AT LAST
Marley, in that compensatory pleasure we find in difficulties in the
retrospect, was afterward fond of saying that if he had waited until he
had the money and the position to warrant his marrying, he never would
have married at all.
Just what moved him to take the decisive step he did he would have found
it hard to tell. He had grown accustomed to the life he was living in
Chicago, he had succumbed, as it were, to his environment; he no longer
regretted Macochee and he found a satisfaction in declaring, whenever he
had the chance, that the kindest thing the town had ever done for him
was to refuse him a place within its borders. As he looked back at all
the plans he had formed, he marveled at their number, but he marveled
more that he should have had such regret in the failure of all of them;
he was glad now that they had failed; had any one of them succeeded his
life would have been diverted into other channels, and it gave him a
kind of fear when he tried to imagine his life in those other channels;
he could see himself in those relations only as some other identity, and
it gave him a gruesome feeling to do this.
Not that he was satisfied with himself or his surroundings; he did not
like newspaper work, and he did not like Chicago very well. He was
determined to get out of newspaper work at any rate, and while he could
not yet clearly see a way of getting into the law, he had a calm
assurance that he would do it, in the end. Weston sustained him in this
hope by saying:
"A man can't control circumstances; they control him; but sometimes he
can dodge them, and, after all, every sincere prayer is answered."
During the winter that followed the summer when he had paid his visit to
his home he worked hard at the law, spending in study the hours the
other men on his newspaper spent in their dissipations, and in the
spring he stole away almost secretly to Springfield, took the
examination, and was admitted to the bar.
After it was done, it seemed but a little thing; he wrote Lavinia and he
wrote Wade Powell, knowing the interest Powell would have in the fact,
that he felt no different now as a lawyer than he had when he was merely
a layman. Weston had spent the winter over the book he was writing; in
the spring he found a publisher, and _The Clutch of Circumstance_ was
given to the world. Marley thought it a wonderful book, and so did
Lavinia, and while it made but little noise in the world, Weston said it
had done better than he expected--so well, in fact, that he was going to
give up newspaper work, and give his attention wholly to writing another
book.
It was a shock to Marley when Weston told him they would have to give up
their apartment; it was a break in the life to which he had grown
accustomed. But it seemed a time of change, and it was then he wrote
Lavinia that he thought it useless for them to wait any longer; he
thought they might as well be married then as at any time.
Unconsciously, perhaps, he wrote this letter as if he and not she had
been waiting, and if he had known the state of the sensitive public
opinion in Macochee, he might have felt himself justified in the
attitude. Ever since his visit there the summer before his apparent
prosperity had given the sentiment of the town an impetus in his favor;
the people had turned their criticism toward Lavinia; for months it was
a common expression that it was a shame she was keeping Marley waiting
so long. They would nod in a sinister way, and insinuate the worldliest
of motives; it was generally under stood that she was waiting for Marley
to make a fortune, and this, they held, was demanding too much. She had
withdrawn utterly from the society of Macochee; and she had not gone to
one of the balls Lawrence had arranged that winter at the Odd Fellows'
Hall; her position, outwardly at least, was as isolated as that of the
Misses Cramer, the fragile and transparent old maids who lived so many
years in their house sheltered by the row of cedars behind the High
School grounds.
When Judge Blair received the formal letter in which Marley told him he
had asked Lavinia to name the day and requested his approval, the judge
gave his consent with a promptness that surprised him almost as much as
it did Mrs. Blair and Lavinia. He justified his inconsistency to his
wife, in order perhaps, the more thoroughly to justify it to himself, by
saying that he had long felt Lavinia's position keenly.
"If the strain has been to her anything like what it has been to me," he
said to his wife, "they could not have endured it much longer."
"It will be lonely here without her," said Mrs. Blair, pensively.
"Yes," the judge assented, and then after a moment's thought he added:
"But we can now begin to worry about Connie."
"Don't you dare mention that, William!" said Mrs. Blair, almost
viciously. "She mustn't begin to think of such a thing."
"But she's in long dresses now, and she seems to walk home more and more
slowly every night with those boys from the High School."
"Well, I don't propose to go through such an experience as we have had
for these last three years, not right away, at any rate."
The judge tried to laugh, as he said:
"Well, I'll turn Connie over to you; I'm going to have a little peace
now."
The judge complained that he could find no peace, however, anywhere, so
great was the preparation that raged thereafter in the house, driving
him with his book and cigar from place to place. Mrs. Blair and Lavinia
and Connie were in fine excitement over the gowns that were being
fashioned, and Miss Ryan lived at the Blairs' for weeks, while in every
room there were billowy clouds of white garments, and threads and
ravelings over all the floors.
Meanwhile it was understood that Marley, too, was making arrangements in
Chicago. He had leased a small flat on the South Side, and had arranged
with Weston to remove most of the furniture of their apartment into the
new home where the lovers were to set up housekeeping. Mrs. Marley was
to spare them some of the things from her home, and Mrs. Blair, from
time to time, designated certain articles which she was willing to
devote to the cause. Chad's contribution was merely a suggestion; he
said they could depend on the wedding presents to fill up the gaps.
They were married in the middle of June. The ceremony was pronounced by
Doctor Marley in the parlor of the Blair home; everybody bore up well
until, under the stress of his emotion, the doctor's voice broke, and
then Mrs. Blair wept and the judge wiped his eyes and his reddened,
anguished face. Mrs. Marley cried too, though every one tried to comfort
her with the assurance that she was not losing a son, but gaining a
daughter. Connie, in her first long gown, acted as maid for her sister,
but it was evident that she was desperately impressed by the young
author of _The Clutch of Circumstance_, who had come on from Chicago to
act as groomsman.
The company that had been invited was as much impressed by Weston as
Connie was; they had never had an author in Macochee before, and though
most of them had such confused notions of Weston's performances in
literature that they grew cold with fear when they talked with him, they
nevertheless braved it out for the sake of an experience they could
boast of afterward. Most of them took refuge in a discussion of Marley's
achievements with him, and they gave him the unflattering impression
that Marley's work was as important as his own.
Many of them had plots they wished him to use in his stories, others
wished to know if he took his characters from real life; and Mrs. Carter
was of such an acuteness that she identified Marley as his hero, though
Weston had tried to keep his book from having any hero. George Halliday,
however, was able to save the day; he could discriminate; he had read
_The Clutch of Circumstance_, having borrowed Lavinia's autograph copy,
and he told Weston that while he did not go in for realism, because it
was too photographic, too materialistic and lacked personality, he
nevertheless had enjoyed a pleasant half-hour with the volume, and
considered it not half-bad.
This conversation was held in plain hearing of all in that difficult
moment after the ceremony, when the relatives of the bride had solemnly
kissed her, and her most intimate friends, like Mayme Carter, had wept
on her neck. The people were standing helplessly about; Marley noticed
Wade Powell, as dignified as a clergyman, in his black garments and
white tie standing apart with his wife.
Marley had never seen Mrs. Powell before, but he recalled in a flash
that she filled his conception of her; and this delicate, sensitive
little face completed the picture he remembered long ago to have formed.
When he saw Powell standing there, his hands behind him, unequal to the
ordeal of being entertained in Judge Blair's house, bowing stiffly and
forcing a smile on the few occasions when he was spoken to or thought he
was being spoken to, he had a wish to go to him, but he could not then
leave his place by Lavinia's side. He was glad a moment later when he
saw his father and Wade Powell in conversation, and as he and Lavinia
passed them on their way out to the dining-room he heard his father say:
"Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Powell, when I was young my creed was founded
on the fact of sin in man; but now that I am old, I find it more and
more founded on the fact of the good that is in all of them."
When the supper was over, Lawrence gave the cheer that every one wished
to see come to the wedding by clearing the parlor for a dance, and
Marley was glad that his position now permitted him to refrain from
dancing with a valid excuse.
Marley thought that Lavinia never looked so pretty as she did when she
stood at the head of the stairs after she had donned her blue traveling
gown, drawing on her gloves and waiting for the carriage that was to
drive them to the station. Her face was rosy in the light that filled
the house, and she met his eyes with a fond, contented glance.
"Are you happy?" he asked.
"Don't you see?" she said, looking up at him.
"And will you be happy in that big city, away from every one you know,
as the wife of a newspaper man?"
"I shall be happy anywhere with you."
"Our dreams are coming true," Marley said, "after a fashion. And yet not
just as we dreamed them, after all."
"In all the essentials they are, aren't they?"
"Yes, but you know our dream was that I was to practise law."
"Well, we still have that dream."
"Yes, we still have it; maybe it will come true. Weston says that our
dreams are as much realities in our lives as anything else."
THE END