CHAPTER XXXI
It was just one year from the day when she had taken that first journey from West to East and met the pretty college girl on her tearful way home to her soul’s trying that Mrs. Maxwell came back from her sojourn in California. The business that had taken her there had prolonged itself, and then unexpectedly the sick sister had telegraphed that she was coming out to spend the winter, and wanted her to remain; and because the sister had seemed to be in very great need of her she had remained.
But now the sister was gaining rapidly, was fully able to be left in the care of a nurse and the many friends with whom she was surrounded, and Mrs. Maxwell had been summoned home for a great event.
As the train halted, at the college station, and a bevy of girls came chattering round, bidding some comrade good-bye, she thought of the day one year ago when she had been so interested in one girl, and wondered whether her instincts concerning her had been true. She was going home to attend that girl’s wedding now! That girl so soon to be married to her dear and only son, and since that one brief afternoon together she had never seen that little girl again.
Oh, there had been letters, of course, earnest, loving, welcoming letters on the part of the mother, glad letters expressing joy at her son’s choice and picturing the future in glowing colors; shy, sweet, almost apologetic letters onthe part of the girl, as if she had presumed in accepting a love so great as that of this son; and the mother had been glad, joyously glad, for was she not the first girl she had ever laid eyes upon whose face looked as if she were sweet, strong, and wise enough for her beloved son’s wife?
But now as she neared the place, and the meeting again was close at hand, her heart began to misgive her. What if she had made a mistake? What if this girl was not all those things that she had thought at that first sight? What if Arthur, too, had been deceived, and the girl would turn out to be frivolous, superficial, unlovely in her daily life, unfine in soul and thought? For was she, the mother, not responsible in a large way for this union of the two? Had she not fairly thrown her son into the way of knowing the girl, and furthered their first acquaintance in her letters in little subtle ways that she hardly realized at the time, but that had come from the longing of her soul to have a daughter just like what she fancied this girl must be?
All the long miles she tortured her soul with these thoughts; and then would come the memory of the sweet, sad, girlish face she had watched a year ago, the strength, the character in the lovely profile of firm little chin and well-set head, the idealism in the clear eyes; and her heart would grow more sure. Then she would pray that all might be well, and again take out her son’s last letter, and read it over, especially the last few paragraphs.
“You will love her, mother of mine, for she is justyour ideal. I used to wonder how you were ever going to stand it when I did fall in love, to find out the girl was not what you had dreamed I should marry. For I honestly thought there were no such girls as you had brought me up to look for. When I went to college and found what modern girls were, I used to pity you sometimes when you found out, too. But Cornelia is all and more than you would want. She goes the whole limit of your desire, I believe, for she is notably a Christian. I speak it very reverently, mother, because I have found few that are, at least, that are recognizable as such; and generally those have managed to make the fact unpleasant by the belligerent way in which they flaunt it, and because of their utter crudeness in every other way. Perhaps that isn’t fair, either. I have met a few who seemed genuine and good, but they were mortally shy, and never seemed to dare open their mouths. But this girl of mine is rare and fine. She can talk, and she can work, and she can live. She can be bright and gay, and she can suffer and strive; but she is a regular girl, and yet she is a Christian. You should hear her lead a Christian Endeavor meeting, striking right home to where everybody lives, and acts, and makes mistakes, and is sorry or forgetful as the case may be. You should hear her pray, leading everybody to the feet of Christ to be forgiven and learn.
“Yes, mother, dear, she has led me there, too; and you have your great wish. I have given myself to your Christ and her’s. I feel that He is my Christ now, and I am going to try to live and work for His cause all therest of my life. For, to tell the truth, mother, the Christ you lived and the Christ she lived was better than the best thing on earth, and I had to give in. I was a fool that I didn’t do it long ago, for I knew in my heart it was all true as you taught me, even though I did get a lot of rot against it when I was in college; but, when I saw a young girl with all of life before her giving herself to Christian living this way, it finished me.
“So I guess you won’t feel badly about the way things turned out. And anyway you must remember you introduced us, and sort of wished her on me with those ferns; so you mustn’t complain. But I hope you’ll love her as much as you do me, and we are just waiting for you to get back for the ceremony, mother, dear; so don’t let anything hinder you by the way, and haste the day! It cannot come too soon.”
She had telegraphed in answer to that letter that she would start at once. The day had been set for the wedding, and all arrangements made. Then a slight illness of her sister that looked more serious than it really was had delayed her again; and here she was travelling post-haste Philadelphiaward on the very day of the wedding, keeping everybody on thequi vivelest she would not get there in time and the ceremony would have to be delayed. All these twelve months had passed, and yet she had not seen the reconstructed little house on the hill.
As she drew nearer the city, and the sun went down in the western sky, her heart began to quiver with excitement, mature, calm mother even though she was. Butshe had been a long time away against her will from her only son, and her afternoon with Cornelia had been very brief. Somehow she could not make it seem real that she was really going to Arthur’s wedding that night, and not going to have an opportunity to meet again the girl he was to marry until she was his wife, and never to have met her people until it was over, a final, a finished fact. She sighed a little wearily, and looked toward the evening bars of sunset red and gold, with a wish, as mothers do when hard pressed, that it were all over and she going home at last to rest, and a feeling that her time was out.
Then right in the midst of it the brakeman touched her on the shoulder and handed her a telegram, with that unerring instinct for identity that such officials seem to have inborn.
With trembling fingers and a vague presentment she tore it open, and read:
“Cornelia and I will meet you at West Philadelphia with a car and take you to her home. Have arranged to have your trunk brought up immediately from Broad Street, so you will have plenty of time to dress. Take it easy, little mother; we love you.Arthur.”
Such a telegram! She sat back relieved, steadied her trembling lips, and smiled. Smiled, and read it over again. What a boy to make his bride come to the station to meet her two hours before the ceremony! What a girl to be willing to come!
Suddenly the tears came rushing to her eyes, glad tears mingled with smiles, and she felt enveloped in thelove of her children. Her boy and her girl! Think of it! She would have a daughter! And she was a part of them; she was to be in the close home part of the ceremony, the beforehand and the sweet excitement. They were waiting for her and wanting her, and she was not just a necessary part of it all because she was the groom’s mother; she was to stay his mother, and be mother to the girl; and she would perhaps be a sister to the girl’s mother, who was now also to be her boy’s mother. Now for the first time the bitterness was taken out of that thought about Arthur’s having another mother, and she was able to see how they two mothers could love him together, if the other one should prove to be the right kind of mother. And it now began to seem as if she must be to have brought up a girl like Cornelia.
At that very moment in the little house on the hill four chattering college-girl bridesmaids attired in four becoming silk negligees were bunched together on Cornelia’s bed, supposed to be resting before they dressed, while Cornelia, happy-eyed and calm, sat among them for a few minutes’ reunion.
“Isn’t it awfully queer that you should be the first of the bunch to get married?” burst forth Natalie, the most engaged and engaging of the group. “I thought I was to be the very first myself right after I graduated, and here we’ve had to put it off three times because Tom lost his position. And Pearl broke her engagement, and Ruth’s gone into business, and Jane is up to her eyes in music. It seems queer to have things so different from what weplanned, doesn’t it? My, how we pitied you, Cornie, that day you had to leave. It seems an awful shame you had to go home then, when such a little time would have given you all that fun to remember. I don’t see why such things have to happen anyway. I think it was just horrid you never graduated. I don’t see why somebody couldn’t have come in here and taken care of things till you got through. It meant so very much to you. You missed so much, you know, that you can never, never make up.”
Cornelia from her improvised couch by the window smiled dreamily.
“Yes, but that was the day I met my new mother,” she said, almost as if she had forgotten their existence and were speaking to herself; “and she introduced me to Arthur. Probably I would never have seen either of them if I hadn’t come home just that day.
A galaxy of eyes turned upon her, searching for romance, and studied her sweet face greedily.
“Don’t pity her any more girls,” cried Natalie. “She’s dead in love with him, and hasn’t missed us nor our commencement one little minute. She walked straight into the land of romance that day when she left us, and hasn’t thought of us since. I wonder she ever remembered to invite us to the wedding. But I’m not surprised either. If he’s half as stunning as his picture, he must be a pippin. I’m dying to meet him! What kind of a prune is his mother? I think she must be horrid to demand your presence at the station to meet her two hours before the ceremony. I must say I’d make a kick at that.”
“Oh,” said Cornelia, a haughty color coming into her cheeks. “You don’t understand. She didn’t demand! She doesn’t even know. Arthur and I are surprising her. Arthur just sent a telegram to the train for her to get off at the West Philadelphia station. She expected to go on to Broad Street. Oh! she is the dearest mother; wait till you see her.”
A tap at the door interrupted her, and Louise entered shyly. “Nellie, dear, I hate to interrupt you; but that man, that Mr. Ragan, has come; and he’s so anxious to see you just a minute mother said I better tell you so you could send him down a message. It’s something about the curtains for his house. I think he wants birds on them, or else he doesn’t, I don’t know which. He’s so afraid you’ve already ordered the material, and he wants it the way you said first, he says.”
“That’s all right, darling; I think I’ll just run down and see him a minute; he’s so anxious about his little house, and it will reassure him if I explain about it. Tell him to wait just a minute till I slip on my dress.”
A chorus of protests arose from the bed.
“For mercy’s sake, Cornie, you’re surely not going down to see a man on businessnow! What on earth? Did you really get to be an interior decorator, after all? You don’tmeanit! I thought you were just kidding when you wrote about it. What do you mean? They’re only poor people. Well, what do you care? You’re surely not going on with such things after you’re married?”
Cornelia, flinging the masses of her hair into a lovelycoil, and fastening the snaps of her little blue organdie, smiled again dreamily.
“Arthur likes it,” she said. “He wants me to go on. You see we both regard it, not exactly altogether as a business, but as something that is going to help uplift the world. I’ve done two really big houses, and they’ve been successful; and I have had good opportunities opening, so that I could really get into a paying business if I chose, I think. But I don’t choose. Oh, I may do a fine house now and then if I get the chance, just to keep my hand in, for I enjoy putting rich and beautiful things together in the right way; but what I want is to help poor people do little cheap houses, and make them look pretty and comfortable and really artistic. So many don’t have pretty homes who would realty like them if they only knew how! Now, this man I’m going down to now is just a poor laborer; but he has been saving up his money to make a nice home for his girl, and he heard about me, and came to me to help him. I’ve been having the best fun picking out his things for him. I won’t get a great fee out of it; indeed, I hate to take anything; only he wouldn’t like that, but it’s been great! Arthur and I have been together out to see the little cottage twice, and arranged the new chairs for him; and I even made up the beds, and showed him how to set the table for their first meal. They are to be married next week, and he’s so worried lest the stuff I ordered for curtains won’t get here in time to finish his dining-room. But mother is going to finish them; and Harry and Carey will put themup; and I want to tell him, so he will not worry.” With a bright smile Cornelia left them, and flew downstairs to her customer.
“Goodness, girls! did you ever see such a change in any one? I can’t make her out, can you?” cried Jane, sitting up on the foot of the bed and looking after her.
“I should say not?” declared Pearl. “What do you suppose has come over her? I suppose it’s being in love or something, although that doesn’t generally make a girl do slum work at a busy time like this. But I guess we wasted our pity on her. She said she was coming home to a horrid, poor little house. Did you ever see such a pretty nest of a house in your life? That living room is a dream. I’m crazy to get back to it and look it over again.”
“Well, I never thought Cornie Copley would turn out to be that kind of a nut. Think of her going to the station to meet her mother-in-law just before the ceremony! Love certainly is blind. Girls you needn’t ever worry lest I’ll do anything of that kind, not me!” cried Natalie. “That man must be some kind of a nut himself, or else she’s been all made over somehow.”
Jane tiptoed, and shut the door; and then in a whisper she said: “Girls, I want to tell you. I believe it’s religion. It’s queer, but I believe it is. I heard her talking about praying for somebody down in the hall when I stood up here waiting for my trunk to be unlocked by her brother. She was talking to her little sister, and they both seemed to be praying for something or somebody; and she’s mentionedthe church every other breath since we came, and the minister, and—look at there! There’s her Bible with her name in it. I opened it, and looked, andhegave it to her; ‘Cornelia from Arthur’; that’s what it says. And see that card framed over the table? It’s a Christian Endeavor pledge-card. I know for I used to belong when I was a child. She’s going to have the Christian Endeavor society all at the wedding, too. I heard her say the Christian Endeavor chorus was going to sing the wedding march before they came in, and she talks about the minister’s daughter all the time. You may depend on it, it’s religion that’s the matter with Cornie, not being in love. Cornie’s a level-headed girl, and she wouldn’t go out of her head this way just for falling in love. When religion gets into the blood it’s ten times worse than any falling in love ever. I wonder what her Arthur thinks of it. Maybe he means to take it out of her when he gets her good and tied.”
“Don’t!” said Ruth sharply. “You make me sick, Jane. I don’t care what it is that has changed Cornie. She’s sweet, I know; that’s all that’s necessary. And, if it’s religion, I wish we all had some of it. I know she looks all the time as if she’d seen a vision, and that’s what precious few other people do. Come, it’s time to take a nap, or we’ll look like withered leaves for this evening. Now stop talking! I’m going to sleep.”
The passengers in the parlor-car glanced at the distinguished-looking lady with the sweet smile and happy eyes, and glanced again, and liked to look, there was suchjoy, such content, such expectancy, in her face. More than one, as the train slowed down at West Philadelphia, and the porter gathered her baggage and escorted her out, sat up from his velvet chair and stretched his neck to see who was meeting this woman to make her so happy since that telegram had been brought to her. They watched until the train passed on and they could see no more—the tall, handsome young man who took her in his arms and kissed her, and the lovely girl in blue organdie with a little lace-edged organdie hat drooping about her sweet face, who greeted her as if she loved her. As far as the eye could reach Mrs. Maxwell’s fellow passengers watched the little bit of human drama, and wondered, and tried to figure out who they were and what relation they bore to one another.
“You precious child, you shouldn’t have done it!” said Mrs. Maxwell, nestling Cornelia’s hand in her own as her son stowed them away in the back seat of the car together and whirled them away to the Copley house. “But it was dear of you, and I shall never forget it!” she said fervently with another squeeze of the hand.
A few moments more, and she entered the living room that had been wrought out with such care and anxiety, and gazed about her, delighted.
“I knew you would do it, dear. I knew it! I was sure you could,” she whispered with her arm around the girl; and then she went forward with a sigh of relief to meet the sweet mother of the Copleys, who came to greet her. The two mothers looked long into each other’s eyes,with hands clasped and keen, loving, searching looks; and then a smile grew on both their faces. Mother Maxwell spoke first with a smile of content:
“I was almost sure you would be like that,” she said; “and I’m going to love you a great deal”; and Mother Copley, her face placid with a calm that had its source in deep springs of peace, smiled back an answering love.
Then came father Copley, and grasped the other mother’s hand, and bade her welcome too; and after that mother Maxwell was satisfied, and went to dress for the wedding.
The four bridesmaids did not see much of Cornelia, after all; for, when she came back from her ride, they were all breathlessly manipulating curling-irons and powder-puffs, tying sashes, and putting on pretty slippers; and no one had time to talk of other things. It seemed to be only Cornelia who was calm at this last minute, who knew where the shoe-horn had been put, could find a little gold pin to fasten a refractory ribbon, and had time to fix a drooping wave of hair or adjust a garland of flowers.
It had been Cornelia’s wish that her wedding should be very simple and inexpensive; and, though the bridesmaids had written many letters persuading and suggesting rainbow hues and dahlia shades, and finally pleaded for jades and corals, all was to no effect. Cornelia merely smiled, and wrote back: “I want you all in white, if you please, just simple white organdie, made with a deep hem and little ruffles; and then I want you to have each a garlandof daisies around your hair, and daisies in your arms.”
“White for bridesmaids!” they cried as one maid. “Who ever heard of such a thing?”
But the answer came back: “This isn’t going to be a conventional wedding. We’re just going to get married, and we want our dearest friends about us. I love white, and the daisies will be lovely on it and do away with hats. I’m going to wear a veil. I like a veil; but my dress is white organdie, too, and I’ll have white roses.”
And so it was, all natural and sweet like an old-fashioned country affair, and not one convention out of a thousand observed in the order and form of things.
For the bride herself had decked the church with the aid of her bridegroom and her brother and Grace Kendall. The lace-like boughs of tall hemlocks drooped back of the altar, and smothered the pulpit; and against it rose a waving field of daisies with grasses softly blending. The little field-flowers were arranged in concealed glass jars of water so that they kept fresh and beautiful, and were so massed that they seemed to be growing there. All about the choir gallery the daisies were massed, a bit of nature transplanted to the quiet temple. Every one exclaimed softly on entering the church at the wonderful effect of the feathery, starry beauty. It was as if a bit of the out-of-door world had crept into the sanctuary to grace the occasion. God’s world and God’s flowers of the field.
There were not many mighty among the guests. A choice few of the Maxwell and Copley connection andfriends; the rest were new acquaintances, of all stations in life, all trades and professions, many humble worshippers in the church whom Cornelia and Maxwell had come to respect and love.
The two mothers came in together, and sat down side by side, attended by Harry and his father. Harry had most strenuously objected to being of the wedding party when it was suggested. He said he “couldn’t see making a monkey of himself, all dolled up, going up the church aisle to music.”
Grace Kendall was at the organ, of course, and above the daisy-bordered gallery the Christian Endeavor choir girls all in white, with wreaths of green leaves in their hair, sang the bridal chorus; and from the doors at either side of the front of the church there filed forth the bridesmaids and the ushers. The bridesmaids were led by Louise as maid of honor, with a wreath of daisies among her curls and a garland of daisies trailing down from her left shoulder over the little white organdie that made her look like a young angel. Carey as best man led the ushers, who were four warm friends of Maxwell’s; and on either side of the altar they waited, facing toward the front door as Cornelia and Maxwell came arm in arm up the middle aisle together.
It was all quite natural and simple, though the bridesmaids were disappointed at the lack of display and the utter disregard of convention and precedent.
The minister spoke the service impressively, and added a few words of his own that put the ceremony quite outof the ordinary; and his prayer seemed to bring God quite near among them, as if He had come especially to bless this union of His children. Mother Maxwell’s heart suddenly overflowed with happy tears, and the four bridesmaids glanced furtively and knowingly at one another beneath their garlands of daisies, as if to say, “It is religion, after all; and this is where she got it”; and then they began to listen and to wonder for themselves.
After it was over the bride and the groom turned smilingly and walked back down the aisle, preceded by Louise and Carey, and followed by the bridesmaids and ushers; and everybody rose and smiled, and broke the little hush of breathless attention with a soft murmur of happy approval.
“Such a pretty wedding, so sweet! so dear!” Mother Maxwell could hear them breathing it on every hand as she walked out with Mother Copley.
Then just a chosen few came home to the wedding supper, which had been planned and partly prepared by Cornelia herself; and everybody was talking about the lovely wedding and the quiet, easy way in which everything moved without fuss or hurry or excitement, right and natural and as it all should be when two persons joined hands and walked out together into the new life.
“It is something inside her that makes her different,” hazarded a sleepy bridesmaid several hours later, after the others had been still a long time and were almost asleep. “But wasn’t it lovely? Only field-daisies and the grass and old pine-trees; but it certainly was a dream even if we didn’t get to do much marching. Well, Cornelia Copley always did know how to decorate.”