VIA LOHENGRIN
I
While perhaps it may perturb strict sticklers for etiquette,
nevertheless my own marital status was ignored and at Nathan’s earnest
solicitation I was best man at his wedding.
Never did weeks speed past so swiftly as they did that summer. October
was approaching almost before we realized it, least of all Nathan. What
with acclimating himself at his new work, house-planning with Madelaine
in those roseate New York days which followed, attending to the thousand
and one details having to do with his approaching state as a benedict
again, he was grateful when the time separating him from the Great Day
narrowed down to a week, then three days, then two, then one,—grateful
entirely outside his anticipation of having Madelaine with him
permanently.
Three weeks before the event, the invitations had been mailed, and it
was pathetic when Madelaine applied to her lover for a list of those he
wished to invite to the nuptials.
“List?” he laughed sadly. “It’s a rather short list, dear girl. The
Thornes, Caleb Gridley, Mother and Edith, old Sam Hod who published my
first bally poems in his paper. And—and—that’s about all, I guess. Bill
and his wife, of course, though Bill’s acting as best man.”
It was a pretentious wedding. It seemed as though everybody of
consequence in Springfield was invited. Madelaine’s maids of honor were
old school chums from Mount Hadley days. The gifts covered two great
tables, facetiously mentioned by Murfins and old Steb in the servants’
quarters as “the great American pickle-dish exhibit”. Two days
beforehand a rehearsal was held in which every one seemed as painfully
self-conscious as possible and managed to get twisted up and in each
other’s way and permit confusion to reign supreme. But through it all
Madelaine never once lost her head and was its soul and guiding spirit.
The ceremony was scheduled for four o’clock, and Christ Church was a
mammoth conservatory of flowers a day and a night beforehand. Then the
evening before the great day, Mrs. Anna Forge and Edith arrived in
Springfield, and Madelaine went with Nathan to the station to meet them
and have dinner with them, that the mother might meet her son’s new wife
informally.
II
Nathan was a little taken aback when he saw his mother and sister. Mrs.
Forge had lost height and weight; she was a poor, pucker-faced,
broken-down, little old lady. Nathan knew her to be fifty-three. She
looked seventy. He felt a heart-stab when he saw her clothing, it was so
poor and threadbare and out of taste. And Edith!
Edith was now the “mother of seven!” Verily! She had grown into a tall,
awkward, raw-boned woman with a coarse face, sloppy cornflower hair and
a hat which resembled a cross between a basket of flowers and a fried
egg. The broken status of her corsets was immediately noticeable when
she had removed her outer cloak, and her skirt hung lower in the rear
than in the front. She was messy—alongside Madelaine—and looked as
though she had hurriedly dropped a gummy baby in a clothes basket while
she threw on any clothes lying handy to come to her brother’s “swell
weddin’.”
Mrs. Forge clung to Nathan hysterically when she met him on the station
platform. And she wept openly when Madelaine took her unceremoniously in
her arms and kissed her. They went to the Worthy for rooms and dinner.
Madelaine waited in the ladies’ parlor while Nathan went up with his
relatives. Edith first entered the room which Nathan had reserved as
though her footfalls profaned the very carpets.
“My Gawd, what class!” she cried blankly. “Nat, is she worth a million
dollars—on the level?”
Nathan laughed. That was the only feature of the forthcoming alliance to
mar his perfect happiness. Madelaine was worth a million dollars. It was
awkward.
“I guess so,” he responded carelessly.
“You guess so! My Gawd, don’t you know? I should think that’d be the
first thing——”
“I’ll have to go back and stay with Madelaine,” the brother interrupted.
“Come down as soon as you’re ready.” He counted out money. “Take this,
mother. And to-morrow morning buy yourself something out of the ordinary
for clothes. Please! I wish it!”
When he had gone, Edith flounced down on the bed, discovered the
resiliency of the springs, and bobbed up and down, testing them.
“She’s a cuckoo, Ma!” declared the daughter, anent Madelaine. “But I bet
a hat right now there ain’t goin’ to be much family visitin’ back and
forth! Lord, if she ever come into my shack, and Joe and all the kids
piled in to give her the once-over, somebody’d have to stick their feet
out the window to leave room to breathe. She’d take more gorgeous space
than all the rest of us put together, includin’ a wardrobe trunk!”
“I think she’s a dear,” announced Mrs. Forge. “She’s so democratic.”
“I’d give ten dollars to know what she sees in Nat, though. Huh! It
warn’t so awful long ago we was all takin’ Saturday night baths up in
Paris and undressin’ together in the kitchen because the upstairs rooms
was cold. A million bucks! Can you beat it, Ma! Wonder how much her hat
cost?”
They went down into the Worthy dining room. Madelaine chose a table
beside a north window. Mrs. Forge and Edith promptly put on their
“manners.”
Mother and daughter—absolutely dumb in the presence of a colored waiter
and a million-dollar-bride-to-be—said they guessed they wasn’t a bit
hungry, and yet at each of Nat’s suggestions from the menu they nodded
their heads avidly. Madelaine tried her best to put the two at their
ease, but it was a sorry business. Mrs. Forge and Edith “knew how to
behave in company,” which was to act as stiff and unnatural and wooden
as possible and assume that every one in the dining room was watching
them like jewelry thieves.
The Indian summer night was lazily warm. The windows were open. Over in
the southwest corner a group of Dartmouth alumni men were holding a
reunion supper.
“My stars!” whispered Mrs. Forge to Nathan, “they’re drinkin’ licker!
You don’t drink licker, do you, Nathan?”
Nathan affirmed that he did not drink “licker” and then he turned his
head away and looked out of the window upon his left as the college men
broke into roistering song.
Outside on the curbing a young man stopped and gazed up into the room.
“Madge,” said Nathan thickly, “one night, several years ago, I stood
outside like that, and looked up at a fellow and girl sitting here just
like this——”
A quick exclamation. Madelaine had overturned a water glass.
“Was that you, Nathan?” she cried, astounded. “So that’s where you saw
me first? Well, foolish boy, just for that, the title of your
damage-making little old poem was ‘Girl-Without-a-Name.’ And I was
conceited enough to think it was written for me, and no one else.”
“Perhaps,” said Nathan gravely, “it was! Who knows?”
Edith was rather glad to see Madelaine tip over her water glass. It just
went to prove that even The Best People, Millionairesses, those who Had
Money, did such things. She cast a glance at her mother as much as to
say, “You see! She isn’t such a Thingumbob after all. She tips over her
water glass at table!”
III
The Day!
For perfection of weather, only one other day in Nathan’s experience had
surpassed it, the high noon in Siberia when he had seen a splash of
vivid scarlet against sharp cobalt and golden brown.
I made a trip up to the church around noon for some detail, when the
florists had called their work complete. I stood by the door for a
moment and felt prayful with the beauty and portent of it. The chancel
had been almost smothered in fine palms. There were banks and vases of
cut flowers on the altar. Wreaths were draped about the reading desk,
chancel rail and choir stall, and a rope of flowers cast across the
center aisle instead of white ribbon, reserving the first six pews for
relatives and special guests.
Anticipating her daughter’s departure by a few minutes, at a quarter to
four Mrs. Theddon entered her car with old Amos Ruggles, who was to give
the bride away, and who never looked more vacuous or pop-eyed in his
life. Arriving at the church, she entered on the head usher’s arm and
then to the door came the motors of the bridal party.
Vestibule and center aisle were cleared of guests when the bridal party
arrived. Doors to street and church were closed. At five minutes to
four, the bride and her maids assembled. An electric word came to Nathan
and myself, waiting in a side room behind the chancel, that Madelaine
and her party had arrived. The organist was on the alert for the opening
of the great doors at the far end of the center aisle. The ceremony was
a matter of minutes.
It is popularly accepted that a groom a few moments before his marriage
must be flustrated, senseless and speechless, a comic object generally
and only acceptable because if he failed to put in appearance the
wedding machine might have a minor cog missing somewhere, causing it to
rasp horribly. As a matter of fact, most grooms are quite cool and
collected,—at least outwardly. They may misplace a few little things of
minor importance, such as hats, railroad tickets or sense of humor. But
on the whole, they really know a surprising lot of what it’s all about
and why they are there and what the outcome of the entire fuss may
aggregate. Nathan was no exception.
He had not seen Madelaine that morning; he had breakfasted and lunched
with me and we had reached the church at about three-forty-five. I was
agreeably surprised at sight of him in his wedding clothes,—black
cutaway, gray trousers, white waistcoat, gray suède gloves. It came to
me with a smash that my little freckled-faced friend of the Foxboro
schoolyard had flowered into a handsome man. Not the Gordon-Ruggles,
matinee-idol type of handsomeness, but the rugged individuality of the
male who has his fundamentals established, who has found himself and
carries the whole struggle on firm features.
“Well, Bill, old man,” he said, as we waited for the great signal, “it’s
come! The day and the hour we talked about one night down the Green
River in the old red scow. Remember?”
“Yes, Nat,” I returned. “How can either of us forget?”
“There is a God, Bill. And He is good. We talked about Him too, if I
recall correctly.”
“At least I’ve never doubted,” said I, “that He’s on the side of the
chap who tries to do the best he can.”
Those were the last words I ever spoke to my lifelong friend as a single
man. At that moment word came that Madelaine was ready.
Into the chancel he went behind the rector and I followed. Outside the
communion rail he stood facing that great church of faces, manner grave
but easy, a man in perfect control of himself.
Neither of us chanced to be looking at the end of the mid aisle when the
sexton opened the big doors. A sudden peal of music from the high organ
over our heads announced that Nathan’s Woman Beautiful was advancing to
become his wife.
The wedding was on!
The ushers came first, walking two and two with the train of bridesmaids
behind. A vast, motionless hush fell over that church as the wedding
party moved toward the chancel and the bride came into view. Several
women had their handkerchiefs ready to enjoy themselves. They did. At
the profusion of autumnal flowers, the afternoon sunlight flooding
richly through the huge stained-glass window high on the left, Madelaine
advancing behind her maids on the arm of old “Am” Ruggles,—a choke came
in my own throat, I’ll admit, and I teetered on the verge of making an
ass of myself and spoiling my make-up generally.
Madelaine was wonderfully gowned, with a sweeping train. From her dusky
coiffure fell a long tulle veil. She carried a mammoth bouquet of
American Beauty roses. Her face was flushed. She was happy in that
moment; it radiated from her.
She slipped her hand from old “Am’s” arm and the music suddenly died
away. The church was very quiet. A pause.
“_In the name of God, Amen!_”
There was no blur in Nathan’s mind now, no wonder what another girl was
doing, no wandering memories. He was paying attention. Oh, very much he
was paying attention.
Old Amos waited beside Madelaine during the preliminary exhortation.
Then Madelaine gave her maid of honor her bouquet and when the rector
demanded, “Who giveth this woman away?” old Amos allowed he gaveth this
woman away with an “I do!” which suggested he had kept the words locked
in his system for weeks, for months, and the relief of letting them
explode at last was almost sleep-producing. Then he turned, and his
saucer eyes demanded, “Now, bless my soul! Whereabouts do I find myself,
anyhow?” And finding himself at a wedding and the observed of all
observers, he spatted his way to a pew seat and sat down and twirled his
thumbs and looked wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove. And the
wedding went on.
Nathan was married again. The ceremony was finished. The blessing was
spoken. And the man was glad, glad.
With her left hand on the arm of her new husband, Madelaine turned with
him to leave the altar. At that instant the great organ was given its
leash. Thunderously above us all, it pealed into a ringing march of
triumph. The very church arches shook with the delirium of it. The
little flower girls who had brought up the rear of the procession now
turned and were prompted forward. And down the aisle my friend and the
woman who loved him moved forward to happiness on a carpet of flowers.
Millions of unborn men and women are yet to be married and given in
marriage. But no wedding ceremony will ever pass off with such velvet
perfection and infinite smoothness.
In the vestibule Nathan received hat, gloves and stick. The Theddon
motor was waiting. In a moment the pair were seated therein and it had
eased away from the Chestnut Street curbing.
Alone in the limousine, as it purred down South Main Street toward Long
Hill and the wedding reception, Madelaine was the first to speak.
“Well, laddie, I’m yours,” she said simply. “And I’m so happy that it’s
my turn to dream now. And I pray the dear Lord I never awake.”
Nathan’s great talon claw stole out and completely obliterated her right
hand.
“You’ll never awaken if I can help it, dear,” he said huskily. “And I
have a quaint idea that I can.”
Yet there was more happiness in store for them that afternoon.
IV
The Theddon drawing-room was opened to its fullest and banked with more
flowers. The motors which had followed began to empty bridesmaids,
ushers and invited guests. Bride and groom stood before a solid screen
of cut flowers with Gracia Theddon in silver-gray.
And almost the first person to appear with congratulations and good
wishes was—old Caleb Gridley!
If Nathan lost his head that day, it was when he recognized Caleb and
blinked at him stupidly. It was their first meeting in two years.
Gridley had been “out west” on farm mortgage business for the People’s
Bank and as usual had barely arrived in time for the ceremony. But it
was because old Caleb had changed that Nathan stared in stupefaction.
Was this—could it be—old Gridley of the tannery office?
Caleb was clean-shaven and dressed in afternoon clothes which the most
fastidious authority on male attire could not criticize. His iron hair
was no longer a wiry, unruly mass. A heroic barber had conquered it and
old Caleb with his ponderous size, big shoulders, flawless clothes, was
the most distinguished man in that drawing-room, not excepting the groom
himself. He still had the paving-block jaw. But his ugly,
tobacco-stained incisors were gone. He displayed two rows of fine, even
teeth, though he did remove them at night “to get some mouth comfort in
his sleep” as he expressed it afterward.
Old Caleb had suddenly emerged from a chrysalis of small-town mediocrity
into a gentleman of the world. He had left backwater and stroked out
into strong, main current. He was a personage of parts.
But still more than his altered appearance was making Nathan stare. It
was the tableau occurring near the door. Old Caleb had come face to face
with Gracia Theddon. And Madelaine’s foster-mother was very near to
fainting. She had one hand at her heart and the other was clutching the
edge of a table behind her.
“Caleb!” she cried hoarsely.
“B’damn!” was all Caleb could articulate. Showing that in a
flower-banked drawing-room amid bevies of ladies, there were still a few
trifling irregularities in his culture that left room for improvement.
Nathan stepped forward.
“You know Mrs. Theddon, Mr. Gridley?”
Caleb beheld his altered protégé as in a daze. “It was an afternoon of
daisies,” or dazes, as Edith expressed it afterward.
“You an’ me writ a poem about her once, didn’t we?” was the tanner’s
perturbing demand before those wondering guests. “Know her?—Bub!—Bub!—To
think it’s all ended here—Gracie Hemin’way!”
Mrs. Theddon fought for self-possession and won.
“Mr. Gridley and myself knew each other very intimately when we were in
our twenties,” she announced.
The guests were arriving and crowding in and old Caleb had to give way.
But he gripped Madelaine’s hand with a palm which had thrown hides for
twenty years and could not exactly be described as “moonbeam.” He cried
huskily:
“Ma’am—you got the finest boy in the world, b’damn if you haven’t! Only
you got to see the unholy scrapes he can get into, to find it out. Same
as me. We writ poetry, once, ma’am. B’damn if we didn’t write perty good
poetry. I congratulate you, ma’am. This is a scrumpshus occasion—a dam’
fine one!”
Madelaine laughed merrily.
“You’re so good, Mr. Gridley. You’re going to be one of my dearest
friends, because you’ve been Nathan’s. He’s told me all about you. He
said you were the only real father he’d ever known.”
“Did he now? Well, just goes to show what excellent judgment he’s got!
Haven’t had much time to do no letter-writin’ or send presents, but I
guess it ain’t too late to pay my respects and show how I allus
appreciated Nat’s readin’ me poetry. Take this here. I gotta go see a
man!”
Caleb said this last suddenly and a bit wildly. He had no man to “see”
but he did have to get away before he choked so tightly he could only
gurgle. With his declaration, however, he pressed a bit of heavy,
crinkled, folded paper into Madelaine’s palm.
Madelaine laughed again and thanked him and handed it to her husband.
Nathan shoved it in the pocket of his waistcoat. The reception was well
over before he thought to look at it.
It was old Caleb’s check, drawn on a Boston bank for ten thousand
dollars.
V
But Mrs. Nathaniel Forge, née Theddon, never knew how truly she spoke,
nor significantly, when she declared that old Caleb was to be one of her
dearest friends because he had been Nathan’s. And for a reason entirely
apart from her husband.
After her supper to her bridesmaids, Madelaine slipped upstairs to
change into her traveling suit. Her mother had been unpardonably missing
for over an hour. Having occasion to enter the upper library, Madelaine
drew back aghast.
Her mother was in there alone with old Caleb. Her mother was sobbing.
But her mother was merely exercising sweet woman’s prerogative to weep
gloriously and copiously, in proof that she was happy, happy, happy.
Madelaine turned blank of face from what she had seen. She met Nathan on
the stairs. She caught her husband and spoke in swift and stupefied
whispers.
Nathan grinned. Yes, he did!
“Oh, well, Girl-o’-Mine,” he admonished. “We needn’t be selfish and
demand a monopoly of all the happiness that’s going around to-day. The
springtime of life is all fine and wonderful. But we’ve got to admit
there’s many a love flower that blossoms in Indian Summer. And it’s
usually all the more fragrant and exquisite on that account. Where’s the
telephone?”
VI
In their rooms at The Worthy that night, after Madelaine and Nathan had
left town, Mrs. Anna Forge and Edith locked their door carefully. Mrs.
Forge had read in newspapers of “strange men” who “prowled” around hotel
corridors.
“_Whew!_” cried Edith, flopping down in a rocker and sprawling her
ungainly legs. “After all that class, I’m plumb bowled over. My Gawd,
Ma, think of it! And Natie’s gotta spend all the rest of life livin’ up
to it. Poor Natie!”
Mrs. Forge stood by the window, holding to the lace drape and using a
badly overworked handkerchief as it was needed at her features. Whatever
else might be said for Mrs. Anna Forge in her sunset years, she had not
forgotten how to weep.
“I think it was all heavenly, Edie. For one afternoon—for the first time
in all my life—I just reveled in it. And I think Natie’s the luckiest
boy in the world.”
“Baggin’ a million dollars? You bet! But think of havin’ to sit around
all the rest of life on your manners and never darin’ to open your mouth
for fear o’ puttin’ your foot in it! Gawd, it’d have me in a sanatorium
in a month!”
“Nathan’s got what he wanted and deserved. He can’t help but be happy
with that beautiful wife and surrounded by fine things.”
“Sufferin’ catfish, Ma! You don’t mean to say _you’d_ wanner live up to
it, too? Then it ain’t hard to see where Natie gets his crazy ideas for
swell things and manners. You can knock Pa all you wanner. But he’s my
dad and I’m his girl. And I kiss my soup at table if I feel like it, and
if I wanner I loll ’round the house in a blanket. That’s my privilege.
No airs to me. You always know just where to find me. I’m honest!”
And Edith fully believed that she was and remained smugly content, the
“mother of seven.”
Mrs. Forge not answering (Mrs. Forge, in fact, living over the glories
of that wonder-day with the lacklustre gone from her pin-point eyes and
her pinched face softened, for the first time in years), Edith finally
concluded:
“Say, Ma! Wonder how quick it’d be safe to ‘touch’ Nat for a couple o’
thousand—and stand any show o’ gettin’ it? Joe’s gettin’ awful restless
lately with so many kids to support. And a couple thousand would give
him a swell start in the express business. Nat oughta set him up. It’s
his duty. After all, he can’t sneak outta the fact that I’m his sister!”
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