and tramped, and laughed, and came near
crying, and fell in sudden anxious consultations, and were sped (with
a prepared sarcasm on our lips) to some fallacious milliner, and made
dashes to the schooner and John Smith's, and at every second corner
were reminded (by our own huge posters) of our desperate estate. Between
whiles, I had found the time to hover at some half-a-dozen jewellers'
windows; and my present, thus intemperately chosen, was graciously
accepted. I believe, indeed, that was the last (though not the least) of
my concerns, before the old minister, shabby and benign, was routed from
his house and led to the office like a performing poodle; and there, in
the growing dusk, under the cold glitter of Thirteen Star, two hundred
strong, and beside the garish glories of the agricultural engine, Mamie
and Jim were made one. The scene was incongruous, but the business
pretty, whimsical, and affecting: the typewriters with such kindly faces
and fine posies, Mamie so demure, and Jim--how shall I describe that
poor, transfigured Jim? He began by taking the minister aside to the far
end of the office. I knew not what he said, but I have reason to believe
he was protesting his unfitness; for he wept as he said it: and the old
minister, himself genuinely moved, was heard to console and encourage
him, and at one time to use this expression: "I assure you, Mr.
Pinkerton, there are not many who can say so much"--from which I
gathered that my friend had tempered his self-accusations with at least
one legitimate boast. From this ghostly counselling, Jim turned to me;
and though he never got beyond the explosive utterance of my name and
one fierce handgrip, communicated some of his own emotion, like a charge
of electricity, to his best man. We stood up to the ceremony at last,
in a general and kindly discomposure. Jim was all abroad; and the divine
himself betrayed his sympathy in voice and demeanour, and concluded with
a fatherly allocution, in which he congratulated Mamie (calling her "my
dear") upon the fortune of an excellent husband, and protested he had
rarely married a more interesting couple. At this stage, like a glory
descending, there was handed in, ex machina, the card of Douglas B.
Longhurst, with congratulations and four dozen Perrier-Jouet. A bottle
was opened; and the minister pledged the bride, and the bridesmaids
simpered and tasted, and I made a speech with airy bacchanalianism,
glass in hand. But poor Jim mu