My mother settled down, disconsolately, in her rocking chair, with a
small, weeping burden in her arms, and rocked and sang.
"This is a dreadful family," she said, in between verses. "There is
always a fuss."
As for Dick he made one more triumphant discovery before he finally
subsided for the night.
"Girls are soft things," he declared, jealously, from his crib. "They
are! They are!"
"Dick!" my father called from downstairs, "you stop that!"
Which settled the subject for the time being.
There was just one person in the family who was not upset, and that was
my grandmother Harcourt. She read her Bible as usual, and watched us
with grave eyes. She watched grandmother Lawrence buying pretty dresses
by the dozen for Auntie May, and scolding violently, because they were
not worn, and she watched granddad going about, with a perplexed face
and a heavy heart, and even my own father laboriously concocting funny
stories at which nobody laughed. When grandmother spoke her remarks were
oracular.
"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder," she said,
with dignity.
And one day when things were at their very worst, and Auntie May had
come to our house, "to cry in peace," as she said, grandmother Harcourt
laid a small white note in her hand.
"Go out in the garden, dear," she said, impressively. "Behind the lilac
bush. Quick!"
Away flew Auntie May, and I after her.
Now behind the lilac bush was my own particular domain. It was where I
made my little mudpies in beautiful clam shells, and once I had had a
caterpillar colony there, all pretty brown and yellow ones, and some few
with neat tufted backs and red whiskers. And Jeremiah John, the
wandering turtle, lived there. But no grown-up person ever ventured
behind the lilac bush, so it was a surprise to find Burton Raymond, with
cobwebs on his coat and a pale face, waiting for us.
"You!" Auntie May cried.
She said it almost in a shriek. She put her arms about him and clung to
him.
"You!" she said again, with infinite content.
They didn't appear to mind me in the least, and they nearly killed
Jeremiah John, who had gone to sleep in the sun.
Burton Raymond had seemed frightened at first; but when he saw how
Auntie May cried and clung to him, his head went up, and his eyes grew
dark, and he looked every inch a crusader. They talked together in
whispers. He was persuading her to do something.
"Oh, no, no!" she cried.
She looked down at her clothes.
"What! In this dress!" she exclaimed, hotly.
He whispered again, and little by little she stopped shaking her head,
and grew a trifle rosy and confused, and, at last, it seemed to me that
she said, "yes." It must have been something very terrible to which she
had agreed, for she faltered afterwards, and had to be encouraged some
more. Then she picked a bunch of the lilacs and pinned it in her belt,
and they went on toward the gate together. Her hand was on the latch
before she remembered me.
"Oh, there's Rhoda!" she said.
Her eyes questioned mine, anxiously.
"Will you come, too, Rhoda?" she asked.
Somehow I felt that she would be glad to have one of the family with
her, so I went.
Of course I knew that it was an elopement. Auntie May was running away,
just like a princess in a fairy tale! I knew whole pages and pages of
fairy tales, and I had always liked the ones best where the princess ran
away; but I had never expected to be in a fairy tale myself. The sun was
so bright, and the air was golden with mystery. The gate shut with a
soft click. I felt that it would never betray us. It was very exciting
afterwards. We turned around a corner, and there was a horse and buggy
waiting for us in quite a magical fashion, and in a moment we were in
and off.
"Oh, make him go fast, Burton," Auntie May prayed.
She was frightened again.
"Oh, make him go very fast!" she cried.
The houses whisked past us. The people in the streets looked at us,
strangely, and one old man, a lifelong friend of my grandfather's, ran
out to the curb, and held up his cane, imperatively, for us to stop. On
we went, with a clatter and a bounce, right through the town, and out
into the quiet country beyond, where there were daisies in the fields,
and cows to regard us with astonishment, and dogs to bark as we went
along. We were all quite pale by now, I fancy, and wild-eyed. At least
the prince and the princess were, and they held hands as if they had
been lost and had found each other. And, then, away off in the distance
I saw the steeple of a tiny church. It grew taller and taller.
Always when I had thought of being Auntie May's bridesmaid, I had
expected to wear a white dress and carry flowers, and walk right down
the aisle with all the golden and red and blue ladies in the church
windows watching me; but now when the time came I concluded that I liked
this new way best of all. The minister was out in his front yard when we
drove up, and I thought that he looked at our bridal party rather
pityingly. And I also thought that he considered us a joke. We walked up
to him trembling, and stood about the bed which he was digging.
"We'd like to be married, sir," Burton announced, awkwardly.
The minister regarded us all through big, benevolent, silver-rimmed
spectacles. He left off his digging to smile at us. He had a geranium in
one hand, and a shovel in the other.
"I thought you were a christening party," he said.
He pointed his shovel at me.
"Who's that?" he demanded, beaming.
"I'm the bridesmaid," I told him.
Then I felt a sudden confidence in him. I pulled at his sleeve.
"They're running away," I confided, anxiously. "Won't you marry them? If
you don't poor Auntie May will never be married at all!"
"We've only got a few moments' start, sir," Burton explained,
breathlessly. "There's a carriage after us. Listen!"
Far in the direction of town we could hear the sound of coming wheels.
While we listened they seemed to redouble their speed.
"Oh, if you'd please hurry, sir!" Auntie May begged, in a panic.
"They'll take me home again! I know they will. Oh, what shall I do! What
shall I do!"
She looked about with wild eyes as though for somewhere to hide.
The minister himself seemed to catch fire a bit at that, and he did
hurry. He had us all in the parsonage parlor in a moment, and went off
upstairs calling for "Dora." He was back again immediately in his
surplice, with his wife following him, and there, standing before a
sunny window, the wilted lilacs still pinned in her belt, Auntie May
became Mrs. Burton Raymond.
She looked so pretty! Her eyes were full of tears, and her cheeks were
pink. She trembled a little still from agitation. After it was all over
she turned to Burton, and held out her hands to him in a frightened way.
"You'll be good to me?" she questioned.
"Good!" Burton cried, with his arms about her.
He looked as if he could dare the whole world in her defense.
"If he isn't he'll have to answer to me," the minister declared,
stoutly.
"And to me!" another voice cried, irately, and there was granddad
Lawrence stalking, unexpectedly, into the room.
He was very much out of breath, and very angry. I don't believe that I
ever saw granddad Lawrence so angry before. For one moment I thought
that he was going to shake Burton; but after a bit he calmed down, and
we all went home together, the bridal couple in their buggy in advance,
and granddad and I behind in the dog-cart. Granddad seemed very
sorrowful, and, at last, he unburdened his mind to me.
"This is all very well, Rhoda," he said, in a rueful fashion. "But who's
going to break the news to your grandmother!"
He took off his hat, and rumpled up his gray hair until it stood up
like quills all over his head.
"Who's going to tell _her_?" he asked, blankly.
It worried us both all the way home; but the question was settled in
quite an unexpected manner, for it was grandmother Harcourt who went to
tell grandmother Lawrence. She put on her best black silk, and her lace
veil, and her cameo pin, and she held up her head very high in the air
as she went out of the front gate.
"I shall tell her a few wholesome truths," she said, determinedly. "I
shall speak as woman to woman."
"It is really not so bad after all," my father told my mother. "They
talk of a concert tour for the boy, and he comes of a good old family,
if it _has_ fallen on evil times."
He paused for a moment, his eyes searching the future.
"And if your father runs for mayor--I don't say that he will, but if he
should be persuaded to run--why, that story would bring him in a great
many votes. It's so pretty and romantic. All the world loves a lover you
know."
My mother sighed blissfully, and motioned to him to peep in the parlor
door.
There in the darkest corner sat Auntie May and Burton Raymond on a sofa
together. They sat and looked at each other for hours and hours and
hours.