“I'm sure, Mr. Blacklock,” she said plaintively, “I only wished to say what was pleasant and nice about your fiancée. I know she's a lovely girl. I've often admired her at the opera. She goes a great deal in Mrs. Langdon's box, and Mrs. Langdon and I are together on the board of managers of the Magdalene Home, and also on the board of the Hospital for Unfortunate Gentlefolk.” And so on, and on.
I walked up and down among those wrapped-up, ghostly chairs and tables and cabinets and statues many times before Joe arrived with the minister—and he was a Methodist, McCabe by name. You should have seen Mrs. Ball's look as he advanced his portly form and round face with its shaven upper lip into the drawing-room. She tried to be cordial, but she couldn't—her mind was on Anita, and the horror that would fill her when she discovered that she was to be married by a preacher of a sect unknown to fashionable circles.
“All I ask of you,” said I to him, “is that you cut it as short as possible. Miss Ellersly is tired and nervous.” This while we were shaking hands after Joe's introduction.
“You can count on me, sir,” said McCabe, giving my hand an extra shake before dropping it. “I've no doubt, from what my young neighbor here tells me, that your marriage is already made in your hearts and with all solemnity. The form is an incident—important, but only an incident.”
I liked that, and I liked his unaffected way of saying it. His voice had more of the homely, homelike, rural twang in it than I had heard in New York in many a day. I mentally doubled the fee I had intended to give him. And now Alva and she were coming down the stairway. I was amazed at sight of her. Her evening dress had given place to a pretty blue street suit with a short skirt—white showing at her wrists, at her neck and through slashings in the coat over her bosom; and on her head was a hat to match. I looked at her feet—the slippers had been replaced by boots. “And they're just right for her,” said Alva, who was following my glance, “though I'm not so tall as she.”
But what amazed me most, and delighted me, was that she seemed to be almost in good spirits. It was evident she had formed with Joe's daughter one of those sudden friendships so great and so vivid that they rarely lived long after the passing of the heat of the emergency that bred them. Mrs. Ball saw it, also, and was straightway giddied into a sort of ecstasy. You can imagine the visions it conjured. I've no doubt she talked house on the east side of the park to Joe that very night, before she let him sleep. However, Anita's face was serious enough when we took our places before the minister, with his little, black-bound book open. And as he read in a voice that was genuinely impressive those words that no voice could make unimpressive, I saw her paleness blanch into pallor, saw the dusk creep round her eyes until they were like stars waning somberly before the gray face of dawn. When they closed and her head began to sway, I steadied her with my arm. And so we stood, I with my arm round her, she leaning lightly against my shoulder. Her answers were mere movements of the lips.
At the end, when I kissed her cheek, she said: “Is it over?”
“Yes,” McCabe answered—she was looking at him. “And I wish you all happiness, Mrs. Blacklock.”
At that name, her new name, she stared at him with great wondering eyes; then her form relaxed. I carried her to a chair. Joe came with a glass of champagne; she drank some of it, and it brought life back to her face, and some color. With a naturalness that deceived even me for the moment, she smiled up at Joe as she handed him the glass. “Is it bad luck,” she asked, “for me to be the first to drink my own health?” And she stood, looking tranquilly at every one—except me.
I took McCabe into the hall and paid him off.