CHAPTER L

Forbes had not been invited to Persis' wedding. She had debated the

matter feverishly and resolved that it was the lesser slight to leave

him out of the twenty-five hundred who received the double-enveloped

engravings. There was a certain distinction in being omitted, and she

knew that he could not account it an oversight. She had been tempted to

write him a letter. She scrawled off a dozen and tore them up in turn.

What she had to say could not be put on paper. Besides, it would be

hideously indiscreet.

But Forbes was present in her thoughts. He was the chief wedding guest

in her soul. He seemed to kneel between her and the groom and try to

shoulder him away. This added a last terror to the multitude of her

frights--frights ranging in importance from a fear that she might kneel

on her veil and pull it askew to nameless terrors of the bridegroom.

There had been a lilt of gaiety in trying on the bridal robe for the

rehearsals and the posings before the camera. But when she made her

final entrance into the snowy costume it seemed to be entering into the

shroud of maidenhood. The journey to the church was like a ride in her

hearse, only that the progress through the streets was difficult because

of a crowd so dense that mounted policemen could hardly push and trample

lane enough for her to reach the awning.

And under the narrow canopy a rabble jostled her and peered into her

face, even plucked at her robes, as if she had been a French princess on

her way to the guillotine. The rabble inside the church was hardly less

insolently inquisitive for being better dressed.

The preliminaries of the march; the whispered instructions and warnings;

the corrected blunders; the stupidity of her father, made a child by the

shame that sweeps over a father at delivering his girl-child to a man to

possess; the sudden grief of her sister, the Countess; Persis' almost

overpowering tempest of desire to flee from the church and run to Forbes

for refuge--a whirlpool of emotions and memoranda and impressions.

And then the march beginning, the organ blaring, the ushers setting

forth, and her sister and the children and the maids of honor; herself

clinging to her father's arm, which trembled so that she rather

supported him than he her; the arrival at the altar, where Willie was

standing, a sick green from church-fright; the waiting priests, the

rites, the hush of the throng to hear the answers; the strange piping

tone of Willie's voice; the odd sound of her own.

Now she was filled with a realization of the awe of this great deed, a

realization so vivid and so new that it seemed to be her first

understanding of it. While she was kneeling in the prayer her thoughts

were not soaring aloft, but swirling with thoughts of Forbes and

memories of his embraces, a sense of his arms clasping her now so that

she could hardly breathe, a wondering if his eyes and thoughts were on

her, and where her nightcap was, and a swooning recollection of her cry

of "Help me, Harvey!" a frightful impulse to leap to her feet and cry

again to him to help her--then sick shudders at the blasphemy of such

thoughts amid the sacraments at her husband's side--for Willie was

already her husband, she wore his ring. He had kissed her. They were

standing up again. They were signing something. They were leaving the

church. It was over. It was just beginning. She was no longer her own;

nor her father's. Her father could not protect her from this man at her

side. Nobody could. The police and the judges and the laws were drawn

up to keep her his.

Everybody was congratulating her, everybody was smiling, everybody was

grinning to think that the marriage was not yet consummated. Back of all

the gorgeousness and the glitter and the music and the sacrament waited

the hideous profanation, the grossness, the violation of all that was

precious and secret and holy.

She had a blurred sense of returning to the carriage and to the house,

and of the mob there, the clatter of tongues, the price-mark appraisal

of gifts, the swinish greediness about the buffet, the smirking

repetition of the same banalities, the lines of drifting hands, the

faces that floated up like melons on a stream and spoke and sometimes

kissed her. But what did it matter who kissed her now? They were

Willie's cheeks and Willie's lips. She was all Willie's, now and for

evermore.

Eventually, when she was white-mouthed with fatigue and eager to swoon

out of the pandemonium, some one took pity on her, and she was spirited

away to her room and her bridal livery taken from her. The weight of the

veil and the train had been greater than she knew. The blossoms were

lifted from her head, and in their place a little black straw hat with a

frill of black tulle was pinned. And in place of her white satin a

simple Callot gown of sage-green cloth was fastened about her girlhood

the last time.

She looked to be only a smart young woman, but she was now truly in the

robe of sacrifice. They whispered about her and called her "Mrs. Enslee"

with immemorial mischief; but it was still Persis Cabot that slipped

from the house and met Willie, still a bachelor. They hurried into the

limousine and sped to that clandestine meeting in the hotel suite where

they were to tarry till the morrow. And then the yacht was to take them

on a long cruise across an ocean of bliss to the unknown continent

beyond the honeymoon.

And now the crowdless silence seemed to ring in her ears. She had heard

so much noise and suffered so many stares and vibrated to so many

excitements that the abrupt hush left her dizzy as on the edge of an

unexpected abyss. It was like one of Beethoven's symphonies, where sound

is piled on sound and speed on speed till the storm sweeps toward an

intolerable climax, and just as the thunder and the lightning are to

come there is instead a complete hush; and then a little oboe voice

twanging.

She had been swept and spun in a maelstrom, an eternal crash! crash!

crash! Then suddenly she was alone in a room with this little man. She

heard the thud of the door like a coffin lid. She heard the lock click;

she saw him peering at her with a fox-like slyness. He was whipping off

his coat and waistcoat and fumbling at his scarf. And his words were in

his whining, oboe voice:

"Well, that's over. And, thank God, I can get out of this damned collar

before it chokes me!"

That was his first comment on their solitude! But it was better than the

love speeches he tried to make next.

She sank into a chair; but he was wrapping his arms about her. He was

trying to say pretty things, and making a complete fiasco. He was

kissing her with ownership, and she dared not turn her lips from his,

though all her soul was averted.

He was tugging at her hatpins and pulling her hair naggingly. She rose,

controlling her impatience, and spoke with a meekness that amazed her:

"Nichette is there. She will--help me."

He grinned peevishly.

"Nichette, eh? I thought we were to be alone--for once? Well, send her

away--as soon as you can."

He spoke already with command, and she said, with that sick meekness:

"All right, Willie."

She slunk away and was afraid to meet the eyes of Nichette. And even

Nichette wept at her ministrations. And then she sent Nichette away. At

the door Nichette paused to stare through eyes of water, then ran back

and clasped Persis and kissed her, and ran out and closed the door.

And Persis waited for her husband. Her thoughts were bitter. She was

utterly ashamed. It was not the beautiful shame of a bride whose lover

knocks at her door. She was understanding her bargain. She had kept

herself for Willie Enslee. She had fought off lovers and love and fled

from her own heart that she might be worthy of Willie Enslee and his

money! Her body was no longer a shrine. She had rented it to the highest

bidder. And the tenant had arrived.