Chapter Four I Will Do All in My Power
In which a promise is made before the truth can be told
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What had he done?
The question hammered through Graham's mind even as the minister lifted his hands for the benediction.
Was there some way, even now, before the last words were spoken and the doors thrown open, to stop this — to tell the truth plainly and let the whole dreadful mistake be set right before it went one moment further?
Surely no court in the land, and no church either, could hold a man to vows spoken in such complete and mutual ignorance.
It would be a hard thing for the girl beside him, cruelly hard, but surely better now, in this one terrible moment, than later.
And yet — the clasp of her hand still warm in his memory — hadn't he already promised her something with that touch, some silent pledge he could not now unmake? Was that not, in its own way, what the moment had meant?
But my commission, some cold, dutiful corner of his mind protested. A matter of life and death, the Director said.
This, another part of him answered, with a certainty that startled him, is more than life or death.
The organ broke into its triumphant recessional before he could resolve the argument, and the church stirred to its feet, every eye turned toward the bridal party for its final procession.
The bride reached for her bouquet from the maid of honor beside her, and the small motion seemed to break whatever spell had held Graham fixed in place.
He bent toward the young man at his side — Jefferson, he still could not think of him any other way — and spoke low and urgent under the music. "There's been a terrible mistake—"
"Not a bit of it, old man!" Jefferson caught only the word mistake and misread it entirely, his face wreathed in relieved good humor.
"Nobody noticed that little hitch with the ring — over in a second, smooth as anything.
Only thing left now is to walk my sister out.
Look sharp, though — she's white as her own veil.
She hasn't been at all well today. Steady her, will you?
She'll manage till she's out in the air, but hurry. "
Graham turned in sudden alarm, every other thought driven from his head.
Whatever else was true or false about this impossible night, the pale, swaying girl on his arm had become, in the space of a heartbeat, entirely his responsibility.
Perhaps, he thought suddenly, she knows.
Perhaps that's what the tears meant — that she saw through the mustache and the borrowed name and let it happen anyway, for reasons of her own.
But she had let the ceremony run its full course without a word of protest, and it was not his place, he told himself, to undo in public whatever private reason she'd had for her silence.
He must wait, and ask her, and let this brother of hers — plainly the real best man's closest friend, or he'd never have been trusted with the ring — believe, for now, that all was as it should be.
Fool, he told himself savagely, walking her slowly back down the long aisle to the swelling music, trying to hold some semblance of the bearing a bridegroom ought to have.
You might have stopped this at the very first moment, if only you'd understood what was happening.
And now — now what possible explanation could he give?
He could not so much as whisper the word commission without unraveling two years of trust and, very possibly, a great deal more than that.
What had happened to him tonight had no name in the whole history of foolish men.
He could think of no word for it at all.
"Oh, isn't he devoted," he heard one of the elderly women in a front pew murmur to her companion as they passed, and felt the words land strangely, like a blessing meant for someone else entirely.
Somewhere at the back of his mind, retreating step by step down that endless aisle, he half expected to see Judy Bristol's tall, scornful figure waiting at the church door with her particular curled smile of disapproval — but he found, with something like wonder, that he did not care to look for her.
His whole attention stayed fixed on the small, sorrowful, lovely face on his arm, and something told him that so long as he did not look away from her, whatever hold Judy Bristol had once had on his imagination was already, quietly, gone for good.
?
Out in the empty vestibule, alone with her at last for one brief moment beneath the striped canopy, he felt her weight grow suddenly heavier on his arm, her steps faltering.
Without quite deciding to, he found himself half-carrying her down the carpeted steps to the waiting car, easing her onto the cushioned seat as gently as he knew how.
Someone shut the door behind them, and the car pulled away into the New York evening before he had gathered his thoughts enough to speak.
She sank back against the seat with a small, exhausted sigh, as though she could not have borne one more second of standing upright before witnesses.
Graham leaned across to crack the window for her, and she accepted the small kindness with a grateful, wordless glance, her eyes sliding shut, every line of her slight frame speaking of a weariness that went far deeper than one long ceremony could account for.
It felt almost a violation to break that silence. But he could not let the ride pass without some word of explanation, however inadequate.
"There's something I owe you an explanation for—" he began.
Her hand came up, weak but unmistakably pleading. "Oh — please don't." Her voice was very small. "I know. Your flight was delayed. It doesn't matter in the least."
Graham sat back, stunned into silence. She doesn't know, he understood, with a fresh wave of horror. She has no idea at all that she has married a stranger.
"But you don't understand," he tried again, gently.
"Please." The word broke, just slightly, at its edges. "I don't want to understand anything right now. Nothing can change what's happened. Only let me be quiet until we reach the house, or I don't think I can manage the rest of this evening at all."
Her voice caught on the last words, close to a sob, and Graham sat very still, fighting an entirely unexpected urge to gather the small, trembling stranger into his arms and simply hold her until the shaking stopped.
Nothing can change what's happened. The words turned over and over in his mind.
Did she know, then, after all — know, and believe it too late now to undo?
He would have to find some way, later, gently, to tell her the whole truth.
But not tonight. Not while she looked at him like that.
She opened her eyes as if she felt the weight of his unspoken thoughts, and in the passing glow of a streetlamp he saw fresh tears standing in them.
"Don't," she said again — just the one word, small and childlike and utterly disarming.
It struck him harder than he could account for. Whatever his duty demanded of him, he found he could not disobey that single word.
"Very well," he said quietly, and folded his hands in his lap, and said nothing more.
The promise in his voice seemed to loosen something in her.
She let out a long breath and closed her eyes once more, and Graham sat watching the unfamiliar streets slide past the window, turning the whole impossible tangle of the evening over and over in his mind, searching for some thread that might lead him back out of it.
His commission came first, of course — it had to.
The Director's warning still rang in his ears: don't let anything hinder you.
And yet every time he tried to hold that thought steady, the small, sorrowing figure across from him crowded it out entirely.
Could he serve both duty and this strange, sudden claim on his heart?
Could he, in honesty, serve either, torn as he was between them?
He thought, unbidden, of a verse from his mother's worn Bible — words he had not consciously considered in years, and yet which rose now with startling clarity: John 15:13 — "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
" He was no one's friend here, not really — a stranger who had stumbled by accident into another man's wedding — and yet something in him had already, without his full consent, begun laying down whatever plans he'd had for the evening on this girl's behalf.
I am married, he thought, and the strangeness of the thought nearly stole his breath.
I — Caleb Graham — am, by every appearance of law and church, a married man.
Of course it could not truly hold; of course some correction would have to be made, quietly, carefully, as soon as decency allowed.
And yet — for one unguarded instant — he let himself wonder what it might mean if it did hold. Would he be sorry?
His heart answered before his reason could stop it, with a leap of gladness that startled him more than anything else that whole extraordinary night.
He knew, with a certainty he could not have explained to any sensible man, that he could love this stranger — could cherish her, and be patient with her, and build a whole life gladly around her — in a way he had never once, in three long years, imagined himself loving Judy Bristol.
Then the thought caught itself up short.
Whatever she was to him now by ceremony, she belonged, by every right of history and hope, to some other man — the real bridegroom, whoever and wherever he was, doubtless searching even now for the wedding he had somehow missed.
Graham would have to face that reckoning soon enough.
But not, please God, before he had seen her safely into gentler hands than the confusion of tonight.
The car drew up at last before a great, brightly lit house, its entrance shielded from the street by a striped canopy that at least spared her the further ordeal of curious eyes.
There was no possibility of slipping away unnoticed here — the sidewalk was thick with onlookers even at this hour.
He stepped out first, as he supposed a husband would, and handed her down, and gathered up the heavy bouquet she seemed too frail to carry another step herself.
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In the doorway a small crowd of household staff swept forward to receive her, foremost among them an older woman — evidently a beloved nurse from childhood — who caught the bride's hands in both her own with tears standing openly on her weathered cheeks, murmuring endearments too soft for Graham to catch.
He stood back, watching the warmth of it wash over the pale girl's face, thinking already of how he might slip unnoticed toward some side door once the flowers were safely out of his arms.
But before he could take a single step toward escape, a hand closed firmly on his sleeve.
He turned, half braced to find a policeman at his shoulder — but it was only the old nurse, her eyes still bright with tears, looking up at him with an expression of fierce, searching tenderness.
"Mister Gregory," she said, "ye hevn't forgot me, hev ye?
Ye was always one fer teasin', but bygones is bygones now, an' I wish ye well with all my heart.
Yer grown into a fine man, an' I know ye must be worthy of her, or she'd never hev had ye.
Ye've got yerself a good wife, an' no mistake, an' I know ye'll be the happiest man alive for it. "
She paused, plainly expecting some answer, and Graham — understanding now that Gregory must be the true best man, whoever and wherever that unlucky fellow presently was — managed only a low, awkward assurance that he held nothing at all against her.
The old woman's gaze traveled fondly to the bride, who stood a little apart now, smiling with visible effort at the small crowd of well-wishers gathered round her, rallying what looked to Graham like the very last of her strength to give them the joy they'd come expecting.
"Ah, ye luve her, don't ye, Mister Gregory?
" the nurse said, her voice dropping, suddenly serious.
"I don't wonder at it. Everybody as lays eyes on her comes to luve her.
She's that dear—" Her voice broke entirely for a moment, and she reached, out of long habit, for an apron that was not there, meaning to wipe her eyes on it.
And then, before Graham's better judgment could catch up with his tongue, he heard himself answer.
"Yes," he said. "I love her."
The words left him without his leave, and struck him, the instant they were spoken, with the force of simple truth.
He had known this stranger scarcely two hours.
He had spoken to her perhaps a dozen words, and looked into her face directly only once.
And yet he could not call the answer a lie, however impossible it seemed even to himself.
This, he thought, with something between wonder and alarm, is going to make everything a very great deal more complicated.
The old nurse's face lit with fresh tears, this time plainly of relief.
"Then ye'll promise me somethin', won't ye, Mister Gregory?
" she pressed, both hands tightening on his sleeve.
"Promise me ye'll never make her sorrowful again.
She's cried more these last three months than any girl her age ought to — cried where nobody could see but me, for she's proud, my Miss Calie, an' hides her heart well from them that don't look close.
But I've looked close, all her life, an' I know what she's carried.
Promise me ye'll spend yerself makin' her happy, whatever it costs ye. "
Graham looked past the old woman's earnest, tear-bright face to where the bride stood framed in the lamplight of her own front hall — small, pale, valiant, smiling through whatever private grief the last three months had cost her — and found the words rising in him with a solemnity he had not planned and could not, in that moment, have refused even if he'd tried.
1 Corinthians 13:4 rose in his memory unbidden, a fragment his mother had loved: "Charity suffereth long, and is kind."
"I will do everything in my power," he said quietly, "to make her happy."
He spoke it like a vow — because, he realized even as the words left him, that was precisely what it was — and wondered, with a cold and sudden ache beneath the warmth of the promise, just how very little time he might actually have to keep it.