a before-lunch drink. Not wishing to seem rude, Mrs. Harder asked the rest of those present if they would care for a drink. Sam Gottleib and Joshua MacLean, Hank’s older brother who was a med student at Cornell, accepted. The other men declined. David kept asking Eve if someone had died.
At twelve-thirty the front doorbell sounded. Mrs. Harder began weeping. Mr. MacLean, Hank’s father said, “There, there.” Mr. Harder went to open the door. Linda, wearing an orchid pinned to her suit, smiled and went into her father’s arms. Mr. Harder took Hank’s hand and whispered, “Congratulations. Take care of her, do you hear?” and then they went into the living room.
The sight of her despoiled daughter sent Mrs. Harder into a fresh wave of hysteria. Mr. MacLean, a thin man of sixty, with white hair and pale blue eyes, kept saying over and over again, “There, there. There, there.” His wife Martha, was a red faced woman who seemed rather annoyed by all the fuss. She could see nothing whatever wrong with her son. Any girl’s mother, it seemed to her, should have been delighted to have him as a son-in-law.
Linda went directly to Eve.
Eve rose, and the sisters embraced, and Eve was surprised to find herself holding Linda so tightly. Again she warned herself not to become too involved, but still she held her sister close and wished her happiness and silently wished, too, that the marriage were not starting on the bitter note Mrs. Harder had introduced. There was so much yet that Linda had to learn, to experience, and it should have started happily, the way her own marriage to Larry had started. And thinking back to the start and the joy she had known, she felt a new rush of sadness, and over Linda’s shoulder she saw Larry and wondered again if she could have been so wrong about the man she loved.
“Where were you married?” Gottleib asked suddenly.
Linda turned. The lawyer was a heavy-set man in his middle fifties. A Phi Beta Kappa key hung on a gold chain across his vest. He wore a brown pin-stripe suit and a silk rep tie. He wore spectacles which had slipped halfway down his nose. He carried his head cocked to one side in a perpetual expression of mild skepticism.