CHAPTER XIV.
A SECOND MAID OF HONOR
It was a new experience to Miles Bradford, this trudging through thedense beech woods on a summer night behind a row of flickering lanterns.The path they followed was a wide one, and well worn by the feet ofchurchgoing negroes, for it was the shortest cut between the Valley andStumptown, a little group of cabins clustered around the colored church.
Ranald led the way with a brakeman's lantern, and Rob occasionallyilluminated the scene by electric flashes from the head of thewalking-stick he was flourishing. A varied string of fiery dragons,winged fish, and heathen hobgoblins danced along beside them, for Kittywas putting candles in a row of Japanese lanterns when they arrived atThe Beeches, and nearly everybody in the party accepted her invitationto take one. Mary chose a sea-serpent with a grinning face, and Elise apretty oval one with birds and cherry blossoms on each side. Lloyd didnot take any. Her hands were already filled with a huge bouquet of redroses.
"Sylvia asked me to carry these," she explained to Miles Bradford, "andto weah a white dress and this hat with the red roses on it. Because Iwas maid of honah at Eugenia's wedding she seems to think I can reflectsome sawt of glory on hers. She said she wanted all her young ladies toweah white."
"Who are her young ladies, and why?" he asked.
"Allison, Kitty, Betty, and I. You see, Sylvia's grandfathah was theMacIntyre's coachman befoah the wah, and her mothah is our old AuntCindy. She considahs that she belongs to us and we belong to her."
Farther down the line they could hear Katie Mallard's cheerful giggle asshe tripped over a beech root, then Bernice Howe's laugh as they allwent slipping and sliding down a steep place in the path which led tothe hollow crossed by the dry creek bed.
"Sing!" called Miss Allison, who was chaperoning the party, and pickingher way behind the others with Mary and Elise each clinging to an arm."There's such a pretty echo down in this hollow. Listen!" The tune thatshe started was one of the popular songs of the summer. It was caught upby every one in the procession except Miles Bradford, and he kept silentin order to enjoy this novel pilgrimage to the fullest. The dark woodsrang with the sweet chorus, and the long line of fantastic lanterns sentweird shadows bobbing up in their wake.
The bare, unpainted little church had just been lighted when theyarrived, and a strong smell of coal-oil and smoking wicks greeted them.
"It's too bad we are so early," said Miss Allison. "Sylvia would havepreferred us to come in with grand effect at the last moment, but I'mtoo tired to wait for the bridal party. Let's put our lanterns in thevestibule and go in and find seats."
A pompous mulatto man in white cotton gloves and with a cluster oftuberoses in his buttonhole ushered the party down the aisle to theseats of honor reserved for the white folks. There were seventeen in theparty, too many to sit comfortably on the two benches, so a chair wasbrought for Miss Allison. After the grown people were seated, each ofthe little girls managed to squeeze in at the end of the seats nearestthe aisle. Lloyd found herself seated between Mary Ware and AlexShelby. Leaning forward to look along the bench, she found that Bernicecame next in order to Alex, then Lieutenant Stanley and Allison, DoctorBradford and Betty.
She had merely said good evening to Alex Shelby when they met at TheBeeches, and, although positions in the procession through the woods hadshifted constantly, it had happened she had not been near enough to talkwith him. Now, with only Mary Ware to claim her attention, theynaturally fell into conversation. It was only in whispers, for theaudience was assembling rapidly, and the usher had opened the organ intoken that the service was about to begin.
There had been an attempt to decorate for the occasion. Friends of thebride had resurrected both the Christmas and Easter mottoes, so that thewall behind the pulpit bore in tall, white cotton letters, on abackground of cedar, the words, "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men."Fresh cedar had been substituted for the yellowed branches left overfrom the previous Christmas, and fresh diamond dust sprinkled over thegrimy cotton to give it its pristine sparkle of Yule-tide frost.
"An appropriate motto for a wedding," whispered Alex Shelby to Lloyd.Only his eyes laughed. His face was as solemn as the usher's own as heturned to gaze at the word "Welcome" over the door, and the fringe ofpaper Easter lilies draping the top of each uncurtained window.
Bernice claimed his attention several moments, then he turned to Lloydagain. "Do tell me, Miss Lloyd," he begged, "what is that wonderfullyand fearfully made thing in the front of the pulpit? Is it a doorway ora giant picture-frame? And what part is it to play in the ceremony?"
Lloyd's face dimpled, and an amused smile flashed up at him from thecorner of her eye. Then she lowered her long lashes demurely, and seemedto be engrossed with her bunch of roses as she answered him.
"The coquettish thing!" thought Bernice, seeing the glance but nothearing the whisper which followed it.
"Sh! Don't make me laugh! Everybody is watching to see if the whitefolks are making fun of things, and I'm actually afraid to look up againfor feah I'll giggle. Maybe it's a copy of Eugenia's gate of roses. Itlooks like the frame of a doahway. Just the casing, you know. Maybe it'sa doah of mawning-glories they're going to pass through. I recognizethose flowahs twined all around it. We made them a long time ago for thelamp-shades when the King's Daughtahs had an oystah suppah at the manse.I made all those purple mawning-glories and Betty made the yellow ones."
Glancing over his shoulder, he happened to spy a familiar face behindhim, the kindly old black face of his uncle's cook.
"Howdy, Aunt Jane!" he exclaimed, with a friendly smile. Then, in astage whisper, he asked, "Aunt Jane, can you tell me? Are thosemorning-glories artificial?"
The old woman wrinkled her face into a knot as she peered in thedirection of the pulpit, toward which he nodded. One of the words in hisquestion puzzled her. It was a stranger to her. But, after an instant,the wrinkles cleared and her face broadened into a smile.
"No'm, Mistah Alex. Them ain't artificial flowahs, honey. They's made ofpapah."
Again an amused smile stole out of the corner of Lloyd's eye to answerthe gleam of mischief in Alex's. Not for anything would she have AuntJane think that she was laughing, so her eyes were bent demurely on herroses again. Again Bernice, leaning forward, intercepted the glance andmisinterpreted it. When Alex turned to her to repeat Aunt Jane'sexplanation, she barely smiled, then relapsed into sulky silence.Finding several other attempts at conversation received with onlymonosyllables, he concluded that she was not in a mood to talk, andnaturally turned again to Lloyd.
He had not been out in the Valley for years, he told her. The last visithe had made to his uncle, old Doctor Shelby, had been the summer thatthe Shermans had come back to Lloydsboro from New York. He rememberedpassing her one day on the road. She had squeezed through a hole in thefence between two broken palings, and was trying to pull a little dogthrough after her; a shaggy Scotch and Skye terrier.
"That was my deah old Fritz," she answered, "and I was probably runningaway. I did it every chance I had."
"The next time I saw you," he continued, "I was driving along withuncle. I was standing between his knees, I remember, proud as a peacockbecause he was letting me hold the reins. I was just out of kilts, so itwas a great honor to be trusted with the lines. When we passed yourgrandfather on his horse, he had you up in front of his saddle, anduncle called out, 'Good morning, little Colonel.'"
These reminiscences pleased Lloyd. It flattered her to think heremembered these early meetings so many years ago. His relationship tothe old doctor whom she loved as her own uncle put him on a veryfriendly footing.
The church filled rapidly, and by the time the seats were crowded andpeople were jostling each other to find standing-room around the door, ayoung colored girl in a ruffled yellow dress seated herself at theorgan. First she pulled out all the stops, then adjusting a pair ofeyeglasses, opened a book of organ exercises. Then she felt her sash inthe back, settled her side-combs, and raising herself from the organb
ench, smoothed her skirts into proper folds under her. After thesepreliminaries she leaned back, raised both hands with a grand flourish,and swooped down on the keys.
"Bang on the low notes and twiddle on the high!" laughed Lloyd, underher breath. "Listen, Mistah Shelby. She's playing the same chord in thebass straight through."
"Is that what makes the fearsome discord?" he asked. "It makes me thinkof an epitaph I once saw carved on a pretentious headstone in a littlevillage cemetery:
"'Here lies one Who never let her left hand know What her right hand done.'"
"Neithah of Laura's hands will evah find out what the othah one istrying to do," whispered Lloyd. "She is supposed to be playing thewedding-march. Hark! There is a familiah note: '_Heah comes the bride_.'They must be at the doah. Well, I wish you'd look!"
Every head was turned, for the bridal party was advancing. Slowly downthe aisle came M'haley, in the pink chiffon gown from Paris. Mom Beck'squick needle had altered it considerably, for in some unaccountable waythe slim bodice fashioned to fit Lloyd's slender figure, now fastenedaround M'haley's waist without undue strain. The skirt, though turned"hine side befo'," fell as skirts should fall, for the fulness had beenshifted to the proper places, and the broad sky-blue sash covered themended holes in the breadth Lloyd had torn on the stairs.
With her head high, and her armful of flowers held in precisely the sameposition in which Lloyd had carried hers, she swept down the aisle insuch exact imitation of the other maid of honor, that every one who hadseen the first wedding was convulsed, and Kitty's whisper about "Lloyd'sunderstudy" was passed with stifled giggles from one to another downboth benches.
Ca'line Allison came next, in a white dress and the white slippers thathad been thrown after Eugenia's carriage with the rice.
She was flower girl, and carried an elaborate fancy basket filled withfield daisies. A wreath of the same snowy blossoms crowned her woollypate, and an expression of anxiety drew her little black face into adistressed pucker. She had been told that at every third step she mustthrow a handful of daisies in the path of the on-coming bride, and hereffort to keep count and at the same time keep her balance on the highFrench heels was almost too much for her.
During her many rehearsals M'haley had counted her steps for her: "One,two, three--_throw_! One, two, three--_throw_!" She had gone through herpart every time without mistake, for her feet were untrammelled then,and her flat yellow soles struck the ground in safety and with rhythmicprecision. She could give her entire mind to the graceful scattering ofher posies. But now she walked as if she were mounted on stilts, and herway led over thin ice. The knowledge that she must keep her own countwas disconcerting, for she could not "count in her haid," as M'haley hadordered her to do. She was obliged to whisper the numbers loud enoughfor herself to hear. So with her forehead drawn into an anxious pucker,and her lips moving, she started down the aisle whispering, "One, two,three--_throw_! One, two, three--_throw_!" Each time, as she reached theword "throw" and grasped a handful of daisies to suit the action to theword, she tilted forward on the high French heels and almost came to afull stop in her effort to regain her balance.
But Ca'line Allison was a plucky little body, accustomed to walking thetops of fences and cooning out on the limbs of high trees, so shereached the altar without mishap. Then with a loud sigh of relief shesettled her crown of daisies and rolled her big eyes around to watch themajestic approach of her mother.
No matron of the four hundred could have swept down the aisle with agrander air than Sylvia. The handsome lavender satin skirt she wore hadonce trailed its way through one of the most elegant receptions evergiven in New York, and afterward had graced several Louisvillefunctions. Its owner had given Sylvia the bodice also, but no amount ofstretching could make it meet around Sylvia's ample figure, so theproceeds of the fish-fry and ice-cream festival had been invested in aready-made silk waist. It was not the same shade of lavender as theskirt, but a gorgeous silver tissue belt blinded one to suchdifferences. The long kid gloves, almost dazzling in their whiteness,were new, the fan borrowed, and the touch of something blue wasfurnished by a broad back-comb of blue enamel surmounted by rhinestones.One white glove rested airily on "Mistah Robinson's" coat-sleeve, theother carried a half-furled fan edged with white feathers.
M'haley and Ca'line Allison waited at the altar, but the bridal couple,turning to the right, circled around it and mounted the steps leading upinto the pulpit. The mystery of the wooden frame was explained now. Itwas not a symbolical doorway through which they were to pass, but a hugeflower-draped picture-frame in which they took their places, facing thecongregation like two life-sized portraits in charcoal.
"'ONE, TWO, THREE--_THROW_!'"]
The minister, standing meekly below them between M'haley and Ca'lineAllison, with his back to the congregation, prefaced the ceremony bya long and flowery discourse on matrimony, so that there was ample timefor the spectators to feast their eyes on every detail of the picturebefore them. Except for a slight stir now and then as some neck wascraned in a different position for a better view, the silence wasprofound, until the benediction was pronounced.
At the signal of a blast from the wheezy organ the couple, slowlyturning, descended the steps. Ca'line Allison, in her haste to reach theaisle ahead of them to begin her posy-throwing again, nearly tiltedforward on her nose. But with a little crow-hop she righted herself andbegan her spasmodic whispering, "One, two, three--_throw_!"
After the couple came M'haley and the pompous young minister. ThenLloyd, who had caught the bride's smile of gratification as her eyesrested on the white dress and red roses of this guest of honor, and whoread the appealing glance that seemed to beckon her, rose and steppedinto line. The rest of Sylvia's young ladies immediately followed, andthe congregation waited until all the rest of the white folks passedout, before crowding to the carriage to congratulate "Brothah and SistahRobinson."
Lloyd went on to the carriage to speak to Sylvia and give her thearmful of roses to decorate the wedding-feast, before joining theothers, who were lighting the lanterns for their homeward walk.
"You'd better come in the light of ours, Miss Lloyd," said Alex Shelby,coming up to her with Bernice beside him. "We might as well take thelead. Ranald seems to be having trouble with his wick."
Lloyd hesitated, remembering Rob's warning, but glancing behind her, shesaw Phil hurrying toward her, and abruptly decided to accept hisinvitation. She knew that Phil was trying to arrange to walk home withher. This would be his last opportunity to walk with her, and while sheknew that he would respect her promise to her father enough not toinfringe on it by talking openly of his regard for her, his constanthints and allusions would keep her uncomfortable. He seemed to take itfor granted that she was bound to come around to this point of view someday, and regard him as the one the stars had destined for her.
So it was merely to escape a tete-a-tete with Phil which made her walkalong beside Alex, and put out a hand to draw Mary Ware to the otherside. She linked arms with her as they pushed through the crowd, andstarted down the road four abreast. But the fences were lined withbuggies and wagons, and the scraping wheels and backing horses kept themconstantly separating and dodging back and forth across the road, moreoften singly than in pairs.
By the time they reached the gap in the fence where the path through thewoods began, the others had caught up with them, and they all scrambledthrough in a bunch. Lloyd looked around, and, with a sensation ofrelief, saw that Kitty had Phil safely in tow. She would be free as faras The Beeches, at any rate. At a call from Elise, Mary ran back to joinher. Positions were being constantly shifted on the homeward way, justas they had been before, and, looking around, Lloyd decided that shewould slip back presently with some of the others, who would not thinkthat two is company and three a crowd, as Bernice might be doing. Thebackward glance nearly caused her a fall, for a big root in the pathmade her ankle turn, and Alex Shelby's quick grasp of her elbow was allthat saved her.
"It was my fault, Miss Lloyd," he insisted. "I should have held thelantern differently. There, I'll go slightly ahead and light the pathbetter. Can you see all right, Bernice?"
"Yes," she answered, shortly, out of humor that he should be as carefulof Lloyd's comfort as her own. She trudged along, taking no part in theconversation. It was a general one, extending all along the line, forRob at the tail and Ranald at the head shouted jokes and questions backand forth like end-men at a minstrel show. Laughing allusions to themaid of honor and Ca'line Allison were bandied back and forth, and whenthe line grew unusually straggling, Kitty would bring them into stepwith her, "One, two, three--_throw_!"
Neither Lloyd nor Alex noticed the determined silence in which Bernicestalked along, and when she presently slipped back with the excuse thatshe wanted to speak to Katie, they scarcely missed her. There wasnothing unusual in the action, as all the others were changing companyat intervals. At the entrance-gate to The Beeches she joined them again,for her nearest road home led through the Walton place, and they were topart company here with Lloyd and her guests.
For a few minutes there was a babel of good-nights and parting sallies,in the midst of which Alex Shelby managed to say to Lloyd in a low tone,"Miss Lloyd, I am coming out to the Valley again a week from to-day. Ifyou haven't any engagement for the afternoon will you gohorseback-riding with me?"
The consciousness that Bernice had heard the invitation and wasdispleased, confused her so that for a moment she lost her usual ease ofmanner. She wanted to go, and there was no reason why she should notaccept, but all she could manage to stammer was an embarrassed, "Why,yes--I suppose so." But the next instant recovering herself, she added,graciously, "Yes, Mistah Shelby, I'll be glad to go."
"Come on, Lloyd," urged Betty, swinging her hand to pull her into thegroup now drawn up on the side of the road ready to start. They had madetheir adieux.
"All right," she answered, locking arms with Betty. "Good night, MistahShelby. Good night, Bernice."
He acknowledged her nod with a courteous lifting of his hat, andrepeated her salutation. But Bernice, standing stiff and angry in thestarlight, turned on her heel without a response.
"What on earth do you suppose is the mattah with Bernice?" exclaimedLloyd, in amazement, as they turned into the white road leading towardhome.