Samson Rawdy came first, driving a victoria in which sat the gentleman who had been pointed out to him as Ina Carroll'sfiancé. He glanced at him approvingly, and the thought even was in his mind that had this stranger been going to marry Charlotte, instead of her sister, he could have had nothing to say against his appearance. Suddenly, Major Arms in the victoria looked full at him and bowed, raising his hat in his soldierly fashion. Anderson was surprised, but returned the salutation promptly.
“Who was that gentleman bowing to you?” his mother asked, as he went up the front steps. She was standing on the porch in her muslin morning panoply.
“He is the gentleman who is to marry the eldest daughter of Captain Carroll,” replied Anderson.
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
“He bowed.”
“I suppose he thought he recognized me.”
“He looks old enough to be her grandfather, but he looks like a fine man. I hope she will make him a good wife. It is a risk for a man of his age, marrying a little young thing. I wonder why Samson Rawdy was bringing him from the station. Strange the Carroll carriage didn't meet him, wasn't it?”
“Perhaps they were not expecting him,” replied Randolph, which was true.
The carriage occupied by Major Arms and Samson Rawdy overtook Ina and Charlotte before they had walked far, in front of Drake's drug-store. They had stopped in there for soda, in fact, and were just coming out.
“Why, there's Major Arms!” cried Charlotte, so loudly that some lounging men in the drug-store heard her. Drake, Amidon, and the postmaster, who had just stopped, stood in the doorway, with no attempt to disguise their interest, and watched Major Arms spring out of the carriage like a boy, kiss his sweetheart, utterly unmindful of their observance, then assist the sisters to the back seat, and spring to the front himself.
“Pretty spry for an old boy,” remarked the postmaster as the carriage rolled away.
“Oh, he's Southern,” returned Amidon, easily. “That is why. Catch a Yankee his age with joints as limber. The cold winters here stiffen folk up quick after they get middle-aged.”
“You don't seem very stiff in the joints,” said Drake, jocularly. “Guess you are near as old as that man.”
“I'm a right smart stiffer than I'd been ef I'd stayed South,” replied Amidon.
Then the postmaster wondered, as Mrs. Anderson had done, why Major Arms was driving up with Samson Rawdy rather than in the Carroll carriage, and the others opined, as Randolph had done, that they had not expected him.
“I don't see, for my part, what they get to feed him on when he comes,” said Amidon, wisely.
The postmaster and Drake looked at him with expressions like hunting-dogs, although a certain wisdom as to his meaning was evident in both faces.
“I suppose it's getting harder and harder for them to get credit,” said Drake.
“Harder,” returned Amidon. “I guess it is. I had it from Strauss this morning, that he wouldn't let them have a pound of beef without cash, and I know that Abbot stopped giving them anything some time ago.”
“How do they manage, then?” asked the postmaster.
“Strauss says sometimes they send a little money and get a little, the rest of the time he guesses they go without; live on garden-sauce—they've got a little garden, you know, or grocery stuff.”
“Can they get trusted at the grocer's?”
“Ingram won't trust 'em, but Anderson lets 'em have all they want, they say.”
“S'pose he knows what he's about.”
“Lawyers generally do,” said Drake.
“He wasn't much of a lawyer, anyhow,” said Amidon.
“That's so. He didn't set the river afire,” remarked the postmaster.
“I don't believe, if Anderson trusts him, but he knows what he is about,” said the druggist. “I guess he knows he's goin' to get his pay.”
“Mebbe some of those fine securities of his will come up sometime,” Amidon said. “I heard they'd been slumpin' lately. Guess there's some Banbridge folks got hit pretty bad, too.”
“Who?” asked Drake, eagerly.
“I heard Lee was in it, for one, and I guess there's others. I must light out of this. It's dinner-time. Where's that arrow-root? My wife's got to make arrow-root gruel for old Mrs. Joy. She's dreadful poorly. Oh, there it is!”
Amidon started, and the postmaster also. In the doorway Amidon paused. “Suppose you knew Carroll was away?” he said.
“No,” said Drake.
“Yes, he's been gone a week; ain't coming home till the day before the wedding. Their girl told ours. We've got a Hungarian, too, you know. Carroll's girl can't get any pay. It's a dam'ed shame.”
“Why don't she leave?”
“Afraid she'll lose it all, if she does. Same way with the coachman.”
“Where's Carroll gone?” asked the postmaster.
“Don't know. The girl said he'd gone to Chicago on business.”
“Guess he'll want to go farther than Chicago on business if he don't look out, before long. I don't see how he's goin' to have the weddin', anyway. I don't believe anybody 'll trust him here, and, unless I miss my guess, he won't find it very easy anywhere else.”
“They say the man the girl's goin' to marry is rich. Maybe he'll foot the bills,” said Drake.
“Mebbe he is,” assented Amidon. Then he went out in earnest, and the postmaster with him.
“Look at here,” said Amidon, mysteriously, as the two men separated on the next corner. “I'll tell you something, if you want to know.”
“What?”
“I believe Drake trusts those Carrolls a little.”
There was in Banbridge, at this date, almost universal distrust of Carroll, but very little of it was expressed, for the reason, common to the greater proportion of humanity: the victims in proclaiming their distrust would have proclaimed at the same time their victimization. It was quite safe to assume that the open detractors of Carroll had not been duped by him; it was also quite safe to assume that many of those who either remained silent or declared their belief in him had suffered more or less. The latter were those who made it possible for the Carrolls to remain in Banbridge at all. There were many who had a lingering hope of securing something in the end, who did not wish Carroll to depart, and who were even uneasy at his absence, although the fact of his family remaining and of the wedding preparations for his daughter going on seemed sufficient to allay suspicions. It is generally true that partisanship, even of the few, counts for more than disparagement of the many, with all right-intentioned people who have a reasonable amount of love for their fellow-men. Somehow partisanship, up to a certain limit, beyond which the partisan appears a fool to all who listen to him, seems to give credit to the believer in it. At all events, while the number of Arthur Carroll's detractors was greatly in advance of his adherents, the moral atmosphere of Banbridge, while lowering, was still very far from cyclonic for him. He got little credit, yet still friendly, admiring, and even obsequious recognition.
The invitations to his daughter's wedding had been eagerly accepted. The speculations as to whether the bills would be paid or not added to the interest. In those days the florist and the dressmaker were quite local celebrities. They looked anxious, yet rather pleasantly self-conscious. The dressmaker bragged by day and lay awake by night. Every time the florist felt uneasy, he slipped across to the nearest saloon and got a drink of beer. After that, when asked if he did not feel afraid he would lose money through the Carroll wedding, he said something about the general esteem in which people should be held who patronized local industries, in his thick German-English, grinned, and shambled back, his fat hips shaking like a woman's, to his hot-houses, and pottered around his geraniums and decorative palms.
On the Sunday morning before the wedding there were an unusual number of men in the barber-shop—old Eastman, Frank's father, who generally shaved himself, besides Amidon, Drake, the postmaster, Tappan the milkman, and a number of others. Amidon was in the chair, and spoke whenever it did not seem too hazardous. He had just had his hair cut also, as a delicate concession to the barber on the part of a free customer on a busy morning, and his rather large head glistened like a silver ball.
“Reckon Carroll must have gone out West promotin' to raise a little wind for the weddin',” he said.
“I haven't seed him, and I atropined he had not come back yet,” remarked the barber.
Lee looked up from his Sunday paper—all the men except young Willy Eddy were provided with Sunday papers; he waited patiently for a spare page finished and thrown aside by another. Besides the odors of soap and perfumed oils and bay-rum and tobacco-smoke, that filled the little place, was the redolence of fresh newspapers, staring with violent head-lines, and as full of rustle as a forest.
Lee looked up from his paper, and gave his head a curious, consequential toss. He had been shaved himself, and his little tuft of yellow beard was trimmed to a nicety. He looked sleek and well-dressed, and he had always his indefinable air of straining himself furtively upon tiptoe to reach some unattainable height. Lee's consequentiality had something painful about it at times.
“I guess Captain Carroll hadn't any need to go out West promoting. I rather think he can find all the business he wants right here,” he said.
Tappan the milkman, bearded and grim, looked up from an article on the coal strike. “Guess hecanfind about fools enough right here to work on, that's right,” said he, and there was a laugh.
Lee's small blond face colored furiously; his voice was shrill in response. “Perhaps those he doesn't work, as you call it, are bigger fools than those he does,” said he.
“Say,” said the milkman, with a snarling sort of humor. He fastened brutally twinkling eyes on Lee. Everybody waited; the little barber held the razor poised over Amidon's chin. “When do your next dividends come in?” he inquired.
Lee gave an angry sniff, and flirted up his paper before his face.
“Why don't ye say?” pressed Tappan, with a hard wink at the others.
“I don't know that it is any of your business,” replied Lee.
“Ask when the millennium's comin',” said Amidon, in the chair.
“I wish I was as sure of the millennium as I am of those dividends,” declared Lee, brought to bay.
“Glad you've got faith in that dead-beat. He's owin' me for fifteen dollars' worth of milk-tickets, and I can't get a dam'ed penny of it,” said Tappan. He gave the sheet of paper he held a vicious crumple and flung it to the floor, whence little Willy Eddy timidly and softly gathered it up. “Gettin' up at four o'clock in the mornin',” continued the milkman, in a cursing voice, “an' milkin' a lot of dam'ed old kickin' cows, and gittin' on the road half-dead with sleep, to make a present to whelps like him, goin' to the City dressed up like Morgan hisself, ridin' to the station in a carriage he 'ain't paid for, with a man drivin' that can't git a cent out of him. Talk about coal strikes! Lord! I could give them miners points. Strikin' for eight hours a day! Lord! what's that? Here I've got to go home an' hay, if itisSunday, to git enough for them dam'ed cows to eat in the winter! Eight hours! Hm! I work eighteen an' I 'ain't got anybody over me to strike again', 'cept the Almighty, an' I ruther guess He wouldn't make much account of it. Guess he'd starve me out ef I quit work, and not make much bones of it. Icanstop peddlin' milk to sech as Carroll, but the milk sours, an' hanged if I know who suffers most. Here's my wife been makin' dam'ed little pot-cheeses out of the sour milk as 'tis, and sellin' 'em for two cents apiece. They're hangin' all over the bushes tied up in little rags. She's got to work all day to-day makin' butter to save the cream, and then I s'pose I've got to hustle round and find somebody to give the butter to. Carroll ain't the only one. I wish they all had to work as hard as I do one day for the things they git for nothin', the whole bilin' lot of 'em. He's the worst, though. What business did he have settlin' down on us here in Banbridge, I'd like to know? If he'd got to steal to feather his nest, why didn't he go to some other place, confound him?” The milkman's voice and manner were malignant.
The barber looked at him with some apprehension, but he spoke, still holding his razor aloft. “Now I rather guess you are jumpin' at exclusions too hasty, Mr. Tappan,” said he, in an anxiously pacific voice. “I don't know about them dividends Mr. Lee's talkin' about. Captain Carroll, he gave me a little dip.” The barber winked about mysteriously. “He told me he'd tell me when to come in, and he ain't told me yet, but I ain't no disprehension, but he's all right. Captain Carroll is a gentleman, he is.” Flynn's voice fairly quivered with affectionate championship. There were tears in his foolish eyes. He bent over Amidon's face, which grinned up at him cautiously through the lather.
“Let him pay me them milk-tickets, then, if he's all right,” Tappan said, viciously.
“He will when he's disembarrassed and his adventures are on a dividend-paying adipoise,” said the barber, in a tearful voice.
“I think he is all right,” said the druggist.
Then little Willy Eddy added his pipe. He had been covertly smoothing out Tappan's crumpled newspaper. “He's real nice-spoken,” said he. “I guess he will come right in time.”
Tappan turned on him and snatched back his newspaper. “Here, I ain't done with that,” he said; “I've got to take it home to my wife.” Then he added, “For God's sake, you little fool, he ain't been swipin' anything from you, has he?”
Then the barber arose to the situation. He advanced, razor in hand. He strode up to the milkman and stood dramatically before him, arm raised and head thrown back. “Now, look at here,” he proclaimed, in a high falsetto, “I ain't agoin' to hear no asparagusment of my friends, not here in this tonsorial parlor. No, sir!” There was something at once touching, noble, and absurd about the demonstration. The others chuckled, then sobered, and watched.
Tappan stared at him a second incredulously. Then he grinned, showing his teeth like a dog.
“Lord! then that jailbird is one of your friends, is he?” he said. He had just lit his pipe. He puffed at it, and deliberately blew the smoke into the little barber's face.
Flynn bent over towards him with a sudden motion, and his mild, consequential face in the cloud of smoke changed into something terrible, from its very absurdity. His blue eyes glittered greenly; he lifted the razor and cut the air with it close to the other man's face. Tappan heard the hiss of it, and drew back involuntarily, his expression changing.
“What the devil are you up to?” he growled, with wary eyes on the other's face.
The barber continued to hold the razor like a bayonet in rest, fixed within an inch of the other's nose. “I'm up to kickin' you out of my parlor if you don't stop speakin' individuously disregardin' my friends,” said he, with an emphasis which was ridiculous and yet impressive. The other men chuckled again, then grew grave.
“Come back here and finish up my job, John,” Amidon called out; yet he watched him warily.
“Here, put up that razor!” the postmaster called out.
“I'll put it up when you stop speakin' mellifluously of my friends,” declared the barber. “There ain't nobody in this parlor goin' to speak a word against Captain Carroll if I'm in hearin'; there ain't an honester man in this town.”
The barber's back was towards the door. Suddenly Tappan's eyes stared past him, his grin widened inexplicably. Flynn became aware of a pregnant silence throughout the shop. He turned, following Tappan's gaze, and Arthur Carroll stood there. He had entered silently and had heard all the last of the discussion. Every face in the shop was turned towards him; he stood looking at them with the curious expression of a man taken completely off guard. All the serene force and courtesy which usually masked his innermost emotions had, as it were, slipped off; for a flash he stood revealed, soul-naked, for any one who could see. None there could fully see, although every man looked, sharpened with curiosity and suspicion. Carroll was white and haggard, unsmiling, despairing, even pathetic; his eyes actually looked suffused. Then in a flash it was over, and Arthur Carroll in his usual guise stood before them—it was like one of those metamorphoses of which one reads in fairy tales. Carroll stood there smiling, stately, gracefully, even confidentially condescending. It was as if he appealed to their sense of humor, that he, Carroll, stood among them addressing them as their equals.
“Good-day, gentleman,” he said, and came forward.
Little Willy Eddy sprang up with a frightened look and gave him his chair, murmuring in response to Carroll's deprecating thanks that he was just going; but he did not go. He remained in the doorway staring. He had a vague idea of some judgment descending upon them all from this great man whom they had been slandering.
“Well, how are you, captain?” said Lee, speaking with an air of defiant importance. It became evident that what had gone before was to be ignored by everybody except Tappan, who suddenly rose and went out, muttering something which nobody heard. Then the lash of a whip was heard outside, a “g'lang,” with the impetus of an oath, and a milk wagon clattered down the street.
Carroll replied to Lee, urbanely: “Fine,” he said, “fine. How are you, Mr. Lee?”
“Seems to me you are not looking quite up to the mark,” Lee remarked, surveying him with friendly solicitude.
The little barber had returned to Amidon in the chair, and was carefully scraping his cheek with the razor.
“Then my looks belie me,” Carroll replied, smiling. He offered a cigar to Lee and to the druggist, who sat next on the other side.
“Been out of town?” asked the druggist.
“Yes,” replied Carroll.
Drake looked at him hesitatingly, but Amidon, speaking stiffly and cautiously, put the question directly: “Where you been, cap'n?”
“A little journey on business,” Carroll answered, easily, lighting his cigar.
“When did you get home?” asked Amidon.
“This morning.”
“You certainly look as if you had lost flesh,” said Lee, with obsequious solicitude.
“Well, it is a hard journey to Chicago—quite a hard journey,” remarked the druggist, with cunning.
“Not on the fast train,” said Carroll.
“So you went on the flyer?” said the postmaster.
Carroll was having some difficulty in lighting his cigar, and did not reply.
“Did you go on the flyer?” persisted the postmaster.
“No, I did not,” replied Carroll, with unmistakable curtness.
The postmaster hemmed to conceal embarrassment. He had been shaved and had only lingered for a bit of gossip, and now the church-bells began to ring, and he was going to church, as were also Lee, the druggist, and most of the others. They rose and lounged out, one after another; little Willy Eddy followed them. Flynn finished shaving Amidon, who also left, and finally he was left alone in the shop with Carroll, who arose and approached the chair.
“Sorry to keep you waitin', Captain Carroll,” said Flynn, preparing a lather with enthusiasm.
“The day is before me,” said Carroll, as he seated himself.
“I hope,” said Flynn, beating away his hand in a bowl of mounting rainbow bubbles—“I hope that—that—your feelings were not hurt at—at—our eavesdropping.”
“At what?” asked Carroll, kindly and soberly.
“At our eavesdropping,” reported the barber, with a worshipful and agitated glance at him.
“Oh!” answered Carroll, but he did not smile. “No,” he said, “my feelings were not hurt.” He looked at the small man who was the butt of the town, and his expression was almost caressing.
Flynn continued to beat away at the lather, and the rainbow bubbles curled over the edge of the bowl. “You said that you would devise me when the time had come for me to invest that money,” he said, diffidently, and yet with a noble air of confidence and loyalty.
“It hasn't come yet,” Carroll replied.
As Ina Carroll's wedding-day drew nearer, the excitement in Banbridge increased. It was known that the services of a New York caterer had been engaged. Blumenfeldt was decorating the church, Samson Rawdy was furbishing up all his vehicles and had hired supplementary ones from New Sanderson.
“No girl has ever went from this town as that Carroll girl will,” he told his wife, who assisted him to clean the carriage cushions.
“I s'pose the folks will dress a good deal,” said she, brushing assiduously.
“You bet,” said her husband.
“Well, they won't get no dirt on their fine duds offyourcarriage-seats,” said she. She was large and perspiring, but full of the content of righteous zeal. She and Samson Rawdy thoroughly enjoyed the occasion, and he was, moreover, quite free from any money anxiety regarding it. At first he had been considerably exercised. He had come home and conferred with his wife, who was the business balance-wheel of the family.
“Carroll has been speakin' to me about providin' carriages for his daughter's weddin', an' I dunno about it,” said he.
“How many does he want?” inquired his wife. He had sunk on his doorstep on coming home at dusk, and sat with speculative eyes on the pale western sky, while his wife sat judicially, quite filling with her heated bulk a large rocking-chair, placed for greater coolness in front of the step, in the middle of the slate walk.
“He wants all mine and all I can hire in New Sanderson,” replied Rawdy.
“Lord!” ejaculated his wife. “All them?”
“All them,” replied Rawdy, moodily triumphant.
“Well,” said his wife, “that ain't the point.”
“No, it ain't,” agreed Rawdy.
“The point is,” said she, “is he agoin' to or ain't he agoin' to pay.”
“That's so,” said Rawdy.
“He's a-owin' everybody, ain't he?” said the wife.
“Pooty near, I guess.”
“Well, you ain't goin' to let one of your cerridges go, let alone hirin', unless he pays ahead.”
“Lord! Dilly, how'm I goin' to ask him?” protested Rawdy.
“How? Why, the way anybody would ask him. 'Ain't you got a tongue in your head?” demanded she.
“You dunno what a man he is. I asked him the other night when I drove him up, and it wa'n't a job I liked, I can tell you.”
“Did he pay you?”
“Paid me some of it.”
“He's owin' you now, ain't he?”
“Well, he ain't owin' much, only the few times their cerridge 'ain't been down. It ain't much, Dilly.”
“But it's something.”
“Yes; everythin' that ain't nothin' is somethin', I s'pose.”
“And now you're goin' right on an' lettin' him have all your cerridges, and you'll be wantin' me to help clean the seats, too, I'll warrant, and you're agoin' to hire into the bargain, with him owin' you and owin' everybody else in town.”
“Now, Dilly, I didn't say I was agoin' to,” protested Rawdy.
“An' me needin' a new dress, and 'ain't had one to my back for two years, and them Carroll women in a different one every time they appear out, and the girl having enough clothes for a Vanderbilt. I guess Stella Griggs will rue the day. She's a fool, and always was. If you can afford to give that man money you can afford to get me a new dress. I'd go to the weddin'—it's free, in the church—if I had anything decent to wear.”
“Now, Dilly, what can I do? I leave it to you,” asked Samson Rawdy, with confessed helplessness.
“Do?” said she. “Why, tell him he's got to pay ahead or he can't have the cerridges. If you're afraid to, I'll ask him. I ain't afraid.”
“Lord! I ain't afraid, Dilly,” said Rawdy.
“You'd better clean up, after supper, an' go up there and tell him,” said Dilly Rawdy, mercilessly.
In the end Rawdy obeyed, having shaved and washed, and set forth. When he returned he was jubilant.
“He's a gentleman, I don't care what they say,” said he, “and he treated me like a gentleman. Gave me a cigar, and asked me to sit down. He was smokin', himself, out on the porch. The women folks were in the house.
“Did he pay you?” asked Mrs. Rawdy.
Then Rawdy shook a fat roll of bills in her face. “Look at here,” said he.
“The whole of it?”
“Every darned mill; my cerridges and the New Sanderson ones, too.”
“Well, now, ain't you glad you did the way I told you to?”
“Lord! he'd paid me, anyway,” declared Rawdy. “He's a gentleman. Women are always dreadful scart.”
“It's a pity men wasn't a little scarter sometimes,” said his wife.
Rawdy, grinning, tossed a bill to her. “Wa'n't you sayin' you wanted a dress?” said he.
“I ruther guess I do. I 'ain't had one for two years.”
“I guess I'd better git a silk hat to wear. I suppose I shall have to drive some of the Carrolls' folks,” said Rawdy, with a timid look at his wife. A silk hat had always been his ambition, but she had always frowned upon it.
“Well, I would,” said she, cordially.
Samson Rawdy told everybody how Carroll had paid him in advance—“every cent, sir; and he didn't believe, for his part, half the stories that were told about him. He guessed that he paid, in the long run, as well as anybody in Banbridge. Carroll wa'n't the only one that hadn't paid him, not by a long-shot. He guessed some of them that talked about Carroll had better look to home. He called Carroll a gentleman, and any time when anything happened that his carriage wa'n't on hand when the train come in, he was ready an' willin' to drive him up, or any of his folks, an' if they didn't have a quarter handy right on the spot, he wa'n't goin' to lay awake sweatin' over it.”
Rawdy's testimony prevented Blumenfeldt, the florist, from asking for his pay in advance, as he had intended. He and his son and daughter, who assisted him in his business, decorated the church and the Carroll house, and wagons laden with palms and flowers were constantly on the road. Tuesday, the day before the wedding, was unusually warm. Banbridge had an air of festive weariness. Everybody who passed the church stopped and stared at the open doors and the wilting grass leaves strewn about.
Elsa Blumenfeldt, in a blue shirt-waist and black skirt, with the tightest of fair braids packed above a round, pink face, with eyes so blue they looked opaque, tied and wove garlands with the stolid radiance of her kind. Her brother Franz worked as she did. Only the father Blumenfeldt, who was of a more nervous strain, flew about in excitement, his fat form full of vibrations, his fat face blazing, contorting with frantic energy.
“It iss ein goot yob,” he repeated, constantly—“ein goot yob.” Not a doubt was left. When he came in contact with Carroll he bowed to the ground; he was full of eager protestations, of almost hysterical assertions. All day long he was in incessant and fruitless motion, buzzing, as it were, over his task, conserving force only in the heat of his own spirit, not in the performance of the work. Meanwhile the son and daughter, dogged, undiverted, wrought with good results, weaving many a pretty floral fancy with their fat fingers. Eddy Carroll had taken it upon himself to guard the church doors and prevent people from viewing the splendors before the appointed time. All the morning he had waged war with sundry of his small associates, who were restrained from forcible entry only by the fear of the Blumenfeldt family.
“Mr. Blumenfeldt says he'll run anybody out who goes in, and kick 'em head over heels all the way down the aisle and down the steps,” Eddy declared, mendaciously, to everybody, even his elders.
“I think you are telling a lie, little boy,” said Mrs. Samson Rawdy, who had come with a timid female friend on a tour of inspection. Mrs. Rawdy, in virtue of her husband's employment, felt a sort of proprietorship in the occasion.
“There won't be a mite of trouble about our goin' in to see the church,” she told the friend, who was a humble soul.
But Mrs. Rawdy reckoned without Eddy Carroll. When she told him that he was telling a lie, he smiled sweetly at her.
“You're telling a lie yourself, missis,” said he.
Mrs. Rawdy essayed to push past him, but as he stood directly in the door, and she was unable, on account of her stout habit of body, to pass him, and hardly ventured to forcibly remove him, she desisted. “You are a sassy little boy,” said she, “and if your sister is as sassy as her brother, I pity the man that's goin' to marry her.”
In reply Eddy made up an impish face at her as she retreated. Then he entered the church himself to inspect progress, returning immediately to take up his position of sentry again. About noon Anderson passed on his way to the post-office, and nodded.
“You can't come in,” the boy called out.
“All right,” Anderson responded. But then Eddy made a flying leap from the church door and caught hold of his arm.
“Say, you can, if you won't tell anybody about it,” he whispered, as if the curious village was within ear-shot.
“I am afraid I cannot stop now, thank you,” Anderson replied, smiling.
“You ain't mad, are you?”
Anderson assured him that he was not.
“They didn't tell me to keep folks out,” Eddy explained, “but I made up my mind I didn't want everybody seeing it till it was done. It's going to be a stunner, I can tell you. There's palms and pots of flowers, and yards and yards of white and green ribbon tied in bows, and the pews are all tied round with evergreen boughs, and to-morrow the smilax is going up. I tell you, it's fine.”
“It must be,” said Anderson. He strove to move on, but could not break free from the boy's little, clinging hand. “Just come up the steps and peek in,” pleaded Eddy. So Anderson yielded weakly and let himself be pulled up the steps to the entrance of the church.
“Ain't it handsome?” asked Eddy, triumphantly.
“Very,” replied Anderson.
“Say,” said Eddy, “was it as handsome when you were married yourself?”
“I never was married,” replied Anderson, laughing.
“You weren't?” said Eddy, staring at him. “Why, I thought you were a widow man.”
“No,” said Anderson.
“Well, why were you never married?” asked Eddy, sharply.
“Oh, for a good many reasons which I have never formulated sufficiently to give,” replied Anderson.
“I hate big words,” said Eddy, “and I didn't think you would do it. It's mean.”
“So it is,” said Anderson, with a kindly look at him. “Well, all I meant was I couldn't give my reasons without thinking it over.”
“Perhaps you'll tell me when you get them thought over,” said Eddy, accepting the apology generously.
“Perhaps.”
Anderson turned to go, after saying again that the church was very handsomely decorated, and Eddy still kept at his side.
“You didn't stay not married because you couldn't get a girl to marry you, anyhow, I know that,” said he, “because you are an awful handsome man. You are better-looking than major Arms. I should think Ina would a heap rather have married you.”
“Thank you,” said Anderson.
“You are going to the wedding, aren't you?” asked Eddy.
“No, I think not.”
“Why not?”
“I am very busy.”
“Why, you don't keep your store open Wednesday evening?” asked Eddy, regarding him sharply.
“I have letters to write,” replied Anderson.
“Oh, shucks! let the letters go!” cried the boy. “There's going to be stacks of fun, and lots of things to eat. There's chicken salad and lobster, and sandwiches, and ice-cream and cake, and coffee and cake, and—” The boy hesitated; then he spoke again in a whisper of triumph that had its meaning of pathos: “They are all paid for. I know, for I heard papa tell Major Arms. The carriages are paid for, too, and the florist is going to be paid.”
“That's good,” said Anderson.
“Yes, sir, so the things are sure to be there. They won't back out at the last minute, as they do sometimes. Awful mean, too. Say, you'd better come. Your mother can come, too. She likes ice-cream, don't she?”
Anderson said that he believed she did.
“Well, she'll be sure to get all she can eat,” said Eddy. “Tell her to come. I like your mother.” He clung closely to the man's arm and walked along the street with him, forgetting his post as guardian of the church. “You'll come, won't you?” he said.
“No. I shall be too busy, my son,” said Anderson, smiling; and finally Eddy retreated dissatisfied. When he went home an hour later he burst into the house with a question.
“Say,” he asked Charlotte, “I want to know if Mr. Anderson and his mother were asked to the wedding.”
Charlotte was hurrying through the hall with white and green ribbons flying around her, en route to trim the bay-window where the bridal couple were to stand to receive the guests. “Oh, Eddy, dear,” she cried, “I can't stop now; indeed I can't. I don't know who was invited and who not.”
“But, Charlotte,” Eddy persisted, “I want to know particularly. Please tell me, honey.”
Then Charlotte stopped and looked back over her great snarl of white and green ribbon. “Who did you say, dear?” she asked. “Hurry! I can't stop.”
“Mr. Anderson,” repeated Eddy. “Mr. Anderson and his mother.”
“Mr. Anderson and his mother?” repeated Charlotte, vaguely, and just then Anna Carroll came with a little table which was to support a bowl of roses in the bay-window.
“Mr. Anderson,” said Eddy again.
“I don't know who you mean, Eddy, dear,” said Charlotte.
“Why, yes, you do, Charlotte, Mr. Anderson and his mother.”
“What is it?” asked Anna Carroll. “Eddy, you must not stop us for anything. We are too busy.”
“You might just tell me if they are asked to the wedding,” said Eddy, in an aggrieved tone. “That won't take a minute. Mr. Anderson. He keeps store.”
“Gracious!” cried Anna Carroll. “The child means the grocer! No, dear, he isn't asked.”
“Why, I never thought!” said Charlotte. “No, dear, he isn't asked.”
“Why not?” asked Eddy.
“We couldn't ask everybody, honey,” replied Anna. “Now you must not hinder us another minute.”
But Eddy danced persistently before them, barring their progress.
“He isn't everybody,” he said. “He's the nicest man in this town. Why didn't you ask him? Didn't you think he was nice enough, I'd like to know?”
“Of course he is nice, dear,” said Charlotte; “very nice.” She flushed a little.
“Why didn't you ask him, then?” demanded Eddy. “I call it mean.”
Anna took Eddy by his small shoulders and set him aside.
“Eddy,” she said, sternly, “not another word. We could not ask the grocer to your sister's wedding. Now, don't say another word about it. Your sister and I are too busy to bother with you.”
“I don't see why you won't ask him because he's a grocer,” Eddy called, indignantly, after her. “He's the nicest man here, and he always lets us have things, whether we pay him or not. I have heard you say so. I think you are awful mean to take his groceries, and eat 'em, and use them for Ina's wedding, and then not ask him, just because he is a grocer.”
Anna's laughter floated back, and the boy wondered angrily what she was laughing at. Then he went by himself about righting wrongs. He hunted about until he found on his mother's desk some left-over wedding-cards, and he sent invitations to both the wedding and reception to Randolph Anderson and his mother, which were received that night.
Randolph carried them home, and his mother examined them with considerable satisfaction.
“We might go to the ceremony,” said she, with doubtful eyes on her son's face.
“I really think we had better not, mother.”
“You think we had better not, simply to the ceremony? Of course I admit that we could not go to the reception at the house, since we have not called, but the ceremony?”
“I think we had better not; this very late invitation—”
“Oh, Randolph, that is easily accounted for. It is so easy to overlook an invitation.”
But Randolph persisted in his dissent to the proposition to attend. He was quite sure how the invitation had happened to come at all, and later on in the day he was confirmed in his opinion when Eddy Carroll made a rush into his office and inquired, breathlessly, if he had received his invitation and if he was coming.
“Because I found out you hadn't been asked, and I told them it was mean, and I sent you one myself,” said he, with generous indignation.
Anderson finally compromised by going with him to the church and viewing the completed decorations. He also presented him with a package of candy from his glass jars when he followed him back to the store.
“Say, you are a brick,” Eddy assured him. “When I am a man I am going to keep a grocery store. I'd a great deal rather do that than have a business like papa's. If you have the things yourself in your own store, you don't have to owe anybody for them. Good-bye. If you should get those letters done, you come, and your mother, and I'll look out you have everything you want; and I'll save seats in the pew where I sit, too.”
“Thank you,” said Anderson, and was conscious of an exceedingly warm feeling for the child flying out of the store with his package of sweets under his arm.
Carroll had arrived home very unexpectedly that Sunday morning. The family were at the breakfast-table. As a usual thing, Sunday-morning breakfast at the Carrolls' was a desultory and uncertain ceremony, but when Major Arms was there it was promptly on the table at eight o'clock. He had not yet, in the relaxation of civilian life, gotten over the regular habits acquired in the army.
“It isn't hard you'll find the old man on you, sweetheart,” he told Ina, “but there's one thing he's got to have, and that is his breakfast, and a good old Southern one, with plenty to eat, at eight o'clock, or you'll find him as cross as a bear all day to pay for it.”
Ina laughed and blushed, and sprinkled the sugar on her cereal.
“Ina will not mind,” said Mrs. Carroll. “She and Charlotte have never been sleepy-heads.”
Eddy glanced resentfully at his mother. He was a little jealous in these days. He had never felt himself so distinctly in the background as during these preparations for his sister's wedding.
“I am not a sleepy-head, either, Amy,” said he.
“It is a pity you are not,” said she, and everybody laughed.
“Eddy is always awake before anybody in the house,” said Ina, “and prowling around and sniffing for breakfast.”
“And you bet there is precious little breakfast to sniff lately, unless we have company,” said Eddy, still in his resentful little pipe; and for a second there was silence.
Then Mrs. Carroll laughed, not a laugh of embarrassment, but a delightful, spontaneous peal, and the others, even Major Arms, who had looked solemnly nonplussed, joined her.
Eddy ate his cereal with a sly eye of delight upon the mirthful faces. “Yes,” said he, further. “I wish you'd stay here all the time, Major Arms, and stay engaged to Ina instead of marrying her; then all the rest of us would have enough to eat. We always have plenty when you are here.”
He looked around for further applause, but he did not get it. Charlotte gave him a sharp poke in the side to institute silence.
“What are you poking me for, Charlotte?” he asked, aggrievedly. She paid no attention to him.
“Don't you think it is strange we don't hear from papa?” said Charlotte.
Major Arms stared at her. “Do you mean to say you have not heard from him since he went away?” he asked.
“Not a word,” replied Mrs. Carroll, cheerfully.
“I am a little uneasy about papa,” said Ina, but she went on eating her breakfast quite composedly.
“I should be if I had ever known him to fail to take care of himself,” said Mrs. Carroll.
“It's the other folks that had better look out,” remarked Eddy, with perfect innocence, though would-be wit. He looked about for applause.
Arms's eyes twinkled, but he bent over his plate solemnly.
“Eddy, you are talking altogether too much,” Anna Carroll said.
“You are unusually silly this morning, Eddy,” said Charlotte. “There is no point in such a remark as that.”
“You said Arthur had gone to Chicago?” Arms said to Mrs. Carroll.
“Well, the funny part of it is, we don't exactly know whether he has or not,” replied Mrs. Carroll, “but we judge so. Arthur had been talking about going to Chicago. He had spoken about the possibility of his having to go for some time, and all of a sudden that morning came a telegram from New York saying that he was called away on business.”
“Amy, of course he went to Chicago,” Anna Carroll said, quickly. “You know there is no doubt of it. He said he might have to go there on business, and he had carried a dress-suit case in to the office, to have it ready, and he had given you the Chicago hotel address.”
“Yes, so he did, Anna,” assented Mrs. Carroll. “I suppose he must have gone to Chicago.”
“You have written him there, I suppose?” said Arms, who was evidently perturbed.
“Oh yes,” replied Mrs. Carroll, easily, “I have written three times.”
“Did you put a return address on the corner of the envelope in case he was not there?”
“Oh no! I never do. I thought only business men did that.”
“Amy doesn't even date her letters,” said Ina.
“I never can remember the date,” said Mrs. Carroll, “and I never can remember whether it is Banbridge or Banridge, so I never write the name of the place, either.”
“And she always signs her name just Amy,” said Charlotte.
“Yes, I do, of course,” said Mrs. Carroll, smiling.
Arms turned to Anna Carroll. “You have not felt concerned?” said he to her.
“Not in the least,” she replied, calmly. “I have no doubt that he has gone to Chicago, and possibly his business has taken him farther still. I think nothing whatever of not hearing from him. Arthur, with all of his considerateness in other respects, has always been singularly remiss as to letters.”
“Yes, he has, even before we were married,” agreed Mrs. Carroll. “Not hearing from Arthur was never anything to worry about.”
“And I think with Amy that Arthur Carroll is perfectly well able to take care of himself,” said Anna, further, with her slight inflection of sarcasm.
“I understood that he was going to Chicago, from something he said to me some time ago,” Arms said, thoughtfully.
“Of course he has gone there,” Anna Carroll said again, with a sharp impatience.
And then there was a whirring flash of steel past the window, and the fiercely hitching curve of a boy's back.
“It's Jim Leech on his wheel, and he's got a telegram,” proclaimed Eddy, and made a dash for the door.
There was a little ripple of excitement. Charlotte jumped up and followed Eddy, but he re-entered the room dancing aloof with the telegram. In spite of her efforts to reach it, he succeeded in tearing it open. Charlotte was almost crying and quite pale.
“Eddy,” she pleaded, “please give it to me—please.”
“Eddy, bring that telegram here,” commanded his aunt, half rising from her seat.
“It is only from Arthur, saying he is coming, of course,” said Mrs. Carroll, calmly sipping her coffee. “Arthur always telegraphs when he has been away anywhere and is coming home.”
“Eddy!” said Charlotte.
But Eddy essayed reading the telegram with an effect of being in the air, such was his defensive agility. “He's coming, I guess,” he said. “I don't think anything very bad has happened. I don't think it's an accident or anything, but the writing is awful. I should think that telegraph man would be ashamed to write like that.”
“Eddy, bring that telegram to me,” said Anna; “bring it at once.” And the boy finally obeyed.
Anna read the telegram and her nervous forehead relaxed. “It is all right,” said she; then she read the message aloud. It was dated New York, the night before:
“Am in New York. Shall take the first train home in the morning.”
“He sent it last night at eight o'clock, and we have only just got it,” said Ina.
“He is all right,” repeated Anna.
“Of course he is all right,” said Mrs. Carroll. “Why doesn't Marie bring in the eggs? We have all finished the cereal?”
“Eggs! Golly!” cried Eddy, slipping into his chair.
“Why, it must be time for him now!” Charlotte said, suddenly.
Arms looked at his watch. “Yes, it is,” he agreed.
It was not long before Samson Rawdy drove into the grounds, and everybody sprang up at the sound of the wheels.
“There's papa!” cried Eddy, and led the way to the door, slipping out before the others.
Carroll was engaged in a discussion with the driver. He nodded his head in a smiling aside in response to the chorus of welcome from the porch, and went on conferring with the liveryman, who was speaking in a low, inaudible voice, but gesticulating earnestly. Presently Carroll drew out his pocket-book and gave him some money.
“My!” said Eddy, in a tone of awe, “papa's paying him some money.”
Still the man, Samson Rawdy, did not seem quite satisfied. Something was quite audible here about the rest of the bill, but finally he smiled in response to Carroll's low, even reply, raised his hat, sprang into his carriage, and turned round in a neat circle while Carroll came up the steps.
“Arthur, dear, where have you been?” asked his wife, folding soft, silken arms around his neck and putting up her smiling face for his kiss. “We have not heard a word from you since you went away.”
“You got my telegram?” replied Carroll, interrogatively, kissing her, and passing on to his daughters. Eddy, meantime, was clinging to one of his father's hands and making little leaps upon him like a pet dog.
“Yes,” cried everybody together, “the telegram just came—just a minute ago.”
Anna had kissed her brother, then stepped quietly into the house. The others moved slowly after her.
“How are you, old man?” Carroll asked Major Arms.
“First rate,” replied Arms, grasping the proffered hand, yet in a somewhat constrained fashion.
“Why didn't you write, Arthur dear?” Mrs. Carroll asked, yet not in the least complainingly or reproachfully. On the contrary, she was smiling at him with the sweetest unreserve of welcome as she entered the dining-room by his side.
“Breakfast is getting cold, papa,” said Charlotte. “Come right in.”
“We have got a bully breakfast. No end to eat,” said Eddy, as he danced at his father's heels.
Carroll need not have answered his wife's question then, for her attention was diverted from it, but he did. “I was very busy, dear,” he said, rather gravely. “You were no less in mind. In fact, I never had you all any more in mind.”
“You must have had a hard night's journey, papa,” Charlotte said, as they all sat down at the table, and Marie brought in the eggs.
“Yes, I had a very hard night,” Carroll replied, still with a curious gravity.
Charlotte regarded him anxiously. “Why, papa,” she said, “aren't you well?”
“Very well indeed, honey,” Carroll replied, and he smiled then.
The others looked at him. “Why, papa, youdolook sick!” cried Ina.
“Arthur, dear, you look as if you had been ill a month, and I never noticed it till now, I was so glad to see you,” cried Mrs. Carroll. Suddenly she jumped from her seat and passed behind her husband's chair and drew his head to her shoulder. “Arthur, dearest, are you ill?”
“No, I am not, sweetheart.”
“But, Arthur, you have lost twenty pounds!”
“Nonsense, dear!”
“Haven't you had anything to eat, papa?” Eddy asked, with sharp sidewise eyes on his father.
Then Anna Carroll spoke. “Can't you see that Arthur wants his breakfast?” said she, and in her tone was a certain impatience and pity for her brother.
Major Arms, however, was not a man to take a hint. He also was scrutinizing Carroll. “Arthur,” he suddenly exclaimed, “what on earth is the matter, lad? You do look pretty well knocked up.”
Carroll loosened his wife's arm and gave her an exceedingly gentle push. He laughed constrainedly at the same time. “Anna is about right,” he said. “I am starved. Wait until I have eaten my breakfast before you pass judgment on my appearance.”
“Haven't you eaten anything since you left Chicago, papa?” asked Ina.
“Never mind, dear,” he replied, in an odd, curt tone, and she looked a little grieved.
“Did you come on the flyer, papa?” asked Eddy. “What are you nudging me for, Charlotte?”
“Papa doesn't want any more questions asked. He wants his breakfast,” said Charlotte.
“No, I did not come on the flyer,” Carroll answered, in the same curt tone. Then for a moment there was silence, and Carroll ate his breakfast.
It was Major Arms who broke the silence. “You got in last night,” he said, with scarcely an inflection of interrogation.
But Carroll replied, “I was in the hotel at midnight.”
“We have been frightfully busy since you left, Arthur dear,” said Mrs. Carroll. “It is a tremendous undertaking to make a wedding.”
“How do the preparations go on?” asked Carroll, while Ina bent over her plate with a half-annoyed, half-pleased expression.
“Very well,” replied Mrs. Carroll. “Ina's things are lovely, and the dressmaker is so pleased that we gave her the trousseau. It will be a lovely wedding.”
“Where have you been all the week?” Carroll asked of Arms, who was gazing with an utter openness of honest delight at Ina.
“Here some of the time, and in New York. I had to run up to Albany on business for two days. I got home Wednesday night too late to come out here, and I went into Proctor's roof-garden to see the vaudeville show.”
“Did you?” remarked Carroll, in an even voice. He sugared his cereal more plentifully.
“Yes. I had the time on my hands. It was a warm night and I did not feel like turning in, and I was trailing about and the lights attracted me. And, by Jove! I was glad I went in, for I saw something that carried me back—well, I won't say how many years, for I'm trying to be as much of a boy as I can for this little girl here—but, by Jove! it did carry me back, though.”
“What was it?” asked Charlotte.
“Well, dear, it was nothing except a dance by a nigger. Maybe you wouldn't have thought so much of it. I don't know, though; it did bring down the house. He was called back I don't know how many times. It was like a dance an old fellow on my father's plantation used to dance before the war. Arthur, you must have seen old Uncle Noah dance that. Why, now I think of it, you used to dance it yourself when you were a boy, and sing for the music just the way he did. Don't you remember?”
Carroll nodded laughingly, and went on eating.
“Used to—I guess you did! I remember your dancing that at Bud Hamilton's when Bud came of age. Old Noah must have been gone then. It was after the war.”
“Oh, papa,” cried Eddy, in a rapture, “do dance it sometime, won't you?”
“I'll tell you what we will all do,” cried Major Arms, with enthusiasm, “we'll all go to the City to-morrow night, and we'll see that dance. I tell you it's worth it. It's a queer thing, utterly unlike anything I have ever seen. It is a sort of cross between a cake-walk and an Indian war-dance. Jove! how it carried me back!” Arms began to hum. “That's it, pretty near, isn't it, Arthur?” he asked.
“Quite near, I should say,” replied Carroll.
“Oh, papa, won't you sing and dance it after breakfast?” cried Eddy.
“Now, hush up, my son,” said Arms. “Your father has the dignity of his position to support. A gentleman doesn't dance nigger dances when he is grown up and the head of a family. It's all very well when he is a boy. But we'll all go to New York to-morrow night and we'll see that dance.”
“There is a great deal to do,” Anna Carroll remarked.
“Nonsense!” said the major. “There's time enough. Where are the Sunday papers? I'll see if it is on to-morrow. Have they come yet?”
“I am going down to get shaved, and I will bring them up,” Carroll said.
“Don't they bring them to the door in Banbridge?” asked Arms, wonderingly.
“They used when we first came here,” said Eddy. “I guess—” Then he stopped in obedience to a look from his aunt.
“I will bring them when I come home,” repeated Carroll.
“Well, we'll all go in to-morrow night, and we'll see that dance,” said the major.
But when Carroll, on his return from the barber's shop, brought the papers, Major Arms discovered, much to his disappointment, that that particular attraction had been removed from the roof-garden. There was a long and flattering encomium of the song and dance which upheld him in his enthusiasm.
“Yes, it was a big thing; you can understand by what it says here,” said he, “I was right. I'm mighty sorry it's off.”
Anderson on Wednesday evening sat on the porch and saw the people stream by to the wedding. Mrs. Anderson, although it was a very pleasant and warm evening, did not come outside, but sat by the parlor window, well-screened by the folds of the old damask curtain. The wedding was at eight, and by quarter-past seven the people began to pass; by half-past seven the street was quite full of them. It seemed as if all Banbridge was gathering. A church wedding was quite an unusual festivity in the town, and, besides, there had always been so much curiosity with regard to the Carrolls that interest was doubled in this case. His mother called to him softly from the parlor. “There are a great many going, aren't they?” said she.
“Yes, mother,” replied Anderson. He distinctly heard a soft sigh from the window, and his heart smote him a little. He realized dimly that a matter like this might seem important to a woman. Presently he heard a soft flop of draperies, and his mother stood large and white and mild behind him.
“They are nearly all gone who are going, I think?” said she, interrogatively.
Anderson looked at his watch, holding it towards the light of the moon, which was just coming above the horizon. The daylight had paled with suddenness like a lamp burning low from lack of oil. “Yes; they must be all gone now,” said he. “It is eight o'clock.”
He rose and placed a chair for his mother, and she settled into it.
“I thought I would not come out here while the people were passing,” said she. “I have mymatinéeon, and I am never quite sure that it is dress enough for the porch.”
Anderson looked at the lacy, beribboned thing which his mother wore over her black silk skirt, and said it was very pretty.
“Yes, it is,” said she, “but I am never sure that it is just the thing to be out of my own room in. I suppose the dresses to-night will be very pretty. Miss Carroll ought to make a lovely bride. She is a very pretty girl, and so is her sister. I dare say their dresses will be prettier than anything of the kind ever seen in Banbridge.”
There was an indescribable wistfulness in Mrs. Anderson's voice. Large and rather majestic woman that she was, she spoke like a disappointed child, and her son looked at her with wonder.
“I don't understand how a woman can care so much about seeing pretty dresses,” he said, not unkindly, but with a slight inflection of amused scorn.
“No,” said his mother, “I don't suppose you can, dear. I don't suppose any man can.” And it was as if she regarded him from feminine heights. At that moment the longing, never quite stilled in her breast, for a daughter, a child of her own kind, who would have understood her, who would have gone with her to this wedding, and been to the full as disappointed as she was to have missed it, was strong upon her. She was very fond of her son, but at the moment she saw him with alien eyes. “No, dear, I don't suppose you can understand,” she repeated; “you are a man.”
“If you had really cared so much, mother—if I had understood,” he said, gently, “you might have gone. You could have gone with the Egglestons.”
“There was no reason why we could not have gone by ourselves,” said she, “and sat with the invited guests, where we could have seen everything nicely, since we had an invitation.”
Anderson opened his mouth to tell his mother of the true source of the invitation; then he hesitated. He had a theory that it was foolish, in view of the large alloy of bitterness in the world, to destroy the slightest element of sweet by a word. It was quite evident that his mother, for some occult reason, took pleasure in the invitation. Why destroy it? So he repeated that she might have gone, had she cared so much; and feeling that he was showing a needless humility in his own scruples, he added that he would have gone with her. Then his mother declared that she did not, after all, really care, that it was a warm night and she would have been obliged to dress, and after fanning herself a little while, went in the house and to bed, leaving him marvelling at the ways of women. The problem as to whether his mother had really wished very much to go to the wedding and whether he had been selfish and foolish in opposing her wish or not, rather agitated him for some minutes. Then he gave it up, and relegated women to a place with the fourth dimension on the shelf of his understanding. The moon was now fairly aloft, sailing triumphant in a fleet of pale gold and rosy clouds. The night was very hot, the night insects were shrieking in their persistent dissonances all over the street. Shadows waved and trembled over the field of silver radiance cast by the moon. No one passed. He could not see a window-light in any of the houses. Everybody had gone to the wedding, and the place was like a deserted village. Anderson felt unutterably lonely. He felt outside of all the happy doors and windows of life. Discontent was not his failing, but all at once the evil spirit swept over him. He seemed to realize that instead of moving in the broad highway trod by humanity he was on his own little side-path to the tomb, and injury and anger seized him. He thought of the man who was being married so short a distance away, and envy in a general sense, with no reference even to Charlotte, swept over him. He had never been disturbed in very great measure with longing for the happiness that the other man was laying hold of, but even that fact served to augment his sense of injury and resentment. He felt that it was due to circumstances, in a very large degree to the inevitable decrees of his fate, that he had not had the longing, and not to any inherent lack of his own nature. He felt that he had had a double loss in both the hunger and the satisfaction of it, and now, after all, had come at last this absurd and hopeless affection which had lately possessed him. To-night the affection, instead of seeming to warm the heart of a nobly patient and reasonable man, seemed to sting it.
Suddenly out of the hot murk of the night came a little puff of cool wind, and borne on it a faint strain of music. Anderson listened. The music came again.
“It cannot be possible that the wedding is just about to begin,” he thought, “not at this hour.”
But that was quite possible with the Carrolls, who, with the exception of the head of the family, had never been on time in their lives. It was nearly nine o'clock, and the guests had been sitting in a subdued impatience amid the wilting flowers and greens in the church, and the minister had been trying to keep in a benedictory frame of mind in a stuffy little retiring-room, and now the wedding-party were just entering the church. A sudden impulse seized Anderson. He stole inside the house, and looked and listened in the hall. Everything was dark up-stairs, and silent. Mrs. Anderson always fell asleep like a baby immediately upon going to bed.
Anderson got his hat from the hall-tree, and went out, closing the door with its spring-lock very cautiously. Then he slipped around the house and listened. He could hear a soft, cooing murmur of voices from the back stoop. The servant, as usual, was keeping tryst there with her lover. He walked a little farther and came upon their consolidated shadow of love under the wild-cucumber vine which wreathed over the trellis-hood of the door. The girl gave a little shriek and a giggle, the man, partly pushed, partly of his own volition, started away from her and stood up with an incoherent growl of greeting.
“Good-evening,” said Anderson. “Jane, I am going out, and my mother has gone up-stairs. If you will be kind enough to have a little attention in case she should ring.” Anderson had fixed an electric bell in his mother's room, which communicated with the kitchen.
“Yes, sir,” said the girl, with a sound between a gasp and a giggle.
“I have locked the front-door,” said Anderson.
“Yes, sir,” said the girl, again.
Anderson went around the house, and the sound of an embarrassed and happy laugh floated after him. He felt again the sense of injury and resentment, as if he were shut even out of places where he would not care to be, even out of the humblest joys of life, out of the kitchens as well as the palaces.
Anderson strolled down the deserted street and turned the corner on to Main Street. Then he strolled on until he reached the church. It was brilliantly lighted. Peering people stood in the entrance and the sidewalk before it was crowded. There was a line of carriages in waiting. But everything was still except for the unintermittent voices of the night, which continued like the tick of a clock measuring off eternity, undisturbed by anything around it. From the church itself a silence which could be sensed seemed to roll, eclipsing the diapason of an organ. Not a word of the minister's voice was audible at that distance. Instead was that tremendous silence and hush. Anderson wondered what that pretty, ignorant little girl in there was, to dare to tamper with this ancient force of the earth? Would it not crush her? If the man loved her would he not, after all, have simply tried to see to it that the fair little butterfly of a thing had always her flowers to hang over: the little sweets of existence, the hats and frocks and ribbons which she loved, and then have gone away and left her? A great pity for the bride came over him, and then a flood of yearning tenderness for the other girl, greater than he had ever known.
In his awe and wonder at what was going on all his own rebellion and unhappiness were gone. He felt only that yearning for, and terror for, that little, tender soul that he loved, exposed to all the terrible and ancient solemn might of existence, which the centuries had rolled up until her time came. He longed to shield her not only from sorrow, but from joy. He took off his hat and stood back in the shadow of a door on the opposite sidewalk. It seemed to him that the ceremony would never end. It was, in fact, unusually long, for the Banbridge minister had much to say for the edification of the bridal pair, and for his own aggrandizement. But at last the triumphant peal of the organ burst forth, and the church swarmed like a hive. People began to stir.
All the heads turned. The rustle of silk was quite audible from outside, also a gathering sibilance of whispers and rustling stir of curious humanity, exactly like the swarming impetus of a hive. Fans fluttered like butterflies over all this agitation of heaving shoulders and turning heads in the church. Outside, the people standing about the steps and on the sidewalk separated hurriedly and formed an aisle of gaping curiosity. A carriage streaming with white ribbons rolled up, the others fell into line. Anderson could see Samson Rawdy on the white-ribboned wedding-coach, sitting in majesty. He was paid well in advance; his wife, complacent and beaming in her new silk waist, was in the church. The contemplation of the new marriage had brought a wave of analogous happiness and fresh love for her over his soul. He was as happy with his own measure of happiness as any one there. Every happiness as well as every sorrow is a source of centrifugal attraction.