Ever since I can remember having any ideas on the subject at all,
I have always longed to be married in one of those dark, little
tucked-away chapels in some cathedral or other, in France or England,
like a girl I read about in a book. Perhaps a late afternoon service
would be going on up near the big altar; candles would be burning;
the priest would be chanting queer minor things; poor women would be
stepping in, crossing themselves, to say a prayer; and, all unconscious
of me, nearly hidden by the big stone pillars, tourists would be
tip-toeing about, gazing at the rose-window and the towering arches.
There would be footfalls and whispers in the nave. Echoes everywhere.
I should have loved the echoes! "But then," Edith said, "you wouldn't
have had a sign of a wedding present, and you can't furnish your house
with echoes, crazy Bobbs."
If ever there was a wedding opposite to my ideal of one, it was mine.
For of course I am married to Dr. Maynard.
You aren't surprised, I know. It was all decided that afternoon at
three, and two weeks later when Will sailed back to Germany it wasn't
in imagination that I stood on the dock and waved him good-bye. I
was there soul and body this time, and I followed with my fluttering
handkerchief every motion that he made with his hat and great spoke of
an arm. I watched him till he faded out of sight, and then with Ruth
and Edith, who went to New York with me, I returned to the shops to buy
my trousseau.
Will had to be back in Germany on May first to deliver a lecture before
a very learned assembly of scientists and doctors. They wanted him to
tell them about a few of his experiments with his guinea-pigs. It was
a great compliment for so young a man, and an American besides, to
receive an invitation to address a body of old-world sages. Of course
he couldn't disappoint them, but he told me that by the middle of
August he would be sailing back again and after a simple little wedding
in the dead quiet of midsummer, he would at last carry his refugee back
with him to Europe. He was not going to begin work until October. We
planned to travel till then.
"So, after all," said Will to me that afternoon at three o'clock,
"after all, some day--oh, Lucy--perhaps some day--" and _this_ time it
was I who finished the sentence.
"Yes, perhaps some day," I said sparkling, "the refugee and you will be
seeing Paris together."
Our plans would have been lovely if they had worked out; but they
didn't. I haven't seen Paris yet, and there's no prospect that I
shall until Will's Sabbatical year comes around. We're going across
then, he says, if we have to work our way on a cattle ship. You see
Will no sooner got back there to Germany and delivered his lectures
to those old sages, than the medical department of one of the biggest
universities here in America sent him an invitation to become a member
of their faculty. The position was quite to his taste, he wrote me.
He could keep right on with his experimenting and guinea-pigs to his
heart's content--the university had wonderfully equipped laboratories,
the best in America--and what did I say? What _should_ I say to a
person whose very picture that had been taken for just me to put on my
bureau, had appeared in two magazines that month? Such an insignificant
tail to the big lion as I, ought cheerfully to go wagging to the North
Pole or the Sahara Desert. Of course I didn't say a word.
I never saw anything like the way the magazines burst forth in sudden
praise of Will. His appointment to the faculty of the university
was reported in every paper published. I didn't know whether my
emotions were of pride or fear. After reading an account of what Dr.
William Ford Maynard had accomplished and how high his position was
in the scientific world, and then, immediately following, seeing the
announcement of his engagement to Miss Lucy Chenery Vars, of Hilton,
Mass., I was filled with a good deal of apprehension.
Edith was delighted with my engagement. To boast of William Ford
Maynard as a future brother-in-law was a great feather in her cap. The
plans for an elaborate wedding were formed and crystallised before I
had gotten used to wearing my engagement ring. I didn't want a big
wedding, but it seemed useless to remonstrate. You see I was under
obligations to Edith. All my linen, stiff gorgeous stuff with heavy
elaborate monograms, she had given me; bath towels two yards long
which I despise, sets of underwear all ruffles, fol-de-rols and satin
rosettes, she had bestowed upon me; also my solid silver service,
Sheffield tray and flat silver were gifts from Edith. I didn't like my
flat silver. The design is awfully elaborate, representing a horn of
plenty overflowing with pears and grapes and apples. Edith, however,
thought it was stunning. I didn't like my wedding invitations, thick
as leather, engraved in enormous block letters, my name staring at me
like a sign over a store and a whole pack of cards besides. But Edith
did. I didn't want the ceremony to take place in the Episcopal church
which Edith has been attending lately, with a boys' choir preceding
me up the aisle, when I've always been a plain straight old-fashioned
Congregationalist. I didn't want eight bridesmaids of Edith's choosing,
selected from the most prominent families that she could find. I didn't
want all society invited. But I soon discovered that my wedding was to
be Edith's party, not mine.
On the morning of the fifth day before the great occasion I was in the
Circassian walnut guest-chamber looking at the overwhelming display
of wedding presents. The original furniture had been moved into the
stable and a low wide shelf covered with heavy white damask ran around
the entire room. Edith had put all the cut-glass together in the
bay-window, and under the glare of a dozen extra electric lights it
sparkled bright and hard. There were two enormous punch-bowls, a lamp,
a vase big enough for an umbrella-stand, thirteen berry dishes, baskets
and candlesticks, two ice-cream sets, two dozen finger-bowls and six
dozen glasses. I hate cut-glass!
"Lucy, Lucy, you up there?" somebody called as I gazed.
"I suppose so," I sang back, and I heard Edith coming up the stairs. I
hadn't a doubt but that she would be staggering under a fresh load of
presents and I wasn't mistaken. She appeared with a regular Pisa Tower
of them, extending up to her eyes.
"How's this for a haul?" she gasped. "Come on, my dear, hustle up and
see what you draw." Then she added, "Gracious, Lucy, where in the world
did you resurrect that old dress? Don't you know every one will be
dropping in at all hours during these last days?" Edith herself was
fairly dazzling in stiff crackling white linen.
"It was so comfortable," I murmured, "and it has no bones in the
collar."
"I should say it hadn't! Your bridesmaids will be here any minute.
Hurry up and look at these things, and then go and get yourself fixed
up. _Do._"
I began silently on the bottom box, cut the string, removed the cover,
and from beneath the tissue-paper drew out a red flannelette bag.
"It's another plateau," I said wearily before I unpulled the
draw-string. I had seven already.
"A plateau! From the Elmer Scotts!" She tossed the cards over to me
contemptuously. "That girl visited me for two weeks before I was
married. They have loads. A plateau! Only the six-fifty size at that,
and--how disgusting--_marked_!"
I didn't know the Scotts from Adam. Half my presents were from Edith's
friends. I didn't see why the Scotts should give me anything.
"Why, they were invited to the reception, my dear!" said Edith,
scandalised. "Come, pass it over! Here goes for three hundred and
seventy-two," and she tore off a little number from a sheet of others,
touched it with the tip of her tongue and slapped it on to the face
of the plateau. She listed it under S in a small book and placed it
with my seven other plateaus on the silver table. I hadn't liked
putting them all together. "But, nonsense," Edith had said. "Don't
you see, little simpleton, if they are together, people can tell how
many plateaus you have at a glance? My goodness, three hundred and
seventy-two presents so far and three more days yet! I'll bet you
get five hundred. Dear me, Lucy," she broke off, "there come your
bridesmaids. Do go and change your dress. Put on the embroidered mulle;
and hurry, child."
I suppose my blue checked gingham did look faded and plain, but I
went to my room with a great swelling loyalty in my heart for every
plain thing in the world. I hung my blue gingham in the closet almost
tenderly. Already my wedding costume was there, staring at me from the
corner--shining satin and expensive lace, little sachet bags sewed
into the lining, and, on the belt inside, the name in gold letters
of one of the most fashionable dressmakers in New York. I was gazing
at it, wishing with all my heart that I hadn't got to take the place
of the tissue-paper now stuffed into the waist and sleeves, when my
sister-in-law suddenly appeared at the door.
"Hurry, Bobbie," she said. "Hurry, do. Your bridesmaids are all here
and the Leonard Jacksons have brought over the John Percivals in their
car. Don't forget the Jacksons gave you the dozen silver coquilholders,
and the Percivals the Dresden service plates. Be nice to Mrs. Percival.
She's going to be one of your neighbours next year. I must run along.
They'll be wondering." She started to go, but turned back and added,
"Why in the world aren't you more enthusiastic, Lucy? You ought to be
the happiest girl in the world, _I_ think. I never saw a more elaborate
trousseau or a costlier layout of presents in my life. I can't imagine
what else you want!"
A maid knocked outside the door and spoke to Edith. I didn't hear the
message, but Edith gave a little exclamation and hurried away.
"The King Georges or the Kaiser Wilhelms in their aeroplane, no doubt,"
I muttered, and made a face at my wedding-gown as I yanked down my
embroidered mulle.
I am going to skip the details of my wedding--the broiling condition
of the thermometer, the sweltering bridesmaids, the crowds, the push,
the funny grown-up feeling in my heart when Alec and Tom kissed me
good-bye so gently, the joy when the train finally gave a snort and a
jerk, and I knew that Edith in her pearls and satin couldn't possibly
follow. I am so anxious to describe the funny old brown house that
Will and I leased in the shadow of chemistry buildings, law-schools,
and dormitories down here in this university town, and the life--the
curious, happy, contented life that I drifted into--that I do not want
to waste any time.
The week after my wedding Edith sailed with Ruth for four months in
Europe. That is how it happened that she wasn't on the ground to
superintend the choice of a residence for Will and me. I knew very well
that Edith would never have countenanced for a minute the house that we
finally decided to rent for the winter. It was a brown, square affair,
a door in the middle with a window on each side, not colonial in the
least, nondescript as it could be, with a slate French roof. Will and I
thought it would answer the purpose, however--even though the bathtub
was tin--and moved into it when the brick sidewalk was sprinkled with
yellow maple-leaves, and the gutter was collecting dry ones.
I didn't know a soul in the town. I didn't know the name of a single
street except our own. I didn't know where to go to buy even a spool of
thread. But I wasn't homesick--oh, no, I wasn't homesick. You see I had
forgotten the joy of my own kitchen and pantry; I had forgotten what
a collander looked like; I had forgotten how sweet a row of cups are
hanging by their handles, underneath a shelf edged with scalloped paper!
I enjoyed acting as my own mistress too; though I am sure if Edith
had known what I was up to, she would have left all the pleasures
of Paris to set me in the right path. For I didn't even unpack some
of my wedding presents. They didn't fit in very well with Will's
furniture which he had freighted down from the old white-pillared
house in Hilton, and every sliver of which I simply adored. It wasn't
colonial furniture, understand, which is so fashionable nowadays, but
black walnut of the seventies--high-backed armchairs and sofas and
marble-topped bedroom tables. There were funny old steel engravings of
the United States Senate, battle scenes, and Abraham Lincoln, besides
some big heavy bronzes that Will told me were very valuable. The
sideboard was black walnut like everything else and Edith's elaborate
silver service made it look so out-of-date that I put on it instead
my own mother's old coffee-pot--the one that used to be so heavy for
me--and our old-fashioned silver water pitcher with four high goblets
to match. I didn't even unlock my enormous chest of silver. Alec had
let me take from the safe at home the forks and darling thin spoons and
knives that had always been in our family. It was like sheltering old
friends under my roof to care for them again.
Edith would have hated the life I drifted into. She would have called
it "a mere existence" or "worse than the frontier." From September to
February, I didn't go to a single luncheon, tea, or bridge! People had
called--members of the faculty, I suppose, I'm sure I don't know, for
the cards were mere names to me and I was always out when they were
left. You see one evening I had run across something in a pamphlet of
Will's on our living-room table that set me to thinking. The pamphlet
was a sort of bulletin of lectures given by different professors in
the college. There was a star after several of the announcements and
at the bottom of the page it said, "Open to the Public." I hadn't a
notion whether it was the right thing for me to go to them or not, but
one rainy afternoon I hunted up Tyler Hall and Room twenty-one on the
second floor and slunk into one of the back chairs at five minutes to
three, very much frightened and wondering if I would be turned out. The
lecture was the second or third of a series given by a Dr. Van Breeze
on something in philosophy. I didn't understand more than about two
sentences, but no one seemed to question my right to sit there, and I
felt ten times more comfortable than I ever had at bridge parties in
Hilton.
You see I have never been to college. Although I hated boarding-school
with all my heart and soul, I have always had a sneaking idea I might
have done better at college. I always liked to study and when I became
aware of the fact that Juliet--who, though the best and staunchest
girl in the world, was never very brainy--was soaring above me in
knowledge, I used to be a little envious. It may seem odd to you for a
married woman to be trotting across a campus every other day to attend
lectures in class-rooms, as if she were an undergraduate, but after
my first plunge into that discourse on philosophy by Dr. Van Breeze I
never missed a single lecture in the series. I went the next week and
the next and the next; and also bolted bravely into a series of French
lectures every Monday afternoon. I liked just to sit and breathe the
air of those class-rooms. I liked the long line of blackboards covered
with unintelligible words that belonged to a previous lecture, the row
of felt erasers, the smell of dry chalk-dust. I liked sitting in those
studious-looking chairs with a big arm on one side. It was as strange
and foreign as a new country in those class-rooms, with the bare
maple-tree branches grazing the window-pane, and in my ears the music
of the French language which I hadn't heard since I left high school. I
was a thousand, thousand miles away from the atmosphere of limousines
and Edith, five hundred and two wedding presents, and a wedding-dress
that cost two hundred dollars. It was like a distant echo from another
world when I received an invitation for a bridge one day from a Mrs.
Percival. It had completely escaped my mind that she was one of the
individuals who had given me a dozen Dresden plates. Even if I had
recollected I shouldn't have accepted the invitation. Why should I put
handcuffs on myself again, now I was once free from a bondage that I
loathed? I sent a very proper note of regret to Mrs. Percival, pleading
a previous engagement. It was true. An old white-haired gentleman whom
I often met at Dr. Van Breeze's lectures had asked me to sit beside him
that particular afternoon at three o'clock in Tyler Hall.
I didn't tell Will about the lectures. He was usually busy at the
medical school daytimes, and I was always at home when he arrived at
six. I was ashamed to confess to Will that I, who never studied a
science in my life, was presuming to attend lectures on the Geology
of Fuels and Fluxes (for I took in everything that was starred), the
Influence of Science upon Religion, and something about the Law of
Falling Spheres. I hated to have him laugh at me, so I kept absolutely
quiet on the subject of my ridiculous search for knowledge. I didn't
even tell him about my new acquaintances.
The white-haired old gentleman and I developed quite a friendship.
Every Thursday we used to walk home together as far as the Library,
and he would explain things in the lecture that I didn't understand.
He called me Pandora in fun because I was so inquisitive and couldn't
bear to let things unknown to me alone. Once in a while a queer little
man in a frock coat and a soft artist's tie would join us, and a
woman--a Miss Avery in an ugly brown suit and a stiff linen collar
like a man's. They used to think that my questions were the drollest
things they had ever heard in their lives; but I couldn't help but feel
that the sweet old man took quite a fancy to me. He gave me a book
once on philosophy, by a famous scholar, and another time he asked me
to come to his house to meet his wife. Naturally I didn't go, for I
wouldn't have let any one guess I was Mrs. William Ford Maynard for all
the wives in creation. It was a funny existence to drift into, wasn't
it--cake and snow-pudding in the morning (I loved to mess about in the
kitchen); economics, geology, philosophy and French in the afternoon;
and evenings our open fire and cribbage with dear old Will, by the
light of our big bronze lamp? It was a happy existence too.
I found something in those lectures of Dr. Van Breeze's which I had
lost a long time ago. It was a precious thing and at first I didn't
recognise it. You see every once in a while Dr. Van Breeze would
say something that was better than anything I had ever heard in any
church. I wasn't sure that I quite understood him, so I asked the old
gentleman. It was a great eye-opener to me when I learned that such a
great thinker as Dr. Van Breeze had a religion.
"Why, even _I_ don't believe anything," I told my white-haired friend.
His little eyes twinkled at that. "And proud of it too, I'll wager," he
laughed.
I blushed, for I think I did feel rather superior, just as I had felt
wise when I knew there was no Santa Claus. Juliet and I had talked
quite a good deal about religion. She took a course in "Bible" at
college, which seemed to knock all the inspiration and the miracles out
of it for her; and when it came to her course in philosophy, well--she
said that she thought that ministers were a very credulous lot of men.
She said you couldn't argue with them because they always wanted to
prove things by quoting the Bible, while there existed simply dozens of
other worthy reference books. She said that she preferred to rely on
great scholars and philosophers for truth, rather than on men who only
looked in _one_ book for information. Naturally I didn't want to keep
on believing in a fallacy, simply because I had never been to college.
Childish as it may seem at first, I used to feel awfully unanchored
not to say my prayers at night; but of course such a custom was silly,
if I really was an unbeliever. I told my white-haired old friend in
defence of my shocking statement (which by the way didn't shock him at
all) that he might laugh, but anyhow I was backed up by scholars and
philosophers, who since the year one had all been busy trying to prove
that there wasn't anything in religion to believe.
"Why, my dear mistaken Pandora," smiled my friend. "On the contrary,
philosophers have all been trying to prove there _is_ something to
believe, of some nature or other."
"Really?" I exclaimed. "It would be a big relief to me--but are you
sure?"
"Did you ever hear of Benedict Graham?" he replied. Of course I
had--every one has. He's at the head of the philosophy department at
this university. The next week my friend presented me with Benedict
Graham's "Introduction to Philosophy." I thought such a book would be
way beyond my understanding, but it wasn't. I used to read a chapter
or two by myself and then talk it over with my friend afterward. He
made everything very simple to me and seemed besides to be an awfully
well-informed old gentleman. I didn't think even Juliet could scoff
at him, though he did _believe_ a lot of things. After a week or
two I felt rather ashamed at having so loftily pronounced myself an
Unbeliever. I am no such thing! I can't tell you exactly what I am. I
really don't know. But so long as minds ten times bigger and greater
than mine (like Dr. Van Breeze and Benedict Graham, and lots of those
learned old Greeks and Germans) so long as such intellects entertain
the idea that there is _something_ of _some_ nature to believe in, I
tell you, I'm going to believe in it with all my might and main.