Slow and stately, the measure of the Lohengrin Wedding March pulsated
through the church; much slower and statelier than Herr Wagner ever
intended that it should be delivered, unforeseeing that his minute
directions would be universally disregarded off the stage in order that
the bride might make her progress up the aisle less like a human being
with a happy goal in sight than like a rusty mechanism directed by a
hidden and uncertain hand. Even to that halting rhythm, however, Mary
Delia Fentriss, owner of her own name and her own maiden self for the
last time, managed to walk like a proud and graceful young goddess to
the accompaniment of something more than the usual hum of admiration
and excitement. T. Jameson James stood awaiting her, looking handsome,
well-groomed, perfectly self-possessed, and even more self-satisfied.
As Dee turned she raised her head slightly and let one slow look range
over the gathered congregation, a gesture inscrutable to many, though
the more romantic among the women deemed it conventionally suitable,
as a farewell glance proper to the drama of marrying and giving in
marriage. But two men in that assemblage, both observers of humankind,
both genuinely caring for Dee in diverse ways, read that look and were
secretly disturbed.
The rector caught his cue and swung into his part with all the
empressement due to a highly fashionable occasion, the ceremony
proceeded, its gross symbolism of sex worship, broad paganism, and
underlying acceptance of women's slavery as a divine system, thinly
cloaked in the severe beauty of the words; and Dee Fentriss was Mrs.
T. Jameson James.
Returned to her father's house for the post-ceremonial festivities, Dee
admitted Pat to her room where the last packing was going on, and was
caught in a swift, hard hug.
"Oh, Dee! You looked lovely."
"Did I?" said the bride indifferently.
"You surely did. Where are you going on your trip?"
"Secret. Washington first, if you want to know."
Pat lowered her voice though there was no one else in the room. "Dee,
aren't you scared?"
"Of course not. Don't be an idiot!"
"I'd be. No; I don't know as I would either, if I was crazy about the
man." Pat, thinking aloud, did not see her sister wince. "I'd be too
curious about--about what came next. You'll tell me, won't you, Dee?
_Everything?_"
The bride laughed not over-mirthfully. "Wait till you're older, Infant.
Though I believe that's what they always say and I don't know why they
should. Had a good time?"
"_The_ most priceless time!"
"That's right. I wish I could always be at the top of the heap, as you
are."
"Sometimes I'm at the bottom. I'll have a poisonous grouch after this."
"Will you? You're a queer kid. By the way, do you know that Mark Denby
is quite nuts over you?"
Denby was best man, an attractive but not highly intelligent
Baltimorean. Pat shrugged her shoulders affectedly to hide her
satisfaction. "He's all right in his way."
"Be nice to him to-night, will you? You haven't shown him much."
"Low speed," remarked Pat.
"I wouldn't think Cary Scott was specially high speed, though he's a
dear. You've been playing round with him quite a bit."
"Well, that can't hurt me, can it?" said Pat, a little impatiently, as
one suspicious of criticism.
No such notion was in the mind of Dee, who answered promptly: "No. Best
thing in the world for you, I'd say. But do give Mark a run for his
money this evening."
"Oh, very well! I don't have to marry the bird, do I?"
Dee laughed. "You might do worse. He's got lots of money and you could
manage him like a lamb."
"I don't want a lamb. I don't want anything yet but to have a good
time."
"Shoot along and have it, then."
Thus it was that Cary Scott was mulcted of several expected dances
with no other explanation than a whispered "I'll tell you why later,"
which, however, left him not ill-content. Just before the bridal couple
left he got his first private word with the busy maid-of-honour. They
stood together on the tile of the loggia, now a bower of greenery and a
narrow thoroughfare for the guests going outside to smoke. Pat's first
words were:
"Oh, Cary; did you _see_ Dee's face?"
"Yes." He did not need to ask her when.
"What did it mean?"
"I don't know. Nothing probably."
"You know it did!" Her confidence in his understanding, her appeal to
him in this, the most intimate of family matters, thrilled him with a
new sense of their rapprochement, was stronger testimony to his claim
upon her inner self than a thousand kisses. "You're fond of Dee, aren't
you?" she pursued.
"I'd be fond of her anyway, aside from her being your sister and the
person closest to you in the world. She is, isn't she?"
"But she doesn't know as much about me as you do," murmured Pat. "In
some ways she does, though. After all, you're only a man.... But Dee's
a wonder, isn't she?"
"She is a fine and high personality."
The jealous coquette in Pat asserted itself. "Finer than I am?"
"Much." His answer was grave and sincere. Pat made a little face at him.
"I don't think it's nice of you to think anyone is nicer than I am."
"I love you, Pat." She quivered a little with delight of the words.
"It would make no difference if another woman were as far above you in
character as the stars are above the earth; it would still be you and
no one else in the world for me. Is it enough? Or do you want rather to
be flattered?"
"No," she breathed softly. "I want you to--love me." There was the
faint hesitancy over the committing word which she always evinced.
"Just your own way. But Dee---- Oh, Bobs!" she exclaimed as the doctor
entered the place. "Come here."
"Hello, Bambina. Ah, Cary." Osterhout's face was moody.
"What's on _your_ mind?" demanded Pat. "You look grouchy as a bear."
"Nothing," he disclaimed.
"Did you notice Dee, in church?"
Osterhout's heavy gaze lifted to study Pat's face, then passed to that
of Scott. "Did you see it, too?" he muttered.
"Bobs, _what_ was she looking for?"
"What could she have been looking for?" he fenced.
"It was so helpless, so hopeless," went on the girl; "and yet as if
she had one hope left and weren't going to give up without--without
looking."
Osterhout had his own private interpretation of that last, long quest
of the bride's eyes before she turned them to her bridegroom, but he
was not going to betray it. "All of us are a little high-strung," he
opined. "Imagining a vain thing. Dee's all right."
He passed on his way. As if by thought transference there flashed into
Scott's mind the strange passage between Dee and the electrical repair
man, his old acquaintance, Stanley Wollaston, at the famous Dangerfield
"swim _au naturel_," and the memory of her possessed, dream-haunted
face. Could T. Jameson James ever evoke that yearning? Scott knew that
he could not, and a great pity for Dee filled him.
Pat left him, not to return until the party was dispersed, all but a
few heavy-drinking remnants who had stood by to help Ralph Fentriss
finish up the punch. Later Pat and Cary passed them on their way to the
clematis arbour. The girl's face was sombre and thoughtful.
"I wish she hadn't married him," she burst out.
Scott sought to reassure her. "It's all right, dearest. As Osterhout
said, we're all emotionally stirred up----"
"I wish she hadn't," persisted the girl. "It must be terrible to go
away--like that--with a man--when you don't love him!"
"Oh, nonsense!" He strove for a light tone. "She does love him.
Otherwise why on earth should she have married him?"
Pat's brows were knit, her gaze far away, fixed upon visions. "I wish
it was us," she murmured. "You and I. Going away. To-night. Together."
"My God! Pat!"
"I _do_. I wish there weren't any laws. I hate laws."
The terrible, fiery desire seized him to claim her then and there,
to bid her leave everything for love and go with him to the ends of
the earth, to overwhelm her with the force of his desire; to make her
believe that with him she would know a happiness greater, fuller, more
real than anything in her petty and tinselled prospect of life; seized
and scorched and convulsed him, until she felt, through the hand which
she had let fall upon his arm, the tremors shake his strong frame; felt
them and exulted, through her woman's dim alarms.
"No!" he said hoarsely, in a voice which told how spent he was by the
struggle against himself. "Not that, Pat. Not for you. I'd give the
soul out of my body to take you away with me. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes," she assented. She was daunted by the depths of passion which she
had evoked. But only for the moment. The reaction brought back to her
her hoydenish flippancy. "You don't for a minute think I'd go, do you?
I was only wishing!"
"For God's sake, don't wish!"
"I _do_ wish there weren't any laws. There ought to be a world where we
could go when we're tired of this one, where laws and rules and things
don't count, and we could come back when--when things got too hectic
there."
"Fools think there is, and go there. But they don't come back."
"Let's pretend that there is such a world," she besought childishly,
"and that we can go there whenever we want to. There you could kiss me
as much as you liked whether people were around or not.... There's
nobody around right now in _this_ world, Cary....
"I've got to go in," she sighed at last. "And I don't want to at all.
Tell me good-night."
His last kiss was very tender, very gentle, long and almost
passionless. "That's good-bye, my darling," he said.
"I don't want it to be good-bye." She stretched out her arms to him.
"Oh, I do wish it was us!"
He took her hands, pressed them to his hot eyes and released them.
"Good-night, Pat. Go in. Please!"
"I will," she acquiesced, obedient for once before the pain in his
voice. "But you're driving me over to-morrow, aren't you?"
"To-morrow is another day," he said.
Almost was Pat convinced on the morning following that she had made
a mistake in commandeering Scott and his car for the trip. The train
would have been far quicker and possibly more amusing. For Scott was
unaccountably silent all the early part of the drive. Having arrayed
herself with much selective thought for the occasion, and being
conscious of her charm as set forth by a gown that clung to her budding
form, and a tight little, bright little hat prisoning her dusky,
mutinous hair, Pat resented the lack of attention she was receiving and
thought proper to "jolly" her companion into a more fitting frame of
mind. She elicited little response in kind.
"You're about as gay as a hearse this morning," she observed with
annoyance as the car swung aside from the main highway to a more
sparsely travelled back road. "This isn't anybody's funeral that I
know. Where are we going, anyway?"
"By a route I like to take when I've plenty of time. We'll reach the
Maple Swamp in time for luncheon, I've packed a hamper. I'm sorry if
I'm dull, dear."
"You're quiet. I don't know that you're dull, exactly. I don't quite
see you ever being dull. But I don't want to be quiet to-day. It gives
me too much time to think. And thinking's the very thing I want the
least of right now. I just want to be happy--because I'm with you.
There's nothing to be solemn about, is there?"
"Nothing!" he agreed. But though he talked with his usual charm
thereafter, she was resentfully conscious of the effort it cost him.
Arrived at the luncheon place he ran the car up beside a stone wall
enclosing a coppice which was all ablaze with the last, defiant
splendour of the year. Autumn was going down with all colours flying.
Pat snuffed the keen scented air with nostrils that quivered.
"Oof!" she cried. "I'm ravenous. What a spiffy luncheon! Coffee? Hold
out your cup. When and where shall we lunch together next time, I
wonder? Isn't there an old song or something, 'When Shall We Two Eat
Again?' Oh, no; it's 'When Shall We Three Meet Again?' I'm glad there
aren't three of us here; aren't you?" she chattered on. "You don't look
glad about anything. What are you thinking about so hard?"
"Only that we aren't likely to see each other for some time."
"Some time?" Her face showed alarm and suspicion. "You're not going to
see me any more at all," she accused. "Is that it?"
He smiled wanly. "Hardly as bad as that."
"When, then?"
"How can I tell? Business----"
"Business!" she echoed scornfully. "You're going away--from me."
"For a while."
"Why?" she demanded, "when I need you so much?"
"No. You don't really need me."
"When I want you, then?" she said imperiously.
"Isn't that just a little selfish of you?"
"Of course it is. Have I ever pretended to be anything else? I always
get what I want if I can, and I never give up anything I want without
trying for it. Why should I?"
"An unanswerable proposition," he made reply, with his subtly ironic
smile. "But the tide never runs all one way; I'm afraid that you've got
some harsh disillusionments in prospect."
"I don't care. If I have to pay, I'll pay."
"It may hurt."
"Let it! I'm not afraid."
"Because you've never been hurt. If I were a praying man I'd pray that
you never may be. But that's foolish of course. Life will hurt you. It
hurts all of us."
"Has it hurt you, Cary?"
"It is hurting me now--a little. Not more than I deserve."
"Why do you deserve? You couldn't help liking"--he smiled--"being in
love with me, could you?"
"I could have helped making love to you."
She had a superb gesture. "Could you, though! When I wanted you to?
What harm has it done?"
"So long as it hasn't harmed you----"
"It's helped me. That's why I can't bear to think of your going. I'm
going to miss you so terribly!" There followed the little, slighting,
boyish, devil-may-care hunch of the shoulders. "Not for long, though. I
never do. I go crazy over someone and think he's the whole thing and I
can't see anything in the world without him, and then, pouf! It's all
over."
"So may it be with you now."
"You _want_ it to be?"
"I don't want you to have the pain of missing me as I shall miss you.
But I'm afraid you're going to feel it more than you think."
"Boasting!" she retorted, but there was no conviction in the word.
"No; I'm not boasting. But I've given you something, Pat, that you
haven't had from your minor flirtations. Much that you won't readily
forget. Nor do I want you to forget it all. But--I want it to drop into
the background for you."
"Background? I don't understand."
"When the real man for you comes along into the foreground of your
life----"
"You want me to compare him with you?" she broke in quickly.
"Perhaps that wouldn't be quite fair to him. I've had more
opportunities, more experience of the world than your younger lovers
are likely to have had; you can't expect quite so much of youth in some
ways. But before you commit yourself finally, suppose you ask yourself
whether you care for the man more than you have at any time for me;
if, in case you married him, you would miss out of your life together
certain phases that we have known."
"But of course I shall!" she cried. "What boy do I know that could
understand me as you do?"
Upon the naïve egotism of this he made no comment. "I haven't made
myself quite clear. Before you decide, go back to our association, go
back to all the associations you have had hitherto, and ask if the new
one will take the place of all of them. If not--don't."
"You're trying to keep me from marrying someone else because you can't
have me, yourself," she accused.
"Do you think that of me, Pat?"
"Oh, no; no! I don't. You know I don't. What makes me so hateful?" She
threw herself upon him, pressed her face close to his, turned so that
their lips met; then drew back with a questioning look in her eyes.
"That was a _very_ white kiss," she murmured discontentedly. "You're so
strange to-day."
"There's more, Pat. It isn't so easy to say."
Her intuition leapt to meet his thought. "It's about this." She touched
her cheek to his again. "With other men. I won't, if you don't want me
to."
"I can't claim any promises from you. You wouldn't keep them anyway."
"I _would_," was the instant and indignant response. "No; probably I
wouldn't," she amended, her voice trailing off, "after you'd been away
from me for a while. But what's the harm, Cary?"
"I've told you; it's dangerous."
"And I've told you; it's not, for me. Suppose I'm in love with the man.
Must I act like an icicle?"
"Ah, that is a different matter. If you're really in love."
"But how am I to tell whether I am or not without letting him make love
to me?"
The naïve logic of it left Scott without adequate answer. After all,
these direct contacts were the very essence and experiment of mating,
the empiric method which inexorable Nature prescribes. Had the modern
flapper, with her daring contempt of what older generations considered
the proprieties if not the normal decencies of social intercourse,
only reverted to a simpler, more natural method? Of course, carrying
the scheme a little further, there were obvious arguments against it,
arguments which he did not care to advance to Pat.
"Only be certain," he said after a pause, "that it isn't merely a
casual fascination."
"You know I'm past being an easy necker," she replied with a touch of
self-righteous reproach.
"I know that you are of a sensuous temperament----"
"Oh, I hate that word!"
"I didn't say 'sensual,' my dear. I said 'sensuous.' You are one of
those fortunate people who are vividly alive to all impressions of the
senses. But with you, the sensuous beauty of life is linked up with
imagination. That is why physical attraction alone won't suffice for
you in the long run; sooner or later your mind is going to awaken and
demand the things of the mind."
The morbid look of introspection darkened down over her face. "You talk
as if I had a mind. I'm an awful fool. You make me forget it when I'm
with you----"
"Because it isn't true. You're a woefully uneducated, untrained,
undisciplined child. But you have the hunger of the mind, the
discontent. Just now your senses are hungry" (she winced and flushed)
"and so you don't feel the deeper hunger. You will in time. It is for
that time that I am anxious. The time of the Second Dreaming."
"Tell me," she begged.
"The First Dreaming for you," he prophesied, "will be passionate
and romantic. You may be carried away by mere physical beauty or
superficial charm. I have known women of your type marry their
chauffeurs or elope with gypsy fiddlers."
Pat gave a tiny snort of disdain.
"Probably you are fastidious enough to escape that extreme. But unless
the man you choose can satisfy what is deepest in you, you will awake
from that First Dreaming to an empty world. And afterward, unless you
have found something to satisfy your craving mind, will come the danger
and the seductiveness of the Second Dreaming."
"Will you come back then?" she challenged.
"I shall be a middle-aged man then; though I suppose you regard me as
that now." He forced a wry smile. "No; I shall never come back, in the
way that you mean."
"I'll make you," she laughed. "Unless you've stopped caring."
"I shall never stop caring."
"If I get engaged shall I bring him to you? And if you say not, I won't
marry him."
Scott's face contracted. "No; my dear. I don't think I could quite
endure being put in that position."
"I don't suppose I'll _ever_ understand about you," she sighed. "We
ought to be going on, oughtn't we?"
She looked at him expectantly, but he only set about packing the things
into the hamper.
It was her turn to be thoughtful and silent when they re-embarked in
the car. As they neared the city, she said suddenly, "Come to the
Parmenters' this evening."
"I think not, Pat."
"Your voice sounds hard as iron. Why not?"
"I don't think it's wise."
She affected not to understand him. "They'll all be out. Cissie told me
so."
"We said our good-byes last night. I don't think I could stand it
again."
A long silence followed.
"I wish I'd never teased you," said the girl. "I wish there was nothing
between us that I had to be sorry for--things that I've done to hurt
you, I mean."
"They are nothing, compared to the sweetness and magic of it," he
said. "Don't let yourself think of what doesn't matter."
"Yes; that's like you." She went on with down-drawn brows and face
darkened in thought: "Whatever happens don't ever think that this
hasn't been the best thing I've ever known in my life. When I've
been crazy over men before I've never had a thought for anyone but
myself.... I wish there was something, anything that I could do for
you, dear," she concluded with passionate wistfulness.
"There is. Be yourself; the real self that you are now."
"I'll try. Oh, I will try! But it's so hard with you gone."
At the door of the Parmenter house she did not raise her eyes to his,
but her strong young hand clung within his fingers in a fluttering
clasp.
"Good-bye, Cary, _dear_."
"God keep you, my darling."
She had to grope her way in past the astonished maid who opened the
door.