UNDER THE HARVEST MOON
The swelling twigs of March had burst into leafage; rough winds had
shaken the "darling buds of May," and the fruit hung fully formed, even
ripened in many cases, on the branches. The summer had flown past, a
happy summer, the last of Jessamy's and Barbara's girlhood. Tom and
Robert had urged their claim to begin their own homes by the autumn,
and Mrs. Wyndham, who did not approve of long engagements, had yielded.
"I am not going to spend the very last summer that I am free to be as
jolly as I wish, without responsibilities,--the last summer before
I settle down into a frumpy, solemn old married woman,--struggling
with clothes," Barbara declared. "If I can't get enough together to
be married in a month, I will start life in a shirt-waist and a duck
skirt. We are going to have the very best time we ever had, just we
four, with our own particular boys for a kind of entrée, all summer
until August, and then I will consent to talk dress-making. I think it
is abominable the way weddings are turned into bugbears--as though
they weren't bad enough in the best regulated households! That's what
the nursery rhyme means:
"Needles and pins, needles and pins,
When a girl's married her trouble begins!"
"But it doesn't say _girl_, Babbie; it is when a _man_ marries," said
Phyllis.
"Misprint!" said Bab. "You ought to know what it is to have your
sentiments perverted by a printer's error. That couplet plainly refers
to the bride's agonies in the hands of the dressmakers; what would the
_man_ have to do with needles and pins? It is perfectly clear to me;
but I don't mean to have any troubles begin that way. I'd rather be
myself, ready to enjoy my new happiness, than be married all worn out
and nervous as so many girls are, just for the sake of a few dresses
more or less. People do make themselves so much bother in this world;
it makes me ache to see them!"
"Hear, hear!" said Jessamy, applauding with two untrimmed hats she was
holding like cymbals. "What a sensible wife Doctor Thomas Leighton is
to have! However, I confess I agree with her--partly, at least."
"Well, I agree with her wholly," said Bab, impartially. "I want this
last summer we are three girls together to be light-hearted and happy,
with no bother we can possibly dodge."
Barbara's program was faithfully carried out. The Wyndhams would not
go away because they clung to every day of the few left them of their
life in the little apartment where happiness had found them out, and
where they had blossomed from inexperienced girls into valuable women.
Like the previous summer, when necessity had kept them in the city,
they took their country air in small doses, making excursions into the
surrounding fields, if fields can be said to surround New York which
have to be reached through such long stretches of diminishing tenements.
In August the serious business of wedding preparations had to be faced;
but both Jessamy and Barbara insisted on their being as simple as
possible.
How and where to be married was a problem for two brides in one family,
when that family lived in an apartment not large enough for their daily
needs. It never occurred to the girls to be married separately. Indeed,
Tom urged Phyllis to seize some youth--violently, if she must--and be
married with the other two; because, he pointed out, it would not only
be effective to marry them all at once, but save trouble in the future.
Poor Phyllis! She kept her feelings bravely hidden; but it was not
easy for her to look forward to parting with Jessamy and Bab. Even
though they were to be near by when they were established in their own
little nests, Phyllis, and still more their mother, realized that they
would never be again as fully their own girls. But Jessamy and Bab
were so happy that it would have been cruel to have shown a shadow of
regret. Besides, Mrs. Wyndham and Phyllis could not regret what was so
certainly for the greater happiness of them all in the end.
Aunt Henrietta came out nobly. She returned from the sea-shore early in
September, thus breaking up her custom of years' standing, and offered
her big house for the wedding. "It is proper in every way that you
should be married from my house, and have the reception and breakfast
there," she said solemnly. "Your apartment is out of the question for
such an occasion, and you must be married suitably to your father's
social position."
"How about Madrina? I didn't think one could affect the standing of
the saints in heaven by unsuitable marriages!" whispered Bab, the
incorrigible, to Jessamy. But she answered her great-aunt dutifully,
with sincere thanks for the kindness which was very unexpected and
great from her.
Mrs. Van Alyn made a similar offer, much to Mrs. Hewlett's disgust.
"Does she think you have no kindred?" demanded the incensed old dame.
"It seems to me," said Jessamy, discussing the matter in a private
family conclave, "that it would be more dignified, besides being far
sweeter and lovelier, to be married from our own little home, and not
from any one's house, no matter how dear or how nearly related to us
she might be. No one can understand just what this flat meant to us
when we began it so courageously, and so ignorantly of all we had to
learn and do. I, for one, should be happier married from it than from
anywhere else in the world; it would be mean to turn our backs on it
for the greatest event of our lives, for which it has prepared us, and
which began for us--I mean found us out--here. Then it is our home, and
I don't like borrowed plumage, even an aunt's house. I think we ought
to be our very selves, most of all at such a time. If Bab agrees, I
should prefer having our friends come here to welcome us and wish us
well after the ceremony; and I should like a wedding suited to this
sort of living--suited to our means, in a word, though our means have
increased lately."
"That's crystal Jessamy all over," cried Bab, warmly. "You know, for my
part, I loathe show functions. It's much more refined and dignified to
use one's own home, and cut your garment according to your cloth--no,
cut your friends according to your space. Who wants a crowd, anyway? I
detest big weddings."
"Of course I should prefer it," said Mrs. Wyndham. "Why not be married
quietly at the church, with only the immediate families of Tom and Rob
and our own present? Then serve a breakfast to the same people, with
the addition of most intimate friends, and go away? A caterer could
contrive a table in this room to seat all we should ask under this
arrangement."
"As far as I am concerned," said Tom, "the less the merrier. I know Bob
thinks so. All young men hate being married, and would like to sneak."
"I should say I did think so!" cried Rob. "My honest opinion is that
the only decent way to be married is to escape on a rope ladder out of
a back window, with no one but the parson and the necessary witnesses
the wiser."
"Dear me!" laughed Jessamy. "I really do not think I should enjoy the
ladder. Then it is settled; a quiet church wedding, no one present but
our own relatives, a breakfast not much larger attended, and then rush
for the carriage, with rice and an old shoe to follow, and that's all."
"We are not going to have a stylish wedding--dear me, that sounds
like 'Daisy Bell,' doesn't it?--so let's have a pretty one--original,
I mean," said Phyllis. "Instead of conventional flowers, let's trim
our rooms here with jasmine and barberries; they are ripe now, and
they would really be wonderfully pretty, and the decorations would be
Jessamy's and Barbara's names written everywhere in white and red."
"What a pretty idea, Phyl!" said Rob; "but where would you get the
barberries?"
"Send an order to a Boston florist; the berries grow abundantly in New
England, and he could get them for us," said Phyllis.
"It would be lovely, Phyl; what a dear you are!" said Jessamy. "We'll
do everything just as we have planned it now, and write grateful
refusals to Aunt Henrietta and dear Mrs. Van Alyn for their offers."
The wedding was to be on the twenty-fourth of September. On the
twenty-third the little apartment was a dream of beauty. Phyllis's
plan had been successful, the barberries had arrived, great boxes of
them, and hung everywhere, graceful, bright, autumnal, yet cheery, full
of suggestions of the woods, yet of homely virtues.
They really were rather like Babbie, prickly, pungent, little and
slender, bright and cheerful, lighting up the darkest corner wherein
they were placed.
As a foil to them, white jasmine filled the rooms with its peculiar
perfume, suggestive of Jessamy in more than name with its grace,
daintiness, and beauty.
Phyllis stood, tired but satisfied, surveying the completed work of her
hands. Nothing was wanting; dear little Babbie and their Jessamy bride
were to have as pretty a wedding as love and taste could make it--mere
money could do far less than these.
Phyllis's heart was heavy. Both the brides of the morrow had gone with
their mother, and Ruth, and Rob's and Tom's sisters, the bridesmaids
elect, and little Margery Horton, who had earned the right to be maid
of honor, to meet Tom and Rob with their best men at the church to
rehearse the ceremony. Phyllis was, of course, a bridesmaid also;
but there were so many little last things to attend to at home that
she begged off from the rehearsal, promising to learn so well the
instructions given her by the others that she would do nothing on the
morrow to disgrace her family. The bell rang, and Violet admitted Alan.
"I brought a little present," he began, and handed Phyllis two more of
the white-wrapped boxes which had been pouring in of late.
"The room looks pretty, doesn't it?" said Phyllis, after she had
thanked him for her cousins.
"It is beautiful; but the best of it is the symbolism," said Alan,
gravely. "It will be the sort of wedding I like."
"All weddings are dreadful," said Phyllis, out of her increasing
loneliness.
"Now don't say that, Phyllis," said Alan, suddenly becoming very red.
"I want you to look forward to mine--I mean, I--what I want to say
is, Phyllis--oh, Phyl, don't you know I love you?" cried poor Alan in
deadly earnest, and stammering in a way new to him.
"Yes, I do know it, Alan, and I'm dreadfully, bitterly sorry," said
Phyllis. "I have tried in every way to make you understand I was sorry.
I wish you had not made it necessary for me to hurt you to-day, when
there ought to be no sorrow in the air. And don't forget for a minute
that I am more fond of you than of any one in all the world, except my
dear family. But there ought not to be an exception. I couldn't marry
you unless you were dearer than every one, myself, my life, to me."
Poor Alan had listened to this outburst in absolute silence, his one
refuge under any strong emotion. Phyllis had spoken rapidly, like one
who had gone over the ground with herself, and who was under pressure
of strong excitement.
"Then you won't marry me?" said Alan. "I tell you, Phyllis, I won't
give up. You say you are fond of me; I'll make you fonder. It's not a
refusal; it's just a postponement. Forget I said anything about it.
I'll get you yet to say yes. Have some tea; you look tired, and it's
but natural you should not be cheerful with the parting before you, and
you all saying good-by, as it were, to your girlhood. I had no right
to bother you now. I was a selfish brute. We'll be the same friends,
Phyllis; for I could not live without you, my girl."
Phyllis felt as though this determined young man, with the quiet,
intense face and the eyes that were full of love for her, were
something she could never escape, and the feeling frightened her.
"I don't want to marry; I have my work," she said.
"Oh, your work!" said Alan, with a man's and a fellow writer's scorn
for a woman's career. "Fancy giving up love, and a home, and everything
best in life for such a thing as writing! If you were as great as
George Eliot it would be folly, Phyllis."
"The only reason for marrying is that some one is so necessary to you,
you can't be happy without him," said Phyllis. "That's what I think."
"Quite right; so do I; and you are necessary to my happiness, my dear,"
said Alan, gravely.
"You are not necessary to me, Alan, though I should miss you dreadfully
if I lost you. Oh, please, please don't think of this any more, but let
us be friends as before," said Phyllis, with tears in her eyes.
"Don't mind, my dear; I'll call for your tea. And as to the rest, I'll
be necessary to you, if humble trying can make me," said persistent
Alan, quietly.
The wedding was at noon. The day dawned sunny, warm, and lovely, an
ideal day for a wedding. Jessamy and Barbara were dressed early, and
shut themselves in their mother's room for one last, sacred, grave
little talk before they went forth to assume the vows which must always
be solemn to those who remember how much they include, and who make
them meaning to fulfil them to the end of life, however long it be.
Ruth Wells, Alice Leighton, Evelyn Lane, Phyllis's companion
bridesmaids, clustered in Phyllis's room, sweet and blooming in their
youthful prettiness, set off by rose-hued gowns. As the hour for
starting for the church sounded, they came down the stairs, giving a
vision of loveliness to the admiring children gathered from neighboring
flats to see the entrancing spectacle of at least so much of a double
wedding.
The church held but few friends. The simplicity of the service was not
to be marred by the presence of those drawn thither by idle curiosity.
"Who giveth this woman?" asked the clergyman; but there was not one
present who did not give something of dear Jessamy and Barbara.
Barbara's responses were inaudible; the solemnity of the occasion
overawed gay Babbie, though all her heart vowed to Tom the promises
asked of her. But Jessamy looked up at Robert, standing tall and a
little pale beside her, and made her vows in a voice low, but so
distinct that it reached to the door of the church.
And Tom and Robert vowed to cherish and love the precious gifts
intrusted to them that day, in tones that admitted no doubt that they
meant to keep the promises to the grave, and beyond it, if that might
be.
The wedding breakfast was spread at the return of the bridal party. The
table did crowd the room, it was true, but no one minded in the least.
There was not one guest but had a claim to be there through near
kinship or closest friendship, not one who did not love more or less
the brides sitting side by side at the head of the table, the new and
exceeding proud young husbands by their sides, and the bridesmaids
clustered as near as circumstances permitted.
One of the bridesmaids wore a sparkling diamond on her left hand, and
Phyllis learned for the first time that the Scotch friend she had found
in Boston was going to take from her the friend who had been so much to
her, and to Jessamy and Bab, through their days of trial, for Ruth and
David were engaged.
Mr. Hurd, present of course, as few had a better claim to be, tried
to make a speech, but broke down, and ended more effectively than his
carefully prepared sentences would have done in a sincere: "God bless
you both!"
Aunt Henrietta tried to relate a story of her own wedding, but lost
the point in an unusual burst of emotion, and, instead of finishing,
produced two old-fashioned jewel-cases, and presented them to Jessamy
and Barbara, with the love, as Aunt Henrietta remarked, with unexpected
poetry, "of their great-grandmother, though the dear lady had not
lived to see this happy day."
It was hard not to smile at this bit of sentiment, considering that the
brides' great-grandmother had missed that happy day by some seventy
years; but it was well to have something to smile at just when there
was a little danger of every one growing sentimental. When Jessamy
opened the leather case, there lay on the faded red velvet lining of
hers a cross set with diamonds, and Barbara's blue-lined case revealed
a string of beautiful old pearls.
When the toasts had been drunk, and the cake cut, and the little white
boxes of cake, already prepared, distributed to the guests, Jessamy
and Barbara arose and slipped away to lay off their bridal white and
don the traveling-gowns in which they were to go out into the world,
no longer Jessamy and Bab Wyndham, but Mrs. Robert Lane and Mrs.
Thomas Leighton. Truce and Nixie, with large white satin bows on their
collars, superintended the transformation, and both girls stooped to
hug the little dog and cat who were so thoroughly associated with their
happiness.
"Good-by, you dear, loveliest young ladies in all dis yere world,"
sobbed Violet. "Miss Phyllis and I's goin' take care you ma while you's
gone, so don' you worry 'bout nothin', an' you gowns sets lovely."
"Good-by, dearies; it is like seeing my own children married,"
whispered Mrs. Van Alyn, holding Jessamy and Bab close in one long
embrace.
Phyllis kissed them each, and each clung to her as if the parting were
forever.
"Come, come," called Tom, who had no desire to let the going away grow
tearful. "There's no time for long hugs, children, and we'll be back
before you get the flat in order."
Mrs. Wyndham held out her arms, and both her girls rested in them for a
moment without a word.
"Good-by, darlings; the best daughters a mother ever had," Mrs. Wyndham
whispered; and Jessamy and Barbara ran down the stairs without daring
to stop or look behind.
A shower of rice fell on the two carriages. Tom and Robert flew through
the storm, the drivers cracked their whips, two flushed, sweet,
smiling, tearful faces looked out of the windows for a moment, and
Jessamy and Barbara had gone.
For a moment Phyllis and her aunt clung to each other, feeling that
they alone were left out of a wreck of the world. Then a small boy
rushed up the stairs, sent by Tom.
"Please, ma'am, Mr. Alan Armstrong is dead--run over by a trolley," he
cried.
The cry of consternation which Mrs. Wyndham uttered drowned the moan
with which poor Phyllis fell unconscious to the floor.
"Oh, what an ending!" murmured Ruth, as she rushed to help Mrs. Wyndham
raise Phyllis's head.
"Is it true?" whispered Phyllis, when they had laid her on the couch
and brought her back to knowledge of her pain.
"Hush, dear, be still; we have sent to learn the truth. Dear, dear
Phyllis, do you care so much?" sobbed her aunt.
Phyllis turned her head away without speaking. So much! Ah, now, too
late, she knew how much. And she had wounded Alan, had thought her
work might suffice her, and had told him he was not necessary to her
happiness!
That was like her, not to know how dependent she really was, to go
on happily in her little ways, nor know what was her most precious
possession till too late.
That was the cruel thought--too late, too late!
As she lay there, numb with agony, Phyllis saw the long, blank years
ahead, wherein Alan's dear, leaping step should never fall on her ear
again, and could not face them. Thank heaven! Jessamy and Barbara had
found their joy, and it would not be marred in its first sweetness by
knowledge of her agony.
A step came up the stairs; it was curious--would it always be like
this, Phyllis wondered. Should she always fancy all steps like his? It
sounded so much like Alan, but Alan was dead, crushed--
"Where's my dear, poor Phyllis? 'Twas a cruel trick," cried a voice,
and all the house rang with Phyllis's cry of: "Alan, Alan!"
There was need of no more words. Trembling, scarce trusting her eyes,
Phyllis lay looking up at Alan--Alan in the flesh, come back from the
dead, and to her!
"I have learned that you are necessary, Alan; I should have died if it
had been true," she whispered.
"It would have been worth dying for if I couldn't have taught you
to love me any other way, my Phyllis," said Alan, with the old-time
twinkle in his eye, and with a suggestion of an Irish bull in his
meaning.
"A telegram, ma'am," said Violet, gingerly holding out the yellow
envelope to Mrs. Wyndham.
Mrs. Wyndham tore it open; it was dated from the Grand Central, and she
read: "'Beg Phyllis to forgive. Nothing less would fetch her; wanted
Alan to share happiness. TOM.'"
"Well, Phyllis will evidently follow soon, Emily," said Mrs. Van Alyn,
kissing her friend good-night very lovingly.
"I shall be the only one of the Wyndham girls left," returned Mrs.
Wyndham, smiling rather tearfully; "the last corner of our dear square
of four. Jessamy, Babbie, Phyllis; they are the best girls in all the
world, Mary. Weddings are tearful things to mothers, but who could help
rejoicing that all my precious three are so blissfully happy?"