She started up, trembling, looked round, as if seeking some way of escape or some place to hide. Joe was in the doorway holding aside one of the curtains. There entered in a beribboned and beflounced tea-gown, a pretty, if rather ordinary, woman of forty, with a petulant baby face. She was trying to look reserved and severe. She hardly glanced at me before fastening sharp, suspicious eyes on Anita.
"Mrs. Ball," said I, "this is Miss Ellersly."
"Miss Ellersly!" she exclaimed, her face changing. And she advanced and took both Anita"s hands. "Mr. Ball is so stupid," she went on, with that amusingly affected accent which is the "Sunday clothes" of speech.
"I didn"t catch the name, my dear," Joe stammered.
"Be off," said I, aside, to him. "Get the nearest preacher, and hustle him here with his tools."
I had one eye on Anita all the time, and I saw her gaze follow Joe as he hurried out; and her expression made my heart ache. I heard him saying in the hall, "Go in, Allie. It"s O K"; heard the door slam, knew we should soon have some sort of minister with us.
"Allie" entered the drawing-room. I had not seen her in six years. I remembered her unpleasantly as a great, bony, florid child, unable to stand still or to sit still, or to keep her tongue still, full of aimless questions and giggles and silly remarks that she and her mother thought funny. I saw her now, grown into a handsome young woman, with enough beauty points for an honorable mention, if not for a prize--straight and strong and rounded, with a brow and a keen look out of the eyes which it seemed a pity should be wasted on a woman. Her mother"s looks, her father"s good sense, a personality apparently got from neither, but all her own, and unusual and interesting. No wonder the b.a.l.l.s felt toward her much as a pair of barn-swallows would feel if they were to hatch out an eaglet. These quiet, tame American parents that are always finding their suppressed selves, the bold, fantastic, unadmitted dreams of their youth startlingly confronting them in the flesh as their own children!
"From what Mr. Ball said,"--Mrs. Ball was gushing affectedly to Anita,--"I got an idea that--well, really, I didn"t know _what_ to think."
Anita looked as if she were about to suffocate. Allie came to the rescue.
"Not very complimentary to Mr. Blacklock, mother," said she good-humoredly.
Then to Anita, with a simple friendliness there was no resisting: "Wouldn"t you like to come up to my room for a few minutes?"
"Oh, thank you!" responded Anita, after a quick, but thorough inspection of Alva"s face, to make sure she was like her voice. I had not counted on this; I had been a.s.suming that Anita would not be out of my sight until we were married. It was on the tip of my tongue to interfere when she looked at me--for permission to go!
"Don"t keep her too long," said I to Alva, and they were gone.
"You can"t blame me--really you can"t, Mr. Blacklock," Mrs. Ball began to plead for herself, as soon as they were safely out of hearing. "After some things--mere hints, you understand--for I"m careful what I permit Mr. Ball to say before _me_. I think married people can not be too respectful of each other. I _never_ tolerate _vulgarity_."
"No doubt, Joe has made me out a very vulgar person," said I, forgetting her lack of humor.
"Oh, not at all, not at all, Mr. Blacklock," she protested, in a panic lest she had done her husband damage with me. "I understand, men will be men, though as a pure-minded woman, I"m sure I can"t imagine why they should be."
"How far off is the nearest church?" I cut in.
"Only two blocks--that is, the Methodist church," she replied. "But I know Mr. Ball will bring an Episcopalian."
"Why, I thought you were a devoted Presbyterian," said I, recalling how in their Brooklyn days she used to insist on Joe"s going twice every Sunday to sleep through long sermons.
She looked uncomfortable. "I was reared Presbyterian," she explained confusedly, "but you know how it is in New York. And when we came to live here, we got out of the habit of church-going. And all Alva"s little friends were Episcopalians. So I drifted toward that church. I find the service so satisfying--so--elegant. And--one sees there the people one sees socially."
"How is your culture cla.s.s?" I inquired, deliberately malicious, in my impatience and nervousness. "And do you still take conversation lessons?"
She was furiously annoyed. "Oh, those old jokes of Joe"s," she said, affecting disdainful amus.e.m.e.nt.
In fact, they were anything but jokes. On Mondays and Thursdays she used to attend a cla.s.s for women who, like herself, wished to be "up-to-date on culture and all that sort of thing." They hired a teacher to cram them with odds and ends about art and politics and the "latest literature, heavy and light." On Tuesdays and Fridays she had an "indigent gentlewoman," whatever that may be, come to her to teach her how to converse and otherwise conduct herself according to the "standards of polite society."
Joe used to give imitations of those conversation lessons that raised roars of laughter round the poker table, the louder because so many of the other men had wives with the same ambitions and the same methods of attaining them.
Mrs. Ball came back to the subject of Anita.
"I am glad you are going to settle with such a charming girl. She comes of such a charming family. I have never happened to meet any of them. We are in the West Side set, you know, while they move in the East Side set, and New York is so large that one almost never meets any one outside one"s own set." This smooth sn.o.bbishness, said in the affected "society" tone, was as out of place in her as rouge and hair-dye in a wholesome, honest old grandmother.
I began to pace the floor. "Can it be," I fretted aloud, "that Joe"s racing round looking for an Episcopalian preacher, when there was a Methodist at hand?"
"I"m sure he wouldn"t bring anything but a Church of England priest,"
Mrs. Ball a.s.sured me loftily. "Why, Miss Ellersly wouldn"t think she was married, if she hadn"t a priest of her own church."
My temper got the bit in its teeth. I stopped before her, and fixed her with an eye that must have had some fire in it. "I"m not marrying a fool, Mrs. Ball," said I. "You mustn"t judge her by her bringing-up--by her family. Children have a way of bringing themselves up, in spite of d.a.m.n fool parents."
She weakened so promptly that I was ashamed of myself. My only apology for getting out of patience with her is that I had seen her seldom in the last few years, had forgotten how matter-of-surface her affectation and sn.o.bbery were, and how little they interfered with her being a good mother and a good wife, up to the limits of her brain capacity.
"I"m sure, Mr. Blacklock," she said plaintively, "I only wished to say what was pleasant and nice about your fiancee. I know she"s a lovely girl. I"ve often admired her at the opera. She goes a great deal in Mrs. Langdon"s box, and Mrs. Langdon and I are together on the board of managers of the Magdalene Home, and also on the board of the Hospital for Unfortunate Gentlefolk." And so on, and on.
I walked up and down among those wrapped-up, ghostly chairs and tables and cabinets and statues many times before Joe arrived with the minister--and he was a Methodist, McCabe by name. You should have seen Mrs. Ball"s look as he advanced his portly form and round face with its shaven upper lip into the drawing-room. She tried to be cordial, but she couldn"t--her mind was on Anita, and the horror that would fill her when she discovered that she was to be married by a preacher of a sect unknown to fashionable circles.
"All I ask of you," said I to him, "is that you cut it as short as possible. Miss Ellersly is tired and nervous." This while we were shaking hands after Joe"s introduction.
"You can count on me, sir," said McCabe, giving my hand an extra shake before dropping it. "I"ve no doubt, from what my young neighbor here tells me, that your marriage is already made in your hearts and with all solemnity. The form is an incident--important, but only an incident."
I liked that, and I liked his unaffected way of saying it. His voice had more of the homely, homelike, rural tw.a.n.g in it than I had heard in New York in many a day. I mentally doubled the fee I had intended to give him.
And now Alva and she were coming down the stairway. I was amazed at sight of her. Her evening dress had given place to a pretty blue street suit with a short skirt--white showing at her wrists, at her neck and through slashings in the coat over her bosom; and on her head was a hat to match. I looked at her feet--the slippers had been replaced by boots. "And they"re just right for her," said Alva, who was following my glance, "though I"m not so tall as she."
But what amazed me most, and delighted me, was that she seemed to be almost in good spirits. It was evident she had formed with Joe"s daughter one of those sudden friendships so great and so vivid that they rarely lived long after the pa.s.sing of the heat of the emergency that bred them. Mrs. Ball saw it, also, and was straightway giddied into a sort of ecstasy. You can imagine the visions it conjured. I"ve no doubt she talked house on the east side of the park to Joe that very night, before she let him sleep.
However, Anita"s face was serious enough when we took our places before the minister, with his little, black-bound book open. And as he read in a voice that was genuinely impressive those words that no voice could make unimpressive, I saw her paleness blanch into pallor, saw the dusk creep round her eyes until they were like stars waning somberly before the gray face of dawn. When they closed and her head began to sway, I steadied her with my arm. And so we stood, I with my arm round her, she leaning lightly against my shoulder. Her answers were mere movements of the lips.
At the end, when I kissed her cheek, she said: "Is it over?"
"Yes," McCabe answered--she was looking at him. "And I wish you all happiness, Mrs. Blacklock."
At that name, her new name, she stared at him with great wondering eyes; then her form relaxed. I carried her to a chair. Joe came with a gla.s.s of champagne; she drank some of it, and it brought life back to her face, and some color. With a naturalness that deceived even me for the moment, she smiled up at Joe as she handed him the gla.s.s. "Is it bad luck," she asked, "for me to be the first to drink my own health?" And she stood, looking tranquilly at every one--except me.
I took McCabe into the hall and paid him off.
When we came back, I said: "Now we must be going."
"Oh, but surely you"ll stay for supper!" cried Joe"s wife.
"No," replied I, in a tone that made it impossible to insist. "We appreciate your kindness, but we"ve imposed on it enough." And I shook hands with her and with Allie and the minister, and, linking Joe"s arm in mine, made for the door. I gave the necessary directions to my chauffeur while we were waiting for Anita to come down the steps. Joe"s daughter was close beside her, and they kissed each other good-by, Alva on the verge of tears, Anita not suggesting any emotion of any sort. "To-morrow--sure,"
Anita said to her. And she answered: "Yes, indeed--as soon as you telephone me." And so we were off, a shower of rice rattling on the roof of the brougham--the slatternly man-servant had thrown it from the midst of the group of servants.
Neither of us spoke. I watched her face without seeming to do so, and by the light of occasional street lamps saw her studying me furtively. At last she said: "I wish to go to my uncle"s now."
"We are going home," said I.
"But the house will be shut up," said she, "and every one will be in bed.
It"s nearly midnight. Besides, they might not--" She came to a full stop.
"We are going--home," I repeated. "To the Willoughby."
She gave me a look that was meant to scorch--and it did. But I showed at the surface no sign of how I was wincing and shrinking.
She drew farther into her corner, and out of its darkness came, in a low voice: "How I _hate_ you!" like the whisper of a bullet.