Meanwhile the accepted lover had become the importunate one. The operation over, there had remained many days before the bandages could be removed--before Jessica could be given her first glimpse of the world for nearly three years. Hugh had urged against delay. If he had stringent reasons of his own, he was silent concerning them. And Jessica, steeped in the delicious wonder of new and inchoate sensations, had yielded.
So it had come about that the wedding was to be on this hot August afternoon, although it would be yet some time before the eye-bandages might be laid aside, save in a darkened room. In her girlish, pa.s.sionate ideality, Jessica had offered a sacrifice to her sentiment. She had promised herself that the first form her new sight should behold should be, not her lover, but her husband! The idea pleased her sense of romance. So, hugging the fancy, she had denied herself. She was to see Hugh for the first time in a shaded room, after the glare and nervous excitement of the ceremony.
Gossip had heard and had seized upon this tidbit with relish. The blind marriage--a bride with hoodwinked eyes, who had never seen the man she was to marry--the moment"s imperfect vision of him, a poor dole for memory to carry into the honeymoon--these ingredients had given the occasion a t.i.tillating sense of the extraordinary and romantic, and sharpened the buzz of the waiting guests, as they whiled away the irksome minutes.
It was a sweltering afternoon, and in the wide east parlor, limp handkerchiefs and energetic fans fought vainly against the intolerable heat. There, as the clock struck six, a hundred pairs of eyes galloped between two centers of interest: the door at which the bride would enter, and the raised platform at the other end of the room where, prayer-book in hand, in his wide robes and flowing sleeves, Harry Sanderson had just taken his stand. Perhaps more looked at Harry than at the door.
He seemed his usual magnetic self as he stood there, backed by the flowers, his waving brown hair unsmoothed, the ruby-ring glowing dull-red against the dark leather of the book he held. Few felt it much a matter of regret that the humdrum and less personable Bishop of the Diocese should be away at convocation, since the young rector furnished the final esthetic touch to a perfectly appointed function. But Harry Sanderson was far from feeling the grave, alien, figure he appeared. In the past weeks he had waged a silent warfare with himself, bitterer because repressed. The strange new thing that had sprung up in him he had trampled mercilessly under. From the thought that he loved the promised wife of another, a quick, fastidious sense in him recoiled abashed. This painful struggle had been sharpened by his sense of Hugh"s utter worthlessness. To that rustling a.s.semblage, the man who was to make those solemn promises was David Stires" son, who had had his fling, turned over his new leaf becomingly, and was now offering substantial hostages to good repute. To him, Harry Sanderson, he was a _flaneur_, a marginless gambler in the futures of his father"s favor and a woman"s heart. He had shrunk from the ceremony, but circ.u.mstances had constrained him. There had been choice only between an evasion--to which he would not stoop--and a flat refusal, the result of which would have been a footless scandal--ugly town-talk--a sneer at himself and his motives--a quietus, possibly, to his whole career.
So now he stood to face a task which was doubly painful, but which he would go through with to the bitter end!
Only a moment Harry stood waiting; then the palm-screened musicians began the march, and Hugh took his place, animated and a.s.sured, looking the flushed and expectant bridegroom. At the same instant the chattering and hubbub ceased; Jessica, on the arm of the old man, erect but walking feebly with his cane, was advancing down the roped lane.
She was in simple white, the point-lace on the frock an heirloom. Her bronze hair was drawn low, hiding much of the disfiguring bandage, under which her lips were parted in a half-smile, human, intimate and eager, full of the hope and intoxication of living.
Harry"s eyes dropped to the opened book, though he knew the office by heart. He spoke the time-worn adjuration with clear enunciation, with almost perfunctory distinctness. He did not look at Hugh.
"_If any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace._" In the pause--the slightest pause--that turned the page, he felt an insane prompting to tear off his robes, to proclaim to this roomful of heated, gaping, fan-fluttering humanity, that he himself, a minister of the gospel, the celebrant of the rite, knew "just cause"!
The choking impulse pa.s.sed. The periods rolled on--the long white glove was slipped from the hand, the ring put on the finger, and the pair, whom G.o.d and Harry Sanderson had joined together, were kneeling on the white satin prie-dieu with bowed heads under the final invocation. As they knelt, choir voices rose:
"O perfect love, all human thought transcending, Lowly we kneel in prayer before Thy throne--"
Then, while the music lingered, the hush of the room broke in a confused murmur; the white ribbon-wound ropes were let down, and a voluble wave of congratulators swept over the spot. In a moment more Harry found himself laying off his robes in the next room.
With a sigh of relief, he stepped through the wide French window into the garden, fresh with the scent of growing things and the humid odors of the soil. The twitter and bustle he had left came painfully out to him, and a whiff of evening coolness breathed through the oppressive air. The strain over, he longed for the solitude of his study. But David Stires had asked him to remain for a final word, since bride and groom were to leave on an early evening train; the old man was to accompany them a part of the journey, and "the Stires place" was to be closed for an indefinite period. Harry found a bench and sat down, where camelias dropped like blood.
What would Jessica suffer in the inevitable awakening, when the tinted petals of her dreams were shattered and strewn? For the first time he looked down through his sore sense of outrage and protest to deeps in himself--as a diver peers through a water-gla.s.s to the depths of a river troubled and opaque, dimly descrying vague shapes of ill. Poetry, pa.s.sion and dreams had been his also, but he had dreamed too late!
It was not long before the sound of gay voices and of carriage-wheels came around the corner of the house, for the reception was to be curtailed. There had been neither bridesmaids nor groomsmen, and there was no skylarking on the cards; the guests, who on lesser occasions would have lingered to throw rice and old shoes, departed from the house in the aspens with primness and dignity.
One by one he heard the carriages roll down the graveled driveway. A bicycle careened across the lawn from a side-gate, carrying a bank messenger--the last shaft of commerce before old David Stires washed his tenacious mind of business. A few moments later the messenger reappeared and rode away whistling. A last chime of voices talking together--Harry could distinguish Hugh"s voice now--and at length quiet told him the last of the guests were gone. Thinking that he would now see his old friends for a last farewell, he rose and went slowly back through the French window.
The east room was empty, save for servants who were gathering some of the cut flowers for themselves. He stood aimlessly for a few moments looking about him. A white carnation lay at the foot of the dais, fallen from Jessica"s shower-bouquet. He picked this up, abstractedly smelled its perfume, and drew the stem through his b.u.t.tonhole. Then, pa.s.sing into the next room, he found his robes leisurely and laid them by--he had now only to embellish the sham with his best wishes!
All at once he heard voices in the library. He opened the door and entered.
Harry Sanderson stopped stock-still. In the room sat old David Stires in his wheel-chair opposite his son. He was deadly pale, and his fierce eyes blazed like fire in tinder. And what a Hugh! Not the indolently gay prodigal Harry had known in the past, nor the flushed bridegroom of a half-hour ago! It was a cringing, a hang-dog Hugh now; with a slinking dread in the face--a trembling of the hands--a tense expectation in the posture. The thin line across his brow was a livid pallor. His eyes lifted to Harry"s for an instant, then returned in a kind of fascination to a slip of paper on the desk, on which his father"s forefinger rested, like a nail transfixing an animate infamy.
"Sanderson," said the old man in a low, hoa.r.s.e, unnatural voice, "come in and shut the door. G.o.d forgive us--we have married Jessica to a common thief! Hugh--my son, my only child, whom I have forgiven beyond all reckoning--has forged my name to a draft for five thousand dollars!"
CHAPTER VII
OUT OF THE DARK
For a moment there was dead silence in the room. In the hall the tall clock struck ponderously, and a porch blind slammed beneath a caretaker"s hand. Harry"s breath caught in his throat, and the old man"s eye again impaled his hapless son.
Hugh threw up his head with an attempt at jauntiness, but with furtive apprehension in every muscle--for he could not solve the look he saw on his father"s face--and said:
"You act as if it were a cool million! I"m no worse than a lot who have better luck than I. Suppose I did draw the five thousand?--you were going to give me ten for a wedding present. I had to have the money then, and you wouldn"t have given it to me. You know that as well as I do. Besides, I was going to take it up myself and you would never have been the wiser. He promised to hold it--it"s a low trick for him to round on me like this. I"ll pay him off for it sometime! I don"t see that it"s anybody else"s business but ours, anyway," he continued, with a surly glance at Harry.
Harry had been staring at him, but with a vision turned curiously backward--a vision that seemed to see Hugh standing at a carpeted dais in a flower-hung room, while his own voice said out of a lurid shadow: "_Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband...._"
"Stay, Sanderson," said the old man; then turning to Hugh: "Who advanced you money on this and promised to "hold it"?"
"Doctor Moreau."
"He profited by it?"
"He got his margin," said Hugh sullenly.
"How much margin did he get?"
"A thousand."
"Where is the rest?" David Stires" voice was like a whip of steel.
Hugh hesitated a moment. He had still a few hundreds in pocket, but he did not mention them.
"I used most of it. I--had a few debts."
"Debts of honor, I presume!"
Hugh"s sensibility quivered at the fierce, grating irony of the inquiry.
"If you"d been more decent with spending-money," he said with a flare of the old effrontery, "I"d have been all right! Ever since I came home you"ve kept me strapped. I was ashamed to stick up any more of my friends. And of course I couldn"t borrow from Jessica."
"Ashamed!" exclaimed the old man with harsh sternness. "You are without the decency of shame! If you were capable of feeling it, you would not mention her name now!"
Hugh thought he saw a glimmer through the storm-cloud. Jessica was his anchor to windward. What hurt him, would hurt her. He would pull through!
"Well," he said, "it"s done, and there"s no good making such a row about it. She"s my wife and she"ll stand by me, if n.o.body else does!"
No one had ever seen such a look on David Stires" face as came to it now--a sudden blaze of fury and righteous scorn, that burned it like a brand.
"You impudent blackguard! You drag my name in the gutter and then try to trade on my self-respect and Jessica"s affection. You thought you would take it up yourself--and I would be none the wiser! And if I did find it out, you counted on my love for the poor deluded girl you have married, to make me condone your criminality--to perjure myself--to admit the signature and shield you from the consequences. You imagine because you are my son, that you can do this thing and all still go on as before!
Do you suppose I don"t consider Jessica? Do you think because you have fooled and cheated her--and me--and married her, that I will give her now to a caught thief--a common jailbird?"
Hugh started. A sickly pallor came to his sallow cheek. That salient chin, that mouth close-gripped--those words, vengeful, vindictive, the utterance of a wrath so mighty in the feeble frame as to seem almost uncouth--smote him with a mastering terror.
A jailbird! That was what his father called _him_! Did he mean to give him up, then? To have him arrested--tried--put in prison? When he had canva.s.sed the risks of discovery, he had imagined a scene, bitter anger--perhaps even disinheritance. His marriage to Jessica, he had reckoned, would cover that extremity. But he had never thought of something worse. Now, for the first time, he saw himself in the grip of that impersonal thing known as the law--handcuffs on his wrists, riding through the streets in the "Black-Maria"--standing at the dock an outcast, gazed at with contempt by all the town--at length sitting in a cell somewhere, no more pleasures or gaming, or fine linen, but dressed in convict"s dress, loose, ill-shapen, hanging on him like bags, with broad black-and-white stripes. He had been through the penetentiary once. He remembered the sullen, stolid faces, the rough, hobnailed shoes, the cropped heads! His mind turned from the picture with fear and loathing.
In the thoughts that were darting through Hugh"s mind, there was none now of regret or of pity for Jessica. His fear was the fear of the trapped spoiler, who discerns capture and its consequent penalties in the patrolling bull"s-eye flashed upon him. He studied his father with hunted, calculating eyes, as the old man turned to Harry Sanderson.