“Who is that,—Mr. Weston?”
“No, but Mr. Weston knows him, and knows his intentions, and he has promised to be at the wedding and act as best man.”
“Oh, it would be fine to have a literary man at the wedding, wouldn’t it.”
They talked then about the wedding, and they found all their old delicious joy in it. Marley said it must be soon now, though with a pang that laid a weight on his heart, he wondered, as he thought of all the extravagances he had allowed himself to drift into, where he was to get the money. He could reassure himself only by telling himself that he was going to live as an anchorite when he got back to Chicago; even if he had to give up the pleasant apartment with Weston and go back to the boarding-house in Ohio Street.
“How shall you like living in Chicago?” he asked. “Can you be happy in a little flat, without knowing anybody, and without being anybody?”
“I shall be happy anywhere with you, Glenn!” she said, looking confidently into his eyes.
CHAPTER XXXI
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS
It was a pleasure to Marley to accept the homage the people paid him; they confounded his success in journalism with a success in literature, and under the impression that all writers are somehow witty, they laughed extravagantly at his lightest observation.
But much as Marley relished all this, much as he enjoyed being at home again, with Lavinia and with his father and mother, he was disturbed by a certain restlessness that came over him after he had been in Macochee a few days and the novelty and excitement of his return had worn off. The glamour the town had worn for him had left it; it seemed to have withered and shrunk away. He could no longer, by any effort of the imagination, realize it as the place he had carried affectionately in his heart during the long months of his absence; its interests were so few and so petty, and he found himself battling with a wish to get away. He was fearful of this feeling; he did not dare to own it to himself, much less to his father and mother or to Lavinia.
He was glad that Lavinia would not let him mention going back to Chicago, and as the days swept by with the swiftness of vacation time, he was troubled that he did not feel more acutely the sorrow he felt would best become the prospect of another separation. He was comforted, finally, when he was able to analyze his sensations sufficiently to discover that it was neither his sweetheart nor his parents that had changed, but his own attitude toward life in a small town; he was vastly relieved when he succeeded in separating his feelings and saw that it was Macochee alone that he had lost his affection for, though he could not analyze his sensations deeply enough to recognize himself as at that period of life when external conditions are accepted for more than their real value; he was still too young for that. And so he could spend his days happily with Lavinia and grudge the moments which Lawrence and Mayme Carter filched from them by their calls, and he was as resentful of Mayme’s invitation to the supper which she exalted into a dinner with a reception afterward, as was Lavinia herself.