CHAPTER IX

DESPAIR

To the very dawn of Nan's wedding day Stuart had refused to give up hope.

The little financier had sent him an invitation, and worst of all had called to ask that he act as his best man. He refused so curtly that Bivens was deeply wounded. He hastened to soothe his feelings with a plausible explanation.

"The fact is, Bivens, I've always hated church funerals and weddings--of the two I prefer funerals----"

"Nonsense!"

"I assure you I'm not joking. Those long hideous veils and white shroud-like dresses to me always symbolize Death. The pallor of the bride's face perhaps adds to my delusion--but it's painfully real. I never go to a church wedding. The apparition haunts me for days."

Bivens smiled wanly.

"But what will you do when your time comes, old man? You can't run away then."

"That's just what I will do--run away and take my girl with me. We'll elope and be married in street clothes. It's more human."

While he spoke, Stuart's eyes suddenly sparkled with the thought that his words, spoken in jest, might be a prophecy of what could really happen. It had happened again and again. The miracle might happen to him.

"But I say, Jim, that's all rot. I want you to stand by me. I've always taken as much of your friendship as you would give and been grateful for it. I don't make new friends easily. I want you, and you've just got to do it."

Stuart shook his head and firmly set his jaws. A grim temptation flashed through his imagination. If he should accept, it might be the one thing which would prevent Nan's betrayal of her love at the altar.

Might he not by the power of his personality, the hypnotic force of his yearning passion and will, stop the ceremony? In the moment of deathlike silence which should follow the minister's words asking if there were any cause known why these two should not be made one, might not a single movement of his body at that moment, a groan of pain, a sob, a cry of agony in a supreme act of his will, cause the white figure to reel and fall at his feet? It was possible.

But it would be too cheap. It would be a worthless victory, a victory of the flesh without the spirit--and he refused to take the body without the soul.

With a frown he turned to Bivens:

"It's no use talking, Cal, I've made up my mind. I won't do it."

"Well, if you won't, you won't," the little man said with a sigh. "At least you'll come to the church. For God's sake let me get a glimpse of one friendly face. I'll be scared to death. You know I'm not used to this."

Stuart smiled:

"All right, I'll be there."

"And a seat, Jim, where I can see you. I want a friend near the door when I start, or I'll never make it--I'll drop on the way. You won't fail?"

"No. You can depend on me."

As Bivens closed the door the young lawyer threw himself back in his chair with a bitter laugh.

"What a farce our lives become sometimes. If we could all see behind the scenes would there be a single illusion left--I wonder?"

His memory rested with bitterness on the fact that he had feared to lift the curtain on Nan's character at one point in their final struggle over this marriage. He had fought with desperation to win and hold her heart, but he had fought fairly. There had always been a way--he might have won by the sacrifice of character. He had not offered to yield his ideal, accept her views, and change his life purpose. The act would have been dishonourable only to his own sense of right. He would have done exactly what Bivens asked. He had never questioned this decision to the day of her wedding. But when the fateful morning came he was stunned by the feeling of incredible despair which crept into his heart. The day was chill and damp. Dull, grayish, half-black clouds rolled over the city from the sea--clouds that hung low and wet over the cold pavements without breaking into rain.

He knew that Nan was as superstitious as the old black mammy of the South who had nursed her. Aunt Sallie had come to New York for the wedding of her "baby," and Stuart could hear her now crooning over the sayings of wedding days:

"Marry in May you'll rue the day; marry in Lent you'll live to repent----"

"Monday for wealth, Tuesday for health, Wednesday best of all; Thursday for crosses, Friday for losses, and Saturday no luck at all." It was Monday, and Nan must have known it when she fixed the day--but there was another important saying he recalled now:

"Happy is the bride the sun shines on----"

Perhaps these lowering clouds and the coming storm might cause her to hesitate and postpone the marriage. All morning he sat brooding by his window, watching the swaying branches of the trees in the Square--and though he knew at best that he was a fool--confidently expecting the miracle of a message. As the hour of noon approached, despair slowly settled over his heart.

How could he reconcile himself to the horrible reality? This woman and the dreams of her had become part of his very being. The memory of his hopes began to strangle him--the wonderful life they were to live together, whose pictured scenes stretched out now before him--of home, of love, of motherhood and fatherhood hallowed by adoration, the pain, the glory, the passion, the tenderness, the sanctity, the mystery of it all--and this the end. A marriage sordid, cold, vulgar to such a man--this little tobacco-stained, bead-eyed weasel.

And she had talked to him about her career. As if she didn't know that the career of any woman was immeasurably grander than that of any man--if she fulfil her destiny that links her to God in the creation of a child--a being whose simple word may mould a million wills and change the fate of centuries--and yet she had deliberately strangled her soul and chosen this little pig, who rooted in the dirt for gold, to be the father of her children.

He rose, breathing hard and brushed a tear from his eye--a tear that had come unbidden in spite of his iron will.

He wished he had not made the foolish promise to Bivens. He knew now that he had never really believed he would have to keep it. And yet the day had come and the hour had struck, and no miracle had been wrought.

He walked with leaden steps through Tenth Street to Broadway, stopped and gazed for a moment on the graceful spire of the church before whose altar Nan would soon stand and perjure herself for money. How could she! He had long felt that in every true man's religion was a supreme belief in himself--in a woman's, faith in some one else. He knew that she believed in him, not in the man to whom she was surrendering herself. And yet she wished to consummate this act of blasphemy--in the House of God before His high altar.

"Why? Why? Why?"

His heart fairly shrieked its cry of despair. He moved mechanically toward the church and waked from his reverie to find himself jammed in a solid mass of humanity. Never before had he realized the utter vulgarity of a public wedding. Why should any one wish a crowd of curious fools to witness even the happiest wedding? Its meaning is surely frank enough without shouting it from the housetops. Should not its joys and mystery be something too shy and sweet and holy for a vulgar crowd of strangers to gaze on? And stripped of the sanctity of love, this ceremony becomes merely a calling of a mob to witness the sale of a woman's body. There could be no illusions about the fact and it was hideous.

He forced his way into the side door and stood waiting the arrival of the bride and groom. When Bivens came, the sight of him roused the slumbering devil in Stuart. The excitement of his triumph had evidently steadied the little man's nerves. His yellow teeth were shining in a broad grin, and from his piercing eyes there flashed the conscious success of the adventurer. His fine clothes and well-groomed body gave him dignity. Never had his shrimp-like figure looked so slippery and plausible.

He extended his slender hand and touched Stuart's in passing. To save his life the lawyer could not repress a shudder. In that moment he could have committed murder with joy. The agony of defeat was on him.

He knew he could beat this man in every fair fight with his bare hands or with equal weapons. And yet there he was carrying off with a grin before his very eyes the woman he loved. He felt in that moment his kinship with all the rebels and disinherited of the earth.

At last the bride came and the surpliced choir moved slowly and solemnly down the aisles through a sea of eager faces as the great organ pealed forth the first bars of the wedding march from "Lohengrin."

Nan was leaning on the arm of a stranger he had never seen before--an uncle from the West. She was pale--deathly pale and walked with a hesitating movement as though weak from illness. Suddenly his heart went out to her in a flood of pity and tenderness. He tried to make her feel this, but she passed without a glance. She had not seen him. The procession moved slowly back to the altar, and a solemn hush fell on the throng.

Stuart listened to the ceremony with a vague impersonal interest, as if it were something going on in another world.

A single question was burning itself into his brain--the price of a woman!

"Have we all our price?" he asked, searching deep into his own soul.

Something pathetic in the white face of the bride had touched the deepest sources of his being.

"Have I, too, my price, oh, boastful soul?" he cried. "Would I sell my honour for a million? No. For ten, fifty, a hundred millions? No--not in the market place, no--but would I sell by a compromise of principle in the secret conclave of my party--at a sale the world could never know--would I sell for the Presidency of the Republic? Or would I sell now to win this woman? Would I? Would I? If so, I should hold her blameless. Have all men and all women a price if we but name it?

Answer! Answer!" And then from the depths of his being came the burning words:

"No. By God, I swear it. No!"

He looked up with a start, wondering vaguely if the crowd had heard this cry from something inside which he knew in that moment was bigger than the world without.

No, they were intent on the drama at the altar. The minister was saying: