But in the first week of her second month Pauline's interest in her
surroundings vanished. She was corresponding with Jennie Atwater and
Jennie began to write of Dumont--he had returned to Saint X; Caroline
Sylvester, of Cleveland, was visiting his mother; it was all but
certain that Jack and Caroline would marry. "Her people want it,"
Jennie went on--she pretended to believe that Jack and Pauline had
given each the other up--"and Jack's father is determined on it.
They're together morning, noon and evening. She's really very swell,
though _I_ don't think she's such a raving beauty." Following this
came the Saint X News-Bulletin with a broad hint that the engagement
was about to be announced.
"It's ridiculously false," said Pauline to herself; but she tossed for
hours each night, trying to soothe the sick pain in her heart. And
while she scouted the possibility of losing him, she was for the first
time entertaining it--a cloud in the great horizon of her faith in the
future; a small cloud, but black and bold against the blue. And she
had no suspicion that he had returned from Chicago deliberately to
raise that cloud.
A few days later another letter from Jennie, full of gossip about Jack
and Caroline, a News-Bulletin with a long article about Caroline,
ending with an even broader hint of her approaching marriage--and
Dumont sent Pauline a note from the hotel in Villeneuve, five miles
from Battle Field: "I must see you. Do not deny me. It means
everything to both of us--what I want to say to you." And he asked her
to meet him in the little park in Battle Field on the bank of the river
where no one but the factory hands and their families ever went, and
they only in the evenings. The hour he fixed was ten the next morning,
and she "cut" ancient history and was there. As he advanced to meet
her she thought she had never before appreciated how handsome he was,
how distinguished-looking--perfectly her ideal of what a man should be,
especially in that important, and at Battle Field neglected, matter,
dress.
She was without practice in indirection, but she successfully hid her
jealousy and her fears, though his manner was making their taunts and
threats desperately real. He seemed depressed and gloomy; he would not
look at her; he shook hands with her almost coldly, though they had not
seen each other for weeks, had not talked together for months. She
felt faint, and her thoughts were like flocks of circling, croaking
crows.
"Polly," he began, when they were in the secluded corner of the park,
"father wants me to get married. He's in a rage at your father for
treating me so harshly. He wants me to marry a girl who's visiting us.
He's always at me about it, making all sorts of promises and threats.
Her father's in the same business that we are, and----"
He glanced at her to note the effect of his words. She had drawn her
tall figure to its full height, and her cheeks were flushed and her
eyes curiously bright. He had stabbed straight and deep into the heart
of her weakness, but also into the heart of her pride.
The only effect of his thrust that was visible to him put him in a
panic. "Don't--PLEASE don't look that way, Polly," he went on hastily.
"You don't see what I'm driving at yet. I didn't mean that I'd marry
her, or think of it. There isn't anybody but you. There couldn't be,
you know that."
"Why did you tell me, then?" she asked haughtily.
"Because--I had to begin somewhere. Polly, I'm going away, going
abroad. And I'm not to see you for--for I don't know how long--and--we
must be married!"
She looked at him in a daze.
"We can cross on the ferry at half-past ten," he went on. "You see that
house--the white one?" He pointed to the other bank of the river where
a white cottage shrank among the trees not far from a little church.
"Mr. Barker lives there--you must have heard of him. He's married
scores and hundreds of couples from this side. And we can be back here
at half-past eleven--twelve at the latest."
She shook her head expressed, not determination, only doubt.
"I can't, Jack," she said. "They----"
"Then you aren't certain you're ever going to marry me," he interrupted
bitterly. "You don't mean what you promised me. You care more for them
than you do for me. You don't really care for me at all."
"You don't believe that," she protested, her eyes and her mind on the
little white cottage. "You couldn't--you know me too well."
"Then there's no reason why we shouldn't get married. Don't we belong
to each other now? Why should we refuse to stand up and say so?"
That seemed unanswerable--a perfect excuse for doing what she wished to
do. For the little white cottage fascinated her--how she did long to
be sure of him! And she felt so free, so absolutely her own mistress
in these new surroundings, where no one attempted to exercise authority
over another.
"I must feel sure of you, Pauline. Sometimes everything seems to be
against me, and I even doubt you. And--that's when the temptations
pull hardest. If we were married it'd all be different."
Yes, it would be different. And he would be securely hers, with her
mind at rest instead of harassed as it would be if she let him go so
far away, free. And where was the harm in merely repeating before a
preacher the promise that now bound them both? She looked at him and he
at her.
"You don't put any others before me, do you, dear?" he asked.
"No, Jack--no one. I belong to you."
"Come!" he pleaded, and they went down to the boat. She seemed to
herself to be in a dream--in a trance.
As she walked beside him along the country road on the other shore a
voice was ringing in her ears: "Don't! Don't! Ask Olivia's advice
first!" But she walked on, her will suspended, substituted for it his
will and her jealousy and her fears of his yielding to the urgings of
his father and the blandishments of "that Cleveland girl." He said
little but kept close to her, watching her narrowly, touching her
tenderly now and then.
The Reverend Josiah Barker was waiting for them--an oily smirk on a
face smooth save where a thin fringe of white whiskers dangled from his
jaw-bone, ear to ear; fat, damp hands rubbing in anticipation of the
large fee that was to repay him for celebrating the marriage and for
keeping quiet about it afterward. At the proper place in the brief
ceremony Dumont, with a sly smile at Pauline which she faintly
returned, produced the ring--he had bought it at Saint X a week before
and so had started a rumor that he and Caroline Sylvester were to be
married in haste. He held Pauline's hand firmly as he put the ring on
her finger--he was significantly cool and calm for his age and for the
circumstances. She was trembling violently, was pale and wan. The
ring burned into her flesh.
"Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder," ended Barker,
with pompous solemnity.
Dumont kissed her--her cheek was cold and at the touch of his lips she
shuddered.
"Don't be afraid," he said in a low voice that was perfectly steady.
They went out and along the sunny road in silence. "Whom God hath
joined," the voice was now dinning into her ears. And she was saying
to herself, "Has GOD joined us? If so, why do I feel as if I had
committed a crime?" She looked guiltily at him--she felt no thrill of
pride or love at the thought that he was her husband, she his wife.
And into her mind poured all her father's condemnations of him, with a
vague menacing fear riding the crest of the flood.
"You're sorry you've done it?" he said sullenly.
She did not answer.
"Well, it's done," he went on, "and it can't be undone. And I've got
you, Polly, in spite of them. They might have known better than to try
to keep me from getting what I wanted. I always did, and I always
shall!"
She looked at him startled, then hastily looked away. Even more than
his words and his tone, she disliked his eyes--gloating, triumphant.
But not until she was years more experienced did she study that
never-forgotten expression, study it as a whole--words, tone, look.
Then, and not until then, did she know that she had instinctively
shrunk because he had laid bare his base and all but loveless motive in
marrying her.
"And," he added, "I'll force father to give me a big interest in the
business very soon. Then--we'll announce it."
Announce IT? Announce WHAT? "Why, I'm a married woman," she thought,
and she stumbled and almost fell. The way danced before her eyes, all
spotted with black. She was just able to walk aboard the boat and drop
into a seat.
He sat beside her, took her hand and bent over it; as he kissed it a
tear fell on it. He looked at her and she saw that his eyes were
swimming. A sob surged into her throat, but she choked it back.
"Jack!" she murmured, and hid her face in her handkerchief.
When they looked each at the other both smiled--her foreboding had
retreated to the background. She began to turn the ring round and
round upon her finger.
"Mrs. John Dumont," she said. "Doesn't it sound queer?" And she gazed
dreamily away toward the ranges of hills between which the river danced
and sparkled as it journeyed westward. When she again became conscious
of her immediate surroundings--other than Dumont--she saw a deck-hand
looking at her with a friendly grin.
Instantly she covered the ring with her hand and handkerchief. "But I
mustn't wear it," she said to Dumont.
"No--not on your finger." He laughed and drew from his pocket a
slender gold chain. "But you might wear it on this, round your neck.
It'll help to remind you that you don't belong to yourself any more,
but to me."
She took the chain--she was coloring in a most becoming way--and hid it
and the ring in her bosom. Then she drew off a narrow hoop of gold
with a small setting and pushed it on his big little finger.
"And THAT, sir," she said, with a bewitching look, "may help you not to
forget that YOU belong to me."
She left the ferry in advance of him and faced Olivia just in time for
them to go down together to the half-past twelve o'clock dinner.