The wedding was set for ten o’clock in the morning, after which there was
to be a wedding breakfast and the married couple were to start immediately
for their new home.
David had driven the day before with his own horse and chaise to a town
some twenty miles away, and there left his horse at a tavern to rest for
the return trip, for Kate would have it that they must leave the house in
high style. So the finest equipage the town afforded had been secured to
bear them on the first stage of their journey, with a portly negro driver
and everything according to the custom of the greatest of the land.
Nothing that Kate desired about the arrangements had been left undone.
The household was fully astir by half past four, for the family breakfast
was to be at six promptly, that all might be cleared away and in readiness
for the early arrival of the various aunts and uncles and cousins and
friends who would “drive over” from the country round about. It would have
been something Madam Schuyler would never have been able to get over if
aught had been awry when a single uncle or aunt appeared upon the scene,
or if there seemed to be the least evidence of fluster and nervousness.
The rosy sunlight in the east was mixing the morning with fresher air, and
new odors for the new day that was dawning, when Marcia awoke. The sharp
click of spoons and dishes, the voices of the maids, the sizzle, sputter,
odor of frying ham and eggs, mingled with the early chorus of the birds,
and calling to life of all living creatures, like an intrusion upon
nature. It seemed not right to steal the morning’s “quiet hour” thus
rudely. The thought flitted through the girl’s mind, and in an instant
more the whole panorama of the day’s excitement was before her, and she
sprang from her bed. As if it had been her own wedding day instead of her
sister’s, she performed her dainty toilet, for though there was need for
haste, she knew she would have no further time beyond a moment to slip on
her best gown and smooth her hair.
Marcia hurried downstairs just as the bell rang for breakfast, and David,
coming down smiling behind her, patted her cheek and greeted her with,
“Well, little sister, you look as rested as if you had not done a thing
all day yesterday.”
She smiled shyly back at him, and her heart filled with pleasure over his
new name for her. It sounded pleasantly from his happy lips. She was
conscious of a gladness that he was to be so nearly related to her. She
fancied how it would seem to say to Mary Ann: “My brother-in-law says so
and so.” It would be grand to call such a man “brother.”
They were all seated at the table but Kate, and Squire Schuyler waited
with pleasantly frowning brows to ask the blessing on the morning food.
Kate was often late. She was the only member of the family who dared to be
late to breakfast, and being the bride and the centre of the occasion more
leniency was granted her this morning than ever before. Madam Schuyler
waited until every one at the table was served to ham and eggs, coffee and
bread-and-butter, and steaming griddle cakes, before she said, looking
anxiously at the tall clock: “Marcia, perhaps you better go up and see if
your sister needs any help. She ought to be down by now. Uncle Joab and
Aunt Polly will be sure to be here by eight. She must have overslept, but
we made so much noise she is surely awake by this time.”
Marcia left her half-eaten breakfast and went slowly upstairs. She knew
her sister would not welcome her, for she had often been sent on like
errands before, and the brunt of Kate’s anger had fallen upon the hapless
messenger, wearing itself out there so that she might descend all smiles
to greet father and mother and smooth off the situation in a most
harmonious manner.
Marcia paused before the door to listen. Perhaps Kate was nearly ready and
her distasteful errand need not be performed. But though she held her
breath to listen, no sound came from the closed door. Very softly she
tried to lift the latch and peep in. Kate must still be asleep. It was not
the first time Marcia had found that to be the case when sent to bring her
sister.
But the latch would not lift. The catch was firmly down from the inside.
Marcia applied her eye to the keyhole, but could get no vision save a dim
outline of the window on the other side of the room. She tapped gently
once or twice and waited again, then called softly: “Kate, Kate! Wake up.
Breakfast is ready and everybody is eating. Aunt Polly and Uncle Joab will
soon be here.”
She repeated her tapping and calling, growing louder as she received no
answer. Kate would often keep still to tease her thus. Surely though she
would not do so upon her wedding morning!
She called and called and shook the door, not daring, however, to make
much of an uproar lest David should hear. She could not bear he should
know the shortcomings of his bride.
But at last she grew alarmed. Perhaps Kate was ill. At any rate, whatever
it was, it was time she was up. She worked for some minutes trying to
loosen the catch that held the latch, but all to no purpose. She was
forced to go down stairs and whisper to her stepmother the state of the
case.
Madam Schuyler, excusing herself from the table, went upstairs, purposeful
decision in every line of her substantial body, determination in every
sound of her footfall. Bride though she be, Kate would have meted out to
her just dues this time. Company and a lover and the nearness of the
wedding hour were things not to be trifled with even by a charming Kate.
But Madam Schuyler returned in a short space of time, puffing and panting,
somewhat short of breath, and color in her face. She looked troubled, and
she interrupted the Squire without waiting for him to finish his sentence
to David.
“I cannot understand what is the matter with Kate,” she said, looking at
her husband. “She does not seem to be awake, and I cannot get her door
open. She sleeps soundly, and I suppose the unusual excitement has made
her very tired. But I should think she ought to hear my voice. Perhaps you
better see if you can open the door.”
There was studied calm in her voice, but her face belied her words. She
was anxious lest Kate was playing one of her pranks. She knew Kate’s
careless, fun-loving ways. It was more to her that all things should move
decently and in order than that Kate should even be perfectly well. But
Marcia’s white face behind her stepmother’s ample shoulder showed a dread
of something worse than a mere indisposition. David Spafford took alarm at
once. He put down the silver syrup jug from which he had been pouring
golden maple syrup on his cakes, and pushed his chair back with a click.
“Perhaps she has fainted!” he said, and Marcia saw how deeply he was
concerned. Father and lover both started up stairs, the father angry, the
lover alarmed. The Squire grumbled all the way up that Kate should sleep
so late, but David said nothing. He waited anxiously behind while the
Squire worked with the door. Madam Schuyler and Marcia had followed them,
and halting curiously just behind came the two maids. They all loved Miss
Kate and were deeply interested in the day’s doings. They did not want
anything to interfere with the well-planned pageant.
The Squire fumbled nervously with the latch, all the time calling upon his
daughter to open the door; then wrathfully placed his solid shoulder and
knee in just the right place, and with a groan and wrench the latch gave
way, and the solid oak door swung open, precipitating the anxious group
somewhat suddenly into the room.
Almost immediately they all became aware that there was no one there.
David had stood with averted eyes at first, but that second sense which
makes us aware without sight when others are near or absent, brought with
it an unnamed anxiety. He looked wildly about.
The bed had not been slept in; that they all saw at once. The room was in
confusion, but perhaps not more than might have been expected when the
occupant was about to leave on the morrow. There were pieces of paper and
string upon the floor and one or two garments lying about as if carelessly
cast off in a hurry. David recognized the purple muslin frock Kate had
worn the night before, and put out his hand to touch it as it lay across
the foot of the bed, vainly reaching after her who was not there.
They stood in silence, father, mother, sister, and lover, and took in
every detail of the deserted room, then looked blankly into one another’s
white faces, and in the eyes of each a terrible question began to dawn.
Where was she?
Madam Schuyler recovered her senses first. With her sharp practical system
she endeavored to find out the exact situation.
“Who saw her last?” she asked sharply looking from one to the other. “Who
saw her last? Has she been down stairs this morning?” she looked straight
at Marcia this time, but the girl shook her head.
“I went to bed last night before they came in,” she said, looking
questioningly at David, but a sudden remembrance and fear seized her
heart. She turned away to the window to face it where they could not look
at her.
“We came in early,” said David, trying to keep the anxiety out of his
voice, as he remembered his well-beloved’s good-night. Surely, surely,
nothing very dreadful could have happened just over night, and in her
father’s own house. He looked about again to see the natural, every-day,
little things that would help him drive away the thoughts of possible
tragedy.
“Kate was tired. She said she was going to get up very early this morning
and wash her face in the dew on the grass.” He braved a smile and looked
about on the troubled group. “She must be out somewhere upon the place,”
he continued, gathering courage with the thought; “she told me it was an
old superstition. She has maybe wandered further than she intended, and
perhaps got into some trouble. I’d better go and search for her. Is there
any place near here where she would be likely to be?” He turned to Marcia
for help.
“But Kate would never delay so long I’m sure,” said the stepmother
severely. “She’s not such a fool as to go traipsing through the wet grass
before daylight for any nonsense. If it were Marcia now, you might expect
anything, but Kate would be satisfied with the dew on the grass by the
kitchen pump. I know Kate.”
Marcia’s face crimsoned at her stepmother’s words, but she turned her
troubled eyes to David and tried to answer him.
“There are plenty of places, but Kate has never cared to go to them. I
could go out and look everywhere.” She started to go down, but as she
passed the wide mahogany bureau she saw a bit of folded paper lying under
the corner of the pincushion. With a smothered exclamation she went over
and picked it up. It was addressed to David in Kate’s handwriting, fine
and even like copperplate. Without a word Marcia handed it to him, and
then stood back where the wide draperies of the window would shadow her.
Madam Schuyler, with sudden keen prescience, took alarm. Noticing the two
maids standing wide-mouthed in the hallway, she summoned her most
commandatory tone, stepped into the hall, half closing the door behind
her, and cowed the two handmaidens under her glance.
“It is all right!” she said calmly. “Miss Kate has left a note, and will
soon return. Go down and keep her breakfast warm, and not a word to a
soul! Dolly, Debby, do you understand? Not a word of this! Now hurry and
do all that I told you before breakfast.”
They went with downcast eyes and disappointed droops to their mouths, but
she knew that not a word would pass their lips. They knew that if they
disobeyed that command they need never hope for favor more from madam.
Madam’s word was law. She would be obeyed. Therefore with remarkable
discretion they masked their wondering looks and did as they were bidden.
So while the family stood in solemn conclave in Kate’s room the
preparations for the wedding moved steadily forward below stairs, and only
two solemn maids, of all the helpers that morning, knew that a tragedy was
hovering in the air and might burst about them.
David had grasped for the letter eagerly, and fumbled it open with
trembling hand, but as he read, the smile of expectation froze upon his
lips and his face grew ashen. He tottered and grasped for the mantel shelf
to steady himself as he read further, but he did not seem to take in the
meaning of what he read. The others waited breathless, a reasonable length
of time, Madam Schuyler impatiently patient. She felt that long delay
would be perilous to her arrangements. She ought to know the whole truth
at once and be put in command of the situation. Marcia with sorrowful face
and drooping eyelashes stood quiet behind the curtain, while over and over
the echo of a horse’s hoofs in a silent street and over a bridge sounded
in her brain. She did not need to be told, she knew intuitively what had
happened, and she dared not look at David.
“Well, what has she done with herself?” said the Squire impatiently. He
had not finished his plate of cakes, and now that there was word he wanted
to know it at once and go back to his breakfast. The sight of his
daughter’s handwriting relieved and reassured him. Some crazy thing she
had done of course, but then Kate had always done queer things, and
probably would to the end of time. She was a hussy to frighten them so,
and he meant to tell her so when she returned, if it was her wedding day.
But then, Kate would be Kate, and his breakfast was getting cold. He had
the horses to look after and orders to give to the hands before the early
guests arrived.
But David did not answer, and the sight of him was alarming. He stood as
one stricken dumb all in a moment. He raised his eyes to the
Squire’s—pleading, pitiful. His face had grown strained and haggard.
“Speak out, man, doesn’t the letter tell?” said the Squire imperiously.
“Where is the girl?”
And this time David managed to say brokenly: “She’s gone!” and then his
head dropped forward on his cold hand that rested on the mantel. Great
beads of perspiration stood out upon his white forehead, and the letter
fluttered gayly, coquettishly to the floor, a reminder of the uncertain
ways of its writer.
The Squire reached for it impatiently, and wiping his spectacles
laboriously put them on and drew near to the window to read, his heavy
brows lowering in a frown. But his wife did not need to read the letter,
for she, like Marcia, had divined its purport, and already her able
faculties were marshalled to face the predicament.
The Squire with deepening frown was studying his elder daughter’s letter,
scarce able to believe the evidence of his senses that a girl of his could
be so heartless.
“DEAR DAVID,” the letter ran,—written as though in a hurry, done
at the last moment,—which indeed it was:—
“I want you to forgive me for what I am doing. I know you will
feel bad about it, but really I never was the right one for you.
I’m sure you thought me all too good, and I never could have
stayed in a strait-jacket, it would have killed me. I shall always
consider you the best man in the world, and I like you better than
anyone else except Captain Leavenworth. I can’t help it, you know,
that I care more for him than anyone else, though I’ve tried. So I
am going away to-night and when you read this we shall have been
married. You are so very good that I know you will forgive me, and
be glad I am happy. Don’t think hardly of me for I always did care
a great deal for you.
“Your loving
“KATE.”
It was characteristic of Kate that she demanded the love and loyalty of
her betrayed lover to the bitter end, false and heartless though she had
been. The coquette in her played with him even now in the midst of the
bitter pain she must have known she was inflicting. No word of contrition
spoke she, but took her deed as one of her prerogatives, just as she had
always taken everything she chose. She did not even spare him the loving
salutation that had been her custom in her letters to him, but wrote
herself down as she would have done the day before when all was fair and
dear between them. She did not hint at any better day for David, or give
him permission to forget her, but held him for all time as her own, as she
had known she would by those words of hers, “I like you better than anyone
else except!—” Ah! That fatal “except!” Could any knife cut deeper and
more ways? They sank into the young man’s heart as he stood there those
first few minutes and faced his trouble, his head bowed upon the
mantel-piece.
Meantime Madam Schuyler’s keen vision had spied another folded paper
beside the pincushion. Smaller it was than the other, and evidently
intended to be placed further out of sight. It was addressed to Kate’s
father, and her stepmother opened it and read with hard pressure of her
thin lips, slanted down at the corners, and a steely look in her eyes. Was
it possible that the girl, even in the midst of her treachery, had enjoyed
with a sort of malicious glee the thought of her stepmother reading that
note and facing the horror of a wedding party with no bride? Knowing her
stepmother’s vast resources did she not think that at last she had brought
her to a situation to which she was unequal? There had always been this
unseen, unspoken struggle for supremacy between them; though it had been a
friendly one, a sort of testing on the girl’s part of the powers and
expedients of the woman, with a kind of vast admiration, mingled with
amusement, but no fear for the stepmother who had been uniformly kind and
loving toward her, and for whom she cared, perhaps as much as she could
have cared for her own mother. The other note read:
“DEAR FATHER:—I am going away to-night to marry Captain
Leavenworth. You wouldn’t let me have him in the right way, so I
had to take this. I tried very hard to forget him and get
interested in David, but it was no use. You couldn’t stop it. So
now I hope you will see it the way we do and forgive us. We are
going to Washington and you can write us there and say you forgive
us, and then we will come home. I know you will forgive us, Daddy
dear. You know you always loved your little Kate and you couldn’t
really want me to be unhappy. Please send my trunks to Washington.
I’ve tacked the card with the address on the ends.
“Your loving little girl,
“KATE.”
There was a terrible stillness in the room, broken only by the crackling
of paper as the notes were turned in the hands of their readers. Marcia
felt as if centuries were passing. David’s soul was pierced by one awful
thought. He had no room for others. She was gone! Life was a blank for
him! stretching out into interminable years. Of her treachery and
false-heartedness in doing what she had done in the way she had done it,
he had no time to take account. That would come later. Now he was trying
to understand this one awful fact.
Madam Schuyler handed the second note to her husband, and with set lips
quickly skimmed through the other one. As she read, indignation rose
within her, and a great desire to outwit everybody. If it had been
possible to bring the erring girl back and make her face her disgraced
wedding alone, Madam Schuyler would have been glad to do it. She knew that
upon her would likely rest all the re-arrangements, and her ready brain
was already taking account of her servants and the number of messages that
would have to be sent out to stop the guests from arriving. She waited
impatiently for her husband to finish reading that she might consult with
him as to the best message to send, but she was scarcely prepared for the
burst of anger that came with the finish of the letters. The old man
crushed his daughter’s note in his hand and flung it from him. He had
great respect and love for David, and the sight of him broken in grief,
the deed of his daughter, roused in him a mighty indignation. His voice
shook, but there was a deep note of command in it that made Madam Schuyler
step aside and wait. The Squire had arisen to the situation, and she
recognized her lord and master.
“She must be brought back at once at all costs!” he exclaimed. “That
rascal shall not outwit us. Fool that I was to trust him in the house!
Tell the men to saddle the horses. They cannot have gone far yet, and
there are not so many roads to Washington. We may yet overtake them, and
married or unmarried the hussy shall be here for her wedding!”
But David raised his head from the mantel-shelf and steadied his voice:
“No, no, you must not do that—father—” the appellative came from his lips
almost tenderly, as if he had long considered the use of it with pleasure,
and now he spoke it as a tender bond meant to comfort.
The older man started and his face softened. A flash of understanding and
love passed between the two men.
“Remember, she has said she loves some one else. She could never be mine
now.”
There was terrible sadness in the words as David spoke them, and his voice
broke. Madam Schuyler turned away and took out her handkerchief, an
article of apparel for which she seldom had use except as it belonged to
every well ordered toilet.
The father stood looking hopelessly at David and taking in the thought.
Then he too bowed his head and groaned.
“And my daughter, _my little Kate_ has done it!” Marcia covered her face
with the curtains and her tears fell fast.
David went and stood beside the Squire and touched his arm.
“Don’t!” he said pleadingly. “You could not help it. It was not your
fault. Do not take it so to heart!”
“But it is my disgrace. I have brought up a child who could do it. I
cannot escape from that. It is the most dishonorable thing a woman can do.
And look how she has done it, brought shame upon us all! Here we have a
wedding on our hands, and little or no time to do anything! I have lived
in honor all my life, and now to be disgraced by my own daughter!”
Marcia shuddered at her father’s agony. She could not bear it longer. With
a soft cry she went to him, and nestled her head against his breast
unnoticed.
“Father, father, don’t!” she cried.
But her father went on without seeming to see her.
“To be disgraced and deserted and dishonored by my own child! Something
must be done. Send the servants! Let the wedding be stopped!”
He looked at Madam and she started toward the door to carry out his
bidding, but he recalled her immediately.
“No, stay!” he cried. “It is too late to stop them all. Let them come. Let
them be told! Let the disgrace rest upon the one to whom it belongs!”
Madam stopped in consternation! A wedding without a bride! Yet she knew it
was a serious thing to try to dispute with her husband in that mood. She
paused to consider.
“Oh, father!” exclaimed Marcia, “we couldn’t! Think of David.”
Her words seemed to touch the right chord, for he turned toward the young
man, intense, tender pity in his face.
“Yes, David! We are forgetting David! We must do all we can to make it
easier for you. You will be wanting to get away from us as quickly as
possible. How can we manage it for you? And where will you go? You will
not want to go home just yet?”
He paused, a new agony of the knowledge of David’s part coming to him.
“No, I cannot go home,” said David hopelessly, a look of keen pain darting
across his face, “for the house will be all ready for her, and the table
set. The friends will be coming in, and we are invited to dinner and tea
everywhere. They will all be coming to the house, my friends, to welcome
us. No, I cannot go home.” Then he passed his hand over his forehead
blindly, and added, in a stupefied tone, “and yet I must—sometime—I
must—go—home!”