Ever After (31 page)

“I am,” She showed him, but her eyes were wet. “Oh, Fitz, I
am
, but how could I tell you, it wasn’t my place to let you know until you—w-wanted it—”

Fitz turned this over in his mind, while he cradled her closer jealously.

“How long has it been goin’ on, then?” he asked. “How long have I lost, bein’ so thickheaded?”

“You haven’t lost anything,” she whispered. “I’ll make it up to you, somehow. You’ll have all there is, Fitz, I promise.”

“Honest? From now on?”

Her eyes were shining and steady. From this minute on, with never a backward glance. She nodded, wondering if anybody had ever had so unpredictable a lover as hers.

“Blast Miles, anyway,” he said thoughtfully, trying to plan ahead. “I tell you what, I’ll just miss that train tomorrow morning and we’ll go down to City Hall and get married, so I can take you with me to Miles’s party.”

Gwen stood perfectly still, her lovely mouth ajar.

“M-married?”

“Too soon for you?” he asked ruefully. “Well, it was just an idea. I kind of hate to let you out of my sight now. Of course Aunt Eden will fix you up with a grand church wedding with all the trimmings if we give her time, but I thought it would be kind of fun if you could come to Miles’s party on Saturday.”

“But, Fitz, I never meant I—I didn’t expect you to—it wouldn’t do for you to
marry
me,” she got out desperately, for she was quite sure that a grand church wedding was not quite what Cabot Murray had in mind.

Fitz held her off to look at her. His brows were very straight, his chin stuck out.

“What’s that you said?” he demanded quietly.

“Don’t you see, Fitz, you feel like this now, but I’m from the wrong side of the tracks and you’re nice people—they wouldn’t—your family would never—well, don’t look at me like that, I’m not going back on anything I said, I can’t help loving you, but I don’t belong as your wife, Fitz, I—I’m not—not—”

“Are you tryin’ to tell me that you’ll go to bed with me tonight, but you won’t go to Williamsburg tomorrow as my wife?”

Gwen put her hand up in front of her face. It was the same gesture she had used that first night before she had said, “You don’t have to be polite with me.” It was as though she had been struck, and was waiting for her head to clear.

“I didn’t mean to make you angry,” she said faintly. “If you—just take time to think, you’ll see how right I am.”

Now that she mentioned it, he supposed that the thing he felt was anger, an emotion he was fairly unfamiliar with. Something was pounding in his temples, there was a constriction in his throat, and his heart was hurrying uncomfortably. His hands dropped from her shoulders and went into his pockets, and he took a turn around the room, trying to assemble himself into his usual state of inner law and order. At last he spoke from the other side of the room, and his voice was as slow and gentle as ever it was.

“What I’m trying to figure out,” he said, “is what the hell kind of a fellow did you think you were in love with?” And when she did not answer, her face hidden by her shielding hand, compassion overtook him and he went to her, lifted her off her feet in one swift compelling movement, and sat down with her on his lap in Johnny’s capacious old Boston rocker. Patiently and in silence he coaxed and wheedled and was firm, until she relaxed against him, obedient and content. “Now, don’t think I’m not sore at you, because I am,” he said then, while his thin, strong fingers cupped her chin. “But I’ve got the habit now, so I’m askin’ you again. I know that crowd down at City Hall and they’ll marry us tomorrow. Will you come quiet, or must I drag you?”

S
UE
hurried through the April sunshine towards Sedgwick’s office, the telegram in her handbag and chaos in her mind. But there was one clear, recurrent idea: Thank goodness I came home from England. Thank goodness I’m here now to—well, to
what?
What was she going to say to Sedgie to resign him to this new wrongheadedness of Fitz’s, marrying a girl nobody in Williamsburg had ever heard of, a girl they weren’t going to understand at first, a girl who had red on her mouth? How could she now explain her own failure to mention Gwen when she returned from New York at Christmas time, which had arisen mainly out of her uncertainty what to say and Eden’s hope that there was nothing in it anyway? And how could Fitz have done such an inconsiderate thing, without warning, behind everybody’s back, as though—as though he was
afraid
to let them know in time?

Weddings were sacred in
the family, like coming-of-age parties. Everybody had to be there, everybody had to toast the bride, there had to be presents, and speeches, and all your friends at the church, and her father had to come and give her away—Who
was
Gwen’s father?

But he shouldn’t have done it like that, with a telegram. He should have taken her to Eden, she should have come down to Williamsburg for a visit with his people. Fitz knew better than to marry anyone that way, no matter how much they were in love….

For all her deep affection and her obstinate pride in him, Sue had no inkling this time of why Fitz had done what he did. She did not guess the sudden near panic which had possessed him at the idea of coming home to Miles’s
party with war in the air and nothing but a musical comedy in his hands, even though it had got as far as going into rehearsal next week and might make him thousands of dollars. The miracle of Gwen seemed to Fitz the answer to all his deficiencies in the eyes of the family. With Gwen beside him he could face anything. They none of them would have anything like Gwen to show, at Miles’s party. Gwen was his own, she had chosen to love him instead of Johnny, and so he had a wife now, and they were partners in his music and were going to be famous and make money.

He had no doubts at all that she had only to smile at them with her honest, shining eyes and maybe sing one song to his new piano
in the drawing room in England Street, and they would all take her to their hearts at once, for this was no Lisl Oleszi, fair and cool and haughty, speaking with a German accent and looking down her high nose at her husband’s country cousins. This was Gwen, who had never had the right sort of family life, and who needed piteously to feel that she was safe and cherished and didn’t have to worry any more about people like Fagan or about finding money for Pa. To Fitz, who had always been a little off the beat in his relationships and had never gone quite the way he was expected to, and had always kept his own diffident counsel, it was a new and intoxicating
experience
to share his life with someone who was so passionately sure he was right as Gwen was, so completely uncritical, so warm and quick and worshipping. Fitz had been lonely all his life, and was only just beginning to discover what he had lacked. Gwen had
become
for him the answer to everything, the sum of all delight. Fitz was headlong in love.

But Sue, mounting the dingy stairs to Sedgwick’s office over the bank, knew only that poor Fitz had done it again, and again it was up to her to smooth his way for him somehow and make them all see that his judgment was always fundamentally sound and that he had never been a fool about women, whatever else they might say, and she had seen the girl herself and noticed that she was pathetically in love with him…. But as Eden said when the telegram came, why, oh, why had they neglected to mention the little singer Fitz had brought to Cabot’s house last December? It was as though they had all
avoided
the subject, and that made it ever so much worse now, as though they had deliberately conspired with Fitz against his parents—

And then Sedgie was so glad to see her, as he always was, and as always she felt herself a traitor to be on Fitz’s side, and found it hard to begin.

“Brace yourself, Sedgie. Fitz has got married.”

“
Fitz!
”

“Now, wait, it’s not as bad as you think, honey, I saw her when I was there, and she was in love with him then fit to break your heart. I didn’t mention it to you all because Fitz didn’t seem to notice how she felt, and I—well, I thought it might not come to anything—”

“When did he marry her? How did you hear?
Who
is
she?
” They were lawyer’s questions, sharp, crackling, to the point.

“He married her yesterday, and sent me a telegram. She’s coming with him on Friday.”

“Who is
she?,” he repeated, for she had skipped that one.

“She is a singer, Sedgie—an awfully pretty girl. She’s a Yankee, of course, but that doesn’t matter any more, does it! He brought her to the house in New York while I was there, and she sang some
of his songs at a ball and made a great hit. Eden says she is going to sing the leading role when Fitz’s musical comedy is produced next month.”

“Did Eden know he was going to marry her?”

“Oh,
no,
Sedgie, you see—now, honey, Eden feels terrible about this, that’s why I came here to talk to you alone. You mustn’t
blame
Eden, when you see her. Fitz isn’t living at their house any more, you know, he took a room because he wanted to be like the other reporters and live on his salary. Cabot’s raised him, too, did he tell you? He gets thirty-live a week now, and if the show is a success it will make him lots of money.”

“But—do you mean to say that this girl he has married is an
actress?
”

“Well, yes, dear, in a way. That is—she
sings.
”

“How did he meet her in the beginning? Has she got people? Were her parents at the wedding we weren’t invited to?”

“I don’t know.”

Sedgwick stared at her hopelessly. There seemed to be so much that she didn’t know.

“Does she earn her own living? What sort of home does she come from?” he asked then.

“Well, I did hear something about a brother who had died, and so Fitz and Johnny Malone helped her along till she got another job. She—maybe she lived alone, she’s been earning her living as a chorus girl with the Weber and Fields show.”

“Oh, my God!” Sedgwick threw himself into his chair with a groan and put his head in his hands.

“Now, you’re not to take it like that, Sedgie, she’s not—not at all the way you might think. She’s only eighteen anyway, and Eden says Cabot said she’s not had much time for sin.”

Sedgwick raised his head.

“What does Cabot think of her?”

“I just told you, Eden says Cabot seemed quite taken with her and thought she might be the making of Fitz.”

“Mm-hm. But does Cabot know Fitz has
married
her?”

“N-no, you see, Cabot was in Washington.”

“Quite so!” said Sedgwick with irony.

“Eden is afraid you may feel she should have been more watchful. But after all, Fitz is a grown man and when he telephoned from the office on Monday morning to say he would have to take a later train, she thought nothing of it, because she’s so used to Cabot and Bracken always being detained.”

“What did he say in the telegram? Did you bring it with you?”

She handed it to him silently, and he tossed it down on the desk when he had read it.

“Poor Melicent!” he said. “He’s hiding behind your skirts, as usual!”

“You mustn’t say that, Sedgie, it was natural for him to tell me first because I had seen her, and he thought I could explain right away so you wouldn’t—wouldn’t feel—”

“What is there to explain, except that Fitz has been hooked? And serve him right at his age!”

“Sedgie, wait till you see her, please! She’s a nice girl, I’m sure she is, and you mustn’t make her feel unwelcome when she comes.”

“But heavens above, Sue, an
actress
! She doesn’t belong here at a family party! What about the girls?”

“I think you are being very stuffy and old-fashioned,” Sue said firmly. “Gwen is only a girl herself, and not half as impudent and worldly wise as Virginia, if you ask me! I intend to do everything I can to make her feel at home here and see that she has a good time, and I sincerely hope that you and Melicent will do the same. Fitz has married her, they’re in love, and I can’t believe you will be so stupid and silly as to make them unhappy by being angry about it. And anyway, it’s too late!”

Sedgwick sighed, and looked at her across the desk with a rueful smile.

“You’re right, as usual. I’ll kiss the bride if she’s painted an inch thick. It’s no use expecting Fitz to do anything the right way, but I can’t seem to learn that. If you say she’ll do we must make the best of it, I suppose. But it’s hard on his mother.”

“Sedgie. There’s one thing more I want to say.”

“Yes, my dear? What’s that?”

“Don’t for one minute think he—well,
had
to marry her.” Sue’s hazel eyes met his levelly, but her cheeks got rather pink. “I know your son, if you don’t, and Fitz isn’t that kind of person. I don’t think she is either. It’s an honest marriage, Sedgie, because they want to be together. You must believe that.”

Somewhere at the back of Sedgwick’s consciousness a weight was lifted. He came around the desk and took one of her hands and turned it palm up in his and kissed it.

“I’m glad you said that,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Sue.”

B
UT
it was Melicent’s place and not Sue’s to welcome Fitz’s bride when he brought her home. So Gwen faced a stranger when Fitz said, “Mother, this is Gwen,” and then, when Melicent had kissed
her dutifully and in silence, Fitz added with noticeable pride, “And this is my father.”

Gwen knew by now that Fitz idolized his father, who was all the things a Sprague should be, and the face she raised to Sedgwick was full of childish appeal with terror at the back of it. Gwen was quite literally frightened stiff. No amount of kindness from Eden or bluff encouragement from Cabot while she was just Fitz’s protégée could give her confidence now to confront this large, impressive, surprised unit known as the Family. She expected that they would be hostile and unfriendly, considering her an interloper, which she undoubtedly was, and it was agony to her to anticipate that through her Fitz might be hurt by the people he loved. She felt instinctively that they were too well-bred to snub her outright, or to disown Fitz, or make any sort of a scene. But she had no hope of being accepted as one of them, and all her defences were braced against condescension or coldness or sarcasm or just plain despisement, any one of which would boomerang Fitz and make him an outsider henceforth, like herself, to his own flesh and blood.