People of the Whirlpool Part 22

_August_ 30. Sylvia and Horace were married under suns.h.i.+ne yesterday in the little chantry of the church that is used in winter and for week-day services. To-day the cold northeasterly storm has come, under cover of which August so often disappears and September enters the marshes upon the wings of low-flying plovers, to the discordant call of the first waterfowl of the return migration.

Mr. Latham came to the wedding. In fact, he has been here several times during the month. He is a well-built man, under sixty, dark and taciturn, and would be handsome but for the hard expression of his face.

His att.i.tude toward the world has seemed to be one of perpetual parry and self-defence; of course he may have good reason for this distrust, or, as Evan says, he may have brought the necessity upon himself by his constant severity of attack on others. Yesterday I partly changed my mind about him. He evidently once had tender feelings, but, from what cause who can say, they have in some way been compressed and frozen until they exist only as hurts.

Sylvia was married in bridal white. She had wished to wear a travelling gown and go away from the chantry door, but Miss Lavinia argued her out of the notion, saying, "Horace has the right to a pretty bride, even if you do not care." It would have taken but very little, after the strain of the last two months, to make Sylvia morbid and old beyond her years, her one thought seeming to be to get away from the surroundings of the past year and begin to live anew.

Our group, and a dozen friends of the Bradfords, including some from Northbridge who belonged to both, filled the little chapel which Horace, Martin, and Evan had trimmed with flowers wholly from our garden. At the last moment, Mrs. Jenks-Smith, whom we thought abroad, dashed up in a depot hack, perspiring and radiant, her smart gown having a most peculiar and unnatural looking promontory on the chest. "No, my dear, I'm not in Carlsbad. Jenks-Smith was called back on business, and I sniffed the wedding in the air and hooked on,--only arrived last night. _Have_ you seen the papers? Hush, I'll tell you later," and her voice sank into an awed whisper, and she gave a startled look as the bride entered on her father's arm, with Ian and Richard as her only attendants. Having heard so much talk of marrying and of weddings, they had asked Sylvia to let them be "bridesmaids," and it seemed she really wanted them. Their faces were solemn to the verge of comedy as they walked hand in hand before her, their feet in brand-new pumps, keeping step and pointing out carefully, while their evident satisfaction brought a smile like a ray of belated suns.h.i.+ne to the face of the serious bride.

I watched Mr. Latham, usually so immovable, during the ceremony as he stepped back from the altar into the shadows, when he left Sylvia finally with Horace. His shoulders lost their squareness, his head drooped; but when I saw that it was to hide the tears that filled his eyes, I looked away. Father says he has seen this type of man, contracted by money-getting, hardened by selfish misunderstanding, recover himself, soften, and grow young again at the transforming touch of grandchildren.

Who knows, Sylvia may find her childhood's father again some day.

When we went back to the cottage for luncheon, the b.u.mp in Mrs.

Jenks-Smith's corsage was removed, and proved to be a gift for Sylvia,--a thick leather case, holding a rich neck ornament of diamonds, a sort of collar with pendants, for the Lady of the Bluffs is nothing if not generous.

"I got it in this way without paying a cent of duty," she said in a stage whisper to Miss Lavinia and me in the hall, as she struggled to release the box, wrenching off a waist hook or two as she did so.

"Jenks-Smith said it didn't look natural, and I'd surely be spotted, but I said I'd like to see mere hired men try to tell a lady how stout or how thin she had a right to be. Almost too gorgeous for a professor's wife?

Not a bit; Miss Lavinia, you're not advanced. n.o.body knows nowadays, at the launching, how anybody's going to turn out,--whether they'll sink or float,--and diamonds are an all-right cargo, anyway. If she moves up, she can wear 'em, if she slumps, she can sell 'em, and if she just drifts along on the level, she can look at 'em once in a time. No, my dear, diamonds are a consolation that no woman can afford to miss."

Considering her usual careless good nature, it seemed to me that Mrs.

Jenks-Smith was very fussy during the luncheon, ill at ease, and strangely anxious to hurry the departure of Sylvia and Horace. The guests, all but ourselves, left first, then Mr. Latham, who went upstairs to take leave of his daughter alone. When Sylvia finally came down, her colour had returned and she looked her radiant self again as she kissed Miss Lavinia and Mrs. Bradford, and went down the steps holding Horace, not by the arm, but clinging to his hand.

As the carriage disappeared around the bend of the road, and as we stood looking at one another, feeling for a second the reaction and the sense of an empty house that always follows the going of a bride, the Lady of the Bluffs sank into a deep chair exclaiming, "Thank the Lord, they've gone!"

"Why, what is it? Are you ill?" cried father, who was just leaving, coming quickly to her side.

"It's this. I wanted to get her started north ahead of it. When she comes back she won't care so much," she replied incoherently, pulling a sc.r.a.p of a morning newspaper from her card-case and holding it out at random for the nearest one to take. Father caught it from her hand, and going to the window, read aloud in slow, precisive accents of astonishment:--

"AN EVENT OF INTEREST TO NEW YORK SOCIETY.

"(SPECIAL CABLE TO NEW YORK HERALD.)

"LONDON, Aug. 29.--Yesterday the marriage took place of Montgomery Bell to Mrs. Vivian Latham, both of New York. The wedding, at the registrar's and quite informal, was followed by a breakfast given the couple by Mrs. Center--who chanced, with several other intimates of the American colony, to be in the city en route to the German baths,--at her apartment which she always keeps in readiness for occupancy. Mr. Bell, who is a member of all the best clubs, is known socially as the 'Indispensable.'

Mr. and Mrs. Bell will return to New York in November and open their magnificent house at Central Park East with a series of the delightful entertainments which they both so well know how to render unique."

XIV

THE OASIS

_September_ 8. Three lowering days of wind and rain, and Summer, after a feigned departure, has returned to complete her task of perfecting.

She does this year after year--the marvel is that we are ever deceived; but after all, what is it but the conflict between arbitrary and natural law? The almanac-maker says that on the first day of September autumn is due. Nature, the orbit-maker, proclaims it summer until, the month three-quarters old, the equinox is crossed. Nature is always right, and after the usual breezy argument sends Summer, her garments a bit storm-tattered, perchance, back to her own.

The ill wind that dashed the tall auratum lilies in the garden to the ground, stripped the clinging fingers of the sweet peas from their trellis, and decapitated the heavy-headed dahlias, has blown me good, held me indoors awhile, sent me to my attic confessional once more, with conscience for priest, and the twins for acolytes, though they presently turned catechists with an entirely new series of questions.

When I have not opened my desk or my garden book for some time, and the planting season, be it of spring or of autumn, as now, overtakes me unawares, I am always newly convinced that gardening is the truly religious life, for it implies a continual preparation for the future, a treading in the straight and narrow path that painful experience alone can mark, an absorption beyond compare, and the continual exercise of hope and love, but above all, of entire childlike faith.

When the time had come in the creative evolution for the stamping of the perfected animal with the Divine image that forever separates him from all previous types, it was no wonder that G.o.d set man, in whom the perpetual struggle between the body and soul was to take place, in a garden for his education.

Recently the boys have been absorbed in their little printing press, which they have established in my attic corner, the present working motive having come from the card announcing Sylvia's marriage to the world in general, according to Mr. Latham's desire. Richard secured one of these and busied himself an entire morning in setting it in type, for the first time in his experience getting the capitals and small letters in their proper places. The result was so praiseworthy that Evan hunted up a large box of ornamental cards for them in town, and for two days they have been "filling orders" for every one in the household.

I print the names they wish to copy very distinctly in big letters.

Richard does the type-setting, which is altogether too slow work for Ian, who, as pressman, does the inking and printing, and in the process has actually learned his tardy letters. As to the distributing and cleaning of the type, I find a little a.s.sistance is gratefully accepted, even by patient Richard, whose dear little pointed fingers by this time have become tired, and fumble.

To-day, having exhausted the simple family names, they have tried combinations and experiments with the words Mr., Mrs., and Miss, much to their own amus.e.m.e.nt, "_Miss_ Timothy Saunders" being considered a huge joke.

Suddenly Ian looked up with one of his most compelling, whimsical smiles, and said, "Barbara, grandpop's Mrs. was grandma, and she's in heaven, but where is Mrs. Uncle Martin?"

Rather startled, I said that I didn't know,--that there had never been any Mrs. Uncle Martin.

"Why not?" persisted Ian, an answer that is simply an acknowledgment of ignorance never being accepted by a child. Before I could think Richard chirped out: "But Aunt Lavinia hasn't any Mr. for her card neiver, and Martha, she said the other day that there was a Mr. and a Mrs. for everybody, only sometimes they couldn't find each other for ever so long.

She told that to Effie, and I heard her."

A short pause, and then Ian jumped up, clapping his hands with joy, as the solution of the problem flashed across him.

"I know what's happened, Barbara; maybe Uncle Martin's Mrs. and Aunt Lavinia's Mr. has gone and got lost together, and some day they'll find it out and bring each ovver back! Do you think they will, so we can have some more weddings and pink ice cream, and couldn't we hurry up and help find them? I guess we better print him some Mrs. cards so as in case."

I had drifted into gardening work on paper again, and I believe I said that he had better ask Uncle Martin what he thought about the matter, and at that moment the bell rang for luncheon.

The ringing of bells for meals in this house is what Lavinia Dorman calls "a relic of barbarism," that she greatly deplores; but as I tell her, our family gathers from so many points of the compa.s.s that if the maid announced the meals, she would have to be gifted with the instinct of a chaser of strayed freight cars.

Ian's queries have brought up a subject that has deluded and eluded my hopes all summer, and has finally ended in the people that I hoped would drift through the doorway of one of my most substantial air castles refusing so to do, or else being too blind to see the open door.

Martin and Lavinia are the best possible friends, have been constantly in each other's society, see from nearly the same point of view, and both agree and disagree upon the same subjects, but they have not settled the question of loneliness of living as I hoped, by making the companions.h.i.+p permanent, _via_ matrimony.

Of course, I did not expect them to fall in love exactly as Evan and I or Horace and Sylvia did--that belongs to spring and summer; still, I thought that when they started worm-hunting together, and played checkers every evening, that they were beginning to find each other mutually indispensable, at least.

But no. Martin stored away his papers in the old desk, and went to New York a week ago to see several suites of bachelor apartments that had been offered him.

He writes this morning that he has found one to his liking, and will return to-night, if he may, and stay over to-morrow to pack his things.

Meanwhile Miss Lavinia has sent her maids to clean and open her house in "Greenwich Village," and will go home on Monday, spending her final Sunday with me. Josephus went with the maids; the country had a demoralizing effect upon him.

Miss Lavinia has been agitating moving uptown, several of her friends at the Bluffs insisting that an apartment near the Park is much more suitable for her than the little house so far from the social centre, saying it is no wonder she is lonely and out of things; but yesterday she told me that she had abandoned the idea of change, and had sent orders to have her old back yard garden dismantled and the whole plot paved, as it was now only a suitable place for drying clothes. Also that she had written to ask her father's cousin Lydia, whose Staten Island home had been built in by progress, very much like her own garden, to come to pa.s.s the winter with her; and, lest she should repent of so rash an act, she had given the letter to Evan before the ink was fairly dry, as he pa.s.sed the cottage on the way to the train, that he might post it in the city.

One consolation remains to me in the wreck of my romantic hopes for her--Miss Lavinia has liked our neighbourhood so well that she has taken the Alton cottage that she now occupies on a three years' lease, and intends living here from May to October. The rambling garden is full of old-time, hardy plants and roses, and oh, what good times we shall have together there next spring, for of course she will stop with me when she is getting things in order, and I can spare her enough roots and cuttings to fill every spare inch of ground,--so, with Sylvia at Pine Ridge, what more can I ask? The strain and hubbub of the Bluffs seems to be quite vanis.h.i.+ng from the foreground and merging with the horizon.

That reminds me that the people are drifting back quite rapidly now. The golfers are afield again Sundays, and all talk of introducing fox hunting with tame foxes; but they will have to learn the land, with its dips and rocks, better first, or there will be a pretty crop of cracked crowns for father. At present, I think that New England Prejudice will soon however get the upper hand here, and tighten her hold of the reins that seemed slipping from her grasp, which is well, for she has long borne aloft the only standard of national morality whose code is not a sliding scale.

_September_ 9. Martin came back to-night. As he entered the house with Evan I positively did not know him, for he has shaved off his mustache and queer little p.u.s.s.y-cat whiskers, and with them has gone his "pudgyness." He is really a very fine-looking man, and his features are developed by the shaving process in an unexpected way. He seems so wide awake, too, and alive to everything that pa.s.ses, that I could see that father, who came from the office to greet him, had difficulty in restraining his surprise, but he contented himself by asking:--