Hannah Heath’s wedding day dawned bright enough for a less calculating
bride.
David did not get home until half past three. He had been obliged to drive
out to the starting place of the new railroad, near Albany, where it was
important that he get a few points correctly. On the morrow was to be the
initial trip, by the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, of the first train drawn
by a steam engine in the state of New York.
His article about it, bargained for by a New York paper, must be on its
way by special post as soon after the starting of the train as possible.
He must have all items accurate; technicalities of preparation;
description of engine and coaches; details of arrangements, etc.; before
he added the final paragraphs describing the actual start of the train.
His article was practically done now, save for these few items. He had
started early that morning on his long drive, and, being detained longer
than he had expected, arrived at home with barely time to put himself into
wedding garments, and hasten in at the last moment with Marcia who stood
quietly waiting for him in the front hall. They were the last guests to
arrive. It was time for the ceremony, but the bride, true to her nature to
the last, still kept Lemuel waiting; and Lemuel, true to the end, stood
smiling and patient awaiting her pleasure.
David and Marcia entered the wide parlor and shook hands here and there
with those assembled, though for the most part a hushed air pervaded the
room, as it always does when something is about to happen.
Soon after their arrival some one in purple silk came down the stairs and
seated herself in a vacant chair close to where the bride was to stand.
She had gold hair and eyes like forget-me-nots. She was directly opposite
to David and Marcia. David was engrossed in a whispered conversation with
Mr. Brentwood about the events of the morrow, and did not notice her
entrance, though she paused in the doorway and searched him directly from
amongst the company before she took her seat. Marcia, who was talking with
Rose Brentwood, caught the vision of purple and gold and turned to face
for one brief instant the scornful, half-merry glance of her sister. The
blood in her face fled back to her heart and left it white.
Then Marcia summoned all her courage and braced herself to face what was
to come. She forced herself to smile in answer to Rose Brentwood’s
question. But all the while she was trying to understand what it was in
her sister’s look that had hurt her so. It was not the anger,—for that she
was prepared. It was not the scorn, for she had often faced that. Was it
the almost merriment? Yes, there was the sting. She had felt it so keenly
when as a little girl Kate had taken to making fun of some whim of hers.
She could not see why Kate should find cause for fun just now. It was as
if she by her look ignored Marcia’s relation to David in scornful laugh
and appropriated him herself. Marcia’s inmost soul rebelled. The color
came back as if by force of her will. She would show Kate,—or she would
show David at least,—that she could bear all things for him. She would
play well her part of wife this day. The happy two months that had passed
since David came back from New York had made her almost feel as if she was
really his and he hers. For this hour she would forget that it was
otherwise. She would look at him and speak to him as if he had been her
husband for years, as if there were the truest understanding between
them,—as indeed, of a certain wistful, pleasant sort there was. She would
not let the dreadful thought of Kate cloud her face for others to see.
Bravely she faced the company, but her heart under Kate’s blue frock sent
up a swift and pleading prayer demanding of a higher Power something she
knew she had not in herself, and must therefore find in Him who had
created her. It was the most trustful, and needy prayer that Marcia ever
uttered and yet there were no words, not even the closing of an eyelid.
Only her heart took the attitude of prayer.
The door upstairs opened in a business-like way, and Hannah’s composed
voice was heard giving a direction. Hannah’s silken tread began to be
audible. Miranda told Marcia afterward that she kept her standing at the
window for an hour beforehand to see when David arrived, and when they
started over to the house. Hannah kept herself posted on what was going on
in the room below as well as if she were down there. She knew where David
and Marcia stood, and told Kate exactly where to go. It was like Hannah
that in the moment of her sacrifice of the long cherished hopes of her
life she should have planned a dramatic revenge to help carry her through.
The bride’s rustle became at last so audible that even David and Mr.
Brentwood heard and turned from their absorbing conversation to the
business in hand.
Hannah was in the doorway when David looked up, very cold and beautiful in
her bridal array despite the years she had waited, and almost at once
David saw the vision in purple and gold like a saucy pansy, standing near
her.
Kate’s eyes were fixed upon him with their most bewitching, dancing smile
of recognition, like a naughty little child who had been in hiding for a
time and now peeps out laughing over the discomfiture of its elders. So
Kate encountered the steadfast gaze of David’s astonished eyes.
But there was no light of love in those eyes as she had expected to see.
Instead there grew in his face such a blaze of righteous indignation as
the lord of the wedding feast might have turned upon the person who came
in without a wedding garment. In spite of herself Kate was disconcerted.
She was astonished. She felt that David was challenging her presence
there. It seemed to her he was looking through her, searching her, judging
her, sentencing her, and casting her out, and presently his eyes wandered
beyond her through the open hall door and out into God’s green world; and
when they came back and next rested upon her his look had frozen into the
glance of a stranger.
Angry, ashamed, baffled, she bit her lips in vexation, but tried to keep
the merry smile. In her heart she hated him, and vowed to make him bow
before her smiles once more.
David did not see the bride at all to notice her, but the bride, unlike
the one of the psalmist’s vision whose eyes were upon “her dear
bridegroom’s face,” was looking straight across the room with evident
intent to observe David.
The ceremony proceeded, and Hannah went through her part correctly and
calmly, aware that she was giving herself to Lemuel Skinner irrevocably,
yet perfectly aware also of the discomfiture of the sweet-faced girl-wife
who sat across the room bravely watching the ceremony with white cheeks
and eyes that shone like righteous lights.
Marcia did not look at David. She was with him in heart, suffering with
him, feeling for him, quivering in every nerve for what he might be
enduring. She had no need to look. Her part was to ignore, and help to
cover.
They went through it all well. Not once did Aunt Amelia or Aunt Hortense
notice anything strange in the demeanor of their nephew or his wife. Aunt
Clarinda was not there. She was not fond of Hannah.
As soon as the service was over and the relatives had broken the solemn
hush by kissing the bride, David turned and spoke to Rose Brentwood,
making some smiling remark about the occasion. Rose Brentwood was looking
her very prettiest in a rose-sprigged delaine and her wavy dark hair in a
beaded net tied round with a rose-colored lute-string ribbon.
Kate flushed angrily at this. If it had been Marcia to whom he had spoken
she would have judged he did it out of pique, but a pretty stranger coming
upon the scene at this critical moment was trying. And then, too, David’s
manner was so indifferent, so utterly natural. He did not seem in the
least troubled by the sight of herself.
David and Marcia did not go up to speak to the bride at once. David
stepped back into the deep window seat to talk with Mr. Brentwood, and
seemed to be in no hurry to follow the procession who were filing past the
calm bride to congratulate her. Marcia remained quietly talking to Rose
Brentwood.
At last David turned toward his wife with a smile as though he had known
she was there all the time, and had felt her sympathy. Her heart leaped up
with new strength at that look, and her husband’s firm touch as he drew
her hand within his arm to lead her over to the bride gave her courage.
She felt that she could face the battle, and with a bright smile that lit
up her whole lovely face she marched bravely to the front to do or to die.
“I had about given up expecting any congratulations from you,” said Hannah
sharply as they came near. It was quite evident she had been watching for
them.
“I wish you much joy, Mrs. Skinner,” said David mechanically, scarcely
feeling that she would have it for he knew her unhappy, dissatisfied
nature.
“Yes,” said Marcia, “I wish you may be happy,—as happy as I am!”
It was an impetuous, childish thing to say, and Marcia scarcely realized
what words she meant to speak until they were out, and then she blushed
rosy red. Was she happy? Why was she happy? Yes, even in the present
trying circumstances she suddenly felt a great deep happiness bubbling up
in her heart. Was it David’s look and his strong arm under her hand?
Hannah darted a look at her. She was stung by the words. But did the
girl-bride before her mean to flaunt her own triumphs in her face? Did she
fully understand? Or was she trying to act a part and make them believe
she was happy? Hannah was baffled once more as she had been before with
Marcia.
Kate turned upon Marcia for one piercing instant again, that look of
understanding, mocking merriment, which cut through the soul of her
sister.
But did Marcia imagine it, or was it true that at her words to Hannah,
David’s arm had pressed hers closer as they stood there in the crowd? The
thought thrilled through her and gave her greater strength.
Hannah turned toward Kate.
“David,” she said, as she had always called him, and it is possible that
she enjoyed the triumph of this touch of intimacy before her guest, “you
knew my friend Mrs. Leavenworth!”
David bowed gravely, but did not attempt to put out his hand to take the
one which Kate offered in greeting. Instead he laid it over Marcia’s
little trembling one on his arm as if to steady it.
“We have met before,” said David briefly in an impenetrable tone, and
turning passed out of the room to make way for the Brentwoods who were
behind him.
Hannah scarcely treated the Brentwoods with decency, so vexed was she with
the way things were turning out. To think that David should so completely
baffle her. She turned an annoyed look at Kate, who flashed her blue eyes
contemptuously as if to blame Hannah.
Soon the whole little gathering were in the dining-room and wide hall
being served with Grandmother Heath’s fried chicken and currant jelly,
delicate soda biscuits, and fruit cake baked months before and left to
ripen.
The ordeal through which they were passing made David and Marcia feel, as
they sat down, that they would not be able to swallow a mouthful, but
strangely enough they found themselves eating with relish, each to
encourage the other perhaps, but almost enjoying it, and feeling that they
had not yet met more than they would be able to withstand.
Kate was seated on the other side of the dining-room, by Hannah, and she
watched the two incessantly with that half merry contemptuous look, toying
with her own food, and apparently waiting for their acting to cease and
David to put on his true character. She never doubted for an instant that
they were acting.
The wedding supper was over at last. The guests crowded out to the front
stoop to bid good-bye to the happy bridegroom and cross-looking bride, who
seemed as if she left the gala scene reluctantly.
Marcia, for the instant, was separated from David, who stepped down upon
the grass and stood to one side to let the bridal party pass. The minister
was at the other side. Marcia had slipped into the shelter of Aunt
Amelia’s black silk presence and wished she might run out the back door
and away home.
Suddenly a shimmer of gold with the sunlight through it caught her gaze,
and a glimpse of sheeny purple. There, close behind David, standing upon
the top step, quite unseen by him, stood her sister Kate.
Marcia’s heart gave a quick thump and seemed to stop, then went painfully
laboring on. She stood quite still watching for the moment to come when
David would turn around and see Kate that she might look into his face and
read there what was written.
Hannah had been put carefully into the carriage by the adoring Lemuel,
with many a pat, and a shaking of cushions, and an adjustment of curtains
to suit her whim. It pleased Hannah, now in her last lingering moment of
freedom, to be exacting and show others what a slave her husband was.
They all stood for an instant looking after the carriage, but Marcia
watched David. Then, just as the carriage wound around the curve in the
road and was lost from view, she saw him turn, and at once knew she must
not see his face as he looked at Kate. Closing her eyes like a flash she
turned and fled upstairs to get her shawl and bonnet. There she took
refuge behind the great white curtains, and hid her face for several
minutes, praying wildly, she hardly knew what, thankful she had been kept
from the sight which yet she had longed to behold.
As David turned to go up the steps and search for Marcia he was confronted
by Kate’s beautiful, smiling face, radiant as it used to be when it had
first charmed him. He exulted, as he looked into it, that it did not any
longer charm.
“David, you don’t seem a bit glad to see me,” blamed Kate sweetly in her
pretty, childish tones, looking into his face with those blue eyes so like
to liquid skies. Almost there was a hint of tears in them. He had been
wont to kiss them when she looked like that. Now he felt only disgust as
some of the flippant sentences in her letters to Harry Temple came to his
mind.
His face was stern and unrecognizing.
“David, you are angry with me yet! You said you would forgive!” The gentle
reproach minimized the crime, and enlarged the punishment. It was Kate’s
way. The pretty pout on the rosy lips was the same as it used to be when
she chided him for some trifling forgetfulness of her wishes.
The other guests had all gone into the house now. David made no response,
but, nothing daunted, Kate spoke again.
“I have something very important to consult you about. I came here on
purpose. Can you give me some time to-morrow morning?”
She wrinkled her pretty face into a thousand dimples and looked her most
bewitching like a naughty child who knew she was loved in spite of
anything, and coquettishly putting her head on one side, added, in the
tone she used of old to cajole him:
“You know you never could refuse me anything, David.”
David did not smile. He did not answer the look. With a voice that
recognized her only as a stranger he said gravely:
“I have an important engagement to-morrow morning.”
“But you will put off the engagement.” She said it confidently.
“It is impossible!” said David decidedly. “I am starting quite early to
drive over to Albany. I am under obligation to be present at the starting
of the new steam railroad.”
“Oh, how nice!” said Kate, clapping her hands childishly, “I have wanted
to be there, and now you will take me. Then I—we—can talk on the way. How
like old times that will be!” She flashed him a smile of molten sunshine,
alluring and transforming.
“That, too, is impossible, Mrs. Leavenworth. My wife accompanies me!” he
answered her promptly and clearly and with a curt bow left her and went
into the house.
Kate Leavenworth was angry, and for Kate to be angry, meant to visit it
upon some one, the offender if possible, if not the nearest to the
offender. She had failed utterly in her attempt to win back the friendship
of her former lover. She had hoped to enjoy his attention to a certain
extent and bathe her sad (?) heart in the wistful glances of the man she
had jilted; and incidentally perhaps be invited to spend a little time in
his house, by which she would contrive to have a good many of her own
ways. A rich brother-in-law who adored one was not a bad thing to have,
especially when his wife was one’s own little sister whom one had always
dominated. She was tired of New York and at this season of the year the
country was much preferable. She could thus contrive to hoard her small
income, and save for the next winter, as well as secure a possible
entrance finally into her father’s good graces again through the
forgiveness of David and Marcia. But she had failed. Could it be that he
cared for Marcia! That child! Scout the idea! She would discover at once.
Hurriedly she searched through the rooms downstairs and then went
stealthily upstairs. Instinctively she went to the room where Marcia had
hidden herself.
Marcia, with that strong upward breath of prayer had grown steady again.
She was standing with her back to the door looking out of the window
toward her own home when Kate entered the room. Without turning about she
felt Kate’s presence and knew that it was she. The moment had come. She
turned around, her face calm and sweet, with two red spots upon her
cheeks, and her bonnet,—Kate’s bonnet and shawl, Kate’s fine lace shawl
sent from Paris—grasped in her hands.
They faced each other, the sisters, and much was understood between them
in a flash without a word spoken. Marcia suddenly saw herself standing
there in Kate’s rightful place, Kate’s things in her hands, Kate’s
garments upon her body, Kate’s husband held by her. It was as if Kate
charged her with all these things, as she looked her through and over,
from her slipper tips to the ruffle around the neck. And oh, the scorn
that flamed from Kate’s eyes playing over her, and scorching her cheeks
into crimson, and burning her lips dry and stiff! And yet when Kate’s eyes
reached her face and charged her with the supreme offense of taking David
from her, Marcia’s eyes looked bravely back, and were not burned by the
fire, and she felt that her soul was not even scorched by it. Something
about the thought of David like an angelic presence seemed to save her.
The silence between them was so intense that nothing else could be heard
by the two. The voices below were drowned by it, the footstep on the stair
was as if it were not.
At last Kate spoke, angered still more by her sister’s soft eyes which
gazed steadily back and did not droop before her own flashing onslaught.
Her voice was cold and cruel. There was nothing sisterly in it, nothing to
remind either that the other had ever been beloved.
“Fool!” hissed Kate. “Silly fool! Did you think you could steal a husband
as you stole your clothes? Did you suppose marrying David would make him
yours, as putting on my clothes seemed to make them yours? Well I can tell
you he will never be a husband to you. He doesn’t love you and he never
can. He will always love me. He’s as much mine as if I had married him, in
spite of all your attempts to take him. Oh, you needn’t put up your baby
mouth and pucker it as if you were going to cry. Cry away. It won’t do any
good. You can’t make a man yours, any more than you can make somebody’s
clothes yours. They don’t fit you any more than he does. You look horrid
in blue, and you know it, in spite of all your prinking around and
pretending. I’d be ashamed to be tricked out that way and know that every
dud I had was made for somebody else. As for going around and pretending
you have a husband—it’s a lie. You know he’s nothing to you. You know he
never told you he cared for you. I tell you he’s mine, and he always will
be.”
“Kate, you’re married!” cried Marcia in shocked tones. “How can you talk
like that?”
“Married! Nonsense! What difference does that make? It’s hearts that
count, not marriages. Has your marriage made you a wife? Answer me that!
Has it? Does David love you? Does he ever kiss you? Yet he came to see me
in New York this winter, and took me in his arms and kissed me. He gave me
money too. See this brooch?”—she exhibited a jeweled pin—“that was bought
with his money. You see he loves me still. I could bring him to my feet
with a word to-day. He would kiss me if I asked him. He is weak as water
in my hands.”
Marcia’s cheeks burned with shame and anger. Almost she felt at the limit
of her strength. For the first time in her life she felt like
striking,—striking her own sister. Horrified over her feelings, and the
rage which was tearing her soul, she looked up, and there stood David in
the doorway, like some tall avenging angel!
Kate had her back that way and did not see at once, but Marcia’s eyes
rested on him hungrily, pleadingly, and his answered hers. From her sudden
calmness Kate saw there was some one near, and turning, looked at David.
But he did not glance her way. How much or how little he had heard of
Kate’s tirade, which in her passion had been keyed in a high voice, he
never let them know and neither dared to ask him, lest perhaps he had not
heard anything. There was a light of steel in his eyes toward everything
but Marcia, and his tone had in it kindness and a recognition of mutual
understanding as he said:
“If you are ready we had better go now, dear, had we not?”
Oh how gladly Marcia followed her husband down the stairs and out the
door! She scarcely knew how she went through the formalities of getting
away. It seemed as she looked back upon them that David had sheltered her
from it all, and said everything needful for her, and all she had done was
to smile an assent. He talked calmly to her all the way home; told her Mr.
Brentwood’s opinion about the change in the commerce of the country the
new railroad was going to make; told her though he must have known she
could not listen. Perhaps both were conscious of the bedroom window over
the way and a pair of blue eyes that might be watching them as they passed
into the house. David took hold of her arm and helped her up the steps of
their own home as if she had been some great lady. Marcia wondered if Kate
saw that. In her heart she blessed David for this outward sign of their
relationship. It gave her shame a little cover at least. She glanced up
toward the next house as she passed in and felt sure she saw a glimmer of
purple move away from the window. Then David shut the door behind them and
led her gently in.