“Tuesday night she came into my room and got into my bed. She put her arms round me and said, ‘Helen, I can’t marry him! He’s—he’s just awful! It makes me cold all over for him to touch me.’ We talked nearly all night—and—I feel sorry for her—but I felt it would be wrong for me to go to the wedding or have anything to do with it. She wouldn’t break it off—she said she’d go on if it killed her. And I begged her to go to you and ask you to stop it, but she said she wanted to marry him or she wouldn’t. And—but when you said I must go, it seemed to me it’d be wrong to disobey. Only—I can’t apologise to them—I can’t—because—I’ve done nothing to apologise for.”
“Never mind, child,” I said—I felt thoroughly uncomfortable. It is impossible clearly to explain many matters to an innocent mind. “You need not apologise. But pay no attention to Aurora’s hysterics—and enjoy yourself at the wedding. Girls always act absurdly when they’re about to marry. Six months from now she’ll be the happiest woman in New York, and if she didn’t marry him she’d be the most wretched.”
“Poor Aurora!” said Helen, with a long sigh.
But Helen could not have said “poor” Aurora on the great day at St. Bartholomew’s. It was, indeed, an hour of triumph for us all. As she and Kirkby came down from the altar, I glanced round the church and had one of my moments of happiness. There they all were—all the pride and fashion and established wealth of New York—all of them at my feet. I, who had sprung from nothing; I, who had had to fight, fight, fight, staking everything—yes, character, even liberty itself—here was I, enthroned, equal to the highest, able to put my heel upon the necks of those who had regarded me as part of the dirt under their feet. I went down the aisle of the church, drunk with pride and joy. I had not had such happiness since that day when, smarting under Judson’s insults, I suddenly remembered that, if he had honour, I had the million and was a millionaire. As my wife and I drove back to the house for the reception, I caught myself muttering to the crowds pushing indifferently along the sidewalks, intent upon their foolish little business, “Bow! Bow! Don’t you know that one of your masters is passing?”
Just as I was in the full swing of this ecstasy I happened to notice a huge stain on the costly cream-coloured lining of the brougham—I was in my wife’s carriage. “What’s that?” said I, pointing to it.
She told a silly story of how she had carelessly broken a bottle in the carriage a few days before and had ruined a seven-hundred-dollar dress and the carriage-lining.
Instantly the routine of my life claimed me—my happiness was over. I made the natural comment upon such criminal indifference to the cost of things; she retorted after her irrational, irresponsible fashion. We were soon quarrelling fiercely upon the all-important subject, money, which she persists in denouncing as vulgar. We could scarcely compose our faces to leave the carriage and make a proper appearance before the crowds without the house and the throngs within. As for me, my day was ruined.
But the reception was, in fact, a failure, though it seemed a success. Aurora, the excitement of the ceremony over, was looking wretched; and, as she came down to go away, her face was tragical. I could feel the hypocritical whisperings of my guests. Exasperated, I turned, only to stumble on Helen, crying as if her heart were breaking. My new son-in-law bade me good-bye with a cold, condescending shake of the hand, and in a voice that made me long to strike him. It set me to gnawing again on what Helen heard at the dancing class three years ago. When every one had gone my wife came to me, her eyes sparkling with anger.
“Did you see old Mrs. Kirkby leave?” she asked.
“No—she must have gone without speaking to me,” I replied.