So there was presently another wedding at Storm, or rather in the church
at Storm; and Kate could have sung with the Psalmist: "Now lettest thou
thy servant depart in peace according to thy ways, for mine eyes have
seen thy salvation."
Jemima, who spent as much time as her husband would spare her at Storm,
in the interval between the formal engagement and the wedding, tried
conscientiously to summon up courage to end in some way a situation that
seemed to her impossible. But her hints and innuendoes, broad as she
dared make them, had no effect upon the radiant satisfaction of her
mother, nor upon Philip himself, hedged around as he was with a sort of
calm serenity, an uplifted, detached air, which she had not sufficient
experience to recognize as the elation that goes with martyrdom.
She began to wonder if after all she had been mistaken in Philip's
feeling for her mother. He seemed quite content, even happy.
Nevertheless, there was something about him that awed Jemima a little,
made her usual frankness with him quite impossible.
With Jacqueline, however, she had no such feeling of awe, and she
watched her sister with amazed impatience. Her infatuation for Channing
had been a thing inexplicable to the fastidious Jemima; even more
inexplicable was the ease with which she appeared to forget him for
another lover.
Much of the girl's gaiety had returned to her. She entered into the
wedding preparations with the eagerness of a child playing with a new
toy. She spoke of Philip constantly, was always watching for his
arrival, greeted him when he came with the utmost enthusiasm, clinging
to him, sitting on the arm of his chair, kissing him, regardless of
onlookers. True, she was quite as demonstrative with her mother, with
James Thorpe, even with Jemima, when permitted; but, as the older girl
said to herself in distaste, she was not going to marry them!
One day, shortly before the wedding, when Jemima arrived at Storm she
was met by her mother at the door with finger upon lip.
"Hush! Jacky is singing again," whispered Kate, delightedly.
It was the first time the girl had been to the piano for weeks.
The two stood and listened. She sang to herself very softly, unconscious
of an audience, one of the Songs of the Hill:
"A little winding road
Goes over the hill to the plain--
A little road that crosses the plain
And comes to the hill again."
Kate realized the difference in Jacqueline's voice since she had heard
it last in that Song of the Hill; clear and expressionless, then, as a
boy's; so throbbing now, so poignant with understanding, that the
mother's eyes filled with tears. Jemima's, too, were a little moist, and
she blinked them hard, and steeled herself to say to Jacqueline that day
what she had come to say.
The child must not slip further into an irrevocable mistake, if she
could help it.
She made an opportunity as soon as possible to get her alone. "Jacky,"
she said abruptly, "are you quite sure you want to marry Philip,--and
that he wants to marry you?"
The girl turned a startled face upon her--"Why, Jemmy, he asked me! Why
would he ask me if he didn't want me?"
"I suspect Philip does many things he does not want to.--Didn't he know
all about--Mr. Channing?" She looked mercifully away from the other's
blanching face, "I wonder if that might have anything to do with his
asking you?"
She waited nervously for a reply. Even the most confident of surgeons
have their moments of suspense.
It came very low, "I never thought of that, Jemmy. Perhaps you are
right.--Oh, if that is so, I just _can't_ be loving enough to him to
make up for his goodness, can I? Darling old Phil!--You see it was
because he did know all about Mr. Channing" (the voice was almost
inaudible now) "that I knew I could marry him. We understand each other,
you see. I'd never expect to be first with him, to take mother's place
with him, any more than he expects to take--And--and so--we could
comfort each other." The voice failed utterly here, and Jacqueline ran
blindly out of the room, up to the never-failing solace of Mag's baby;
leaving Jemima with the miserable sensation of having been cruel where
she meant to be kind, and cruel to no purpose.
That night, when Philip came at his usual time, Jacqueline settled the
matter once for all. She perched upon the arm of his chair, holding his
head against her shoulder so that he could not look at her.
"Reverend Flip, dear," she began, "I want you to tell me
something--truly, truly, truth now! Before it is too late. People
shouldn't marry each other unless they're going to be quite honest with
each other, should they?"
"No, dear," he answered. "Fire away."
"You're sure, quite sure, that you really want to marry me?" She
abandoned her strangle-hold, and leaned down with her cheek on his hair,
to make the telling of anything disagreeable more easy for him.
She felt him start, but he said, "Very sure, sweetheart."
"And you're not just being noble," she asked, wistfully, "like Jemmy
thinks?"
Philip cried, "Jemima be darned!" and pulled her down into his arms
quite roughly.
Her relief and gratitude pierced through the armor of his abstraction.
"Oh, Phil, you _are_ sweet!" she whispered, holding him tight. "And I'll
make up to you somehow for it. I will! I will!"
The wedding was more Jemima's idea of what such an affair should be than
her own had been; with a bishop officiating, and a choir in surplices
(rather weak-voiced and tearful, without their beloved leader) and a
matron-of-honor in a very smart New York frock, and the little church
crowded to its doors, and even spilling into the road beyond. Nor was
the congregation entirely composed of country-folk, tenants and the
like. There was quite a sprinkling of what Jemima called "worth-while
people"; not only Jacqueline's victims, who came _en masse_ and looking
rather depressed, but Mrs. Lawton and her daughters and several other
women whom Jemima had firmly brought to Storm (one could not be friends
with young Mrs. Thorpe without being friends with her family as well)
and who needed no urging to come a second time.
Well toward the front there sat another guest, whom the eye of the
matron-of-honor encountered with some distaste; an unwashed-looking
person with a peddler's pack on the floor at his feet, whose beaming,
innocent gaze missed no detail of the ceremony. Brother Bates was in the
habit of carrying up to Misty other things besides his stock in trade
and the Word of God. Very little that occurred at Storm was unknown to
the man he called "Teacher."
Nobody who had any possible claim to be present missed that wedding. It
was the nine days' wonder of the community. As Mrs. Sykes murmured to
her chosen intimates: "To think of both them beautiful young gals bein'
content to take their ma's cast-off leavin's!"--for the heart-affairs of
the Madam were viewed by her realm with a certain proprietary,
disapproving interest, not entirely unmixed with pride. And more than
one noted that the bridegroom, waiting at the altar-steps with his best
man, Farwell, was careful never to glance toward the pew where Mrs.
Kildare sat, quite as beautiful and far more radiant than the young
creature in white, who moved dreamily up the aisle as if her thoughts
were far away. There was a certain amount of buzzing among the
congregation.
Jacqueline was married in a sort of daze. She had remembered quite
mechanically to keep five paces behind Jemima, to lift her skirts at the
step so as not to stumble over them, even to smile at Philip because he
smiled at her--a very tender, encouraging smile. As she spoke the words
that made her his wife she thought triumphantly, "If Mr. Channing could
only see me now!"
It was not until she was going down the aisle again on her husband's arm
that the daze lifted suddenly. Her husband! She looked up at him with a
little gasp, and Philip, feeling her tremble, pressed her hand,
murmuring, "Steady, dear," as he would have spoken to a frightened colt.
Then she remembered that after all it was only old Philip, her
friend....
Some hours later they drove back in the Ark from Storm to the
rectory--their only wedding-journey--through a world white with the
first snow, in honor of their nuptials. They went hand in hand through
the little blanketed garden toward the welcome of the firelight that
glowed through the cabin windows; and the door was eagerly opened to
them by the elderly housewoman, Ella, and proud Lige, both of whom Mrs.
Kildare had spared from Storm to replace the worthless Dilsey.
"We all's got two more presents!" announced Lige, a-grin from ear to ear
with the joy of the occasion. "Come and look."
He led the way with a lantern toward Philip's modest stable, where they
found a pretty little Jersey cow with a placard tied to her crumpled
horn, which read, "Compliments of the Possum Hunters."
It was the final activity of Night Riders in that community.
They found the second present on the dressing-table in the room which
Philip had fitted up, without consulting anybody, as Jacqueline's
boudoir; just such a room as the girl had dreamed of, with slender white
furniture, and rosy curtains, and a little shelf of her favorite books,
and a lovely photograph of her mother hanging beside her bed--which had
once been Philip's photograph. She could hardly withdraw her attention
from the delights of her room long enough to notice the present, a small
pasteboard box addressed to "Mrs. Philip Benoix," which Philip finally
opened for her.
He gave an exclamation. The box contained a ring of oddly wrought pale
gold, set with a sapphire cut in a crest. It was a ring which his father
had worn as far back as Philip could remember. The card enclosed said
simply, "For my new little daughter, Jacqueline."
"Then the warden does know where he is!" cried Philip. He had written to
his father about his approaching wedding, addressing the letter in care
of the state penitentiary, on the chance of its reaching him. "But how
did the box get here?"
Inquiry produced no results. Ella had found it on a table beside the
door. In the excitement of that day, there had been a constant stream of
people coming and going, the altar guild and the choir to decorate the
house with evergreens, neighbors to inspect the preparations for the
bride, negroes with offers of assistance, taking the delight of their
race in anything that resembles an Occasion. Any one of these visitors
might have left the ring unobserved.
Ella did not think to mention that among them had been the old mountain
peddler, who had come to the door to ask whether there was a Bible in
that house, and been routed by Ella with a scornful, "Go 'way f'um here.
Don't you know Mr. Philip's a preacher?"
But busy as she was, Ella had found time to run and get him a glass of
milk, remembering that he was a protégé of the Madam's, and that the
Madam never permitted people to go from her door hungry.