“I do,” was what Jim and Charity said a little later when Jim had wrested Charity from her sleep by pounding at her door. He waited, frantically, while she dressed. And he had the town's one hack at the door below. He was afraid that the parson would change his mind before they could get the all-important words out of him.
They rode through the rain like Heine's couple in the old stage-coach, with Cupid, the blind passenger, between them. They ran into the church under the last bucketfuls of shower. Jim produced the license he had carried so long in vain. The washerwoman consented to be one witness; the sexton-janitor made the other.
Jim had the ring ready, too. He had carried it long enough. It made a little smoldering glimmer in the dusk church. He knelt by Charity during the prayer, and helped her to her feet, and the little clergyman kissed her with fearsome lips. Jim nearly kissed him himself.
He did hug Mrs. McGillicuddy, and pressed into her hand a bill that she thought was a dollar and blessed him for. When she got home and found what it was she almost fainted into one of her own tubs.
Jim left a signed check for the minister, with the sumlines blank, and begged him not to be a miser. They left with him a great doubt as to what the Church would do to him for doing what he had done for his chapel. But he was as near to a perfection of happiness as he was likely ever to be.
His future woes were for him, as Charity's and Jim's were for them. They would be sufficient to their several days; but for this black rainy night there were no sorrows.
It was too late to get back to the city and luxury—and notoriety. They stayed where they were and were glad enough. They expected to fare worse on the battle-front in France where they would spend their honeymoon.
There was some hesitation as to which of their two rooms at the hotel was the less incommodious, but the furniture had been magically changed. Everything was velvet and silk; what had been barrenness was a noble simplicity; what had been dingy was glamorous.
The ghastly dinner sent up from the dining-room was a great banquet, and the locomotive whistles and the thunderous freight-cars were epithalamial flutes and drums.
Outside, the world was a rainy, clamorous, benighted place. And to-morrow they must go forth into it again. But for the moment they would snatch a little rapture, finding it the more fearfully beautiful because it was so dearly bought and so fleeting, but chiefly beautiful because they could share it together.