"That you will soon be mine," he answered her.
XVIII
The wedding came off about four months later, after Miss Paragon's Paris trousseau had safely arrived. Just how to describe such a wedding in reasonable space is a problem, for the plans of it were described in the newspapers weeks beforehand,—all the decorations and preparations, as well as the ancestry, possessions, and accomplishments of both bride and groom. The Associated Press sent out two descriptions of the wedding gown,—one technical, by an expert, and one imaginative, by a sympathetic artist. On the day before the wedding the Fifth Avenue church—the church where "Robbie" had taught Sunday-school, and had for thirty years listened to the edifying sermons of the Reverend Doctor Lettuce Spray, the church, with all its marvellous riot of flowers—was pictured with pen and pencil, and after the great event the front pages of all the New York papers were given up to telling an eager and expectant people everything about it that could be described or imagined. By that time, of course, the radical press had forgotten all its vehemence about Hungerville, and Mr. Robert van Rensselaer was again the noted financier, the prominent social light, the eminent citizen, and the inimitable raconteur. After the couple were safely married, and had spent a long honeymoon upon the Comet, and drunk the full cup of their bliss, I remember reading in the New York papers an address which our Robbie had delivered before the Young Men's Mohammedan Association of Podunk, the theme being industrial brotherhood and the community of interest between capital and labor.
XIX
And now will the reader kindly imagine that four or five years more have sped by; and that Mrs. Robert van Rensselaer is a mother of two children, and a proud and majestic social queen,—a grande dame,—wearing serenely the crown of her exalted station; and that Mr. van Rensselaer is more than ever a power in the financial circles of the country, a man able to make governors and senators by the signing of his pen. His affairs have prospered steadily, fortunes springing up at his command like fruit trees beneath the hand of a Hindoo conjurer. He has organized a great corporation of the rivals of his Company for the preventing of ruinous competition; and he has done other things that have left Wall Street equally aghast.
I should venture upon this portion of my hero's career with great trepidation, feeling dubious of my ability to conduct him safely amid the labyrinths of "the street"; but fortunately this story has been told by experts as to whose authority there can be no question, and I avail myself of the opportunity to quote from their narrative. The language of them is somewhat technical, to be sure; but every branch of human science has to have a vocabulary of its own, and the seeker of knowledge has to master it. All van Rensselaer's life in these days was Wall Street life, and it is necessary to give some idea of what manner of life that was.