On the Stairs Part 18

"Yes, for a few weeks in the year. 'One family'? What is the mere label?

Nothing. What is the real situation? Everything. Of blood-relations.h.i.+p not a trace. Why, even cousins marry--but here are two strains absolutely different.... Have you," I asked, "have you brought up this point with--Albert?"

Raymond glanced at the letters.

"You have! And he says what I say!"

Raymond put the letters away.

Albert had doubtless said much more--and said it with the vigor of indignant youth.

VI

At a wedding the father of the bridegroom need not be conspicuous--least of all when the wedding takes place in a church. He may avoid, better than at a home wedding, too close contact with the various units of the bridal party. In view of such considerations, Raymond Prince was able to be present, with discomfort minimized, at his son's marriage.

We attended, too, of course. My wife has a woman's fondness for weddings--and so has our Elsie.

It came in June. The church was _the_ church--the church with the elms and ash-trees around it, the triangular lawn with the hydrangeas and elderberry-bushes blossoming here and there, and the gardens and plantations of private wealth looking across from all sides; the church where everybody who is anybody gets married as a matter of course--at that time of year; the church which has plenty of room for limousines on both sides of its converging streets, and on a third cross-street close by; the church which has the popular and sympathetic rector, who has known you ever since you were a boy (or girl), the competent organist, and the valiant surpliced choir (valiant though small); the church which, under its broad squat tower and low spire, possesses, about its altar-rail, room for many palms and rubber-plants and for as many bridesmaids and ushers as the taste of the high contracting parties may require:--a s.p.a.ce reached by a broad flight of six or seven steps, and wide enough for any deployment, high enough for the whole a.s.semblage to see, and grand enough (with its steps and all) to make a considerable effect when the first notes of the Wedding March sound forth and the newly wedded couple walk down and out into married life.

"Be married in your uniform!" Johnny McComas had said effusively.

"Well, I'm not in the service, now...." replied Albert.

"You have been, haven't you? Haven't you?" Johnny repeated, as if there could be two answers.

"Why, I was only a private...." Albert submitted.

"So were lots of other good fellows."

"It's soiled," said Albert. "There's a stain on the shoulder."

"All the better. We've done something for the country. Let those people know it."

So Albert walked down the aisle in khaki.

Althea was in white--my wife named the material expertly. She wore a long veil. There were flower-girls, too,--my wife knew their names.

"She's the most beautiful bride I ever saw!" my wife declared. "This is the most beautiful wedding I ever attended!" She always says that.

Johnny McComas was in white, too. As he stood beside the bridal pair he seemed almost too festive, too estival, too ebullient for this poor earth of ours. His wife, whose costume I will not describe and whose state of mind I shall not explore, showed a subdued sedateness--though a glad--which restored the balance.

Raymond Prince saw the ceremony from one of the back pews. If he attended the out-of-door reception at the house, it must have been but briefly: I quite missed him there. For him the wedding proper had been less a ceremony than a parade. I can fancy how he resented the organist's grand outburst and the triumphal descent (undeniably effective) of the bridal party over those six or seven steps. Again he was an unregarded and negligible spectator. I presume he missed Johnny's hand in Albert's, and Johnny's pressure on Albert's shoulder--the one with the stain; and I hope he did. It was the hand of the stronger, taking possession. "My prop, my future mainstay!" said Johnny's action.

And it was as an unregarded and negligible spectator--now his permanent role--that Raymond Prince took the slow train back to town.

THE END