VI
One night back over the years, Nathan and I had idled down the Green River in the starlight, and the poet had dreamed dreams of his wedding day—fantastic, vague, exotic—the wonder noon of the future all blurred in autumn lights, laughter, love and flowers.
Fred Babcock, real-estate agent and justice of the peace, in the Norwalk Block, tucked a small brown flask hurriedly in the bottom drawer of his desk when he heard somebody coming up the stairs. He threw his “chew” in the stove and nipped his finger on the hot iron door. He was shaking the smarting hand and swearing when Nathan appeared in the doorway. There was some one behind him.
“Mr. Babcock,” asked the boy in a strained voice, “wonder if I could get you to perform a m-m-marriage?”
“Whose?” gaped Fred.
“Mine! Mine and Miss Richards.”
Fred looked from one to the other blankly.
“Well, of course, if it’s bad as that,” he assented. “Come in! Gawd! I ain’t hitched nobody for so long b’darned if I know where to look for the book.”
Milly clung to Nathan frightenedly. Her other hand held her cloak together, for the dangling button had ceased its dangling somewhere en route.
Fred found the book in an empty cigar box that had fallen upon a pile of old overshoes and fishing tackle.
“B’darn! We gotta have a witness!” he declared. “An’ you gotcha license all proper, aincher?”
Nathan could produce a license but not a witness. Fred departed to “scare one out.” He was pleased with the prospect of making five dollars so easily to top off the week,—just like “picking it up in the street.”
While Fred was absent, Milly and Nathan sat stiffly. Dimly in the grief-stunned boy’s mind was a thought that by this he was going Carol one better! Wait until she heard! Then too, he never would have to go back to his father and mother. Milly was all right! As good as the run of ’em! She was The Sex anyhow and had proved that she loved him. Had she not stayed at work during the strike? Had she not gone uptown once and brought him down a basket of supper, unasked?
Fred came back with a colored man in tow,—old Ezra Hassock, janitor for a half-dozen Main Street blocks and tender of their nocturnal fires. He wore white overalls and a dented felt hat. The hat had cobwebs on it, and his hands hung from the length of his arms like smoked hams.
“Well, stand up, and we’ll have the agony over,” was the cheery way the justice of the peace phrased it. “Gotta ring?”
“Yes,” said Nathan thickly. “I bought one when we came across the square just now.”
“Well, grab her left lunch-hook and hang on,” was Fred’s equally jovial way of directing the ceremonies. “You, Ezra! Take the cotton battin’ out your ears and look like a witness!”
“Ain’t got no cotton battin’ in mah ears!” rejoined Ezra. Thereat all present laughed. It was an excellent joke.
“In the name of God, Amen!”
A knife ran into Nathan’s heart. Where was Carol this moment and what was she doing? The paper must have been mailed a week before—she had been several days on her honeymoon already.... Carol had wanted him to get the Harvey house in Pearl Street.... Milly’s hand was very sweaty and hard, calloused from the pasting of many boxes.... Where had old Ezra got so many cobwebs on his hat?... Where would he take Milly that first night?... Where was Carol and what——
“Yes! I mean ‘I do!’” he answered anent keeping, loving and cherishing this female in sickness and in health and all the rest of it, whatever it was.
He was dimly conscious that he was trying to get the ring on Milly’s finger; it didn’t fit half so well as it had in the jewelry store. Ezra was grinning—showing ivories like an enameled picket-fence—it was fourteen minutes after nine o’clock—Carol had said she wanted the living room furnished in Mission——
“... I now therefore pronounce you man and wife and may God bless your union, Amen! And it’ll cost you five bucks.”
Nathan and Milly came down into Main Street. It looked quite like Main Street on a hundred other Saturday nights.
“Where’ll we go?” asked Milly, as they paused on the top step in front of the Norwalk Block so as not to be jostled by the grocery-bill-paying, Sunday-meat-buying crowd. She clung to Nathan’s arm with one hand and in the other held her marriage certificate as though she didn’t know what to do with it. Which she didn’t.
“I dunno!” said Nathan vaguely. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to go home and tell Ma and the kids,” returned Milly honestly. “To think when I left the house to-night, I was coming back married! My Gawd!”
They descended the four stone steps and were obliterated at once in the serpentine sidewalk traffic of hopeless mediocrity.
BOOK TWO
SUNSHINE GLORIOUS