Juliet Marcy's prospective maid-of-honour found Anthony Robeson's best man
at her elbow the moment she entered the waiting-room of the big railway
station. Now, although she greeted him with a charming little conscious
look, there was nothing either new or singular about the quiet rush he had
made across the waiting-room the instant he saw her. The rest of the party
of twenty people who were going down into the country to the Marcy-Robeson
wedding understood it perfectly, although the engagement had not been
announced and probably would not be until Wayne Carey should have an
income decidedly larger than he had at present.
Judith Dearborn joined the group at once, and Carey reluctantly followed
her. Judith had a way of joining groups and of giving her betrothed many
impatient half-hours thereby.
"Just think of this," she said to the others. "When I knew Juliet had
really given in to Anthony Robeson at last I thought I should be asked to
assist at an impressive church wedding. But here we are going down to what
Tony describes as 'a box of a house' in the most rural of suburbs. If it's
really as small as he says even twenty people will be a tight fit."
"How in the world did they come to be married there?" asked the sister of
the best man. Everybody had been summoned to this wedding so hurriedly and
so informally that nobody knew much about it.
The son of the Bishop--whose father was going down to perform the
ceremony--answered promptly:
"Tony tells me its Juliet's own choice. You see they furnished the house
together, with her aunt, Mrs. Dingley; and Juliet fell so in love with it
that she must needs be married in it. What's occurred to that girl I don't
know. After the Robesons of Kentucky lost their money and everything else
but their social standing I thought it was all up with Anthony. But he's
plucky. He's made a way for himself, and he's won Juliet somehow. He seems
to be a late edition of that obstinate chap who remarked 'I will find a
way or make one.' By Jove--he must have made one when he convinced Juliet
Marcy that she could be happy in a house where twenty people are a tight
fit."
When the train stopped at the small station Judith Dearborn said in Wayne
Carey's ear, as he glanced wonderingly from the train: "Is this it? Juliet
Marcy must be perfectly crazy!"
"She certainly must," admitted Robeson's best man. But he stifled a sigh.
If Juliet Marcy could do so crazy a thing as to marry Anthony Robeson on
the comparatively small salary that young man--brought up to do nothing at
all--was now earning, why must Wayne Carey wait for several times that
income before he could have Juliet's closest friend? Was there really such
a difference in girls?
But at the next instant he was shouting hilariously, and so was everybody
else except the Bishop and the Bishop's wife, who only smiled indulgently.
The rest of the party were young people, and their glee brooked no
repression. The moment they reached the little platform they comprehended
not only that they were coming to a most informal wedding--they were also
in for a decidedly novel lark.
Close to the edge of the platform stood a great hay-wagon, cushioned with
fragrant hay and garlanded with goldenrod and purple asters. Standing
erect on the front, one hand grasping the reins which reached out over a
four-in-hand of big, well-groomed, flower-bedecked farm horses, the other
waving a triumphant greeting to his friends, was Anthony Robeson, in white
from head to foot, his face alight with happiness and fun. He looked like
a young king; there could be no other comparison for his splendid outlines
as he towered there. And better yet, he looked as he had ever looked,
through prosperity and through poverty, like a "Robeson of Kentucky."
Below him, prettier than she had ever been--and that was saying much--her
eyes brilliant with the spirit of the day, laughing, dressed also in
white, a big white hat drooping over her brown curls, stood Juliet Marcy.
In a storm of salutations and congratulations the guests rushed toward
this extraordinary equipage and the radiant pair who were its charioteers.
All regrets over the probable commonplaceness of a small country wedding
had vanished.
[Illustration: "Standing erect ... one hand grasping the reins ... was
Anthony Robeson."]
"Might have known they would do things up in shape somehow," grunted the
Bishop's son approvingly. "This is the stuff. Conventionality be tabooed.
They're going to the other extreme, and that's the way to do. If you don't
want an altar and candles, and a high-mucky-muck at the organ, have a
hay-wagon. _Gee!_--Let me get up here next to Ben Hur and the lady!"
Even the Bishop, sitting with clerical coat-tails carefully parted, his
handsome face beaming benevolently from under his round hat, and Mrs.
Bishop, granted by special dispensation a cushion upon the hay seat,
enjoyed that drive. Anthony, plying a long, beribboned lash, aroused his
heavy-footed steeds into an exhilarating trot, and the hay-wagon, carrying
safely its crew of young society people in their gayest mood, swept over
the half-mile from the station to the house like a royal barge.
As they drew up a chorus of "Oh's!" not merely polite but sincerely
surprised and admiring, recognised the quaint beauty of the little house.
It was no commonplace country home now, though the changes wrought had
been comparatively slight. It looked as if it might have stood for years
in just this fashion, yet it was as far removed from its primitive
characterless condition as may be an artist's drawing of a face upon which
he has altered but a line.
Mrs. Dingley and Mr. Horatio Marcy--a pair whose presence anywhere would
have been a voucher for the decorum of the most unconventional
proceedings--welcomed the party upon the wide, uncovered porch.
"We're going to be married very soon, to have it over," called Anthony.
"But you may explore the house first, so your minds shall be at rest
during the crisis. Just don't wander too far away in examining this
ancestral mansion. There are six rooms. I should advise your going in
line, otherwise complications may occur in the upper hall. Please don't
all try to get into the kitchen at once; it can't be done. It will hold
Juliet and me at the same time--all the rooms have been stretched to do
that--they had to be; but I'm not sure as to their capacity for more. Now
make yourselves absolutely at home. The place is yours--for a few hours.
After that it's mine--and Juliet's."
He glanced, laughing, at his bride, as he spoke from where he stood in the
doorway. She was on the little landing of the staircase, at the opposite
end of the living-room. She looked down and across at him, and nearly
everybody in the room--they were thronging through at the moment--caught
that glance. She was smiling back at him, and her eyes lingered only an
instant after they met his, but her friends all saw. There could be no
question that the Juliet Marcy who, since she had laid aside her
pinafores, had kept many men at bay, had at last surrendered. As for
Anthony----
"Why, he's always been in love with her," said the Bishop's son in the ear
of the best man, as in accordance with their host's permission they peeped
admiringly in at the little kitchen, "but any idiot can see that he's
fairly off his feet now. Ideal condition--eh? Say, this dining-room's
great--Jove, it is. I'm going to get asked out here to dinner as soon as
they are back. Let's go upstairs. The girls are just coming down--hear 'em
gurgling over what they saw?"
Upstairs the best man looked in at the blue-and-white room with eyes which
one with penetration might have said were envious. Indeed, he stared at
everything with much the same expression. He was the soberest man present.
Ordinarily he could be counted on to enliven such occasions, but to-day
his fits of hilarity were only momentary, and during the intervals he was
observed by the Bishop's son to be gazing somewhat yearningly into space
with an abstraction new to him.
Nobody knew just how the moment for the ceremony arrived. But when the
survey of the house was over and everybody had instinctively come back to
the living-room, the affair was brought about most naturally. The Bishop,
at a word from the best man, took his place in the doorway opening upon
the porch, which had been set in a great nodding border of goldenrod.
Anthony, making his way among his guests, came with a quiet face up to
Juliet and, bending, said softly, "Now, dear?" A hush followed instantly,
and the guests fell back to places at the sides of the room. Anthony's
best man was at his elbow, and the two went over to the Bishop, to stand
by his side. Mr. Marcy moved quietly into his place. Juliet, with Judith,
who had kept beside her, walked across the floor, and Anthony, meeting
her, led her a step farther to face the Bishop. It was but a suggestion of
the usual convention, and Anthony, in his white clothes, surrounded as he
was by men in frock-coats, was assuredly the most unconventional
bridegroom that had ever been seen. Juliet, too, wore the simplest of
white gowns, with no other adornment than that of her own beauty. Yet,
somehow, as the guests, grown sober in an instant, looked on and noted
these things, there was not one who felt that either grace or dignity was
lacking. The rich voice of the Bishop was as impressive as it had ever
been in chancel or at altar; the look on Anthony's face was one which
fitted the tone in which he spoke his vows; and Juliet, giving herself to
the man whose altered fortunes she was agreeing to share, bore a
loveliness which made her a bride one would remember long--and envy.
"There, that's done," said the Bishop's son with a gusty sigh of relief,
which brought the laugh so necessary to the relaxing of the tension which
accompanies such scenes. "Jove, it's a good thing to see a fellow like
Robeson safely tied up at last. You never can tell where these quixotic
ideas about houses and hay-wagons and weddings may lead. It's a terrible
strain, though, to see people married. I always tremble like a leaf--I
weigh only a hundred and ninety-eight now, and these things affect me.
It's so frightful to think what might happen if they should trip up on
their specifications."
There was a simple wedding breakfast served--by whom nobody could tell. It
was eaten out in the orchard--a pleasant place, for the neglected grass
had been close cut, and an old-fashioned garden at one side perfumed the
air with late September flowers. The trim little country maids who brought
the plates came from a willow-bordered path which led presumably to the
next house, some distance down the road. There were several innovations in
the various dishes, delicious to taste. Altogether it was a little feast
which everybody enjoyed with unusual zest. And the life of the party was
the bridegroom.
"I never saw a fellow able to scintillate like that at his own wedding,"
remarked the son of the Bishop to the best man's sister. "Usually they are
so completely dashed by their own temerity in getting into such an
irretrievable situation that they sit with their ears drooping and their
eyes bleared. Do you suppose it's getting married in tennis clothes that's
done it?"
"Tennis clothes!" cried the best man's sister with a merry laugh. "If you
realised how much handsomer he looks than you men in your frock-coats you
would not make fun."
"Make fun!" repeated the Bishop's son solemnly. "I joke only to keep my
head above water. I never in my life was so completely submerged in the
desire to get married instantly and live in a picturesque band-box.
Nothing can keep me from it longer than it takes to find the girl and the
band-box. If--if--" his voice dropped to a whisper, and a hint of redness
crept into his face which belied his jesting words, "you knew of the
girl--I--er--say--should you mind living in a band-box?"
The best man's sister was the sort of girl who can discern when even an
inveterate joker is daring to be somewhat more than half in earnest, and
she flushed so prettily that the son of the Bishop caught her hand
boyishly under the little table. He had hitherto been considered a
hopeless old bachelor, so it may readily be seen that, now the contagion
had caught him, his was quite a serious case.