The Bridal Party. A short story
from F. Scott Fitzgerald
THERE WAS the usual insincere
little note saying : "I wanted you
to be the first to know/ 7 It was
a double shock to Michael, announc-
ing, as it did, both the
engagement and the imminent marriage;
which, moreover, was to be held,
not in New York, decently and far
away, but here in Paris under his
very nose, if that could be said to
extend over the Protestant
Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity,
Avenue George-Cinq. The date was
two weeks off, early in June.
At first Michael was afraid and
his stomach felt hollow. When he
left the hotel that morning, the
jemme de chambre, who was in love
with his fine, sharp profile and his
pleasant buoyancy, scented the
hard abstraction that had settled
over him. He walked in a daze to
his bank, he bought a detective
story at Smith's on the Rue de Rivoli,
he sympathetically stared for a
while at a faded panorama of the
battlefields in a tourist-office
window and cursed a Greek tout who
followed him with a half
-displayed packet of innocuous post cards
warranted to be very dirty
indeed.
But the fear stayed with him, and
after a while he recognized it
as the fear that now he would never
be happy. He had met Caroline
Dandy when she was seventeen,
possessed her young heart all
through her first season in New
York, and then lost her, slowly,
tragically, uselessly, because he
had no money and could make no
money ; because, with all the
energy and good will in the world, he
could not find himself ; because,
loving him still, Caroline had lost
faith and begun to see him as
something pathetic, futile and shabby,
outside the great, shining stream
of life toward which she was in-
evitably drawn.
Since his only support was that
she loved him, he leaned weakly
on that ; the support broke, but
still he held on to it and was carried
out to sea and washed up on the
French coast with its broken pieces
still in his hands. He carried
them around with him in the form of
photographs and packets of
correspondence and a liking for a maud-
lin popular song called Among My
Souvenirs. He kept clear of other
girls, as if Caroline would
somehow know it and reciprocate with a
faithful heart. Her note informed
him that he had lost her forever.
It was a fine morning. In front
of the shops in the Rue de Cas-
tiglione, proprietors and patrons
were on the sidewalk gazing upward,
for the Graf Zeppelin, shining
and glorious, symbol of escape and
destruction of escape, if
necessary, through destruction glided in
the Paris sky. He heard a woman
say in French that it would not
her astonish if that commenced to
let fall the bombs. Then he heard
another voice, full of husky
laughter, and the void in his stomach
froze. Jerking about, he was face
to face with Caroline Dandy and
her fianc6.
"Why, Michael ! Why, we were
wondering where you were. I asked
at the Guaranty Trust, and Morgan
and Company, and finally sent
a note to the National City
"
Why didn't they back away? Why
didn't they back right up,
walking backward down the Rue de
Castiglione, across the Rue de
Rivoli, through the Tuileries
Gardens, still walking backward as fast
as they could till they grew vague
and faded out across the river ?
"This is Hamilton
Rutherford, my fiance."
"We've met before."
"At Pat's, wasn't it?"
"And last spring in the Ritz
Bar."
"Michael, where have you
been keeping yourself?"
"Around here." This
agony. Previews of Hamilton Rutherford
flashed before his eyes a quick
series of pictures, sentences. He re-
membered hearing that he had
bought a seat in 1920 for a hundred
and twenty-five thousand of
borrowed money, and just before the
break sold it for more than half
a million. Not handsome like
Michael, but vitally attractive,
confident, authoritative, just the
right height over Caroline there
Michael had always been too short
for Caroline when they danced.
Rutherford was saying : "No,
I'd like it very much if you'd come
to the bachelor dinner. I'm
taking the Ritz Bar from nine o'clock on.
Then right after the wedding
there'll be a reception and breakfast
at the Hotel George-Cinq."
"And, Michael, George
Packman is giving a party day after
tomorrow at Chez Victor, and I
want you to be sure and come. And
also to tea Friday at Jebby
West's ; she'd want to have you if she
knew where you were. What's your
hotel, so we can send you an in-
vitation ? You see, the reason we
decided to have it over here is be-
cause mother has been sick in a
nursing home here and the whole
clan is in Paris. Then Hamilton's
mother's being here too "
The entire clan ; they had always
hated him, except her mother ;
always discouraged his courtship.
What a little counter he was in
this game of families and money !
Under his hat his brow sweated
with the humiliation of the fact
that for all his misery he was worth
just exactly so many invitations.
Frantically he began to mumble
something about going away.
Then it happened Caroline saw
deep into him, and Michael knew
that she saw. She saw through to
his profound woundedness, and
something quivered inside her,
died out along the curve of her mouth
and in her eyes. He had moved
her. All the unforgettable impulses
of first love had surged up once
more ; their hearts had in some way
touched across two feet of Paris
sunlight. She took her fiance's arm
suddenly, as if to steady herself
with the feel of it.
They parted. Michael walked
quickly for a minute; then he
stopped, pretending to look in a
window, and saw them farther up
the street, walking fast into the
Place Vendome, people with much
to do.
He had things to do also he had
to get his laundry.
"Nothing will ever be the
same again," he said to himself. "She
will never be happy in her
marriage and I will never be happy at all
any more."
The two vivid years of his love
for Caroline moved back around
him like years in Einstein's
physics. Intolerable memories arose
of rides in the Long Island
moonlight ; of a happy time at Lake
Placid with her cheeks so cold
there, but warm just underneath the
surface; of a despairing
afternoon in a little cafe on Forty-eighth
Street in the last sad months
when their marriage had come to seem
impossible.
"Come in," he said
aloud.
The concierge with a telegram ;
brusque because Mr. Curly's
clothes were a little shabby. Mr.
Curly gave few tips; Mr. Curly was
obviously a petit client.
Michael read the telegram.
u An answer?" the concierge
asked.
"No," said Michael, and
then, on an impulse: "Look."
u Too bad too bad," said the
concierge. "Your grandfather is
dead."
"Not too bad," said
Michael. "It means that I come into a quarter
of a million dollars."
Too late by a single month ;
after the first flush of the news his
misery was deeper than ever.
Lying awake in bed that night, he lis-
tened endlessly to the long
caravan of a circus moving through the
street from one Paris fair to
another.
When the last van had rumbled out
of hearing and the corners of
the furniture were pastel blue
with the dawn, he was still thinking
of the look in Caroline's eyes
that morning the look that seemed
to say: "Oh, why couldn't
you have done something about it? Why
couldn't you have been stronger,
made me marry you? Don't you
see how sad I am ?"
Michael's fists clenched.
"Well, I won't give up till
the last moment," he whispered. "I've
had all the bad luck so far, and
maybe it's turned at last. One takes
what one can get, up to the limit
of one's strength, and if I can't have
her, at least she'll go into this
marriage with some of me in her
heart."
II
Accordingly he went to the party
at Chez Victor two days later,
upstairs and into the little
salon off the bar where the party was to
assemble for cocktails. He was
early ; the only other occupant was a
tall lean man of fifty. They
spoke.
"You waiting for George
Packman's party?"
"Yes. My name's Michael
Curly."
"My name's "
Michael failed to catch the name.
They ordered a drink, and
Michael supposed that the bride
and groom were having a gay time.
"Too much so," the
other agreed, frowning. "I don't see how they
stand it. We all crossed on the
boat together ; five days of that crazy
life and then two .weeks of
Paris. You" he hesitated, smiling faintly
"you'll excuse me for saying
that your generation drinks too
much."
"Not Caroline."
"No, not Caroline. She seems
to take only a cocktail and a glass
of champagne, and then she's had
enough, thank God. But Hamilton
drinks too much and all this
crowd of young people drink too much.
Do you live in Paris ?"
"For the moment," said
Michael.
"I don't like Paris. My wife
that is to say, my ex-wife, Hamilton's
mother lives in Paris."
"You're Hamilton Rutherford's
father?"
"I have that honor. And I'm
not denying that I'm proud of what
he's done ; it was just a general
comment."
"Of course."
Michael glanced up nervously as
four people came in. He felt sud-
denly that his dinner coat was
old and shiny ; he had ordered a new
one that morning. The people who
had come in were rich and at home
in their richness with one
another a dark, lovely girl with a hysteri-
cal little laugh whom he had met
before ; two confident men whose
jokes referred invariably to last
night's scandal and tonight's po-
tentialities, as if they had
important roles in a play that extended
indefinitely into the past and
the future. When Caroline arrived,
Michael had scarcely a moment of
her, but it was enough to note
that, like all the others, she
was strained and tired. She was pale
beneath her rouge ; there were
shadows under her eyes. With a mix-
ture of relief and wounded
vanity, he found himself placed far from
her and at another table ; he
needed a moment to adjust himself to
his surroundings. This was not
like the immature set in which he
and Caroline had moved ; the men
were more than thirty and had an
air of sharing the best of this
world's good. Next to him was Jebby
West, whom he knew ; and, on the
other side, a jovial man who im-
mediately began to talk to
Michael about a stunt for the bachelor
dinner: They were going to hire a
French girl to appear with an
actual baby in her arms, crying:
"Hamilton, you can't desert me
now!" The idea seemed stale
and unamusing to Michael, but its
originator shook with
anticipatory laughter.
Farther up the table there was
talk of the market another drop
today, the most appreciable since
the crash; people were kidding
Rutherford about it: "Too bad,
old man. You better not get married,
after all."
Michael asked the man on his
left, "Has he lost a lot?"
"Nobody knows. He's heavily
involved, but he's one of the
smartest young men in Wall
Street. Anyhow, nobody ever tells you
the truth."
It was a champagne dinner from
the start, and toward the end it
reached a pleasant level of
conviviality, but Michael saw that all
these people were too weary to be
exhilarated by any ordinary stimu-
lant ; for weeks they had drunk
cocktails before meals like Ameri-
cans, wines and brandies like
Frenchmen, beer like Germans, whisky-
and-soda like the English, and as
they were no longer in the twen-
ties, this preposterous melange,
that was like some gigantic cocktail
in a nightmare, served only to
make them temporarily less conscious
of the mistakes of the night
before. Which is to say that it was not
really a gay party ; what gayety
existed was displayed in the few who
drank nothing at all.
But Michael was not tired, and
the champagne stimulated him and
made his misery less acute. He
had been away from New York for
more than eight months and most
of the dance music was unfamiliar
to him, but at the first bars of
the "Painted Doll", to which he and
Caroline had moved through so
much happiness and despair the pre-
vious summer, he crossed to
Caroline's table and asked her to dance.
She was lovely in a dress of thin
ethereal blue, and the proximity
of her crackly yellow hair, of
her cool and tender gray eyes, turned
his body clumsy and rigid ; he
stumbled with their first step on the
floor. For a moment it seemed
that there was nothing to say; he
wanted to tell her about his
inheritance, but the idea seemed abrupt
unprepared for.
"Michael, it's so nice to be
dancing with you again."
He smiled grimly.
"I'm so happy you
came," she continued. "I was afraid maybe
you'd be silly and stay away. Now
we can be just good friends and
natural together. Michael, I want
you and Hamilton to like each
other."
The engagement was making her
stupid ; he had never heard her
make such a series of obvious
remarks before.
"I could kill him without a
qualm," he said pleasantly, "but he
looks like a good man. He's fine.
What I want to know is, what
happens to people like me who aren't
able to forget?"
As he said this he could not
prevent his mouth from drooping
suddenly, and glancing up,
Caroline saw, and her heart quivered
violently, as it had the other
morning.
"Do you mind so much,
Michael?"
"Yes."
For a second as he said this, in
a voice that seemed to have come
up from his shoes, they were not
dancing ; they were simply clinging
together. Then she leaned away
from him and twisted her mouth
into a lovely smile.
"I didn't know what to do at
first, Michael. I told Hamilton about
you that I'd cared for you an
awful lot but it didn't worry him,
and he was right. Because I'm
over you now yes, I am. And you'll
wake up some sunny morning and be
over me just like that."
He shook his head stubbornly.
"Oh, yes. We weren't for
each other. I'm pretty flighty, and I need
somebody like Hamilton to decide
things. It was that more than
the question of of "
"Of money." Again he
was on the point of telling her what had
happened, but again something
told him it was not the time.
"Then how do you account for
what happened when we met the
other day," he demanded
helplessly "what happened just now?
When we just pour toward each
other like we used to as if we were
one person, as if the same blood
was flowing through both of us?"
"Oh, don't," she begged
him. "You mustn't talk like that ; every-
thing's decided now. I love
Hamilton with all my heart. It's just that
I remember certain things in the
past and I feel sorry for you for
us for the way we were."
Over her shoulder, Michael saw a
man come toward them to cut
in. In a panic he danced her
away, but inevitably the man came on.
"I've got to see you alone,
if only for a minute," Michael said
quickly. "When can I ?"
"I'll be at Jebby West's tea
tomorrow," she whispered as a hand
fell politely upon Michael's
shoulder.
But he did not talk to her at
Jebby West's tea. Rutherford stood
next to her, and each brought the
other into all conversations. They
left early. The next morning the
wedding cards arrived in the first
mail.
Then Michael, grown desperate
with pacing up and down his
room, determined on a bold
stroke; he wrote to Hamilton Ruther-
ford, asking him for a rendezvous
the following afternoon. In a
short telephone communication
Rutherford agreed, but for a day
later than Michael had asked. And
the wedding was only six days
away.
They were to meet in the bar of
the Hotel Jena. Michael knew
what he would say: "See
here, Rutherford, do you realize the re-
sponsibility you're taking in
going through with this marriage? Do
you realize the harvest of
trouble and regret you're sowing in per-
suading a girl into something
contrary to the instincts of her heart?"
He would explain that the barrier
between Caroline and himself had
been an artificial one and was
now removed, and demand that the
matter be put up to Caroline
frankly before it was too late.
Rutherford would be angry,
conceivably there would be a scene,
but Michael felt that he was
fighting for his life now.
He found Rutherford in
conversation with an older man, whom
Michael had met at several of the
wedding parties.
"I saw what happened to most
of my friends," Rutherford was
saying, "and I decided it
wasn't going to happen to me. It isn't so
difficult ; if you take a girl
with common sense, and tell her what's
what, and do your stuff damn
well, and play decently square with
her, it's a marriage. If you
stand for any nonsense at the beginning,
it's one of these arrangements
within five years the man gets out,
or else the girl gobbles him up
and you have the usual mess."
"Right!" agreed his
companion enthusiastically. "Hamilton, boy,
you're right."
Michael's blood boiled slowly.
"Doesn't it strike
you," he inquired coldly, "that your attitude
went out of fashion about a
hundred years ago?"
"No, it didn't," said
Rutherford pleasantly, but impatiently. "I'm
as modern as anybody. I'd get
married in an aeroplane next Satur-
day if it'd please my girl."
"I don't mean that way of
being modern. You can't take a sensitive
woman "
"Sensitive? Women aren't so
darn sensitive. It's fellows like you
who are sensitive ; it's fellows
like you they exploit all your devo-
tion and kindness and all that.
They read a couple of books and see
a few pictures because they
haven't got anything else to do, and then
they say they're finer in grain
than you are, and to prove it they take
the bit in their teeth and tear
off for a fare-you-well just about as
sensitive as a fire horse."
"Caroline happens to be
sensitive," said Michael in a clipped
voice.
At this point the other man got
up to go ; when the dispute about
the check had been settled and they
were alone, Rutherford leaned
back to Michael as if a question
had been asked him.
"Caroline's more than
sensitive," he said. "She's got sense."
His combative eyes, meeting
Michael's, flickered with a gray light.
"This all sounds pretty
crude to you, Mr. Curly, but it seems to me
that the average man nowadays
just asks to be made a monkey of by
some woman who doesn't even get
any fun out of reducing him to
that level. There are darn few
men who possess their wives any more,
but I am going to be one of
them."
To Michael it seemed time to
bring the talk back to the actual
situation: "Do you realize
the responsibility you're taking?"
"I certainly do,"
interrupted Rutherford. "I'm not afraid of re-
sponsibility. I'll make the
decisions fairly, I hope, but anyhow
they'll be final."
"What if you didn't start
right?" said Michael impetuously. "What
if your marriage isn't founded on
mutual love?"
"I think I see what you
mean," Rutherford said, still pleasant.
"And since you've brought it
up, let me say that if you and Caroline
had married, it wouldn't have
lasted three years. Do you know what
your affair was founded on? On
sorrow. You got sorry for each other.
Sorrow's a lot of fun for most
women and for some men, but it seems
to me that a marriage ought to be
based on hope." He looked at his
watch and stood up.
"I've got to meet Caroline.
Remember, you're coming to the
bachelor dinner day after
tomorrow."
Michael felt the moment slipping
away. "Then Caroline's personal
feelings don't count with
you?" he demanded fiercely.
"Caroline's tired and upset.
But she has what she wants, and that's
the main thing."
"Are you referring to
yourself ?" demanded Michael incredulously.
"Yes."
"May I ask how long she's
wanted you?"
"About two years."
Before Michael could answer, he was gone.
During the next two days Michael
floated in an abyss of helpless-
ness. The idea haunted him that
he had left something undone that
would sever this knot drawn
tighter under his eyes. He phoned
Caroline, but she insisted that
it was physically impossible for her
to see him until the day before
the wedding, for which day she
granted him a tentative
rendezvous. Then he went to the bachelor
dinner, partly in fear of an
evening alone at his hotel, partly from a
feeling that by his presence at
that function he was somehow nearer
to Caroline, keeping her in
sight.
The Ritz Bar had been prepared
for the occasion by French and
American banners and by a great
canvas covering one wall, against
which the guests were invited to
concentrate their proclivities in
breaking glasses.
At the first cocktail, taken at
the bar, there were many slight spill-
ings from many trembling hands,
but later, with the champagne,
there was a rising tide of
laughter and occasional bursts of song.
Michael was surprised to find
what a difference his new dinner
coat, his new silk hat, his new,
proud linen made in his estimate of
himself ; he felt less resentment
toward all these people for being so
rich and assured. For the first
time since he had left college he felt
rich and assured himself; he felt
that he was part of all this, and
even entered into the scheme of
Johnson, the practical joker, for the
appearance of the woman betrayed,
now waiting tranquilly in the
room across the hall.
"We don't want to go too
heavy," Johnson said, "because I imagine
Ham's had a pretty anxious day
already. Did you see Fullman Oil's
sixteen points off this
morning?"
"Will that matter to him?"
Michael asked, trying to keep the
interest out of his voice.
"Naturally. He's in heavily
; he's always in everything heavily. So
far he's had luck ; anyhow, up to
a month ago."
The glasses were filled and
emptied faster now, and men were
shouting at one another across
the narrow table. Against the bar a
group of ushers was being photographed,
and the flash light surged
through the room in a stifling
cloud.
"Now's the time,"
Johnson said. "You're to stand by the door, re-
member, and we're both to try and
keep her from coming in just
till we get everybody's
attention."
He went on out into the corridor,
and Michael waited obediently
by the door. Several minutes
passed. Then Johnson reappeared with
a curious expression on his face.
"There's something funny
about this."
"Isn't the girl there?"
"She's there all right, but
there's another woman there, too ; and
it's nobody we engaged either.
She wants to see Hamilton Ruther-
ford, and she looks as if she had
something on her mind."
They went out into the hall.
Planted firmly in a chair near the
door sat an American girl a little
the worse for liquor, but with a
determined expression on her
face. She looked up at them with a
jerk of her head.
"Well, j'tell him?" she
demanded. "The name is Marjorie Collins,
and he'll know it. I've come a
long way, and I want to see him now
and quick, or there's going to be
more trouble than you ever saw."
She rose unsteadily to her feet.
"You go in and tell
Ham," whispered Johnson to Michael. "Maybe
he'd better get out. I'll keep
her here."
Back at the table, Michael leaned
close to Rutherford's ear and,
with a certain grimness,
whispered :
"A girl outside named
Marjorie Collins says she wants to see you.
She looks as if she wanted to
make trouble."
Hamilton Rutherford blinked and
his mouth fell ajar ; then slowly
the lips came together in a
straight line and he said in a crisp
voice :
"Please keep her there. And
send the head barman to me right
away."
Michael spoke to the barman, and
then, without returning to the
table, asked quietly for his coat
and hat. Out in the hall again, he
passed Johnson and the girl
without speaking and went out into the
Rue Cambon. Calling a cab, he
gave the address of Caroline's hotel.
His place was beside her now. Not
to bring bad news, but simply
to be with her when her house of
cards came falling around her head.
Rutherford had implied that he
was soft well, he was hard enough
not to give up the girl he loved
without taking advantage of every
chance within the pale of honor.
Should she turn away from Ruth-
erford, she would find him there.
She was in ; she was surprised
when he called, but she was still
dressed and would be down
immediately. Presently she appeared in
a dinner gown, holding two blue
telegrams in her hand. They sat
down in armchairs in the deserted
lobby.
"But, Michael, is the dinner
over?"
"I wanted to see you, so I
came away."
"I'm glad." Her voice
was friendly, but matter-of-fact. "Because
I'd just phoned your hotel that I
had fittings and rehearsals all day
tomorrow. Now we can have our
talk after all."
"You're tired," he
guessed. "Perhaps I shouldn't have come."
"No. I was waiting up for
Hamilton. Telegrams that may be im-
portant. He said he might go on
somewhere, and that may mean
any hour, so I'm glad I have
someone to talk to."
Michael winced at the
impersonality in the last phrase.
"Don't you care when he gets
home?"
"Naturally," she said,
laughing, "but I haven't got much say
about it, have I?"
"Why not?"
"I couldn't start by telling
him what he could and couldn't
do."
"Why not?"
"He wouldn't stand for
it."
"He seems to want merely a
housekeeper," said Michael ironi-
cally.
"Tell me about your plans,
Michael," she asked quickly.
"My plans? I can't see any
future after the day after tomorrow.
The only real plan I ever had was
to love you."
Their eyes brushed past each
other's, and the look he knew so
well was staring out at him from
hers. Words flowed quickly from
his heart :
"Let me tell you just once
more how well I've loved you, never
wavering for a moment, never
thinking of another girl. And now
when I think of all the years
ahead without you, without any hope,
I don't want to live, Caroline
darling. I used to dream about our
home, our children, about holding
you in my arms and touching your
face and hands and hair that used
to belong to me, and now I just
can't wake up."
Caroline was crying softly.
"Poor Michael poor Michael." Her
hand reached out and her fingers
brushed the lapel of his dinner
coat. "I was so sorry for
you the other night. You looked so thin,
and as if you needed a new suit
and somebody to take care of you."
She sniffled and looked more
closely at his coat. "Why, you've got
a new suit ! And a new silk hat !
Why, Michael, how swell ! " She
laughed, suddenly cheerful
through her tears. "You must have come
into money, Michael ; I never saw
you so well turned out."
For a moment, at her reaction, he
hated his new clothes.
"I have come into
money," he said. "My grandfather left me about
a quarter of a million
dollars."
"Why, Michael," she
cried, "how perfectly swell I I can't tell you
how glad I am. I've always
thought you were the sort of person who
ought to have money."
"Yes, just too late to make
a difference."
The revolving door from the
street groaned around and Hamilton
Rutherford came into the lobby.
His face was flushed, his eyes were
restless and impatient.
"Hello, darling; hello, Mr.
Curly." He bent and kissed Caroline.
"I broke away for a minute
to find out if I had any telegrams. I see
you've got them there."
Taking them from her, he remarked to
Curly, "That was an odd
business there in the bar, wasn't it ? Espe-
cially as I understand some of
you had a joke fixed up in the same
line." He opened one of the
telegrams, closed it and turned to Caro-
line with the divided expression
of a man carrying two things in his
head at once.
"A girl I haven't seen for
two years turned up," he said. "It seemed
to be some clumsy form of blackmail,
for I haven't and never have
had any sort of obligation toward
her whatever."
"What happened?"
"The head barman had a
Surete Generate man there in ten minutes
and it was settled in the hall.
The French blackmail laws make ours
look like a sweet wish, and I
gather they threw a scare into her that
shell remember. But it seems
wiser to tell you."
"Are you implying that I
mentioned the matter?" said Michael
stiffly.
"No," Rutherford said
slowly. "No, you were just going to be on
hand. And since you're here, I'll
tell you some news that will interest
you even more."
He handed Michael one telegram
and opened the other.
"This is in code,"
Michael said.
"So is this. But I've got to
know all the words pretty well this last
week. The two of them together
mean that I'm due to start life all
over."
Michael saw Caroline's face grow
a shade paler, but she sat quiet
as a mouse.
"It was a mistake and I
stuck to it too long," continued Ruth-
erford. "So you see I don't
have all the luck, Mr. Curly. By the way,
they tell me you've come into
money."
"Yes," said Michael.
"There we are, then."
Rutherford turned to Caroline. "You under-
stand, darling, that I'm not
joking or exaggerating. I've lost almost
every cent I had and I'm starting
life over."
Two pairs of eyes were regarding
her Rutherford's noncommittal
and unrequiring, Michael's
hungry, tragic, pleading. In a minute she
had raised herself from the chair
and with a little cry thrown herself
into Hamilton Rutherford's arms.
"Oh, darling," she
cried, "what does it matter! It's better; I like
it better, honestly I do ! I want
to start that way ; I want to ! Oh,
please don't worry or be sad even
for a minute ! "
"All right, baby," said
Rutherford. His hand stroked her hair
gently for a moment ; then he
took his arm from around her.
"I promised to join the
party for an hour," he said. "So I'll say
good night, and I want you to go
to bed soon and get a good sleep.
Good night, Mr. Curly. I'm sorry
to have let you in for all these
financial matters."
But Michael had already picked up
his hat and cane. "I'll go
along with you," he said.
III
It was such a fine morning.
Michael's cutaway hadn't been de-
livered, so he felt rather
uncomfortable passing before the cameras
and moving-picture machines in
front of the little church on the
Avenue George-Cinq.
It was such a clean, new church
that it seemed unforgivable not
to be dressed properly, and
Michael, white and shaky after a sleep-
less night, decided to stand in
the rear. From there he looked at the
back of Hamilton Rutherford, and
the lacy, filmy back of Caroline,
and the fat back of George
Packman, which looked unsteady, as if
it wanted to lean against the
bride and groom.
The ceremony went on for a long
time under the gay flags and
pennons overhead, under the thick
beams of June sunlight slanting
down through the tall windows
upon the well-dressed people.
As the procession, headed by the
bride and groom, started down
the aisle, Michael realized with
alarm he was just where everyone
would dispense with their parade
stiffness, become informal and
speak to him.
So it turned out. Rutherford and
Caroline spoke first to him;
Rutherford grim with the strain
of being married, and Caroline love-
lier than he had ever seen her,
floating all softly down through the
friends and relatives of her
youth, down through the past and for-
ward to the future by the sunlit
door.
Michael managed to murmur,
"Beautiful, simply beautiful," and
then other people passed and
spoke to him old Mrs. Dandy,
straight from her sickbed and
looking remarkably well, or carrying
it off like the very fine old
lady she was; and Rutherford's father
and mother, ten years divorced,
but walking side by side and look-
ing made for each other and
proud. Then all Caroline's sisters and
their husbands and her little
nephews in Eton suits, and then a long
parade, all speaking to Michael
because he was still standing par-
alyzed just at that point where
the procession broke.
He wondered what would happen
now. Cards had been issued for
a reception at the George-Cinq ;
an expensive enough place, heaven
knew. Would Rutherford try to go
through with that on top of those
disastrous telegrams? Evidently,
for the procession outside was
streaming up there through the
June morning, three by three and
four by four. On the corner the
long dresses of girls, five abreast,
fluttered many-colored in the
wind. Girls had become gossamer
again, perambulatory flora; such
lovely fluttering dresses in the
bright noon wind.
Michael needed a drink ; he
couldn't face that reception line with-
out a drink. Diving into a side
doorway of the hotel, he asked for the
bar, whither a chasseur led him
through half a kilometer of new
American-looking passages.
But how did it happen? the bar
was full. There were ten
fifteen men and two four girls,
all from the wedding, all needing
a drink. There were cocktails and
champagne in the bar; Ruther-
ford's cocktails and champagne,
as it turned out, for he had engaged
the whole bar and the ballroom
and the two great reception rooms
and all the stairways leading up
and down, and windows looking out
over the whole square block of
Paris. By and by Michael went and
joined the long, slow drift of
the receiving line. Through a flowery
mist of "Such a lovely
wedding," "My dear, you were simply lovely,"
"You're a lucky man,
Rutherford" he passed down the line. When
Michael came to Caroline, she
took a single step forward and kissed
him on the lips, but he felt no
contact in the kiss ; it was unreal and
he floated on away from it. Old
Mrs. Dandy, who had always liked
him, held his hand for a minute
and thanked him for the flowers he
had sent when he heard she was ill.
"I'm so sorry not to have
written ; you know, we old ladies are
grateful for " The flowers,
the fact that she had not written, the
wedding Michael saw that they all
had the same relative impor-
tance to her now ; she had
married off five other children and seen
two of the marriages go to
pieces, and this scene, so poignant, so con-
fusing to Michael, appeared to
her simply a familiar charade in which
she had played her part before.
A buffet luncheon with champagne
was already being served at
small tables and there was an
orchestra playing in the empty ball-
room. Michael sat down with Jebby
West ; he was still a little em-
barrassed at not wearing a
morning coat, but he perceived now that
he was not alone in the omission
and felt better. "Wasn't Caroline
divine?" Jebby West said.
"So entirely self-possessed. I asked her
this morning if she wasn't a
little nervous at stepping off like this.
And she said, Why should I be?
I've been after him for two years,
and now I'm just happy, that's
all.' "
"It must be true," said
Michael gloomily.
"What?"
"What you just said."
He had been stabbed, but, rather
to his distress, he did not feel
the wound.
He asked Jebby to dance. Out on
the floor, Rutherford's father
and mother were dancing together.
"It makes me a little sad,
that," she said. "Those two hadn't met
for years ; both of them were
married again and she divorced again.
She went to the station to meet
him when he came over for Caroline'*
wedding, and invited him to stay
at her house in the Avenue du Bois
with a whole lot of other people,
perfectly proper, but he was afraid
his wife would hear about it and
not like it, so he went to a hotel
Don't you think that's sort of
sad?"
An hour or so later Michael
realized suddenly that it was after-
noon. In one corner of the
ballroom an arrangement of screens like
a moving-picture stage had been
set up and photographers were tak-
ing official pictures of . ,
still as
death and pale as wax under the
bright lights, appeared, to' the
dancers circling the modulated
semidarkness of the ballroom, like
those jovial or sinister groups
that one comes upon in The Old Mill
at an amusement park.
After had been photographed, there was a group
of the ushers ; then the
bridesmaids, the families, the children. Later,
Caroline, active and excited,
having long since abandoned the repose
implicit in her flowing dress and
great bouquet, came and plucked
Michael off the floor.
"Now we'll have them take
one of just old friends." Her voice im-
plied that this was best, most
intimate of all. "Come here, Jebby,
George not you, Hamilton; this is
just my friends Sally "
A little after that, what remained
of formality disappeared and
the hours flowed easily down the
profuse stream of champagne. In
the modern fashion, Hamilton
Rutherford sat at the table with his
arm about an old girl of his and
assured his guests, which included
not a few bewildered but
enthusiastic Europeans, that the party was
not nearly at an end ; it was to
reassemble at Zelli's after midnight.
Michael saw Mrs. Dandy, not quite
over her illness, rise to go and
become caught in polite group
after group, and he spoke of it to one
of her daughters, who thereupon
forcibly abducted her mother and
called her car. Michael felt very
considerate and proud of himself
after having done this, and drank
much more champagne.
"It's amazing," George
Packman was telling him enthusiastically.
"This show will cost Ham
about five thousand dollars, and I under-
stand they'll be just about his
last. But did he countermand a bottle
of champagne or a flower? Not he!
He happens to have it that
young man. Do you know that T. G.
Vance offered him a salary of
fifty thousand dollars a year ten
minutes before the wedding
this morning? In another year
he'll be back with the million-
aires."
The conversation was interrupted
by a plan to carry Rutherford
out on communal shoulders a plan
which six of them put into
effect, and then stood in the
four-o'clock sunshine waving good-by
to the bride and groom. But there
must have been a mistake some-
where, for five minutes later
Michael saw both bride and groom
descending the stairway to the reception,
each with a glass of cham-
pagne held defiantly on high.
"This is our way of doing
things," he thought. "Generous and fresh
and free ; a sort of
Virgina-plantation hospitality, but at a different
pace now, nervous as a ticker
tape."
Standing unself-consciously in
the middle of the room to see which
was the American ambassador, he
realized with a start that he hadn't
really thought of Caroline for
hours. He looked about him with a
sort of alarm, and then he saw
her across the room, very bright and
young, and radiantly happy. He
saw Rutherford near her, looking at
her as if he could never look
long enough, and as Michael watched
them they seemed to recede as he
had wished them to do that day in
the Rue de Castiglione recede and
fade off into joys and griefs of
their own, into the years that
would take the toll of Rutherford's fine
pride and Caroline's young,
moving beauty; fade far away, so that
now he could scarcely see them,
as if they were shrouded in some-
thing as misty as her white,
billowing dress.
Michael was cured. The ceremonial
function, with its pomp and
its revelry, had stood for a sort
of initiation into a life where even
his regret could not follow them.
All the bitterness melted out of
him suddenly and the world reconstituted
itself out of the youth and
happiness that was all around
him, profligate as the spring sunshine.
He was trying to remember which
one of the bridesmaids he had
made a date to dine with tonight
as he walked forward to bid Ham-
ilton and Caroline
Rutherford good-by
