LLR Books

The Bridal Party. A short story from F. Scott Fitzgerald







THERE WAS the usual insincere little note saying : "I wanted you
to be the first to know/ 7 It was a double shock to Michael, announc-
ing, as it did, both the engagement and the imminent marriage;
which, moreover, was to be held, not in New York, decently and far
away, but here in Paris under his very nose, if that could be said to
extend over the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity,
Avenue George-Cinq. The date was two weeks off, early in June.

At first Michael was afraid and his stomach felt hollow. When he
left the hotel that morning, the jemme de chambre, who was in love
with his fine, sharp profile and his pleasant buoyancy, scented the
hard abstraction that had settled over him. He walked in a daze to
his bank, he bought a detective story at Smith's on the Rue de Rivoli,
he sympathetically stared for a while at a faded panorama of the
battlefields in a tourist-office window and cursed a Greek tout who
followed him with a half -displayed packet of innocuous post cards
warranted to be very dirty indeed.

But the fear stayed with him, and after a while he recognized it
as the fear that now he would never be happy. He had met Caroline
Dandy when she was seventeen, possessed her young heart all
through her first season in New York, and then lost her, slowly,
tragically, uselessly, because he had no money and could make no
money ; because, with all the energy and good will in the world, he
could not find himself ; because, loving him still, Caroline had lost
faith and begun to see him as something pathetic, futile and shabby,
outside the great, shining stream of life toward which she was in-
evitably drawn.

Since his only support was that she loved him, he leaned weakly
on that ; the support broke, but still he held on to it and was carried
out to sea and washed up on the French coast with its broken pieces
still in his hands. He carried them around with him in the form of
photographs and packets of correspondence and a liking for a maud-
lin popular song called Among My Souvenirs. He kept clear of other
girls, as if Caroline would somehow know it and reciprocate with a
faithful heart. Her note informed him that he had lost her forever.

It was a fine morning. In front of the shops in the Rue de Cas-
tiglione, proprietors and patrons were on the sidewalk gazing upward,
for the Graf Zeppelin, shining and glorious, symbol of escape and
destruction of escape, if necessary, through destruction glided in
the Paris sky. He heard a woman say in French that it would not
her astonish if that commenced to let fall the bombs. Then he heard
another voice, full of husky laughter, and the void in his stomach
froze. Jerking about, he was face to face with Caroline Dandy and
her fianc6.

"Why, Michael ! Why, we were wondering where you were. I asked
at the Guaranty Trust, and Morgan and Company, and finally sent
a note to the National City "

Why didn't they back away? Why didn't they back right up,
walking backward down the Rue de Castiglione, across the Rue de
Rivoli, through the Tuileries Gardens, still walking backward as fast
as they could till they grew vague and faded out across the river ?

"This is Hamilton Rutherford, my fiance."

"We've met before."

"At Pat's, wasn't it?"

"And last spring in the Ritz Bar."

"Michael, where have you been keeping yourself?"

"Around here." This agony. Previews of Hamilton Rutherford
flashed before his eyes a quick series of pictures, sentences. He re-
membered hearing that he had bought a seat in 1920 for a hundred
and twenty-five thousand of borrowed money, and just before the
break sold it for more than half a million. Not handsome like
Michael, but vitally attractive, confident, authoritative, just the
right height over Caroline there Michael had always been too short
for Caroline when they danced.

Rutherford was saying : "No, I'd like it very much if you'd come
to the bachelor dinner. I'm taking the Ritz Bar from nine o'clock on.
Then right after the wedding there'll be a reception and breakfast
at the Hotel George-Cinq."

"And, Michael, George Packman is giving a party day after
tomorrow at Chez Victor, and I want you to be sure and come. And
also to tea Friday at Jebby West's ; she'd want to have you if she
knew where you were. What's your hotel, so we can send you an in-
vitation ? You see, the reason we decided to have it over here is be-
cause mother has been sick in a nursing home here and the whole
clan is in Paris. Then Hamilton's mother's being here too "

The entire clan ; they had always hated him, except her mother ;
always discouraged his courtship. What a little counter he was in
this game of families and money ! Under his hat his brow sweated
with the humiliation of the fact that for all his misery he was worth
just exactly so many invitations. Frantically he began to mumble
something about going away.

Then it happened Caroline saw deep into him, and Michael knew
that she saw. She saw through to his profound woundedness, and
something quivered inside her, died out along the curve of her mouth
and in her eyes. He had moved her. All the unforgettable impulses
of first love had surged up once more ; their hearts had in some way
touched across two feet of Paris sunlight. She took her fiance's arm
suddenly, as if to steady herself with the feel of it.

They parted. Michael walked quickly for a minute; then he
stopped, pretending to look in a window, and saw them farther up
the street, walking fast into the Place Vendome, people with much
to do.

He had things to do also he had to get his laundry.

"Nothing will ever be the same again," he said to himself. "She
will never be happy in her marriage and I will never be happy at all
any more."

The two vivid years of his love for Caroline moved back around
him like years in Einstein's physics. Intolerable memories arose
of rides in the Long Island moonlight ; of a happy time at Lake
Placid with her cheeks so cold there, but warm just underneath the
surface; of a despairing afternoon in a little cafe on Forty-eighth
Street in the last sad months when their marriage had come to seem
impossible.

"Come in," he said aloud.

The concierge with a telegram ; brusque because Mr. Curly's
clothes were a little shabby. Mr. Curly gave few tips; Mr. Curly was
obviously a petit client.

Michael read the telegram.

u An answer?" the concierge asked.

"No," said Michael, and then, on an impulse: "Look."

u Too bad too bad," said the concierge. "Your grandfather is
dead."

"Not too bad," said Michael. "It means that I come into a quarter
of a million dollars."

Too late by a single month ; after the first flush of the news his
misery was deeper than ever. Lying awake in bed that night, he lis-
tened endlessly to the long caravan of a circus moving through the
street from one Paris fair to another.

When the last van had rumbled out of hearing and the corners of
the furniture were pastel blue with the dawn, he was still thinking
of the look in Caroline's eyes that morning the look that seemed
to say: "Oh, why couldn't you have done something about it? Why
couldn't you have been stronger, made me marry you? Don't you
see how sad I am ?"

Michael's fists clenched.

"Well, I won't give up till the last moment," he whispered. "I've
had all the bad luck so far, and maybe it's turned at last. One takes
what one can get, up to the limit of one's strength, and if I can't have
her, at least she'll go into this marriage with some of me in her
heart."

II

Accordingly he went to the party at Chez Victor two days later,
upstairs and into the little salon off the bar where the party was to
assemble for cocktails. He was early ; the only other occupant was a
tall lean man of fifty. They spoke.

"You waiting for George Packman's party?"

"Yes. My name's Michael Curly."

"My name's "

Michael failed to catch the name. They ordered a drink, and
Michael supposed that the bride and groom were having a gay time.

"Too much so," the other agreed, frowning. "I don't see how they
stand it. We all crossed on the boat together ; five days of that crazy
life and then two .weeks of Paris. You" he hesitated, smiling faintly
"you'll excuse me for saying that your generation drinks too
much."

"Not Caroline."

"No, not Caroline. She seems to take only a cocktail and a glass
of champagne, and then she's had enough, thank God. But Hamilton
drinks too much and all this crowd of young people drink too much.
Do you live in Paris ?"

"For the moment," said Michael.

"I don't like Paris. My wife that is to say, my ex-wife, Hamilton's
mother lives in Paris."

"You're Hamilton Rutherford's father?"

"I have that honor. And I'm not denying that I'm proud of what
he's done ; it was just a general comment."

"Of course."

Michael glanced up nervously as four people came in. He felt sud-
denly that his dinner coat was old and shiny ; he had ordered a new
one that morning. The people who had come in were rich and at home
in their richness with one another a dark, lovely girl with a hysteri-
cal little laugh whom he had met before ; two confident men whose
jokes referred invariably to last night's scandal and tonight's po-
tentialities, as if they had important roles in a play that extended
indefinitely into the past and the future. When Caroline arrived,
Michael had scarcely a moment of her, but it was enough to note
that, like all the others, she was strained and tired. She was pale
beneath her rouge ; there were shadows under her eyes. With a mix-
ture of relief and wounded vanity, he found himself placed far from
her and at another table ; he needed a moment to adjust himself to
his surroundings. This was not like the immature set in which he
and Caroline had moved ; the men were more than thirty and had an
air of sharing the best of this world's good. Next to him was Jebby
West, whom he knew ; and, on the other side, a jovial man who im-
mediately began to talk to Michael about a stunt for the bachelor
dinner: They were going to hire a French girl to appear with an
actual baby in her arms, crying: "Hamilton, you can't desert me
now!" The idea seemed stale and unamusing to Michael, but its
originator shook with anticipatory laughter.

Farther up the table there was talk of the market another drop
today, the most appreciable since the crash; people were kidding
Rutherford about it: "Too bad, old man. You better not get married,
after all."

Michael asked the man on his left, "Has he lost a lot?"

"Nobody knows. He's heavily involved, but he's one of the
smartest young men in Wall Street. Anyhow, nobody ever tells you
the truth."

It was a champagne dinner from the start, and toward the end it
reached a pleasant level of conviviality, but Michael saw that all
these people were too weary to be exhilarated by any ordinary stimu-
lant ; for weeks they had drunk cocktails before meals like Ameri-
cans, wines and brandies like Frenchmen, beer like Germans, whisky-
and-soda like the English, and as they were no longer in the twen-
ties, this preposterous melange, that was like some gigantic cocktail
in a nightmare, served only to make them temporarily less conscious
of the mistakes of the night before. Which is to say that it was not
really a gay party ; what gayety existed was displayed in the few who
drank nothing at all.

But Michael was not tired, and the champagne stimulated him and
made his misery less acute. He had been away from New York for
more than eight months and most of the dance music was unfamiliar
to him, but at the first bars of the "Painted Doll", to which he and
Caroline had moved through so much happiness and despair the pre-
vious summer, he crossed to Caroline's table and asked her to dance.

She was lovely in a dress of thin ethereal blue, and the proximity
of her crackly yellow hair, of her cool and tender gray eyes, turned
his body clumsy and rigid ; he stumbled with their first step on the
floor. For a moment it seemed that there was nothing to say; he
wanted to tell her about his inheritance, but the idea seemed abrupt
unprepared for.

"Michael, it's so nice to be dancing with you again."
He smiled grimly.

"I'm so happy you came," she continued. "I was afraid maybe
you'd be silly and stay away. Now we can be just good friends and
natural together. Michael, I want you and Hamilton to like each
other."

The engagement was making her stupid ; he had never heard her
make such a series of obvious remarks before.

"I could kill him without a qualm," he said pleasantly, "but he
looks like a good man. He's fine. What I want to know is, what
happens to people like me who aren't able to forget?"

As he said this he could not prevent his mouth from drooping
suddenly, and glancing up, Caroline saw, and her heart quivered
violently, as it had the other morning.

"Do you mind so much, Michael?"

"Yes."

For a second as he said this, in a voice that seemed to have come
up from his shoes, they were not dancing ; they were simply clinging
together. Then she leaned away from him and twisted her mouth
into a lovely smile.

"I didn't know what to do at first, Michael. I told Hamilton about
you that I'd cared for you an awful lot but it didn't worry him,
and he was right. Because I'm over you now yes, I am. And you'll
wake up some sunny morning and be over me just like that."

He shook his head stubbornly.

"Oh, yes. We weren't for each other. I'm pretty flighty, and I need
somebody like Hamilton to decide things. It was that more than
the question of of "

"Of money." Again he was on the point of telling her what had
happened, but again something told him it was not the time.

"Then how do you account for what happened when we met the
other day," he demanded helplessly "what happened just now?
When we just pour toward each other like we used to as if we were
one person, as if the same blood was flowing through both of us?"

"Oh, don't," she begged him. "You mustn't talk like that ; every-
thing's decided now. I love Hamilton with all my heart. It's just that
I remember certain things in the past and I feel sorry for you for
us for the way we were."

Over her shoulder, Michael saw a man come toward them to cut
in. In a panic he danced her away, but inevitably the man came on.

"I've got to see you alone, if only for a minute," Michael said
quickly. "When can I ?"

"I'll be at Jebby West's tea tomorrow," she whispered as a hand
fell politely upon Michael's shoulder.

But he did not talk to her at Jebby West's tea. Rutherford stood
next to her, and each brought the other into all conversations. They
left early. The next morning the wedding cards arrived in the first
mail.

Then Michael, grown desperate with pacing up and down his
room, determined on a bold stroke; he wrote to Hamilton Ruther-
ford, asking him for a rendezvous the following afternoon. In a
short telephone communication Rutherford agreed, but for a day
later than Michael had asked. And the wedding was only six days
away.

They were to meet in the bar of the Hotel Jena. Michael knew
what he would say: "See here, Rutherford, do you realize the re-
sponsibility you're taking in going through with this marriage? Do
you realize the harvest of trouble and regret you're sowing in per-
suading a girl into something contrary to the instincts of her heart?"
He would explain that the barrier between Caroline and himself had
been an artificial one and was now removed, and demand that the
matter be put up to Caroline frankly before it was too late.

Rutherford would be angry, conceivably there would be a scene,
but Michael felt that he was fighting for his life now.

He found Rutherford in conversation with an older man, whom
Michael had met at several of the wedding parties.

"I saw what happened to most of my friends," Rutherford was
saying, "and I decided it wasn't going to happen to me. It isn't so
difficult ; if you take a girl with common sense, and tell her what's
what, and do your stuff damn well, and play decently square with
her, it's a marriage. If you stand for any nonsense at the beginning,
it's one of these arrangements within five years the man gets out,
or else the girl gobbles him up and you have the usual mess."

"Right!" agreed his companion enthusiastically. "Hamilton, boy,
you're right."

Michael's blood boiled slowly.

"Doesn't it strike you," he inquired coldly, "that your attitude
went out of fashion about a hundred years ago?"

"No, it didn't," said Rutherford pleasantly, but impatiently. "I'm
as modern as anybody. I'd get married in an aeroplane next Satur-
day if it'd please my girl."

"I don't mean that way of being modern. You can't take a sensitive
woman "

"Sensitive? Women aren't so darn sensitive. It's fellows like you
who are sensitive ; it's fellows like you they exploit all your devo-
tion and kindness and all that. They read a couple of books and see
a few pictures because they haven't got anything else to do, and then
they say they're finer in grain than you are, and to prove it they take
the bit in their teeth and tear off for a fare-you-well just about as
sensitive as a fire horse."

"Caroline happens to be sensitive," said Michael in a clipped
voice.

At this point the other man got up to go ; when the dispute about
the check had been settled and they were alone, Rutherford leaned
back to Michael as if a question had been asked him.

"Caroline's more than sensitive," he said. "She's got sense."

His combative eyes, meeting Michael's, flickered with a gray light.
"This all sounds pretty crude to you, Mr. Curly, but it seems to me
that the average man nowadays just asks to be made a monkey of by
some woman who doesn't even get any fun out of reducing him to
that level. There are darn few men who possess their wives any more,
but I am going to be one of them."

To Michael it seemed time to bring the talk back to the actual
situation: "Do you realize the responsibility you're taking?"

"I certainly do," interrupted Rutherford. "I'm not afraid of re-
sponsibility. I'll make the decisions fairly, I hope, but anyhow
they'll be final."

"What if you didn't start right?" said Michael impetuously. "What
if your marriage isn't founded on mutual love?"

"I think I see what you mean," Rutherford said, still pleasant.
"And since you've brought it up, let me say that if you and Caroline
had married, it wouldn't have lasted three years. Do you know what
your affair was founded on? On sorrow. You got sorry for each other.
Sorrow's a lot of fun for most women and for some men, but it seems
to me that a marriage ought to be based on hope." He looked at his
watch and stood up.

"I've got to meet Caroline. Remember, you're coming to the
bachelor dinner day after tomorrow."

Michael felt the moment slipping away. "Then Caroline's personal
feelings don't count with you?" he demanded fiercely.

"Caroline's tired and upset. But she has what she wants, and that's
the main thing."

"Are you referring to yourself ?" demanded Michael incredulously.

"Yes."

"May I ask how long she's wanted you?"

"About two years." Before Michael could answer, he was gone.

During the next two days Michael floated in an abyss of helpless-
ness. The idea haunted him that he had left something undone that
would sever this knot drawn tighter under his eyes. He phoned
Caroline, but she insisted that it was physically impossible for her
to see him until the day before the wedding, for which day she
granted him a tentative rendezvous. Then he went to the bachelor
dinner, partly in fear of an evening alone at his hotel, partly from a
feeling that by his presence at that function he was somehow nearer
to Caroline, keeping her in sight.

The Ritz Bar had been prepared for the occasion by French and
American banners and by a great canvas covering one wall, against
which the guests were invited to concentrate their proclivities in
breaking glasses.

At the first cocktail, taken at the bar, there were many slight spill-
ings from many trembling hands, but later, with the champagne,
there was a rising tide of laughter and occasional bursts of song.

Michael was surprised to find what a difference his new dinner
coat, his new silk hat, his new, proud linen made in his estimate of
himself ; he felt less resentment toward all these people for being so
rich and assured. For the first time since he had left college he felt
rich and assured himself; he felt that he was part of all this, and
even entered into the scheme of Johnson, the practical joker, for the
appearance of the woman betrayed, now waiting tranquilly in the
room across the hall.

"We don't want to go too heavy," Johnson said, "because I imagine
Ham's had a pretty anxious day already. Did you see Fullman Oil's
sixteen points off this morning?"

"Will that matter to him?" Michael asked, trying to keep the
interest out of his voice.

"Naturally. He's in heavily ; he's always in everything heavily. So
far he's had luck ; anyhow, up to a month ago."

The glasses were filled and emptied faster now, and men were
shouting at one another across the narrow table. Against the bar a
group of ushers was being photographed, and the flash light surged
through the room in a stifling cloud.

"Now's the time," Johnson said. "You're to stand by the door, re-
member, and we're both to try and keep her from coming in just
till we get everybody's attention."

He went on out into the corridor, and Michael waited obediently
by the door. Several minutes passed. Then Johnson reappeared with
a curious expression on his face.

"There's something funny about this."

"Isn't the girl there?"

"She's there all right, but there's another woman there, too ; and
it's nobody we engaged either. She wants to see Hamilton Ruther-
ford, and she looks as if she had something on her mind."

They went out into the hall. Planted firmly in a chair near the
door sat an American girl a little the worse for liquor, but with a


determined expression on her face. She looked up at them with a
jerk of her head.

"Well, j'tell him?" she demanded. "The name is Marjorie Collins,
and he'll know it. I've come a long way, and I want to see him now
and quick, or there's going to be more trouble than you ever saw."
She rose unsteadily to her feet.

"You go in and tell Ham," whispered Johnson to Michael. "Maybe
he'd better get out. I'll keep her here."

Back at the table, Michael leaned close to Rutherford's ear and,
with a certain grimness, whispered :

"A girl outside named Marjorie Collins says she wants to see you.
She looks as if she wanted to make trouble."

Hamilton Rutherford blinked and his mouth fell ajar ; then slowly
the lips came together in a straight line and he said in a crisp
voice :

"Please keep her there. And send the head barman to me right
away."

Michael spoke to the barman, and then, without returning to the
table, asked quietly for his coat and hat. Out in the hall again, he
passed Johnson and the girl without speaking and went out into the
Rue Cambon. Calling a cab, he gave the address of Caroline's hotel.

His place was beside her now. Not to bring bad news, but simply
to be with her when her house of cards came falling around her head.

Rutherford had implied that he was soft well, he was hard enough
not to give up the girl he loved without taking advantage of every
chance within the pale of honor. Should she turn away from Ruth-
erford, she would find him there.

She was in ; she was surprised when he called, but she was still
dressed and would be down immediately. Presently she appeared in
a dinner gown, holding two blue telegrams in her hand. They sat
down in armchairs in the deserted lobby.

"But, Michael, is the dinner over?"

"I wanted to see you, so I came away."

"I'm glad." Her voice was friendly, but matter-of-fact. "Because
I'd just phoned your hotel that I had fittings and rehearsals all day
tomorrow. Now we can have our talk after all."

"You're tired," he guessed. "Perhaps I shouldn't have come."

"No. I was waiting up for Hamilton. Telegrams that may be im-
portant. He said he might go on somewhere, and that may mean
any hour, so I'm glad I have someone to talk to."

Michael winced at the impersonality in the last phrase.

"Don't you care when he gets home?"

"Naturally," she said, laughing, "but I haven't got much say
about it, have I?"

"Why not?"

"I couldn't start by telling him what he could and couldn't
do."

"Why not?"

"He wouldn't stand for it."

"He seems to want merely a housekeeper," said Michael ironi-
cally.

"Tell me about your plans, Michael," she asked quickly.

"My plans? I can't see any future after the day after tomorrow.
The only real plan I ever had was to love you."

Their eyes brushed past each other's, and the look he knew so
well was staring out at him from hers. Words flowed quickly from
his heart :

"Let me tell you just once more how well I've loved you, never
wavering for a moment, never thinking of another girl. And now
when I think of all the years ahead without you, without any hope,
I don't want to live, Caroline darling. I used to dream about our
home, our children, about holding you in my arms and touching your
face and hands and hair that used to belong to me, and now I just
can't wake up."

Caroline was crying softly. "Poor Michael poor Michael." Her
hand reached out and her fingers brushed the lapel of his dinner
coat. "I was so sorry for you the other night. You looked so thin,
and as if you needed a new suit and somebody to take care of you."
She sniffled and looked more closely at his coat. "Why, you've got
a new suit ! And a new silk hat ! Why, Michael, how swell ! " She
laughed, suddenly cheerful through her tears. "You must have come
into money, Michael ; I never saw you so well turned out."

For a moment, at her reaction, he hated his new clothes.

"I have come into money," he said. "My grandfather left me about
a quarter of a million dollars."

"Why, Michael," she cried, "how perfectly swell I I can't tell you
how glad I am. I've always thought you were the sort of person who
ought to have money."

"Yes, just too late to make a difference."

The revolving door from the street groaned around and Hamilton
Rutherford came into the lobby. His face was flushed, his eyes were
restless and impatient.

"Hello, darling; hello, Mr. Curly." He bent and kissed Caroline.
"I broke away for a minute to find out if I had any telegrams. I see
you've got them there." Taking them from her, he remarked to
Curly, "That was an odd business there in the bar, wasn't it ? Espe-
cially as I understand some of you had a joke fixed up in the same
line." He opened one of the telegrams, closed it and turned to Caro-
line with the divided expression of a man carrying two things in his
head at once.

"A girl I haven't seen for two years turned up," he said. "It seemed
to be some clumsy form of blackmail, for I haven't and never have
had any sort of obligation toward her whatever."

"What happened?"

"The head barman had a Surete Generate man there in ten minutes
and it was settled in the hall. The French blackmail laws make ours
look like a sweet wish, and I gather they threw a scare into her that
shell remember. But it seems wiser to tell you."

"Are you implying that I mentioned the matter?" said Michael
stiffly.

"No," Rutherford said slowly. "No, you were just going to be on
hand. And since you're here, I'll tell you some news that will interest
you even more."

He handed Michael one telegram and opened the other.

"This is in code," Michael said.

"So is this. But I've got to know all the words pretty well this last
week. The two of them together mean that I'm due to start life all
over."

Michael saw Caroline's face grow a shade paler, but she sat quiet
as a mouse.

"It was a mistake and I stuck to it too long," continued Ruth-
erford. "So you see I don't have all the luck, Mr. Curly. By the way,
they tell me you've come into money."

"Yes," said Michael.

"There we are, then." Rutherford turned to Caroline. "You under-
stand, darling, that I'm not joking or exaggerating. I've lost almost
every cent I had and I'm starting life over."

Two pairs of eyes were regarding her Rutherford's noncommittal
and unrequiring, Michael's hungry, tragic, pleading. In a minute she
had raised herself from the chair and with a little cry thrown herself
into Hamilton Rutherford's arms.

"Oh, darling," she cried, "what does it matter! It's better; I like
it better, honestly I do ! I want to start that way ; I want to ! Oh,
please don't worry or be sad even for a minute ! "

"All right, baby," said Rutherford. His hand stroked her hair
gently for a moment ; then he took his arm from around her.

"I promised to join the party for an hour," he said. "So I'll say
good night, and I want you to go to bed soon and get a good sleep.
Good night, Mr. Curly. I'm sorry to have let you in for all these
financial matters."

But Michael had already picked up his hat and cane. "I'll go
along with you," he said.

III

It was such a fine morning. Michael's cutaway hadn't been de-
livered, so he felt rather uncomfortable passing before the cameras
and moving-picture machines in front of the little church on the
Avenue George-Cinq.

It was such a clean, new church that it seemed unforgivable not
to be dressed properly, and Michael, white and shaky after a sleep-
less night, decided to stand in the rear. From there he looked at the
back of Hamilton Rutherford, and the lacy, filmy back of Caroline,
and the fat back of George Packman, which looked unsteady, as if
it wanted to lean against the bride and groom.

The ceremony went on for a long time under the gay flags and
pennons overhead, under the thick beams of June sunlight slanting
down through the tall windows upon the well-dressed people.

As the procession, headed by the bride and groom, started down
the aisle, Michael realized with alarm he was just where everyone
would dispense with their parade stiffness, become informal and
speak to him.

So it turned out. Rutherford and Caroline spoke first to him;
Rutherford grim with the strain of being married, and Caroline love-
lier than he had ever seen her, floating all softly down through the
friends and relatives of her youth, down through the past and for-
ward to the future by the sunlit door.

Michael managed to murmur, "Beautiful, simply beautiful," and
then other people passed and spoke to him old Mrs. Dandy,
straight from her sickbed and looking remarkably well, or carrying
it off like the very fine old lady she was; and Rutherford's father
and mother, ten years divorced, but walking side by side and look-
ing made for each other and proud. Then all Caroline's sisters and
their husbands and her little nephews in Eton suits, and then a long
parade, all speaking to Michael because he was still standing par-
alyzed just at that point where the procession broke.

He wondered what would happen now. Cards had been issued for
a reception at the George-Cinq ; an expensive enough place, heaven
knew. Would Rutherford try to go through with that on top of those
disastrous telegrams? Evidently, for the procession outside was
streaming up there through the June morning, three by three and
four by four. On the corner the long dresses of girls, five abreast,
fluttered many-colored in the wind. Girls had become gossamer
again, perambulatory flora; such lovely fluttering dresses in the
bright noon wind.

Michael needed a drink ; he couldn't face that reception line with-
out a drink. Diving into a side doorway of the hotel, he asked for the
bar, whither a chasseur led him through half a kilometer of new
American-looking passages.

But how did it happen? the bar was full. There were ten
fifteen men and two four girls, all from the wedding, all needing
a drink. There were cocktails and champagne in the bar; Ruther-
ford's cocktails and champagne, as it turned out, for he had engaged
the whole bar and the ballroom and the two great reception rooms
and all the stairways leading up and down, and windows looking out
over the whole square block of Paris. By and by Michael went and
joined the long, slow drift of the receiving line. Through a flowery
mist of "Such a lovely wedding," "My dear, you were simply lovely,"
"You're a lucky man, Rutherford" he passed down the line. When
Michael came to Caroline, she took a single step forward and kissed
him on the lips, but he felt no contact in the kiss ; it was unreal and
he floated on away from it. Old Mrs. Dandy, who had always liked
him, held his hand for a minute and thanked him for the flowers he
had sent when he heard she was ill.

"I'm so sorry not to have written ; you know, we old ladies are

grateful for " The flowers, the fact that she had not written, the

wedding Michael saw that they all had the same relative impor-
tance to her now ; she had married off five other children and seen
two of the marriages go to pieces, and this scene, so poignant, so con-
fusing to Michael, appeared to her simply a familiar charade in which
she had played her part before.

A buffet luncheon with champagne was already being served at
small tables and there was an orchestra playing in the empty ball-
room. Michael sat down with Jebby West ; he was still a little em-
barrassed at not wearing a morning coat, but he perceived now that
he was not alone in the omission and felt better. "Wasn't Caroline
divine?" Jebby West said. "So entirely self-possessed. I asked her
this morning if she wasn't a little nervous at stepping off like this.
And she said, Why should I be? I've been after him for two years,
and now I'm just happy, that's all.' "

"It must be true," said Michael gloomily.

"What?"

"What you just said."

He had been stabbed, but, rather to his distress, he did not feel
the wound.

He asked Jebby to dance. Out on the floor, Rutherford's father
and mother were dancing together.

"It makes me a little sad, that," she said. "Those two hadn't met
for years ; both of them were married again and she divorced again.
She went to the station to meet him when he came over for Caroline'*
wedding, and invited him to stay at her house in the Avenue du Bois
with a whole lot of other people, perfectly proper, but he was afraid
his wife would hear about it and not like it, so he went to a hotel
Don't you think that's sort of sad?"

An hour or so later Michael realized suddenly that it was after-
noon. In one corner of the ballroom an arrangement of screens like
a moving-picture stage had been set up and photographers were tak-
ing official pictures of . , still as
death and pale as wax under the bright lights, appeared, to' the
dancers circling the modulated semidarkness of the ballroom, like
those jovial or sinister groups that one comes upon in The Old Mill
at an amusement park.

After  had been photographed, there was a group
of the ushers ; then the bridesmaids, the families, the children. Later,
Caroline, active and excited, having long since abandoned the repose
implicit in her flowing dress and great bouquet, came and plucked
Michael off the floor.

"Now we'll have them take one of just old friends." Her voice im-
plied that this was best, most intimate of all. "Come here, Jebby,
George not you, Hamilton; this is just my friends Sally "

A little after that, what remained of formality disappeared and
the hours flowed easily down the profuse stream of champagne. In
the modern fashion, Hamilton Rutherford sat at the table with his
arm about an old girl of his and assured his guests, which included
not a few bewildered but enthusiastic Europeans, that the party was
not nearly at an end ; it was to reassemble at Zelli's after midnight.
Michael saw Mrs. Dandy, not quite over her illness, rise to go and
become caught in polite group after group, and he spoke of it to one
of her daughters, who thereupon forcibly abducted her mother and
called her car. Michael felt very considerate and proud of himself
after having done this, and drank much more champagne.

"It's amazing," George Packman was telling him enthusiastically.
"This show will cost Ham about five thousand dollars, and I under-
stand they'll be just about his last. But did he countermand a bottle
of champagne or a flower? Not he! He happens to have it that
young man. Do you know that T. G. Vance offered him a salary of
fifty thousand dollars a year ten minutes before the wedding
this morning? In another year he'll be back with the million-
aires."

The conversation was interrupted by a plan to carry Rutherford
out on communal shoulders a plan which six of them put into
effect, and then stood in the four-o'clock sunshine waving good-by
to the bride and groom. But there must have been a mistake some-
where, for five minutes later Michael saw both bride and groom
descending the stairway to the reception, each with a glass of cham-
pagne held defiantly on high.

"This is our way of doing things," he thought. "Generous and fresh
and free ; a sort of Virgina-plantation hospitality, but at a different
pace now, nervous as a ticker tape."

Standing unself-consciously in the middle of the room to see which
was the American ambassador, he realized with a start that he hadn't
really thought of Caroline for hours. He looked about him with a
sort of alarm, and then he saw her across the room, very bright and
young, and radiantly happy. He saw Rutherford near her, looking at
her as if he could never look long enough, and as Michael watched
them they seemed to recede as he had wished them to do that day in
the Rue de Castiglione recede and fade off into joys and griefs of
their own, into the years that would take the toll of Rutherford's fine
pride and Caroline's young, moving beauty; fade far away, so that
now he could scarcely see them, as if they were shrouded in some-
thing as misty as her white, billowing dress.

Michael was cured. The ceremonial function, with its pomp and
its revelry, had stood for a sort of initiation into a life where even
his regret could not follow them. All the bitterness melted out of
him suddenly and the world reconstituted itself out of the youth and
happiness that was all around him, profligate as the spring sunshine.
He was trying to remember which one of the bridesmaids he had
made a date to dine with tonight as he walked forward to bid Ham-
ilton and Caroline Rutherford good-by