I must explain that it did not occur to me that she had been drinking. My country imagination was not equal to that flight. To be sure, since my arrival I had learned that the women of the New Nineveh did drink; I had peered into the “orange room,” and the “palm room,” and several other strange rooms, and had seen gorgeous peacock-creatures with little glasses of highly-colored liquids before them. But I had not got so far as to imagine any consequences; I had never thought of connecting the high color in women’s cheeks, the sparkle in women’s eyes, the animation of women’s chatter with the little glasses of highly-colored liquids. They had so many other reasons for being animated, these fortunate, victorious ones!
No, I only knew that this woman was excited; and I began forthwith to imagine most desperate and romantic things. You must remember what I said when I was first telling about Sylvia—that my ideas of the grand monde had been derived from cheap fiction in “Farm” and “Home” and “Fireside” publications. You all know the old story of the beautiful heroine who marries the dissolute duke; how the duke’s cast-off mistress attends the wedding, and does something melodramatic and thrilling—perhaps shoots at the duke, perhaps throws vitriol at the bride, perhaps hands her a letter which is worse than vitriol to her innocent young soul. I smile when I think how instantly I understood this situation, and with what desperate seriousness I made ready to play my part—watching the woman like a cat, ready to spring and seize her at the first hostile move. And yet, after all, it was no joke, for Claire was really quite capable of a murderous impulse when she was in her present condition.
Other people had begun to notice her peculiar behavior; I saw one or two women edging away from her, but I stayed all the closer. The time came when we heard the music of the Mendelssohn March, and the excitement in the crowd told us what was coming. Suddenly the doors of the church swung open—and there, in her radiant loveliness—the bride!
Her veil was thrown back, but her eyes were cast down, and she clung to the arm of her husband. Oh, what a vision she was, and what a thrill went about! For myself, however, I scarcely saw her. My eyes were on the strange woman.
She looked like a mad creature; quivering in every nerve, her fingers twisting and untwisting themselves like writhing snakes. She had crouched, as if ready to spring; and I had my hands within a foot of hers, ready to stop her. The procession moved through the passage kept clear by the police, and I literally held my breath while they passed—held it until the bride had stepped into a limousine, and the bridegroom had followed, and the door had slammed. Then suddenly the strange woman drew herself up and turned upon me, her face glaring into mine. I saw her wild eyes—and also I got a whiff of her breath. She laughed, a hysterical, hateful laugh, and muttered: “She’ll pay for what she gets!”
I whispered “Hush!” But the woman cried again, so that several people heard her: “She’ll pay for everything she gets from him!” She added a phrase in French, the meaning and import of which I learned to understand long afterwards—“Le cadeau de noce que la maitresse laisse dans la corbeille de la jeune fille!” Then suddenly I saw her sway, and I caught her and steadied her, as I know how to steady people with my big strong arms.
And that, reader, was the strange way of my coming into the life of Sylvia Castleman!
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