Chapter 22

Two days after the army of the Prutts had landed and devastated the coast, Judge Stephen Douglas Blackstaff came into Cass’s chambers after court.

“Cass, I have been listening to that banker fellow, Prutt, expiring of sunburn from his blushes of modesty on the telephone. He’s a fool, but he is a symptom. A rustle of scandal is beginning to follow you. Son, you and I are both men of the world—from a strictly Calvinistic point of view, of course—but we are also lawyers, and we both know that there must never be any shadow of scandal over the judicial office. Do you care so much for this girl that I’ve seen you with? Would you rather resign than lose her?”

“Yes, I would, Steve.”

“Nonsense, son. Absolute mongery. Why the devil don’t you marry the girl?”

“Why don’t I?” Why DON’T I? Because she’s refused me. Twice.”

“My esteemed Rhoda refused me almost continuously, over a period of two years. She refused me on Rye Beach, she refused me in the Brothers and Linonia Library of Yale College, and refused me once during a communion service—somewhat abruptly, I thought. But still I triumphed—at least, that’s the accepted theory. Cass, you’re a good young man. Don’t risk your honor and the honor of the State for a sentimental fancy! People are sometimes evil, and they are not going to believe that you could not marry this young woman if you desired, and if nothing will make her wed you, there have always been the soundest precedents for consigning her to the devil.”

Judge Blackstaff’s long and rigid back completed his admonition, and Cass sat wondering whether for Jinny, that lightly dancing figure on a fan, he would really give up his judicial dignities.

Yes, he would, if he must do so to guard one higher dignity—plain humanity. He had no right more imperious than to be with his girl, married or not, and for this he would certainly resign, at need. He had reached this uncomfortable resolution when Jinny herself, not knocking, came flying into his chambers; and before he had planned what to say, he had sprung up, he had kissed her, and she was sobbing:

“Cass! I’ve lost my job!”

“Oh no!”

“I didn’t think I ever could. I was so proud—the girl cartoonist!”

“What—”

“Mr. Marl fired me. For incompetence. I wish it could have been for drunkenness or bigamy. I did so want to be independent, and I thought I was such a whiz—everybody said they liked my cartoons, and I thought they were all looking for them in the paper. I was so busy, and I was enjoying it, like a fool, and Mr. Marl called me in and first he said Mrs. Marl and he wanted me to come to dinner, all by myself—was I ever proud! Then he asked me how come I didn’t have a cartoon ready for day-before-yesterday. I hadn’t been able to get a good idea, and I’d ruined two drawings. Then he said he’d already hired a new hand from Minneapolis and he was so sorry, so awful sorry, but I was through. So now I’ll go back to the factory and eat dirt. I was so proud and silly and now I’m all washed up—”

She was weeping, against his shoulder.

As George Hame entered the chambers, Cass said to her, “Now you’re going to marry me.”

“Am I? Maybe.”

Judge Blackstaff said, yes, it would be a little inconvenient to have Judge Timberlane away from court during mid-term, even for a honeymoon. “But,” said the senior judge, “it will be a noble inconvenience.” He patted Cass’s shoulder. “Son, I am glad that you thought my advice over and decided to take it. I may no longer be the sprightly beau I once was, but you see now that I understand women.”

“Oh, thoroughly, Stephen.”

“By the way, my boy, take a Bible on your honeymoon. You yourself may not read it extensively, but it may implant some ideas in the pliable mind of your bride. I assure you that it is full of the most admirable advice to females to be thrifty, industrious, chaste, and SILENT. One of the most useful books to husbands. And whenever I travel I find it much safer to take some pulverized coffee.”

The Jinny whom Cass had expected to want only an informal wedding, with the mayor officiating and Eino and Tracy racketing around and beer and melody afterward, demanded a formal affair, with all the clergy, trains, white flowers, unreconstructed relatives, and champagne available. Cass was touched by the thought that she did not intend to come into the heraldic haughtiness of Ottawa Heights by the back door. She was so small and alone, and the Prutts so large and firm and multifarious. All right. His fairy princess should come in with as large and brassy a band as he could muster.

But again he felt, “I can’t go on carrying everything alone. I must have someone to help me.” He turned to his sister Rose and to Mrs. Higbee. He was not worried about the attitude of Cleo; he felt that she would be for anything that brought gaiety and ribbon-trailing and mouse-fetching cake into the somber house.

He sat gravely at the oilcloth-covered kitchen table, with Mrs. Higbee seated across, and urged, “I hope you’ll be happy with Miss Jinny here.”

“Judge, would you like me to quit, so I won’t get in her way?”

“Good Lord, no! She loves you, same as I do. The question is whether YOU’LL be happy.”

“Very. A lot of bosses never think of it, but a house is a servant’s HOME. I couldn’t imagine myself anywheres else, but sometimes it has been lonely. I’ll be real pleased to have her here, and that quick way she walks, almost runs, around the place. I hope I ain’t intruding if I say it’s grieved my heart sometimes to see you poking around so lonely. I prayed about it in church.” She laughed. “I hope the Lord consulted you to see if it was all right, before He sent Miss Jinny in answer to my prayer!”

“Yes, He consulted me. Thank you for Miss Jinny.”

“Well, she was about the best I noticed around this town—of course it isn’t a very big place.”

“That’s so.”

While Jinny was in as much of an orgy of dressmaking as any Wargate, Cass nervously conferred with Rose about “redoing the house.”

“Leave it to Jinny,” she said.

“And then there’s a matter—I don’t quite dare to ask her, Rose, about—about rooms—”

Rose answered with the coarseness that only a truly good and wedded woman can achieve. “You mean, do you think she’ll want the favors of the same bed with you every night, or to have a room of her own. Of her own, of course; same as any woman born since 1890. If you knew how Don gurgles all night long, and when he turns over, he sits up straight and then moans in terror and shakes himself like a wet dog and then he doesn’t just lie down again—he makes a dive at the pillow—a belly-flopper dive. Give her the northeast bedroom, Cassy; the one I had as a girl. It’s smaller than that funeral parlor of yours, but it gets the sun.”

“It’s a go!” said His Honor, the learned judge.

He felt very clever and efficient.

His Honor, the learned judge, who had heard the details of maniac sex-murders and been bland enough in discussing them with psychiatrists, approached Jinny like a freshman:

“You know, just at first, we might—uh—we might not want any children, and I believe there are precautions—uh—is there a woman clerk in your father’s drug store that would—uh—I hate to speak of this but—”

“You poor dear lamb! What do you suppose girls talk about nowadays?”

“Do they really? I didn’t know.”

“There, there, Mother’s glad you’ve kept your innocence.”

As a politician, Cass did possess the correct morning clothes, but there was a crisis in the matter of the top hat, that symbol, that grotesque crown made of rabbit’s fur, that more than the coat of arms or the broad A or even the dollar sign distinguishes a gent from a fellow. In Grand Republic, they rate with bustles, and while Cass did own a top hat, he had last worn it at a Plattdeutsch funeral, and it had long rested in the attic, a nest for mice.

He begged of Jinny, “You don’t want me to wear a stovepipe hat, like Abraham Lincoln?”

“Yes, I do! I’ve never seen one, except in the movies! Let’s be gaudy for once. I don’t expect to get married but just this one time in all my life.”

“Fine!”

He had the Piccadilly Cents’ Ware Shop send for the hat. When he had put on the whole armor of a knight, the high silk helmet, steely white shirt, linen gorget, dark-gray coat shaped like a calla lily, and studied himself in the full-length mirror on the back of his bathroom door, he was delighted.

His best man, Dr. Drover, along with Boone Havock, Bradd Criley, Judge Flaaten, Frank Brightwing, and his other ushers had talked of a bachelor dinner, but he had no mind to endure their heavy jokes. The thought of Jinny was to him as frail and muted as a distant flute in the autumnal dusk.

He spent his last evening before the wedding alone with Cleo in the quarter-lighted library.

Was Jinny in love with him at all? Did she love him enough to endure his longing to give her everything that he was and had? It is more difficult to receive tolerantly than to give gladly. Of Jinny’s mother and grandmother the question would never have been asked, but did Jinny, or any girl of her era, really attach herself to her husband and his fortunes, sick or in health, richer or poorer, avid for bright noise or content with the quiet mind?

He was apprehensive.

Cleo, who had been asleep upon his knee beside the dead fire, came suddenly awake, twitching and terrified, and leaped from him. He could hear her protests as she roamed the dark house, up and down, searching for something he did not understand. He sat uneasy, and when the telephone assaulted his ears, he gasped.

It was Jinny. “How are you darling? Are you scared, like me?”

“Bless you for calling. Scared stiff.”

“Well, and very right, too, Cass. Both of us ought to be; both of us these disgusting Sensitive Souls, looking for a chance to be hurt and likely to get sore when we DON’T get hurt, because that shows nobody cares enough about us to hurt us. But what are you sitting in the dark for?”

“How did you know I—”

“Because I am, too! Good night. Oh, Cass, we’re going to have a lot of fun being married. I’ll really learn chess, even. I’ve ordered a chess costume: plaid, with rabbit-lined boots. Good night, my dear!”

He was convinced that this spirit of fire and mist might some day love him like a breathing woman. But through the house Cleo was still searching, still whimpering reproachfully.

Jinny was not so avid of grandeur as to want the reception that Rose Pennloss longed to give for them. She agreed with Cass that it would be wise to take the train directly after the ceremony. But that ceremony itself was ducal.

Not since the wedding of Della Lent, and her a Wargate, had there been a richer gathering of all that was noble, virtuous, and of five-figure income than at the union of Miss Marshland and Judge Timberlane; and the Rev. Dr. Gadd wore a new Geneva gown and had a Lutheran pastor and an Episcopal priest—pretty young, but of the very highest church—for collaborators in the conjuring whereby the little wild hawk was turned into a Grand Republic matron.

There were even Prutts present. It was more fun to attend and look doubtful than to stay away.

Through the forest of mink and broadtail, Cass saw Jinny coming down the aisle with her father. He noted, as casually as though he were studying a jury, that Mr. Marshland seemed timid and shrunken and shabby, against all the sleek furriness, and that Jinny, in cloudy white, was of the precise loveliness and inviolability of a goddess.

—God keep her shining and confident as she is now.

Then Jinny was his wife, and she was looking at him trustingly, and there was trust and adoration in his first marital whisper to her, “Let’s try to sneak out the back door; we got just an hour and a quarter before the train goes” and in her enchanted answer, “Okay, darling—my husband!”