For Christine’s wedding the Street threw off its drab attire and assumed a wedding garment. In the beginning it was incredulous about some of the details.
“An awning from the house door to the curbstone, and a policeman!” reported Mrs. Rosenfeld, who was finding steady employment at the Lorenz house. “And another awning at the church, with a red carpet!”
Mr. Rosenfeld had arrived home and was making up arrears of rest and recreation.
“Huh!” he said. “Suppose it don’t rain. What then?” His Jewish father spoke in him.
“And another policeman at the church!” said Mrs. Rosenfeld triumphantly.
“Why do they ask ‘em if they don’t trust ‘em?”
But the mention of the policemen had been unfortunate. It recalled to him many things that were better forgotten. He rose and scowled at his wife.
“You tell Johnny something for me,” he snarled. “You tell him when he sees his father walking down street, and he sittin’ up there alone on that automobile, I want him to stop and pick me up when I hail him. Me walking, while my son swells around in a car! And another thing.” He turned savagely at the door. “You let me hear of him road-housin’, and I’ll kill him!”
The wedding was to be at five o’clock. This, in itself, defied all traditions of the Street, which was either married in the very early morning at the Catholic church or at eight o’clock in the evening at the Presbyterian. There was something reckless about five o’clock. The Street felt the dash of it. It had a queer feeling that perhaps such a marriage was not quite legal.
The question of what to wear became, for the men, an earnest one. Dr. Ed resurrected an old black frock-coat and had a “V” of black cambric set in the vest. Mr. Jenkins, the grocer, rented a cutaway, and bought a new Panama to wear with it. The deaf-and-dumb book agent who boarded at McKees’, and who, by reason of his affliction, was calmly ignorant of the excitement around him, wore a borrowed dress-suit, and considered himself to the end of his days the only properly attired man in the church.
The younger Wilson was to be one of the ushers. When the newspapers came out with the published list and this was discovered, as well as that Sidney was the maid of honor, there was a distinct quiver through the hospital training-school. A probationer was authorized to find out particulars. It was the day of the wedding then, and Sidney, who had not been to bed at all, was sitting in a sunny window in the Dormitory Annex, drying her hair.
The probationer was distinctly uneasy.
“I—I just wonder,” she said, “if you would let some of the girls come in to see you when you’re dressed?”
“Why, of course I will.”
“It’s awfully thrilling, isn’t it? And—isn’t Dr. Wilson going to be an usher?”
Sidney colored. “I believe so.”
“Are you going to walk down the aisle with him?”
“I don’t know. They had a rehearsal last night, but of course I was not there. I—I think I walk alone.”
The probationer had been instructed to find out other things; so she set to work with a fan at Sidney’s hair.
“You’ve known Dr. Wilson a long time, haven’t you?”
“Ages.”
“He’s awfully good-looking, isn’t he?”
Sidney considered. She was not ignorant of the methods of the school. If this girl was pumping her—
“I’ll have to think that over,” she said, with a glint of mischief in her eyes. “When you know a person terribly well, you hardly know whether he’s good-looking or not.”
“I suppose,” said the probationer, running the long strands of Sidney’s hair through her fingers, “that when you are at home you see him often.”
Sidney got off the windowsill, and, taking the probationer smilingly by the shoulders, faced her toward the door.
“You go back to the girls,” she said, “and tell them to come in and see me when I am dressed, and tell them this: I don’t know whether I am to walk down the aisle with Dr. Wilson, but I hope I am. I see him very often. I like him very much. I hope he likes me. And I think he’s handsome.”
She shoved the probationer out into the hall and locked the door behind her.
That message in its entirety reached Carlotta Harrison. Her smouldering eyes flamed. The audacity of it startled her. Sidney must be very sure of herself.
She, too, had not slept during the day. When the probationer who had brought her the report had gone out, she lay in her long white nightgown, hands clasped under her head, and stared at the vault-like ceiling of her little room.
She saw there Sidney in her white dress going down the aisle of the church; she saw the group around the altar; and, as surely as she lay there, she knew that Max Wilson’s eyes would be, not on the bride, but on the girl who stood beside her.
The curious thing was that Carlotta felt that she could stop the wedding if she wanted to. She’d happened on a bit of information—many a wedding had been stopped for less. It rather obsessed her to think of stopping the wedding, so that Sidney and Max would not walk down the aisle together.
There came, at last, an hour before the wedding, a lull in the feverish activities of the previous month. Everything was ready. In the Lorenz kitchen, piles of plates, negro waiters, ice-cream freezers, and Mrs. Rosenfeld stood in orderly array. In the attic, in the center of a sheet, before a toilet-table which had been carried upstairs for her benefit, sat, on this her day of days, the bride. All the second story had been prepared for guests and presents.
Florists were still busy in the room below. Bridesmaids were clustered on the little staircase, bending over at each new ring of the bell and calling reports to Christine through the closed door:—
“Another wooden box, Christine. It looks like more plates. What will you ever do with them all?”
“Good Heavens! Here’s another of the neighbors who wants to see how you look. Do say you can’t have any visitors now.”
Christine sat alone in the center of her sheet. The bridesmaids had been sternly forbidden to come into her room.
“I haven’t had a chance to think for a month,” she said. “And I’ve got some things I’ve got to think out.”
But, when Sidney came, she sent for her. Sidney found her sitting on a stiff chair, in her wedding gown, with her veil spread out on a small stand.
“Close the door,” said Christine. And, after Sidney had kissed her:—
“I’ve a good mind not to do it.”
“You’re tired and nervous, that’s all.”
“I am, of course. But that isn’t what’s wrong with me. Throw that veil some place and sit down.”
Christine was undoubtedly rouged, a very delicate touch. Sidney thought brides should be rather pale. But under her eyes were lines that Sidney had never seen there before.
“I’m not going to be foolish, Sidney. I’ll go through with it, of course. It would put mamma in her grave if I made a scene now.”
She suddenly turned on Sidney.
“Palmer gave his bachelor dinner at the Country Club last night. They all drank more than they should. Somebody called father up to-day and said that Palmer had emptied a bottle of wine into the piano. He hasn’t been here to-day.”
“He’ll be along. And as for the other—perhaps it wasn’t Palmer who did it.”
“That’s not it, Sidney. I’m frightened.”
Three months before, perhaps, Sidney could not have comforted her; but three months had made a change in Sidney. The complacent sophistries of her girlhood no longer answered for truth. She put her arms around Christine’s shoulders.
“A man who drinks is a broken reed,” said Christine. “That’s what I’m going to marry and lean on the rest of my life—a broken reed. And that isn’t all!”