Mr. and Mrs. Heaton K. Harrenden request the pleasure of your company at
the wedding breakfast at two o'clock, February Fifteenth, Nineteen
Hundred and Twelve, at Harrenden Manor.
A letter from Cham had been tucked in:
Dear Fanshaw: You've got to come. Mrs. Harrenden says she wants an
old-fashioned wedding, but Allie and I are going to try to pep it up a
bit.
Yours, Cham.
Let's see, Fanshaw was thinking, what ought one to wear at a noon
wedding? Noon. The time Cham and I took those two chorus girls canoeing
at Norumbega Park, the mudsmell of the river.... And now Cham's marrying
an heiress. Harrenden's Snowflake Meal. Like telegraph poles from the
train the years slip by, so fast and nothing to catch hold of. Ought I
to get a cutaway?
Through the coal smoke that gripped his throat Fanshaw caught a whiff of
roses. A girl in a mink coat with a large bunch of pink roses at her
waist had just brushed past him. She must be going to the wedding too,
he thought, and started walking in the direction she had gone, following
with his eyes the signs that announced the trains: Portland Express,
North Shore Local....
"Hello, Macdougan, where the hell are you going?"
"I'm going to a wedding. What are you doing here this time of day,
Henley?"
"I'm off to a wedding too." Henley had a booming voice; he was a tall
dark man with a moustache, thickwaisted.
"Cham Mason's wedding?"
"Sure.... I didn't know that dignified people like you went in for
weddings."
"I don't often, Henley.... But I roomed with Cham Mason when we
were freshmen."
"Frankly, Macdougan, I find weddings of great anthropological
interest.... Savage survivals."
They were in a crowd of very dressed people passing through a gate in
the end platform, all about them fur coats, flowers, fuzzy hats, bright
shoes. "O, how do you do, Mrs. Glendinning! Yes, dreadfully cold.
Why everybody anyone ever knew in the world is here? No, those are
the Pittsburgh people. Imagine having a special train. Yes, those are
the Harrison-Smiths, my dear."
"Say, Macdougan, suppose we get in the smoker where we can chat
quietly," whispered Henley fitting his derby back on his head. "This is
too much of a good thing.... There's something so prurient about women
at an affair like this."
"After all a wedding.... Go ahead."
"Why they are parlor cars.... Here we are.... Is the only piece of
straight sex-ceremonial left to us."
"How's that?"
"The ring, my dear fellow, the ring.... What could be more of a symbol
than a ring? Why, among the aborigines of the Caribbean ..."
"Why, look who's here?... Why, this is a class reunion, boys." A red,
round face topped by straight black hair slicked across a bald forehead
was poked in the door. "You remember me, don't you, Henley?"
"Sure I do, Randall. I haven't seen you since our last class day. How
are you?... As I was saying, Macdougan, among the aborigines of the
Caribbean ..."
"I think I'll join you fellers if you don't mind. Gee, it's great
isn't it, that old Cham is gettin' hitched?"
"That depends...."
"Not if you know the bride," Randall hitched up his blue serge trousers
and let himself sink down broadly on to the leather seat. "Ah ... A
lovely, sweet girl."
"Yes, I know her," said Fanshaw frostily. He turned and looked out at
the empty windows of the train on the next track. Through them he could
see more windows, people sitting in a parlor car. There came a toot from
the engine and the empty windows and the windows with people in them
began to glide past. The seat rumbled; the train was moving, smoke cut
out the view, cleared to reveal bridges and black water over which gulls
veered screaming. Five gulls on the edge of a cake of ice.
A leather case of cigars was poked under his nose. "Thanks, I never
smoke cigars." Fanshaw kept his face turned to the window, letting
Henley talk to this Randall-man.
"Yes," he was saying with a heavy laugh, "I been to some mighty
funny weddings."
"I never miss one when I can help it."
"There was a wedding down in Philadelphia I once went to where the groom
passed out before the ceremony. That was a funny wedding."
"What was the matter?"
"Dry Martinis, that's all. We had to put him under the showerbath to
bring him around enough to stagger up the aisle.... He got mixed up and
tried to lead one of the bridesmaids up to the altar. It was a barrel of
monkeys, that wedding was...."
Fanshaw was looking out at the bare trees and the rows of grey suburban
houses. The smoke from the engine unrolled dense and white across the
landscape against a leaden sky. Above the grinding rumble of wheels he
could hear the two men talking beside him.
"I saw a man drop down stone dead at the altar once."
"You don't say."
"Dreadful thing... Heart failure it was that did it. The bride had just
said about love, honor, and obey, when the fellow began to stagger
around. When they picked him up he was dead. A good chap too, important
in the Elks and secretary of the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce. It was
a great shock to everyone. Marrying the girl he was going to marry had
been thought the crowning success of his career."
"Funny time of year to have a country wedding, isn't it?"
Fanshaw turned laughing from the window.
"Most eccentric... Why, everything's full of hoar-frost."
When the train reached Durham station the sun was shining palely. The
cars exuded furs and orchids and derby hats and canes from either end.
Outside the station several limousines and taxicabs were lined up
waiting for the guests, and in front of them, pacing up and down the
platform with the stationmaster, was a tall sallow man in a silk hat and
a frock coat of which the straight line was broken in front by a sudden
little pot belly that looked like a football tucked in under his vest.
"That's Mr. Harrenden," said Henley. "Let's walk up to the house to
avoid the rush... Gosh, look at that feather. I bet she's one of the
Pittsburghers."
"In full warpaint too," said Fanshaw tittering.
"How do you do, Mr. Harrenden?"
"Howdy, boys... Glad to see you. Step right into one of those cars, or
perhaps you'ld rather walk. Leave more room for the lovely ladies... See
you up at the house... Why, how do you do, Mrs. Harrison-Smith?"
"Come on, Macdougan," said Henley. Fanshaw followed him through the
station. They walked briskly through the main street of the town, past a
row of new concrete stores, and out along a macadam road that crunched
frostily underfoot. Now and then a limousine full of guests passed them.
"It's only half a mile and we have plenty of time."
"Do you know Miss Harrenden, Henley?"
"Very well... Why, I almost wanted to marry her myself at one time.
She's a very lively young person."
Fanshaw glanced at him furtively out of the corners of his eyes.
Henley had flushed red.
"Cold, the wind, isn't it?" Fanshaw said after a pause and turned up the
velvet collar of his coat with a gloved hand.
"Extraordinary study a wedding is from the point of view of
psychoanalysis."
"How do you mean?"
"Everybody gets a certain vicarious satisfaction out of it, don't
you think so?"
"You mean the culmination of a romance? That sort of thing...?"
"I mean out of the two nice young things going off to bed together...
The rest of it is just sublimation."
"I don't think that's altogether true... I think romance much more about
how they are going to buy furniture and found a home and have new
visiting cards printed."
"Sublimation all of it. Look how excited all those overdressed
women are?"
"Just because they are going to a party and meeting their friends and
trying to look their best... I don't agree with the Freudian emphasis on
the lowest in our natures. I don't think it's a good thing... Anyway
civilized people don't let themselves think about those subjects."
"That's what I'm saying... But what they think is just a veneer.
Underneath our conscious thoughts and taboos we are over-sexed and
anthropophagous savages."
They were walking up a drive bordered by barberry bushes of which the
berries stood out scarlet over the greybrown lawn. They scraped the
soles of their shoes against the scraper beside the door on the
semicircular Colonial porch and found themselves being divested of their
hats and overcoats by a maid who gave them numbered checks in return.
Then clearing their throats slightly, smoothing the tails of their
cutaways with one hand, they advanced up the hall to where in a black
and silver dress with a tinsel Egyptian shawl over her shoulders stood
Mrs. Harrenden smiling and pyramidal.
"Dick Henley, I haven't seen you for years. We must find time to
have a chat... How do you do Mr... Mr..."
"Macdougan."
"Of course... You'll find the young people right upstairs in the
library... I suppose you still are classed among the young people, Dick.
All seems mere children to me at any rate... You will help me to make an
oldfashioned jolly wedding of it, won't you? It's not a social affair at
all. No one is invited but a few indispensable, intimate friends. So
vulgar these great society weddings... So much nicer to have only a few
intimate friends..."
With a silky swish Mrs. Harrenden stalked towards the door which was
encumbered by a new car full of guests.
At the top of the brown-carpeted stairs they ran suddenly into Cham
Mason who was crawling on his hands and knees across the upper hall.
"Hello, Cham."
"Why, if it isn't Fanshaw... Look, for crissake, help me... Susie
Beveridge has broken her string of pearls. We're looking for them
because with all these strange people... How do you do, Henley? I hadn't
seen you." He got to his feet unsteadily and rubbed his hand across his
closecropped yellow hair. "Gosh, I'm tight as a tick... Come into the
library and have a cocktail... I got to have a lil' sip to sober me."
"I thought you were looking for the wedding ring," said Henley.
"Right after a lil' sip to sober up we mus' look for pearls again. Two
of 'em rolled into the hall."
They followed Cham into the library, a great wainscoted room dense with
the sweetness of the yellow mimosa that stood in pots in the fireplace.
A group of girls and young men stood round a brass smoking table on
which was a shaker and a great array of cocktail glasses shining in the
grey light that poured in through a broad window. In a morrischair sat a
fatfaced girl, her eyes brimmed with tears holding a lot of various
sized pearls in her cupped hands.
"Count them again, Susie.... Maybe you've got them all," somebody said.
"Have a lil' cocktail with us and then we'll all look an we won't stop
looking till we find every last one of 'em."
"But it's time, Cham," whined the girl in the morrischair.
"Well, where's Allie? I'm ready.... Here's looking at you, Fanshaw."
"Brush off your knees, they're all over dust.... I hear the orchestra
tuning up. Come along, everybody."
"For God's sake, don't anybody get me started laughing," said Cham
straightening himself up and goosestepping stiffly towards the door.
"Come on, Cham, they are waiting," said in a voice staccato with
excitement a little grey-haired grey faced man in a frock coat too long
for him who appeared in the door.
"All right, Dad, I'm coming.... But, where's Allie? I refuse to be
married without Allie."
Fanshaw drank down his cocktail and followed. Behind him he heard a
voice still whining, "I don't know where to put my pearls." He pulled
the door to and started down the stairs beside a black toque with a
cockade like a Westpointer's in it.
"My," the girl was saying, "You should have seen the rehearsal of the
ceremony this morning. It was a scream. Everybody got the giggles so we
couldn't go on."
"Sh-sh," went someone. Everything was quiet but for the rustle of
dresses, an occasional cough or a sound of creaky tiptoeing. They were
packed into a long drawing room down the middle of which an aisle had
been made by a row of little orange trees in pots. Fanshaw flattened
himself against the wall beside a picture that he was in constant fear
of knocking down. The string orchestra grouped about the piano in the
far corner behind the palms struck up. Everybody craned their necks.
"That's the overture," whispered someone.
"What, deary?" came in broken elderly tones.
"The overture, Mother,... Beethoven."
"Ah, Beethoven."
"Sh-sh."
The overture stopped. In the silence feverish whispering was heard in
the hall and a man's voice loud and angry: "And for Heaven's sake don't
forget which pocket it's in."
"Sh-sh."
The orchestra was playing Mendelssohn's Wedding March. Fanshaw could see
the heads of people moving two by two up the aisle to the end of the
room where the minister stood with a purple stole round his neck. The
bride and groom were hidden by an orange tree but he could see the backs
of the bridesmaids in peachcolored silk and a shimmer of orange tulle on
their hats, and the light shining on Mr. Harrenden's bald head. A sneeze
across the room was stifled in a handkerchief. There was some coughing
in the wedding party and the minister began to read the service in a
chanting nasal tone. Fanshaw was breathing deep of a heavy lemonsweet
smell... Must be orange blossoms.
* * * *
The table stretched long and white in both directions, bordered by
faces, black coats, bright colored hats. The shine of silver and plates
and champagne glasses was blurred by cake crumbs, rind of fruit,
nutshells, napkins.
Gracious, have I had too much to drink? the thought streaked across the
shimmer of Fanshaw's brain and the sound of voices and the smell of
food. He was half turned round in his chair, talking rapidly and
smoothly, in spite of the fact that his tongue felt bigger than usual,
to the girl next to him who wore a pink dress and kept laughing and
laughing.
"Cultivated people in this generation," he was saying, "Are like
foreigners who suddenly find themselves in a country whose language they
do not know, whose institutions they do not understand, like people in
one of those great state barges the Venetians had, that Canaletto drew
so well..."
"Isn't this wedding a scream," said the girl in pink, laughing and
laughing. "I've never been to such a nice wedding as this and this is my
fourth already this winter... If a winter wedding's like this, what
would a spring wedding be like? Aren't they just too lovely together? I
think Chamberlain's awfully good-looking, don't you?"
They were standing up, moving into another room, bright dresses and
black coats jamming the doorway. Fanshaw found himself sitting alone in
a deep armchair smoking a cigar. What he needed was some coffee, he was
saying to himself. After an oldfashioned jolly wedding he needed coffee.
He got to his feet and walked with care and deliberation to the table
where the coffee service was. My, things were happening fast. Careful,
he must be careful. There was no one in the room but a short pudgy man
in a grey suit who was drinking a whiskey and soda, shaking the glass
meditatively between every sip.
"Where have they all gone?" asked Fanshaw querulously.
"Getting out the Stutz, I guess."
"How's that?" Fanshaw gulped some coffee.
"Didn't you know that the young couple were going on their honeymoon in
the big red Stutz Harrenden gave them? An elegantly matched pair."
"Cham and I roomed together, Freshman year in college," Fanshaw found
himself saying.
"Ah, College! That's the place to make connections."
They stood looking at each other nodding their heads knowingly, Fanshaw
with his coffeecup, the pudgy man with his highball glass, when the
sound of a racing motor attracted their attention. It was followed by a
shout from the front of the house. Fanshaw went to the window and pulled
back the curtain. The guests cheering and laughing filled the colonial
porch and surged round a shaking roadster in the drive. Fanshaw caught a
glimpse of Alice Harrenden's pale face under a little brown hat and veil
as she climbed into the car. Her eyes were swollen and her lips tight as
if she were going to cry. Cham waved a buff cap and opened the cutout.
Rice hailed on the car. An old sneaker hit Cham in the head. He honked
the horn, bent over the wheel and the car shot around the bend of the
driveway. People looked at each other constrainedly and began going back
into the house.
Somewhere quiet till this passes off, Fanshaw was thinking. He made his
way back through the house and out into the garden. Why, I'm staggering
down the path. Mucky underfoot from the thaw. Bench to sit on. Dry
bench. He leaned back and stared up at the streaming greypurple clouds
that brightened to yellow in spots where a little sun broke through.
Oughtn't to have drunk so much champagne. After all, if no one
noticed... Jolly thing an oldfashioned jolly wedding. My wedding. The
Macdougan wedding. If it could be Nan. But Wenny... No, no. Someone I've
not met yet. Perhaps she'd have red hair, auburn hair, a Titian
blonde. Aretino had to flee Venice when he was accused of sodomy. He had
eight beautiful mistresses in a great palace on the Grand Canal. And
I've never had a woman. Wedding parties, fellows phoning easy girls,
through all that lonely as a cloud. Horrible coward, I guess. That night
walking with Wenny along the road to Blue Hill couples of girls wanting
to be picked up, their eyes under the arclight clicking into ours.
Hullo, kiddo. Hello, cutie. But Wenny, that sort of thing just isn't
done. Danger of exposure too, scandal, disease. And the street through
Somerville dark under the May-rustling trees, pink blobs of arclights
and the shuddering green fringes of foliage about them and the hips, the
wabbly hips of stumpy girls. When walking, when welldressed people
walked, thinking of the Renaissance, of distant splendid things, all
this surged about them out of the long streets of night. Festering web
of desire, grimy probing hands, groping eyes, toughs and hard girls
circling like dogs before a fight. Wrestling sweaty bodies, hands
palping, feeling, feeling up.... O, I don't want to think of all that.
Oldfashioned jolly wedding. Pull yourself together.
Fanshaw sat with his head buried in his hands, his elbows on his knees,
staring at the gravel between his feet. After a while he got up, cold
and stiff. The dazzle of the champagne had passed off. The orchestra in
the house was playing a foxtrot. Probably caught a cold sitting out here
like an idiot. He walked meditatively towards the conservatory, scraped
his feet off on the mat and stepped in. The warm sugary air was soothing
after the rawness of outdoors. He stood a long while looking at the
little sprouts that had formed at the tips of the fronds of a big
Australian fern. The door at the end of the conservatory opened letting
in a burst of ragtime from the drawing room, voices, sliding of feet on
a hardwood floor. All of a sudden he wanted to go away to be walking by
himself down the road to the station. He went out into the garden again
for fear someone should see him and speak to him. He'd slip away without
saying goodby. Such a crowd no one could possibly notice. Groping in his
pocket for his coatcheck he went round the house towards the front door.
In an embrasure beside a fieldstone chimney was a trellised bench, on
the bench a hat of orange tulle, beside the hat a fluffy peachcolored
dress, a flushed face thrown back, a long lock of undone hair curling
spikily over a shoulder, and stooped about her, half holding her up, a
young man in a black suit. Her eyes were closed, his face crushed into
hers. One hand gripped the young man hard like a claw by the elbow.
Fanshaw stood a moment breathless staring at them. Then he walked off
fast with the blood throbbing in his ears.
On the way to the station he kept thinking: And the years slip by like
telegraph poles past you in the train and people marry and spoon on
benches and I'm always, alone, moral, refined, restrained. If I were
only made like Wenny, I'd enjoy life. Disgusting, though, out in the
open like that where anybody could see, worse than factory hands at
Norumbega.
One must try to be beautiful about life.