SNELGROVE said to Dave toward the end of the next week: "Boy, somebody has sure made you one bear of a salesman! You slipped off form for a spell after your little trip out on the ice; but now! Zowie!" Snelgrove sorted over the sheaf of orders, with checks for deposits paid, which Dave brought in. "Somebody has sure spoken to you! And all I. E. Snelgrove hopes is 'Speak to him again, girl! Speak to him again!'"
This was Snelgrove's most direct reference to Dave's personal affairs. Business was booming, partly because of the coming of the warm days of spring with their call to the car and partly as a result of the new energy with which Dave worked. It amazed himself quite as much as it did Snelgrove. He felt that he could do anything; yes, for Fidelia, he could do anything.
He worried no more about the increase in price of the new Hamilton six; in so far as he worried at all now, it was as to whether the factory would make good on their promises of the car, and deliver on time.
To be sure, it bothered him at first not to have money of his own for his personal expenses; for he recognized that, when he drew money at the office, it either came from Mr. Fuller's loan or else was taken from the deposits paid on the orders for cars not yet delivered. But the use of this money disturbed his partner not at all.
"It's only business, boy," he assured Dave indulgently and in a tone which conveyed wonderment at his junior partner's perplexity in the presence of the soundest business practice.
Mr. Snelgrove attested the complete comfort in his mind by liberally increasing the scale of his personal expenditures; he purchased several new suits; he bought himself a diamond; and lent to his friends with more lavish hand.
For it was plain that the good tidings that Irving again was flush, had spread from the Turkish baths and cabarets to the "barrel" and "flop" houses along south State and Clark streets whence appeared the more picturesque of the down and out comrades of Mr. Snelgrove's youth. For each, he cheerily and generously "tapped the till" as he himself called it.
Also in growing numbers and frequency, women phoned for Mr. Snelgrove or dropped into the office, in person.
It became impossible for Dave to doubt that his partner was a man whom his father would call "steeped in sin"; yet, in spite of this, Dave got along with Snelgrove better than before.
"We make a great pair, you and me," Snelgrove frequently complimented Dave and himself. "You stick with me and watch the big money roll in. I got the experience and the point of view; you got the pep and the education and the polish."
Snelgrove frankly envied Dave his education but even more he admired and valued his junior partner's "polish." He commented: "You can work in anywhere, boy; you know how to meet 'em all!"
Dave did know, since Alice had taken him in his freshman year out of the meager round of contacts, which naturally would have been the lot of a minister's son working his way through Northwestern, and had gradually, through four years, made him accustomed to the acquaintance of the prosperous and "worldly" people who frequented the big house on Sheridan road.
Often, when meeting a prospective customer and realizing that he was getting along with the prospect easily and favorably, Dave would feel a sudden, sharp pang of conscience at the thought that Alice had prepared him for this success.
He did not quickly separate Alice's interest from his own; he had formed the habit of including hers with his so completely that it startled him to discover, during the round of the day, how much he had cast from his life. Particularly toward evening, when the hour came at which he always had telephoned her, he felt lonely and lost. And the week-day mornings, when he had classes with Alice, became most difficult in another way.
At that wretched midnight, when she had left him sitting in the cab beside Willard, he had thought in his dismay: "Have I ended college for her?"
Of course he knew that she had barely three months more of attendance at classes to win her degree; but this only weighted his guilt if now she dropped out.
But Alice did not drop out. On Monday morning, as usual, she appeared in her car at the edge of the campus. The difference was that he did not meet her; she came up the walk alone and they did not encounter each other until they were entering the class-room.
Everybody was watching them; for already everybody knew that it was "over" between Alice and Dave; and everybody knew why as certainly as though her cry to him in the cab, when she struck him with her little fist, had resounded through Willard: "I'll never say it! Never! Never!" They knew Alice would never have said it; they had been waiting for him to jilt her for Fidelia Netley. Now they knew that he had done it and here, coming to class again, was Alice.
She looked up at him and she was white but she was calm; quietly she said: "Good morning, David."
He quivered as he replied to her, in almost the same words. With himself, he realized: "She's not quitting. I didn't know her when I supposed she might."
Tremendously this sight of him stirred her that morning. It was far more than she had expected; she had thought that, when she saw him, some change in him, in his physical appearance, would lessen her longing for him. But he was not changed; nothing seemed changed in this class-room after the lecture began. There he was seated before her in his accustomed place; here she was in hers, watching him, dreaming about him. No! No more of that; she dare not let herself relax and dream; for, if she did, she must go through the agony of realization again. She could not bear that.
But what, what was different? There he was; here she was, where she had been happy through so many hours like this because of her nearness to him. It became more incredible, not less, now that she saw him, that he had ceased to be hers, he would never again clasp her and kiss her, that he would not want to; incredible it was, indeed, that even their talks together, their confidences and friendship were finished because Fidelia Netley had come.
Alice had drilled herself for the eleven o'clock meeting with Fidelia when they both—Fidelia and she—would come to class with David. Alice had warned herself: "I mustn't hate her! I won't! I won't!" Yet this morning, during the hours between nine o'clock, when the first class with David was over, and eleven, when she would see him with Fidelia, she was weak with fear. What would she do when she saw Fidelia? Then she came upon Fidelia suddenly in the girls' study room.
"Why, Alice!" Fidelia exclaimed and seized her hands. "Why Alice!"
A fury within Alice wanted to snatch her hands away but another power submitted her to Fidelia's warm, close clasp. But while submitting, Alice searched Fidelia's eyes. She saw no triumph in them; she saw no look, such as she expected, which taunted, "I've taken him from you."
And she realized that Fidelia felt no taunt and no triumph over her. She realized that Fidelia was not feeling sorry for her, either. Fidelia had done a terrible thing to her and Fidelia knew it but was only beginning to realize it now that she saw Alice.
Alice clenched her fists within Fidelia's hands and then suddenly relaxed.
There rang in Alice's throbbing brain, words which Myra had spoken in warning before Fidelia had ever seen David. "She can't help being an enemy." That was what Myra had said; and Fidelia could not help being an enemy of Alice but she did not mean to be an enemy. Fidelia had no more planned to stay out on the floe and draw David to her than she had planned to sit in the sun on her first morning in class. She did such things because her nature made her sit in the sun and dare the starlit cold; and her nature, which made her do such things without planning or thinking, drew men away from girls who had no such nature. And this struck Alice to helplessness.
Yet, with her helplessness, she found herself amazingly without fear of Fidelia now. What a strange discovery to find her fear of Fidelia gone; for you can not fear one who no longer can hurt you; and Fidelia had taken away from Alice all that any one could. She had taken David and ended the meetings at the campus edge; ended their glances at each other, their sharing of plans, hopes, dreams; she had taken away the twenty-second of June, the wedding day! What a surprise to feel no fear of Fidelia! What did she feel?
She did not know; she knew what thought ran through her. Alice thought: "She'll have the wedding day; she'll be David's wife."
Alice drew her hands from Fidelia; the bell for class was ringing. "Come," said Alice; it was her first word; and with Fidelia, she went to class and to David.
Later, when she told Myra of meeting Fidelia, Alice said: "She didn't want to spoil my life. She didn't, My!"
"What did she want to do?" Myra demanded.
"It just happened to be me who had David who had—who had to have her. She didn't do it, My; he did."
"He did his half, all right!" Myra admitted; she had become as open in her enmity to David as to Fidelia. "And you don't blame him, either!" Myra accused and she went on uttering her impatience with Alice's "abjectness."
Alice replied. "I don't care if I am abject. I can't think of anybody but him. My, I've all my life planned for years and years ahead—with David! We planned it all together. Where we'd live and how, and everything we'd do. We've taken the same courses for four years so we'd be interested in the same things; we've—" Alice broke down and cried.
"You start at forgetting Dave!" Myra commanded almost savagely. "You start forgetting him right now!"
But no one knew better than Myra that Alice never could do it; no one more fully realized the force of that tremendous, initial advantage which David had taken of Alice when he came to college, an overworked, serious and awkward boy, so strange to social manners that others laughed at him but Alice drew to his defense; no one better undestood that Alice never could hope to find, nor could she ever have heart to seek for, a substitute for her love for David which had been growing throughout the four years they had been developing from girl and boy together.
Theirs was an intimacy not to be likened to any ordinary engagement and least of all to the lightly held "campus engagements" which led to far more "petting" and physical contacts than Alice and Dave ever permitted themselves. Theirs had been—or had been believed to be—one of those fine friendships between boy and girl which naturally mature to the most beautiful and happiest of marriages such as are forever the glory of each class of girls and boys who have gone through college together.
Betrayal of this was not merely a hurt to Alice but partook of the nature of an offense to many. Naturally, Dave felt the criticism of Alice's friends and particularly of those who disliked Fidelia. He had expected that; but he had not prepared himself for other currents which ran against him. He became self-conscious even among his own fraternity brothers and in his own room with Lan; in fact, he was especially self-conscious with Lan; for he had betrayed what Lan was loyal to.
Dave avoided his own room when Lan was up there. Lan minded his own business; he made no criticism but merely became silent with Dave or else was wholly casual in his talk. Gone were the old, frank discussions of the room-mates in regard to their personal affairs; gone were the pleasant, natural mentionings of Myra and Alice and the planning of their parties of four. Lan seldom referred to Myra and never to Alice. To think that Alice's name had become taboo!
But if Dave occasionally was made to feel self-conscious and guilty, always—or almost constantly—he was aware of a new exhilaration which supplied that confident energy which gained the business results so pleasing to Mr. Snelgrove.
He found that the sensation of freedom, which had seized him when he was skating out from the shore, abandoned him only temporarily after his return. He had cast off, with Alice, a burden of conscience. He wrote to his father: "Alice and I are no longer engaged. We will never marry each other." Also he wrote, but he did not send: "A girl has come to college who is of the type you would find more detrimental to me than Alice. For she is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. I know almost nothing about her character except that she is pleasant, strong in physical endurance and keeps cheerful hour after hour under trying conditions. The truth is, I think little about her character and less about her religious faith. I believe, as a matter of fact, she has none, though she likes to go to church. I love her.
"Probably you wouldn't call it love. You'd say I desire her. All right. But I mean to marry her, if I possibly can."
Dave wrote, even for himself, no more than that, though he kept what he had written and was tempted to send it on after he received his father's reply. For his father assumed that the end of the betrothal of Alice and David had come as a result of sober realization of David's "duty." Ephraim Herrick protested his satisfaction and his conviction that it "followed the will of our Lord."
There came also, in the same envelope, a sheet written by his mother who prayed that her son had no heartache; and it was this which held Dave from a rejoinder to his father. Instead, Dave called upon that fund of accrued, but not yet earned, commissions which Snelgrove drew upon freely; and Dave sent his mother fifty dollars extra that month, writing her: "Please spend it on yourself, every cent of it. Oh, mother, do get yourself a few nice things."
This gave him some satisfaction, though he knew his mother never would spend that money upon herself; and after she had not but had written him a careful accounting of how it had gone, he determined to buy an outfit for her himself next month. So he wrote his sister Deborah to abstract from the old packing trunk the winter dress his mother would have put away and to send it to him.
When it arrived, he did not know quite how to proceed; for Alice always had helped him in the selection of any considerable present for his mother. His idea was to take the dress down to Field's, exhibit it as a sample for size and trust to the aid of the salespeople.
He thought of asking Fidelia's advice; but he had yet done nothing so deliberate as suggesting a shopping expedition with her. Daily he saw her, of course, frequently he walked with her; and, besides meeting her about the university buildings and on the campus, he found her at dances to which he went.
There was a "formal" at almost every week-end; and often there were two big affairs. For spring was the natural season for festivities. Winter had its dances but they suffered, in comparison, from being necessarily shut into ball-rooms and heated halls; also the basketball championships went on through winter, claiming many Friday and Saturday evenings. Autumn was a far sterner season than spring, not only by reason of weather, but because of football; the whole college followed the eleven at home or away, gathering at the gymnasium nearly every Friday night for a great "pep" mass-meeting to practice songs and yells and to cheer the team; and then Saturday was to be saved, hopefully, for the celebration of victory.
But May and June were the months of minor sports, of baseball and tennis to be played and of races to be run during the afternoon, leaving the evenings free; and the twilight was long and agreeable. Everywhere windows and doors were open; lawns became carpets of soft, cool grass; elms became quiet canopies, and the lake lay like a mirror for moon and stars, inviting to canoes. So these were favorite months for the music of "formals" from which couples could wander between dances and stroll hatless and without scarf over bare shoulders or dance with equal delight on veranda or ball-room floor.
Almost every fraternity and sorority saved one of its allotted quota of entertainments to give a ball on some such Friday or Saturday evening of May or June.
It was the custom of each society, when entertaining, to invite, in addition to its friends of the opposite sex, a select few from each of its own rival organizations. And last year, no matter whether a fraternity or a sorority was the host, Alice Sothron and David Herrick were on every list. This spring, every fraternity invited Alice and every sorority chose her for one of the guests from Tau Gamma; but every sorority but one, besides Tau Gamma which already had entertained, dropped Dave; and only one invited Fidelia.
This was criticism direct; and Dave felt it; for he knew with what frank discussion each group of girls made out their lists. However, the fraternities invited him as usual; and every fraternity invited Fidelia.
She received no mere general "bid" to each of these dances. Prior to the issue of the engraved invitations, at least one member of the fraternity to entertain called on Fidelia and offered himself as her escort. So she went with a different man to each of these dances.
When Delta A entertained three Saturdays after Tau Gamma, Bill Fraser took Fidelia. He had gone to Dave before the invitations were out.
"I suppose you're taking Fidelia," he commented.
"I'm not taking her," Dave replied. "You go ahead, if you want her."
"You bet I do," Bill assured enthusiastically; and then inquired: "Who you taking, Dave?"
"I'm stagging it," Dave said and reddened.
Fraser descended to the living-room and reported: "I'm going to ask Fidelia Netley. Dave's still laying off."
Very consciously Dave was "laying off." If Fidelia had been showing especial liking for any other one man, Dave might have done differently but she was making friends, impartially, with many.
Bill Fraser put his own case fairly for all the rest: "I'm certainly crazy about that girl," he confessed. "But I don't fool myself that I'll ever have a chance, but I bet Dave could sell himself there."
Dave, while "laying off," wondered about that. Fidelia gave him no sign; she remained friendly and interested; but during these weeks following his break with Alice, Fidelia never by word or act did one thing to lead him on. He considered: "She never actually made a lead for me; yet, she went with me as far as I asked her. . . . But I never asked any distance."
He was in his room one warm, May noon preparing to go to town when he saw Fidelia come from Mrs. Fansler's. Fidelia was in blue street dress with scarf; she had on hat and veil and gloves, all evidences of no mere local errand but of an expedition to Chicago. Dave picked up that bundle of his mother's dress, which had been long waiting his decision, and he went out and turned in the direction of the railroad station.
He saw Fidelia half a block ahead but intentionally he did not overtake her until she reached the station platform.
"Going to a matinée?" Dave asked; the day happened to be Wednesday.
"I don't know," Fidelia admitted. "Maybe."
As the train roared in, he waited until they were seated side by side before he pursued: "You mean you want to go to a show but aren't sure of tickets?"
"No," said Fidelia. "I'm just going to the city. I don't know what I'll do; maybe a play; maybe shopping; maybe just seeing lots of people. Don't you like to be that way?"
"I never have," Dave replied. "I say, how about lunch? Have you had it?"
"No. I'm going to have that in the city."
"Where?"
She smiled, her pretty nose shortening in its attractive way; she was profiled to him before the window. "Why, I'll think up a place now, if I must!"
"I've one all thought out," Dave assured, "for both of us."
"Aren't you going right off to business?"
"Not to-day." And he didn't.
He took her to Marshall Field's luncheon room; not at all a daring place, but a pleasant one particularly as they arrived rather after the shoppers' noon hour. They had a table in the cool Narcissus room near the quiet fountain with the wide basin of water-flowers and lily pads. The tables near them became deserted. They ordered the same things, sharing them in the intimacy of split "portions."
"It's funny," said Fidelia, as she served him half of an order put before her, "how one likes things dainty like this, everything crisp, just right, nothing burnt or soggy; and then you'll call the best dinner you ever had a camp supper scorched black in places."
He was watching her hands, her beautiful, strong hands, capable, but which obeyed and never guided.
"You cooked that supper?" he asked.
"Well, I helped."
"It was in Idaho, I suppose."
"Yes."
With that word, she shut off further question in the gentle yet wholly final way she had. Dave explained to himself, "Because the man she had it with, is dead." And he was jealous of that man, though dead.
"I've never had a camp supper," he said. "But I'm going to have one!" He thought of her hands helping another's hands; he thought next of her hands helping his in preparation of their camp supper.
When luncheon was over, she asked him: "Now what are we going to do?"
He had been wondering when she would think of that. He said "I should have ordered theater tickets before we sat down. But we can get something yet."
"Do you want to?"
"No."
She said: "I never did. Do you have to take your bundle somewhere?"
He explained: "I was taking it here. It's a dress of my mother's. She won't buy things for herself. My father's a minister, you know."
Fidelia nodded.
"My mother mostly wears worn clothes—I mean clothes which other people have worn," Dave proceeded and flushed hot.
"Yes," said Fidelia. "I've lived in little towns."
"I'm going to get," said Dave, "the best clothes for her that are in Marshall Field's!"
Fidelia arose. "You're exchanging that?" She referred to his bundle.
"No; that's a sample for size. It's a dress some one gave her and she'd made over."
"Give it to me," Fidelia asked. "I'll look it over in the women's room for size." And she took his bundle away, to reappear with it a few minutes later.
"She must be tall like you, David," Fidelia said.
"She is."
"She's awfully thin."
"Yes"; said Dave.
"She's—pale?" asked Fidelia.
"Usually."
"You see I've got to think about the color," Fidelia explained. "Her hair's brown, I suppose."
"Pretty gray now," said Dave.
"Come," said Fidelia and she took the lead in this.
"Something for yourself, Miss?" asked the salespeople eagerly when Fidelia halted in the dress department. She explained she was shopping for a friend who was older and she gave a size.
She selected a dress which never in the world would Dave have chosen though it had been shown him a dozen times; nor would Alice have approved it for his mother. They both would have thought it too gay; Dave would have thought, "Mother'll never wear it." But he did not think so now.
"There! Isn't this lovely for her? Think of her in it!"
Dave thought and wholeheartedly approved; he bought the dress and a few minutes later a hat to go with it.
"Now you go and get her gloves and I'll get other things. Please don't you bother about anything else," Fidelia said.
When they met below, Fidelia was satisfied. "She'll have as good garments as anybody, underneath or outside," Fidelia reported. Dave asked: "How much do I owe you?" For they had been prepaying their purchases and having the goods sent direct to Itanaca from the store.
Fidelia asked: "Let me do that last little bit, David! You see," she explained, "when I saw that dress, which I took out of your bundle, I couldn't help seeing my aunt Minna."
"Wearing the dress?" said Dave.
"No; I thought of somebody like aunt Minna giving it to your mother, after it was worn; and I had to send what I did. Now let's go see lots of people!"
She would not tell what she had spent; and Dave gave up argument, knowing he would learn of these purchases from his mother. He went with Fidelia to Michigan Avenue where they turned south along the gay, fashionable shops. He longed to buy something for her; when he looked into the windows, he thought how this and that would look on her. He was lighthearted and happy as he had been only with her; and he thrilled with the admiration she aroused on the boulevard.
Every one had to gaze at her; many stared; and nearly every one, after staring at her, glanced at him and envied him. She took the attention beautifully, not pretending to be utterly unconscious of it but never made self-conscious by it.
Perhaps, upon that warm May afternoon in the shadows of the tall buildings, with the shafts of the sun laying their golden light at each street intersection, Fidelia was fairer and more alluring than ever before. She made no obvious attempt to attract; she was in a plain, blue street dress with a straw hat and gray gloves; only now she left off her veil. Obviously, to be sure, she was happy; and to Dave, that was a triumphant walk. He had never felt of such account before. He wanted to go on and on with Fidelia; he wanted to show her to Snelgrove and to men he knew on "the row" far down the boulevard. But she stopped when they reached Congress Street.
"You have to go to work now, I know," she said.
Dave denied it but she determined to return home.
She said "home" meaning Mrs. Fansler's in Evanston; but the word struck Dave with dismay at the thought of her departing in a few weeks, at the end of the college year.
"Where'll you be going when school's out?" he demanded.
"I?" she said; and considered for a moment. "Why, I've no special place to go. Dorothy Hess wants me to visit her for a while after graduation. What would you think of that?"
"Where does she live?" Dave asked.
"Streator, Illinois."
"That's a good idea. I'd do it."
She gazed at him seriously and asked: "You'd like me to?"
"I would. Will you?"
"I will."
He said: "Then I'll come down and call for you there."
"What?" she asked.
He was quivering. He had not known what he was to say until he had spoken it; now he planned aloud: "That's what we'll do, Fidelia. You go down to Streator; and I'll call for you. Will you?"
She held her breath for a moment and then asked: "Will I what, David?"
"Go down with Dorothy Hess. You said you would, before I said I'd call for you. Will you now?"
She replied: "Yes. I'll do that."
"I'll," he said and stopped for breath. They were standing on the street corner and, so far as any one passing might guess, they were arranging only some ordinary appointment before they parted—"I'll call for you as soon as I can."
He thrust his hand forward and she gave him hers; and their eyes met. "Good-by now, David," she said.
"Not now!" he denied.
"Yes; you go on to business. I want you to; I want to go back alone!"
She drew her hand away and turned from him; he took a step after her, then he stopped and watched her as she was caught in the crowd on the walk. He was suffused as he realized the compact he had made with her. He, who had broken solemn betrothal with Alice, had made an agreement to "call for" Fidelia at Streator; and he knew he would not fail in this.
The very vagueness of their compact satisfied him better than would any formal pledge; for he had just broken the most definite of promises and Fidelia knew it. Moreover, David had a feeling against making any final assertion until after the twenty-second of June. He knew this was wholly to satisfy an emotional protest within himself; but the protest was there and he could not ignore it. Now, Fidelia would wait for him until after the twenty-second, when he would go to Streator and fetch her; he would carry her away with him in the warmth of June, on the evening of some day like this; he would take her to a forest shore far from the rest of the world; he would have his camp supper with her!
He planned the place while he walked alone after she had vanished; he thought of the Wisconsin woods above the shore of the lake with the moon above the warm, mirrored waters in which Fidelia and he would bathe; he thought of their campfire on the fringe of the sands; their bed on the ground.
He thought of his father and of the Apostle Paul; and as he planned his preparations for his marriage, he considered how he would prevent his father from discovering what he meant to do. His father intended to visit Evanston for the Commencement exercises; but David could prevent him by simply refraining from sending home any more money.
So David sent presents home instead of making his usual remittance for June. His mother was delighted with the dress which Fidelia had selected but she returned, for exchange, the articles which Fidelia had chosen for her personal gift and which were the finest and softest of silk underwear. Sarah Herrick obtained several times the number of cotton garments for herself and her daughters with the credit.
David did not tell Fidelia of this and he made no attempt to persuade her to accept repayment of the money she had spent. He was meeting her daily, of course; and outwardly there was little change in their relations; no one could report, with more certainty than before, that Fidelia Netley and David Herrick were "engaged."
When they were alone, David spoke boldly of "Streator"; he said, "when I come to call for you!" He divided time into periods "before" and "after I call for you!" Fidelia, when she referred to their compact, used his phrase for it; but it seldom came to her lips. Sometimes she seemed, indeed, to wish to avoid thinking of their agreement; this bothered him but when he asked her, point blank, what was the matter, she kissed him.
Yet he had few kisses. This was not the result of any deliberate regulation between him and her. She was shy with him; and he, himself, was holding off. He argued with himself: "With her, this is the way to be. I won't try for more now. I'll have all at once!" Still her shyness, and her reluctance to speak of what they would do after he called for her, worried him.
She was not to be graduated, but, after most of the students had gone home, Fidelia remained at Mrs. Fansler's for the end of Commencement week. Dorothy Hess, being a senior, was staying on; and Dorothy not only won her diploma but was given her coveted honor of the Phi Beta Kappa key.
Dorothy's parents were in town for Commencement; Myra's mother and father had arrived from Rock Island and Lan's had come for the graduation ceremonies; but David's were not there. His father wrote him a long and very earnest letter; his mother sent him the first flowers from her garden—they came by post wrapped in wet newspaper and bore the message, "For my boy, my oldest son, Mother."
Alice's family of course came to the college for Commencement; and her mother cried and her father watched with eyes blurred when Alice walked up in her turn to take her diploma and when the class and the other students clapped and clapped for her as they did for nobody else.
Alice hardly thought of what she was doing; she thought: "David's here with me for the last time." The epoch of their perforced meetings was finished. She thought: "Only by accident will I ever see him again. He'll marry Fidelia soon. He's waiting until after the twenty-second." For Alice knew David so well that she realized how he was feeling about that date of the twenty-second.
David saw Fidelia off on the train with Dorothy and her mother and father. They departed in the morning after Commencement; and it seemed to David, on that morning, that Fidelia purposely avoided letting him find her alone.
He made her promise, again, to wait for him to call for her at Streator; but, after she was gone, he worried.
He had torn up, after one reading, the letter which his father had sent him; but he kept his mother's flowers until after they faded and then he preserved one white petalled daisy, pressing it between the leaves of the bible his mother had given him.
Two days after the twenty-second, the Hamilton factory happened to make delivery of several car-loads of automobiles which David sent at once to the customers who had ordered; and so he had earned and had in hand considerable money of his own. He wired Fidelia that he was coming for her; that night he was in Streator and no longer he found Fidelia shy with him.
He thought, confidently: "The trouble with her was that we were in college where I'd been engaged to Alice." He made his few arrangements that evening and upon the next morning he stood with Fidelia before an Episcopal clergyman in the front parlor of Dorothy Hess's home. "Before God and this company," which consisted of Dorothy Hess's family, David and Fidelia entered into that holy estate which is "not by any one to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts which have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in fear of God."
The words, when they were repeated, brought before David the image of his father; and David banished it. In his waistcoat pocket, where he had the ring by which he would wed Fidelia, he had a dried and faded flower—the daisy blossom which his mother had sent him. His fingers touched it as he felt for the ring.
On the evening of that day, their wedding day, David and Fidelia were in camp on the shore of the lake. They were in the Wisconsin woods at a spot like the haven of David's dream. They were alone; not even a guide was with them. They exulted, "Nobody within miles!"
Together, and with quivering hands held to the same utensils, they prepared and cooked their camp supper; and never was a meal like that in all the world, in all time, ten thousand years ago or now! When they were finished, they heaped up their fire so they would not have to tend it again.
Late, when the moon was above the pines, when the fire glowed in embers and the tree toads were singing, David lay awake from the tumult of his soul. Fidelia was sleeping, lovely, far lovelier as she lay beside him with her throat bare, her hair in loose braids, her arm toward him, far lovelier than ever he had dreamed.
He lay beside her, staring up at the sky, aghast at the teachings which had all but possessed him but which, by this night, he had denied.
"This is what they call the great sin," he repeated to himself, "unless done 'reverently, soberly and in fear of God.'" He laughed quietly at his father's God. "The wonder of love with her!" he exulted. "And to think I'd been taught all my life to fear love and to look upon love for love as low!"
A star shone clearly between the branches of the trees:
"Up from Earth's Center through the Seventh Gate,"
he whispered:
"I rose and on the Throne of Saturn sate;
And many a knot unravelled by the road;
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
There was the door to which I found no Key;
There was the veil through which I could not see;
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was—"
He turned and gazed at Fidelia's face in the moonlight.
"And then no more of Thee and Me."
He whispered: "All right. Who wants Eternity?" he cast his defiance to the stars. "I'm satisfied with the Throne of Saturn. 'No more of Me and Thee' after a while; but now Thee and Me!" And he kissed Fidelia, his wife.