Of course, he did not mention Charity's name. He tried fervently to convince Jim that he ought not to marry Kedzie, but, failing to persuade him from the perils of matrimony, he did his best to help him to a decent secrecy. His best was the program Jim and Kedzie followed.

They motored over to the village of Jolicoeur in New Jersey. There a local attorney, a friend of McNiven's, met them and vouched for them before the town clerk, who made out the license. He asked Kedzie if she had been married before, and she was so young and pretty and so plainly a girl that he laughed when he asked the question. And for answer Kedzie just laughed, too. He wrote down that she had never been married before.

Kedzie had not really lied, and they can't arrest a person, surely, for just laughing. Not that she did not believe in the motto which Blanche Bates used to read so convincingly in "The Darling of the G.o.ds": "It is better to lie a little than to be unhappy much."

Jim was shocked at the situation, but he could hardly be so ungallant as to call his fiancee a liar at such a time. Besides, he had heard that the law is interested in people's persons and not their names, and he was marrying Kedzie personally.

When the license was made out the lawyer whispered to the town clerk that it would be made worth his while to suppress the news for thirty days or more, and the clerk winked and grinned. Business was slow in matrimony, and he needed any little tips.

Now that they were licensed, Jim and Kedzie, being non-residents of New Jersey, must wait twenty-four hours before they could be married. They motored back to New York and went to the theater to kill the evening.

The next afternoon Jim called for Kedzie, and they motored again to Jolicoeur for the ceremony. Mr. and Mrs. Thropp went along as witnesses and to make sure.

The lawyer had found a starveling parson in Jolicoeur who asked the fatal questions and p.r.o.nounced the twain man and wife, adding the warning, "Whom G.o.d hath joined, let no man put asunder." Jim Dyckman was so befuddled that he heard it, "Let no man join whom G.o.d hath put asunder." But he paid the preacher well and added a large sum for the church on condition that the news of the marriage be kept out of the public records till the last legal moment.

Dyckman had tried to do the honorable thing by Kedzie. He was certainly generous, for a man can hardly give a woman more than himself and all he has. Dyckman, however, had been ashamed of a mental reservation or two. He could not repress a sneaking feeling that he had been less the kidnapper than the napped kid in this elopement. If anybody were to be arrested for abduction, it would not be he.

He reviled himself for confessing this to himself, and his sympathies went out to Kedzie because the poor child had to be yoked with a reluctant mate. A bridegroom ought to bring to his bride, above all things else, an eager heart. And that Jim could not bring.

He had been in his time a man and had sowed his measure of wild oats--more than a poor man could, less than a rich man might, far less than his unusual opportunities and the greedy throngs of temptresses encouraged. But he had taken Kedzie seriously, never dreaming how large a part ambition played in her devotion to him. He had been good to her and with her. The marriage ceremony had solemnized him further.

He had made a try at secrecy, because he felt shy about the affair. He knew that his name would lead the newspapers to haze him, as the rustic neighbors deride a rural couple with a noisy "chivaree." He dreaded the head-lines, as a kind of invasion of the bridal chamber.

In any case he had always hated flamboyant weddings with crowds and splendor. He did not believe that a marriage should be circused.

And thus at last he and Kedzie were united into one soul and one flesh, for better, for worse, etc., etc. Then they sped away to the remotest pleasant hotel to be found in darkest Jersey.

Jim registered under his own name, but blushed more hotly than if he had been engaged in an escapade. He could, perhaps, have taken Kedzie so with less regret than under the blessing of the clergy. For now he felt that he owed to her the all-hallowing grace of that utter love which was something he could not bestow.

She was the first wife he had ever had, and he wished a devoutness in that consummation. Lacking the sanctifying ardor, he was remorseful rather than triumphant, feeling himself more of a brute than even a bridegroom usually feels.

Kedzie did not seem to miss any perfection in his devotion, but he imputed that more to her innocent kindliness than to any grace of his own. The more he studied her the more he wondered why he did not love her more. She was tremendously exquisite, ferociously delicate, and almighty pretty. She was altogether too delectable, too cunningly wrought and fragile, for a hulking t.i.tan like him.

He was positively afraid of her, and greatly amazed to see that she was not at all afraid of him. The moment the parson had done his worst a new Kedzie had appeared. She took command of everything instantly: ordered the parson about, shipped her mother and father back to town as if they were bothersome children, gave directions to Jim's chauffeur in a way that taught him who was to be who thenceforward, and made demands upon the hotel clerk in a tone that was more convincing of her wifehood than a marriage license could have been.

The quality missing in Kedzie was the sense of terror and meekness expectable in brides. Her sole distress was, to Jim's amazement, the obscurity and solitude of their retreat. Kedzie was rapturous, but she had not the slightest desire to hide it from the world. She was Mrs. Jim Dyckman, and she didn't care who knew it.

Poor Kedzie had her own sorrows to mar her triumph. She was being driven to believe that the world was as badly managed as the Hyperfilm Studio.

Providence seemed to provide tribulations for her like a scenario editor pursuing a movie heroine. The second reel had begun well, the rich but honest lover putting the poor but dishonest husband to flight. And now Honeymoon Number Two! She had dreamed of a gorgeous church ceremony with two pipe-organs, and an enlarged cast of clergymen, and wedding guests composed of real millionaires instead of movie "extras." But lo and behold, her adorer whisks her off to a little town in New Jersey and the great treaty is sealed in the shoddy parlor of a village parsonage!

Gilfoyle's Munic.i.p.al Building was a cathedral compared to this.

Then with never a white ribbon fluttering, not an old shoe or a grain of rice hurtling, the limousine of love rolled away to a neglected roadhouse. It was attractive enough as a roadhouse, but it was wretched as an imitation paradise.

In the face of this outrage everything else was a detail, a minor humiliation. There was no parrot on an area fire-escape to mock her next morning, but there was a still earlier rooster to banish sleep and parody her triumph. She slipped out of bed and went barefoot to the window-seat and gazed out into a garden.

She made a picture there that Ferriday would have loved in a "close-up."

Her hair was tumbling down upon and around her shoulders, and her silken nightgown shimmered blissfully about her, sketching her contours in iridescent lines. She gazed, through an Elizabethan of small panes, into a garden where sunrise bloomed rosily in petals of light. She was the prettiest thing in the pretty picture; yet she was pouting at Fate--Fate, the old scenario writer who never could seem to bring off a happy ending.

Jim Dyckman, waking, saw her there and rubbed his eyes. Then he remembered. He pondered her and saw a tear or two slip out of her eyes, run along her cheek and pitch off into the tiny ravine of her bosom.

He felt that he was a contemptible fiend who had committed a lynchable crime upon a tender and helpless victim. He closed his eyes in remorse, pretending to sleep, tormented like the repentant purchaser of a "white slave"--or rather a pink slave.

They breakfasted early and prettily. Kedzie was radiant now. She usually was when she was dealing in futures. They took up the question of their future residence. Jim proposed all the honeymoon haunts. Europe was out of the question, so he suggested Bermuda, Jamaica, California, Atlantic City, North Carolina, the Adirondacks. But Kedzie wanted to get back to New York.

This pained and bewildered him at first, because he felt that wedded rapture should hide itself awhile in its own lovely loneliness. Besides, his appearance in New York with a wife would involve him in endless explanations--and there would be reporters to see, and society editors and photographers, and his family and all his friends.

But those were just what Kedzie wanted. And at last she told him so.

"You act as if you were ashamed to be seen with me," she cried out.

The only answering argument to this was to take her back to town at once. The question of how and where they were to live was important.

They had not settled it in the flurry of their hasty secret marriage.

Jim supposed that a hotel would be necessary till they found a house. He loathed the thought of a hotel, but a suitable furnished house might not be in the market at the moment. He suggested an apartment.

This reminded Kedzie of how Gilfoyle had sent her out on a flat-hunt.

She would have more money now, but there would doubtless be something the matter with every place. The most urgent thing was to get out of New Jersey. They could discuss residences in the car.

And they did discuss them. Building a new house would take years. Buying a ready-made house and furnishing it would take days, perhaps weeks.

Kedzie could not choose which one of the big hotels she most wanted to camp in. Each had its qualities and their defects.

When they were on the ferry crossing the river she had not yet made up her mind. Jim had no mind to make up. He was reduced to a mere waiter on her orders. He laughed at himself. This morning at daybreak he had been reproaching himself for being a vicious gorilla who had carried off a little girl; now he was realizing that the little girl had carried him off and was making a monkey of him.

Kedzie's mental disarray was the overwhelming influence of infinite money. For the first time in her life she could disregard price-marks entirely. Curiously, that took away half the fun of the thing. It seemed practically impossible for her to be extravagant. She would learn before long that there are countless things that plutocrats cannot afford, that they also must deny themselves much, feel shabby, and envy their neighbors. For the present she realized only that she had oodles of money to sprinkle.

But it takes training to spend money, and Kedzie was now unpractised.

Her wisher was so undeveloped that she could only wish for things available to people of moderate affluence. She could not wish for a yacht, because Jim had a yacht. She could not wish for a balloon because she would not go up in it. She could wish for a house, but she could not walk into it without delay. She could not live in two hotels at once.

Jewelry she could use in quant.i.ties, but even at that she had only so much surface area to hang it on. In fact, when she came right face to face with facts, what was there worth wishing for? What was the use of being so dog-on rich, anyway?

And there she hung on the door-sill of her new life like a child catching sight of a loaded Christmas tree and palsied with inability to decide which toy to grab first, horrified to realize that he cannot suck the orange and blow the trumpet at the same time.

When they reached the New York side of the Hudson the car rolled off the boat into the ferry-house and into the street, and when Jim said again, "Well, where do you want to go?" she had to sigh.

"Oh, Heavens! let's go home to my old apartment and talk it over." She gave the address to the chauffeur, and Jim smiled grimly. It gave him a little cynical amus.e.m.e.nt to act as pa.s.senger.

On the way up-town Kedzie realized that she was hungry and that here would be no food in her apartment. They turned to Sherry's. Kedzie left Jim and went into the dressing-room to smooth her hair after the motor flight.

And now, just too late, Charity Coe Cheever happened to arrive as the guest of Mrs. Duane. The sight of Jim alone brought a flush of hope to Charity's eyes. She greeted him with a breeziness she had hardly known since she was a girl. There was nothing about his appearance to indicate that he had just come across from New Jersey, where he had been made the husband of Mrs. Kedzie Thropp Gilfoyle.

Seeing Charity so unusually bright, Jim said, "What's happened to you, Charity, that you look so gay and free?"

"That's what I am."

"What?"

"Gay and free. Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes."

"I'm getting divorced."

"My Lord, no!"