As she sat on his knee, as she drooped against him unresisting, he was certain that she was very beautiful, altogether desirable.
The Benhams came home—Mrs. Benham to cry happily over the engagement, and Mr. Benham to indulge in a deal of cordial back-slapping, and such jests as, “Well, by golly, now I’m going to have a real live preacher in the family, guess I’ll have to be so doggone honest that the store won’t hardly pay!”
III
His mother came on from Kansas for the wedding, in January. Her happiness in seeing him in his pulpit, in seeing the beauty and purity of Cleo—and the prosperity of Cleo’s father—was such that she forgot her long dragging sorrow in his many disloyalties to the God she had given him, in his having deserted the Baptist sanctuary for the dubious, the almost agnostic liberalisms of the Methodists.
With his mother present, with Cleo going about roused to a rosy excitement, with Mrs. Benham mothering everybody and frantically cooking, with Mr. Benham taking him out to the back-porch and presenting him with a check for five thousand dollars, Elmer had the feeling of possessing a family, of being rooted and solid and secure.
For the wedding there were scores of coconut cakes and hundreds of orange blossoms, roses from a real city florist in Sparta, new photographs for the family album, a tub of strictly temperance punch and beautiful but modest lingerie for Cleo. It was tremendous. But Elmer was a little saddened by the fact that there was no one whom he wanted for best man; no one who had been his friend since Jim Lefferts.
He asked Ray Faucett, butter-maker at the creamery and choir-singer in the church, and the village was flattered that out of the hundreds of intimates Elmer must have in the great world outside, he should have chosen one of their own boys.
They were married, during a half blizzard, by the district superintendent. They took the train for Zenith, to stop overnight on their way to Chicago.
Not till he was on the train, the shouting and the rice-showers over, did Elmer gasp to himself, looking at Cleo’s rather unchanging smile, “Oh, good God, I’ve gone and tied myself up, and I never can have any fun again!”
But he was very manly, gentlemanly in fact; he concealed his distaste for her and entertained her with an account of the beauties of Longfellow.
IV
Cleo looked tired, and toward the end of the journey, in the winter evening, with the gale desolate, she seemed scarce to be listening to his observations on graded Sunday School lessons, the treatment of corns, his triumphs at Sister Falconer’s meetings, and the inferiority of the Reverend Clyde Tippey.
“Well, you might pay a little attention to me, anyway!” he snarled.
“Oh, I’m sorry! I really was paying attention. I’m just tired—all the preparations for the wedding and everything.”
She looked at him beseechingly. “Oh, Elmer, you must take care of me! I’m giving myself to you entirely—oh, completely.”
“Huh! So you look at it as a sacrifice to marry me, do you!”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it that way—”
“And I suppose you think I don’t intend to take care of you! Sure! Prob’ly I stay out late nights and play cards and gamble and drink and run around after women! Of course! I’m not a minister of the gospel—I’m a saloon-keeper!”
“Oh, dear, dear, dear, oh, my dearest, I didn’t mean to hurt you! I just meant—You’re so strong, and big, and I’m—oh, of course I’m not a tiny little thing, but I haven’t got your strength.”
He enjoyed feeling injured, but he was warning himself, “Shut up, you chump! You’ll never educate her to make love if you go bawling her out.”
He magnanimously comforted her: “Oh, I know. Of course, you poor dear. Fool thing anyway, your mother having this big wedding, and all the eats and the relatives coming in and everything.”
And with all this, she still seemed distressed.
But he patted her hand, and talked about the cottage they were going to furnish in Banjo Crossing; and as he thought of the approaching Zenith, of their room at the O’Hearn House (there was no necessity for a whole suite, as formerly, when he had had to impress his Prosperity pupils), he became more ardent, whispered to her that she was beautiful, stroked her arm till she trembled.
V
The bellboy had scarcely closed the door of their room, with its double bed, when he had seized her, torn off her overcoat, with its snow-wet collar, and hurled it on the floor. He kissed her throat. When he had loosened his clasp, she retreated, the back of her hand fearfully at her lips, her voice terrified as she begged, “Oh, don’t! Not now! I’m afraid!”
“That’s damned nonsense!” he raged, stalking her as she backed away.
“Oh, no, please!”
“Say, what the devil do you think marriage is?”
“Oh, I’ve never heard you curse before!”
“My God, I wouldn’t, if you didn’t act so’s it’d try the patience of a saint on a monument!” He controlled himself. “Now, now, now! I’m sorry! Guess I’m kind of tired, too. There, there, little girl. Didn’t mean to scare you. Excuse me. Just showed I was crazy in love with you, don’t you see?”
To his broad and apostolic smirk she responded with a weak smile, and he seized her again, laid his thick hand on her breast. Between his long embraces, though his anger at her limpness was growing, he sought to encourage her by shouting, “Come on now, Clee, show some spunk!”
She did not forbid him again; she was merely a pale acquiescence—pale
