Didactic fiction; Political fiction; Social problems -- Fiction
Then the four walked up the long aisle of the great bare church, and
presently Dr. Knowles came from the vestry and performed the ceremony.
Venetia stood very still and straight, drawing in her breath in little
gasps, looking very hard at the broad face of the minister. Coburn,
too, stood very straight, but Helen, who watched the two lovingly while
the words of the contract rolled forth in the empty church, saw the
look of tenderness in the man's face as his glance rested steadfastly
on the woman by his side.
In a few minutes they were out again in the sunlight. Pete was
surrounded by a group of small boys, who were debating whether he would
bite if they got near enough to him.
"Here, boys," Venetia called, as she untied Pete's leash. "This is the
day you must celebrate! Give me some money, Sayre."
And she distributed to the delighted urchins all the silver that the
doctor had in his pockets. Then the four went to a restaurant in the
city, where they had dinner together, Jackson ordering the champagne,
and they talked until Helen rose and declared it was time to leave the
bride and bridegroom. The doctor and Venetia walked off westward to
their new home, arm in arm, Pete dangling in the rear from his leash,
which his mistress held.
"What good times they will have!" Helen exclaimed, watching them bob
across the gayly lighted thoroughfare, dragging the terrier after them.
"I suppose it's because they're both what Venetia would call 'real
clear sports.'"
After the newly married couple had disappeared, the Harts walked
leisurely northwards, and as the night was calm and warm, they kept on
beyond Ohio Street, strolling along the shore of the lake towards the
Park. The great houses across the boulevard were already deserted by
their occupants, who had begun the annual migration. The architect's
eye roved over the gloomy façades of these monstrous piles of brick and
stone, to which the toilsome steps of some successful ones in the city
had led; and he began to wonder, as he had when a boy, why in this
world, which seemed to hold so many pleasant things, the owners of
these ugly houses could be content to live in them. To the boy's mind
the ambition to encase one's self in a great dwelling had seemed so
inadequate! Again, to-night, he looked at their burly shadows, and
speculated over them without envy.
They loitered arm in arm beside the sea-wall, listening to the heaving
lake, the cool splash of water on the concrete embankment below the
walk.
"Nell, I saw Wright to-day," he remarked thoughtfully, "and had a long
talk with him."
She turned her head and waited.
"He's a good deal more of a man than I used to think him!" he went on
slowly. "There were a lot of people waiting to see him, and he had to
go somewhere, but he didn't seem to mind that I was there with him a
long time. I guess he knows pretty nearly all that has happened to me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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