New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Prostitutes -- Fiction
Mary said nothing more. She packed her few belongings into her
trunk, left it in the hall to be called for, and, as the chill
evening fell, went away from the house with no idea where she was to
find a lodging for the night. For an hour, though she was still
weak, and the time was as yet so early, she walked up Broadway and,
in the Forties, turned eastward for a few blocks, and so south again.
Not far from the Grand Central Station she saw a little crowd
gathered at a corner, and she stopped, rather for the luxury of
standing still than from any curiosity.
The place was a church. Colored lights streamed from its rich
stained-glass windows. Through its swinging doors there stole the
scent of flowers and the sound of delicate music. A long row of
carriages, the coachmen walking up and down to keep warm, stretched
far around the corner.
Mary, shivering, worked her way quietly through the group of men and
women on the sidewalk. In order to avoid a particularly entangled
portion of the press, she started to walk along the steps by the
tower-entrance, and then, seeing a side-door open, she listlessly
turned toward it and looked in.
Far away up the vaulted nave the altar stood, white with damask and
yellow with candles. The chancel was a garden, the whole building
heavy with scent. Acolytes in scarlet were grouped about the robed
priests. The choir had risen and, preceded by a lad that bore aloft
a great brass cross, were forming into a singing procession, which
slowly filed down the center aisle.
With a subdued scuffle and swish, the congregation also rose as the
double line of choristers moved between them. Women craned their
necks and men, pretending to look stolidly ahead of them, looked
really out of the corners of their eyes. The choir, at the main
door, divided and stood still. High overhead a deep-toned organ was
playing the wedding-march from Lohengrin, and through the respectful
line of white-clad boys there moved a man of regular features with
lowered lids that hid his eyes, and a crisp brown mustache, which
concealed his lips, and, on his arm, in the costume of a bride, a
tall, graceful, pure woman, whose face was like a Greek cameo and in
whose hand was a huge bunch of orchids and lilies-of-the-valley.
The fingers of a policeman touched Mary's arm.
"You'll have to get back," he said. "The people'll be comin' out in
a minute."
But Mary did not wish to move.
"I've got a right here," she answered.
"You?" The policeman looked at her, and then laughed. "What right?"
he asked.
"Isn't that Miss Lennox?"
"It was."
"And Judge Dyker?"
"Sure."
"Well, I gave him his marriage-license."
The policeman's good-nature was amused, but he forced her back to the
street.
"No use," he said.
"An' I guess," said Mary bitterly--"I guess I paid for the bride's
bouquet."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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