“I could promise you anything, Frank,” he said after a long pause. “Yes,” he repeated, “I promise.”
She crept closer to him, and with a little half-stifled, half-hungry cry held his face down to her own. He could feel the abandon of complete surrender in the most intimate warmth of her mouth, as it sought and clung to his own.
When her uplifted arms that had locked about his neck once more fell away, and the heavy head of dull gold sank capitulatingly down on his knee, the hurdy-gurdy had passed out of hearing, and the lintel-shadow had crept down to where they sat.
CHAPTER XXIX
On the following afternoon Frances Candler and Durkin were quietly married.
It was a whim of Durkin’s that the ceremony should take place on Broadway, “on the old alley,” as he put it, “where I’ve had so many ups and downs.” So, his arm in a black silk sling, and she in a gown of sober black velvet, with only a bunch of violets bought from an Italian boy on a street corner, they rode together in a taxi-cab to the rectory of Grace Church.
To the silent disappointment of each of them the rector was not at home. They were told, indeed, that it would be impossible for a marriage service to be held at the church that afternoon. A little depressed, inwardly, at this first accidental cross-thread of fate, they at once made their way up Fifth Avenue to the Church of the Transfiguration.
“The way we ought to do it,” said Frances, as they rode up the undulating line of the Avenue, “would be to have it all carried on over a long-distance telephone. We should have had some justice of the peace in Jersey City ring us up at a certain time, and send the words of the service over the wire. That would have been more in the picture. Then you should have twisted up an emergency wedding ring of KK wire, and slipped it on my finger, and then cut in on a Postal-Union or an Associated Press wire and announced the happy event to the world!”
She rattled bravely on in this key, for she had noticed, in the strong sidelight of the taxi-window, that he looked pale and worn and old, seeming, as he sat there at her side, only a shadow of the buoyant, resilient, old-time Durkin that she had once known.
The service was read in the chapel, by a hurried and deep-voiced English curate, who shook hands with them crisply but genially, before unceremoniously slipping off his surplice. He wished them much happiness. Then he told them that the full names would have to be signed in the register, as a report of the service must be sent to the Board of Health, and that it was customary to give the sexton and his assistant two dollars each for acting as witnesses.