Part 58 (1/2)
The two stood and listened. She sang to herself very softly, unconscious of an audience, one of the Songs of the Hill:
”A little winding road Goes over the hill to the plain-- A little road that crosses the plain And comes to the hill again.”
Kate realized the difference in Jacqueline's voice since she had heard it last in that Song of the Hill; clear and expressionless, then, as a boy's; so throbbing now, so poignant with understanding, that the mother's eyes filled with tears. Jemima's, too, were a little moist, and she blinked them hard, and steeled herself to say to Jacqueline that day what she had come to say.
The child must not slip further into an irrevocable mistake, if she could help it.
She made an opportunity as soon as possible to get her alone. ”Jacky,”
she said abruptly, ”are you quite sure you want to marry Philip,--and that he wants to marry you?”
The girl turned a startled face upon her--”Why, Jemmy, he asked me! Why would he ask me if he didn't want me?”
”I suspect Philip does many things he does not want to.--Didn't he know all about--Mr. Channing?” She looked mercifully away from the other's blanching face, ”I wonder if that might have anything to do with his asking you?”
She waited nervously for a reply. Even the most confident of surgeons have their moments of suspense.
It came very low, ”I never thought of that, Jemmy. Perhaps you are right.--Oh, if that is so, I just _can't_ be loving enough to him to make up for his goodness, can I? Darling old Phil!--You see it was because he did know all about Mr. Channing” (the voice was almost inaudible now) ”that I knew I could marry him. We understand each other, you see. I'd never expect to be first with him, to take mother's place with him, any more than he expects to take--And--and so--we could comfort each other.” The voice failed utterly here, and Jacqueline ran blindly out of the room, up to the never-failing solace of Mag's baby; leaving Jemima with the miserable sensation of having been cruel where she meant to be kind, and cruel to no purpose.
That night, when Philip came at his usual time, Jacqueline settled the matter once for all. She perched upon the arm of his chair, holding his head against her shoulder so that he could not look at her.
”Reverend Flip, dear,” she began, ”I want you to tell me something--truly, truly, truth now! Before it is too late. People shouldn't marry each other unless they're going to be quite honest with each other, should they?”
”No, dear,” he answered. ”Fire away.”
”You're sure, quite sure, that you really want to marry me?” She abandoned her strangle-hold, and leaned down with her cheek on his hair, to make the telling of anything disagreeable more easy for him.
She felt him start, but he said, ”Very sure, sweetheart.”
”And you're not just being n.o.ble,” she asked, wistfully, ”like Jemmy thinks?”
Philip cried, ”Jemima be darned!” and pulled her down into his arms quite roughly.
Her relief and grat.i.tude pierced through the armor of his abstraction.
”Oh, Phil, you _are_ sweet!” she whispered, holding him tight. ”And I'll make up to you somehow for it. I will! I will!”
The wedding was more Jemima's idea of what such an affair should be than her own had been; with a bishop officiating, and a choir in surplices (rather weak-voiced and tearful, without their beloved leader) and a matron-of-honor in a very smart New York frock, and the little church crowded to its doors, and even spilling into the road beyond. Nor was the congregation entirely composed of country-folk, tenants and the like. There was quite a sprinkling of what Jemima called ”worth-while people”; not only Jacqueline's victims, who came _en ma.s.se_ and looking rather depressed, but Mrs. Lawton and her daughters and several other women whom Jemima had firmly brought to Storm (one could not be friends with young Mrs. Thorpe without being friends with her family as well) and who needed no urging to come a second time.
Well toward the front there sat another guest, whom the eye of the matron-of-honor encountered with some distaste; an unwashed-looking person with a peddler's pack on the floor at his feet, whose beaming, innocent gaze missed no detail of the ceremony. Brother Bates was in the habit of carrying up to Misty other things besides his stock in trade and the Word of G.o.d. Very little that occurred at Storm was unknown to the man he called ”Teacher.”
n.o.body who had any possible claim to be present missed that wedding. It was the nine days' wonder of the community. As Mrs. Sykes murmured to her chosen intimates: ”To think of both them beautiful young gals bein'
content to take their ma's cast-off leavin's!”--for the heart-affairs of the Madam were viewed by her realm with a certain proprietary, disapproving interest, not entirely unmixed with pride. And more than one noted that the bridegroom, waiting at the altar-steps with his best man, Farwell, was careful never to glance toward the pew where Mrs.
Kildare sat, quite as beautiful and far more radiant than the young creature in white, who moved dreamily up the aisle as if her thoughts were far away. There was a certain amount of buzzing among the congregation.
Jacqueline was married in a sort of daze. She had remembered quite mechanically to keep five paces behind Jemima, to lift her skirts at the step so as not to stumble over them, even to smile at Philip because he smiled at her--a very tender, encouraging smile. As she spoke the words that made her his wife she thought triumphantly, ”If Mr. Channing could only see me now!”
It was not until she was going down the aisle again on her husband's arm that the daze lifted suddenly. Her husband! She looked up at him with a little gasp, and Philip, feeling her tremble, pressed her hand, murmuring, ”Steady, dear,” as he would have spoken to a frightened colt.