Part 7

"Make mine a ginger ale highball, kiddo."

Silly, this blather of the Renaissance, ham actors mouthing To be or not to be... Like Whitey, that was better. But first I'll have to be so girls don't bother me. Shall I go home with her? I wish she was better looking. He wouldn't care how she looked.... I get it now and then, but I don't miss it. And Nan; is Nan just girls bothering me?

"You're blue this evenin', kiddo, ain't they treatin' you right? Tell it to mommer."

Wenny jerked his chair round and put an arm round her waist. Her head sank on his shoulder. Smell of her hair, what was the perfume she used? Rouge too, sweetish fatty smell of rouge from her lips. She beads her eyes. His hand touched her breast limp under her bodice. Firm Nan's breasts would have been. This morning how he had wanted to put his hands on Nan's firm breasts and kiss her. Don't think of it. When I am sated I will forget Nan, everything. He kissed her lips. Her eyes were bored unfired between their beaded lashes.

"Look out, kiddo, don't get too close. This is a respectable joint. I doan wanter get in wrong here."

Wenny seemed to stand apart from this body of his touching the girl's body, to look at it critically through the tobacco smoke as if from the bleary eyes of the chromo of Washington. And when he is sated, his voice seemed to say, when his flesh has grown very cold he'll be like Whitey, going round to new towns, walking down roads, hopping freights: Tallahassee and South Bend and Havana and Paris and Helsingfors and Khiva and Budapest and Khorasan ... riding over more parched hills than the leanfaced people of the Renaissance rode over, in search of words, of old gods' names more powerful than any they ever dreamed of. Under the table his hand was on her thigh. His heart was pounding.

"What do you think about when you're blue, Ellen?"

"Me? I don't think when I'm blue. I drink."

At the next table a man with three chins whose bald head swayed from side to side was trying to stroke with a puffy ringed hand the arm of the redhaired girl opposite him. A waiter hovered over them threateningly. The room was swinging round in smooth spirals to the sound of The Blue Danube from the orchestra.

Wenny's heart was pounding. His hands were cold. Afraid, are you? a voice sneered in his head. To live you can be afraid of nothing. The Greeks were not afraid. The lean-faced men were not afraid. By god they were. Men flagellated themselves round the altar of Apollo on Delos. They recanted on their deathbeds and stuck their tongues out eagerly for the wafer. And can David Wendell, silly little Wenny, son of a minister with his collar on backwards, can I conquer fear. I must. Her flesh was hot under his hand.

"Let's go, Ellen. Where do you live?"

"Aint so far from here. I'll show you. I got a swell room."

The wind blew cold down streets of blank windows. At the corner she slipped on a frozen puddle.

"Oopsidaisy!" He caught her with a laugh.

"Jeeze, I wrenched my ankle..." She drew the breath in sharply through her teeth. "Hell of a note... Say, kiddo, got plenty of jack?"

"I've got enough."

"I'll treat you nice, honest I will. I like you, real pash. Make it twenty, will you? A buck don't go far nowadays. Make it twenty, kiddo."

"I don't think I can give you as much as that. I'm broke."

Nan this morning in her green kimono shaking him, her long fingers digging into his shoulders. O, I must forget her.

"Not often you can get a girl like me, deary. I'm mighty careful...

"Don't worry, I'll give you all I've got."

They passed a Chinaman in a fur coat standing under an arclight.

Nan, I hate you. Nan, I'll kill you out of my mind. Tomorrow when I've killed you utterly, I'll begin to live.

They stopped at a red brick house with a sign Furnished Rooms in the window. The key was in the door, clicked; the door opened. Dim gaslight in the hall.

Whitey had said: O, they don't bother me.

I get it now and then, but I don't miss it. I'll be like that tomorrow.

The carpet on the stairs had big roses on green; it was frayed and torn. The stairs creaked. The house smelt mustily of rotting wallpaper, of ratnests.

"Here we are, deary... Aint bad, is it. Wait a sec, I'll light up."

Nan, you are beaten, dead. Must not is dead too. Wenny's legs were trembling. His tongue moved about in his mouth like a thirsty dog's. He dropped into a chair by the door. Nan, God, how I love you, Nan.

"Tired are you, deary? D'you know you look powerful like a guy I had a crush on wonct. Near croaked of it, honest... You see, for all I could do he wouldn't give it to me... Kerist, I'm glad that's over. Worse than a spell of sickness..."

To be free of this sickness of desire. I must break down my fear. Of what, of what? The social evil, prostitutions of the Caananites, venereal disease, what every young man should know, convention, duty, God. What rot.

"You get into bed, deary... I must fix my hair. Sheets are nice and clean, see. I always have clean sheets on my bed... Maybe you'll come to see me often now. Safer, I'm tellin' ye to go to one girl steady. You know what you're gettin' then... Pretty, ain't it, this chimmy? Got it at Filene's in the bargain basement..."

He was standing against the door crumpling his felt hat in his hands. He tried to speak; no words came.

She was naked sitting on the edge of the bed under the gas jet, eyes wide and mocking; her breasts hung free as she leaned towards him. In his head was a ghastly sniggering. He was out the door.

She grabbed him by the wrist.

"No, you don't. I've had them kind before ... just want to peek an' run. Gimme somethin' or I'll raise the roof, you low-down sonofabitch of a cheap skate you."

"Here, take that, it's all I've got."

He piled crumpled greenbacks in her hands. A half-dollar fell to the floor. She stooped, naked, groping for it.

He rushed down the stairs, slammed the door, out into the icy glare of the arclight in the street. Coward, the word was like a pack of hounds screaming about his ears, yelping, tearing. This is what you've done to me, Nan. Tomorrow was colonnades of stage scenery tumbling about his ears. Through it he was fainting with desire for the woman's body naked on the bed under the gas jet. Nan's eyes, sea-grey, drowning him, the smell of her hair. He leaned against a lamp post and stared with stinging eyes down the empty darkness of the street.

V

On Fanshaw's desk was a large white envelope and within that envelope another envelope which contained engraved cards faced with tissuepaper. Fanshaw pulled off the tissuepaper and ran the nail of his little finger lightly across the lettering.

Mr. and Mrs. Heaton W. Harrenden Announce the Marriage of their Daughter Alice to Mr. Chamberlain C. Mason at Twelve O'clock, Noon, February Fifteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Twelve at Harrenden Manor, Durham, Massachusetts.

Then there was a little card

For the accommodation of guests a special train will leave the North Station, Boston, at eleven fifteen, returning from Durham at five thirty.

And another little card

Mr. and Mrs. Heaton K. Harrenden request the pleasure of your company at the wedding breakfast at two o'clock, February Fifteenth, Nineteen Hundred and Twelve, at Harrenden Manor.

A letter from Cham had been tucked in:

Dear Fanshaw: You've got to come. Mrs. Harrenden says she wants an old-fashioned wedding, but Allie and I are going to try to pep it up a bit.

Yours, Cham.

Let's see, Fanshaw was thinking, what ought one to wear at a noon wedding? Noon. The time Cham and I took those two chorus girls canoeing at Norumbega Park, the mudsmell of the river.... And now Cham's marrying an heiress. Harrenden's Snowflake Meal. Like telegraph poles from the train the years slip by, so fast and nothing to catch hold of. Ought I to get a cutaway?

Through the coal smoke that gripped his throat Fanshaw caught a whiff of roses. A girl in a mink coat with a large bunch of pink roses at her waist had just brushed past him. She must be going to the wedding too, he thought, and started walking in the direction she had gone, following with his eyes the signs that announced the trains: Portland Express, North Shore Local....

"Hello, Macdougan, where the hell are you going?"

"I'm going to a wedding. What are you doing here this time of day, Henley?"

"I'm off to a wedding too." Henley had a booming voice; he was a tall dark man with a moustache, thickwaisted.

"Cham Mason's wedding?"

"Sure.... I didn't know that dignified people like you went in for weddings."

"I don't often, Henley.... But I roomed with Cham Mason when we were freshmen."

"Frankly, Macdougan, I find weddings of great anthropological interest.... Savage survivals."

They were in a crowd of very dressed people passing through a gate in the end platform, all about them fur coats, flowers, fuzzy hats, bright shoes. "O, how do you do, Mrs. Glendinning! Yes, dreadfully cold. Why everybody anyone ever knew in the world is here? No, those are the Pittsburgh people. Imagine having a special train. Yes, those are the Harrison-Smiths, my dear."

"Say, Macdougan, suppose we get in the smoker where we can chat quietly," whispered Henley fitting his derby back on his head. "This is too much of a good thing.... There's something so prurient about women at an affair like this."

"After all a wedding.... Go ahead."

"Why they are parlor cars.... Here we are.... Is the only piece of straight sex-ceremonial left to us."

"How's that?"

"The ring, my dear fellow, the ring.... What could be more of a symbol than a ring? Why, among the aborigines of the Caribbean ..."

"Why, look who's here?... Why, this is a class reunion, boys." A red, round face topped by straight black hair slicked across a bald forehead was poked in the door. "You remember me, don't you, Henley?"

"Sure I do, Randall. I haven't seen you since our last class day. How are you?... As I was saying, Macdougan, among the aborigines of the Caribbean ..."

"I think I'll join you fellers if you don't mind. Gee, it's great isn't it, that old Cham is gettin' hitched?"

"That depends...."

"Not if you know the bride," Randall hitched up his blue serge trousers and let himself sink down broadly on to the leather seat. "Ah ... A lovely, sweet girl."

"Yes, I know her," said Fanshaw frostily. He turned and looked out at the empty windows of the train on the next track. Through them he could see more windows, people sitting in a parlor car. There came a toot from the engine and the empty windows and the windows with people in them began to glide past. The seat rumbled; the train was moving, smoke cut out the view, cleared to reveal bridges and black water over which gulls veered screaming. Five gulls on the edge of a cake of ice.

A leather case of cigars was poked under his nose. "Thanks, I never smoke cigars." Fanshaw kept his face turned to the window, letting Henley talk to this Randall-man.

"Yes," he was saying with a heavy laugh, "I been to some mighty funny weddings."

"I never miss one when I can help it."

"There was a wedding down in Philadelphia I once went to where the groom passed out before the ceremony. That was a funny wedding."

"What was the matter?"

"Dry Martinis, that's all. We had to put him under the showerbath to bring him around enough to stagger up the aisle.... He got mixed up and tried to lead one of the bridesmaids up to the altar. It was a barrel of monkeys, that wedding was...."

Fanshaw was looking out at the bare trees and the rows of grey suburban houses. The smoke from the engine unrolled dense and white across the landscape against a leaden sky. Above the grinding rumble of wheels he could hear the two men talking beside him.

"I saw a man drop down stone dead at the altar once."

"You don't say."

"Dreadful thing... Heart failure it was that did it. The bride had just said about love, honor, and obey, when the fellow began to stagger around. When they picked him up he was dead. A good chap too, important in the Elks and secretary of the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce. It was a great shock to everyone. Marrying the girl he was going to marry had been thought the crowning success of his career."

"Funny time of year to have a country wedding, isn't it?"

Fanshaw turned laughing from the window.

"Most eccentric... Why, everything's full of hoar-frost."

When the train reached Durham station the sun was shining palely. The cars exuded furs and orchids and derby hats and canes from either end. Outside the station several limousines and taxicabs were lined up waiting for the guests, and in front of them, pacing up and down the platform with the stationmaster, was a tall sallow man in a silk hat and a frock coat of which the straight line was broken in front by a sudden little pot belly that looked like a football tucked in under his vest.

"That's Mr. Harrenden," said Henley. "Let's walk up to the house to avoid the rush... Gosh, look at that feather. I bet she's one of the Pittsburghers."

"In full warpaint too," said Fanshaw tittering.

"How do you do, Mr. Harrenden?"

"Howdy, boys... Glad to see you. Step right into one of those cars, or perhaps you'ld rather walk. Leave more room for the lovely ladies... See you up at the house... Why, how do you do, Mrs. Harrison-Smith?"

"Come on, Macdougan," said Henley. Fanshaw followed him through the station. They walked briskly through the main street of the town, past a row of new concrete stores, and out along a macadam road that crunched frostily underfoot. Now and then a limousine full of guests passed them.

"It's only half a mile and we have plenty of time."

"Do you know Miss Harrenden, Henley?"

"Very well... Why, I almost wanted to marry her myself at one time. She's a very lively young person."

Fanshaw glanced at him furtively out of the corners of his eyes. Henley had flushed red.

"Cold, the wind, isn't it?" Fanshaw said after a pause and turned up the velvet collar of his coat with a gloved hand.

"Extraordinary study a wedding is from the point of view of psychoanalysis."

"How do you mean?"

"Everybody gets a certain vicarious satisfaction out of it, don't you think so?"

"You mean the culmination of a romance? That sort of thing...?"

"I mean out of the two nice young things going off to bed together... The rest of it is just sublimation."

"I don't think that's altogether true... I think romance much more about how they are going to buy furniture and found a home and have new visiting cards printed."

"Sublimation all of it. Look how excited all those overdressed women are?"

"Just because they are going to a party and meeting their friends and trying to look their best... I don't agree with the Freudian emphasis on the lowest in our natures. I don't think it's a good thing... Anyway civilized people don't let themselves think about those subjects."

"That's what I'm saying... But what they think is just a veneer. Underneath our conscious thoughts and taboos we are over-sexed and anthropophagous savages."

They were walking up a drive bordered by barberry bushes of which the berries stood out scarlet over the greybrown lawn. They scraped the soles of their shoes against the scraper beside the door on the semicircular Colonial porch and found themselves being divested of their hats and overcoats by a maid who gave them numbered checks in return. Then clearing their throats slightly, smoothing the tails of their cutaways with one hand, they advanced up the hall to where in a black and silver dress with a tinsel Egyptian shawl over her shoulders stood Mrs. Harrenden smiling and pyramidal.

"Dick Henley, I haven't seen you for years. We must find time to have a chat... How do you do Mr... Mr..."

"Macdougan."

"Of course... You'll find the young people right upstairs in the library... I suppose you still are classed among the young people, Dick. All seems mere children to me at any rate... You will help me to make an oldfashioned jolly wedding of it, won't you? It's not a social affair at all. No one is invited but a few indispensable, intimate friends. So vulgar these great society weddings... So much nicer to have only a few intimate friends..."

With a silky swish Mrs. Harrenden stalked towards the door which was encumbered by a new car full of guests.

At the top of the brown-carpeted stairs they ran suddenly into Cham Mason who was crawling on his hands and knees across the upper hall.

"Hello, Cham."

"Why, if it isn't Fanshaw... Look, for crissake, help me... Susie Beveridge has broken her string of pearls. We're looking for them because with all these strange people... How do you do, Henley? I hadn't seen you." He got to his feet unsteadily and rubbed his hand across his closecropped yellow hair. "Gosh, I'm tight as a tick... Come into the library and have a cocktail... I got to have a lil' sip to sober me."

"I thought you were looking for the wedding ring," said Henley.

"Right after a lil' sip to sober up we mus' look for pearls again. Two of 'em rolled into the hall."

They followed Cham into the library, a great wainscoted room dense with the sweetness of the yellow mimosa that stood in pots in the fireplace. A group of girls and young men stood round a brass smoking table on which was a shaker and a great array of cocktail glasses shining in the grey light that poured in through a broad window. In a morrischair sat a fatfaced girl, her eyes brimmed with tears holding a lot of various sized pearls in her cupped hands.

"Count them again, Susie.... Maybe you've got them all," somebody said.

"Have a lil' cocktail with us and then we'll all look an we won't stop looking till we find every last one of 'em."

"But it's time, Cham," whined the girl in the morrischair.

"Well, where's Allie? I'm ready.... Here's looking at you, Fanshaw."

"Brush off your knees, they're all over dust.... I hear the orchestra tuning up. Come along, everybody."

"For God's sake, don't anybody get me started laughing," said Cham straightening himself up and goosestepping stiffly towards the door.

"Come on, Cham, they are waiting," said in a voice staccato with excitement a little grey-haired grey faced man in a frock coat too long for him who appeared in the door.

"All right, Dad, I'm coming.... But, where's Allie? I refuse to be married without Allie."

Fanshaw drank down his cocktail and followed. Behind him he heard a voice still whining, "I don't know where to put my pearls." He pulled the door to and started down the stairs beside a black toque with a cockade like a Westpointer's in it.

"My," the girl was saying, "You should have seen the rehearsal of the ceremony this morning. It was a scream. Everybody got the giggles so we couldn't go on."

"Sh-sh," went someone. Everything was quiet but for the rustle of dresses, an occasional cough or a sound of creaky tiptoeing. They were packed into a long drawing room down the middle of which an aisle had been made by a row of little orange trees in pots. Fanshaw flattened himself against the wall beside a picture that he was in constant fear of knocking down. The string orchestra grouped about the piano in the far corner behind the palms struck up. Everybody craned their necks.

"That's the overture," whispered someone.

"What, deary?" came in broken elderly tones.

"The overture, Mother,... Beethoven."

"Ah, Beethoven."

"Sh-sh."

The overture stopped. In the silence feverish whispering was heard in the hall and a man's voice loud and angry: "And for Heaven's sake don't forget which pocket it's in."

"Sh-sh."

The orchestra was playing Mendelssohn's Wedding March. Fanshaw could see the heads of people moving two by two up the aisle to the end of the room where the minister stood with a purple stole round his neck. The bride and groom were hidden by an orange tree but he could see the backs of the bridesmaids in peachcolored silk and a shimmer of orange tulle on their hats, and the light shining on Mr. Harrenden's bald head. A sneeze across the room was stifled in a handkerchief. There was some coughing in the wedding party and the minister began to read the service in a chanting nasal tone. Fanshaw was breathing deep of a heavy lemonsweet smell... Must be orange blossoms.

* * * *

The table stretched long and white in both directions, bordered by faces, black coats, bright colored hats. The shine of silver and plates and champagne glasses was blurred by cake crumbs, rind of fruit, nutshells, napkins.

Gracious, have I had too much to drink? the thought streaked across the shimmer of Fanshaw's brain and the sound of voices and the smell of food. He was half turned round in his chair, talking rapidly and smoothly, in spite of the fact that his tongue felt bigger than usual, to the girl next to him who wore a pink dress and kept laughing and laughing.

"Cultivated people in this generation," he was saying, "Are like foreigners who suddenly find themselves in a country whose language they do not know, whose institutions they do not understand, like people in one of those great state barges the Venetians had, that Canaletto drew so well..."

"Isn't this wedding a scream," said the girl in pink, laughing and laughing. "I've never been to such a nice wedding as this and this is my fourth already this winter... If a winter wedding's like this, what would a spring wedding be like? Aren't they just too lovely together? I think Chamberlain's awfully good-looking, don't you?"

They were standing up, moving into another room, bright dresses and black coats jamming the doorway. Fanshaw found himself sitting alone in a deep armchair smoking a cigar. What he needed was some coffee, he was saying to himself. After an oldfashioned jolly wedding he needed coffee. He got to his feet and walked with care and deliberation to the table where the coffee service was. My, things were happening fast. Careful, he must be careful. There was no one in the room but a short pudgy man in a grey suit who was drinking a whiskey and soda, shaking the glass meditatively between every sip.

"Where have they all gone?" asked Fanshaw querulously.

"Getting out the Stutz, I guess."

"How's that?" Fanshaw gulped some coffee.

"Didn't you know that the young couple were going on their honeymoon in the big red Stutz Harrenden gave them? An elegantly matched pair."

"Cham and I roomed together, Freshman year in college," Fanshaw found himself saying.

"Ah, College! That's the place to make connections."

They stood looking at each other nodding their heads knowingly, Fanshaw with his coffeecup, the pudgy man with his highball glass, when the sound of a racing motor attracted their attention. It was followed by a shout from the front of the house. Fanshaw went to the window and pulled back the curtain. The guests cheering and laughing filled the colonial porch and surged round a shaking roadster in the drive. Fanshaw caught a glimpse of Alice Harrenden's pale face under a little brown hat and veil as she climbed into the car. Her eyes were swollen and her lips tight as if she were going to cry. Cham waved a buff cap and opened the cutout. Rice hailed on the car. An old sneaker hit Cham in the head. He honked the horn, bent over the wheel and the car shot around the bend of the driveway. People looked at each other constrainedly and began going back into the house.