Part 17

As he was leaving--a notable figure in a suit such as never entered Compson’s, and a straw hat, and a walking stick--he was met by Ritchie coming in. Ritchie was dressed in threadbare serge, and wore brown shoes, which he had attempted to make black. Bradley went by without a sign--not by intention, for he would have saluted his benefactor joyously if he had known him; but Ritchie, to him, was exactly like countless others, and quite indistinguishable.

Of course Ritchie took this apparent neglect as a personal insult. He sat down at his usual table, burning with shame and fury. When Madeline approached, he said truculently:

“I suppose you don’t want to go to the movies to-morrow night?”

It was an announcement, rather than a question.

“Well, I’m sorry,” replied Madeline, “only I got a date.”

“Him, isn’t it? All right! Go ahead! That’s just like a woman,” said Ritchie. “If a feller has good clothes and a fine physique, what do they care if he drinks, or anything?”

“I wasn’t aware I was requesting your valuable advice, Mr. Ritchie,” observed Madeline frigidly.

“I wasn’t giving it,” said he. “All I was saying was, women are all for show. They never see below the surface. Anyway, I’m going to Chicago the end of this week. I’m sick of New York!”

“My! Poor New York!” murmured she.

“I’m sick of the girls here,” he went on vehemently. “Just a lot of jazz babies--that’s what they are!”

“Here, now!” she cried.

“Jazz babies,” he repeated. “There isn’t one of them with--with any brains or any feelings.”

Madeline had turned pale.

“I’m not paid to be insulted by customers,” said she. “I’ll send some one else to wait on you. I’m sure I hope you’ll find some one in Chicago that’s good enough for you, if such a thing is possible!”

And thus terminated their acquaintance. They were now complete strangers.

VI

In the course of her twenty years Madeline had not shed so many tears as during this one night. There was time for a deluge, for it was surely the longest night that had ever covered the earth. It had the interminable confusion of a dream; and, like a dream, it was made up of vivid and apparently unconnected flashes.

First there was herself leaving Compson’s with a not very genuine air of composure, entering Bradley’s car, and settling herself by his side, determined not to be impressed or perturbed either by his magnificence or by the rakishness of the small car.

Then there was the flight through the bejeweled and marvelous city--a delight seriously marred by her companion’s sinister silence. Not being a driver herself, she had mistaken his preoccupation with traffic signals and so on for a grim and alarming determination. She had, as etiquette required, tried to talk, but he scarcely answered.

Then they shot out into the country--a world dark and unfamiliar to her. Almost the first thing Bradley did was to draw up the car by the roadside and produce a pocket flask. He had been surprised and amused at her indignation, and not overawed by her firm principles. She had said that she wished to go home, but he had been so very persuasive about the supper agreed upon that she had yielded.

She had regretted her weakness. The road house was an awful place. It was like the “haunts of vice” that she had read about in the Sunday newspapers. The prices on the menu appalled her, and the dancing was beyond imagining. Bradley knew some of those people, and had danced with a girl, leaving Madeline alone and unprotected at their table.

He said that what he had to drink was ginger ale, but she didn’t believe it. Ginger ale couldn’t have made him so flushed and silly; and when at last, after he had sat there smoking cigarettes and dawdling, they rose to go, she had noticed that his gait was unsteady. He had grown talkative, too, and never had she heard such silly conversation.

And now here they stood, on the brow of a hill. It was dark, but the dawn was already tingeing the sky. The birds were awake all about them, each one giving his own note--a reedy quaver, a chirp, a clear, exultant carol, each one indifferent and independent, but part of a glorious orchestral symphony. It was dawn, and here they were, for the graceless Bradley had lost his way in the dark.

They had gone jolting up lanes that ended in walls and fences, they had rushed across bridges, they had turned this way and that. Bradley made inquiries, but was not quite capable of profiting by them. Moreover, Madeline’s tears and reproaches had made him frantic. Dawn, and here they were! So fair and tranquil a dawn, it might have inspired to poetry the most insensitive soul; but to poor Madeline it meant only another working day. It made her think of Compson’s.

“Oh, my!” she cried. “Oh, what shall I do? Oh, how could you do such a thing?”

“I’m very sorry,” was all that the sobered young man could say. “I didn’t mean to.”

“My aunt’ll never let me in the house again!” she lamented. “Somebody’s sure to come from Compson’s and ask where I am, and my aunt’ll say she don’t know. I wish I was dead!”

“But can’t you explain?” Bradley asked patiently.

She was amazed at his stupidity, but the poor chap was quite unaware of the villainous aspect he had in the eyes of Compson’s staff. He had never considered himself a villain--certainly not where Madeline was concerned. He was very grateful to her, and he had tried to show his gratitude. That had not been at all difficult, because she was so pretty; but, thought he, what an awful temper!

Bradley was used to girls who concealed the most fiendish rages when in his company, and he believed that all girls were amiable. Ritchie would have understood Madeline’s outbreak. He might perhaps have quarreled with her, but all the time he quarreled he would have been terribly moved by her plight. Bradley couldn’t see that there was any plight. If she hadn’t been so terribly upset, he would have thought the thing a joke.

“Explain!” she cried. “Who do you think would believe me?”

He was about to speak, but when he looked at her, he could not. Some faint comprehension of her point of view came to him. The more he looked, the better he understood.

Grief had dignified her. Her tear-stained face, her brimming eyes, her trembling lip, distressed him beyond measure. He was an honest and kind-hearted fellow, and even something more than that. In his way, he was chivalrous. He felt deeply ashamed just then to remember that only a few hours before he had thought it rather comic to be taking out a waitress. He regretted the harmless but not very decorous jokes that he and his friends had made about the episode. He wished he had shown his gratitude in some other way. She wasn’t a waitress--she was a forlorn and miserable girl whom his ill-behavior had got into a situation which she regarded as serious.

“I’ll make it all right,” he said earnestly, wondering how this might be done.

“Well, you ought to!” she replied.

She didn’t mean to be ungracious or unkind, but she was in anguish. Neither she nor any of the people she knew could take such things lightly. She saw herself irretrievably disgraced, her haughty respectability forever tarnished. She knew so well what the girls at Compson’s would say!

She had been so proud of her discretion, of her superiority! She had been so very cautious about “strange gentlemen”! And to be away from home all night! She couldn’t bear it. Grief and resentment drove her to tears again.

“Don’t!” entreated Bradley. “Please don’t! I’ll make it all right, somehow--I give you my word I will!”

What he meant was that he would fly to some sympathetic feminine spirit, who could and would make it right for him.

VII

Madeline’s aunt didn’t believe one word of her niece’s story. Madeline quarreled haughtily and scornfully with her, but in her own heart she couldn’t blame her. She wouldn’t have believed it herself. Getting lost in a motor car with a millionaire! That was simply nonsense.

She lay down on the bed in her dismal little room, as close to despair as she was ever likely to be. One of the girls had come from Compson’s, and her aunt had said she didn’t know where Madeline was.

“I can never go back there!” she thought. “Never, never!”

She might have been mourning for a lost paradise. After all, it was as hard for her to lose her standing among her peers at the chophouse as for a duchess to lose prestige in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair. She had nothing else.

She neither expected nor wished to see Bradley again. He was a sinister mystery to her; she couldn’t understand him at all. She was convinced that he had got lost on purpose. The very fact of his not having tried to make love to her made the case all the more perturbing. He must have some deep design which she could not yet fathom.

He was bad. He drank. He went gladly to road houses where every one was bad, and drank, and danced improperly. His fascination was the fascination of a villain. His whole life must be a phantasmagoria of splendid evil.

As the room grew dark, she shuddered at the very thought of him. She dozed, and dreamed nightmares, and woke and cried and slept again. The blessed security of her honest, hard-working life was gone. She would have to give up her job. She couldn’t face the other girls again. Perhaps she was caught in one of those awful snares elaborately laid by millionaires for the daughters of the poor. Perhaps it was Bradley’s purpose to see that she never got another job--to hound her to the brink of starvation, that she might be obliged to listen to his evil proposals.

“I’d rather die!” she cried to herself with a sob.

There was not a soul in the world to assuage the heartsick young creature, no one to speak a word of common sense or solace. Her preposterous fears were terribly real to her. She had eaten nothing all day. She was exhausted, frightened, inimitably wretched.

She heard her aunt moving about in the kitchen. She knew that nothing on earth could induce the older woman to bring her even a cup of tea, and nothing could persuade her to ask for it.

“Not after what she said!” thought Madeline. “It would choke me!”

She fell asleep again, and was awakened by her aunt’s hand on her shoulder.

“Here’s that Mr. Ritchie,” the aunt announced.

“Well, tell him to go away!” replied Madeline.

“Tell him yourself,” said her aunt promptly. “I guess I got something better to do than carry messages for you!”

Her aunt was a severe, stout, bespectacled creature of fifty, a woman of invincible propriety, and Madeline’s conduct had stricken her to the heart. She was as glad to see Ritchie as if he were an angel, because obviously he could remedy all that was wrong; but she had no other way of expressing gratification, affection, or the most profound grief, than by her habitual disagreeableness.

“That’s just like you,” said Madeline.

She rose, too wretched to care how she looked, and went into the lugubrious little parlor where Ritchie waited.

“Well! I thought maybe you were sick,” said he.

“Well, I’m not,” she replied.

There was an awkward silence.

“Well!” he said at last. “Then what about going to the movies?”

Although he refused, as always, to look squarely at her, he had none the less observed her wan and tear-stained face, her untidy hair, her piteous dejection. Something which he imagined to be anger came over him.

“You been out with that feller?” he demanded.

“That’s my business!” returned Madeline valiantly.

“Well, if you--if you had more sense,” he said, and paused. He could not well have been more miserable than he was at that moment, nor could he have concealed it better. “Well!” he said again, with a sort of fury. “All right! It’s nothing to do with me. Go ahead! Suit yourself!”

He drew one of his books from his pocket, opened it, and held it out to her in a shaking hand.

“You can just look at this, if you like,” he said. “I’m going away to-morrow--that’s all I’ve got to say!”

She did look. Heavily underscored were two lines unfamiliar to her, and of striking beauty and significance:

’Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

Mr. Ritchie flung the book down on the table and walked out.

VIII

The very next evening, when he should have been on his way to Chicago, he was ringing the door bell of Madeline’s flat. His presence brought ineffable consolation to the aunt, and was not displeasing to the girl herself.

“My!” she said loftily. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d come back!”

“Well, I did,” said he. “Aren’t you going back to Compson’s any more?”

“That’s my business!” she answered, but she let him in, and he did not appear rebuffed.

“Well, I guess they miss you there,” he observed.

“Let ’em!” she retorted with spirit. They were both too polite, too formal, to take any notice of the tears rolling down her cheeks. “I went out with that Mr. Bradley, and we got lost in his car. We never got back here until near noon. There’s no use telling those girls that. They’re awful spiteful, and they’d never believe me.”

“Well, I do,” said Ritchie.

“I should think you ought to!” said Madeline, with a sternness that concealed a very warm gratitude.

“Well, I said I did, didn’t I?” pursued Ritchie.

There was a pause.

“He was here to-day,” said Madeline; “him and his sister. I must say I didn’t think much of her--all painted and everything. She wants to get me a job with one of those Fifth Avenue dressmakers, as a model, to show off the dresses.”

There was calm triumph in her tone, but despair seized Ritchie’s heart.

“She says I’d be an elegant model,” observed Madeline.

“All right!” said Ritchie. “Go ahead! Be one! Suit yourself!”

Another pause.

“That po’try you showed me,” said Madeline. “I thought it was sweet.”

“It’s not meant to be sweet,” replied Ritchie severely. “It’s more like, now, tragic. If you’d read more--”

“I always admired the way you read such a lot,” said Madeline.

In spite of himself, he was mollified. He glanced at her covertly. She was quite as lovely and disturbing as ever.

“Well,” he said, “of course I got to read. I want to get on. I’m making twenty-seven a week now, and more when there’s overtime. I spend a good lot on those correspondence courses, and the Coyote Club and all; but I guess I could do without them, if I felt like it.”

“I’m not going to take that job,” said Madeline suddenly. “I wouldn’t--not for anything. I guess I’ve had enough of that kind of people--all that drinking and all. I’d never get on with that kind!”

“Well, twenty-seven a week, _clear_--” said Ritchie.

The collapse of castles in the air doesn’t make a sound. Down came the magnificent edifice of Everard Ritchie’s ambitions, and the airy palace of Madeline’s dreams. In their place was instantaneously erected a three-room flat in a respectable quarter.

Their hands met, but not their eyes. They were timid lovers; but by that handclasp they could say all they wished.

“Those people just make me sick,” said Madeline. “You ought to have seen them dancing out at that place!”

Then their eyes did meet, full of profound confidence and understanding. His arm went round her shoulders, and she drew close to him.

“I know!” said he. “Fellers like that are no good at all; and those girls!” He looked at his haughty and incorruptible Madeline. “Those girls,” said he, from the depths of his vast worldly knowledge, “are nothing but a bunch of jazz babies!”

MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE

AUGUST, 1923 Vol. LXXIX NUMBER 3

The Postponed Wedding

IN WHICH THE PRINCIPALS WERE A TEARFUL BRIDE AND A SUBSTITUTE BRIDEGROOM

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Mildred stood like a statue--a trite figure of speech, but in this case an apt one. With the white satin draped about her bare shoulders, immobile in her cool and tranquil loveliness, she was truly like a statue, and an admirable one.

The dressmaker knelt at her feet as if before an idol, gathered the gleaming material into folds here and there, and put in pins, serious and happy in this congenial work. She admired Mildred immeasurably, because Miss Henaberry was polite and kind and beautiful, and did justice to a dressmaker’s art.

Mildred was not the first idol to be obliged to stand still and look lovely while the keenest anguish racked her. Not by the flicker of an eyelash would she betray what she suffered. She had read the letter calmly; she held it now in fingers that trembled not at all. Obediently she turned, or lifted an arm, and did everything necessary, so that the dress might be perfect.

It was her wedding dress, and her wedding had been announced for the first day of June--and for the past fifteen minutes she had known that there would be no wedding then.

The dressmaker rose and stood back a few feet, to look at the tall, straight young creature, with her proud little dark head, so nobly set off by the lustrous satin.

“My!” said she. “You’ll be a perfect vision, Miss Henaberry!”

Mildred smiled then, somewhat faintly. She was able, even willing, to endure the worst that fate could inflict upon her; but she very much wanted one hour alone, to endure the first shock. She did not want to cry, or even to think; all that she needed was a little space of time to steady and fortify that pride so horribly shaken.

Pride was at once the girl’s finest quality, and her worst. It was a splendid pride that had made her come out so bravely after her father’s bankruptcy and death, and, after twenty years of easy and luxurious living, had set to work to earn her bread as a teacher in a private school. It was a pride diabolic that made her stand so aloof, and refuse friendship, because of her morbid fear that some one might pity her.

You could read all that in her face; for though she had the profile, the wide, low brow, and the fine, grave eyes of Minerva, there was that about her mouth and chin which was simply mulish obstinacy. She never had listened, she never would listen, to any warning or advice. Any number of people had wanted to warn and advise her about Will Mallet.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Terhune, an old friend of her mother’s, “Will can’t support a wife.”

“He’s never tried,” answered Mildred. “He’s never had a wife.”

“But Will is--” Mrs. Terhune began, and had to stop.

Impossible to describe just what was wrong with Will Mallet. He came of a good family, and, though he hadn’t a penny, he had influential connections. He wasn’t lazy, he hadn’t a vice in the world, he was intelligent, almost scholarly, and altogether a handsome and endearing boy. Even the fact that at twenty-four he was still at loose ends, and still looking for his appointed work in the world, couldn’t justify what Mrs. Terhune said.

She declared that as a husband Will was impossible. He couldn’t be taken seriously. It was nice to dance with him, play tennis with him, hear him recite his poems--but marry him!

He had seldom been seen in the little town on the Hudson where he had been born. Now and then he came to visit an indulgent relative, and to get assistance moral and material, after which he would go off to try his luck once more. Every one liked him and no one respected him.

On this last visit he had surprised them all by deciding to stay. He said he intended to open a florist’s shop and greenhouses. He had looked about for a likely site, and had asked for advice--which he got in generous measure. His relations were pleased and rather touched by this venture, which seemed at once practical and poetic, and he had received more attention and encouragement than was good for him; but when his engagement to Mildred was made known, he lost all favor. He was severely condemned, and remonstrated with, and still further advised.

Will was a young man of no great vanity or self-assurance. He was fatally inclined to agree with people. He listened, downcast and wretched, to the admonitions of friends and relatives, and hastened off to tell Mildred that he was no good, and that she would be better off without him.

She thought otherwise. She had few illusions about her Will, but she thought that with help and encouragement he might be improved. She had for him a maternal sort of love, exacting and yet very tender. She didn’t wish to spoil him. She meant to inspire him with greater energy and self-reliance. She told him that he was capable of great things, for she really thought so. She was kind, indulgent, and yet firm with him--and she never suspected how she terrified him.

She had all the virtues. She worked hard and earnestly, she saved money, she read, she studied, she was intelligent, tender-hearted, modest, reserved, and matchlessly polite. She was beautiful, she knew how to dress and how to carry herself, and socially she was perfect; but there is one little truth which Mildred had never been taught. A good example must not be too good, or, instead of producing a desire for imitation, the beholders feel only despair and hopeless inferiority.

The bell rang for lunch, and Mildred had difficulty in suppressing a sob of relief. The dressmaker had the pleasure of going downstairs and eating at the same table with her idol. She looked about the dismal dining room of the boarding house with a happy smile.

“Well, you won’t be here much longer, Miss Henaberry,” she said.

Mildred agreed with that. She knew what she could endure, and she knew also what would be too much for her. She could not endure to remain there, among those friendly, interested people--not after this!

II

Mrs. Terhune read the letter, read it again with a distressed frown, and passed it to her husband.

DEAR MRS. TERHUNE:

Please believe that I am very sorry to go away without seeing you and thanking you for all your many, many kindnesses. Will and I have been obliged to change our plans, however, and to postpone our wedding for a time; so in order to avoid all the awkward and tiresome explaining, and so on, I thought it better to go for a visit to some old friends in the country, until our arrangements were complete. Of course I shall let you know all about it at the earliest possible moment.

Please, dear Mrs. Terhune, don’t think me ungrateful or lacking in affection for running off this way. As you know, I have an almost morbid horror of gossip, and I couldn’t bear to stay and explain a hundred times that the wedding was postponed until Will had improved his position. He is inclined to be far too sensitive about his earning powers, but I am sure you agree with me that a man is not to be judged by his financial success. I have perfect faith in Will.