“Well, I don’t propose to go through such an experience as we have had for these last three years, not right away, at any rate.”
The judge tried to laugh, as he said:
“Well, I’ll turn Connie over to you; I’m going to have a little peace now.”
The judge complained that he could find no peace, however, anywhere, so great was the preparation that raged thereafter in the house, driving him with his book and cigar from place to place. Mrs. Blair and Lavinia and Connie were in fine excitement over the gowns that were being fashioned, and Miss Ryan lived at the Blairs’ for weeks, while in every room there were billowy clouds of white garments, and threads and ravelings over all the floors.
Meanwhile it was understood that Marley, too, was making arrangements in Chicago. He had leased a small flat on the South Side, and had arranged with Weston to remove most of the furniture of their apartment into the new home where the lovers were to set up housekeeping. Mrs. Marley was to spare them some of the things from her home, and Mrs. Blair, from time to time, designated certain articles which she was willing to devote to the cause. Chad’s contribution was merely a suggestion; he said they could depend on the wedding presents to fill up the gaps.
They were married in the middle of June. The ceremony was pronounced by Doctor Marley in the parlor of the Blair home; everybody bore up well until, under the stress of his emotion, the doctor’s voice broke, and then Mrs. Blair wept and the judge wiped his eyes and his reddened, anguished face. Mrs. Marley cried too, though every one tried to comfort her with the assurance that she was not losing a son, but gaining a daughter. Connie, in her first long gown, acted as maid for her sister, but it was evident that she was desperately impressed by the young author of The Clutch of Circumstance, who had come on from Chicago to act as groomsman.
The company that had been invited was as much impressed by Weston as Connie was; they had never had an author in Macochee before, and though most of them had such confused notions of Weston’s performances in literature that they grew cold with fear when they talked with him, they nevertheless braved it out for the sake of an experience they could boast of afterward. Most of them took refuge in a discussion of Marley’s achievements with him, and they gave him the unflattering impression that Marley’s work was as important as his own.
Many of them had plots they wished him to use in his stories, others wished to know if he took his characters from real life; and Mrs. Carter was of such an acuteness that she identified Marley as his hero, though Weston had tried to keep his book from having any hero. George Halliday, however, was able to save the day; he could discriminate; he had read The Clutch of Circumstance, having borrowed Lavinia’s autograph copy, and he told Weston that while he did not go in for realism, because it was too photographic, too materialistic and lacked personality, he nevertheless had enjoyed a pleasant half-hour with the volume, and considered it not half-bad.
This conversation was held in plain hearing of all in that difficult moment after the ceremony, when the relatives of the bride had solemnly kissed her, and her most intimate friends, like Mayme Carter, had wept on her neck. The people were standing helplessly about; Marley noticed Wade Powell, as dignified as a clergyman, in his black garments and white tie standing apart with his wife.
Marley had never seen Mrs. Powell before, but he recalled in a flash that she filled his conception of her; and this delicate, sensitive little face completed the picture he remembered long ago to have formed. When he saw Powell standing there, his hands behind him, unequal to the ordeal of being entertained in Judge Blair’s house, bowing stiffly and forcing a smile on the few occasions when he was spoken to or thought he was being spoken to, he had a wish to go to him, but he could not then leave his place by Lavinia’s side. He was glad a moment later when he saw his father and Wade Powell in conversation, and as he and Lavinia passed them on their way out to the dining-room he heard his father say: