A low-hung Victoria, drawn by a glossy team in harness that glittered with silver, swung at a dignified pace around the corner of Filbert Avenue, two wooden men in plum-coloured livery on the box, two dignified figures on the rear seat, one middle-aged, large, formidable, commanding, sitting erect and high, the other slighter and not commanding.
Instantly, at the sight, Henry's frown gave place to a nervously eager smile, returned, went again. When the carriage at length drew up before Berger's grocery, across the way, however, he had both frown and smile under reasonable control and was a presentable if deadly serious young man.
The footman leaped down and stood at attention. The formidable one stepped out and entered Berger's. And the slight, fresh-faced girl, leaned out to welcome the youth who rushed across the street.
In Sunbury, in the nineties, a youth and a maiden could 'go together' without a thought of the future. The phrase implied frank pairing off, perhaps an occasionally shyly restrained sentimental passage, in general a monopoly of the other's spare time. An 'understanding,' on the other hand, was a. distinctly transitive state, leading to engagement and marriage as soon as the youth was old enough or could earn a living or the opposition of parents could be overcome.
The relationship between Cicely and Henry had lately hovered delicately between the two states. If it seemed, after each timid advance, to recede from the 'understanding' point; that was because of the burdens and the heavy responsibility that instantly claimed their thoughts at the mere suggestion of engagement and marriage:
There were among the parents of Henry's boyhood friends, couples that had married at twenty or even younger, and on no greater income than Henry's rather doubtful twelve dollars a week. But that day had gone by. An 'understanding' meant now, at the very least, that you were saving for a diamond. You could hardly ask a nice girl to become engaged without one.
And marriage meant good clothes for parties, receptions and Sundays, and the street; it meant membership in the Country Club, a reasonably priced pew in church, a rented house, at least, preferably not in South Sunbury and distinctly not out on the prairie or too near the tracks, a certain amount invested in furniture, dishes and other house fittings, and reasonable credit with the grocer and at the meat-market. You could hardly ask a nice girl to go in for less than that. You really couldn't afford to let her go in for less.
So they were marrying later now; six or eight or ten years later. And the girls were turning to older men. Here in Sunbury, Clemency Snow had married a man seven or eight years older whose younger brother had been among her playmates. Jane Bellman had married a shy little doctor of thirty-one or two. And Martha Caldwell, whom Henry had 'gone with' for two or three years, was permitting the rich, really old bachelor, James B. Merchant, Jr., to devote about all his time to her. He was thirty-eight if a day.
It was a disturbing condition for the town boys. Thoughts of it cast black shadows on Henry's undisciplined brain as he looked at the girl in the Victoria, felt, in the very air about them, her quick, bright smile, the delicately responsive liftings of her eyebrows, her marked desirability.
'Oh, Henry,' she was saying, 'I've just been hearing the most wonderful things about you! You can't imagine! At Mrs MacLouden's tea. There was a man there——'