On the 6th of the following July, Lilly Becker and Albert Penny were
married.
The day dawned one of those imperturbable blues that hang over that
latitude of the country like a hot wet blanket steaming down. The corn
belt shriveled of thirst. The automobile had not yet bitten so deeply
into the country roads, but even a light horse and buggy traveled in a
whirligig of its own dust. St. Louis lay stark as if riveted there by
the Cyclopean eye of the sun. For twenty-four hours the weather vanes of
the great Middle West stood stock-still while July came in like a lion.
The city slept in strange, improvised beds drawn up beside windows or
made up on floors, and awoke enervated and damp at the back of the neck.
Throughout the Becker household, however, the morning moved with a whir,
the newly installed telephone lifting its shrill scream, delivery wagons
at the door, the horses panting under wet sponges and awning hats,
Georgia wide-eyed at the concurrence of events.
For the half-dozenth time that morning Mrs. Becker suffered a little
collapse, dropping down to the kitchen chair or hall bench, fanning
herself with the end of her apron.
"I'm dead! Another day like this will finish me. Georgia, have you
polished the door bell? Those delivery boys finger it up so. I'm
wringing wet with _prespiration_. If only there is a breeze in the
church to-night. Georgia, if that is Mr. Albert on the telephone, tell
him Miss Lilly isn't going to leave her room until noon. No, wait. I
want to speak to him myself. Hello, Albert? Well, bridegroom, good
morning!... What's left of me is fine.... I'm making her stay in her
room. Poor child, she's all nerves. Don't be late. I hate last-minute
weddings. Did you see the item in the morning _Globe_?... Yes, the name
is spelled wrong, Pen-nie, but there's quite a few lines. 'In lieu of a
honeymoon,' it goes on to say, 'the young couple will go to housekeeping
at once in their new home, 5199 Page Avenue, directly across from the
parents of the bride.' I'm sending over now to have all the windows
opened so it won't be stuffy for you to-night. Wait until you see the
presents, Albert, that came this morning. A check for five hundred
dollars all the way from her uncle Buck in Alaska. That makes six
hundred in checks. Three beautiful clocks, a dozen berry spoons from my
euchre club, and an invitation in poetry for her to become a member of
the Junior Matron Friday Club. If I wasn't so rushed I think I--I could
just sit down and have a good cry. Albert, be careful of those silk
sleeve garters I sent you for your wedding shirt, don't adjust them too
tight; and you know how you catch cold. Don't perspire and go in a
draught. And--and Albert, I see I have to remind you of little things
the way I do Ben. You men with your heads so chock full of business!"
(Very _sotto voce_.) "Send Lilly flowers this afternoon.
Lilies-of-the-valley and white rosebuds. Remley's on your corner is a
good place. Tell them your mother-in-law is a good customer and they'll
give you a little discount.... Yes, she's upset, poor child. I was the
same way. My mother almost had to shove me into the carriage. Well,
Albert, call up again about noon. She'll be up by then. Good-by--son."
A pox of perspiration was out over her face, sparkling forth again after
each mopping. A box arrived from a jeweler's and one from a department
store. They were a pie knife and a table crumber in the form of a
miniature carpet sweeper. The usual futilities with which such occasions
can be cluttered and which have shaped the destinies of immemorial women
into a tyranny of petty things.
Then Mrs. Becker hurried upstairs, her white wrapper floating after.
In the bathroom her husband leaned to a mirror, his jaw line thrust to
the cleave of a razor.
"I really envy you, Ben. Not even your daughter's wedding day can
disturb you. For a cent I could cry my eyes out. It's only excitement
keeps me going. I--could--c-c-cry."
"Now, now, little woman."
She sat down on a hall chair, regarding him through the open bathroom
door.
"Has she said anything to you, Ben, since yesterday? It's made me so
upset."
"Now, now, little woman, you must make allowances for a young girl's
nervousness."
"I know, Ben, but it worries me so. It's not natural for her to have
crying spells like that one yesterday."
"Nonsense! I'm not so sure you weren't a red-eyed bride."
"My nervousness wasn't anything like hers. She'll make herself sick."
"You mean you will."
"Have you heard her moving about her room yet?"
"No."
"Shall I knock?"
"No, Carrie; now let the child alone this morning."
"I never knew her to stay in bed so long. It's after eleven, and the
hair dresser coming at twelve. It will seem funny, won't it, Ben,
her--little room empty to-night."
"Now, now, no waterworks. What if she was moving away to another city
instead of just settling down across the street? You worked this thing
your way, and even now you don't feel satisfied."
"I do feel satisfied, Ben, but I want her to be, too."
"Now, little woman, mark my word, Lilly may feel that she is doing this
thing in more or less of a spirit of sacrifice to our pleasure, but
inside of a week she'll be as busy and happy a little housekeeper as
her mother."
"Is that her calling?"
"Yes. Go to her, Carrie."
Out in the little upper square of hallway Lilly appeared suddenly; her
hair still down in the beautiful way she let it toss about her in sleep,
and her body boldly outlined in a Japanese kimono she held tightly
about her.
"Mamma, will you and papa please come to my room? I want to talk to
you."
"Your father is shaving, Lilly. Can't you talk to us out here? How is
our girl on her wedding day? Frightened? You're me all over again. Ask
your father if I wasn't as pale as you are." She kissed her daughter on
lips that were cold, brushing back the shower of hair from her
shoulders. "You ought to see the presents, Lilly, that just--"
"Mamma--papa--you must listen."
"Yes, Lilly."
"Please, won't you let me off? Please!"
Her father regarded her from behind the white mud of lather, his eyes
darkening up.
"Now, now, sweetheart," he said, using one of his rarest words of
endearment, "this won't do at all."
"But I can't, papa. I just can't. I know it's terrible, this last
minute, but--but--I tell you--I can't."
"My God, Ben!"
"Can't what, Lilly?"
"Can't! I never had such a funny--a terrible feeling. I can't explain
it, only let me off. Please! It's not too late. Lots of girls have done
it--found out at the last minute they couldn't--"
"My God! What are we to do, Ben? Ben!"
"Carrie, if only you will hold your horses I'll handle this." He mopped
off his face hurriedly, sliding into a dressing gown.
"Come now, Lilly, into the front room. Sit down."
She moved after him with the rather groping look of the blind.
"Now what is this nonsense, Lilly, you've been hinting these last few
days?"
"I've made a mistake, papa. I should have said so weeks--ago--from the
start. It isn't Albert's fault. It isn't anybody's fault. I've had it
all along, this queer feeling all through the engagement and parties,
but I kept hoping for your sakes I'd get over it--hoping--in vain--"
"Why, of course, Lilly, you'll get over it! It's natural for a young
girl to feel--"
"No! No! My feeling won't lift! If only I had said nothing the night
he--proposed. But mamma was waiting up. She--she pressed me so. It was
so hard the way you put it. I know he's a fine fellow. I know, papa,
he's thrown big orders in your way. But I can't help being what I am.
Please, papa, let me off! Please!"
An actual shrinkage of face seemed to have taken place in Mrs. Becker.
"What'll we do? What'll we do, Ben?" she kept repeating, rocking herself
back and forth in what seemed to border on dementia.
"You see, papa, it's only to be a small wedding. We could so easily call
things off. I'll take all the blame--"
"No! No! No!"
"Mamma dear, I'm as sorry--about it as you are, but--"
"No! No! She's ruining our lives, Ben--disgracing--"
"Lilly, are you sure that you are telling us everything?"
"I swear it, papa. I know I'm inarticulate, I don't seem able to explain
the terrible state I've been in for days--"
"It's nervousness, Lilly."
"I tell you, no! I can't make you understand. But I'm not cut out, papa,
for what I'm going to settle down to. I'm something else than what you
think I am. I guess I--I am a sort of botanical sport, papa, off our
family tree. I know what you're going to say, and maybe you're right. I
may have more ideas than I have talent, but let me go my way. Let me be
what I am."
"Lilly, Lilly, let us take this thing step by step, quietly. Surely,
daughter, you appreciate the enormity of the situation!"
"I do. I do."
"Now to go back to the beginning. Did you consent to this engagement of
your own free will?"
"I did and I didn't."
"You didn't?"
"Oh, I know you let me decide for myself, but don't you think I felt the
undercurrent of your attitudes? All the other girls settling down, as
you put it. You and Albert such good friends, and then Albert himself
so--so what he should be."
"Now you are talking. If your mother and I hadn't felt that Albert was
the fine and upright man for their little girl to marry, do you think
they would have--"
"I know! There we go around in the circle again. Everything is perfect.
The little house, Albert's promotion to first assistant. Everything
perfect, but me. I don't want it. I don't love him. You hear me! There
is something in me he hasn't touched. Respect him? Yes, but respect is
only a poor relation to love and comes in for the left-over and the
cast-off emotions."
"Her head is full of the novels she reads!"
"You can't keep me from thinking like a woman. Feeling like one. Is it
shameful to want to love? Is it wrong to desire in the man you are to
marry that fundamental passion that makes the world go around? I'm not
supposed to know any thing about the thing I'm plunging into until after
I've plunged! I'm afraid, papa. Save me!"
"Ben, I could swear who is at the bottom of this indecent talk of hers.
I found his picture cut out of the school magazine and pasted in her
diary. She's a changed child since that Lindsley came to the High School
the year before she graduated."
"Mamma! Mamma!" fairly exploded to her feet by the potency of her sense
of outrage. "Oh, you--you--"
"I know I'm right."
"Why, I haven't even seen him since I graduated! I've never talked ten
words to the man in my life! Oh--oh--how can you?"
"Just the same, he's been your ruination. Since you got him into your
head not one of the boys you met has been good enough. I knew you had
him in mind the day you told me you wished Albert was a little more
bookish and musical. I know why you wanted him to subscribe to the
Symphony. The spats you made him buy. Poor boy! and his ankles aren't
cut for them. Love! Your father and I weren't so much in love, let me
tell you. Only I knew my parents wanted it and that was enough. I wish
to God I'd never lived to see this day--"
"Carrie!"
"I do. Noon of my daughter's wedding day, and she can't make up her mind
whether she'll be married or not. O God! it's funny--love, now at the
last minute--oh--oh--" A geyser of hysteria shot up, raining down in a
glassy kind of laugh. "Oh--oh, it's funny!--love--"
"Carrie, you're hysterical. Here, smell this ammonia."
"The little house--my heart's blood in it. A doll's house, ready for her
to walk into. Membership in the Junior Matrons--trousseau--oh, it's
funny--funny--"
"For God's sake, papa, try to calm her!"
"Funny--funny--funny."
With a wave of sobs that broke over her, she went down, then, literally
to her knees, her back heaving and shuddering.
"Her wedding day--O God--funny--"
"Mamma! Mamma! It's all right, dear. Don't--holler like that. I just got
upset, that's all. Frightened like--like any other girl would. I'm all
right now, mamma. I'm sorry."
"We want to see you happy, baby. It's for your good."
"Of course you do. I know it. I'm all right now, mamma."
"We're your best friends, Lilly. We would go through fire for you."
"Of course, mamma. I--I was nervous, that's all."
"There's no finer boy breathes than Albert."
"You're right."
"He's sending you lilies-of-the-valley, baby. He's ordered himself some
white-flannel tennis pants, too--the kind you admired. He got his report
from the life-insurance people and he's a grand risk, Lilly. In as fine
a condition to marry as a man could be. Baby, tell me--tell papa--aren't
you happy?"
"I am--I--oh, I am, dear! Why, here is Elsa ready to dress my hair!
Mamma--dear--I'm all right now. Fine."
* * * * *
At eight o'clock that evening, in the Garrison Avenue Rock Church,
little Evelyn Kemble, in the bushiest of white skirts and to the
accompaniment of organ music rolling over her, placed a white-satin
cushion before the smilax-banked altar.
Kneeling on it, and to the antiphonal beat of the Reverend Stickney's
voice, Lilly Becker and Albert Penny became as one.