Page:Flaming Youth black on red.pdf/204

 CHAPTER

XIX

Stow and stately, the measure of the Lohengrin Wedding March pulsated through the church; much slower and statelier than Herr Wagner ever intended that it should be delivered, unforeseeing that his minute directions would be universally disregarded off the stage in order that the bride might make her progress up the aisle less like a human being with a happy goal in sight than like a rusty mechanism directed by a hidden and uncertain hand. Even to that halting rhythm, however, Mary Delia Fentriss, owner of her own name and her own maiden self

for the last time, managed to walk like a proud and graceful young goddess to the accompaniment of something more than the usual hum of admiration and excitement. T. Jameson James stood awaiting her, looking handsome,

well-groomed, perfectly self-possessed, and even more selfsatisfied. As Dee turned she raised her head slightly and let one slow look range over the gathered congregation, a gesture inscrutable to many, though the more romantic among the women deemed it conventionally suitable, as a farewell glance proper to the drama of marrying and giving in marriage. But two men in that assemblage, both observers of humankind, both genuinely caring for Dee in diverse ways, read that look and were secretly disturbed. The rector caught his cue and swung into his part with all the empressement due to a highly fashionable occasion, the ceremony proceeded, its gross symbolism of sex worship, broad paganism, and underlying acceptance of women’s slavery as a divine system, thinly cloaked in the 200