EASTER LILIES.
Bright, soft days began to come; days in which windows stood open,
and pots of plants were set out on the window-sills; days
alternating as in the long, New England spring they always do, with
bleak intervals of sharp winds and cold sea-storms; yet giving sweet
anticipation tenderly, as a mother gives beforehand that which she
cannot find in her heart to keep back till the birthday. That is the
charm of Nature with us; the motherliness in her that offsets, and
breaks through with loving impulse, her rule of rigidness. The year
comes slowly to its growth, but she relaxes toward it with a kind of
pity, and says, "There, take this! It isn't time for it, but you
needn't wait for everything till you're grown up!"
People feel happy, in advance of all their hopes and realizations,
on such days; the ripeness of the year, in whatever good it may be
making for them, touches them like the soft air that blows up from
the south. There is a new look on men's and women's faces as you
meet them in the street; a New Jerusalem sort of look; the heavens
are opened upon them, and the divineness of sunshine flows in
through sense and spirit.
Sylvie Argenter was very peaceful. She told Desire that she never
would be afraid again in all her life; she _knew_ how things were
measured, now. She was "so glad the money had almost all been spent
while mother lived; that not a dollar that could buy her a comfort
had been kept back."
She was quite content to stay now; at least till Rachel Froke
should come; she was busily helping Desire with her wedding outfit.
She was willing to receive from her the fair wages of a seamstress,
now that she could freely give her time, and there was no one to
accept and use an invalid's expensive luxuries.
Desire would not have thought it needful that hundreds of extra
yards of cambric and linen should be made up for her, simply because
she was going to be married, if it had not been that her marriage
was to be so especially a beginning of new life and work, in which
she did not wish to be crippled by any present care for self.
"I see the sense of it now, so far as concerns quantity; as for
quality, I will have nothing different from what I have always had."
There was no trousseau to exhibit; there were only trunks-full of
good plenishing that would last for years.
Sylvie cut out, and parceled. Elise Mokey, and one or two other
girls who had had only precarious employment and Committee "relief"
since the fire, had the stitching given them to do; and every tuck
and hem was justly paid for. When the work came back from their
hands, Sylvie finished and marked delicately.
She had the sunny little room, now, over the gray parlor, adjoining
Desire's own. The white box lay upon a round, damask-covered-stand
in the corner, under her mother's picture painted in the graceful
days of the gray silks and llama laces; and around this, drooping
and trailing till they touched the little table and veiled the box
that held the beautiful secret,--seeming to say, "We know it too,
for we are a part,"--wreathed the shining sprays of blossomy fern.
In these sunny days of early spring, Sylvie could not help being
happy. The snows were gone now, except in deep, dark places, out of
the woods; the ferns and vines and grasses were alive and eager for
a new summer's grace and fullness; their far-off presence made the
air different, already, from the airs of winter.
Yet Rodney Sherrett had kept silence.
All these weeks had gone by, and Miss Euphrasia had had no answer
from over the water. Of all the letters that went safely into mail
bags, and of all the mail bags that went as they were bound, and of
all the white messages that were scattered like doves when those
bags were opened,--somehow--it can never be told how,--that
particular little white, folded sheet got mishandled, mislaid, or
missent, and failed of its errand; and at the time when Miss
Euphrasia began to be convinced that it must be so, there came a
letter from Mr. Sherrett to herself, written from London, where he
had just arrived after a visit to Berlin.
"I have had no family news," he wrote, "of later date than January
20th. Trust all is well. Shall sail from Liverpool on the 9th."
The date of that was March 20th.
The fourteenth of April, Easter Monday, was fixed for Desire
Ledwith's marriage.
Rachel Froke came back on the Friday previous. Desire would have her
in time, but not for any fatigues.
The gray parlor was all ready; everything just as it had been before
she left it. The ivies had been carefully tended, and the golden and
brown canary was singing in his cage. There was nothing to remind of
the different life to which, the place had been lent, making its
last hours restful and pleasant, or of the death that had stepped so
noiselessly and solemnly in.
Desire had formally made over this house to her cousin and
co-heiress, Hazel Ripwinkley.
"It must never be left waiting, a mere possible convenience, for
anybody," she said. "There must be a real life in it, as long as we
can order it so."
The Ripwinkleys were to leave Aspen Street, and come here with
Hazel. Miss Craydocke, who never had half room enough in Orchard
Street, was to "spill over" from the Bee-hive into the Mile-hill
house. "She knew just whom to put there; people who would take care
and comfort. Them shouldn't be any hurt, and there would be lots of
help."
There was a widow with three daughters, to begin with; "just as neat
as a row of pins;" but who had had less and less to be neat with for
seven years past; one of the daughters had just got a situation as
compositor, and another as a book-keeper; between them, they could
earn twelve hundred dollars a year. The youngest had to stay at home
and help her mother do the work, that they might all keep together.
They could pay three hundred dollars for four rooms; but of course
they could not get decent ones, in a decent neighborhood, for that.
That was what Bee-hives were for; houses that other people could do
without.
Hazel had her wish; it came to pass that they also should make a
bee-hive.
"And whenever I marry," Hazel said, "I hope he won't be building a
town of his own to take me to; for I shall _have_ to bring him here.
I'm the last of the line."
"That will all be taken care of as the rest has been. There isn't
half as much left for us to manage as we think," said Desire,
putting back into the desk the copy of Uncle Titus's will which they
had been reading over together. "He knew the executorship into
which he gave it."
Shall I stop here with them until the Easter tide, and finish
telling you how it all was?
There is a little bit about Bel Bree and Kate Sencerbox and the
Schermans, which belongs somewhat earlier than that,--in those few
pleasant days when March was beguiling us to believe in the more
engaging of his double moods, and in the possibility of his behaving
sweetly at the end, and going out after all like a lamb.
We can turn back afterwards for that. I think you would like to hear
about the wedding.
Does it never occur to you that this "going back and living up" in a
story-book is a sign of a possibility that may be laid by in the
divine story-telling, for the things we have to hurry away from, and
miss of, now? It does to me. I know that _That_ can manage at least
as well as mine can.
* * * * *
Christopher Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith were married in the
library, where they had betrothed themselves; where Desire had felt
all the sacredness of her life laid upon her; where she took up now
another trust, that was only an outgrowth and expansion of the
first, and for which she laid down nothing of its spirit and intent.
Mrs. Ledwith and the sisters--Mrs. Megilp and Glossy--were there, of
course.
Mrs. Megilp had said over to herself little imaginary speeches about
the homestead and old associations, and "Daisy's great love and
reverence for all that touched the memory of her uncle, to whom she
certainly owed everything;" about the journey to New York, and the
few days they had to give there to Mr. Oldway's life-long friend
and Desire's adviser, Mr. Marmaduke Wharne ("_Sir_ Marmaduke he
would be, everybody knew, if he had chosen to claim the English
title that belonged to him"),--who was too infirm to come on to the
wedding; and the necessity there was for them to go as fast as
possible to their estate in the country,--Hill-hope,--where Mr.
Kirkbright was building "mills and a village and a perfect castle of
a house, and a private railroad and heaven knows what,"--all this to
account, indirectly, for the quiet little ordinary ceremony, which
of course would otherwise have been at the Church of the Holy
Commandments; or at least up-stairs in the long, stately old
drawing-room which was hardly ever used.
But none of the people were there to whom any such little speeches
had to be made; nobody who needed any accounting to for its oddity
was present at Desire Ledwith's wedding.
Mr. Vireo officiated; there was something in his method and manner
which Mrs. Megilp decidedly objected to.
It was "everyday," she thought. "It didn't give you a feeling of
sanctity. It was just as if he was used to the Almighty, and didn't
mind! It seemed as if he were just mentioning things, in a quiet
way, to somebody who was right at his elbow. For her part, she liked
a little lifting up."
Hazel Ripwinkley heard her, and told Sylvie and Diana that "that
came of having all your ideas of home in the seventh story; of
course you wanted an elevator to go up in."
Desire Ledwith looked what she was, to-day; a grand, pure woman; a
fit woman to stand up beside a man like Christopher Kirkbright, in
fair white garments, and say the words that made her his wife.
There was a beautiful, sweet majesty in her giving of herself.
She did not disdain rich robes to-day,--she would give herself at
her very best, with all generous and gracious outward sign.
She wore a dress of heavy silk, long-trained; the cream-white folds,
unspoiled by any frippery of lace, took, as they dropped around her,
the shade and convolutions of a lily. Upon her bosom, and fastening
her veil, were deep green leaves that gave the contrast against
which a lily rests itself. Around her throat were links of frosted
silver, from which hung a pure plain silver cross; these were the
gift of Hazel. The veil, of point, and rarely beautiful, fell back
from her head,--lovely in its shape, and the simple wreathing of the
dark, soft hair,--like a drift of water spray; not covering or
misting her all over,--only lending a touch of delicate suggestion
to the pure, cool, graceful, flower-like unity of her whole air and
apparel.
"Desire is beautiful!" said Hazel Ripwinkley to her mother. "She
never _stopped_ to be _pretty_!"
White calla-lilies, with their tall stems and great shadowy leaves,
were in the Pompeiian vases on the mantel; in the India jars in the
corners below; in a large Oriental china bowl that was set upon the
closed desk on the library table, wheeled back for the first time
that anybody there had seen it so, against the wall.
Hazel had hung a lily-wreath upon the carved back of Uncle Titus's
chair, that no one might sit down in it, and placed it in the recess
at Desire's left hand, as she should stand up to be married.
"Will you two take each other, to love and dwell together, and to do
God's work, as He shall show and help you, so long as He keeps you
both in this his world? Will you, Desire Ledwith, take Christopher
Kirkbright to be your wedded husband; will you, Christopher
Kirkbright, take Desire Ledwith to be your wedded wife; and do you
thereto mutually make your vows in the sight of God and before this
company?"
And they answered together, "We do."
It was a promise for more than each other; it was a
life-consecration. It was a gathering up and renewal of all that had
been holy in the resolves of either while they had lived apart; a
joining of two souls in the Lord.
Hilary Vireo would not have dared to lead to perjury, by such words,
a common man and woman. It was enough for such to ask if they would
take, and keep to, each other.
Mrs. Megilp thought it was "so jumbled!" "If it was _her_ daughter,
she should not think she was half married."
Mrs. Megilp put it more shrewdly than she had intended.
Desire and Christopher Kirkbright were very sure they had _not_ been
"half married." It was not the world's half marriage that they had
stood up there together for.