The room was very still as he spoke. Madam Schuyler forgot the coming
guests and the preparations, in consternation over the thought of David
and his sorrow. Marcia sobbed softly upon her father’s breast, and her
father involuntarily placed his arm about her as he stood in painful
thought.
“It is terrible!” he murmured, “terrible! How could she bear to inflict
such sorrow! She might have saved us the scorn of all of our friends.
David, you must not go back alone. It must not be. You must not bear that.
There are lovely girls in plenty elsewhere. Find another one and marry
her. Take your bride home with you, and no one in your home need be the
wiser. Don’t sorrow for that cruel girl of mine. Give her not the
satisfaction of feeling that your life is broken. Take another. Any girl
might be proud to go with you for the asking. Had I a dozen other
daughters you should have your pick of them, and one should go with you,
if you would condescend to choose another from the home where you have
been so treacherously dealt with. But I have only this one little girl.
She is but a child as yet and cannot compare with what you thought you
had. I blame you not if you do not wish to wed another Schuyler, but if
you will she is yours. And she is a good girl. David, though she is but a
child. Speak up, child, and say if you will make amends for the wrong your
sister has done!”
The room was so still one could almost hear the heartbeats. David had
raised his head once more and was looking at Marcia. Sad and searching was
his gaze, as if he fain would find the features of Kate in her face, yet
it seemed to Marcia, as she raised wide tear-filled eyes from her father’s
breast where her head still lay, that he saw her not. He was looking
beyond her and facing the home-going alone, and the empty life that would
follow.
Her thoughts the last few days had matured her wonderfully. She understood
and pitied, and her woman-nature longed to give comfort, yet she shrunk
from going unasked. It was all terrible, this sudden situation thrust upon
her, yet she felt a willing sacrifice if she but felt sure it was his
wish.
But David did not seem to know that he must speak. He waited, looking
earnestly at her, through her, beyond her, to see if Heaven would grant
this small relief to his sufferings. At last Marcia summoned her voice:
“If David wishes I will go.”
She spoke the words solemnly, her eyes lifted slightly above him as if she
were speaking to Another One higher than he. It was like an answer to a
call from God. It had come to Marcia this way. It seemed to leave her no
room for drawing back, if indeed she had wished to do so. Other
considerations were not present. There was just the one great desire in
her heart to make amends in some measure for the wrong that had been done.
She felt almost responsible for it, a family responsibility. She seemed to
feel the shame and pain as her father was feeling it. She would step into
the empty place that Kate had left and fill it as far as she could. Her
only fear was that she was not acceptable, not worthy to fill so high a
place. She trembled over it, yet she could not hold back from the high
calling. It was so she stood in a kind of sorrowful exaltation waiting for
David. Her eyes lowered again, looking at him through the lashes and
pleading for recognition. She did not feel that she was pleading for
anything for herself, only for the chance to help him.
Her voice had broken the spell. David looked down upon her kindly, a
pleasant light of gratitude flashing through the sternness and sorrow in
his face. Here was comradeship in trouble, and his voice recognized it as
he said:
“Child, you are good to me, and I thank you. I will try to make you happy
if you will go with me, and I am sure your going will be a comfort in many
ways, but I would not have you go unwillingly.”
There was a dull ache in Marcia’s heart, its cause she could not
understand, but she was conscious of a gladness that she was not counted
unworthy to be accepted, young though she was, and child though he called
her. His tone had been kindness itself, the gentle kindliness that had won
her childish sisterly love when first he began to visit her sister. She
had that answer of his to remember for many a long day, and to live upon,
when questionings and loneliness came upon her. But she raised her face to
her father now, and said: “I will go, father!”
The Squire stooped and kissed his little girl for the last time. Perhaps
he realized that from this time forth she would be a little girl no
longer, and that he would never look into those child-eyes of hers again,
unclouded with the sorrows of life, and filled only with the
wonder-pictures of a rosy future. She seemed to him and to herself to be
renouncing her own life forever, and to be taking up one of sacrificial
penitence for her sister’s wrong doing.
The father then took Marcia’s hand and placed it in David’s, and the
betrothal was complete.
Madam Schuyler, whose reign for the time was set aside, stood silent, half
disapproving, yet not interfering. Her conscience told her that this
wholesale disposal of Marcia was against nature. The new arrangement was a
relief to her in many ways, and would make the solution of the day less
trying for every one. But she was a woman and knew a woman’s heart. Marcia
was not having her chance in life as her sister had had, as every woman
had a right to have. Then her face hardened. How had Kate used her
chances? Perhaps it was better for Marcia to be well placed in life before
she grew headstrong enough to make a fool of herself as Kate had done.
David would be good to her, that was certain. One could not look at the
strong, pleasant lines of his well cut mouth and chin and not be sure of
that. Perhaps it was all for the best. At least it was not her doing. And
it was only the night before that she had been looking at Marcia and
worrying because she was growing into a woman so fast. Now she would be
relieved of that care, and could take her ease and enjoy life until her
own children were grown up. But the voice of her husband aroused her to
the present.
“Let the wedding go on as planned, Sarah, and no one need know until the
ceremony is over except the minister. I myself will go and tell the
minister. There will need to be but a change of names.”
“But,” said the Madam, with housewifely alarm, as the suddenness of the
whole thing flashed over her, “Marcia is not ready. She has no suitable
clothes for her wedding.”
“Not ready! No clothes!” said the Squire, now thoroughly irritated over
this trivial objection, as a fly will sometimes ruffle the temper of a man
who has kept calm under fire of an enemy. “And where are all the clothes
that have been making these weeks and months past? What more preparation
does she need? Did the hussy take her wedding things with her? What’s in
this trunk?”
“But those are Kate’s things, father,” said Marcia in gentle explanation.
“Kate would be very angry if I took her things. They were made for her,
you know.”
“And what if they were made for her?” answered the father, very angry now
at Kate. “You are near of a size. What will do for one is good enough for
the other, and Kate may be angry and get over it, for not one rag of it
all will she get, nor a penny of my money will ever go to her again. She
is no daughter of mine from henceforth. That rascal has beaten me and
stolen my daughter, but he gets a dowerless lass. Not a penny will ever go
from the Schuyler estate into his pocket, and no trunk will ever travel
from here to Washington for that heartless girl. I forbid it. Let her feel
some of the sorrow she has inflicted upon others more innocent. I forbid
it, do you hear?” He brought his fist down upon the solid mahogany bureau
until the prisms on a candle-stand in front of the mirror jangled
discordantly.
“Oh, father!” gasped Marcia, and turned with terror to her stepmother. But
David stood with his back toward the rest looking out of the window. He
had forgotten them all.
Madam Schuyler was now in command again. For once the Squire had
anticipated his wife, and the next move had been planned without her help,
but it was as she would have it. Her face had lost its consternation and
beamed with satisfaction beneath its mask of grave perplexity. She could
not help it that she was glad to have the terrible ordeal of a wedding
without a bride changed into something less formidable.
At least the country round about could not pity, for who was to say but
that David was as well suited with one sister as with the other? And
Marcia was a good girl; doubtless she would grow into a good wife. Far
more suitable for so good and steady a man as David than pretty, imperious
Kate.
Madam Schuyler took her place of command once more and began to issue her
orders.
“Come, then, Marcia, we have no time to waste. It is all right, as your
father has said. Kate’s things will fit you nicely and you must go at once
and put everything in readiness. You will want all your time to dress, and
pack a few things, and get calm. Go to your room right away and pick up
anything you will want to take with you, and I’ll go down and see that
Phoebe takes your place and then come back.”
David and the Squire went out like two men who had suddenly grown old, and
had not the strength to walk rapidly. No one thought any more of
breakfast. It was half-past seven by the old tall clock that stood upon
the stair-landing. It would not be long before Aunt Polly and Uncle Joab
would be driving up to the door.
Straight ahead went the preparations, just as if nothing had happened, and
if Mistress Kate Leavenworth could have looked into her old room an hour
after the discovery of her flight she would have been astonished beyond
measure.
Up in her own room stood poor bewildered Marcia. She looked about upon her
little white bed, and thought she would never likely sleep in it again.
She looked out of the small-paned window with its view of distant hill and
river, and thought she was bidding it good-bye forever. She went toward
her closet and put out her hand to choose what she would take with her,
and her heart sank. There hung the faded old ginghams short and scant, and
scorned but yesterday, yet her heart wildly clung to them. Almost would
she have put one on and gone back to her happy care-free school life. The
thought of the new life frightened her. She must give up her girlhood all
at once. She might not keep a vestige of it, for that would betray David.
She must be Kate from morning to evening. Like a sword thrust came the
remembrance that she had envied Kate, and God had given her the punishment
of being Kate in very truth. Only there was this great difference. She was
not the chosen one, and Kate had been. She must bear about forever in her
heart the thought of Kate’s sin.
The voice of her stepmother drew nearer and warned her that her time alone
was almost over, and out on the lawn she could hear the voices of Uncle
Joab and Aunt Polly who had just arrived.
She dropped upon her knees for one brief moment and let her young soul
pour itself out in one great cry of distress to God, a cry without words
borne only on the breath of a sob. Then she arose, hastily dashed cold
water in her face, and dried away the traces of tears. There was no more
time to think. With hurried hand she began to gather a few trifles
together from closet and drawer.
One last lingering look she took about her room as she left it, her arms
filled with the things she had hastily culled from among her own. Then she
shut the door quickly and went down the hall to her sister’s room to enter
upon her new life. She was literally putting off herself and putting on a
new being as far as it was possible to do so outwardly.
There on the bed lay the bridal outfit. Madam Schuyler had just brought it
from the spare room that there might be no more going back and forth
through the halls to excite suspicion. She was determined that there
should be no excitement or demonstration or opportunity for gossip among
the guests at least until the ceremony was over. She had satisfied herself
that not a soul outside the family save the two maids suspected that aught
was the matter, and she felt sure of their silence.
Kate had taken very little with her, evidently fearing to excite
suspicion, and having no doubt that her father would relent and send all
her trousseau as she had requested in her letter. For once Mistress Kate
had forgotten her fineries and made good her escape with but two frocks
and a few other necessaries in a small hand-bag.
Madam Schuyler was relieved to the point of genuine cheerfulness, over
this, despite the cloud of tragedy that hung over the day. She began to
talk to Marcia as if she had been Kate, as she smoothed down this and that
article and laid them back in the trunk, telling how the blue gown would
be the best for church and the green silk for going out to very fine
places, to tea-drinkings and the like, and how she must always be sure to
wear the cream undersleeves with the Irish point lace with her silk gown
as they set it off to perfection. She recalled, too, how little experience
Marcia had had in the ways of the world, and all the while the girl was
being dressed in the dainty bridal garments she gave her careful
instructions in the art of being a success in society, until Marcia felt
that the green fields and the fences and trees to climb and the excursions
after blackberries, and all the joyful merry-makings of the boys and girls
were receding far from her. She could even welcome Hanford Weston as a
playfellow in her new future, if thereby a little fresh air and freedom of
her girlhood might be left. Nevertheless there gradually came over her an
elation of excitement. The feel of the dainty garments, the delicate
embroidery, the excitement lest the white slippers would not fit her, the
difficulty of making her hair stay up in just Kate’s style—for her
stepmother insisted that she must dress it exactly like Kate’s and make
herself look as nearly as possible as Kate would have looked,—all drove
sadness from her mind and she began to taste a little delight in the
pretty clothes, the great occasion, and her own importance. The vision in
the looking-glass, too, told her that her own face was winsome, and the
new array not unbecoming. Something of this she had seen the night before
when she put on her new chintz; now the change was complete, as she stood
in the white satin and lace with the string of seed pearls that had been
her mother’s tied about her soft white throat. She thought about the
tradition of the pearls that Kate’s girl friends had laughingly reminded
her of a few days before when they were looking at the bridal garments.
They had said that each pearl a bride wore meant a tear she would shed.
She wondered if Kate had escaped the tears with the pearls, and left them
for her.
She was ready at last, even to the veil that had been her mother’s, and
her mother’s mother’s before her. It fell in its rich folds, yellowed by
age, from her head to her feet, with its creamy frost-work of rarest
handiwork, transforming the girl into a woman and a bride.
Madam Schuyler arranged and rearranged the folds, and finally stood back
to look with half-closed eyes at the effect, deciding that very few would
notice that the bride was other than they had expected until the ceremony
was over and the veil thrown back. The sisters had never looked alike, yet
there was a general family resemblance that was now accentuated by the
dress; perhaps only those nearest would notice that it was Marcia instead
of Kate. At least the guests would have the good grace to keep their
wonderment to themselves until the ceremony was over.
Then Marcia was left to herself with trembling hands and wildly throbbing
heart. What would Mary Ann think! What would all the girls and boys think?
Some of them would be there, and others would be standing along the shady
streets to watch the progress of the carriage as it drove away. And they
would see her going away instead of Kate. Perhaps they would think it all
a great joke and that she had been going to be married all the time and
not Kate. But no; the truth would soon come out. People would not be
astonished at anything Kate did. They would only say it was just what they
had all along expected of her, and pity her father, and pity her perhaps.
But they would look at her and admire her and for once she would be the
centre of attraction. The pink of pride swelled up into her cheeks, and
then realizing what she was thinking she crushed the feeling down. How
could she think of such things when Kate had done such a dreadful thing,
and David was suffering so terribly? Here was she actually enjoying, and
delighting in the thought of being in Kate’s place. Oh, she was wicked,
wicked! She must not be happy for a moment in what was Kate’s shame and
David’s sorrow. Of her future with David she did not now think. It was of
the pageant of the day that her thoughts were full. If the days and weeks
and months that were to follow came into her mind at all between the other
things it was always that she was to care for David and to help him, and
that she would have to grow up quickly; and remember all the hard
housewifely things her stepmother had taught her; and try to order his
house well. But that troubled her not at all at present. She was more
concerned with the ceremony, and the many eyes that would be turned upon
her. It was a relief when a tap came on the door and the dear old minister
entered.