FORTUNATELY Kate's marriage came to distract them for a while from the
thought of Bud's future. The essential house had been found that was
suitable for a captain, yet not too dearly rented--a piece of luck in
a community where dwellings are rarely vacant, and every tenant over
eighty years of age has the uneasy consciousness that half a dozen pairs
betrothed have already decided upon a different color of paint for his
windows, and have become resigned, with a not unpleasing melancholy, to
the thought that in the course of nature his time cannot be long.
The Captain--that once roving eagle-heart subdued by love for the maid
of Colonsay--so persistently discouraged any yachting trips which took
the _Wave_ for more than a night or two from her moorings that Lady Anne
and her husband, knowing the heart themselves, recommended immediate
marriage; and Miss Bell, in consequence, was scouring the country-side
for Kate's successor in the kitchen, but hopeless of coming on one who
could cook good kale, have a cheery face, and be a strict communicant.
“I can get fine cooks that are wanting in the grace of God, and pious
girls who couldn't be trusted to bake a Christian scone,” she said;
“it's a choice between two evils.”
“Of two evils choose the third, then,” said Dan to his sister, flushed
and exhilarated by a search that, for elderly maiden ladies, makes up
for an older hunt. “The sport's agreeing with you.”
It was a great distress to Bud that the wedding should take place in
the house and not in church, as seemed most fitting. She felt a private
ceremony deprived her of a spectacle, with Miss Amelia Duff playing the
wedding march on the harmonium, and the audience filing up the aisle in
their Sunday clothes, the carriage of their hats revealing character.
“Why, you're simply going to make it look like a plain tea!” she
protested. “If it was my marriage, Kate, I'd have it as solemn and grand
as Harvest Sunday. A body doesn't get married to a man in brass buttons
every other day, and it's a chance for style.”
“We never have our weddings in the church,” said Kate. “Sometimes the
gentry do, but it's not considered nice; it's kind of Roman Catholic.
Forbye, in a church, where would you get the fun?”
If Bud hadn't realized that fun was the main thing at Scottish weddings,
she got hints of it in Kate's preparation. Croodles and hysterics took
possession of the bride: she was sure she would never get through the
ceremony with her life, or she would certainly do something silly that
would make the whole world laugh at her and dreadfully vex the Captain.
Even her wedding-dress, whose prospect had filled her dreams
with gladness, but deepened her depression when it came from the
manteau-maker's--she wept sad stains on the front width, and the
orange-blossom they rehearsed with might have been a wreath of the
bitter rue. Bud wanted her to try the dress on, but the bride was aghast
at such an unlucky proposition; so she tried it on herself, with sweet
results, if one did not look at the gathers in the back. They practised
the ceremony the night before, Kate's sister from Colonsay (who was
to be her bridesmaid) playing the part of a tall, brass-buttoned
bridegroom.
“Oh, Kate!” cried Bud, pitifully, “you stand there like's you were a
soda-water bottle and the cork lost. My goodness! brisk up a bit; if
it's hard on you, just remember it isn't much of a joke for Charles.
Don't you know the eyes of the public are on you?”
“That's just it,” said poor Kate. “I wouldn't be frightened a bit if it
wasn't for that, for I'm so brave. What do you do with your hands?”
“You just keep hold of them. Mercy! don't let them hang like that;
they're yours; up till now he's got nothing to do with them. Now for the
tears--where's your handkerchief? That one's yards too big, and there
isn't an edge of lace to peek through, but it 'll do this time. It
'll all be right on the night. Now the minister's speaking, and you're
looking down at the carpet and you're timid and fluttered and nervous,
and thinking what an epoch this is in your sinful life, and how you
won't be Kate MacNeill any more but Mrs. Charles Maclean, and the Lord
knows if you will be happy with him--”
The bride blubbered and threw her apron over her head as usual. Bud was
in despair.
“Well, you are a silly!” she exclaimed. “All you want is a gentle tear
or two trickling down the side of your nose, enough to make your eyes
blink but not enough to soak your veil or leave streaks. And there you
gush like a water-spout, and damp your face so much the bridegroom 'll
catch his death of cold when he kisses you. Stop it, Kate MacNeill, it
isn't anybody's funeral. Why, weddings aren't so very fatal; lots of
folk get over them--leastways in America.”
“I can't help it!” protested the weeping maid. “I never could be
melancholy in moderation, and the way you speak you make me think it's
running a dreadful risk to marry anybody.”
“Well,” said Bud, “you needn't think of things so harrowing, I suppose.
Just squeeze your eyes together and bite your lip, and perhaps it 'll
start a tear; if it don't, it 'll look like as if you were bravely
struggling with emotion. And then there's the proud, glad smile as you
back out on Charles's arm--give her your arm, Minnie--the trial's over,
you know, and you've got on a lovely new plain ring, and all the other
girls are envious, and Charles Maclean and you are one till death do
you part. Oh, Kate, Kate! don't grin; that's not a smile, it's a--it's
a railroad track. Look!” Bud assumed a smile that spoke of gladness and
humility, confidence and a maiden's fears, a smile that appealed and
charmed.
“I couldn't smile like that to save my life,” said Kate, in a
despair. “I wish you had learned me that instead of the height of
Popacatthekettle. Do you think he'll be angry if I don't do them things
properly?”
“Who? Charles! Why, Charles 'll be so mortally scared himself he
wouldn't notice if you made faces at him or were a different girl
altogether. He'll have a dull, dead booming in his ears, and wonder
whether it's wedding-day or apple-custard--all of them I've seen married
looked like that. It's not for Charles you should weep and smile; it's
for the front of the house, you know, it's for the people looking on.”
“Toots!” said Kate, relieved. “If it's only for them, I needn't bother.
I thought that maybe it was something truly refined that he would be
expecting. It's not--it's not the front of a house I'm marrying. Tell
me this and tell me no more--is there anything special I should do to
please my Charles?”
“I don't think I'd worry,” said Bud, on reflection. “I dare say it's
better not to think of anything dramatic. If I were you I'd just keep
calm as grass, and pray the Lord to give me a good, contented mind and
hurry up the clergyman.”
But yet was the maiden full of a consciousness of imperfection, since
she had seen that day the bride's-cake on view in the baker's window--an
edifice of art so splendid that she felt she could never be worthy of
it. “How do you think I'll look?” she asked. And Bud assured her she
would look magnificently lovely.
“Oh, I wish I did,” she sighed. “But I'm feared I'll not look so lovely
as I think I do.”
“No girl ever did,” said Bud. “That's impossible. But when Charles comes
to and sits up he'll think you're It; he'll think you perfect.”
“Indeed, I'm far from that,” said Kate. “I have just my health and
napery and a liking for the chap, and I wish I wasn't near so red.”
Bud was able to instruct her in the right deportment for a bride, but
had no experience in the management of husbands; for that Kate had to
take some hints from her mistress, who was under the delusion that her
brother Dan was the standard of his sex.
“They're curious creatures,” Bell confided. “You must have patience,
ay, and humor them. They'll trot at your heels like pussy for a
cheese-pudding, but they'll not be driven. If I had a man I would never
thwart him. If he was out of temper or unreasonable I would tell him he
was looking ill, and that would make him feared and humble. When a man
thinks he's ill, his trust must be in the Lord and in his womankind.
That's where we have the upper hand of them! First and last the thing's
to be agreeable. You'll find he'll never put anything in its proper
place, and that's a heartbreak, but it's not so bad as if he broke
the dishes and blackened your eyes, the way they do in the newspapers.
There's one thing that's the secret of a happy home--to live in the fear
of God and within your income; faith! you can't live very well without
it.”
“Oh, m'em! it's a desperate thing a wedding,” said the maid. “I never in
all my life had so much to think about before.”
There were stricken lads in these days! The more imminent became her
utter loss, the more desirable Kate became; but sentiment in country
towns is an accommodating thing, and all the old suitors--the whistlers
in the close and purveyors of conversation lozenges--found consolation
in the fun at the wedding, and danced their griefs away on the flags of
the Dyces' kitchen.
A noble wedding! All the cookery skill of Kate and her mistress was
expended on it, and discretion, for the sake of the incredulous, forbids
enumeration of the roasted hens. Chanticleers in the town crowed roupily
and ruefully for months thereafter. The bridegroom might have stepped
over the wall to the wedding chamber or walked to it in a hundred paces
up the lane; he rode instead in a carriage that made a stately and
circuitous approach round John Turner's corner, and wished the distance
had been twenty times as long. “It's not that I'm feared,” said he,
“or that I've rued the gyurl, but--but it's kind of sudden!”--a curious
estimate of a courtship that had started in the burial-ground of
Colonsay so many years before!
A noble wedding!--its revelry kept the town awake till morning; from
the open windows the night was filled with dancing times and songs and
laughter; boys cried “Fab, fab!” in the street, and a fairy lady--really
a lady all grown up, alas!--stood at a window and showered pence among
them.
Long before the wedding party ended, Bud went up to bed, but she lay for
hours awake in the camceil-room hearing the revelry of the kitchen. She
had said goodbye to the blissful pair whose wedding was the consequence
of her own daft pranks as letter-writer; she would miss the maid of
Colonsay. The knowledge that 'tis an uncertain world, a place of
change and partings, comes to us all sooner or later in one flash of
apprehension and of grief; for the first time Bud felt the irrevocable
nature of the past, and that her happy world under this roof was,
someway, crumbling, and the tears came to her eyes.
A hurried footstep sounded on the stairs, a rap came to the door, and
the bride came in, unbidrin the darkness, whispering Lennox's name.
Her only answer was a sob from the girl in bed.
“Miss Lennox!” said the bride, distressed, “what ails you? I've come
up to say good-bye; it wasn't a right good-bye at all with yon folk
looking. Oh, Lennox, Lennox! _ghaol mo chridhe!_ my heart is sore to be
leaving you, for the two of us were so merry! Now I have a man, and a
good man, too; it was you that gave me him, but I have lost my loving
friend.” She threw herself on the bed, regardless of her finery, and the
Celtic fount of her swelled over in sobs and tears.