In the good old idyllic days it had been possible for romantic youth to
get married as easily as to get dinner--and as hard to get unmarried as
to get wings. Couples who spooned too long at seaside resorts and
missed the last train home could wake up a preacher and be united in
indissoluble bonds of holy matrimony for two dollars. The preachers
of that day slept light, in order to save the reputations of foolish
virgins.
But now a greedy and impertinent civil government had stepped in and
sacrilegiously insisted on having a license bought and paid for before
the Church could officiate. And the license bureau was not open all
night, as it should have been.
Kedzie knew nothing of this, but Gilfoyle was informed. Theoretically he
believed that marriage should be rendered impossible and divorce
easy. But he could no more have proposed an informal alliance with his
precious Kedzie than he could have wished that his mother had made one
with his father. His mother and father had eloped and been married by a
sleepy preacher, but that was poetic and picturesque, seeing that they
did not fail to wake the preacher. Gilfoyle's reverence for Kedzie
demanded at least as much sanctity about his union with her.
It is curious how habits complicate life. Here were two people whom
it would greatly inconvenience to separate. Yet just because it was a
custom to close the license bureau in the late afternoon they must wait
half a night while the license clerk slept and snored, or played cards
or read detective stories or did whatever license clerks do between
midnight and office hours. And just because people habitually crawl
into bed and sleep between midnight and forenoon, these two lovers were
already finding it hard to keep awake in spite of all their exaltation.
They simply must sleep. Romance could wait.
Gilfoyle knew that there were places enough where Kedzie and he could go
and have no questions asked except, “Have you got baggage, or will you
pay in advance?” But he would not take his Kedzie to any such place, any
more than he would leave a chalice in a saloon for safe-keeping.
In their drowsy brains projects danced sparklingly, but they could find
nothing to do except to part for the eternity of the remnant of the
night. So Gilfoyle escorted Kedzie to the Hotel Belmont door, and told
her to say she was an actress arrived on a late train. He stood off at
a distance while he saw that she registered and was respectfully treated
and led to the elevator by a page.
Then he moved west to the Hotel Manhattan and found shelter. And thus
they slept with propriety, Forty-second Street lying between them like a
sword.
The alarm-clock in Gilfoyle's head woke him at seven. He hated to
interrupt Kedzie's sleep, but he was afraid of his boss and he needed
his salary more than ever--twice as much as ever. He telephoned from
his room to Kedzie's room down the street and up ten stories and was
comforted to find that he woke her out of a sleep so sound that he could
hardly understand her words. But he eventually made sure that she would
make haste to dress and meet him in the restaurant.
They breakfasted together at half past eight. Kedzie was aglow with the
whole procedure.
“You ought to write a novel about us,” she told Gilfoyle. “It would be
a lot better than most of the awful stories folks write nowadays. And
you'd make a million dollars, I bet. We need a lot of money now, too,
don't we?”
“A whole lot,” said Gilfoyle, who was beginning to fret over the
probable cost of the breakfast.
It cost more than he expected--as he expected. But he was in for it, and
he trusted that the Lord would provide. They bought a ring at a petty
jewelry-shop in Forty-second Street and then descended to a Subway
express and emerged at the Brooklyn Bridge Station.
The little old City Hall sat among the overtowering buildings like an
exquisite kitten surrounded by mastiffs, but Gilfoyle's business took
him and his conquest into the enormous Municipal Building, whose windy
arcades blew Kedzie against him with a pleasant clash.
The winds of life indeed had blown them together as casually as two
leaves met in the same gutter. But they thought it a divine encounter
arranged from eons back and to continue for eons forward. They thought
it so at that time.
They went up in the elevator to the second floor, where, in the fatal
Room 258, clerks at several windows vended for a dollar apiece the
State's permission to experiment with matrimony.
There was a throng ahead of them--brides, grooms, parents, and witnesses
of various nationalities. All of them looked shabby and common, even to
Kedzie in her humility. All over the world couples were mating, as the
birds and animals and flowers and chemicals mate in their seasons. The
human pairs advertised their union by numberless rites of numberless
religions and non-religions. The presence or absence of rite or its
nature seemed to make little difference in the prosperity of the
emulsion. The presence or absence of romance seemed to make little
difference, either. But it seemed to be generally agreed upon as a
policy around the world that marriage should be made exceedingly easy,
and unmarriage exceedingly difficult. In recruiting armies the same plan
is observed; every encouragement is offered to enlist; one has only to
step in off the street and enlist. But getting free! That is not the
object of the recruiting business.
Gilfoyle and Kedzie had to wait their turns before they could reach a
window. Then they had a cross-examination to face.
Kedzie giggled a good deal, and she leaned softly against the hard
shoulder of Gilfoyle while the clerk quizzed him as to his full name,
color, residence, age, occupation, birthplace, the name of his father
and mother and the country of their birth, and the number of his
previous marriages.
She grew abruptly solemn when the clerk looked at her for answers to the
same questions on her part; for she realized that she was expected
to tell her real name and her parents' real names. She would have to
confess to Tommie that she had deceived him and cheated him out of a
beautiful poem. Had he known the truth he would never have written:
Pretty maid, pretty maid, may I call you Kedzie?
Your last name is Thropp, but your first name is--
Nothing rhymed with _Kedzie_.
While she gaped, wordless, Gilfoyle magnificently spoke for her, proudly
informed the clerk that her name was “Anita Adair,” that she was white
(he nearly said “pink”), that her age was--he had to ask that, and she
told him nineteen. He gave her residence as New York and her occupation
as “none.”
“What is your father's first name, honey?” he said, a little startled to
realize how little he knew of her or her past. She had learned much news
of him, too, in hearing his own answers.
“Adna,” she whispered, and he told the clerk that her father's name was
Adna Adair. She told the truth about her mother's maiden name. She could
afford to do that, and she could honestly aver that she had never had
any husband or husbands “up to yet,” and that she had not been divorced
“so far.” Also both declared that they knew of no legal impediment to
their marriage. There are so few legal impediments to marriage, and so
many to the untying of the knot into which almost anybody can tie almost
anybody!
The clerk's facile pen ran here and there, and the license was delivered
at length on the payment of a dollar. For one almighty dollar the State
gave the two souls permission to commit mutual mortgage for life.
Gilfoyle was growing nervous. He told Kedzie that he was expected at the
office. There were several advertisements to write for the next day's
papers, and he had given the firm no warning of what he had not foreseen
the day before. If they hunted for a preacher, Gilfoyle would get into
trouble with Mr. Kiam.
If they had listened to the excellent motto, “Business before pleasure,”
they might never have been married. That would have saved them a vast
amount of heartache, both blissful and hateful. But they were afraid to
postpone their nuptials. The mating instinct had them in its grip.
They fretted awhile in the hurlyburly of other love-mad couples and
wondered what to do. Gilfoyle finally pushed up to one of the windows
again and asked:
“What's the quickest way to get married? Isn't there a preacher or
alderman or something handy?”
“Aldermen are not allowed to marry folks any more,” he was told.
“But the City Clerk will hitch you up for a couple of dollars. The
marriage-room is right up-stairs.”
This seemed the antipodes of romance and Gilfoyle hesitated to decide.
But Kedzie, knowing his religious ardor against religions, said:
“What's the diff? I don't mind.”
Gilfoyle smiled at last, and the impatient lovers hurried out into the
corridor. They would not wait for the elevator, but ran up the steps.
They passed a trio of youth, a girl and two young fellows. One of the
lads gave the other a shove that identified the bridegroom. The girl was
holding her left hand up and staring at her new ring. A pessimist might
have seen a portent in the cynical amusement of her smile, and another
in the aweless speed with which Gilfoyle and Kedzie hustled toward the
awful mystery of such a union as marriage attempts.
The wedlock-factory was busy. In spite of the earliness of the hour the
waiting-room was crowded, its benches full. The only place for Kedzie
to sit was next to a couple of negroes, the man in Ethiopian foppery
grinning up into the face of a woman who held his hat and cane, and
simpered in ebony.
Kedzie whispered to Gilfoyle her displeased surprise:
“Why, they act just like we do.”
Kedzie liked to use _like_ like that. She felt belittled at sharing with
such people an emotion that seemed to her far too good for them. Also
she felt that the emotion itself was cheapened by such company. She
wished she had not consented to the marriage. But it would excite
attention to back out now, and the dollar already invested would be
wasted. For all she knew, the purchase of the license compelled the
completion of the project.
A group of Italians came from Room 365--two girls in white, a bareheaded
mother who had been weeping, a fat and relieved-looking father, an
insignificant youth who was unquestionably the new-born husband.
Gilfoyle kept looking at his watch, but he had to wait his turn. There
was a book to be signed and a two-dollar bill to be paid. At last, when
the negro pair came forth chuckling, Kedzie and Gilfoyle rushed into the
so-called “chapel” to meet their fate.
The chapel was a barrenly furnished office. Its nearest approach to an
altar was a washstand with hot and cold running water. At the small desk
the couple stood while the City Clerk read the pledge drawn up in the
Corporation Counsel's office with a sad mixture of religious, legal, and
commercial cant:
“In the name of God, Amen.
“Do either of you know of any impediment why you should not be legally
joined together in matrimony, or if any one present can show any
just cause why these parties should not be legally joined together in
matrimony let them now speak or hereafter hold their peace.
“Do you, Thomas Gilfoyle, take this woman as your lawfully wedded wife,
to live together in the state of matrimony? Will you love, honor,
and keep her, as a faithful man is bound to do, in health, sickness,
prosperity, and adversities, and forsaking all others keep you alone
unto her as long as you both shall live?
“Do you, Anita Adair, take this man for your lawfully wedded husband
to live together in the state of matrimony? Will you love, honor, and
cherish him as a faithful woman is bound to do, in health, sickness,
prosperity, and adversities, and forsaking all others keep you alone
unto him as along as you both shall live?
“For as both have consented in wedlock and have acknowledged same before
this company I do by virtue of the authority vested in me by the laws of
the State of New York now pronounce you husband and wife.
“And may God bless your union.”
The City Clerk had to furnish witnesses from his own staff while he
administered the secular rites and exacted the solemn promises which so
few have kept, and invoked the help of God which is so rarely manifest
or so subtly hidden, in the human-animal-angel relation of marriage.
And now Anita Adair and Thomas Gilfoyle were officially welded into one.
They had received the full franchise each of the other's body, soul,
brain, time, temper, liberty, leisure, admiration, education, past,
future, health, wealth, strength, weakness, virtue, vice, destructive
power, procreative power, parental gift or lack, domestic or bedouin
genius, prejudice, inheritance--all.
It was a large purchase for three dollars, and it remained to be seen
whether either or both delivered the goods. At the altar of Hymen,
Kedzie had publicly vowed to love, honor, and cherish under all
circumstances. It was like swearing to walk in air or water as well as
on earth. The futile old oath to “obey” had been omitted as a perjury
enforced.
Kedzie Thropp, who had dome to New York only a few months before, had
done one more impulsive thing. First she had run away from her parents.
Now she had run away from herself. She had loved New York first. Now she
was infatuated with Tommie Gilfoyle. He was as complex and mysterious a
city as Manhattan. She would be as long in reaching the heart of him.
There had been no bridesmaids to give the scene social grace, no
music or flowers to give it poetry, no minister to give it an odor of
sanctity. It was marriage in its cold, business-like actuality, without
hypnotism, superstition, or false pretense. Small wonder that Kedzie had
hardly left the marriage-room before she felt that she was not married
at all. The vaccination had not taken. She was not one with Gilfoyle.
And yet she must pretend that she was. She must act as if they were
one soul, one flesh; must share his tenement, his food, his joys and
anxieties. Of these last there promised to be no famine.
Gilfoyle was in a panic about his office. He told Kedzie to devote the
morning to looking up some place to live. He would join her at luncheon.
He fidgeted while they waited for the elevator, Kedzie staring at her
ring with the same curious smile as the other girl.