| CHAPTER VI. CONCERNING A WEDDING-DAY
On the morning of July 1st, the whole neighbourhood seemed to be assembled in and about the little Anglican Church four miles north of the Atkinson farm. Jim, for the first time in ten months, had slept at his brother's. A number of guests from the city had been quartered there, too.
Bride and bridegroom stood at the steps of the chancel; the bride in white, her veils reaching to the floor; behind her, two girls, also in white; while Jim stood opposite, ruddy of face, with, behind him, Arthur and Mr. McKay, one of his partners in business. Between Jim and Jane, yet slightly behind them, stood the bride's parents, her mother florid, handsome, imperious; her father, slight, delicate, visibly nervous.
In the nave of the church Mr. Wortleby was seen with his wife; and, far to the rear, old Mr. Stiewers who looked still shorter than usual in his black suit, with his enormously wide, loose, and low-hung trousers tapering to his feet. From Fisher Landing, Mr. Thorpe had come; and Dr. Weatherhead and Mr. Aylmer, the leading merchant; from the city, Mr. Carter, the lawyer, the partner of the bridegroom; and also his older brother who had volunteered to act as chauffeur to the pair after the ceremony; young Dr. Henderson also was present; and, among the ladies, Mrs. Ann Aikins who made it a point thus to honour the friend of her college days though she could not stay after the ceremony. Besides, there was a whole crowd of farmers with their ladies, overflowing the seats and the aisles, many standing even outside, on the steps and in the yard of the church.
That yard, flooded with sunlight, was crowded with buggies and wagons; outside the fence, six cars were parked, slanting with their rear ends into the road.
Slowly and solemnly the marriage service proceeded, working on to its climax.
Slowly and solemnly the priest, a tall, imposing man with grey hair
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and moustache, his figure enfolded in the black and white vestments of office, droned his charge to the bridal pair, "I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment..."
Jane could not listen. But suddenly, breaking into the monotony of the priests melodious but unmodulated speech, she heard Jim's clearly enunciated, "I will"; and she became conscious of the fact that the ripple of words was henceforth addressed to her.
"Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him, in sickness and in health; and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?"
The droning voice seemed to take on the volume of a trumpet. A lump rose in her throat; she trembled; she was on the point of falling forward; and when the voice ceased speaking, she was aware that something was required of her; but it seemed as if she could not find the words. The pause lengthened; she heard a shuffling of feet; she knew she was expected to say "I will" but could not say it. She felt that her silence became embarrassing; alternately she reddened and paled; she wrestled with herself to force the words out.
In the congregation necks were craned, looks exchanged.
And she seemed to be aware of it all.
A look of almost dismay flitted over Jim's face; her father stirred; her mother frowned. And of these things, too, she seemed to be aware; and they gathered into an invisible circle of compulsion rushing in upon her from all sides till she swallowed and stammered, "I will."
A breath of relief swept through the church; smiles broke out on various faces; a few heads nodded.
Jane stood in a void bereft of sensation.
Once more she had to speak; but this time the priest said the words before her; and she repeated them in a mechanical way, giving no
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thought at all to their import.
Then she heard Jim's voice which sounded almost mocking. "With this ring I thee wed..."
And then they knelt. Prayer and psalms resounded as through a vault; and the responses; and prayer again. And they all sounded as if chanted from out of a dome overhead, down into a void in which she stood alone.
She did not become conscious again of what was going on about her till the whole assembly stirred. A moment later, her mother was kissing her; and then her father; and at last, on Jim's arm, she was proceeding down the centre of the aisle, to the sacristy of the church. There, names were signed in a book; and hands were shaken.
It was only when she stood on the steps outside that she became aware of the persistent presence of a man who was not exactly a stranger to her. It was Mr. Stephen Carter, the older brother of Jim's partner: a huge man with round, fleshy shoulders and an enormous, fleshy head with a hanging, fleshy nose and a drooping moustache. His eyelids, too, drooped; and every feature in his face seemed to droop as with a weariness beyond expression. But when he spoke, he spoke rapidly, with a strange intonation of purpose and superiority. His clothes, which were hanging about him as if casually dropped on his shoulders, were immaculate and expensive; about his short neck he wore a fine, soft-linen collar of old-fashioned cut, with two points denting the soft flesh of his hanging cheeks; a narrow black tie was gathered into a knot, like a silken cord; but with a pearl in that knot which was of exceptional beauty.
This man was talking to her and explaining that, since he happened to own an exceptionally large and comfortable car, he had taken it upon himself - "a great privilege, of course" - to convey the newly married couple, first to the parental home, and later to their own home at Stockton.
The strange thing was that Jane, while almost annoyed at his persistent,
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rumbling chatter, seemed to read in his manner that he was aware of her perplexities and sympathising with them. He looked at her in such a strange way, from under his drooping eyelids and out of half sleepy eyes; and while he spoke, he smiled with quick little flashes of heavy, pale lips; and now and then a short, rumbling laugh shook his chest. By this smile and laugh he seemed to convey a message to her; as if, while he said one thing with his voice, for the benefit of the by-standers, he were telling her by some secret language not to be in the least afraid of him - that, in spite of his uncouth appearance - for which he was sorry but which he could not very well remedy - he was the only person present who fully understood and appreciated all that had happened to her. She hardly listened to his words though she smiled when he did; but she realised with a peculiar thrill of reassurance that, if this man lived in the new world into which she was about to enter - and, having met him there, she knew that he did - she would not be entirely without a friend. She could not help being glad of it.
Their short tête-à-tête on the steps of the church was interrupted by the approach of others who came in groups to congratulate her and to shake hands. At the gate of the yard in front, her father drove up, handling his team with that English angularity of elbow which she had always loved; he was waiting for her mother to enter the carriage; for it was not a buggy but a brougham or a four-wheeled chaise. It suddenly felt good to stand out there in the sun; to have left the gloomy morning chill of the church; to look at the bright-green trees all about and at the throng of vehicles with their horses which were being moved back and forth as the crowd began to break up.
Among those who came to shake hands was young Dr. Henderson, the already famous young surgeon, son of old Dr. Henderson, the friend of her father. He was small, slender, very well dressed, with a slight, dreamy, but intelligent face, though his complexion was strangely grey.
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She was glad to see him, for he, too, formed part of that world of Stockton which she was going to enter.
"I am going to say good-by," he said. "I shall have to go straight home. I have an operation in the afternoon. I hope I shall have the pleasure of soon seeing more of you, Mrs. Forrest."
She handed him her white-gloved hand; and, lifting his hat, he bowed. That moment she saw, over his head, Arthur Forrest mounting a small horse in the road. She even took mental note of the fact that he was still using his father's English saddle. Then, suddenly, the fact came home to her that he had not spoken to her; and she felt hurt.
But there was no time to linger over thoughts. Mr. Stiewers stepped up, smiling broadly, but seeking, as usual, the ground with his eyes. "Well," he said, "Mrs. Forrest; heartiest wishes; the best of the earth; and heaven afterwards."
Mr. Wortleby came next. "Mrs. Forrest," he said, smiling and bowing, "our belle is going to leave us. My very best wishes!"
And thus the crowd filed past.
Mr. Carter's car moved to the gate. It was a limousine; but he himself sat in the driver's seat. Jim, busy, laughing, flushed, came from the door behind; he offered Jane his arm; in front of the church a lane was formed; and through it they walked to the gate to enter the tonneau of the car.
They were alone. In front, separated from them by a panel of glass, Mr. Carter pushed buttons and handled levers. They slipped away.
Jim heaved a sigh of relief. "Well, that is over. The spread next. And then..." He encircled her waist with his arm.
Jane shivered. But she did not withdraw though she looked straight ahead.
When they reached the yard, most of those invited for this domestic function had already arrived; for Mr. Carter had intentionally driven very slowly. East of the barn a dozen buggies were backed against the fence; the horses, unhitched, had been taken to the stable where a
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small, ape-like attendant, specially hired for the day, was in charge. At the far end of the yard, three cars were parked.
Mr. Carter drew up in front of the porch.
"I'll turn the car," he said, speaking fast, in his now familiar rumble. "I'll leave it right here. Whenever you want to go, let me know. If you can't find me, press this button. But you'll be wanting to get away quietly, I suppose. I shall be around." And, without looking at either of them, he lifted himself ponderously out of his seat.
The veranda was crowded with guests.
In the house which Jane entered in order to change her dress, the table, arranged in the form of the letter H, reached from the dining room into the parlor, with the cross-bar in the door between the two rooms. She had to enter so that the half dozen young girls of the district who had volunteered as waitresses could duly admire her in her bridal finery. They belonged to a generation some eight years younger than Jane; and she smiled down at them as from the height of a great and saddening experience of life.
Then, gathering the long and voluminous skirts of her gown, she slipped upstairs. There, the bride's maids were awaiting her. On the floor, at the foot of the bed which had been hers, stood the open steamer trunk which held such of her personal belongings as had not been sent down beforehand.
At once, with flushed faces and in a peculiar excitement the two young girls began to divest her of her veils, her wreath, and her gown. Jane felt given over into their hands; for they had been carefully instructed as to their duties by such as knew them. She felt in the power of the machinery of a tradition against which it would be useless to fight. In order not to set tongues a-wagging, she must not even betray the slightest desire to fight it; she must act as if she not only accepted that tradition but gloried in it. She stood there, inwardly shivering, invaded by strange impulses of pudicity even
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before these girls. The truth was that she was only beginning to realise that marriage meant physical intimacy with a man; and, as a consequence of her recent sobering, she was self-conscious about it. At moments when she felt unobserved, she closed her eyes. When the girls exclaimed at the beauty of her undergarments, she felt as if driven to flight; as if she must undo even now the irreparable thing she had done. Then the skirt which she was to wear as a travelling dress for her entry into her future home was held up and slipped over her form. Not content with putting on the waist of white batiste, she slipped the small coat of the suit on over it.
Yet, when, thus dressed, she descended the stairs, something of that awakened consciousness of pudency lingered in her face. She went slowly, stopping for a second on every step.
What had she expected? What had she thought? Were these the things her father and mother had gone through on the day of their wedding? How strange that children, themselves the result of sex relationships, should know, see, divine so little, so absolutely nothing of that essential life which the parents must live between them in their very midst! A few months, a few weeks ago she had been in love: unspeakably, inexpressibly, blindly in love; and what had love meant to her? She could not say. For the most disturbing thing of all was that she could not understand what was happening to her at present nor whence it came. She could have told what love had meant to her before she had actually fallen in love; theoretically as it were. It had meant adoration of a superior goodness and intelligence: of physical and spiritual beauty. A thousand things flashed through her mind. She thought of that day when she had stood at the window of that room of hers in which she had just now, for the last time as a virgin, changed her dress. Then, the mere sight of the play of the muscles in the back of this man whom she had chosen, his jaunty step, the rakish, boyish angle of his cap had moved her to tears. And now? Irrelevantly she wondered whether Jim was a reader. Was he a lover of the things
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she loved? With almost a gasp of amazement she realised that fundamentally the man to whom she was bound was a stranger to her.
A door opened downstairs, and her father crossed the hall without perceiving her where she stood in her dark, navy-blue suit, in the shadows of the stair-well.
She composed her face and went down into the wide veranda where the sound of laughter and the hum of a general conversation greeted her.
Jim rose and met her to lead her to a seat. She avoided looking at him. Yet she was conscious of a new shade in his bearing. He seemed to marshal her progress. An air of proprietorship was even in his motions; and also a new sort of eagerness, an empressement; to her supersensitive perceptions he betrayed a wish to be done with these preambles; a desire to be alone with her.
For a few minutes she took part in a trivial conversation. Then Jim returned to her.
"Have you seen the last presents?" he asked, bending down to her. There was a tremolo in his voice.
She rose; she could not do anything else without seeming rude. "Still more?" she asked.
"Lots. Roland has just come from town with the last mail."
He led the way; she could not but follow.
By this time every smallest motion of Jim's was full of revelations for her. She had lain in his arms before, in the first days, weeks, months of their love. But there had been barriers between them: barriers of convention: this day convention itself had removed them. When he enfolded her in his arms the next time, he would have the right to touch her in a different way. With a sudden feeling of supreme anguish she saw that he would thus enfold her in his arms, that he would put his hand about her waist; and that it would have a new meaning, now, since she had given him the right to do with her as he pleased.
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The anguish was so sudden and so sharp that she stopped with a little, half-suppressed cry in the door which Jim held open.
As it happened, her brothers, the twins, were just then coming down the stairs, carrying her trunk. She acted as if their unexpected sight had frightened her; she raised a hand to her heart. Thus she covered and explained the cry which had escaped her.
Yet, a moment later, even that trivial incident of the removal of her trunk took on a strange poignancy; it made her separation from the parental home a final thing. That trunk was going to go where so many other things, all her books, for instance, had already gone: into the house of the future.
To the left of the hall lay the little sewing-room where the wedding presents were displayed on an improvised table. Its door stood open. Jane glanced into it, saw that it was empty, and entered with a feeling of being deserted by everybody. As Jim followed, she divined by a motion of his that he was going to close the door.
"Excuse me one second, Jim," she said with precipitate sweetness, slipped out, past him, and along the narrow corridor behind the stairway into the kitchen.
There, Mrs. Hall was being assisted by another bevy of girls. In addition to the large wood-range, there were four coal-oil ranges, borrowed for the occasion from neighbours.
Mrs. Hall, intensely old-fashioned, curtsied. "Congratulations, Mrs. Forrest," as if everybody must use her new name to compliment her.
Jane smiled and held out her hand. "Mother isn't here?"
"Outside." The short, fat woman nodded towards the backdoor.
Jane went out. More girls there, turning ice-cream freezers. Her mother, holding the long train of her gown thrown over one arm, regal in all her jewellery, was giving directions. Jane ran up to her, gathering her own skirt with a practised hand.
"Mother," she said in a whisper, "Jim and I
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are going to look at the presents. Please, mother dear, do come along."
Mrs. Atkinson looked at her; and, seeing her agitation, she smiled. "Of course, child; if you wish me to."
But, though she came, Jane read in her smile that very attitude which had made it impossible for her to speak of her troubles while there was still time. Even now she would have shrunk from it had not her need been extreme.
When Jim saw his mother-in-law accompanying Jane, he scowled and turned away to hide his face. Jane felt guilty, half repentant and at the same time exultant. As she exclaimed at the presents, this complexity of her feelings made her adopt an almost provoking tone which she knew to be tantalising to her husband of a few hours. But in spite of Mrs. Atkinson's endeavours to give her the slip she managed to lead her back to the veranda; and only there she allowed her to escape.
Shortly after, the gong summoned the guests into the house.
Jim was visibly fretting. The "spread" as he had called it was going to last for hours. Apart from the short trip in the car, he had not yet been alone with his wife; and it was clear that she was evading him. Now he could not hope to have her to himself till they arrived at their own home.
Jane knew of course that for her there was no permanent escape. Perhaps she would not even have availed herself of an opportunity had it offered. She was fully aware of the fact that she had deliberately allowed such an opportunity to go by a few days ago when her father had almost invited confidences. She merely wished to postpone what was inevitably coming.
She became lively and took part in the general and trivial conversation which developed. She saw Arthur sitting slantways opposite her. He had a wistful but almost encouraging smile on his face; unaccountably to herself, she became gay.
Then, after an incredibly short time, it was four o'clock by the big timepiece on the buffet of the dining room. It being a midsummer
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day, the light had hardly yet begun to take on the quality of evening; yet she knew that, outside, the sun was riding to the west. Almost immediately after, the half hour struck. Toasts were being pronounced. She found herself standing; and the guests filed past, clinking glasses; opposite her, Jim was standing, too, glass in hand.
She seemed hardly to have sat down again when her mother touched her knee under the table and, when she bent over to listen, whispered to her to slip out and to follow her inconspicuously. Her heart pounding, she did so after having allowed a minute to go by.
Mrs. Atkinson whom she found in the corridor led the way to her father's "den", a small room accessible through a door behind the stairway. That door she closed carefully when Jane had entered.
"It is time, child," she said. "Your father is telling Jim to get ready. Mr. Carter is waiting in the car."
"Why couldn't I stay till evening, mother?"
"It isn't done, child. Now, my dear, dear girl, I have a last duty to perform. I must tell you certain things..."
"I know, I know," Jane cried and turned in the narrow space of the book-lined room as if she were looking for a way to escape.
"Child, child!" her mother tried to soothe her. "Listen, my dear."
"Don't, mother, don't!" Jane said; and, in a sudden white determination, "I know."
This was said with such fierce emphasis that her mother looked at her, doubtful for the first time whether she could let her go.
The fact was that Jane had divined many things; some of them had been adumbrated by Jim's unconscious self-betrayal; some by her own profound disinclination to proceed which she now knew to have had a physical origin. If at this moment she had been asked, and if she had, according to her feelings of the hour, been able to give a truthful answer, she would perhaps have said that of all men she knew her husband was the very last one with whom she was willing to enter into that relationship into which she was about to enter with him. For
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this very day had revealed to her what, a few weeks ago, she would have refused to believe; it had revealed it to her by almost imperceptible things, and above all by that anticipatory eagerness with which he had hovered about her - namely, that he was at bottom anti-pathetic to her; that there were things which, though she might have given them as a free gift to him six months ago, but which she thought she could give him no longer freely but at best from a sense of duty and with the full knowledge that she was giving away, yes, that she was wasting the most precious part of her own possible share in life. What did it now matter whether she knew the details! She could not bear to have them discussed or revealed to her. She could not explain to her mother; but she felt that, since she had to bear the internal facts alone, she might just as well thus, alone, face the externals.
For a moment longer she stood rigidly before her mother, like a statue, declining intimacy, as if she condemned her, and in her all the facts of married life.
Her mother, not knowing what to do, feeling baffled and awkward for perhaps the first time in her life, at last turned to the door and opened it softly.
Her father and Jim stood in the corridor; both looked as if they, too, had partaken of the tension of the last few minutes. Jane stepped out, still unbending, with a tragic pallour on her cheeks. Straight in front of the hall door stood the car with Mr. Carter at the wheel. Her father handed her her hat; and she put it on, stern and erect.
Jim was shaking hands and kissing his mother-in-law on her brow.
Jane understood that the moment had come. She bent over her father and kissed him; but even this was an icy kiss. Then she kissed her mother who looked worried and undecided; and a moment later she was rapidly striding through the little hall, out across the veranda, and to the gate of the narrow yard. As she crossed the threshold, she saw that her trunk had been strapped to a platform behind the car. Then she entered the tonneau. To her relief she noticed
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that the plate-glass panels which, in the morning, had divided the driver's cab from the tonneau were folded aside, so that the whole interior of the car was thrown into one.
All the while, since she had left her father's den, Jim had been "hovering" about her, with tripping steps, excited, his hands atremble.
Mr. Carter had half turned in his seat and was mumbling. "I haven't started the engine. The moment I do, the mob will rush out. We'll get good and ready first, won't we, Mrs. Forrest?" And, with a sudden emphasis and contemptuous vulgarity which betrayed that he, too, partook of the general tension, he added, "You bet your life we will. You bet your precious life!"
The twins came out. Hands were shaken through the open window in the door. Whatever was said was spoken in a whisper. Mr. Atkinson had tears in his eyes but stood without blinking; Mrs. Atkinson tortured a limp handkerchief in her hands.
Then Kenneth went to the front of the car and gripped the crank.
Mr. Carter looked back. "All set?"
Jim nodded.
And Mr. Carter gave Kenneth the signal to turn the engine over. Instantly the exhaust shook the quiet air of the deserted yard with a bellow of explosions. But the car had barely begun to crawl forward when the first guests, notified by its noise, came running out of the house, laughing and noisy. From behind the building, Mrs. Hall and her helpers rushed forward. A shower of rice and confetti fell into and over the car, hitting like small shot; and wishes and jests were shouted after the gliding back of the huge machine. Then its gathering speed cut off at once the sound of voices and hail of things thrown.
When the car stopped at the curb in front of the house - it was the western most house on Albert Avenue -Jane was the first to alight. The two maids who had been engaged by Mrs. Atkinson came running down the steps and through the front yard; and, having greeted their new mistress, they took her wraps and looked at the trunk.
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Jim, lighting a cigarette as he stood on the curb-stone, took charge. "I'll help you with that," he said to the girls. "Take those things to the house and come back." In his attitude to the servants there was the exaggerated jauntiness of the handsome, rich young man who was fully conscious of the fact that every passer-by envied him and his high estate. In a leisurely way he began to loosen the leather straps which held the trunk in place.
Jane had turned to Mr. Carter and was speaking to him; he seemed to deprecate what she was saying. Her manner was nervous in the extreme. She knew that what she was doing was in abominably bad taste. But she could not help herself; and she did not care. From the corner of her eye, where she stood, one of her feet raised to the running-board, she was watching Jim who, uptilted cigarette in mouth, was busy at the rear-end of the car.
"But I insist, Mr. Carter," she said, assuming the tone so foreign to her of a spoiled woman. "Indeed I do."
"But really, Mrs. Forrest..."
"At least for a cup of tea," she went on. "I won't let you off; and I know you won't disappoint me. Don't let me beg, now! I don't think it's a bit nice of you! Please!"
Against his will and better judgment the enormous man lifted himself over to the side of his seat. Jane laughed a nervous, almost hysterical laugh.
A last time Mr. Carter hesitated. He looked at the woman who had been speaking to him. In his sleepy eyes the heavy lids of which he seemed to keep apart with an effort lay an expression as if he deeply pondered the case; as if, through the medium of looks, he were spinning out the argument between the young woman who stood on the grassy margin of the sidewalk and himself.
She laughed lightly and stamped her foot.
He decided that it was best to indulge her. Clearly, she was not herself. Lifting his heavy body out backward, he emerged.
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Jim, seeing it, scowled and dropped his cigarette to the gutter.
But Mr. Carter, having complied with the request of the young woman, made up his mind to take matters into his own hand with the young man. Speaking quickly and in his mumbling way, he bowed to Jane.
"Exceedingly kind of you, Mrs. Forrest, I'm sure. A cup of tea would be welcome to an old bachelor who has nowhere to go but his club. I never decline a good offer."
Jane felt exceedingly guilty at thus conspiring on the first day of her married life. But she looked straight at Jim.
Jim, feeling that his hand was forced, laughed. "Sure," he said. "By all means, come in for a while, Cart."
So Jane preceded into the house. A spirit of incomprehensible recklessness took hold of her. She removed hat and coat in the cloak-room which opened to the left of the entrance, partitioned off from the huge hall. When she entered the latter which was going to be the chief place of assembly in the house, she stood for a moment and looked about. This room was forty-two feet long, running the full width of the building . Opposite the double-doored entrance gaped the huge fire-place with the wide rustic-stone pillar of the chimney above it. Deeply upholstered arm-chairs spanned with dark-purple damask stood about at various angles. A large chesterfield faced the fire-place. All the furniture was low, enhancing the impression of height which this room made. Jane sighed, Well, "it" would be less unbearable in a house like this! To her right, the wide, heavy stairway led up, bent at right angles in the south-east corner of the house.
Behind her, Jim, Mr. Carter, and the girls came through the door. After all, the girls were not carrying the trunk. But Carter looked quite incongruous with his part of the load. They put it down at the foot of the stairway, upended against the wall. Again, as in the house of her parents, that trunk was a symbol, to her, of the transfer of her life.
Jim ran upstairs with a small suitcase of his. The girls withdrew.
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Jane led to the fire-place. "Sit down, Mr. Carter."
"Now, Mrs. Forrest," he mumbled, "I'll say this. You're a naughty girl."
Jane laughed. "There's a German proverb that says, Need knows no law."
"Well, then!" he said and dropped into one of the chairs.
Jane went and looked into her own room, at the extreme west end of the house. She had already begun to call it her "library". Its appointments had been the special care of her father. If her mind had been fully at ease, she would have given a cry of delight; as it was, the excitement which burned in her eyes seemed to deepen. Then she turned back.
"You'll excuse me a moment, Mr. Carter?" she said as she passed him.
He waved a hand.
Between her "library" and the dining room lay the large drawing or music room as it was going to be called, for it held a "grand" piano. She went through the dining room, at the west end of the hall, and, beyond, through the narrow corridor, into the white-tiled kitchen. There, she noticed the tea-kettle on the electric range and a tea-wagon set with plates and cups. The two girls were busy with preparations. She gave her first directions as the mistress of the house.
When she returned into the hall, Jim was coming down the stairway. She passed him and flew upstairs. There, she flitted from place to place, into the servants' room, the guest room, and the large bedroom. Jim had familiarly thrown his light top-coat over the foot-rail of the bed. She ran down again.
She did not know what she was doing and how the evening passed. She poured tea; and then she played the piano though she was not exactly an expert; she exerted herself to hold the unwilling guest.
It was half past ten when Mr. Carter made his escape. Jane had insisted on his staying for a late supper.
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He had hardly left when Jim went into the kitchen and dismissed the girls who went upstairs. He locked the doors, humming a tune to himself, while Jane stood rigid in front of the fireless fire-place.
Then he returned and looked at her, half frowning. "Well," he said almost sarcastically, "that's that. It is bed-time, too."
Half-hidden frowns were flitting over Jane's brow.
Jim, again looking at her, this time with a curious smile, reached up to a light-switch in the wall alongside the entrance door.
"Just leave that to me, Jim," Jane said quickly. "I'll be up in a minute."
He hesitated. Then, almost seriously, as if he were sobered, "Very well. As you wish."
And he went to the stairs. There, frowning, he stopped as if to say something. But he changed his mind and went on without looking back.
Jane waited, motionless, for ten or fifteen minutes, listening to the small sounds in the house. Outside, it was surrounded by a quiet which was almost rural. She heard the maids moving about as they went to bed. She heard Jim opening and closing the door to the clothes-closet in what was to be their common room. She was shaking with the thud of her heart. Waves of things which frightened her so that they seemed to deprive her of the power to reason ran through her body. She felt as if, to release the tension of her nerves, she must burst out laughing or crying.
Then the tick-tack of a small clock on the mantel-piece behind her forced itself on her attention. She turned and watched its minute-hand crawling over two or three minute spaces, her lips twitching. And very suddenly, as if she feared that, if she waited a moment longer, she would not have the strength to do so, she gathered all her remaining energies, with an almost physical effort, turned, and went upstairs without thinking of the lights which she had undertaken to extinguish.
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Jim, clad in silk pyjamas, was sitting on the edge of the wide bed and looking up at her, his lips parted in a smile. It all seemed utterly impossible; entirely beyond her strength. She felt a victim, immolated to she knew not what. She saw herself as she had stood in her old room in the parental home when the bride's-maids had stripped her wedding-gown down. Thus she was to stand before this man!
Suddenly she caught sight of a lace-trimmed night-gown of pink crepe-de-chine which the girls had laid out on the pillow on her side of the bed.
With a cry, as if hunted, she turned and ran down the stairs. She was aware of the fact that Jim had risen and was following her.
She almost fell down the steps , rushed through the whole length of the hall and into that small room of hers, her "library", slamming the door shut and turning the key which happened to be in the lock on the inside. There she stood, pressing against the door with her back. Only now did it strike her that the house was still fully lighted since she had forgotten to turn the master-switch which controlled the whole system downstairs with the exception of a small hall-light just inside the outer door. A fraction of a second later, Jim tried to turn the knob. Then she was aware of the fact that he moved away from the door. As with the realisation of a disaster she noticed that the second door of the room - which connected it with the drawing-room - stood wide open. With a bound she reached it, throwing it shut and locking it, too.
At that, Jim spoke outside, calling her in an angry voice.
"Yes, dear," she said, using, in an impulse of propitiation, the epithet by which she had always called him till quite recently when she had begun to use his name.
"Open that door, I say!"
"Dear, dear, ask anything you care to, but not that. I cannot! I cannot!"
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Jim was angrily speaking to himself as if he were walking away. "Nice doings these, I must say, for a wedding-night."
"Dear!" she called him, standing by the door, bent over and listening. "Listen, dear! I cannot. Not to-night! Please, dear, please. Let me stay here to-night. Just for one night, dear! Please! Please!"
There was no answer. She stood and listened, straining her powers to the utmost. In a sudden fear that he would find means to enter by force, she was seized by a panic; and again she called him, softly, "Dear, dear!" Again there was no answer. She felt her reason fleeing, the strength departing from her limbs.
Then she became aware of the fact that he was upstairs. She stood perfectly still, trying to subdue the pounding of her heart in order to catch every sound which reached her, ever so faintly. Yes, he had gone upstairs.
She asked herself what she was doing. She was breaking her marriage vows, that was all. She could not help it. No woman, she said to herself, had ever been quite so unhappy as she was. Anything, anything! Thus she kept protesting to herself. She would keep house for him. She would serve him, like one of his maids. She would be a faithful wife to him in all things but this one. She would help him to make a success of his business. She would keep an open house and receive people whether she liked them or not; for she knew that he expected her to do that. He had immense ambitions in a business way; she would do all in her power to aid him in making them a reality. Anything, anything! But he must respect her physical inviolability! That was the one, the only thing he must agree to!
The minutes passed. She heard the small clock on the mantel-piece of the hall strike. The larger one in the dining room followed like an echo. It was half past eleven. Upstairs everything was quiet, quiet as the grave.
At last she turned from the door. She was hardly able to support herself on her knees. All about, she was surrounded by book-cases of
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dark-red mahogany, holding the treasures of her girlhood. Near the window stood a low couch covered with a beaver robe. On it she sank down, stretching out almost luxuriously, without removing any part of her clothes.
Again she lay and listened; and at once she was aware that the man upstairs was moving about again. She sprang up and extinguished the lights. Then, tensely, she lay down once more in the dark.
Jim came to the door and tried the knob. He cleared his throat. "Jane," he called in a changed voice, softly. "Dearest! Unlock! Let me in! I promise not to touch you unless you let me. This is hard, you know. A man does not marry a woman in order to be locked out from her. All day you have withdrawn yourself. I have been on the rack. I have had more of you when we were strangers almost than I've had today since you've been my wife. Dearest, do you hear me?"
She did not answer.
He went on, begging, imploring.
She never stirred.
Then he took hold of the door-knob again, tried to rattle, to force it. But the house was well-built; the door did not even make a noise. The lock was solid. Once more he had recourse to speech. Within an hour he resigned himself in anger.
When day dawned, Jane sat up with a start. She had actually slept towards
the last, from a complete exhaustion of her emotional and nervous powers. She
thought she was in her father's house. The previous day's happenings seemed,
for a moment, no more than a hideous nightmare. Then the luxury surrounding
her, surpassing anything in the parental dwelling , drove home the tragic reality:
she was in her husband's house!
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