# The Relentless City/Chapter 14

CHAPTER XIV
The marriage of Bertie Keynes and Amelie was to be celebrated at New York towards the end of February, and bade fair to be the comble up to date (not even excepting the famous pearl fishery) of Mrs. Palmer's social successes. It was to take place in St. Luke's Church, Fifth Avenue, and for days beforehand the ordinary services had been altogether suspended, because the church had to be made fit to be the theatre of the ceremony, and a perfect army of furniture-men, upholsterers, carpenters, and plumbers occupied it. The ordinary square-backed wooden pews were removed from the body of the church, which was carpeted from wall to wall with purple felt, and rows of fauteuils in scarlet morocco, like the stalls of an opera-house, occupied their places. To complete the resemblance, each chair was marked with its particular number in its own row, and the occupants, who gave up their tickets at the church door, retaining only the tallies, were shown to their places, where they found in each chair a copy of the service printed on vellum and bound by Riviére, by scarlet-coated footmen. Similarly, the free seats in the gallery were cleared out in order to make room for the very magnificent orchestra, which beguiled the hours of waiting for the guests with inspiriting and purely secular pieces, and during the choral part of the service accompanied the choir.
In front of the altar, where the actual ceremony would ​take place, there had been constructed, hanging from the roof, an immense bell-shaped frame made of wood and canvas, which was completely covered inside and out with white flowers, and reached from side to side of what the reporters called the sacred edifice. It had been quite impossible, even for Mrs. Palmer, to procure at this time of year sufficient real flowers, and, as a matter of fact, they were largely artificial, like everything else. Round the edge of this large bell, suspended by invisible wires, but appearing to float in the air, were life-size baby figures of amorini, made of wood and beautifully tinted, winged, and almost completely nude, who discharged gilded arrows from their gilded bows towards the pair who were to stand in the centre of the bell. Numbers of others peeped from the banks of flowers that lined the walls, all aiming in the same direction, so that the bridegroom, one would have thought, might reasonably compare himself to a modern St. Sebastian. Framed in these banks of flowers also were several pictures belonging to Lewis Palmer, all bearing on what might be called classical matrimony: a Titian of Europa and the Bull, a Veronese of Bacchus and Ariadne, and a more than doubtful Rubens of Leda and the Swan. Gilded harps twined with flowers leaned about in odd corners, and the general impression was that one had come, not into a church, but, by some deplorable mistake, into the Venusberg as depicted in the first act of ' Tannhäuser.'
The ceremony, of course, had been many times rehearsed, and for days beforehand the dummy bridegroom's procession had crossed Fifth Avenue (the house exactly opposite was to be Bertie's domicile for the night preceding the marriage), and taken up its position, chalked out, at the church door. That event was signalled to the chef d'orchestre in the gallery, who was thereupon to begin the Mendelssohn wedding-march, and to the bride's procession, which was to start at the same moment from Mr. Lewis Palmer's house ​four blocks off. This, proceeding at walking speed, should reach the church door exactly at the conclusion of the wedding-march, whereupon the two processions, dummy-Bertie attended by his usher, dummy-Amelie by her bridesmaids, moved up the church to right and left of the bell, at such a pace that the voice which breathed o'er Eden ceased breathing as they reached their places. Then—this was a startling innovation—Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, arm in arm, were to have an unattended progress up the aisle to two very suitable golden chairs, which at this moment would be the only unoccupied places in the church, while the choir in their honour were to sing a short hymn specially written for the occasion, and addressed to them, beginning:
'Blessed parents here who see This bright hour arriving.'
Then the bride and bridegroom took their places under the bell, and the service proceeded in the usual manner. One rehearsal was rudely interrupted by the fall of one of the wooden amorini at this point, which narrowly missed the dummy-bridegroom's head, and fell with a loud crash, splintering itself into match-wood on the floor of the chancel. So another one was procured, and they were all more securely wired. Immense baskets of white flowers were to be carried by the bridesmaids, which they were to strew in the path of the bride both as she entered and left the church with her husband; and from the belfry outside, as they emerged, a shower of sham satin slippers with little parachute wings, so that they should float in the air and sink very gradually on to the heads of the amazed crowd, was to be discharged. These had been tested privately, and were not used in the rehearsals.
Bertie had arrived in New York some fortnight before the marriage, leaving Mr. Palmer, who was very much occupied, in England, to follow a week later. Wedding-presents ​for both of them had begun arriving, and were still doing so in shoals, and every day he was occupied for several hours in writing letters of gratitude. He soon got a certain facility at this, but one morning there arrived for him a present which astonished him. The present itself was a charming dressing-bag (there was nothing surprising in this, for it was the eleventh he had received), and the donor was Mrs. Emsworth. She wrote with it a characteristic little note, saying that she was unable to come to the ceremony, as she was at Chicago, and begging him to forget her and not acknowledge the gift. She was making a great success with her tour, and was getting quite rich. Considering what had happened, this seemed to him one of the most superb pieces of impertinence ever perpetrated. ' She was getting quite rich!' Quite so; she had made a considerable sum lately apart from her theatrical business; she could well afford to give him a dressing-bag.
But the impertinence of it, the irresistible impertinence! How like the gamin who puts his tongue in his cheek and says ' Yah!' He almost laughed when he thought of it. But the laughter died at the memory of those sickening hours in London on the day he had received the blackmailing letter, and in a sudden spasm of anger against her, not pausing to consider whether it was wise or not, he gave orders that the bag should be packed up again and sent back to her at Chicago, without word of any kind. She would understand quite well.
This incident, small though it was in itself, served to increase a certain depression and uneasiness that beset him during this fortnight. The appalling apparatus and display which was to be made over the wedding was intolerable to him; never before, as he read and re-read the instructions which had been sent him as to the timing of his own movements in what he mentally termed ' the show,' had the huge, preposterous vulgarity of the American mind ​fully struck him. The thought of what his wedding-day would be like was unfaceable, and the unextinguishable mirth of Ginger, who had come over as his best man, was not consoling.
' Here the bridegroom, crowned with garlands and ribands, shall be led underneath the largest amorino, which at a given signal shall descend upon his head, while the orchestra plays the Dead March from “ Saul,” ' had been his comment when the accident in rehearsal happened, and Bertie, though he laughed, groaned inwardly.
All this, however, was, as he recognised, but a temporary worry, and did not seriously affect him. More intimately disquieting was the perpetual sense of his nerves being jarred by the voices, manners, aims, mode of looking at life of the society into which he was to marry. Not for a moment did he even hint to himself that his manner of living and conducting himself, traditional to him, English, was in the smallest degree better or wiser than the manner of living and conducting themselves practised by these people, traditional (though less so) to them, American. Only there was an enormous difference, which had been seen by him in the autumn and dismissed as unessential, since it concerned only their manners, and had nothing to do with their immense kindliness of heart, which he never doubted or questioned for a moment. What he questioned now was whether manners did not spring, after all, from something which might be essential, something, the lack of which in one case, the presence of it in another, might make you find a man or a woman tolerable or intolerable if brought into continuous contact. He was going to marry this charming American girl, whose friends, interests, companions, pursuits, were American. It was reasonable and natural for her—indeed, it would have shown a certain heartlessness had it not been so—that she should wish to continue to be in touch with her friends and interests. For ​no human being can be plucked up, like a plant, and have its roots buried in an alien soil; transplant it without a lump of its own earth, and it will infallibly wither. Nor had Bertie the least intention of making the attempt to transplant her like that. All along he had known that the American invasion would come to his house; he no more expected Amelie to give up her American milieu than she would have expected him to give up his English milieu. Indeed, when Mr. Palmer had presented him with a charming little bijou flat in New York, he had accepted the implication that he would pay from time to time a visit there with the same unquestioning acquiescence.
But now in his second visit he found to his dismay that, so far from ceasing to mind or notice the difference between the two peoples, the difference was accentuated as far as notice went, and doubled as far as minding went. His nerves, no doubt, were a little out of order, and what would have scarcely affected him in a serener frame of mind was in his present mood like the squeak of a slate pencil.
Yet behind all this, even as the sky extends for millions of miles behind a stormy and cloudy foreground, lay his feeling for Amelie herself. True, once in his life the passion for a woman had burned in him with so absorbing and fierce a flame that for more than two years afterwards he had soberly believed that he never again could feel any touch of passion for another. His adoration for Dorothy Emsworth had been his first grande passion; it was therefore probably his last, for such a thing does not come twice. Men whose lives are morally unedifying might doubt it, so he said to himself, but merely because they have never experienced it at all. To them has come a succession of strong desires, but this never. And though he did not give, nor did he make pretence of giving, to Amelie that which Mrs. Emsworth could find no use for, yet he gave her very honestly another way of love: he gave her very strong ​and honest affection; he gave her immense admiration; he gave her as much, for he was of ardent nature, as many men have ever felt. All the chords of his lyre sounded for her. But once there had been another chord; that he could not give her, for it was gone.
Consequently, when he wondered whether continuous contact with American milieu might not prove absolutely intolerable, he did not include in his misgivings his continuous contact with Amelie. He had deliberately set out in the quest of a wealthy wife, and he had found one in all ways so charming, so lovable, that the mercenary side of his quest was out of sight. That quest, he admitted to himself, was not a very exalted one; but as his father had pointed out, he could not, practically speaking, marry a poor girl—at least, without marrying a great deal of discomfort—and it was therefore more sensible to look for his wife among wealth. He had been quite prepared, in fact, for marrying a girl who ' would do,' provided she saw the matter in the same light. Amelie did much more than ' do.'
Two nights before his marriage he had been to a very ingenious party, the author and inventor of which had been Reggie Armstrong. It was called a ' Noah's Ark ' party, for he had caused his stable-yard to be flooded, and erected in the centre of it a huge wooden building in shape and form exactly like the Noah's arks which children play with. It had false painted windows on it, the whole was in crude and glaring colours, and it was approached up a gang-plank across the stable-yard. At the door stood Reggie Armstrong on a little wooden stand, dressed like Noah in a brown ulster, with a stiff wide-awake hat and a false black beard, and by him the four other people who were the joint hosts. Mrs. Palmer was one, representing Mrs. Noah, and three young New York bachelors were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. A confused noise came from within the ark, and ​as the astonished guests entered they saw that all round the walls were cages containing real live animals. A pair of elephants occupied the top end, a snarling tiger was in the next cage; there were giraffes, lions, pumas, antelopes, all sorts of birds in diminishing order of size, and at the tail a small glass-covered box containing fleas. Shrill cries of excited admiration greeted this striking piece of genius, and in the rather pungent menagerie atmosphere, to the snarling of the tiger, the growling of lions, the mewing of cats, the barking of dogs, and the neighing of the equine species, the banquet, at which each guest sat on a wooden stool, and ate off wooden plates, in order to accentuate the primitive nature of the surroundings, ran its appointed course, and took rank among the brilliant entertainments of the world.
After dinner, bridge and normality followed, and it was natural that Bertie should find a corner as quiet as possible to have a talk with Amelie. They had wandered together round the cages, had tried to make themselves heard at the lion's end, but that monarch of the forest roared so continuously that it was impossible to catch a word anyone else was saying unless he shouted. And as their conversation was not naturally adapted to shouting, they sought the comparative quiet of the end which harboured the meaner insects.
Amelie had looked at the last case of all, and turned to Bertie.
' It's very complete,' she said.
' Very,' said he, and their eyes met, and both laughed.
' Now, tell me exactly what you think of it,' she went on, turning her back on the fleas and sitting down. ' I really want to know what you think of it, Bertie.'
Bertie looked round to see that they were alone.
' It appears to me absolutely idiotic,' he said.
She did not reply at once.
​' Mámma—ah, you like me to say mother—mother was one of the hosts,' she observed.
' I know. But you asked me what I thought.'
' Reggie's very rich,' she said. ' It doesn't make any difference to him. I suppose a beggar would think me idiotic to wear jewels, which might be converted into cash. At least, I suppose it is that you mean—the senseless expenditure.'
' No; one can't say any expenditure is senseless,' said he, ' since it is a matter of degree, a matter of how much you have to spend. If a man spent all his capital on such an entertainment, or indeed on any, it would be senseless, but, as you say, Armstrong is very rich.'
' What do you mean, then?'
' I mean that it is idiotic, because it doesn't give one any real pleasure. It gives one real pleasure to see those pearls lying on your neck.'
' Oh, but it does give pleasure, though perhaps not to you,' she said. ' Lots of people here think it's just exquisite. I suppose that means they are idiots.'
She paused a moment.
' You've been very frank,' she said; ' I will be, too. When I see you here, when I see that darling Ginger here, I think it is idiotic. But I don't otherwise. You see, I've been brought up in it all. You have been brought up differently. All my life I have been in the middle of this—this senseless expenditure. You have been in gray old houses, and big green parks, and quiet places, among people with low voices.'
He made a gesture to stop her. It was no use saying these things.
' No, I want to say this,' she said; ' I have meant to say it often, and I haven't been able. I have chosen, you see—I have chosen you. And I have seen often that we have grated on you; I have seen you thinking how senseless ​this all is. But, Bertie, I can't give up my friends, and I don't suppose I can change my nature. I can't promise to become English. I can't promise even to try. But I love you.'
She looked up at him with those great gray eyes, and for a moment something rose in his breast, till he almost thought that the intolerable joy of a passion he had once felt was about to burn again within him. But it rose, stayed short of the point, and sank again.
' I don't ask you to, Amelie,' he said. ' I am not so unreasonable or unfair as to ask you to change. And you left to say last what was best of all.'
Suddenly he felt an impulse almost overwhelming to tell her all, to tell her that, tender and strong as was his affection for her, he had known once a love that was different in kind from this, a love which he thought a man can only feel once, and when he felt it, it was not for her. Yet how could he do it? How define a moonbeam? And what good would it be when done? It might perhaps vaguely distress and disquiet her, but it could serve no other purpose, except that it would satisfy a certain demand for honesty felt by himself. The impulse, he dimly felt, was of a momentous nature; it involved principle which lies behind expediency, but though for a space it was very strong, it soon passed, and the want of practical purpose in telling her took its place. To minimize pain and to multiply pleasure was one of Bertie's maxims; suffering of any sort was repugnant to him, whether he or another was the sufferer. Such a desire is part always of a kindly nature, but when, as in his case, it is a dominant factor, one of the dominant lords of conduct, it is the sign of a nature not only kindly, but emphatically lazy—one which will always drift as long as possible, one which in a moral sense will never go to the dentist before its teeth ache, and will then not try to have them saved, but take gas and part with them.
​His last words to Amelie made the girl's cheek glow and her eye brighten. She loved her lover's lack of effusiveness, for to her it indicated the depth of still waters. In everything she found him as she would have him, and when he said ' you left till last the best of all,' she felt that no torrent of words, no battery of impassioned looks, could have been so convincingly genuine as the dry simplicity of his words. Like every other woman or man who has ever loved, she had imagined for herself the ideal lover, and enshrined it in some human tabernacle. To her Bertie was the one and only tabernacle wherein her love could dwell. He had told her with a limpid directness in the early days of their engagement that when he came a-wooing he had come, of set purpose, to a wealthy house, and this declaration, which would in a nature less sweet and generous than hers have prompted, in case of a lover's quarrel, the stifled whisper ' you wished to marry me for my money,' had not the most shadowy existence in her. She knew otherwise; the fortunate accident of her wealth had been no more, so she believed, than the mere master of the ceremonies who had introduced them.
The completeness of his reply so satisfied her that, after a short pause, she spoke at once of other things.
' Father has settled Molesworth on me,' she said. ' He has made it my own.'
' Will you ask me there sometimes?' said Bertie.
' Yes, perhaps. Are you very fond of it?'
' Yes, somehow right inside me I am. I think one gets a very strong, though not at all a violent, feeling for a place where one has been brought up. One's father was brought up there, too, you see, and one's grandfather. The feeling isn't worth much; we have tried to sell it for years, and whistled for a buyer in vain.'
She sighed.
' We Americans have no sense of home at all,' she said. ​' Really, we all live in hotels for preference. I don't suppose I shall ever get it, or even understand it. Is it—is it worth having, that sense of home?'
' I don't know that it is. It is a comfortable feeling, that is all. “ My own fireside ”; it is a domestic sort of joy, which rather reminds one of Cowper's poems.'
' I shall read them,' remarked Amelie with decision.
Bertie laughed.
' You will certainly go to sleep over them,' he said.
' That will be domestic too. Come, Bertie, I'm going to jabber like the others.'
' Jabber to me.'
' I can't jabber to you. You are not jabberable. Look at me once; that must be our good-night.'
Mr. Palmer had arrived in New York some week or so before, and had occupied himself for a whole day over the matter of settlements. Molesworth he had given to Amelie, had settled a million pounds sterling on her, and on Bertie two hundred and thirty-seven thousand, the curious exactitude of this sum being due to the fact that he had intended to settle a quarter of a million on him, of which he had already received thirteen thousand. He also recommended him a few suitable investments for it, while Mrs. Palmer, after getting rid of the first high pressure of satisfaction by sending to Amelie a perfect packing-case of diamonds, directed a torrent of different objects, chiefly mounted in gold, at both of them.
Bertie went home that night in a more settled and buoyant frame of mind than had been his since his arrival in America. Never before had he felt so certain of a happy and harmonious future. What Amelie's feeling for him was he dimly guessed from his knowledge of what once had been his for another, while for his part he gave her all he had to give—admiration, affection, desire. Only—and this, as far as he knew, was no longer among the capabilities ​of his nature—he did not give her their fusion into one white flame; he only offered, as it were, packets of the separate ingredients. But, as Sybil Massington had said, there are many ways of love; he took the best he knew. The knowledge of this, and the straight and honest acceptation of it by himself, was tranquillizing, and possibly a sedative to his conscience, for his thoughts as he strolled down Fifth Avenue on that night, strangely warm for the earliness of the month, strayed slowly, like his footsteps, to past years, and it would have surprised anyone who looked on his extraordinarily youthful and untroubled face to know how very old he was feeling as his mind drifted with the quiet strength of some ocean-tide back, viâ wedding-presents, to Dorothy. How absolutely she had dominated his every thought and feeling, how completely for those months he had ceased to have any independent will of his own, being absorbed and melted into her. He remembered one June in particular; they had both been in London, and day after day he had gone to see her in her house in Curzon Street. The weather was very hot, and she had a craze for living in nearly empty rooms; all her carpets had been taken up, and all her floors polished—everything not essential to comfort had been stacked in garrets, and the rooms were empty except for flowers. Lilacs had been magnificent that year—they were her favourite flowers—and the smell of lilac to him now meant that he lived once again, in the flash of a moment, that month of beautiful days when he had been so exquisitely unhappy with the unsatisfied yearning of his first passion. All that month she had kept him in a sort of rapturous agony of suspense, which kept ever growing nearer to certainty. Then, at the end, to bring matters to a crisis, he had written her that letter, and not gone near her for two days. Then, having no answer, he went, and she laughed at him and sent him away. Well, he had paid dearly for that letter, ​both in the desolating inability to care for anything in the months that followed, and also in other ways. What it cost him in hard cash did not trouble him. After all, he was infinitely her debtor; it was she who had let him see (though she had plucked the vision away again) to what height of ecstasy his own average human nature could rise.
What must a woman of that kind be made of? he wondered to himself. Was she so grossly stupid that she never had a glimpse of what she meant to him, or was she so utterly hard that, having seen that, she had not the decency anyhow to go into mourning, as it were, for him just for a little? Stupidity he could not accuse her of; there was no one of such lightning-like power of intuition to divine the mood of a man. No; she must have seen it and known it, and brushed it from her, as one brushes a fly off one's coat. For not a month after that she had left London with Bilton, whom she never professed to care for. But he was rich, and certainly he had done a great deal for her, for he had taken her from her position of ' pretty woman ' actress, seen her capability of dramatic impersonation, and got her play after play where she had to behave like herself, till now, in a certain sort of rôle, there was no woman who touched her. Also, he had somehow made her the fashion; he had gauged his age correctly, and given it what it wanted. He had seen the trend of society both in England and America—seen its hardness, its heartlessness, its imperative need of being amused, its passion for money, and for its stage he had given it Mrs. Emsworth, an incarnation of itself.
Yes; she was hard, hard, hard as her own diamonds, and as brilliant, as many-faceted. Sometimes out of her, as out of them, a divinely soft light would shine, but if you tried to warm yourself in that mellow blaze there was no heat there; if in the excellent splendour and softness of the light you would think for a moment that there was a ​heart there, you would find only the cold, clear-cut edges. Had she not proved it—she who, not satisfied with leading him on, with letting him fall passionately in love with her, only to divert herself a little in watching that storm of passion which she observed from behind her shut window, only to draw the blind down when she had looked enough, had even used the letter he wrote her to make money out of it? How well she knew him, his weakness, his ineradicable instinct to save trouble, avoid disturbances, so that, when she wrote, or caused to be written, the letter of blackmail, she did it probably without the least fear that she was putting herself in a dangerous position. Nor was she—secure in the knowledge of Bertie's engagement, she was certain to get her money. And, as no doubt she also knew well, against her he could not have taken legal steps, for the memory of the love he once bore her. No; she was safe, quite safe.
He let himself into his flat with his latch-key, and saw several letters lying on the table. The English mail had come in, and Ginger, who had got home before him, was busy with his own correspondence, and only looked up and nodded at Bertie as he entered. For Bertie himself there were several English letters, chiefly congratulatory, a parcel from Tiffany's, ' by order of Mrs. Palmer,' containing a gold sapphire-starred cigarette-case, and two or three letters from America, one of which was type-written. For some reason, which he hardly formulated to himself, he took it up, and examined on front and back before opening it. Then he laid it down again, mixed a whisky and soda, and, returning to it, tore it open. It contained one square sheet, and ran as follows:
' Dear Sir, ' Hearing that you are about to be married to Miss Amelia Palmer, it may interest you to learn that we are in ​possession of an autograph letter of yours to Mrs. Emsworth. The following phrases may recall it to your mind:
' “ I loved you more than ever last night, though I thought I could not have loved you more than I really did.”
' “ Lilac, lilac; it reminds me of you more than any picture of you could.”
' “ You know my devotion to you. For me there is no other in the world.” '
(Then, as before, followed a space.)
' Should you care to possess yourself of this, we will let you have it for, £5,000. The money should be sent to Mr. Harold Bilton at his business office, 1,324a, Broadway, for Mrs. Emsworth's account, by to-morrow (Tuesday) evening. In the event of its not being to hand, we shall presume that you do not wish to have the letter, which we shall thereupon forward by special messenger that evening to Mr. Lewis S. Palmer.
' Mr. Bilton, who has lately arrived in New York, is authorized to receive the above-mentioned sum from you, should you settle to adopt this course, but to permit no discussion of any kind referring to the matter in hand. ' We are, dear Sir, ' Your faithful, obedient servants, ' A. B. C.'
Bertie read it through, folded it neatly up, replaced it in its envelope, and walked across to where Ginger was sitting absorbed in a letter.
' Any news?' he asked.
' Yes, a good deal.'
Ginger finished the sheet he was reading, got up briskly, and helped himself to whisky.
' Noah's Ark,' he observed. ' Great and merciful God!'
​' You seemed to be enjoying yourself,' said his brother.
' I was, enormously. But it's great and merciful, all the same. That's all. Oh no, one thing more. Bertie, I think your girl is worth the rest of this continent. News? Yes, news from Davos. Charlie is better, ever so much better, and his nurse throughout has been Sybil. In fact, there is going to be love in a cottage, I think. Charlie writes. He seems to like the idea of a cottage.'
' She's going to marry him?' asked Bertie.
Ginger smiled.
' Now I come to think of it, he doesn't mention the word,' he observed.
' You're rather coarse,' remarked Bertie.
' I am. I thought it might cheer you up. You look rather down. Anything wrong?'
' Nothing whatever.'
Ginger strolled back to his chair, put his whisky on one arm, a little heap of cigarettes on the other, and curled himself up between them.
' The young folk are all growing up and being married,' he said. ' It makes me feel extremely old, and it is a little uncomfortable. I've done nothing—but that might happen to anybody—and I've felt nothing. What is it like to feel things, Bertie?'
' Depends what they are.'
' No, I mean independently of what they are. I don't know what strong emotion is. I don't know what it is to be carried off one's feet. I am much interested in many things, but impersonally. Now, you—you have adored, and you have been adored. I have sat and looked on. Does it leave you duller, do you think, to feel a thing, and then cease to feel it, than you would have been if you never felt it at all?'
Bertie considered this a moment.
' You never cease to feel things,' he said. ' A thing that ​has been exquisitely sweet becomes bitter, and continues bitter. You taste the jam first, and the powder afterwards.'
He turned to the mantelpiece, took up a cigarette, and then, with a sudden trembling hand, threw it into the grate.
' And you pay for it all,' he said—' you pay over and over again. Good-night, Ginger.'