Gods Men (27 page)

William flushed. “Nothing would please me better, Mr. Cameron,” he said.

His marriage day dawned as bright as though he had commanded the sun. At that light striking through his open windows he remembered a story his mother used to tell of his childhood. He had waked once at dawn in the old temple where his family was summering upon one of those bare brown mountains outside the city of Peking. The light was pearly above the horizon and he had shouted, leaping out of bed, “Come up, Sun!” At that moment, as though in obedience to his command, the sun sprang above the edge of the earth. He could not have been more than four years old.

The sun had come up as suddenly this morning and he lay realizing as much as he could the meaning of this day. Everything was ready and all that he had to do was simply to be the bridegroom that the day demanded. He had no doubt of himself, for he was to be alone. He had struggled for months over the matter of his sisters and his grandparents and then had dismissed his conscience. Both the girls were at college and his grandfather was not well. The old man was recovering slowly from a stroke and one side of his face was askew. William would not have them at his wedding.

When Candace spoke of them he shook his head. “I don't want them there,” he said. She had looked at him with strange eyes and had said nothing.

The bridesmaids were six of Candace's schoolmates and friends. Jeremy was his best man and Martin, Blayne and Seth were his ushers. He had made everything as he wanted it.

The door opened and the valet came in, a middle-aged man with a careful English accent.

“Shall I draw your bath, sir?”

“If you please.”

“Mrs. Cameron thought you might like your breakfast fetched on a tray.”

“I would, thanks.”

The ceremony was to be at noon and they were sailing for England immediately. Roger Cameron was giving them the trip. He was giving them a house, too. Not a large one, but a pleasant small structure of cream-colored brick near Washington Square. William had not pretended that either luxury was in his power to provide.

“Someday I'll be able to do all these things for Candy, sir,” he had said, gracefully accepting the gifts.

“Of course you will,” Roger Cameron had replied.

The bath water stopped running and a valet held up a silk robe, his head turned away. William got out of bed and drew it about his shoulders.

“Bring breakfast in half an hour,” he said with the brusque manner he had learned in his childhood toward servants.

The valet disappeared and William went into the bath. He would stay in his room this morning, away from everyone. The rehearsal had gone off well yesterday. There was no detail left for anxiety. Candace was supposed to sleep until just before she needed to dress for the ceremony. He did not want to see Jeremy or any of the fellows. He could do with two hours or so of pure leisure.

There was a knock at the door and he answered. A footman came in with a small wheeled table on which was set a large tray of covered dishes. In the midst of them was a little silver bowl of roses.

“Your breakfast, Mr. Lane,” the man murmured.

“Set it there by the window, Barney,” William replied. The man was young and not much older than William himself. He was Irish, as his somewhat shapeless face declared, and his eyes were innocent and humble as the eyes of the poor and ignorant should always be. William liked him and had sometimes encouraged him to talk.

“ 'Tis a nice day for it, sir,” Barney now said. He arranged the tray by the window, from which could be seen the trees of the park, their green tinged with coming autumn.

“It is, indeed,” William said. He had put on his new dressing gown, an affair of blue and black stripes, effective with his dark hair and stone-gray eyes. He should perhaps have kept it for tomorrow when he would be breakfasting with Candace, but he felt that magnificence alone had also its special pleasure.

Barney hovered about the table. “Your eggs is turned as you like 'em, sir, and the toast I did myself.”

“Thank you.”

“Well, sir,” Barney said at last, “my best wishes, I'm sure.”

“Thank you,” William said again.

Upon such composure Barney retired. When he had eaten William sat for a while, smoking a cigarette and drinking a second cup of coffee. Two hours were left in which he need do nothing. He did not know how to do nothing. He thought of going to bed, but he could sleep no more. He did not want to think about Candace. There would be plenty of time for that. He could not read.

Two hours—a valuable space of time! When would he be alone again? He got up abruptly and went to the desk at the other end of the room and sat down before it. There for the two hours he worked steadily and in silence until the thump upon his door announced Jeremy. It was time to get ready for his wedding.

A perfect wedding, of course, he had expected. Anything less would have surprised and annoyed him. His ushers did their work well and Jeremy was only less efficient. He seemed strangely thoughtful throughout the ceremony and hesitated a long moment when it came to the ring, so long that Candace looked at him with startled eyes. But the ring was there in Jeremy's vest pocket and he gave it to William with a veiled, beseeching look.

William did not notice the look. He was absorbed in the proper conduct of his own part, and he slipped the ring on Candace's finger and made his promises. Going down the aisle a few minutes later, his steps measured to the music, he held his head high in his habitual proud fashion.

The fashionable church was crowded. He looked at no one, and yet he was aware of every personage there. Beside him Candace walked as proudly as he did, but it was he who set the step. He had begun the stately march of his life.

Clem's engagement to Henrietta took place abruptly and even awkwardly. The first tentative letters that they had exchanged had carried far more than their proper weight of meaning. They were secret communications between two persons completely solitary. Though Henrietta had moved apparently serene through public high school in the comfortable, unfashionable suburb, living with Ruth, their grandparents, and the two elderly housemaids, she knew herself as lonely as though she lived upon a desert isle. Ruth was popular and pretty and might easily have married while very young any of several men, even before she went to college. That she did not do so, that she postponed marriage by going to college, was because she visited more and more often in William's home. Vacations soon meant a few hurried days with Henrietta and getting a wardrobe together suitable for the rest of the vacation, even the long summer, with William and Candace. There was no discussion of Henrietta's going, too. Ruth had learned to live delicately between her brother and sister, conveying to each the impression of apology and greater affection.

“I feel guilty,” she told Henrietta. “I go flying off and you stay here and take care of the grandparents.”

“It is what I want to do,” Henrietta said.

Ruth paused in the folding of a silky film. “You would like Candace if you let yourself. Everybody does. She's very easy.”

“I daresay I would like Candace but there's William,” Henrietta replied with her terrible honesty.

“He is your brother,” Ruth persisted, though timidly. She was equally afraid of Henrietta and William.

“I can't help that,” Henrietta replied. “Don't forget I knew him long before you did—and much better. We had those two years together at the Chefoo school when you were at home in Peking with Papa and Mama.”

Nevertheless, when Ruth was gone, when she had waved to the pretty face under the flowery hat, smiling through the train window, Henrietta knew she was lonely. Like William's the lines of her face were severe and her frame was angular and tall. Inside she was like him and yet how unlike! She was so like him that she could see in herself his very faults. She had no sense of humor, neither had he. But in their spirits there was no likeness. She was possessed with honesty and a depth of simplicity that frightened away all but the brave, and among the young there are few who are brave. Young men feared her and young girls avoided her. There remained Clem, whom she never had seen and who had never seen her. To Clem, in long silent summer evenings, she poured out her feelings almost unrestrained. He answered her letters on Sundays, when he had sent Bump to church. He had no other vacant hour throughout the week. Even on Sundays he had to work on the books for Mr. Janison.

She went to a small girls' college, an inexpensive one, while Ruth had decided to go to Vassar. She did not want to be with Ruth for by then even she could see that Ruth had chosen William and the sort of life he wanted. She listened to Ruth's accounts of that life, repelled and forlorn. Ruth's flying blond hair, her sweet blue eyes, her white skin and slender shape were the means whereby she was welcomed in William's life. William was living in a beautiful house, neither large nor small, on Fifth Avenue. Candace had furnished it in pink and gray and gold. There was a great room where they gave parties. It had been two rooms but William had ordered the wall between taken down. William worked fearfully hard and his paper was getting to be successful. Everybody was talking about it.

“We ought to be proud of him,” Ruth said.

Henrietta did not answer this. She sat gazing at Ruth rather stolidly and no one could have known that she was in her heart giving up this younger sister whom she tenderly loved. When Ruth came back from a long summer spent with William, she had been prepared to tell her about Clem. She had planned it in many ways. She might say, “Ruth, I don't want you to think I'm in love, but …” Or she might say, “Do you remember the Faith Mission family in Peking? Well, I know Clem again.” Or she might simply choose one of Clem's letters, perhaps the one that explained how he wanted to open a chain of markets, right across the country, in which people could buy good food cheaply, or if they had no money, they could simply ask for it free. “People don't ask unless they must—that is, most people,” Clem had written. He had a deep faith in the goodness of people. People didn't like to beg or to be given something for nothing. The human heart was independent. Henrietta was moved by the greatness of Clem's faith. In her loneliness she wanted desperately to believe that this was true. But when Ruth talked about William, Henrietta could not tell her about Clem. The two names were not to be linked together.

Then one day she saw something new in Ruth's face, a quiver about the soft lips, a shyness in those mild eyes. Ruth, catching the loving query in Henrietta's look, suddenly collapsed into tears, her arms around Henrietta's neck and her body flung across her sister's lap.

“Why, baby,” Henrietta breathed. She had not used the name since they had been little girls playing house, and she had always been the mother and Ruth her child. She put her arms about the small creature now and hugged her, and felt how strangely long it was since she had offered a caress to anyone. She and Ruth had not been demonstrative in recent years, and there was no one else.

“I'm in love,” Ruth sobbed. “I'm terribly, terribly in love.”

“Don't cry,” Henrietta whispered. “Don't mind, Ruthie. It's all right. It's not wrong. Who is it?”

“Jeremy,” Ruth said in the smallest voice.

Henrietta did not release her hold. She tried to remember Jeremy's face as she had seen it when William graduated from college. A nice face, rather thin, very pale, very kind, this she remembered. Then she remembered slow, rather careful movements, as though something inside hurt him, and very pale and delicate hands, bony and not small.

“Does he know?” she asked.

“Yes, he does,” Ruth said. She slid from Henrietta's lap to the floor and leaned against her knee and wiped her eyes with the edge of Henrietta's gingham skirt. “He told me first—I wouldn't have dared—”

“You mean you are engaged?” Henrietta asked.

Ruth nodded. “I suppose so—as soon as he dares to tell. Candace knows, but none of us dares to tell William.”

“Why not?” Henrietta said with fierceness. “Is there any reason why it is his business?”

“It just seems to be,” Ruth said.

“Nonsense,” Henrietta replied.

Her mind flew to Clem. Was not this the moment to reveal that she too was beginning to love? But still she could not speak of him.

“I'll tell William myself,” she declared.

“Oh no,” Ruth said quickly. “Jeremy wants to do it. He will, one of these days. I don't know why he thinks William won't like it.”

“I know,” Henrietta said. Her voice was gloomy. “William doesn't want the people he goes about with to think he has any family at all. Nobody is good enough for him.”

“That's not quite true,” Ruth said. “William's very nice to me, usually.”

“Because you always do what he says,” Henrietta said.

“Well, usually I don't see any reason why I shouldn't,” Ruth said. “Anyway, it's to be kept a secret for a while.”

She got up from the floor and went to the mirror and smoothed her curls. The intimate moment was over. William had broken it as he always did, and Henrietta said nothing about Clem.

The college year began again and the sisters parted.

Clem's Sunday letters reached Henrietta on Wednesday. She had chemistry laboratory on Wednesday afternoons and among her test tubes she read the long, closely written letter lying between her notes. Then one week there came the letter she had not expected. On Thursday she scarcely ever bothered to go to see whether she had mail, but that day she had happened to pass by the office and, on the chance that there might be a rare letter from her mother, she stopped and found instead another letter from Clem.

“Do I have to be home early?” Bump had inquired.

He was now a pudgy boy who had just begun to wear spectacles. Long ago he had given up rebelling against Clem.