The wedding came off so exactly as Judy had planned it that it seemed to
her to be a proof of the theory of transmigration of the soul, and that
in a previous incarnation she had been to just such a wedding. The
eldest brother, Ernest, arrived from the far West just in time to change
his clothes and give the bride away. There were three understudies for
his part, so there was not much concern over his non-arrival until he
got there with a blood-curdling tale of wrecks and wash-outs that had
delayed him twenty-four hours. Then all of them got very much concerned
and Mrs. Brown reproached herself for being so taken up with Mildred's
wedding that she had forgotten to worry about the absent one for the
time being. Ernest resembled Sue more than any of the rest of them, and
had a good deal of her poise and dignity. "But I'll wager that he is not
as serious as he seems," thought Judy, detecting a twinkle in the corner
of his sober eyes.
Mildred looked lovely, and she had such a sweet, trusting look in her
eyes as she came down the steps and up the tan-bark walk on Ernest's
arm, that Crittenden Rutledge, waiting for her at the end of the walk,
broke away from his best man and went forward several yards to meet his
bride. Sue and Molly brought up the rear; Sue, composed and calm with
her sweet dignity; but Molly, so deeply moved by this beloved sister's
marriage and the break in their ranks, the very first, that she felt her
knees trembling and wondered if it could be possible that she was going
to ruin everything and burst into tears or fall in a faint or do
something terrible. But she didn't. The familiar voice of their old
minister in the opening lines of the Episcopal marriage service brought
her to her senses, and she was able to follow the ritual in her mind,
but she dared not trust herself to look up. She kept her eyes glued to
her bouquet of "love-in-the-mist," that Miss Lizzie Monday had brought
her that morning, picked from her own old-fashioned garden.
"I know the groom will send the bridesmaids flowers, but somehow, Molly,
I don't want you to carry hothouse flowers. These 'love-in-the-mists'
will look just right with your dress and your eyes and your ways."
So Molly carried Miss Lizzie's "bokay" and put the flowers that the
groom sent her in a vase in the parlor. But Molly was not thinking of
her dress or her eyes, except to try to keep the tears in them, since
come they would, and not let them run out on her cheeks. Mildred's
responses were inaudible except to dear old Dr. Peters, the minister,
but Crittenden's were so loud and clear and resonant that it was almost
like chanting, and Judy had to smile when she could not help thinking of
the stammering man's "Your house is on fire, tra la, tra la."
"I pronounce you man and wife."
All is over. Molly can let the tears fall now if she wants to, but,
strange to say, she does not seem to want to any more. Such a rejoicing
is going on. Everybody seems to be kissing everybody else. Aren't they
all more or less kin? Mildred and Kent, the center of a gay crowd, are
fondly kissing the ones they should merely shake hands with, and
formally shaking hands with their nearest and dearest, just as in a fire
people have been known to carry carefully the pillows downstairs and
throw the bowls and pitchers out of the window. Kent has his wits about
him, however, and kisses Judy, declaring it is all in the day's work.
A stranger standing on the outskirts of the crowd during the whole
ceremony seemed much more interested in the bridesmaid dressed in blue
than in the bride herself, and when this same bridesmaid felt herself
swaying a little as though her emotion might get the better of her, if
one had not been so taken up with the central figures on the stage he
might have noticed the stranger start forward as though to go to her
assistance. But he, too, was brought to his senses by the calm voice of
Dr. Peters in the opening words of the service, and saw with evident
relief that the bridesmaid had gained control of herself. He was a tall
young man with kind brown eyes and light hair, a little thin at the
temples, giving him more years perhaps than he was entitled to.
When the service was over and the general confusion ensued, he made his
way swiftly to where Molly stood, and without saying one word of
greeting he put his arm around her and tenderly kissed her. Molly was so
overcome with astonishment that she could only gasp, "Professor Green!
What are you doing here?"
"I am having a very pleasant time, thank you, Miss Molly. I got your
mother's kind invitation to attend your sister's wedding, and--here I am.
Didn't your brother Paul tell you that I had come?"
"No, we have been so occupied, I believe I have not seen Paul to-day."
"I went to his newspaper office in Louisville to find out something
about how to get here, and he asked me to drive out with him. Are you
sorry I came, Miss Molly?"
"Sorry? Oh, Professor Green, you must know how glad I am to see you!
But, you see, I was a little startled, not expecting you and thinking of
you as still at Wellington."
"If you were thinking of me as being anywhere at all, I feel better.
Were you really thinking of me?"
"Yes," said the candid Molly, "and wasn't it strange that I was thinking
of you just as you came up--and--and----" but, remembering his manner of
greeting her, she blushed painfully.
"You are not angry with me, are you, my dear child? I felt so lonesome.
You see everybody seemed to know everybody else, and there was such a
handshaking and so forth going on that before I knew it I was in the
swim."
"Almost every one here is kin or near-kin, and weddings in Kentucky seem
to give a great deal of license," said Molly, recovering her equanimity.
"Of course I am not angry with you. I could not get angry with any one
on Mildred's wedding day."
But Molly felt that in a way Edwin Green had paid her back for the hug
she had given him. She had hugged him because he was so old that she
could do so with impunity, and he in turn had kissed her because he felt
lonesome, forsooth, and she was so young that it made no great
difference. His "My dear child" had been a kind of humiliation to Molly.
What is the use of being a senior and graduating at college if a man
very little over thirty thinks you are nothing but a kid?
"Professor Green is not so very much older than Ernest," thought Molly,
"and I wager he will not treat Judy with that
old-enough-to-be-your-father air! Here am I getting mad on Mildred's
wedding day when I just said I could not! And, after all, Professor
Green has been very kind to me and means to be now, I know." Turning to
him with one of "Molly's own," as Edith Williams termed her smile, she
said, "Now you must meet my mother and all the rest of them."
Mrs. Brown looked keenly and rather sadly at the young professor. This
coming of men for her daughters was growing wearisome, so the poor lady
thought; but she liked Edwin Green's expression and found herself
trusting him before he got through explaining his sudden appearance in
Kentucky.
"After all, maybe he is only thinking of Molly as one of his pupils. His
buying the orchard meant an interest in her college course and nothing
else."
Mrs. Brown introduced him to the relatives and friends near her, and
Molly had to leave him and make herself useful, as usual, in seeing that
the refreshments were forthcoming.
When they had decided to have the wedding out of doors, it had seemed
best to have the supper al fresco, and now brisk and very polite colored
waiters were busy bringing tables and chairs from a side porch and
placing them on the lawn. An odor of coffee and broiled sweetbreads,
mingling with that of chicken salad and hot beaten biscuit, began to
rival the fragrance of the orange flowers and roses.
The crowd around the bride thinning out a little to find seats at the
tables, Professor Green was able to make his way to Mildred and
Crittenden. After greeting them, he espied Judy talking sweetly to a
stern-looking woman with a hard face and a soft figure, who was dressed
severely in a stiff black silk, with most uncompromising linen collar
and cuffs. Her iron-gray hair was tightly coiled in a fashion that
emphasized her hawk-like expression, but with all she looked enough like
Mrs. Brown to establish an undeniable claim to relationship with that
charming lady. Mrs. Brown herself, in a soft black crepe de Chine and
old lace collar and cuffs, with her wavy chestnut hair, was more
beautiful than any of her daughters, the bride herself having to take a
second place.
Judy was delighted to see the professor, and not nearly so astonished as
Molly had been, the truth being that Paul had told that young lady of
Edwin Green's arrival, with the expectation that she would inform Molly.
But Judy, realizing the state of excitement that Molly was in,
determined to keep the news to herself and not give Molly anything more
to feel just then, even if in doing so she, Judy, would appear to be
careless and forgetful. Judy understood the regard that Molly had for
Professor Green--better than Molly herself did. She remembered Molly's
expression and misery when little Otoyo, their Japanese friend at
Wellington, had told them of his being so dangerously ill with typhoid,
and how Molly had lost weight and could neither sleep nor eat until the
crisis had passed.
"Did you ever see such a beautiful wedding in your life?" said Judy.
"Never, and I am told it was all your plan, even to the holly-hock
background."
"Well, you see the idea was floating around in the air, and I was just
the one who had her idea-net ready and caught it. Ideas are like
butterflies, anyhow--all flying around waiting to be pounced on--but the
thing is to have your net ready."
"Yes, and another thing, not to handle the butterfly idea too roughly.
Many an idea, beautiful in itself, is ruined in the working out," said
her companion.
"That is where taste comes in."
Judy would have liked to chase the metaphor much farther with the
agreeable young man, but she remembered that she had set out to
fascinate Aunt Clay, and it was Aunt Sarah Clay to whom she had been
talking when Professor Green had come up. She introduced him, and Mrs.
Clay immediately pounced on him with a tirade against innovations of all
kinds.
Looking very much as we are led by the cartoonists to expect a
suffragist to look, Mrs. Clay was the most ardent "anti." Opposed to all
progress and innovations, and constantly at war on the subject of higher
education of women, she carried her conservatism even to the point of
having her grain cut with a scythe instead of using the up-to-date
machinery. Professor Green was her natural enemy, for was he not
instructor in a girls' school where, she was led to understand, belief
in equal suffrage was as necessary for entrance as the knowledge of
Latin or mathematics?
Professor Green, ignorant of the antagonism she felt for him and his
calling, endeavored to make himself as agreeable as possible to Molly's
aunt. He listened with seeming respect to her attack on modernism and
then turned the subject to the wedding, her pretty nieces and
fine-looking nephews.
"I never heard of any one getting married out of doors before in my
life, and had I known they were contemplating such a thing I certainly
should not have set my foot on the place, nor would I have sent them the
handsome wedding present I did. I shall not be at all astonished if the
bishop reprimands that sentimental old Dr. Peters for allowing anything
so undignified in connection with the church ritual. They had much
better jump over a broomstick like Gypsies and not desecrate our prayer
book in such a manner. Mildred Carmichael has brought all her children
up to have their own way. The idea of none of those boys being willing
to stay on the farm where their forefathers managed to make a living,
and a very good one! They, forsooth, must go as clerks or reporters or
what not into cities and let their farm go to rack and ruin, already
mortgaged until it is top-heavy. Then when they do make a little, they
must squander it in this absurd new-fangled machinery, labor-saving
devices that I have no use for in the world. And now Molly, not content
with four years wasted at college, to say nothing of the money, says she
wants to go back to fit herself more thoroughly for making her living.
Living, indeed! Where are her brothers that she need feel the necessity
of making her living?"
"But, Mrs. Clay," Judy here broke in, "my father says that there are
only three male relatives that a woman should expect to support her: her
father, her husband and her son. Since Molly has none of these, she, of
course, wants to do something for herself. Even with a father, unless
the father is very well off, it seems to me a girl ought to help after a
lot has been spent on her education. I certainly mean to do something,
but the trouble is, the only thing I can do will mean more money spent
before I can accomplish anything."
"And what does such a charming person as Miss Kean expect to do?" asked
the irascible old lady.
"I want to go to Paris and study to become a decorator." This was too
much for Mrs. Clay. Without saying a word, she turned and stalked across
the lawn where the waiters were carrying trays of food.
"Hateful old thing! I hope food will improve her temper. It would
certainly be acceptable to me. See, here comes Kent with a table! I'll
find Molly and we can have a fine foursome, and you shall taste Aunt
Mary's beaten biscuit, hot from the oven. No wonder Molly is such an
angel. If, as the cereal ads. say, we are what our food makes us, any
one raised on Aunt Mary's cooking would have to be good. Goodness knows
what Aunt Clay eats! It must be thistles and green persimmons!"