Part 11 (2/2)
But you can at least remember these words, Laura, and some time the meaning will get to you. Always carry your happiness under your bonnet!
It's the only thing I can give you--out of all my store!”
The girl put her arm about him and pressed closely to him, and they rose, as she said: ”Why, father--I understand. Of course I understand.
Don't you see I understand, father?”
She spoke eagerly and clasped her arms tighter about the pudgy little figure. They stood quietly a moment, as the father looked earnestly, dog-wise, up into her face, as if trying by his very gaze to transmit his loving wisdom. Then, as he found voice: ”No, Laura, probably you'll need fifty years to understand; but look over on the hill across the valley at the moving cloud shadows. They are only shadows--not realities. They are just unrealities that prove the real--just trailing anchors of the sun!” He had pocketed his pipe and his hand came up from his pocket as he waved to the distant shadows and piped: ”Trouble--heartaches--all the host of clouds that cover life--are only--only--” he let his voice drop gently as he sighed: ”only anchors of the sun; Laura, they only prove--just prove--”
She did not let him finish, but bent to kiss him and she could feel the shudder of a smothered sob rack him as she touched his cheek.
Then he smiled at her and chirped: ”Just Eendiany--sis'. Just pore, dumb Eendiany! Hi, ho! Now run and be a good girl! And here's a jim-crack your daddy got you!”
From his pocket he drew out a little package, and dangled a sparkling jewel in his hands. He saw a flash of pleasure on her face. But his heart was full, and he turned away his head as he handed the gift to her. Her eyes were upon the sparkling jewel, as he led her into the house, saying with a great sigh: ”Come on, my dear--let's go in.”
At nine o'clock that night, the great foundry of a house, with its half a score of chimneys, marking its various epochs of growth, literally was stuffed with smilax, ferns, roses, orange blossoms, and daisy chains. In the mazes of these aisles of verdure, a labyrinth of Van Dorns and Satterthwaites and visiting statesmen with highly powdered womankind was packed securely. George Brotherton, who was born a drum major, wearing all of his glittering insignia of a long line of secret societies, moved as though the welding humanity were fluid. He had presided at too many funerals not to know the vast importance of keeping the bride's kin from the groom's kin, and when he saw that they were ushered into the wedding supper, in due form and order, it was with the fine abandon of a grand duke lording it over the populace. Senators, Supreme Court justices, proud Satterthwaites, haughty Van Dorns, Congressmen, governors, local gentry, were packed neatly but firmly in their proper boxes.
The old families of Harvey--Captain Morton and his little flock, the Kollanders, Ahab Wright with his flaring side-whiskers, his white necktie and his shadow of a wife; Joseph Calvin and his daughter in pigtails, Mrs. Calvin having written Mrs. Nesbit that it seemed that she just never did get to go anywhere and be anybody, having said as much and more to Mr. Calvin with emphasis; Mrs. Brotherton, mother of George, beaming with pride at her son's part; stuttering Kyle Perry and his hatchet-faced son, the Adamses all starched for the occasion, Daniel Sands, a widower pro tem. with a broadening interest in school teachers, Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker, the ladies' hatter, cla.s.sifying the Satterthwaites and the Van Dorns according to the millinery of their womenkind; Morty Sands wearing the first white silk vest exhibited in Harvey and making violent eyes at a daughter of the railroad aristocracy--either a general manager's daughter or a general superintendent's, and for the life of her Mrs. Nesbit couldn't say; for she had not the highest opinion in the world of the railroad aristocracy, but took them, president, first, second and third vice, general managers, ticket and pa.s.senger agents, and superintendents, as a sort of social job-lot because they came in private cars, and the Doctor desired them, to add to his trophies of the occasion,--Henry Fenn, wearing soberly the suit in which he appeared when he rode the skyrocket, and forming part of the bridal chorus, stationed in the cigar-box of a sewing-room on the second floor to sing, ”Oh, Day So Dear,” as the happy couple came down the stairs--the old families of Harvey were all invited to the wedding. And the old and the new and most of the intermediary families of no particular caste or standing, came to the reception after the ceremony. But because she had the best voice in town, Margaret Muller sang ”Oh, Promise Me,” in a remote bedroom--to give the effect of distant music, low and sweet, and after that song was over, and after Henry Fenn's great pride had been fairly sated, Margaret Muller mingled with the guests and knew more of the names and stations of the visiting n.o.bility from the state house and railroad offices than any other person present. And such is the perversity of the male s.e.x that there were more ”by Georges,” and more ”Look--look, looks,” and more faint whistles, and more ”Tch--tch tchs,”
and more nudging and pointing among the men when Margaret appeared than when the bride herself, pink and white and beautiful, came down the stairs. Even the eyes of the groom, as he stood beside the bride, tall, youthful, strong, and handsome as a man may dare to be and earn an honest living, even his eyes sometimes found themselves straying toward the figure and face of the beautiful girl whom he had scarcely noticed while she worked in the court house. But this may be said for the groom, that when his eyes did wander, he pulled them back with an almost irritated jerk, and seemed determined to keep them upon the girl by his side.
As for the wedding ceremony itself--it was like all others. The women looked exultant, and the men--the groom, the bride's father, the groomsmen, and even Rev. John Dexter, had a sort of captured look and went through the service as though they wished that marriages which are made in Heaven were celebrated there also. But after the service was actually accomplished, after the bride and groom had been properly congratulated, after the mult.i.tude had been fed in serried ranks according to social precedence, after the band on the lawn outside had serenaded the happy couple, and after further interminable handshaking and congratulations, from those outside, after the long line of invited guests had filed past the imposing vista of pickle dishes, cutlery, b.u.t.ter dishes and cake plates, reaching around the walls of three bedrooms,--to say nothing of an elaborate wax representation of nesting cupids bearing the card of the Belgian Society from the gla.s.s works and sent, according to the card, to ”Mlle. Lille'n'en Pense”; after the carriage, bedecked and bedizened with rice and shoes and ribbons, that was supposed to bear away the bride and groom, had gone amid the shouting and the tumult of the populace, and after the phaeton and the sorrel mare had actually taken the bride and groom from the barn to the railway station, after the fiddle and the ba.s.soon and the horn and the tinkling cymbal at Morty Sands's dance had frayed and torn the sleep of those pale souls who would sleep on such a night in Harvey, Grant Adams and his father, leaving Jasper to trip whatever fantastic toes he might have, in the opera house, drove down the hill through the glare of the furnaces, the creaking of the oil derricks and the smell of the straw paper mill through the heart of South Harvey.
They made little talk as they rode. Their way led them through the street which is shaded and ashamed by day, and which glows and flaunts itself by night. Men and women, gambling, drinking, carousing, rioted through the street, in and out of doors that spilled puddles of yellow light on the board sidewalks and dirt streets; screaming laughter, hoa.r.s.e calls, the stench of liquor, the m.u.f.fled noises of gambling, sputter of electric lights and the flash of glimmering reflections from bar mirrors rasped their senses and kept the father and son silent as they rode. When they had pa.s.sed into the slumbering tenements, the father spoke: ”Well, son, here it is--the two kinds of playing, and here we have what they call the bad people playing. The Van Dorns and the Satterthwaites will tell you that vice is the recreation of the poor.
And it's more or less true.” The elder man scratched his beard and faced the stars: ”It's a devilish puzzle. Character makes happiness; I've got that down fine. But what makes character? Why is vice the recreation of the poor? Why do we recruit most of our bad boys and all of our wayward girls from those neighborhoods in every city where the poor live? Why does the clerk on $12 a week uptown crowd into Doctor Jim's wedding party, and the gla.s.s blower at $4 a day down here crowd into 'Big Em's'
and 'Joe's Place' and the 'Crescent'? Is poverty caused by vice; or is vice a symptom of poverty? And why does the clerk's wife move in 'our best circles' and the miner's wife, with exactly the same money to spend, live in outer social darkness?”
”I've asked myself that question lots of times,” exclaimed the youth. ”I can't make it work out on any theory. But I tell you, father,” the son clinched the hand that was free from the lines, and shook it, ”it's wrong--some way, somehow, it's wrong, way down at the bottom of things--I don't know how nor why--but as sure as I live, I'll try to find out.”
The clang of an engine bell in the South Harvey railroad yards drowned the son's answer. The two were crossing the track and turning the corner that led to the South Harvey station. The midnight train was about due.
As the buggy came near the little gray box of a station a voice called, ”Adams--Adams,” and a woman's voice, ”Oh, Grant.”
”Why,” exclaimed the father, ”it's the happy couple.” Grant stopped the horse and climbed out over the sleeping body of little Kenyon. ”In a moment,” replied Grant. Then he came to a shadow under the station eaves and saw the young people hiding. ”Adams, you can help us,” said Van Dorn. ”We slipped off in the Doctor's phaeton, to get away from the guying crowd and we have tried to get the house on the 'phone, and in some way they don't answer. The horse is tied over by the lumber yard there. Will you take it home with you to-night, and deliver it to the Doctor in the morning--whatever--” But Grant cut in:
”Why, of course. Glad to have the chance.” He was awkward and ill at ease, and repeated, ”Why, of course, anything.” But Van Dorn interjected: ”You understand, I'll pay for it--” Grant Adams stared at him. ”Why--why--no--” stammered Grant in confusion, while Van Dorn thrust a five-dollar bill upon him. He tried to return it, but the bride and groom ran to the train, leaving the young man alone and hurt in his heart. The father from the buggy saw what had happened. In a few minutes they were leading the Doctor's horse behind the Adams buggy. ”I didn't want their money,” exclaimed Grant, ”I wanted their--their--”
”You wanted their friends.h.i.+p, Grant--that's what you wanted,” said the father.
”And he wanted a hired man,” cried Grant. ”Just a hired man, and she--why, didn't she understand? She knew I would have carried the old horse on my back clear to town, if she'd let me, just to hear her laugh once. Father,” the son's voice was bitter as he spoke, ”why didn't she understand----why did she side with him?”
The father smiled. ”Perhaps, on your wedding trip, Grant, your wife will agree with you too, son.”
As they rode home in silence, the young man asked himself over and over again, what lines divided the world into cla.s.ses; why manual toil shuts off the toilers from those who serve the world otherwise. Youth is sensitive; often it is supersensitive, and Grant Adams saw or thought he saw in the little byplay of Tom Van Dorn the caste prod of society jabbing labor back into its place.
”Tom,” said the bride as they watched Grant Adams unhitch the horse by the lumber yard, ”why did you force that money on Grant----he would have much preferred to have your hand when he said good-by.”
”He's not my kind of folks, Laura,” replied Van Dorn. ”I know you like him. But that five will do him lots more good than my shaking his hand, and if that youth wasn't as proud as Lucifer he'd rather have five dollars than any man's hand. I would----if it comes to that.”
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