GREAT MUSIC
"Wull ye be comin' soon, Miss Warne?" said the voice of Mrs. MacFayden
at her door. Georgiana opened it quickly, and the housekeeper entered,
quietly resplendent in black silk with fine lace collar and cuffs, her
hair in shining order, an expression of great solemnity on her face.
"Mr. and Mrs. Peter Brandt are here," she announced with impressiveness.
"Doctor Craig is doonstairs with them; he cam' ten minutes ago. He bade
me say he wad coom for ye himself when ye were ready. It's a gled day
for him, Miss Warne, an' for us a'."
Georgiana advanced, her heart very warm toward this good woman, who, as
she well knew, was quite as much the friend of Jefferson Craig as his
housekeeper, and well esteemed, even beloved by him. The girl came
close.
"Mrs. MacFayden," she said, very low, "I have--no mother to kiss me
before I go down. May I----"
The sentence was left unfinished, for with one step forward Mary
MacFayden opened wide her arms, and for a long minute the two enfolded
each other, while both hearts beat strongly.
Then Georgiana, suddenly mindful that she must not let go for an instant
of her self-control, pressed a kiss upon the fair, smooth cheek of the
Scotswoman, received one equally warm upon her own, and drew away
smiling. "Thank you," she murmured uncertainly. "I couldn't go without
it."
"Thet ye could na', lassie," responded Mrs. MacFayden heartily.
"Noo--wull I send the doctor up?"
"Just in a minute--when I have seen my father----"
Georgiana ran into his room from her own. A deep embrace, a lingering
kiss--while James Stuart looked out of the window, a lump suddenly
appearing from nowhere in his sturdy throat.
Then Georgiana said softly at the young man's elbow: "Thank you again
for coming, Jimps. It's such a comfort to have my brother here."
Before he could reply she was gone again.
He led Mr. Warne downstairs, where Doctor Craig presented them both to
the Brandts--delightful people Stuart thought them, too--so simple and
unaffected--almost like village people.
As he stood waiting with them, in the same dignified big room which he
had been in before he went upstairs, he was conscious that in his brief
absence its character had changed. Library though it still was, with its
massive bookcases filled with rows upon rows of finely bound books, it
had taken on a festal air. Great bowls of roses, deep crimson, glowing
pink, rich amber, had been brought in; they stood on table,
chimney-piece, and floor; hundreds of them it seemed to him there must
be. He realized that Georgiana herself could not have seen them; they
would be a surprise to her. Evidently the simple little wedding was to
have a character all its own.
With the quiet departure of Jefferson Craig from the room James Stuart
was all eyes for an appearance at the door. How would Georgiana come to
her marriage? In shimmering white, he supposed, for that was the
traditional garb of all the brides he had ever seen--mostly village
girls they were. Once, while at college, he had attended a city wedding,
that of a classmate who had not been willing to wait till his college
course was finished. Stuart remembered how pale the bride had been; she,
had looked as if she were going to faint. He hoped Georgiana would not
look like that: he could not conceive it.
The next moment he saw her, entering the wide door, on Doctor Craig's
arm--the same Georgiana he had always known, as simply dressed, even
more simply, he thought, though he had little time for looking at her
dress, so held was his gaze by her face. Never could he have conceived
so radiant a bride. And then he thought--Jefferson Craig had gone up
alone to bring her down. Stuart wondered if he himself could make
Jeannette look like that, at such a moment. He thought he could!
Georgiana looked into Father Davy's eyes as she stood before him. He was
not tall; his face was almost on a level with her own. It seemed to her
she had never seen eyes so clear, so blue, so comprehending. Her own
never left them for a moment while the service lasted, until the closing
prayer.
Father Davy's voice, at first very slightly tremulous, gathered force as
he went on with the words he had spoken so many times, but never as he
was speaking them now--to his child, to Phoebe's child, and to the man
of her choice. A little flush crept into his thin cheeks. More than once
his eyes rested on the dark-blue silk which covered his daughter's
shoulders; the sight of it seemed to give him strength.
When the service ended, and his voice sank into the words of prayer, the
hand of Mr. Peter Brandt went for a moment to his eyes; Mrs. MacFayden
felt suddenly for her handkerchief; James Stuart softly cleared his
throat, winking once or twice rather rapidly. Never had any of them
heard just such a prayer as that. It was as if he who made it were very
near the invisible Presence whom he so tenderly and trustingly
addressed.
Stuart never forgot the moment when he looked for the first time into
the eyes of Jefferson Craig's newly made wife. For one instant he
suffered a pang of jealousy--a queer, irrational feeling. It was as if
he had lost his friend, as if this star-eyed creature before him could
never find room for him again in her full heart. But he knew better in
the next breath, for she lifted her face, ever so little, and with a
sense of deep relief he gave her the brotherly kiss she thus permitted.
When he looked at Jefferson Craig he found that the keen, fine eyes were
regarding him with a very friendly intentness, and he wrung the hand
offered him as he would have wrung the hand of a brother.
"You're the luckiest man in this whole big town," declared Stuart. His
lips had been dumb before Georgiana, but now he turned to her again.
"George, there's no use trying to tell you how I feel about this. All I
can say is that nothing's too good for you--or for him. That's pretty
lame, but--whatever eloquence I'm capable of is tied up somewhere; I
can't get it out."
"It's out, Jimps, dear," she assured him. "Isn't it--Jefferson?"
"It certainly is--Jimps," Craig answered heartily. "It was for just that
genuine feeling that I sent for you. I knew we couldn't spare it."
Stuart watched the pair eagerly during the next hour--the hour during
which the little party sat at the wedding breakfast which followed. The
table was a round one, and his place was next the bride, so he missed
nothing. He had never been present on such an occasion, nor could have
guessed the beauty and charm of the setting wealth and art can give. It
was perfection itself, arranged by whose hand he had no notion, but he
understood well enough by whose order had been created all the simple
elegance which so well suited the house and the people. And as he looked
at Georgiana he said to himself:
"She fits into this as if she had been born to it. She _was_ born to it,
for it's just the kind of thing she'd have made for herself if she'd had
the means. No show, no fuss, just niceness! And it's the sort of thing
my wife shall have, somehow, even in the country, before long. We'll
_bring_ this there; she'll know how. There's no patent on it. Bless
her--how George deserves this! If only Jean could have been here. But
I'll tell her; I'll get it over to her. And she'll understand!"
At the end of the hour the car was at the door, and Georgiana was coming
down the stairs in her traveling clothes, her bridal bouquet on her arm.
How those splendid roses had lighted up the little dark-blue frock!
"I've no bridesmaid to throw it to," she said, extending it toward
Stuart. "Will you take it to Jeannette?"
"I should say I will. I'll be with her this evening; she made me
promise." And Stuart received the offering with a glad hand.
A long, silent clinging to her father was the only parting embrace for
this girl. If James Stuart longed for one of his own, after these years
of friendship, he was obliged to be content with the lustrous look he
had from eyes lifted for a moment to his as Georgiana took her place in
the car, and with the lingering pressure her hand gave his, which spoke
of love and loyalty.
Then she was gone, with Jefferson Craig sending back at Stuart a special
brilliant smile of gratitude for the office he had performed, that of
taking the place of the whole group of young people usually present on
such occasions, saying good-bye with bared head and face of ardent
devotion, with the first light snowflakes of winter falling on his fair
hair.
"I can't believe I'm quite awake," said Georgiana, by and by. She sat in
one of the drawing-rooms of a fast train, the door closed, the curtains
drawn between herself and the rest of the carful of passengers, and only
the flying landscape beyond the window to tell of the world outside.
Craig sat watching her; he seemed able to do nothing else. In his face
was the most joyous content; there seemed almost a light behind it.
"Not awake?" was his amused comment. "I wonder why. Now I feel
tremendously awake--after a long, uneasy sleep, in which I dreamed of
losing what I most wanted."
"But it's not all strange to you as it is to me. I can't quite believe
that there's nothing on my shoulders--no care, no anxiety, just--well,
_your_ shoulders! Oh, but," she went on hastily, "don't think that means
I want you to carry everything for me; indeed I don't. I want to
carry--half!"
"Ah, but that's it," he answered. "My shoulders for your burdens, yours
for mine. That way neither of us will feel half the weight of either.
I'm not pretending that I shall give you a life of wholly sheltered
ease; it won't be that, and you don't want it, not in this
burden-bearing world. But--you shall have some things that you have been
denied, my brave girl! Georgiana, I can't tell you how it touched
me--the dress you made to be married in."
Her eyes went down now before the look in his.
"I'll tell you fairly that I longed with all my heart to take you to
some place worthy of your beauty and find a wedding gown for you--not
necessarily a very costly one, but one that should bring out all you are
capable of showing. But when I saw you, looking just yourself, in the
silk that was like your mother's,"--he leaned forward, taking both her
hands in his and looking straight into her face, compelling her gaze to
lift to his lest she should miss what she knew was there,--"I felt
something inside my heart break wide open--with worship for you, little,
strong, splendid spirit that you are!"
He pressed the hands against his lips. Then he touched two rings upon
her left hand: exquisite and rare jewels were set in both engagement and
wedding rings, after the modern fashion. But there was a third ring
there, guarding the others, a slender band of gold, worn thin by many
years of hard, self-forgetting work--the ring which David Warne had
placed twenty-seven years ago upon the hand of his bride. Jefferson
Craig studied all three, turning them round and round upon the rosy
finger they encircled.
Presently he spoke again, very gently: "My rings on your hand mean to me
love and beauty, loyalty and truth. But her ring stands for all that
and--service. We need it there, to remind us what we owe the world we
live in. She paid her debt; we'll pay ours, in memory of her. Bless her
for giving me her daughter!"
For a minute Georgiana could not speak. Then, with her dark eyes
sparkling through the mist of tears which had taken her unawares, she
seized his hand and lifted it to press her glowing cheek against it,
saying passionately: "Oh, _how_ you understand!"
They were silent for a long time after that, while the train flew on,
through the gathering darkness of the late December afternoon, into the
night....
Georgiana had supposed that they were to go at once to the old home, for
she knew that Craig could not be long away at this time, and there was
much to do there. But she found that instead of changing trains in the
great city, sixty miles beyond which lay the home village, they were
leaving the station to be conveyed in a waiting car to a hotel.
"If you had been spending all these years in cities," was Craig's
explanation, "I should have felt like plunging at once with you into the
solitude. But as it is--well, I wondered if we shouldn't like to hear
some great music to-night. Do you feel as I do--that there are times
when nothing but music can speak for you?"
"But you," she said, "who live in the rush all the time----"
"There's no rush here for me," he answered. "Nobody is likely to know me
here; I can forget the whole world in the midst of the crowd with you
to-night. As for the music--I've been on short rations a good while
myself. I think we can feast together, don't you?"
It was all a fairy tale to Georgiana, that evening in the city. Her
college days had been spent in a small college town which, though it had
lain not many miles away from this same great metropolis, had seldom
seen her leave it for the privileges which richer girls enjoyed at every
week-end.
As for the superb hotel to which Craig took her, although she had seen
its impressive front, she had never so much as stood within its stately
lobby. Now she experienced all sorts of queer little thrills, as she
watched the accustomed ease with which her husband led her through the
brief details of arrival and noted with what deference he was received.
Evidently he had been expected, for there was no delay in the smooth
service which took them to an apartment reserved by wire, as Georgiana
gathered from a word she overheard.
He was quite right; a touch of this was what she needed, as a bird long
confined needs a chance to stretch its wings. To this girl, with vivid
life stirring in her pulses, the unaccustomed experience could but be a
delight, with such a companion to show her the way. Every detail had its
own fascination, such as might never come again when she should be more
wonted to such scenes. The dinner served in their own small
drawing-room, the flowers which crowned the table, the blithe talk Craig
made during the little feast, with all its pretty, ceremonious detail of
service; finally the short drive to the place where the great music, as
Craig had called it, was to be heard--it all made a richly enchanting
picture in Georgiana's mind.
When at length she sat beside her husband in the immense, silent
audience, listening to such splendid harmonies as only once or twice in
her lifetime she had heard before, her heart was far too full for words.
He did not ask them of her, understanding something of what was passing
in her mind, though not even his more than ordinary powers of sympathy
could have guessed at all that held her breathless through those hours
of supreme delight.
Certain words of a Psalm, which she had often heard her father quote,
came into her mind and repeated themselves over and over. She had smiled
with a bitter irony sometimes when she had heard him speak them in a
tone of utter thankfulness, while she had been quite unable to imagine
how he could use them of himself. But now--now--surely they applied to
her!
Along with the sweep of the conductor's baton, with the rise and surge
of one of the greatest of the symphonies, ran the triumphant words of
the singer of old time: "_Thou hast set my feet in a large room._"
Surely it was a large room into which, from a cramped and restricted
one, she had emerged. She would do small honour to the devout life which
had so long been lived beside her if she should fail to give the praise
to the Maker of all life, who, according to her father's firm belief,
had known from the beginning all for which He had been so wisely fitting
her.