"Till the stars are old,And the sun grows cold,And the leaves of the judgmentBook unfold."
It brought back the whole moonlighted desert to Lloyd, with the odor of orange-blossoms wafted across it, as it had been on two eventful occasions they rode over it together. She sat quite still in the hammock, with the bit of turquoise clasped tight in her hand. It was hard to listen to such a beautiful voice unmoved. It thrilled her as no song had ever done before.
As it floated into the library, it thrilled Mary also, but in a different way; for with a guiltystart she realized that she had been listening to something not meant for her to hear.
"Oh, what have I done! What have I done!" she whispered to herself, dropping the book and noiselessly wringing her hands. She could hear voices on the stairs now. Eugenia and Betty were coming down, and Rob's whistle down the avenue told that he was on his way to join them. Too ashamed to face any one just then, and afraid that her guilty face would betray the fact to Phil and Lloyd that she shared their secret, she hurried out of the library and up to her room, where Joyce was rearranging her hair. In response to Joyce's question about her coming up so early in the evening, she said she had thought of something she wanted to write in her journal. But when Joyce had gone down she did not begin writing immediately. Turning down the lamp until the room was almost in darkness, she sat with her elbows on the window-sill staring out into the night.
"I nevermeantto do it!" she kept explaining to her conscience. "It just did itself. It seemed all right to listen at first, when they were talking about things I had a right to know, and then I got so interested, it was like reading a story, and I couldn't go away because I forgot there was sucha person living asme. But Lloyd mightn't understand how it was. She'd scorn to be an eavesdropper herself, and she'd scorn and despise me if she knew that I just sat there like a graven image and listened to Phil the same as propose to her."
Hitherto Mary had looked upon Malcolm as Lloyd's especial knight, and had planned to be his valiant champion should need for her services ever arise. But this put matters in a different light. All her sympathies were enlisted in Phil's behalf now. She liked Phil the best, and she wanted him to have whatever he wanted. He had called her his "angel unawares," and she wished she could do something to further deserve that title. Then she began supposing things.
Suppose she should come tripping down the stairs some day (this would be sometime in the future, of course, when Lloyd's promise to her father was no longer binding) and should find Phil pacing the room with impatient strides because the maid of honor had gone off with Sir Feal to the opera or somewhere, in preference to him, on account of some misunderstanding. "The little rift within the lute" would be making the bestman's music mute, and now would be her time to play angel unawares again.
She would trip in lightly, humming a song perhaps, and finding him moody and downcast, would begin the conversation with some appropriate quotation. In looking through the dictionary the day before, her eye had caught one from Shakespeare, which she had stored away in her memory to use on some future occasion. Yes, that one would be very appropriate to begin the conversation. She would go up to him and say, archly:
"My lord leans wondrously to discontent.His comfortable temper has forsook him."
With that a smile would flit across his stern features, and presently he would be moved to confide in her, and she would encourage him. Then, she didn't know yet exactly in what way it could come about, she would do something to bring the two together again, and wipe out the bitter misunderstanding.
It was a very pleasing dream. That and others like it kept her sitting by the window till nearly bedtime. Then, just before the girls came up-stairs, she turned up the lamp and made an entry in her journal. With the fear that some pryingeye might some day see that page, she omitted all names, using only initials. It would have puzzled the Sphinx herself to have deciphered that entry, unless she had guessed that the initials stood for titles instead of names. The last paragraph concluded: "It now lies between Sir F. and the B. M., but I think it will be the B. M. who will get the mantle, for Sir F. and his brother have gone away on a yachting trip. The M. of H. does not know that I know, and the secret weighs heavy on my mind."
She was in bed when the girls came up, but the door into the next room stood open and she heard Betty say, "Oh, we forgot to give you Alex Shelby's message, Lloyd. Joyce and I met him on our way to the post-office. He was walking with Bernice. He sent his greetings to the fair Elaine. He fairly raved over the way you looked in that moonlight tableau."
"It was evident that Bernice didn't enjoy his raptures very much," added Joyce. "Her face showed that she was not only bored, but displeased."
"I can imagine it," said Lloyd. "Really, girls, I think this is a serious case with Bernice. She seems to think moah of Mistah Shelby than any one who has evah gone to see her, and she is oldenough now to have it mean something. She's neahly twenty, you know. I do hope he thinks as much of her as she does of him."
"There!" whispered Mary to herself, nodding wisely in the darkness of her room, as if to an unseen listener. "I knew it! I told you so! All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't make me believe she'd stoop to such a thing as that nasty Bernice Howe insinuated. She's a maid of honor in every way!"
The morning after the arrival of the rest of the bridal party, Betty was out of bed at the first sound of any one stirring in the servants' quarters. She and Lloyd had given up their rooms to the new guests, and moved back into the sewing-room together. Now in order not to awaken Lloyd she tiptoed out to the little vine-covered balcony, through the window that opened into it from the sewing-room. She was in her nightgown, for she could not wait to dress, when she was so eager to find out what kind of a day Eugenia was to have for her wedding.
Not a cloud was in sight. It was as perfect as only a June morning can be, in Kentucky. The fresh smell of dewy roses and new-mown grass mingled with the pungent smoke of the wood fire, just beginning to curl up in blue rings from the kitchen chimney. Soft twitterings and jubilant bird-calls followed the flash of wings from tree totree. She peeped out between the thick mass of wistaria vines, across the grassy court, formed by the two rear wings of the house, to another balcony opposite the one in which she stood. It opened off Eugenia's room, and was almost hidden by a climbing rose, which made a perfect bride's bower, with its gorgeous full-blown Gloire Dijon roses.
Stray rhymes and words suggestive of music and color and the morning's glory began to flit through her mind as she stood there, as if a little poem were about to start to life with a happy fluttering of wings; a madrigal of June. But in a few moments she slipped back into the house through the window, put on her kimono and slippers, and gathering up her journal in one hand and pen and ink with the other, she stole back to the balcony again. The seamstress had left her sewing-chair out there the afternoon she finished Mary's dress, and it still stood there, with the lap-board beside it. Taking the board on her knees, and opening her journal upon it, Betty perched her ink-bottle on the balcony railing and began to write. She knew there would be no time later in the day for her to bring her record up-to-date, and she did not want to let the happenings pile up unrecorded. She was afraid she might leave out something she wanted to include,and she had found that the trivial conversations and the trifles she noted were often the things which recalled a scene most vividly, and almost made it seem to live again. She began her narrative just where she had left off, so that it made a continuous story.
"We didn't settle down to anything yesterday morning. Phil went to town with Papa Jack directly after breakfast, and we girls just strolled up and down the avenue and talked. It was delightfully cool under the locusts, and we knew it would be our last morning with Eugenia; that after the arrival of the rest of the bridal party, everything would be in confusion until after the wedding, and then she would never be Eugenia Forbes again. She would be Mrs. Stuart Tremont.
"She told us that her being married wouldn't make any difference, that she'd always be the same to us. But it's bound to make a difference. A married woman can't be interested in the same things that young girls are. Her husband is bound to come first in her consideration.
"Joyce asked her if it didn't make her feel queer to know that her wedding-day was coming closer and closer, and quoted that line from 'The Siege of Lucknow,'—'Day by day the Bengal tiger nearerdrew and closer crept.' She said she'd have a fit if she knew her wedding-day was creeping up on her that way. Eugenia was horrified to have her talk that way, and said that it was because she didn't know Stuart, and didn't know what it meant to care enough for a man to be glad to join her life to his, forever and ever. There was such a light in her eyes as she talked about him, that we didn't say anything more for awhile, just wondered how it must feel to be so supremely happy as she is. There is no doubt about it, he is certainly the one written for her in the stars, for he measures up to every ideal of hers, as faultlessly 'as the falcon's feathers fit the falcon.'
"We had heard so much from her and Phil about Doctor Miles Bradford, Stuart's friend who is coming with him to be one of the ushers, that we dreaded meeting him. When she told us that he is from Boston and belongs to one of its most exclusive families, and is very conventional, and twenty-five years old, Joyce nicknamed him 'The Pilgrim Father,' and vowed shewouldn'thave him for her attendant; that I had to take him and let her walk in with Rob. She said she'd shock him with her wild west slang and uncivilized ways, and thatI was the literary lady of the establishment, and would know how to entertain such a personage.
"I was just as much afraid of him as she was, and wanted Rob myself, so we squabbled over it all the way up and down the avenue. We were walking five abreast, swinging hands. When we got to the gate we saw some one coming up the road, and we all stood in a row, peeping out between the bars till we saw that it was Rob himself. Then Joyce said that we would make him decide the matter—that we'd all put our hands through the bars as if we had something in them, and make him choose which he'd take, right or left. If he said right, I could have him for my attendant and she'd take Doctor Bradford, but if he said left I'd have to put up with the Pilgrim Father, and she'd take Rob.
"'ALL YOU GIRLS STANDING WITH YOUR HANDS STUCK THROUGH THE BARS'""'ALL YOU GIRLS STANDING WITH YOUR HANDS STUCK THROUGH THE BARS'"
"He came along bareheaded, swinging his hat in his hand, and we were so busy explaining to him that he was to choose which hand he'd take, right or left, that we did not notice that he had a kodak hidden behind his hat. He held it up in front of him, and bowed and scraped and did all sorts of ridiculous things to keep us from noticing what he was doing, till all of a sudden we heard the shutter click and he gave a whoop and said, 'There! That will be one of the best pictures in my collection.All you girls standing with your hands stuck through the bars, like monkeys at the Zoo, begging for peanuts. I don't know whether to call it "Behind the Bars," or "Don't Feed the Animals."'
"Then Lloyd said he shouldn't come in for making such a speech, and he sat down on the grass and began to sing in a ridiculous way, the old song that goes:
"'Oh, angel, sweet angel, I pray theeSet the beautiful gates ajar.'
"He was off the key, as he usually is when he sings without an accompaniment, and it was so funny, such a howl of a song, that we laughed till the tears came. Then he said he'd name the picture 'At the Gate of Paradise,' and make a foot-note to the effect that she was a Peri, if she'd let him in.
"After awhile she said she'd let him in to Paradise if he could name one good deed he'd ever done that had benefited human kind. He said certainly he could, and that he wouldn't have to dig it up from the dead past. He could give it to her hot from the griddle, for only ten minutes before he had completed arrangements for the evening's entertainment of the bridal party.
"Lloyd opened the gate in a hurry then, and fairly begged him to come in, for we had been wildall week to know what godmother had decided upon. She only laughed when we teased her to tell us, and said we'd see. We were sure it would be something very elegant and formal. Maybe a real grown-up affair, with an orchestra from town and distinguished strangers to meet the three fathers, Eugenia's, Stuart's and the Pilgrim F.
"We couldn't believe Rob when he told us that we were to go on acoon hunt, and went racing up to the house to ask godmother herself.
"And she said yes, she was sure they would enjoy a glimpse of real country Southern life, and some of our informal fun, far more than the functions they could attend any time in the East. Besides she wanted everybody to keep in mind that we were still little schoolgirls, even if we were to be bridesmaids, and that was why she was taking us all off to the woods for an old-time country frolic, instead of having a grand dinner or a formal dance.
"Then Rob asked us if we didn't want to beg his pardon for doubting his word, but Lloyd told him no, that
"'The truth itself is not believedFrom one who often has deceived.'
"Then we tried to make him choose which he'd have, right or left, and held out our hands again,but he said he knew that some great question of choice was being involved, and that he would not assume the responsibility. That we'd have to draw straws, if we wanted to decide anything. So Eugenia held two blades of grass between her palms, and Joyce drew the longest one. I couldn't help groaning, for that meant that the Pilgrim Father must fall to my lot.
"But it didn't seem so bad after I met him. They all came out on the three o'clock train with Phil. When the carriage came up from the station we had a grand jubilee. Cousin Carl seemed so glad to get back to the Valley, but no gladder than everybody was to see him. Stuart is so much like Phil that we felt as if we were already acquainted with him. He is very boyish-looking and young, but there is something so dignified and gentle in his manner that one feels he is cut out to be a staid old family physician, and that in time he will grow into the love and confidence of his patients like Maclaren's Doctor of the Old School. But dear old Doctor Tremont is the flower ofthatfamily. We all fell in love with him the moment we saw him. It is easy to see what he has been to his boys. The very tone in which they call him 'Daddy'shows how they adore him; and he is so sweet and tender with Eugenia.
"Contrasted with him and Cousin Carl, I must say that the Pilgrim Father is not a suitable name for Doctor Bradford. Really, with his smooth shaven face, and clear ruddy complexion like an Englishman's, he doesn't seem much older than Malcolm. Still his dignity is rather awe-full, and his grave manner and Boston accent make him seem sort of foreign, so different from the boys whom we have always known. We were afraid at first that godmother had made a great mistake in planning to take him on a coon hunt. But it turned out that she was right, as she always is. He told us afterward he had never enjoyed anything so much in all his life.
"It was just eight o'clock when we set out on the hunt last night. A big hay-wagon drove up to the door with the party from The Beeches already stowed away in it, sitting flat on the hay in the bottom. Mrs. Walton was with them, and Miss Allison and Katie Mallard and her father, and several others they had picked up on the way.
"While they were laughing and talking and everybody was being introduced, Alec came driving up from the barn with another big wagon, and weall piled into it except Lloyd and Rob, Joyce and Phil. They were on horseback and kept alongside of us as outriders. The moon hadn't come up, but the starlight was so bright that the road gleamed like a white ribbon ahead of us, and we sang most of the way to the woods.
"Old Unc' Jefferson led the procession on his white mule, with three lanky coon dogs following. They struck the trail before we reached our stopping-place, and went dashing off into the woods. Unc' Jefferson fairly rolled off his old mule, and threw the rope bridle over the first fence-post, and went crashing through the underbrush after them. The wagons kept on a few rods farther and landed us on the creek bank, up by the black bridge.
"It seemed as if the whole itinerary of the hunt had been planned for our especial benefit, for just as we reached the creek the moon began to roll up through the trees like a great golden mill-wheel, and we could see our way about in the woods. Evidently the coon's home was in some hollow near our stopping-place, for instead of staying in the dense beech woods, up where it would have been hard for us to climb, the first dash of the dogs sent him scurrying toward the row of big sycamores that overhang the creek.
"It whizzed by us so fast that at first we did not know what had passed us till the dogs came tumbling after at breakneck speed. They were such old hands at the game that they gave their quarry a bad time of it for awhile, turning and doubling on his tracks till we were almost as excited and bewildered as the poor coon. Little Mary Ware just stood and wrung her hands, and once when the dogs were almost on him she teetered up and down on her tiptoes and squealed.
"All of a sudden the coon dodged to one side and disappeared. We thought he had escaped, but a little later on we heard the dogs baying frantically farther down the creek, and Rob shouted that they had treed him, and for everybody to hurry up if they wanted to be in at the death. So away we went, helter-skelter, in a wild race down the creek bank, godmother, Papa Jack, Cousin Carl, and everybody. It was a rough scramble, and as we pitched over rolling stones, and caught at bushes to pull ourselves up, and swung down holding on to the saplings, I wondered what Doctor Bradford would think of our tomboy ways.
"Nobody waited to be helped. It was every fellow for himself, we were in such a hurry to get to the coon. Lloyd kept far in the lead, ahead ofeverybody, and Joyce walked straight up a steep bank as if she had been a fly. When we got to the tree where the dogs were howling and baying we had to look a long time before we could see the coon. Then all we could distinguish was the shine of its eyeballs, for it crouched so flat against the limb that it seemed a part of the bark. It was away out on the tip-end of one of the highest branches.
"The only way to get it was to shake it down, and to our surprise, before we knew who had volunteered, we saw Doctor Bradford, in his immaculate white flannels, throw off his coat and go shinning up the tree like an acrobat in a circus. He had to shake and shake the limb before he could dislodge the coon, but at last it let go, and the dogs had it before it fairly touched the ground. We girls didn't wait to see what they did with it, but stuck our fingers in our ears and tore back to the wagons. Rob made fun of Lloyd when she said she didn't see why they couldn't have coon hunts without coon killings, and that they ought to have made the dogs let go. They had had the fun of catching it, and they ought to be satisfied with that.
"Joyce whispered to me that the hunt had had one desirable result. It had limbered up the Pilgrim Father so thoroughly, that he couldn't be stiff anddignified again after his acrobatic feat. It really did make a difference, for after that he was one of the jolliest men in the party.
"As it was out of season and old Unc' Jefferson didn't care for the coons, he called off the dogs after they had caught one, to show us what the sport was like, and then he built us a grand camp-fire on the creek bank, and we had what Mrs. Walton called the sequel. She and Miss Allison and godmother made coffee and unpacked the hampers we had brought with us. There was beaten biscuit and fried chicken and iced watermelon, and all sorts of good things. As we ate, the moon came up higher and higher, and silvered the white trunks of the sycamores till they looked like a row of ghosts standing with outstretched arms along the creek. It was so lovely there above the water. All the sweet woodsy smells of fern and mint and fallen leaves seem stronger after nightfall. Everybody enjoyed the feast so much, and was in such high spirits that we all felt a shade of regret that it had to come to an end so soon.
"'THEY STEPPED IN AND ROWED OFF DOWN THE SHINING WATERWAY'""'THEY STEPPED IN AND ROWED OFF DOWN THE SHINING WATERWAY'"
"There were two boats down by the bridge which we found that Rob had had sent over that morning for the occasion. They had brought the oars over in the wagon. Pretty soon we saw Eugenia andStuart going down toward one of them, a little white canvas one, and they stepped in and rowed off down the shining waterway. It was only a narrow creek, but the moonlight seemed to glorify it, and we knew that it made them think of that boat-ride that had been the beginning of their happiness, in far-away Venice.
"The other boat was larger. Allison and Miss Bonham, Phil and Lieutenant Stanley went out in that. The music of their singing, as it floated back to us, was so beautiful, that those of us on the bank stopped talking to listen. When they came back presently, Kitty and Joyce, Rob and Lieutenant Logan pushed out in it for awhile. They sang too.
"When the little boat came back, Doctor Bradford asked Lloyd to go out with him, and she said she would as soon as she had given her chatelaine watch to her father to keep for her. The clasp kept coming unfastened and she was afraid she would lose it."
Here Betty laid down her pen a moment and sat peering dreamily out between the vines. She was about to record a little conversation she had overheard between Lloyd and her father as they stood a moment in the bushes behind her, but paused as she reflected that it would be like betraying a confidence to make an entry of it in her journal. It would be even worse, since it was no confidence of hers, but a matter lying between Lloyd and her father alone.
She sat tapping the rim of the ink-bottle with her pen as she recalled the conversation. "Yes, it's all right for you to go, Lloyd, but wait a moment. Have you my silver yardstick with you to-night, dear?"
"Why of co'se, Papa Jack. What makes you ask such a question?"
"Well," he answered, "there is so much weaving going on around you lately, and weddings are apt to put all sorts of notions into a girl's head. I just wanted to remind you that only village lads and shepherd boys are in sight, probably not even a knight, and the mantle must be worthy of a prince's wearing, you know."
Then Lloyd pretended to be hurt, and Betty could tell from her voice just how she lifted her head with an air of injured dignity.
"Remembah I gave you my promise, suh, the promise of a Lloyd. Isn't that enough?"
"More than enough, my little Hildegarde." As they stepped out of the bushes together Betty saw him playfully pinch her cheek. Then Lloyd wenton down the bank. Here Betty took up her pen again.
"When she stepped into the boat the moonlight on her white dress and shining hair made her look almost as ethereal and fair as she had in the Elaine tableau. The boats could only go as far as the shallows, just a little way below the bridge, so they went back and forth a number of times, making such a pretty picture for those who waited on the bank.
"After Doctor Bradford had brought Lloyd back he asked me to go with him, and oh, it was so beautiful out there on the water. I'll enjoy the memory of it as long as I live. At first I couldn't think of anything to say, and the more I tried to think of something that would interest a man like him, the more embarrassed I grew. It was the first time I had ever tried to talk to any but old men or the home boys.
"After we had rowed a little way in silence he turned to me with the jolliest twinkle in his eyes and asked me why the boat ought to be called the Mayflower. I wassosurprised, I asked him if that was a riddle, and he said no, but he wondered if I wouldn't feel that it was the Mayflower because I was adrift in it with the Pilgrim Father.
"I was so embarrassed I didn't know what to say, for I couldn't imagine how he had found out that we had called him that. I couldn't have talked to him at all if I had known what Lloyd told me afterward when we had gone to our room. It seems that by some unlucky chance he was left alone with Mary Ware for awhile before dinner. Godmother told her to entertain him, and she proceeded to do so by showing him the collection of all the kodak pictures Rob had taken of us during the house-party. After he left us yesterday morning he went straight to work to develop and print the films he had just taken, and when he brought us the copies that afternoon, we were busy, and he slipped them into the album with the others without saying anything about them. So none of us saw them until Mary came across them in showing them to Doctor Bradford.
"There was the one of us with our hands thrust through the bars, when we were trying to make Rob choose right or left, and one of Joyce and me drawing straws. Neither of us had the slightest idea that he had taken us in that act, and Mary was so surprised that she gave the whole thing away—blurted out what we were doing, before she thought that he was the Pilgrim Father. Then in her confusion, to cover up her mistake, she began to explain as only Mary Ware can, and the more she explained, the more ridiculous things she told about us. Doctor Bradford must have found her vastly entertaining from the way he laughed whenever he quoted her, which he did frequently.
"I wish she wouldn't be so alarmingly outspoken when she sings our praises to strangers. She gave him to understand that I am a full-fledged author and playwright, the peer of any poet laureate who ever held a pen; that Lloyd is a combination of princess and angel and halo-crowned saint, and Joyce a model big sister and an all-round genius. How she managed in the short time they were alone to tell him as much as she did will always remain a mystery.
"He knew all about Joyce raising bees at the Wigwam to earn money for her art lessons, and my nearly going blind at the first house-party, and why we all wear Tusitala rings. Only time will reveal what else she told. Maybe, after all, her confidences made things easier, for it gave us something to laugh about right in the beginning, and that took away the stiff feeling, and we were soon talking like old friends. By the time the boat landed I was glad that he had fallen to my lot asattendant instead of Rob, for he is so much more entertaining. He told about a moonlight ride he had on the Nile last winter when he was in Egypt, and that led us to talking of lotus flowers, and that to Tennyson's poem of the 'Lotus Eaters.' He quoted a verse from it which he said was, to him, one of the best comparisons in English verse.
"'There is sweet music here that softer fallsThan petals from blown roses on the grass,Or night dews upon still waters, between wallsOf shadowy granite in a gleaming pass.Music that gentlier on the spirit liesThan tired eyelids upon tired eyes.'
"The other boat-load, far down the creek, was singing 'Sweet and low, wind of the western sea,' and he rested on his oars for us to listen. I had often repeated that verse to myself when I closed my eyes after a hard day's study. Nothing falls gentlier than tired eyelids upon tired eyes, and to have him understand the feeling and admire the poem in the same way that I did, was such a pleasant sensation, as if I had come upon a delightful unexplored country, full of pleasant surprises.
"Such thoughts as that about music are the ones I love best, and yet I never would dream of speaking of such things to Rob or Malcolm, who are both old and dear friends.
"After all, the coon hunt proved a very small part of the evening's entertainment, and he must have liked it, for I heard him say to godmother, as he bade her good night, that if this was a taste of real Kentucky life, he would like a steady diet of it all the rest of his days."
As Betty carefully blotted the last page and placed the stopper in the ink-bottle, the clock in the hall began to strike, and she realized that she must have been writing fully an hour. The whole household was astir now. She would be late to breakfast unless she hurried with her dressing.
Steps on the gravelled path below the balcony made her peep out between the vines. Stuart and Doctor Bradford were coming back from an early stroll about the place. The wistaria clung too closely to the trellis for them to see her, but, as they crossed the grassy court between the two wings, they looked up at Eugenia's balcony opposite. Betty looked too. That bower of golden-hearted roses had drawn her glances more than once that morning. Now in the midst of it, in a morning dress of pink, fresh and fair as a blossom herself, stood Eugenia, reaching up for a half-blown bud above her head. Her sleeves fell back from hergraceful white arms, and as she broke the bud from its stem a shower of rose-petals fell on her dusky hair and upturned face.
Then Betty saw that Doctor Bradford had passed on into the house, leaving Stuart standing there with his hat in his hand, smiling up at the beautiful picture above him.
"Good morrow, Juliet," he called, softly. "Happy is the bride the sun shines on. Was there ever such a glorious morning?"
"It's perfect," answered Eugenia, leaning out of her rose bower to smile down at him.
"I wonder if the bride's happiness measures up to the morning," he asked. "Mine does."
For answer she glanced around, her finger on her lips as if to warn him that walls have ears, and then with a light little laugh tossed the rosebud down to him. "Wait! I'll come and tell you," she said.
Betty, gathering up her writing material, saw him catch the rose, touch it to his lips and fasten it in his coat. Then, conscience-smitten that she had seen the little by-play not intended for other eyes, she bolted back into her room through the window, so hurriedly that she struck her head against thesash with a force which made her see stars for several minutes.
The first excitement after breakfast was the arrival of the bride's cake. Aunt Cindy had baked it, the bride herself had stirred the charms into it, but it had been sent to Louisville to be iced. Lloyd called the entire family into the butler's pantry to admire it, as it sat imposingly on a huge silver salver.
"It looks as if it might have come out of the Snow Queen's palace," she said, "instead of the confectionah's. Wouldn't you like to see the place where those snow-rose garlands grow?"
"Somebody take Phil away from it! Quick!" said Stuart. "Once I had a birthday cake iced in pink with garlands of white sugar roses all around it, and he sneaked into the pantry before the party and picked off so many of the roses that it looked as if a mouse had nibbled the edges. Aunt Patricia put him to bed and he missed the party, but we couldn't punish him that way if he should spoil the wedding cake, because we need his services as best man. So we'd better remove him from temptation."
"Look here, son," answered Phil, taking Stuart by the shoulders and pushing him ahead of him."When it comes to raking up youthful sins you'd better lie low. 'I could a tale unfold' that would make Eugenia think that this is 'a fatal wedding morn,' If she knew all she wouldn't have you."
"Then you sha'n't tell anything," declared Lloyd. "I'm not going to be cheated out of my share of the wedding, no mattah what a dahk past eithah of you had. Forget it, and come and help us hunt the foah-leaf clovahs that Eugenia wants for the dream-cake boxes."
"What are they?" asked Miles Bradford, as he edged out of the pantry after the others. Mary happened to be the one in front of him, and she turned to answer, pointing to one of the shelves, where lay a pile of tiny heart-shaped boxes, tied with white satin ribbons.
"Each guest is to have one of those," she explained. "There'll be a piece of wedding cake in it, and a four-leaf clover if we can find enough to go around. Most people don't have the clovers, but Eugenia heard about them, and she wants to try all the customs that everybody ever had. You put it under your pillow for three nights, and whatever you dream will come true. If you dream about the same person all three nights, that is the one you will marry."
"Horrible!" exclaimed he, laughing. "Suppose one has nightmares. Will they come true?"
Mary nodded gravely. "Mom Beck says so, and Eliot. So did old Mrs. Bisbee. She's the one that told Eugenia about the clovers. There was one with her piece of cake from her sister's wedding, that she dreamed on nearly fifty years ago. She dreamed of Mr. Bisbee three nights straight ahead, and she said there never was a more fortunate wedding. They'll celebrate their golden anniversary soon."
"Miss Mary," asked her listener, solemnly, "do you girls really believe all these signs and wonders? I have heard more queer superstitions the few hours I have been in this Valley, than in all my life before."
"Oh, no, we don't really believe in them. Only the darkies do that. But you can't help feeling more comfortable when they 'point right' for you than when they don't; like seeing the new moon over your right shoulder, you know. And it's fun to try all the charms. Eugenia says so many brides have done it that it seems a part of the performance, like the veil and the trail and the orange-blossoms."
They passed from the dining-room into the hall, then out on to the front porch, where they stoodwaiting for Joyce and Eugenia to get their hats. While they waited, Rob Moore joined them, and they explained the quest they were about to start upon.
"Where are you going to take us, Miss Lloyd?" asked Miles Bradford. "According to the old legend the four-leaved clover is to be found only in Paradise."
"Oh, do you know a legend about it?" asked Betty, eagerly. "I've always thought there ought to be one."
"Then you must read the little book, Miss Betty, called 'Abdallah, or the Four-leaved Shamrock.' Abdallah was a son of the desert who spent his life in a search for the lucky shamrock. He had been taught that it was the most beautiful flower of Paradise. One leaf was red like copper, another white like silver, the third yellow like gold, and the fourth was a glittering diamond. When Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden, poor Eve reached out and clutched at a blossom to carry away with her. In her despair she did not notice what she plucked, but, as she passed through the portal, curiosity made her open her hand to look at the flower she had snatched. To her joy it was the shamrock. But while she looked, a gust ofwind caught up the diamond leaf and blew it back within the gates, just as they closed behind her. The name of that leaf was Perfect Happiness. That is why men never find it in this world for all their searching. It is to be found only in Paradise."
"Oh, but I don't believe that!" cried Lloyd. "Lots and lots of times I have been perfectly happy, and I am suah that everybody must be at some time or anothah in this world."
"Yes, but you didn't stay happy, did you?" asked Joyce, who had come back in time to hear part of the legend. "We get glimpses of it now and then, as poor Eve did when she opened her hand, but part of it always flies away while we are looking at it. People can be contented all the time, and happy in a mild way, but nobody can be perfectly, radiantly happy all the time, day in and day out. The legend is right. It is only in Paradise that one can find the diamond leaf."
"Joyce talks as if she were a hundred yeahs old," laughed Lloyd, looking up at Doctor Bradford. "Maybe there is some truth in yoah old Oriental legend, but I believe times have changed since Abdallah went a-hunting. Phil and I came across a song the othah day that I want you all to heah. Maybe it will make you change yoah minds."
Phil protested with many grimaces and much nonsense that he "could not sing the old songs now." That he would not "be butchered to make a Roman holiday." But all the time he protested, he was stepping toward the piano in a fantastic exaggerated cake-walk that set his audience to laughing. At the first low notes of the accompaniment, he dropped his foolishness and began to sing in a full, sweet voice that brought the old Colonel to the door of his den to listen. Eliot, packing trunks in the upper hall, leaned over the banister:
"I know a place where the sun is like gold,And the cherry blooms burst with snow.And down underneath is the loveliest nookWhere the four-leaf clovers grow."One leaf is for hope and one is for faith,And one is for love you know,And God put another one in for luck.If you search you will find where they grow."And you must have hope and you must have faith.You must love and be strong, and soIf you work, if you wait, you will find the placeWhere the four-leaf clovers grow."
It was a sweet, haunting melody that accompanied the words, and the gay party of nine, strolling toward the orchard, hummed it all the way.
There in the shade of the big apple-trees, wherethe clover grew in thick patches, they began their search; all together at first, then in little groups of twos and threes, until they had hunted over the entire orchard. Stuart, who had been doing more talking than hunting, went to groping industriously around on his hands and knees, when they all came together again after an hour's search.
"Bradford," he said, emphatically, "I am beginning to think that you and Miss Joyce are right, and that Paradise has a monopoly on the four-leaf kind. I haven't caught a glimpse of one. Not even its shadow."
Lloyd held up a handful. "I found them in several places, thick as hops."
"Which goes to show," he insisted, "that the song, 'If you work, if you wait, you will find the place,' is all a delusion and a snare. You all have worked, and Eugenia and I have waited, and only you, who are 'bawn lucky,' have found any. It's pure luck."
"No," interrupted Miles Bradford, "you can't call strolling around a shady orchard with a pretty girl work, and the song does correspond with the legend. Abdallah worked hard for his first leaf, dug a well with which to bless the thirsty desert for all time. The bit of copper was at the bottomof it. The effort he made for the second almost cost him his life. He rescued a poor slave girl in order to be faithful to a trust imposed in him, and taught her the truths of Allah. The silver leaf was his reward. He found it in the heathen fetish which she gave him in her gratitude. It had been her god.
"I am not sure about the golden leaf, but I think it was the reward of living a wise and honorable life. The day of his birth it was said that he alone wept, while all around him rejoiced; and he resolved to live so well that at the day of his death he should have no cause for tears, and all around him should mourn. No, I'll not have you belittling my hero, Tremont. There was no luck about it whatsoever. He won the first three leaves by unselfish service, faithfulness to every trust, and wise, honorable living, so that he well deserved that Paradise should bring him perfect happiness."
"Girls!" cried Betty, her face lighting up, "wemust be warm on the trail, with our Tusitala rings, our Warwick Hall motto, and our Order of Hildegarde. A Road of the Loving Heart is as hard to dig in every one's memory as a well in the desert. If we keep the tryst in all things, we're boundto find the silver leaf, and think of the wisdom it takes to weave with the honor of a Hildegarde!"
Eugenia interrupted her: "Oh, Betty,pleasewrite a legend of the shamrock for girls that will fit modern times. In the old style there are always three brothers or three maidens who start out to find a thing, and only the last one or the youngest one is successful. The others all come to grief. In yours giveeverybodya chance to be happy.
"There is no reason whyeverymaiden shouldn't find the leaves according to the Tusitala rings and Ederyn's motto and Hildegarde's yardstick. And then, don't you see, they needn't wait till the end of their lives for the diamond, forthe princewill bring it! Don't you see? It is his coming thatmakesthe perfect happiness!"
Phil laughed. "Stuart's face shows how he appreciates that compliment," he said, "and as for me and all the other sons of Adam, oh, fair layde, I make my bow!" Springing to his feet, he swept her an elaborate curtsey, holding out his coat as if it were the ball-gown of some stately dame in a minuet.
Lloyd, sitting on the grass with her hands clasped on her knees, looked around the circle of smilingfaces, and then gave her shoulders a whimsical shrug.
"That's all right if the princecomes," she exclaimed. "But how is one to get the diamond leaf if he doesn't? Mammy Eastah told my fortune in a teacup, and she said: 'I see a risin' sun, and a row of lovahs, but I don't see you a-takin' any of 'em, honey. Yo' ways am ways of pleasantness, and all yo' paths is peace, but I'se powahful skeered you'se goin' to be an ole maid. I sholy is, if the teacup signs p'int right.'"
"It will be your own fault, then," answered Phil. "The row of lovers is there in the teacup for you. You've only to take your pick."
"But," began Rob, "maybe it is just as well that she shouldn't choose any of them. The prince's coming doesn't always bring happiness. Look at old Mr. Deckly. For thirty years he and his fair bride have led a regular cat and dog life. And there are the Twicketts and the Graysons and the Blackstones right in this one little valley, to say nothing of all the troubles one reads of in the papers."
"No!" contradicted Eugenia, emphatically. "You have no right to hold them up as examples. It is plainly to be seen that Mrs. Deckly andMrs. Twickett and Mrs. Grayson and Mrs. Blackstone were not Hildegardes. They failed to earn their third leaf by doing their weaving wisely. They didn't use their yardsticks. They looked only at the 'village churls,' and wove their webs to fit their unworthy shoulders, so that the men they married were not princes, and they couldn't bring the diamond leaf."
"The name of the prince need not always beMan, need it?" ventured Joyce. "Couldn't it be Success? It seems to me that if I had struggled along for years, trying to make the most of my little ability, had worked just as faithfully and wisely at my art as I could, it would be perfect happiness to have the world award me the place of a great artist. It would be as much to me as the diamond leaf that marriage could bring. I should think you'd feel that way, too, Betty, about your writing. There are marriages that are failures just as there are artistic and literary careers that are failures, and there are diamond leaves to reward the work and waiting of old maids, just as there are diamond leaves to reward the Hildegardes who use their yardsticks. Sometimes there are girls who don't marry because they sacrifice their lives to taking care of their families, or living forthose who are dependent on them. Surely there must be a blessedness and a happiness for them greater than any diamond leaf a prince could bring."
"There is probably," answered Eugenia, "but it seems as if most people of that kind have to wait till they get to Paradise to find it."
"I don't think so," said Betty. "I believe all the dear old-maid aunts and daughters,who earn the first three leaves, find the fourth waiting somewhere in this world. It is only the selfish ones, who slight their share of the duties life imposes on every one, who are cross and unlovely and unloved. They probably would not have been happy wives if they had married."
"Well, but what aboutme!" persisted Lloyd. "I nevah expect to have a career, so Success in big lettahs will nevah bring me a medal or a chromo. I am not sacrificing my life for anybody's comfort, and I can nevah have any little nieces and nephews to whom I can be one of those deah old aunts Betty talks about, and there is that dreadful teacup!"
She did not hear Doctor Bradford's laughing answer, for Phil, turning his back on the others, looked down into her upturned face and began tohum, as if to himself, "From the desert I come to thee!" Only Mary understood the significance of it as Lloyd did, and she knew why Lloyd suddenly turned away and began passing her hands over the grass around her, as if resuming her search. She wanted to hide her face, into which the color was creeping.
A train whistled somewhere far across the orchard, and Rob took out his watch. The sight of it suggested something in line with the conversation, for when he had noted the time, he touched the spring that opened the back of the case.
"Never you mind, Little Colonel," he said, in a patronizing, big-brotherly tone. "If nobody else will stand between you and that teacup,I'llcome to the rescue. Bobby won't go back on his old chum.I'llbring you a four-leaf clover. Here's one, all ready and waiting."
Lloyd looked across at the watch he held out to her. "Law, Bobby," she exclaimed, giving him the old name she had called him when they first played together, "I supposed you had lost that clovah long ago."
"Not much," he answered. "It's the finest hoodoo ever was. It helped me through high school. I swear I never could have passed in Latin butfor your good-luck charm. It's certainly to my interest to hang on to it.
"Think of it, Mary," he added, seeing that her eyes were round with interest, "that was given to me by a princess."
Mary darted a quick look at Lloyd and another one at him to see if he were teasing.
"Oh, Isee!" she remarked, in a tone of enlightenment.
"What do you see?" he demanded, laughing.
She would not answer, but, ignoring his further attempts to make her talk, she, too, turned again to search for clovers, inwardly excited over the discovery she thought she had made. She would make a note of it in her journal, she decided, something like this: "The plot thickens. The B. M. and Sir F. have a rival they little suspect. R. carries the charm the M. of H. gave him in years gone by, and I can see many reasons why he should be the one to bring her the diamond leaf."
Only two dozen clovers rewarded their united search, but Eugenia was satisfied. "We'll put them in the boxes haphazard," she said, "and the uncertainty of getting one will make it more exciting than if there were one for every box."
The path back to the house led past the kitchen,where several colored women were helping Aunt Cindy. Just as they passed, one of them put her head out of the door to call to a group of children crowded around one of the windows of the great house. They were watching the decorators at work inside the drawing-room, hanging the gate of roses in the arch. The youngest one was perched on a barrel that had been dragged up for that purpose, so that his older brothers and sisters might be spared the weariness of holding him up to see. A narrow board laid across the top made an uneasy and precarious perch for him. He was seated astride, with his bare black legs dangling down inside the barrel.
"You M'haley Gibbs," called the woman, "don't you let Ca'line Allison lean agin that bo'd. It'll upset Sweety into the bar'l."
Her warning came too late, for even as she called the slight board was pushed off its foundations by the weight of the roly-poly Ca'line Allison, and the pickaninny went down into the barrel as suddenly as a candle is snuffed out by the wind.
"You M'haley, I'll natcherly lay you out," shrieked the woman, hurrying up the path to the rescue. But M'haley, made agile by fifteen years of constant practice, dodged the cuffing as it wasabout to descend, and scuttled around the house to wait till Sweety stopped howling.
"They are Sylvia Gibbs's children," said Lloyd, in answer to Doctor Bradford's astonished comment at seeing so many little negroes in a row. "They can scent a pahty five miles away, and they hang around like little black buzzahds waiting for scraps of the feast. I suppose they feel they have a right to be heah to-day, as Sylvia is helping in the kitchen. They're the same children, Eugenia," she added, "who were heah so much when I had my first house-pahty. M'haley is the one who brought you that awful, skinny, mottled chicken in a bandbox for you to 'take home on the kyers fo' a pet,' she said."
"So she is!" exclaimed Eugenia, as they passed around the corner of the house and caught sight of M'haley, who was peeping out to see if the storm was over, and if it would be safe to return to the sightseeing at the window. Her teeth and eyeballs were a-shine with pleasure when Eugenia passed on, after a pleasant greeting and some reference to the chicken. She felt it a great honor to be remembered by the bride, and thanked again, after all these years, for her parting gift. She gave a little giggle when Lloyd came up, and said, with a coyself-conscious air that was extremely amusing to the Northern man, who had never met this type of the race before, "I'se a maid of honah, too, Miss Lloyd."
"You are!" was the surprised answer. "How does that happen?"
"Mammy's gwine to git married agin, to Mistah Robinson, and she says nobody has a bettah right than me to be maid of honah to her own ma's weddin'. So that's how come she toted us all along to you-all's weddin', so that Sweety and Ca'line and the boys could learn how to act at her and Mistah Robinson's."
"When is it to be?" inquired Lloyd.
"To-morrow night. Mammy's done give her fish-fry and ice-cream festible, and she cleahed enough to pay the weddin' expenses. You-all's suah gwine to git an invite, Miss Lloyd."
"It is sort of a benefit," Betty explained to Miles Bradford, as they walked on. "Instead of giving a concert or a recital, the colored people here give a fish-fry and festival whenever they are in need of money. They used to have them just to raise funds for the church, but now it is quite popular for individuals to give them when there is a funeral or a wedding to be paid for. I am so gladyou are going to stay over a few days. We can show you sights you've never dreamed of in the North."
Eugenia, first to step into the hall, gave a cry of pleasure. The florist and his assistants had been there in their absence, and were just leaving. They had turned the entire house into a rose-garden. Hall, drawing-room, and library, and the dining-room beyond were filled with such lavishness that it seemed as if June herself had taken possession, with all her court. Stuart and Eugenia paused before the tall gate of smilax and American beauties.
"It is the Gate into Paradise, sweetheart," he whispered, looking through its blossom-covered bars to the altar beyond, that had been built in the bay-window of the drawing-room, and covered with white roses.
"Yes," answered Eugenia, smiling up at him. "The legend is right. We must enter Paradise to find the diamond leaf. But I was right, too. It is my prince who will bring mine to me."
Lunch was served on the porch, for the tables for the wedding supper were already spread in the dining-room, and Alec had locked the doors that nothing might disturb its perfect order.
"I think we are really going to be able to avoid that last wild rush which usually accompanies home weddings," said Mrs. Sherman, as they sat leisurely talking over the dessert. "Usually the bridesmaids' gloves are missing, or the bride's slippers have been packed into one of the trunks and sent on ahead to the depot. But this time I have tried to have everything so perfectly arranged that the wedding will come to pass as quietly and naturally as a flower opens. I want to have everything give the impression of havingbloomedinto place."
"Eliot and Mom Beck are certainly doing their part to make such an impression," said Eugenia."Eliot has already counted over every article I am to wear, a dozen times, and they're all laid out in readiness, even to the 'something blue.'"
"Oh, that reminds me!" began Lloyd, then stopped abruptly. Nobody noticed the exclamation, however, but Mary, and, with swift intuition, she guessed what the something blue had suggested to the maid of honor. It was that bit of turquoise that caused the only scramble in the preparations, for Lloyd could not remember where she had put it.
"I was suah I dropped it into one of the boxes in my top bureau drawer," she said to herself on the way up-stairs. Then, with her finger on her lip, she stopped on the threshold of the sewing-room to consider. She remembered that when she gave up her room to the guests, all the boxes had been taken out of that drawer. Some of them had been put in the sewing-room closet, and some carried to a room at the end of the back hall, where trunks and hampers were stored.
Now, while Betty was down-stairs, helping with a few last details, Lloyd took advantage of her absence to search all the boxes in the closet and drawers of the sewing-room, but the missing turquoise was not in any of them.
"I know I ought to be taking a beauty sleep," she thought, "so I'll be all fresh and fine for the evening, but I must find it, for I promised Phil I'd wear it."
In the general shifting of furniture to accommodate so many guests, several articles had found their way back among the trunks. Among them was an old rocking-chair. It was drawn up to the window now, and, as Lloyd pushed open the door, to her surprise she found Mary Ware half-hidden in its roomy depths. She was tilted back in it with a book in her hands.
Mary was as surprised as Lloyd. She had been so absorbed in the story that she did not hear the knob turn, and as the hinges suddenly creaked, she started half out of her chair.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, settling back when she saw it was only Lloyd. "You frightened me nearly out of my wits. I didn't know that anybody ever came in here." Then she seemed to feel that some explanation of her presence was necessary.
"I came in here because our room is full of clothes, spread out ready to wear. They're all over the room,—mine on one side and Joyce's on the other. I was so afraid I'd forget and flop down onthem, or misplace something, that I came in here to read awhile. It makes the afternoon go faster. Seems to me it never will be time to dress."
Lloyd stood looking at the shelves around the room, then said: "If time hangs so heavy on yoah hands, I believe I'll ask you to help me hunt for something I have lost. It's just a trifle, and maybe it is foolish for me to try to find it now, when everything is in such confusion, but it is something that I want especially."
"I'd love to help hunt," exclaimed Mary, putting down her book and holding out her arms to take the boxes which Lloyd was reaching down from the shelves. One by one she piled them on a packing-trunk behind her, and then climbed up beside them, sitting Turk fashion in their midst, and leaving the chair by the window for Lloyd.
"It's just a scrap of unset turquoise," explained Lloyd, as she unwrapped a small package, "no larger than one of the beads on this fan-chain. I was in a big hurry when I dropped it into my drawer, and I didn't notice which box I put it in. So we'll have to take out all these ribbons and laces and handkerchiefs and sachet-bags."
It was the first time during her visit that Mary had been entirely alone with her adored Princess,and to be with her now in this intimate way, smoothing her dainty ribbons, peeping into her private boxes, and handling her pretty belongings, gave her a pleasure that was indescribable.
"Shall I open this, too?" she asked, presently, picking up a package wrapped in an old gauze veil.
Lloyd glanced up. "Yes; although I haven't the slightest idea what it can be."
A faint, delicious odor stole out as Mary unwound the veil, an odor of sandalwood, that to her was always suggestive of the "Arabian Nights," of beautiful Oriental things, and of hidden treasures in secret panels of old castles.
"I've hunted for that box high and low!" cried Lloyd, reaching forward to take it. "Mom Beck must have wrapped it so, to keep the dust out of the carving. I nevah thought of looking inside that old veil for anything of any account. I think moah of what it holds than any othah ornament I own."
Mary watched her curiously as she threw back the lid and lifted out a necklace of little Roman pearls. Lloyd dangled it in front of her, lifting the shining string its full length, then letting it slip back into her palm, where it lay a shimmering massof tiny lustrous spheres. Regarding it intently, she said, with one of those unaccountable impulses which sometimes seize people:
"Mary, I've a great mind to tell you something I've nevah yet told a soul,—how it was I came to make this necklace. I believe I'll weah it when I stand up at the altah with Eugenia. It seems the most appropriate kind of a necklace that a maid of honah could weah."
The story of Ederyn and the king's tryst was fresh in Mary's mind, for Betty had told it at the lunch-table half an hour before, in answer to Doctor Bradford's question about the motto of Warwick Hall; the motto which Betty declared was a surer guide-post to the silver leaf of the magic shamrock than the one Abdallah followed.
"I can't undahstand," began Lloyd, "why I should be telling this to a little thing like you, when I hid it from Betty as if it were a crime. I knew she would think it a beautiful idea,—marking each day with a pearl when its duties had been well done, but I was half-afraid that she would think it conceited of me—conceited for me to count that any of my days were perfect enough to be marked with a pearl. But it wasn't that I thought them so. It was only that I tried my hardest tomake the most of them,—in my classes and every way, you know."
As Lloyd went on, telling of the times she had failed and times she had succeeded, Mary felt as if she were listening to the confessions of a white Easter lily. It seemed perfectly justifiable to her that Lloyd should have had tantrums, and stormed at the doctor when he forbade her going back to school after the Christmas vacation, and that she should have cried and moped and made everybody around her miserable for days. Mary's overweening admiration for the Princess carried her to the point of feeling that everybodyoughtto be miserable when she was unhappy. In Mary's opinion it was positively saintly of her the way she took up her rosary again after awhile, trying to string it with tokens of days spent unselfishly at home; days unstained by regrets and tears and idle repinings for what could not be helped.
Mary laughed over the story of one hard-earned pearl, the day spent in making pies and cleaning house for the disagreeable old Mrs. Perkins, who didn't want to be reformed, and who wouldn't stay clean.
"I haven't the faintest idea why I told you all this," said Lloyd at last, once more lifting the stringto watch the light shimmer along its lustrous length. "But now you see why I prize this little rosary so highly. It was what lifted me out of my dungeon of disappointment."
Afterward Mary thought of a dozen things she wished she had said to Lloyd while they were there together in the privacy of the trunk-room. She wished she had let her know in some way how much she admired her, and longed to be like her, and how she was going to try all the rest of her life to be a real maid of honor, worthy in every way of her love and confidence. But some shy, unusual feeling of constraint crowded the unspoken words back into her throbbing little throat, and the opportunity passed.
Clasping the pearls around her neck, Lloyd picked up the sandalwood box again and shook it. "Heah's a lot of loose beads of all kinds, with as many colahs as a kaleidoscope. You do bead-work, don't you, Mary? You may have these if you can use them."
In response to her eager acceptance, Lloyd looked around for something to pour the beads into. "There's an empty cologne bottle on that shelf above yoah head. If you will reach it down, I'll poah them into that."
Beads of various sizes and colors, from garnet to amber, poured in a rainbow stream from the box to the wide-necked bottle. Here and there was the glint of cut steel and the gleam of crystal, and several times Mary noticed a little Roman pearl like those on the rosary, and thought with a thrill of the necklace she intended to begin making that very day. Suddenly Lloyd gave an exclamation and reversed the gay-colored stream, pouring it slowly back into the box from the bottle.
"I thought I saw that turquoise," she cried. "I remembah now, it was in my hand when I took off my necklace, and I must have dropped them in heah togethah."
She parted the beads with a cautious forefinger, pushing them aside one at a time. Presently a bit of blue rolled uppermost, and she looked up triumphantly. "There it is!"
Mary flushed guiltily at sight of the turquoise, wondering what Lloyd would think if she knew that she had overheard what Phil had said about that bit of something blue. She went back to her chair and her book by the window after Lloyd left, but the book lay unopened in her lap. She had many things to think of while she slowly turned the bottle between herself and the light and watched its shifting colors. Several times a black bead appeared among the others.
"I'd have had to use black beads more than once," she reflected, "ifIhad been making a rosary, for there's the day I was so rude to Girlie Dinsmore, and the awful time when I got so interested that I eavesdropped."
The wedding was all that Mrs. Sherman had planned, everything falling into place as beautifully and naturally as the unfolding of a flower. The assembled guests seated in the great bower of roses heard a low, soft trembling of harp-strings deepen into chords. Then to this accompaniment two violins began the wedding-march, and the great gate of roses swung wide. As Stuart and his best man entered from a side door and took their places at the altar in front of the old minister, the rest of the bridal party came down the stairs: Betty and Miles Bradford first, Joyce and Rob, then the maid of honor walking alone with her armful of roses. After her came the bride with her hand on her father's arm.
Just at that instant some one outside drew back the shutters in the bay-window, and a flood of late afternoon sunshine streamed across the room, thelast golden rays of the perfect June day making a path of light from the gate of roses to the white altar. It shone full across Eugenia's face, down on the long-trained shimmering satin, the little gleaming slippers, the filmy veil that enveloped her, the pearls that glimmered white on her white throat.
Eliot, standing in a corner, nervously watching every movement with twitching lips, relaxed into a smile. "It's a good omen!" she said, half under her breath, then gave a startled glance around to see if any one had heard her speak at such an improper time.
The music grew softer now, so faint and low it seemed the mere shadow of sound. Above the rare sweetness of that undertone of harp and violins rose the words of the ceremony: "I, Stuart, take thee, Eugenia, to be my wedded wife."