Sitting at the aisle in the middle of the church, casually dressed in tweeds, Mr. Morgan slouched against the side of the pew, his chin in his hand, his eyes closed. He had not been invited, as I well enough knew because I had checked over the list of guests. But I was not in the least surprised to see him although I could not be certain of his motive, whether he had come to tease Hopestill or if he was in love with her and wished to torment himself, or if it was that desiring to escape suspicion he had thought it the better policy not to hide himself away. He had, if this last was his intention, made a serious mistake in his costume and continued, throughout the ceremony, to make an even graver error in his indolent attitude and his drowsy grin, for he was most conspicuous in that church full of people whose dress (with the exception of Mrs. Hornblower) was all so similar it was virtually a uniform, and thus he was set down by everyone who saw him—and he escaped the notice of very few—as vain and impudent for in gainsaying the decrees of custom, he was usurping custom’s power. His presence relieved me on one point and troubled me on another. Evidently Hopestill had not been seeing him, as I had suspected from time to time, for if she had she would have told him not to come. I had suspected meetings between them because I had learned from Nathan that Morgan was in town all the the time now and there was no falling off of his visits and telephone calls from young women. What disturbed me—vaguely because this morning I felt detached from the whole business—was that since he apparently thought there was nothing odd in his coming this morning and coming with so blatant an air of indifference, there was no reason to suppose that Hopestill and Philip and their friends would be deprived of his company in the future.
Nathan, after two years of anatomizing his pupil, had come to the conclusion that he was not really selfish nor cold-blooded but that he was one of those unfortunate people in whom is missing the talent for falling in love. Such people do not give up but suppose that love will come at last in the person of some now unknown woman, just as other people do not relinquish their hope that belief in God will at last batter down the impregnable battlements of the soul. He carried on two or three affairs concurrently and was equally tenacious of each of his women because it was possible that she was the one who would, under an abrupt and accidental change of circumstances, become his solitary objective. This being the case and if Morgan’s need for the centralization of his life about one woman was as urgent as Nathan would have me believe, would not Hopestill’s marriage be an obstacle of slight consequence to him? I could only conjecture what had taken place in New York, but I was sure that if Morgan offered to marry her (and I imagined that he did, for he was the kind of person who could, with the left hand, dispense a sort of sentimental honorableness at the same time that the right hand was composing a love-letter to another woman) Hopestill had refused, not because she did not love him, not even because she was unwilling to support his infidelities, but because her pride had been mortally wounded and its resuscitation could be effected only if the accessory to the crime were out of sight and, eventually, out of mind. The refusal (I continued my hypothesis) impressed her lover who had not reckoned on so easy an acquittal and after his first sweet sensation of relief, he became tantalized with the possibility that he might have fallen in love with her on the revelation of her stern character which, in spite of her yearning, had firmly dismissed him. Perhaps he had come today, then, for the simple reason that he wanted to see her, to refresh his memory of her beauty and to determine, from the expression on her face and the way she walked, whether his siege of her would be rewarding.
In the hush that forewarned the wedding march, a hush that fell upon the flesh as well as on the ears so that the guests froze briefly in their postures of kneeling or leaning towards their neighbors, a faintness passed over me, obliterating the vigor of a few minutes before. And as from its rich reservoir, the organ’s voice ascended, translating the march from Lohengrin into its ecclesiastical language, I was apprised of the crisis of my complex feeling about this wedding, so similar to the sickness of the flesh that it was as if the very guardians of my body’s fluids had told me of my disequilibrium. My dizziness had no cause more serious than excitement, was but another and more acute version of that agitation which caused the women in the church to apply handkerchiefs to their eyes. And yet, the anguish, that one moment inched like a cold worm through the tunnels of my flesh and the next kindled a fire that spread from branch to branch until I was all aflame, was so much fiercer than any emotional distress I had had before that for a time I believed I was really “coming down” with some disease. Tears boiled over my eyelids and half screened the four bridesmaids in their green tulle dresses, preceding the maid of honor whose medieval velvet gown, a deeper shade than theirs, was like the outer leaf and theirs the paler inside ones. As I was on the verge, I thought, of toppling forward over the back of the pew ahead of me, my mind, like a rapid finger flicking through a book to find a special passage, went over possible diseases and diagnosed my weakness by presenting to me Hopestill’s face, shrouded in shadows, as I imagined it might look in the mirror above the table in the vestibule. Certain then that my symptoms were not physical, I sought to efface them by an effort of will. My eyesight, still somewhat deformed by the tears, cleared enough so that the maid of honor was less nebulous than her vanguard. With a smile directed towards nothing but an abstract point of the compass, she addressed to her gait as much science and regard for the rhythms of the music as if she were executing a step in a difficult dance. But although I saw her thus and followed her slender body and the head whose black hair was caught in a cap of gold and perceived that in her hands she carried a bouquet of yellow roses, I saw her also through the hot vapor of my tears as a mobile stain upon the undulating curtain that obscured the church and the wedding-guests. Similarly, while the music advanced from chord to chord, it clung, at the same time, in my ears, to one deep, roaring note everlastingly renewed by its infinite vibrations. Closing my eyes, I saw repeated on the black waves of my blindness, the same green smear which my sightless pupils pursued until it swam out of their ken, yet entered again at once when the ball rolled back to its central position.
With the passing of the maid of honor, I felt a temporary return of strength. The vertigo ceased and my mind cleared. Across the heads of the audience, who were turning to behold the bride, I saw Philip entering from the chancel, and through some unstudied sophistication, I saw him separate from the person I had known but instead, as a total stranger who, in a few minutes, could no longer lend himself in my imagination to romantic equations of which I was the other magnitude. He underwent a second metamorphosis and became “the physician.” It was under the auspices and according to the rules of this genus that I should henceforth govern my relationship with him. In the service of my own interests, I was then able to transmute the smile of a young man about to be married, who at this moment had caught sight of his bride as she entered the chapel, into the smile of the understanding healer who by his attentiveness seemed to exist for me alone. And taking this clean-boned Yankee together with his opulent and august setting, I was, despite my frustration, glad that our flirting had come to nothing, that he would be unchanged when throughout the years I sought his advice.
The dazzled guests watched the proud flower for whose protection and enhancement the leaves had been created: a chaste and perfect column draped in satin as pure as the wax of the tapers on the altar and outdoing their flame with the hair that blazed through a calotte of pearls. Her face, white as her finery and her lilies, wore an expression of solemnity befitting the occasion, although, as I heard someone whisper, there should have been something of a smile in her countenance, if not upon her lips, then at least within her eyes, for joy should be in proportion equal to the other feelings of the partaker of this particular sacrament. Her look, to me, was one instinct with death, yet death less chill than that which now like a layer beneath her skin gave off a waxen luminosity and imparted to her movement a brittleness as
if the soft integuments of skin and cloth concealed a metal mechanism. Her thin fingers were tightly curled on the Admiral’s arm. Harry Morgan had turned, with all the others, and while I could not see her face, I knew by his, when she had passed by, that a sign had passed between them, for his mouth curved into a serene smile as if he had half won his battle.
It seemed to me, as they joined before the minister, that Hopestill shuddered as she had done when she took the camellias from my hand. If this was seen by anyone else—indeed, if it occurred at all—it was attributed to her nervousness, the understandable and appropriate reluctance of a girl about to relinquish her virginity by so public a ritual. With a tidal rustling, the audience sat down, arranged their hands in their laps and adjusted their spectacles like people anticipating a well-known and beloved piece of music. It was, to be sure, an artistic performance, for the minister, wreathed in benign smiles, posed his literary questions and offered up his prayers with the intonations of a Shakespearean actor, which grace of pitch and diction was afterwards to evoke from Reverend McAllister the remark that the service had been “nothing but rhetoric.” I was astonished at the brevity of the cross-examination, and before I had accustomed myself to the idea that something of great importance was going on, the whole thing was over and the man and wife were coming back down the aisle, arm in arm, smiling to their well-wishers, their faces illuminated by the sunlight into which they were walking. Hopestill did not fail to include her husband in her dispensation of impartial smiles, but her hand that clutched the bouquet of flowers was clenched like stone.
The drawing-room, the library, the dining-room overflowed with cawing guests and the stairs were packed with two lanes, one ascending to view the wedding presents, the other coming down. As soon as I had offered my congratulations (the bride and groom were stationed before the bay-window. Both of them had protested against this lavishness and were so harried that they seemed not to recognize me at all), I pushed my way through the throngs who, because they blocked the way between myself and my room for which I longed, offended me as if they were being intentionally hard-hearted. Outside the drawing-room door, I met Miss Pride who had got rid of her hat and looked refreshed. I told her that I thought I was ill and wanted to go to my room.
“Nonsense,” she said. “I’ve never seen you look better. There are two or three things I want you to attend to in the pantry. Come along with me and I’ll show you.”
I said, “I thought that if I went to bed now the cold wouldn’t have a chance to develop.”
“Oh, I know your kind of cold, you vixen. I’m not as easily taken in as Berthe, though, and won’t let you off. What I think is that you’re just concerned too much with yourself. After this is over, we must have a long talk and straighten things out.”
I followed her docilely down the hall to the door of the pantry where she instructed me to post myself in order to see that the dirty dishes were immediately sent down on the dumb-waiter to be washed and sent up again so that everyone might be served. The waiters, who were perfectly capable of managing by themselves, regarded me with such wounded displeasure that for the half hour I stood on guard I did not utter a word, but leaned against the window where the sunlight was warm, drinking the remains of the champagne in the glasses that came out from the other rooms. Once I closed my eyes to feel the sun on my lids and when I opened them again saw Harry Morgan lounging up against the door giving me what I could only call “a once-over.” Fearing that if Miss Pride chanced to come into the pantry and saw us there together she might surmise that I was responsible for this intrusion, and being, moreover, greatly perturbed by his prowling eyes, I exclaimed, “My God!” and he, straightening up, extended his hand as he said, “May I share your quiet inglenook, dear, just we two?” One of the accommodators, a portly middle-aged man with a bald head and a frowning face, turned on him a look of avuncular disapproval as he pushed past with a tray of glasses and I said, “It’s very crowded in here.”
“Well, then, let’s find a place that isn’t crowded. I can’t go back into that crush.”
“Nobody asked you to,” I said, so nervous that I was obliged to put down the glass I was holding for fear of dropping it. “Nobody asked you to come in the first place.”
“What kind of talk is that? I am guest Number One. I came at the urgent invitation of the doctor himself. No one asked me, indeed!” He laughed openly at my perplexity. “Well, in that case,” I said, “you ought to join the party.”
I myself, feeling that my services in the pantry were dispensable, went out, taking up a place between the long buffet table and the doors to the drawing-room which had been slid back all the way there to examine the implications of the conversation I had just had. I was prevented from a long study by the Admiral who, with old Mrs. McAllister, appeared slowly making his way toward the refreshment table. “Ah,” he cried, spotting me, “here we have an ally. Sonie, what could you do in the way of a hot bird and a cold bottle for two old fellows? I’m hungry as a bear. I tell you, giving away a young lady is hard work. It’s a strain on the heart! Particularly if you wanted her for your granddaughter-in-law.” He winked at his companion. “Well, all’s well that ends well, as they say. And while I’m about consoling myself, ma’am, let me congratulate you on getting a pippin for the boy.”
“Much obliged,” said Mrs. McAllister coldly. “I think Hope looks ill.”
“Ill? Why, ma’am, though you’re a woman, you don’t know women. What female creature ever looked well on her wedding day? I always say the expression shouldn’t be ‘white as a ghost’ but ‘white as a bride.’ And the whiter they are, the prettier, what?”
Mrs. McAllister received a plate of sole and salad and a glass of champagne from me. Refusing from that moment forward to discuss the wedding, the wedding breakfast, or the bride and groom, she commenced on an analysis of Amy Brooks’ water colors in which she displayed more affection than intelligence. “The sweet thing, knowing that I don’t get about, brought a whole portfolio full of them to me yesterday and I was perfectly charmed. She has real talent.” She went on to describe in particular a little scene Amy had done of the hemlocks in the Arboretum. While I nodded with interest and even volunteered a few comments (“How much I should like to see the picture. No, I have never been to the Arboretum, but I hope to go on Lilac Sunday,” etc.), I was actually engrossed in staring at Harry Morgan who had belatedly followed me out of the pantry and was in conversation with the Countess who, from her smiles and laughter, appeared to find him delightful. A surge of people presently obliterated them and I turned my mind again to what Mrs. McAllister and the Admiral were saying. The Arboretum had led her to her own garden in Concord, and Concord had led her to the bitter announcement, corroborated by her son, Reverend McAllister, who edged his way up to us, that “I suppose you’ve heard Philip Senior has given the young couple a handsome wedding present? That house on the Bedford Road left to him by my husband.”
“I declare!” cried the Admiral. “That is handsome of you, Phil. Why, that’s a humdinger of a house. Up on a hill, ain’t it?”
Mrs. McAllister sighed deeply. “The loveliest house in Middlesex County, Lincoln. One of the loveliest in New England. I have always said we ought to turn it over to a historical society.”
“No, Mother, not in my lifetime. I hope the children will get some pleasure out of it. I’ve never cared much for the house myself. Would have sold it long ago, Lincoln, but Mother here didn’t like its being in the hands of a stranger.”
The old lady pursed her lips, said nothing, but obviously was thinking that the house was in the hands of a stranger.
Her son asked me then, “How much champagne would you say Lucy Pride ordered for this collation?” I told him exactly: twelve cases. He raised his eyebrows, appalled. “If all the money spent on drink were handed over to the missionaries, we would have a Christian world.”
Mrs. McAllister, who had wanted her son to go
into the navy, had often been heard to speak like a pagan. She snapped at him, “I hope that time never comes, son, for I feel that there are times when one needs alcohol. Now, for example. At weddings and at funerals.” Her voice had risen to an impassioned shriek and her son put his finger to his solemn lips. “Hush, Mother, they say it takes very little to go to one’s head when one is advanced in years.”
The Admiral snorted, “Your mother can take care of herself, old man. She hasn’t had enough to drink, that’s her trouble. Hand me your glass, ma’am, and let me refill it.”
“Good afternoon,” said Miss Pride crisply from behind us. “Ah, Sonie, I see you’re taking over out here. I don’t know what I would do without you. Well, and have you seen our poor lambs, Sarah? They’re complaining that their arms ache from shaking hands and their faces hurt from smiling. They groaned when I told them they must stay another hour at least.”
Boston Adventure Page 52