Chapter II

After quite a while Clarinda arose from beside her father, and went back up the stairs. Her mother continued to stride about the rooms, giving orders and placing things as she would have them. Clarinda went to prepare herself for the sacrifice, which she hoped in her heart would not be as terrible as she thought it would be. When she was dressed she placed a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair. Mohammedan-like her face was covered with a long diaphanous veil formed as a yashmac, except it was fastened by gold pins. Clarinda dreamed of freedom. Presently she came from her room dressed as a bride. The house became astir. Her wonderful body swayed, lithe and strong, with perfect undulations. Her youth was paramount.

Beneath her veil, her face was contorted, a deadly pallor overspread it. Her lips trembled and her hands shook slightly. She was cold.

Behind her in unison with her step came immaculate maids who bore her long train. As she advanced to come down the stairs, bridesmaids ran hither and thither, picking up wraps and huge bunches of flowers.

The front doors of the house were thrown open as she came the length of the hall, lined by lackeys in uniform. Wide stood the doors, and the sun of the day in June swept into the spaces. It was sweet with the odor of new-mown hay and it merged with the perfume of the banked-up flowers. The light as it broke in cut arabesques on the rugs.

Clarinda felt the odor of the new-mown hay and the warmth of the sun crept into her soul, burning spaces in her fear.

Beyond the open doors at the beginning of the garden, at this side of the fountain that threw its pellucid waters high into the air, stood an automobile furnished with gleaming glass sides.

Clarinda felt the quiet.

It was broken now and then by an occasional laugh, hysterical in its intensity, a giggling girl, the sob of an old servant, but these interstices seemed only to accentuate the quiet.

With effort she moved the length of the hall and passed through the open doors. She entered the automobile which was to carry her to the church and a new life. Clarinda peered through the glass sides and watched the things she knew so well swept by her.

As the car started off, she heard the thundering tones of the bells of the church.

The car finished its journey and stopped suddenly at the church. Some one opened the door and helped her alight. Clustered about on the pavement stood evil, curious people. They gaped with envious eyes upon the girl. Some in their envy spat upon the stones as if to give vent to their wrath. Maliciously they grinned or cursed, cruel, bitter jealousy filled their souls. They whispered and commented upon her beauty and the beauty of her gown.

Clarinda did not know they asked why. Nor that their hands were stretched out in an agony to destroy. She did not know they hated her and the things she represented. Nor did she know they thought it unfair that they should be without and she should have all. These people shivered in the heat of the day. None of them smiled. Clarinda went by them without looking. She did not see their faces, nor did she feel their comments upon her and her gown.

The church swallowed her up. It was all dark. Heavy perfume hung in the air and the gloom was smitten and torn by lights from tall candles upon the high altar. Here and there the sun sent a ray through the stained-glass windows as if to try to dispel the dark. At a distance that seemed miles to Clarinda was the high altar, covered with flowers and decorated with the insignia of the church.

As she looked down the aisle, she saw standing at the end of the chancel, a priest in garments of white and of gold. He was looking steadily towards her as she approached, and at times read from his rubric. A choir of voices in the stalls sang and the music reverberated through the church.

At the steps to the chancel, she saw another man, who was very tall; behind him stood another clothed in black as the first, like bearers at a funeral. As she stopped the bridesmaids collected in certain fixed lines about her, making bright spots in the gloom. They seemed happy, and as envious as the poor who stood at the door and cursed her in the sunlight. The priest raised his hand and prayed that an infinite God might bless this pair. He read with deep intonations.

He was old and grey, his body was bent with the weight of his years. Many had come to him in their youth. Over thousands he had intoned the same prayers and raised his hand in blessing. He had seen these thousands turn and walk away to dangers they knew nothing of, with hope in their hearts and love in their souls.

Even so, Clarinda walked to dangers she knew nothing of, as thousands had before her, with hope in her heart and infinite love in her soul. As she turned from the priest, she pushed the veil back from her face and gently placed her hand upon the arm of the man—a smile was on her lips. Calmly she walked towards the door of the church, through the searching eyes of the host.

The car bore them swiftly away from the mob and their curses. Clarinda crept close to the man at her side, and even though she smiled a tear fell down her face. Clarinda trembled and shook as she tucked herself closer and closer to his side. The man put his arm around her, drawing her lovely body to him, and wiping away the tears as they fell.

“It is wonderful,” she said tremulously. The man laughed. “I am yours,” she added.

“Mine!” he replied.

“Everything that I was before is done. I am someone else. There is no more the old Clarinda. Don’t you think it is wonderful? Think of it, a few words, a motion of the hand, a prayer intoned by an old man and everything that one has been is dead.”

“Yes, it is wonderful, Clarinda. You are mine,” the man replied, and added as an afterthought, “until death do us part, for richer or for poorer; in sickness and in health.”

Clarinda withdrew herself from his arms and sat straight up in the car. She looked him steadily in the face.

“Let no man put asunder what God hath joined together,” she said with deep feeling.

“Those are the words,” he answered.

Through the streets, over the stones, around the corners, through the unheeding many who were swept by their own necessities, the car rushed as if it wished to deliver itself as quickly as possible of the freight it carried.

The keeper of the lodge, at the beginning of the garden stood waiting at the gate. As they passed he bowed low to the ground. His face was covered with a sinister smile. His hat touched the immaculate driveway, as it had done when they went out.

They came to the house. The bridesmaids arrived in various cars and collected about her. Her old father took her kindly in his arms. Her mother pressed a kiss upon her face. The music from the organ at the end of the hall played loudly and a childish voice sang alone, “O Perfect Love.”

Clarinda took her stand in the middle of a long line of people. Other people came in hordes, some shook her by the hand and all mumbled platitudes. Others kissed her and made remarks even as platitudinous. To each she gave a smile and tried in her heart to believe this was a day of joy. The beginning of a new life of unlimited possibilities. The future she hoped was golden in its promise.

The man to whom she had been married stood close by her side; at times, he sought her hand and pressed it violently. Visions of a great happiness floated harmoniously through his mind. He was strong, virile, oppressive in his strength. His face was covered with smiles. He made answer to all the thoughtless congratulations. He stood beside his new-made mother-in-law. Her chest was more prominent than ever. It rose and fell as the heaving of the sea. He bent and kissed her.

The father, the old man, twisted with age and the struggle he had made with the world, who by his fight had made all these things possible, took those who came by the hand and answered as best he could. Down in his heart he was oppressed with anxiety. The thing filled him with fear.

After a long time the line broke and the bridesmaids scattered. They chattered and laughed, each one in her heart hoping that out of this day, might come her chance to follow in the footsteps of Clarinda.

When all the company had assembled and they had seethed about and made their compliments, the doors were thrown open that led to the dining rooms, and the line in which Clarinda had stood for so long a time broke. The laden tables revealed themselves, burdened with mounds of food, in the center of one of them a huge cake, and beside it a long, glistening knife.

The men turned with a sigh of relief from the lights of the day, the girl and the music, their minds going to their stomachs. Everything was forgotten in the mad rush for the food. Old women growled and the young like predatory beasts crowded and secured the best for themselves.

Wines flowed with a lavish hand. Men drank as if it were the last drink of their lives. The smoke from innumerable cigarettes wreathed fantastic festoons over the people. In a short while the men and the women moved with uncertain steps over the polished floors, surfeited with the wines.

Clarinda’s mind was in a whirl. She saw all these things, and sensed none of them. After a great while she slipped from the crowd and wandered with faltering steps from one great room of the house to another. Her father followed her stealthily as if he feared she might like some ethereal thing float into space.

She made her way from room to room, and as she went she stretched out her hand and stroked each object as if she loved it.

Room after room she visited, up all the staircases she went, slowly and surely, until she came to the top of the house. Stopping at an oriel window she laid her hand on the frame, and bending her head leaned it against her arm. Below and beyond she saw the garden stretched like a great panorama. The places she loved were there below her, where she had played as a child. She followed with her eyes the well-beloved paths; every flower, every bush she could identify; they seemed to carry a special significance to her at the moment. Across the lake ambient in its blue she saw the jutting ledges and barren rocks where she had sat so many days and planned her life—what it should be; and she found now it was not to be.

She knew her chimera was shattered. Everything she had planned was gone from her. All was changed. Clarinda felt the wrench from her old life and the cast into the new. An anguish greater than she had ever felt before came over her, and with a saddened spirit she turned from the window, from the garden, the paths and her childhood. As she turned she met the eyes of her father, who stood just below her in the doorway to the room.

The old man trembled and was uncertain, his mind was torn with conflicting emotions. He felt with the going of Clarinda it was the end, the disrupting of the one thing upon which he had built all his later life. Yet, he knew in his heart, it was but a natural sequence. He had built his temple around this slip of a girl. All the dreams of his life had been centered upon this one thing. He had so wished she would always be with him, and that she should gather his many years together, place them in his old dead hands and fold the curtain, when he should at last be placed where moth and rust do not corrupt nor thieves break through and steal.

No one knew with more certainty than he, that all things were futile and ephemeral, but a passing foment. As he stood below at the door and looked up at her with her luxuriant life, he knew he would soon go,—and in a short while she too would pass. Out of nature would come obliteration, and with this obliteration all things he had built crumbled into dust. Even the tiny traces he had made upon the shifting sands of time would be blotted out. His fortunes, his house built of iron and granite, in a few short strokes of the clock would return to their primordial condition; this, even, before the grass should grow green above him.

Clarinda moved quickly over to him and clutched his hand, as if she felt the thoughts that were going through his mind. The old man shook with fear. He feared death, for it was an obsession with him. The thought of his last hours filled him with an ineffable sorrow, and drove the sweat out upon his forehead. And he knew death was there, he felt it in his quaking limbs and in his unsteady gait. He felt at times as if he dwelt with the dead.

At night when he laid himself down to rest, after the multitudinous labors of his day, as he closed his eyes, he would see floating before him all those whom he had known and with whom he had lived and worked and who had died. He counted them as they passed before him. A cold perspiration as he counted them enveloped him while they beckoned to him to follow, with their denuded fingers, and laughed at his futility.

He shivered now and clasped Clarinda’s hand so firmly that she winced with pain. With an effort he gathered himself together. Clarinda stretched her arms out to him and put them gently around his neck, as if to protect him from his fears.

“Father!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, my child,” he said tremulously.

They turned and went slowly hand in hand down through the halls, from place to place, from room to room, on down to the place of the food.

Together they stood for a few moments at the bottom of the staircase and looked at the milling crowd. They, even, marked the steps of those who had fed and drunk too eagerly, as they weaved and staggered from one part of the hall to the other.

They listened to the laughter emphasized by the wines. The crowd milled about. The young danced to the music. The old sat immovable in the chairs, breathing heavily like constrictors. They smiled, these overfed, and whispered among themselves; they criticised, and in their meager hearts their filled stomachs gave charity.

Gradually the hands of the clock, at the head of the stairs, moved towards the hour of departure. Unheeding time went on its inexorable way—irrepressible, grinding, persistent. It ground these minions with malicious certitude. It grinned at the futility of the people, the futility of the father, of the groom, the bridesmaids, the flowers, and the players of the music behind the palms.

It knew, this inexorable time, that the flowers massed upon the tables and hung in festoons from every point of vantage, the tables, the chairs, even the lights, it would smother in its unending advance. The people who laughed, who drank the wines and smoothed each other with unmeaning unction, it would in its own good process take back and bury in itself.

Clarinda knew nothing of time, and smiled at its progress. She smiled because she had never thought. Life to her was but opening up, and all of it was to be.

The man to whom she had been married came to her, and together they walked to the table that held the huge cake. Her heart turned from the things about her and went to him who cut the cake as if it were the Gordian knot. He cut this thing with the same strength he would cut his way to fame. Pride expanded her heart as she looked at him. Her father faded from her sight, and in his place came a new thing, a bigger thing, that resolved itself into youth, hope and ambition. She saw her mother float from place to place, and she too faded into the things that had been, and she had no place in the new condition.

Out of the complacency of her youth she looked at her mother’s tired face. Incompletely she saw her move from place to place. For some reason her spirit revolted against her as if she had done her an irreparable wrong, in bringing her into the world.

Clarinda left the crowd and went up the stairs by herself to dress for her departure. The man, the groom, youth to her youth, waited at the foot of the stairs, and talked rapidly with another man who twitted him. They laughed occasionally, and he smoked, this bridegroom, viciously, drawing the smoke from his cigarette deep down into his lungs, but the tobacco quieted him, and lent him assurance.

As he waited, he thought that from now on in the distant future all things should be his, the world, and success lay in the hollow of his hand. He would command. Life was no mystery, no uncertainty. It was plain and the hard road would be marched with ease.

For months before this wedding, in the still watches of the night, he had dreamed of the house he would build, and the things he would accumulate. He built this house, brick upon brick, just as he had dreamed, and he placed within its walls each piece of furniture as he would have it. In the aurora of it he placed Clarinda, for there was no futility rearing its head in front of him.

For a long time he stood with the other man at the foot of the staircase, waiting patiently, and presently from above came a sound, then he turned his eyes and above him stood Clarinda in all her lovely fragrance. Clarinda was ready, ready to go forth to give herself to him, and to take up life as it would come. A fearlessness, complete, enveloped her.

A smile covered her face as she saw him below. Then she placed one tiny foot in front of another tiny foot, and her movement was slow as if in accordance with the music that played in the hall. The man’s heart beat in unison with her step, and a smile of pride covered his face. The crowd stood back, then, as she stopped for a moment, a faint murmur arose, the voices gradually becoming louder, until the air was rent with a roar of approval.

Out into the sunlight they went—the man and the maid, and at the beginning of the garden they entered the car. The bridesmaids threw after them, as they left, old shoes and broken slippers as if they hoped to give a happy augury to their future.

Then the two, lost in the car, looked out of the windows, and they saw the garden fade out of sight. The keeper of the lodge like some old gnome bowed low to the driveway, this time as if an evil spirit possessed him. He seemed to laugh at their youth and their hopes.

The old keeper knew what futility was, for, in his youth he had taken hope in his heart and love in his soul. He, as they, had started down the roseate path, and it had looked to him as it did to them now, as to all the others who had driven through these gates and had come after him with hopes in their hearts and love in their souls. They, as he, had swept up the ashes of their lives upon the hearths of their homes. And the winds of adversity had come and driven them whirling into space. Out of it all they had gathered nothing, nothing remained, except bitterness, age and the certainty of death.

Clarinda saw nothing of this. In her ears the car sang. The power under the hood sang, and the man who drove sang, even the birds flying in the soft sunlight sang madrigals, and the great beams of the sun, as they cut the branches of the trees, seemed to be doing so out of pure love for her and her joy. The man beside her told her of his love—of the thought in him that at last he had arrived at the peak of his life. He told her that she was the one thing that went to complete his happiness. Clarinda trembled with joy and nestled closer and closer to him. Nothing marred the pleasure she felt. She dwelt upon his words he uttered and gloried in the softness of his voice. Clarinda held fast to the things he said and let them sink into her heart.

Mile after mile went by. They talked but little, but he told her again and again of his love, and from time to time he took her gently in his arms and kissed her.

Clarinda forgot everything, except the moment.

Late in the night they came to the front of a huge house, lit from cellar to garret. In front, collected upon the porch, there moved about many servants. The heavy doors were open and the lights from within cut the night as with a two-edged sword. The car stopped. Clarinda got out slowly. They walked hand in hand into the place. Clarinda gave no thought to anything.

They were served and ate a light repast. The clock in the hall struck twelve, the butler yawned and the other servants stood about and let their faces fall into a curious repose. The man arose from his seat. Clarinda passed out of the room. In her dressing-room there was a book, and it was open and as she read the open page a flush came over her face.