Thus it came about that they met at the City Hall license bureau, got
their license, and half an hour later were married at the house of a
minister in East Thirty-third Street, within a block of the Subway
station. He was feverish, gay, looked years younger than his
thirty-seven. She was quiet, dim, passive, neither grave nor gay, but
going through her part without hesitation, with much the same patient,
plodding expression she habitually bore as she sat working at her
machine--as if she did not quite understand, but was doing her best and
hoped to get through not so badly.
"I've had nothing to eat," said he as they came out of the parsonage.
"Nor I," said she.
"We'll go to Delmonico's," said he, and hailed a passing taxi.
On the way, he sitting in one corner explained to her, shrunk into the
other corner: "I can confess now that I married you under false
pretenses. I am not prosperous, as I used to be. To be brief and plain,
I'm down and out, professionally."
She did not move. Apparently she did not change expression. Yet he,
speaking half banteringly, felt some frightful catastrophe within her.
"You are--poor?" she said in her usual quiet way.
"_We_ are poor," corrected he. "I have at present only a thousand dollars
a month--a little more, but not enough to talk about."
She did not move or change expression. Yet he felt that her heart, her
blood were going on again.
"Are you--angry?" he asked.
"A thousand dollars a month seems an awful lot of money to me," she
said.
"It's nothing--nothing to what we'll soon have. Trust me." And back into
his eyes flashed their former look. "I've been sick. I'm well again. I
shall get what I want. If you want anything, you've only to ask for it.
I'll get it. I know how. . . . I don't prey, myself--I've no fancy for
the brutal sports. But I teach lions how to prey, and I make them pay
for the lessons." He laughed with an effervescing of young vitality and
self-confidence that made him look handsome and powerful. "In the future
they'll have to pay still higher prices."
She was looking at him with weary, wondering, pathetic eyes that gazed
from the pallor of her dead-white face mysteriously.
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
"I was listening," replied she.
"Doesn't it make you happy--what you are going to have?"
"No," replied she. "But it makes me content."
With eyes suddenly suffused, he took her hand--so gently. "Dorothy," he
said, "you will try to love me?"
"I'll try," said she. "You'll be kind to me?"
"I couldn't be anything else," he cried. And in a gust of passion he
caught her to his breast and kissed her triumphantly. "I love you--and
you're mine--mine!"
She released herself with the faint insistent push that seemed weak, but
always accomplished its purpose. Her lip was trembling. "You said you'd
be kind," she murmured.
He gazed at her with a baffled expression. "Oh--I understand," he said.
"And I shall be kind. But I must teach you to love me."
Her trembling lip steadied. "You must be careful or you may teach me to
hate you," said she.
He studied her in a puzzled way, laughed. "What a mystery you are!" he
cried with raillery. "Are you child or are you woman? No matter. We
shall be happy."
The taxicab was swinging to the curb. In the restaurant he ordered an
enormous meal. And he ate enormously, and drank in due proportion. She
ate and drank a good deal herself--a good deal for her. And the results
were soon apparent in a return of the spirits that are normal to
twenty-one years, regardless of what may be lurking in the heart, in a
dark corner, to come forth and torment when there is nothing to distract
the attention.
"We shall have to live quietly for a while," said he. "Of course you
must have clothes-at once. I'll take you shopping to-morrow." He laughed
grimly. "Just at present we can get only what we pay cash for. Still,
you won't need much. Later on I'll take you over to Paris. Does that
attract you?"
Her eyes shone. "How soon?" she asked.
"I can tell you in a week or ten days." He became abstracted for a
moment. "I can't understand how I let them get me down so easily--that
is, I can't understand it now. I suppose it's just the difference
between being weak with illness and strong with health." His eyes
concentrated on her. "Is it really you?" he cried gaily. "And are you
really mine? No wonder I feel strong! It was always that way with me. I
never could leave a thing until I had conquered it."
She gave him a sweet smile. "I'm not worth all the trouble you seem to
have taken about me," said she.
He laughed; for he knew the intense vanity so pleasantly hidden beneath
her shy and modest exterior. "On the contrary," said he good-humoredly,
"you in your heart think yourself worth any amount of trouble. It's a
habit we men have got you women into. And you--One of the many things
that fascinate me in you is your supreme self-control. If the king were
to come down from his throne and fall at your feet, you'd take it as a
matter of course."
She gazed away dreamily. And he understood that her indifference to
matters of rank and wealth and power was not wholly vanity but was, in
part at least, due to a feeling that love was the only essential. Nor
did he wonder how she was reconciling this belief of high and pure
sentiment with what she was doing in marrying him. He knew that human
beings are not consistent, cannot be so in a universe that compels them
to face directly opposite conditions often in the same moment. But just
as all lines are parallel in infinity, so all actions are profoundly
consistent when referred to the infinitely broad standard of the
necessity that every living thing shall look primarily to its own well
being. Disobedience to this fundamental carries with it inevitable
punishment of disintegration and death; and those catastrophes are
serious matters when one has but the single chance at life, that will be
repeated never again in all the eternities.
After their late lunch or early dinner, they drove to her lodgings. He
went up with her and helped her to pack--not a long process, as she had
few belongings. He noted that the stockings and underclothes she took
from the bureau drawers were in anything but good condition, that the
half dozen dresses she took from the closet and folded on the couch were
about done for. Presently she said, cheerfully and with no trace of
false shame:
"You see, I'm pretty nearly in rags."
"Oh, that's soon arranged," replied he. "Why bother to take these
things? Why not give them to the maid?"
She debated with herself. "I think you're right," she decided. "Yes,
I'll give them to Jennie."
"The underclothes, too," he urged. "And the hats."
It ended in her having left barely enough loosely to fill the bottom of
a small trunk with two trays.
They drove to the Knickerbocker Hotel, and he took a small suite, one of
the smallest and least luxurious in the house, for with all his desire
to make her feel the contrast of her change of circumstances sharply, he
could not forget how limited his income was, and how unwise it would be
to have to move in a few days to humbler quarters. He hoped that the
rooms, englamoured by the hotel's general air of costly luxury, would
sufficiently impress her. And while she gave no strong indication but
accepted everything in her wonted quiet, passive manner, he was shrewd
enough to see that she was content. "To-morrow," he said to himself,
"after she has done some shopping, the last regret will leave her, and
her memory of that clerk will begin to fade fast. I'll give her too much
else to think about."
* * * * *
The following morning, when they faced each other at breakfast in their
sitting room, he glanced at her from time to time in wonder and terror.
She looked not merely insignificant, but positively homely. Her skin had
a sickly pallor; her hair seemed to be of many different and
disagreeable shades of uninteresting dead yellow. Her eyes suggested
faded blue china dishes, with colorless lashes and reddened edges of the
lids. Her lips had lost their rosy freshness, her teeth their sparkling
whiteness.
His heavy heart seemed to be resting nauseously upon the pit of his
stomach. Was his infatuation sheer delusion, with no basis of charm in
her at all? Was she, indeed, nothing but this unattractive, faded little
commonplaceness?--a poor specimen of an inferior order of working girl?
What an awakening! And she was his _wife_!--was his companion for the yet
more brilliant career he had resolved and was planning! He must
introduce her everywhere, must see the not to be concealed amazement in
the faces of his acquaintances, must feel the cruel covert laughter and
jeering at his weak folly! Was there ever in history or romance a
parallel to such fatuity as his? Why, people would be right in thinking
him a sham, a mere bluffer at the high and strong qualities he was
reputed to have.
Had Norman been, in fact, the man of ice and iron the compulsions of a
career under the social system made him seem, the homely girl opposite
him that morning would speedily have had something to think about other
than her unhappiness of the woman who has given her person to one man
and her heart to another. Instead, the few words he addressed to her
were all gentleness and forbearance. Stronger than his chagrin was his
pity for her--the poor, unconscious victim of his mad hallucination.
If she thought about the matter at all, she assumed that he was still
the slave of her charms--for, the florid enthusiasm of man's passion
inevitably deludes the woman into fancying it objective instead of
wholly subjective; and, only the rare very wise woman, after much
experience, learns to be suspicious of the validity of her own charms
and to concentrate upon keeping up the man's delusions.
At last he rose and kissed her on the brow and let his hand rest gently
on her shoulder--what a difference between those caresses and the
caresses that had made her beg him to be "kind" to her! Said he:
"Do you mind if I leave you alone for a while? I ought to go to the club
and have the rest of my things packed and sent. I'll not be gone
long--about an hour."
"Very well," said she lifelessly.
"I'll telephone my office that I'll not be down to-day."
With an effort she said, "There's no reason for doing that. I don't want
to interfere with your business."
"I'm neglecting nothing. And that shopping must be done."
She made no reply, but went to the window, and from the height looked
down and out upon the mighty spread of the city. He observed her a
moment with a dazed pitying expression, took his hat and departed.
It was nearly two hours before he got together sufficient courage to
return. He had been hoping--had been saying to himself with vigorous
effort at confidence--that he had simply seen one more of the many
transformations, each of which seemed to present her as a wholly
different personality. When he should see her again, she would have
wiped out the personality that had shocked and saddened him, would
appear as some new variety of enchantress, perhaps even more potent over
his senses than ever before. But a glance as he entered demolished that
hope. She was no different than when he left. Evidently she had been
crying, and spasms of that sort always accentuate every unloveliness. He
did not try to nerve himself to kiss her, but said:
"It'll not take you long to get ready?"
She moved to rise from her languid rest upon the sofa. She sank back.
"Perhaps we'd better not go to-day," suggested she.
"Don't you feel well?" he asked, and his tone was more sympathetic than
it would have been had his sympathy been genuine.
"Not very," replied she, with a faint deprecating smile. "And not
very--not very----"
"Not very what?" he said, in a tone of encouragement.
"Not very happy," she confessed. "I'm afraid I've made a--a dreadful
mistake."
[Illustration: "Evidently she had been crying."]
He looked at her in silence. She could have said nothing that would have
caused a livelier response within himself. His cynicism noted the fact
that while he had mercifully concealed his discontent, she was thinking
only of herself. But he did not blame her. It was only the familiar
habit of the sex, bred of man's assiduous cultivation of its egotism. He
said: "Oh, you'll feel differently about it later. Let's get some fresh
air and see what the shops have to offer."
A pause, then she, timidly: "Would you mind very much if I--if I
didn't--go on?"
"You mean, if you left me?"
She nodded without looking at him. He could not understand himself, but
as he sat observing her, so young, so inexperienced and so undesirable,
a pity of which he would not have dreamed his nature capable welled up
in him, choking his throat with sobs he could scarcely restrain and
filling his eyes with tears he had secretly to wipe away. And he felt
himself seized of a sense of responsibility for her as strong in its
solemn, still way as any of the paroxysms of his passion had been.
He said: "My dear--you mustn't decide anything so important to you in a
hurry."
A tremor passed over her, and he thought she was going to dissolve in
hysterics. But she exhibited once more that marvelous and mysterious
self-control, whose secret had interested and baffled him. She said in
her dim, quiet way:
"It seems to me I just can't stay on."
"You can always go, you know. Why not try it a few days?"
He could feel the trend of her thoughts, and in the way things often
amuse us without in the least moving us to wish to laugh, he was amused
by noting that she was trying to bring herself to stay on, out of
consideration for _his_ feelings! He said with a kind of paternal
tenderness:
"Whenever you want to go, I am willing to arrange things for you--so
that you needn't worry about money. But I feel that, as I am older than
you, I ought to do all I can to keep you from making a mistake you might
soon regret."
She studied him dubiously. He saw that she--naturally enough--did not
believe in his disinterestedness, that she hadn't a suspicion of his
change, or, rather collapse, of feeling. She said:
"If you ask it, I'll stay a while. But you must promise to--to be kind
to me."
There was only gentleness in his smile. But what a depth of satirical
self-mockery and amusement at her innocent young egotism it concealed!
"You'll never have reason to speak of that again, my dear," said he.
"I--can--trust you?" she said.
"Absolutely," replied he. "I'll have another room opened into this
suite. Would you like that?"
"If you--if you don't mind."
He stood up with sudden boyish buoyance. "Now--let's go shopping. Let's
amuse ourselves."
She rose with alacrity. She eyed him uncertainly, then flung her arms
round his neck and kissed him.
"You are _so_ good to me!" she cried. "And I'm not a bit nice."
He did not try to detain her, but sent her to finish dressing, with an
encouraging pat on the shoulder and a cheerful, "Don't worry about
yourself--or me."