“EVERYTHING AWAITS MADAME.”
FRANK wished to see Theresa well provided for--he was most amiable
and generous where serving a friend cost him nothing and agreeably
filled a few of his many vacant hours. He cast shrewdly about among the
susceptible and eligible widowers and bachelors of his club and fixed
upon Edgar Wayland’s father. The old General and “cotton baron” was
growing lonelier and lonelier. He was too rich to afford the luxury
of friendship. He suspected and shunned sycophants. He dreaded being
married for his money, yet longed for a home with some one therein who
would make him comfortable, would listen patiently to his reminiscences
and moralisings. He had led an anything but exemplary life, but having
reached the age and condition where his kinds of self-indulgence are
either highly dangerous or impossible, he wished to become a bulwark of
the church and the social order.
“He needs me even more than I need him,” said Theresa, when she
disclosed her scheme to Emily, “and that’s saying a good deal. He
thinks I’ve been living in Blue Mountain, thinks I’m simple and
guileless--and I am, in comparison with him. I’ll make a new and better
man of him. If he got the sort of woman he thinks he wants, he’d be
miserable. As it is, he’ll be happy.”
Theresa offered to introduce the General to Emily, but she refused,
much to Theresa’s relief. “It’s just as well,” she said, with the
candour that was the chief charm of her character. “You’re entirely too
fascinating with your violet eyes and your wonderful complexion, my
dear. But after he’s safe, you must visit us.”
When the time came for Theresa to go to Blue Mountain for her marriage,
she begged Emily to go with her. “I didn’t know how fond I was of you,”
she said, “until now that we’re separating. And when I look at you,
and forget for the moment what a sensible, self-reliant girl you are,
it seems to me that you can’t possibly get along without me to protect
you.”
But Emily could not go to the wedding. She was moving into an apartment
in Irving Place which she and Joan had taken. Also she was marrying.
The wedding was set for a Thursday, but Marlowe found that he must
leave town on Wednesday night to go with the President on a short
“swing round the circle.” So on Wednesday afternoon he and Emily went
to a notary in One Hundred and Twenty-fifth street and were married by
certificate.
“Certainly the modern improvements do go far toward making marriage
painless,” said Marlowe as they left with the certificates. “I haven’t
felt it at all. Have you?” And he stopped at a letter box to mail the
duplicate for the Board of Health. As he balanced it on the movable
shelf, he looked at her with a queer expression in his eyes. “You
can still draw back,” he said. “If we tear up the papers, we’re not
married. If I mail this one we are.”
She made a movement toward the balancing letter and he hastily let it
drop into the box. “Too late,” he said, in a mock tragic tone. “We are
married--tied--bound!”
“And now let us forget it,” was Emily’s reply. “No one knows it except
us; and we need never think of it.”
They were silent on the journey downtown, and her slight depression
seemed to infect him deeply. Two hours after the ceremony he was dining
alone in the Washington express, and she and Joan were having their
first dinner in their first “home.”
Two weeks later--in the last week of September--she took the four
o’clock boat for Atlantic Highlands and the train there for Seabright.
At the edge of the platform of the deserted station she found the
yellow trap with stripes of red on the body and shafts--the trap he had
described in his letter.
“For Germain’s?” she asked the driver, after she had looked round
carefully, as if she were not going to meet her husband.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered. “They’re expecting you.”
Her trunk and bag were put on the seat with the driver and they were
soon in the Rumson road, gorgeous with autumn finery. There were
the odours of the sea and the woods, and the air was tranquil yet
exhilarating. The trim waggon, the brilliant trees arching overhead,
the attractive houses and lawns on either side--it seemed to her that
she was in a dream. They turned down a lane to the right. It led
through a thick grove of maples, its foliage a tremulous curtain of
scarlet and brown lit by the declining sun. Another turn and they were
at the side entrance to an old-fashioned brick house with creepers
screening verandas and balconies. There were tables on the verandas,
and tables out in the garden under the trees. She could hear only the
birds and the faint sigh of the distant surf.
Rapid footsteps, and a small, fat, smooth man appeared and bowed
profoundly. “Monsieur has not arrived yet,” he said. “Madame Marlowe,
is it not?”
She blushed and answered nervously, “Yes--that is--yes.” It was the
first time she had heard her legal name, or even had definitely
recognised its existence.
“Monsieur telegraphed for madame”--He had a way of saying madame which
suggested that it was a politeness rather than an actuality--“to order
dinner, and that he will presently come to arrive by the Little Silver
station from which he will drive. He missed his train unhappily. But
madame need not derange herself. Monsieur comes to arrive now.”
Emily seated herself on the veranda at its farthest table from the
entrance. “How guilty and queer and--happy I feel,” she thought.
Monsieur Germain brought the dinner card. “I’m sure we can trust to you
for the dinner,” she said.
“Bien, madame. It will be a pleasure. And will madame have a refreshing
drink while she passes the time?”
“Yes--a little--perhaps--a little brandy?” she said tentatively.
“Excellent.” And Germain himself brought a “pony” of brandy, a tall
empty glass and a bottle of soda. He opened the soda and went away.
She drank the brandy from the little glass, and then some of the soda.
Almost instantly she felt her timidity flying before a warm courage
that spread through her veins and sparkled in her eyes. “It is even
more beautiful here than I imagined it would be,” she thought, as
she looked round. “And I’m glad I got here first and had a chance to
get--the brandy.”
When her husband came he found her leaning against a pillar of the
veranda looking out into space, an attitude that was characteristic of
her. She greeted him with a blush, with downcast eyes, with mischievous
radiance.
“I just saw my first star,” she said, “and I made a wish.”
He put his arm round her and his head against hers. “Don’t tell me what
you wished,” he said, “for--I--we--want it to come true. It _must_
come true. And it will, won’t it?”
“I’m very, very happy--thus far,” she answered.
They stood in silence, watching Germain and the waiter set a table
under the trees--the linen, the silver and glass and china, the
candlesticks. And then Germain came to the walk below them and beamed
up at them.
“Everything awaits madame,” he said.