The Business of Life

CHAPTER XIII

They were married in the morning at St. George's in Stuyvesant Square.

Gay little flurries of snow, like wind-blown petals from an apple bough, were turning golden in the warm outbreak of brilliant sunshine; and there was blue sky overhead and shining wet pavements under foot as Jacqueline and Desboro came out of the shadows of the old-time church into the fresh splendour of the early morning.

The solemn beauty of the service still possessed and enthralled them. Except for a low word or two, they were inclined to silence.

But the mating sparrows were not; everywhere the little things, brown wings a-quiver, chattered and chirped in the throes of courtship; now and then, from some high façade rang out the clear, sweet whistle of a starling; and along the warm, wet streets ragged children were selling violets and narcissus, and yellow tulips tinted as delicately as the pale spring sunshine.

A ragged little girl came to stare at Jacqueline, the last unsold bunch of wilted violets lying on her tray; and Jacqueline laid the cluster over the prayer-book which she was carrying, while Desboro slipped a golden coin into the child's soiled hand.

Down the street his chauffeur was cranking the car; and while they waited for it to draw up along the curb, Jacqueline separated a few violets from the faintly fragrant cluster and placed them between the leaves of her prayer-book.

After a few moments he said, under his breath:

"Do you realise that we are married, Jacqueline?"

"No. Do you?"

"I'm trying to comprehend it, but I can't seem to. How soft the breeze blows! It is already spring in Stuyvesant Square."

"The Square is lovely! They will be setting out hyacinths soon, I think." She shivered. "It's strange," she said, "but I feel rather cold. Am I horridly pale, Jim?"

"You are a trifle colourless – but even prettier than I ever saw you," he whispered, turning up the collar of her fur coat around her throat. "You haven't taken cold, have you?"

"No; it is – natural – I suppose. Miracles frighten one at first."

Their eyes met; she tried to smile. After a moment he said nervously:

"I sent out the announcements. The evening papers will have them."

"I want to see them, Jim."

"You shall. I have ordered all this evening's and to-morrow morning's papers. They will be sent to Silverwood."

The car rolled up along the curb and stopped.

"Can't I take you to your office?" he whispered.

"No, dear."

She laid one slim hand on his arm and stood for a moment looking at him.

"How pale you are!" he said again, under his breath.

"Brides are apt to be. It's only a swift and confused dream to me yet – all that has happened to us to-day; and even this sunshine seems unreal – like the first day of spring in paradise!"

She bent her proud little head and stood in silence as though unseen hands still hovered above her, and unseen lips were still pronouncing her his wife. Then, lifting her eyes, winningly and divinely beautiful, she looked again on this man whom the world was to call her husband.

"Will you be ready at five?" he whispered.

"Yes."

They lingered a moment longer; he said:

"I don't know how I am going to endure life without you until five o'clock."

She said seriously: "I can't bear to leave you, Jim. But you know you have almost as many things to do as I have."

"As though a man could attend to things on his wedding day!"

"This girl has to. I don't know how I am ever going to go through the last odds and ends of business – but it's got to be managed somehow. Do you really think we had better go up to Silverwood in the car? Won't this snow make the roads bad? It may not have melted in the country."

"Oh, it's all right! And I'll have you to myself in the car – "

"Suppose we are ditched?" She shivered again, then forced a little laugh. "Do you know, it doesn't seem possible to me that I am going to be your wife to-morrow, too, and the next day, and the next, and always, year after year. Somehow, it seems as though our dream were already ending – that I shall not see you at five o'clock – that it is all unreal – "

The smile faded, and into her blue eyes came something resembling fear – gone instantly – but the hint of it had been there, whatever it was; and the ghost of it still lingered in her white, flower-like face.

She whispered, forcing the smile again: "Happiness sometimes frightens; and it is making me a little afraid, I think. Come for me at five, Jim, and try to make me comprehend that nothing in the world can ever harm us. Tell your man where to take me – but only to the corner of my street, please."

He opened the limousine door; she stepped in, and he wrapped the robe around her. A cloud over the sun had turned the world grey for a moment. Again she seemed to feel the sudden chill in the air, and tried to shake it off.

"Look at Mr. Cairns and Cynthia," she whispered, leaning forward from her seat and looking toward the church.

He turned. Cairns and Miss Lessler had emerged from the portico and were lingering there in earnest consultation, quite oblivious of them.

"Do you like her, Jim?" she asked.

He smiled.

"I didn't notice her very much – or Jack either. A man isn't likely to notice anybody at such a time – except the girl he is marrying – "

"Look at her now. Don't you think her expression is very sweet?"

"It's all right. Dear, do you suppose I can fix my attention on – "

"You absurd boy! Are you really as much in love with me as that? Please be nice to her. Would you mind going back and speaking to her when I drive away?"

"All right," he said.

Their glances lingered for a moment more; then he drew a quick, sharp breath, closed the limousine door, and spoke briefly to the chauffeur.

As long as the car remained in sight across the square, he watched it; then, when it had disappeared, he turned toward the church. But Cairns and Cynthia were already far down the street, walking side by side, very leisurely, apparently absorbed in conversation. They must have seen him. Perhaps they had something more interesting to say to each other than to him.

He followed them irresolutely for a few steps, then, as the idea persisted that they might not desire his company, he turned and started west across the sunny, wet pavement.

It was quite true that Cairns and Cynthia had seen him; also it was a fact that neither had particularly wanted him to join them at that exact moment.

Meeting at St. George's for the first time in two years, and although prepared for the encounter, these two, who had once known each other so well, experienced a slight shock when they met. The momentary contact of her outstretched hand and his hand left them both very silent; even the formal commonplaces had failed them after the first swift, curious glance had been exchanged.

Cairns noticed that she had grown taller and slenderer. And though there seemed to be no more of maturity to her than to the young girl he had once known, her poise and self-control were now in marked contrast to the impulsive and slightly nervous Cynthia he had found so amusing in callower days.

Once or twice during the ceremony he had ventured to glance sideways at her. In the golden half-light of the altar there seemed to be an unfamiliar dignity and sweetness about the girl that became her. And in the delicate oval of her face he thought he discerned those finer, nobler contours made by endurance, by self-denial, and by sorrow.

Later, when he saw her kiss Jacqueline, something in the sweet sincerity of the salute suddenly set a hidden chord vibrating within him; and, to his surprise, he found speech difficult for a moment, checked by emotions for which there seemed no reason.

And at last Jacqueline and Desboro went away, and Cynthia slowly turned to him, offering her hand in adieu.

"Mr. Cairns," she said quietly, "this is the last place on earth that you and I ever thought to meet. Perhaps it is to be our last meeting place. So – I will say good-bye – "

"May I not walk home with you? Or, if you prefer to drive, my car is here – " he began.

"Thank you; it's only to the theatre – if you care to walk with me – "

"Are you rehearsing?"

"There is a rehearsal called for eleven."

"Shall we drive or walk, Cynthia?"

"I prefer to walk. Please don't feel that you ought to go back with me."

He said, reddening: "I do not remember that my sense of duty toward you has ever been persistent enough to embarrass either of us."

"Of course not. Why should you ever have felt that you owed any duty to me?"

"I did not say that I ever felt it."

"Of course not. You owed me none."

"That is a different matter. Obligations once sat very lightly on my shoulders."

"You owe me none," she repeated smilingly, as they emerged from the church into the warm March sunshine.

He was saying: "But isn't friendship an obligation, Cynthia?"

She laughed: "Friendship is merely an imaginary creation, and exists only until the imagination wearies. That is not original," she added. "It is in the new Barrie comedy we are rehearsing."

She turned her pretty head and glanced down the street where Jacqueline and Desboro still stood beside the car. Cairn's car was also waiting, and its owner made a signal to the chauffeur that he did not need him.

Looking at Jacqueline, Cynthia said:

"Long ago I knew that she was fitted for a marriage such as this – or a better one," she added in a lower voice.

"A better one?" he repeated, surprised.

"Yes," she nodded calmly. "Can you not imagine a more desirable marriage for a girl?"

"Don't you like Desboro?" he demanded.

"I like him – considering the fact that I scarcely know him. He has very handsome and very reckless eyes, but a good mouth. To look at him for the first time a woman would be inclined to like him – but he might hesitate to trust him. I had hoped Jacqueline might marry a professional man – considerably older than Mr. Desboro. That is all I meant."

He said, looking at her smilingly but curiously: "Have you any idea, Cynthia, how entirely you have changed in two years?"

She shook her head: "I haven't changed."

"Indeed you have – "

"Only superficially. What I was born I shall always be. Years teach endurance and self-control – if they teach anything. All one can learn is how to control and direct what one already is."

"The years have taught you a lot," he murmured, astonished.

"I have been to school to many masters, Mr. Cairns; I have studied under Sorrow; graduated under Poverty and Loneliness; and I am now taking a finishing course with Experience. Truly enough, I should have learned something, as you say, by this time. Besides, you, also, once were kind enough to be interested in my education. Why should I not have learned something?"

He winced and bit his lip, watching Desboro and Jacqueline below. And, after a moment:

"Shall we walk?" she suggested, smilingly.

He fell into step beside her. Half way down the block she glanced back. Desboro was already crossing the square; the limousine had disappeared.

"I wonder sometimes," she remarked, "what has become of all those amusing people we once knew so well – Marianne Valdez, Jessie Dain, Reggie Ledyard, Van Alstyne. Do you ever see them any more?"

"Yes."

"And are they quite as gay and crazy as ever?"

"They're a bit wild – sometimes."

"Do they ever speak of me? I – wonder," she mused, aloud.

"Yes. They know, of course, what a clever girl you have turned into. It isn't usual, you know, to graduate from a girlie show into the legit. And I was talking to Schindler the other evening; and he had to admit that he had seen nothing extraordinary in you when you were with his noisy shows. It's funny, isn't it?"

"Slightly."

"Besides, you were such a wild little thing – don't you remember what crazy things we used to do, you and I – "

"Did I? Yes, I remember. In those days a good dinner acted on me like champagne. You see I was very often hungry, and when I wasn't starved it went to my head."

"You need not have wanted for anything!" he said sharply.

"Oh, no! But I preferred the pangs of hunger to the pangs of conscience," she retorted gaily.

"I didn't mean that. There was no string to what I offered you, and you know it! And you know it now!"

"Certainly I do," she said calmly. "You mean to be very kind, Jack."

"Then why the devil didn't – "

"Why didn't I accept food and warmth and raiment and lodging from a generous and harebrained young man? I'll tell you now, if you wish. It was because my conscience forbade me to accept all and offer nothing in return."

"Nonsense! I didn't ask – "

"I know you didn't. But I couldn't give, so I wouldn't take. Besides, we were together too much. I knew it. I think even you began to realise it, too. The situation was impossible. So I went on the road."

"You never answered any of those letters of mine."

"Mentally I answered every one."

"A lot of good that did me!"

"It did us both a lot of good. I meant to write to you some day – when my life had become busy enough to make it difficult for me to find time to write."

He looked up at her sharply, and she laughed and swung her muff.

"I suppose," he said, "now that the town talks about you a little, you will have no time to waste on mere Johnnies."

"Well, I don't know. When a mere Johnnie is also a Jack, it makes a difference – doesn't it? Do you think that you would care to see me again?"

"Of course I do."

"The tickets," she said demurely, "are three dollars – two weeks in advance – "

"I know that by experience."

"Oh! Then you have seen 'The Better Way'?"

"Certainly."

"Do you like – the show?"

"You are the best of it. Yes, I like it."

"It's my first chance. Did you know that? If poor little Graham hadn't been so ill, I'd never have had a look in. They wouldn't give me anything – except in a way I couldn't accept it. I tell you, Jack, I was desperate. There seemed to be absolutely no chance unless I – paid."

"Why didn't you write me and let me – "

"You know why."

"It would have been reward enough to see you make good – and put it all over that bald-headed, dog-faced – "

"My employer, please remember," she said, pretending to reprove him. "And, Jack, he's amusingly decent to me now. Men are really beginning to be kind. Walbaum's people have written to me, and O'Rourke sent for me, and I'm just beginning to make professional enemies, too, which is the surest sign that I'm almost out of the ranks. If I could only study! Now is the time! I know it; I feel it keenly – I realise how much I lack in education! You see I only went to high-school. It's a mercy that my English isn't hopeless – "

"It's good! It's better than I ever supposed it would be – "

"I know. I used to be careless. But what can you expect? After I left home you know the sort of girls I was thrown among. Fortunately, father was educated – if he was nothing else. My degeneracy wasn't permanent. Also, I had been thrown with Jacqueline, and with you – "

"Fine educational model I am!"

"And," she continued, not heeding him, "when I met you, and men like you, I was determined that whatever else happened to me my English should not degenerate. Jacqueline helped me so much. I tried to study, too, when I was not on the road with the show. But if only I could study now – study seriously for a year or two!"