第80章

Throughout my life there have been days and incidents,some trivial,some important,that linger in my memory because they are saturated with "atmosphere."I recall,for instance,a gala occasion in youth when my mother gave one of her luncheon parties;on my return from school,the house and its surroundings wore a mysterious,exciting and unfamiliar look,somehow changed by the simple fact that guests sat decorously chatting in a dining-room shining with my mother's best linen and treasured family silver and china.The atmosphere of my wedding-day is no less vivid.The house of Ezra Hutchins was scarcely recognizable:its doors and windows were opened wide,and all the morning people were being escorted upstairs to an all-significant room that contained a collection like a jeweller's exhibit,--a bewildering display.There was a massive punch-bowl from which dangled the card of Mr.and Mrs.Adolf Scherer,a really wonderful tea set of old English silver given by Senator and Mrs.

Watling,and Nancy Willett,with her certainty of good taste,had sent an old English tankard of the time of the second Charles.The secret was in that room.And it magically transformed for me (as I stood,momentarily alone,in the doorway where I had first beheld Maude)the accustomed scene,and charged with undivined significance the blue shadows under the heavy foliage of the maples.The September sunlight was heavy,tinged with gold....

So fragmentary and confused are the events of that day that a cubist literature were necessary to convey the impressions left upon me.I had something of the feeling of a recruit who for the first time is taking part in a brilliant and complicated manoeuvre.Tom and Susan Peters flit across the view,and Gene Hollister and Perry Blackwood and the Ewanses,--all of whom had come up in a special car;Ralph Hambleton was "best man,"looking preternaturally tall in his frock-coat:and his manner,throughout the whole proceeding,was one of good-natured tolerance toward a folly none but he might escape.

"If you must do it,Hughie,I suppose you must,"he had said to me.

"I'll see you through,of course.But don't blame me afterwards."Maude was a little afraid of him....

I dressed at George's;then,like one of those bewildering shifts of a cinematograph,comes the scene in church,the glimpse of my mother's wistful face in the front pew;and I found myself in front of the austere Mr.Doddridge standing beside Maude--or rather beside a woman I tried hard to believe was Maude--so veiled and generally encased was she.Iwas thinking of this all the time I was mechanically answering Mr.

Doddridge,and even when the wedding march burst forth and I led her out of the church.It was as though they had done their best to disguise her,to put our union on the other-worldly plane that was deemed to be its only justification,to neutralize her sex at the very moment it should have been most enhanced.Well,they succeeded.If I had not been as conventional as the rest,I should have preferred to have run away with her in the lavender dress she wore when I first proposed to her.It was only when we had got into the carriage and started for the house and she turned to me her face from which the veil had been thrown back that Irealized what a sublime meaning it all had for her.Her eyes were wet.

Once more I was acutely conscious of my inability to feel deeply at supreme moments.For months I had looked forward with anticipation and impatience to my wedding-day.

I kissed her gently.But I felt as though she had gone to heaven,and that the face I beheld enshrouded were merely her effigy.Commonplace words were inappropriate,yet it was to these I resorted.

"Well--it wasn't so bad after all!Was it?"She smiled at me.

"You don't want to take it back?"

She shook her head.

"I think it was a beautiful wedding,Hugh.I'm so glad we had a good day."...

She seemed shy,at once very near and very remote.I held her hand awkwardly until the carriage stopped.

A little later we were standing in a corner of the parlour,the atmosphere of which was heavy with the scent of flowers,submitting to the onslaught of relatives.Then came the wedding breakfast:croquettes,champagne,chicken salad,ice-cream,the wedding-cake,speeches and more kisses....I remember Tom Peters holding on to both my hands.

"Good-bye,and God bless you,old boy,"he was saying.Susan,in view of the occasion,had allowed him a little more champagne than usual--enough to betray his feelings,and I knew that these had not changed since our college days.I resolved to see more of him.I had neglected him and undervalued his loyalty....He had followed me to my room in George's house where I was dressing for the journey,and he gave it as his deliberate judgment that in Maude I had "struck gold.""She's just the girl for you,Hughie,"he declared."Susan thinks so,too."Later in the afternoon,as we sat in the state-room of the car that was bearing us eastward,Maude began to cry.I sat looking at her helplessly,unable to enter into her emotion,resenting it a little.Yet I tried awkwardly to comfort her.

"I can't bear to leave them,"she said.

"But you will see them often,when we come back,"I reassured her.It was scarcely the moment for reminding her of what she was getting in return.This peculiar family affection she evinced was beyond me;I had never experienced it in any poignant degree since I had gone as a freshman to Harvard,and yet I was struck by the fact that her emotions were so rightly placed.It was natural to love one's family.I began to feel,vaguely,as I watched her,that the new relationship into which Ihad entered was to be much more complicated than I had imagined.