Man's Country/Chapter 15
THE wedding of George Judson and Fay Gilman was permitted to lack no circumstance of all that was signified when the beautiful and accomplished daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Detroit society was united with a young man who, rising swiftly in the empire of business to a position of shining eminence, added to his own wealth, present and prospective, the riches of a good appearance and a pleasing personality.
The organ pealed Lohengrin. Fay came down the aisle to meet her lover with the unpainted rose of her cheeks and the sparkle of her eyes proclaiming through the veil that it was no marble bride George Judson took to wife. No sense of awe oppressed her. Audacious as youth itself, she stepped smiling into place beside the groom with not one hint of misgiving, and solemnly the service was intoned.
George Judson was transported, thrilling in all his nerves. Earnestly he listened to the minister's words. Devoutly he sought to realize their import, and believed that he did; believed that God made himself and Fay Gilman into one in that hour and that he and she were henceforth a solemnized and consummated union.
Two hours later the wedding breakfast had been eaten and the gay reception was over. The guests, whose numbers had overflowed Strong House and sprinkled its lawns with picturesque color, were trying to congregate en masse upon the tiny dock which made connection between the Gilman gardens and lake transportation. A steam whistle had sounded, and the Gray Gull, Fay's private yacht, brave in new paint and with bright-work gleaming, was backing into the stream. While the breach between craft and dock slowly widened, the bride and groom appeared upon the deck, waving handkerchiefs and laughing happy derision at the showers of rice and the barrage of old shoes hurled so hilariously and so futilely after them.
In ten minutes the Gray Gull was far out on the lake. The last flutter of the bride's handkerchief had become indiscernible, and the last hoarse shout of the revelers on the dock had died away. For George and Fay the cruise of matrimony had begun—seemingly under the most favorable auspices in the world. The lake was calm, and the steady vibration of the engines sent a tremor through the Gray Gull's decks, a pulsing that to the happy young couple was like the blissful throb of life itself. There was not a ripple on the wide lake—not a fleck of cloud in the sky.
Three days later the Gray Gull slipped into a berth at Buffalo, where bride and groom took the train. That same afternoon they were at Wilton Springs—a bit of wood, a bit of stream, and a bit of Adirondacks, with a golf course within easy motoring distance of the hotel. Fay, playful as a kitten, was all effervescent joy over the place and went into fresh raptures on discovering that their suite was not in the hotel, but comprised an entire rustic cottage on the hillside above, with every appointment complete. Great rag rugs covered the floor, and though it was June, there was a chill in the evening air that made the blaze in the cavernous, rough stone fireplace a thing to be lingered by, while the burning pine knots spiced the air with an aromatic quality that was indescribably exhilarating.
Meals came up from the hotel. Servants came with them and with their serving disappeared. The dinner that first night was perfect in every detail, and when they looked up from sipping their coffee, lo, they were alone.
"Alone!" cooed Fay. "Alone!" She seemed to lay so much stress on their being alone. "It was simply wonderful of you, George, to have found this dear, little, homey nest for our honeymoon!" she bubbled, and waltzing round the room, broke into gay little trills of song, George followed her every movement with laughing, admiring eyes.
The new day began with a breakfast served in an atmosphere made doubly appetizing by the aroma of the living pines without and the burning logs within. And again the servants retired expeditiously, again leaving the lovers to a delightful sense of solitude that sent Fay once more into trills of happy song, and out on the porch to fill her lungs afresh with the outer air and to stare upward at a pine-covered hillside that challenged youth to climb it.
"Look, George! It's daring us!" Fay cried. "I accept the challenge. Let's get on our hiking clothes and go to it. You can kiss me next upon the very top."
George, bare of head, hands in pockets, unlighted cigar in teeth, stood eyeing her eager enthusiasm with ardent approval, yet he did not move to follow her inside.
"Well, not just yet, dear," he objected. "Here comes Blakeley."
"Blakeley!" Fay exclaimed in a puzzled voice. "What is he doing here?" she asked anxiously. "Does it mean that anything has—has gone wrong?"
"No! Oh, no, dear!" responded George, touched by her quick anxiety and glad to be able to reassure her. "He is just bringing the mail so I can sort of keep in touch with things at the factory."
Fay Judson went icy cold. For a moment she was white and motionless. George, his eye on the man with the mail, was suddenly made aware that something was wrong, decidedly wrong, by the quick, hurt tones in which she demanded: "Do you mean that you arranged for him to come here? That Blakeley is a part of your plan for our—our honeymoon?"
George turned to find the blue eyes burning with reproach and threatening any moment to fill with tears. He was struck dumb with bewilderment. He had been a little proud of himself for this idea of having Blakeley join him here. It meant ease of mind and hourly assurance, if need be, that all was well at the works, so he could give himself up the more unreservedly to his love-making. Now he did not know what to say except to confess the truth rather sheepishly.
"Why, why—yes, dear!"
"Oh, George!" his wife moaned, as if he had struck her. "A secretary? On our honeymoon!"
She turned on her heel and flew past him. He did not need to follow her in order to know that she had flung herself face down upon the bed and was muffling the sound of sobs in pillows. He was shocked and distressed, besides being vastly and stupidly perplexed.
What should he do? One impulse was to rush upon that innocent interloper and kick him clear down the hillside to the hotel, him and his confounded trouble-making letters with him. But the sight of the unsuspecting secretary's earnest face, added to the lure of mail in his hand, smothered that impulse. Besides, there was a principle at stake, and as he recognized this, George's face grew grim. He would resolutely settle one thing now.
Upon the porch was a table of hewn slabs. Beside it were two rustic chairs.
Upon the table Blakeley opened out his briefcase and handed to the president of Judson-Morris Motor Company a stack of letters and telegrams.
"I brought those from the office, sir. This is the morning mail."
While President Judson glanced swiftly through this first assortment of letters and telegrams, disposing of many with a glance and a pencil-mark, concentrating upon others with a frown, Blakeley began slitting the flaps of envelopes. That was the scene without upon the porch.
Within, upon the bed, was quite another. There, face down upon the pillows, swathed in the pale blue silk of one of her trousseau morning gowns, was the willowy figure of Fay Judson, utterly crushed and confidently expecting to be followed. She was at this instant waiting for a knock on the door. When the knock came, it was her purpose to answer with silence, but she expected thereafter that the knocker would recklessly intrude. She expected her tears to be kissed away and herself to be shaken tenderly, imploringly, until she would consent to see contrite eyes staring into hers from a distance of a few inches, while a humble voice demanded frantically to know what was the matter. She expected that and checked herself suddenly in the middle of a sob to realize that no such thing was happening.
She sat bolt upright and watched the door for the first sign of vibration when he should lay a feeble hand upon it.
And then, all at once, in this alert position, she heard his voice, not near, but away out on the porch, not trembling, but crisp, matter-offact, monotonous. Dictating! He was dictating, calmly reading letters and answering them, criticizing advertising copy and approving sales plans.
With her clenched hand she struck the pillow, once, twice, three times; then, with a swift, proud movement, swung her feet to the floor and began to stanch her tears—indignant tears they were now—and her lip was curling with a fine, hot scorn.
So she sat for a long time, disdainful—listening to her husband's voice. Not that she meant to listen or cared to listen, but as she would have listened to any sound whatsoever that was there to drone into her ears.
But presently, thus taking in the sound of that voice, she became aware that George's manner was getting nervous and his sentences jerky; that some were vague and ill-formed; that others were tactless and ill-natured; that his utterance grew more and more staccato. At length he stopped. George's voice had indicated that he was disturbed about something.
Her foolish sympathies were instantly aroused. Had there been anything in the mail to cause him worry? She felt a sudden wave of concern for him and a sense of shame and disappointment with herself.
It was at this moment that the door flew open. She turned as in flight, but too late. Her husband was beside her, his arm about her, and she was snatched violently to his breast.
"Darling! Darling!" he cried remorsefully, "I couldn't get to you quickly enough. It broke my heart to have you take Blakeley's coming the way you did. All the while I was crazy to get to you. But—but, you see, there was a principle at stake."
She became instantly stiff and unresponsive in his arms. "What principle?" she demanded.
He explained it to her with earnest but humble and, he hoped, convincing elaboration—the principle of business before pleasure. Fay received this explanation, which was also an admonition. She was, she told herself, a sensible married woman. She saw the reasonableness of such a position, taking his business circumstances into account; yet her pride resented such reasonableness utterly.
"You see," she said, with a conclusive gesture, "that's what I meant about needing a long honeymoon. That's the kind of adjustment we have to make."
George, however, was still of the opinion that their every difference could be laughed and kissed away.
But she would not let him kiss her. "Do you know, George," she warned him soberly, "that you have a way sometimes of thinking things are settled when they aren't?"
"Why, how's that, sweetheart?" He was innocently bland.
"Because you out-argue me. Because you oversway me with the rush of your personality, and I'm sympathetic and weak and defenseless and love you so much that I haven't the heart to say anything back. You think I am convinced, and sometimes I think I am too, because everything you say seems so everlastingly right. But then I find afterward that my mind hasn't really surrendered at all. My opinions are just bottled up in me, and then something, something like this wretched appearance of Blakeley here, knocks the top off, and I erupt like Vesuvius on a rampage. The trouble is in part that in your large way you take no account of little things, while a woman's life is mostly made of little things."
"You're one little thing that I take account of, Fay," he teased, eyeing her fondly, coaxingly. "But you see how it is. Business has to go on, and I have to give the wheel a kick once in a while. Most natural thing in the world for you to take Blakeley the way you did. It was my fault entirely for not breaking it to you. Stood it like a thoroughbred is what you did, too. I was proud of you, every minute you were breaking your heart in here while I was breaking mine out there by concentrating on the job. Besides, it's all over now for the day."
"Let's say it is," proposed Fay, unwilling to spoil the day. Hopeful, forgiving, and impulsive, she put up her lips sweetly.
He snatched her in his arms and tried his own special treatment for tear-stains, but in the end it was found that cold water did the work better. Soon they were in their hiking clothes, and they left their first quarrel well behind them as they raced each other up the mountain side. Two hours later they looked serenely out upon a placid world from the bald peak itself.
But coming down the mountain, they found, was ever so much swifter and more exciting than going up, and hand in hand, like two children, laughing, shrieking, gamboling, they came—spent and utterly unconscious of the presence of other beings in their world—to where the path branched off and up to their cottage steps. Here they flung themselves panting on the sod, exhausted but still in playful mood. When this playfulness did not subside, there came from above them an embarrassed cough, and Fay, flushing, started up.
Her indignant eyes encountered, on the porch of the cottage, Blakeley, waiting to get his letters signed.
George went up to sign them while Fay remained on the sod, frowning, fuming, kicking an occasional disgusted heel in air. How she hated Blakeley! In him she saw the first personalization of an impersonal rival—a monstrous thing that would take her husband from her if it could.
"Now that's done with!" called George at length to Fay, still sulking on the sod. "Business hours are over."
"Well, I should hope so," responded Fay sarcastically, but deciding once more not to let the day be spoiled, grimaced at the secretary behind his back and wrinkled her nose in mock disgust at her husband.
But George's opinion and Fay's hopes were alike in vain, for that afternoon upon the golf links, when they were only at the seventh hole, appeared again this tall, round-shouldered Blakeley, doggedly clambering over a hazard and coming down to them, bearing a telegram which he seemed to think demanded immediate attention.
Fay cut the air viciously with a practice swing of her mashie and waited impatiently while George read the message. For some seconds after, he stood silent, then dictated an answer. But for the remainder of the afternoon his manner was absorbed; he seemed no more than half-conscious of the charming woman at his side. Fay was by turns resigned, mirthful, sympathetic, miffed. When the mood persisted, she grew sarcastic.
"I suppose it is my humble duty not to intrude upon great thoughts," she taunted.
"Fay!" exclaimed George, coming out of his trance with a start. "Forgive me! Intrude whenever you want to. You're a full partner, not a silent one."
"You're the silent one," she complained. "You know, George, I can't help being fearfully disappointed. It shows you have no—no proper sense of the finer values in our association, to bring that man along on our honeymoon."
George did not like being accused baldly of a lack of finer perception. Few men do. You may accuse most of them of gross crimes, and they will not resent it half so much.
"And you!" he retorted. "It shows, dear girl, that you have no—no proper appreciation of the delicacies of my business situation, or you wouldn't make such a mountain of it. Do you think I'd do it if it wasn't necessary? Why, Fay," and he flung his club over his shoulder and drew her close to him; "you could make it hard for me by making too much of this. You could—you could spoil our honeymoon."
"Could spoil it? Indeed!" Her voice expressed an infinite scorn. "You have spoiled it already," she accused, and coldly waltzed herself out of his embrace.
Instantly he was conscious of extreme untactfulness. "Fay! Don't say that!" he pleaded contritely, catching her hand, and the girl-wife, with his dark eyes looking so appealingly into hers, could not resist him long. She could not be commonly irritable and quarrelsome—not now—she could not. A slow, amused smile grew upon her face as her sense of proportions was restored.
"Very well then, dear, I won't say it," she declared. "Forgive me. What did you make that hole in, seven or eleven?"
"Eleven!" and he smiled at the stab. "As well call it eleven. I'm off even my duffer's game today."
Again the coolness between them had passed as if it had been the shade of a drifting cloud.
But each morning of their stay here, as Fay woke to the ecstasies and delights of a new day, there came always jarring into her mind the thought of Blakeley. His long, gangling form was forever coming in between them—a telegram to read, a letter to sign, a duty to remind her husband of. It was maddening. She had not married Blakeley. Was her life to be forever filled with Blakeleys?
And so from day to day, with hours of rapturous bliss and occasional moments of disillusionment or disappointment, they passed through the allotted period of their honeymoon. In retrospect, from her Detroit home, the trifling discords were forgotten. Fay looked back upon it as a perfect thing.