“You don’t like folks, do you?” Mr. Cameron said suddenly.
William did not know how to answer. Then he chose the truth. “I have a profound pity for them,” he said.
“Pity breeds contempt,” Mr. Cameron said sententiously.
“Perhaps,” William said. “You feel the same way, though, Mr. Cameron.”
Mr. Cameron was pulling his lower lip again. “In a way,” he admitted.
“I knew it as soon as I saw the Stores,” William said. “If you didn’t despise people you couldn’t sell that stuff to them.”
“Here — here—” Mr. Cameron said sheepishly.
“I admire you for it,” William said. “But I have a little more idealism than you have. I think the people can be guided to better things.”
Mr. Cameron looked at him sidewise. “You may be wrong, William. People are awfully mulish.”
William did not yield. “They can be influenced toward something or away from it, just as in the Stores. If you should decide that purple was to be the season’s color, you could get people to buy things in purple.”
“I don’t care,” Mr. Cameron said. “It makes no difference to me what they buy.”
“I do care,” William said.
They did not talk much after that, but after another ten minutes Mr. Cameron got up. “Well, William, whatever your reasons are I’ll say this: I’ll put away a hundred thousand dollars — half of what you need — and keep it handy, and I want you to go ahead and have the wedding.”
William flushed. “Nothing would please me better, Mr. Cameron,” he said.
His marriage day dawned as bright as though he had commanded the sun. At that light striking through his open windows he remembered a story his mother used to tell of his childhood. He had waked once at dawn in the old temple where his family was summering upon one of those bare brown mountains outside the city of Peking. The light was pearly above the horizon and he had shouted, leaping out of bed, “Come up, Sun!” At that moment, as though in obedience to his command, the sun sprang above the edge of the earth. He could not have been more than four years old.
The sun had come up as suddenly this morning and he lay realizing as much as he could the meaning of this day. Everything was ready and all that he had to do was simply to be the bridegroom that the day demanded. He had no doubt of himself, for he was to be alone. He had struggled for months over the matter of his sisters and his grandparents and then had dismissed his conscience. Both the girls were at college and his grandfather was not well. The old man was recovering slowly from a stroke and one side of his face was askew. William would not have them at his wedding.
When Candace spoke of them he shook his head. “I don’t want them there,” he said. She had looked at him with strange eyes and had said nothing.
The bridesmaids were six of Candace’s schoolmates and friends. Jeremy was his best man and Martin, Blayne and Seth were his ushers. He had made everything as he wanted it.
The door opened and the valet came in, a middle-aged man with a careful English accent.
“Shall I draw your bath, sir?”
“If you please.”
“Mrs. Cameron thought you might like your breakfast fetched on a tray.”
“I would, thanks.”
The ceremony was to be at noon and they were sailing for England immediately. Roger Cameron was giving them the trip. He was giving them a house, too. Not a large one, but a pleasant small structure of cream-colored brick near Washington Square. William had not pretended that either luxury was in his power to provide.
“Someday I’ll be able to do all these things for Candy, sir,” he had said, gracefully accepting the gifts.
“Of course you will,” Roger Cameron had replied.
The bath water stopped running and a valet held up a silk robe, his head turned away. William got out of bed and drew it about his shoulders.
“Bring breakfast in half an hour,” he said with the brusque manner he had learned in his childhood toward servants.
The valet disappeared and William went into the bath. He would stay in his room this morning, away from everyone. The rehearsal had gone off well yesterday. There was no detail left for anxiety. Candace was supposed to sleep until just before she needed to dress for the ceremony. He did not want to see Jeremy or any of the fellows. He could do with two hours or so of pure leisure.
There was a knock at the door and he answered. A footman came in with a small wheeled table on which was set a large tray of covered dishes. In the midst of them was a little silver bowl of roses.
“Your breakfast, Mr. Lane,” the man murmured.
“Set it there by the window, Barney,” William replied. The man was young and not much older than William himself. He was Irish, as his somewhat shapeless face declared, and his eyes were innocent and humble as the eyes of the poor and ignorant should always be. William liked him and had sometimes encouraged him to talk.
“ ’Tis a nice day for it, sir,” Barney now said. He arranged the tray by the window, from which could be seen the trees of the park, their green tinged with coming autumn.
“It is, indeed,” William said. He had put on his new dressing gown, an affair of blue and black stripes, effective with his dark hair and stone-gray eyes. He should perhaps have kept it for tomorrow when he would be breakfasting with Candace, but he felt that magnificence alone had also its special pleasure.
Barney hovered about the table. “Your eggs is turned as you like ’em, sir, and the toast I did myself.”
“Thank you.”
“Well, sir,” Barney said at last, “my best wishes, I’m sure.”
“Thank you,” William said again.
Upon such composure Barney retired. When he had eaten William sat for a while, smoking a cigarette and drinking a second cup of coffee. Two hours were left in which he need do nothing. He did not know how to do nothing. He thought of going to bed, but he could sleep no more. He did not want to think about Candace. There would be plenty of time for that. He could not read.
Two hours — a valuable space of time! When would he be alone again? He got up abruptly and went to the desk at the other end of the room and sat down before it. There for the two hours he worked steadily and in silence until the thump upon his door announced Jeremy. It was time to get ready for his wedding.
A perfect wedding, of course, he had expected. Anything less would have surprised and annoyed him. His ushers did their work well and Jeremy was only less efficient. He seemed strangely thoughtful throughout the ceremony and hesitated a long moment when it came to the ring, so long that Candace looked at him with startled eyes. But the ring was there in Jeremy’s vest pocket and he gave it to William with a veiled, beseeching look.
William did not notice the look. He was absorbed in the proper conduct of his own part, and he slipped the ring on Candace’s finger and made his promises. Going down the aisle a few minutes later, his steps measured to the music, he held his head high in his habitual proud fashion.
The fashionable church was crowded. He looked at no one, and yet he was aware of every personage there. Beside him Candace walked as proudly as he did, but it was he who set the step. He had begun the stately march of his life.
Clem’s engagement to Henrietta took place abruptly and even awkwardly. The first tentative letters that they had exchanged had carried far more than their proper weight of meaning. They were secret communications between two persons completely solitary. Though Henrietta had moved apparently serene through public high school in the comfortable, unfashionable suburb, living with Ruth, their grandparents, and the two elderly housemaids, she knew herself as lonely as though she lived upon a desert isle. Ruth was popular and pretty and might easily have married while very young any of several men, even before she went to college. That she did not do so, that she postponed marriage by going to college, was because she visited more and more often in William’s home. Vacations soon meant a few hurried days with Henrietta and getting a wardrobe together suitable for the rest of the vacation, even the long summer, with William and Candace. There was no discussion of Henrietta’s going, too. Ruth had learned to live delicately between her brother and sister, conveying to each the impression of apology and greater affection.