People of the Whirlpool Part 15

The hour was originally set for the morning, but as Fannie saw in her fas.h.i.+on paper that freckled people often developed a peculiarly charming complexion when seen by lamplight, the time was changed to eight at night, in spite of the complications it caused.

A week before the invitations were issued Fannie came to see me and after some preamble said: "Mrs. Evan, I want my wedding to be good form, and I'd like to do the swell thing all through. Now the _Parlour Journal_ says that the front pews that are divided off by a white ribbon should be for the bride's folks on one side of the aisle and the groom's on the other. Mr. Middleton hasn't any people near by enough to come, so I thought I'd have the Bluff folks sit on that side."

"The Bluff people?" I queried, in amazement. "You surely aren't going to invite them? Do you know any of them?"

"Well, not intimately, but Mrs. Ponsonby has been to the house for eggs, and Mrs. Latham's horse dropped a shoe last week and father set it, and the Vanderveer boy's pony ran away into our front yard the other day, so I don't feel as if they were strangers and to be left out. Oh, Mrs. Evan, if they'd only come and wear some of their fine clothes to light up the church, it would be in the papers, the _Bee_ and the _Week's News_ over town maybe, and give me such a start! For you know I'm to live in New York, and as I've never left home before, it would be so pleasant to know somebody there!"

I almost made up my mind to try to put things before her in their true light, and save her from disappointment, but then I realized that I was too near her own age. Ah, if Lavinia Dorman had only been here that day she could possibly have advised Fannie without giving offence.

_May 16th._ The wedding is over. Shall I ever forget it? The rain and cool weather of the past ten days kept back the apple blossoms, so that the supply for decorating the church was poor and the blossoms themselves only half open and water-soaked. Mrs. Jenks-Smith, who always hears everything, knowing of the dilemma, in the goodness of her heart sent some baskets of hothouse flowers, but the girls and men who were decorating did not know how to handle them effectively, for Fannie, still clinging to sentiment, had gilded nearly a barrel of old horseshoes, which were tied with white ribbon to every available place, being especially prominent on the doors of the reserved pews.

Late in the afternoon a fine mist set in with clouds of fog, which, if it got into the church, I knew would completely conceal the glimmer of the oil lamps. It seems that Papa Penney was not told until an hour before the ceremony that he was to walk up the aisle with the bride on his arm and give her away. This he flatly refused to do. He considered it enough of an affliction to have the wedding in church at all, and it was not until his wife had given her first exhibition of fainting, and Fannie had cried her eyes red, that he apparently yielded.

We arrived at the church at about ten minutes to eight, father and Evan having been persuaded to come in recognition of good neighbourhood feeling. The back part of the church was well filled, but the s.p.a.ce above the ribbon was painfully empty. The glimmering lamps did little more than reveal the gloom, and the horseshoes gave a strange racing-stable effect.

We tried to spread ourselves out as much as possible to fill up, and presently the Ponsonby girls entered with some friends, seemingly astonished at being seated within the barrier, for they had never seen their cards of invitation, and had come as a sort of lark to kill time on a wet evening.

The ushers wandered dismally up and down, stretching their hands nervously as if unused to gloves. Presently they fell back, and the organ, in the hands of an amateur performer and an inadequate blower, began to chirp and hoot merrily, by which we knew the bridal party was about to appear.

The ushers came first, divided, and disappeared successfully in the shadows, on either side of the chancel steps. A long wait and then Marie Penney followed, walking alone, as maid of honour; she had insisted upon having plenty of room, as she said so few people walked well that they spoiled her gait. Next came the six bridesmaids on a gallop, then Papa Penney and the bride. He walked along at a jog trot, and he looked furtively about as if for a loophole of escape. As for poor Mrs. Penney, instead of being seated in the front pew before the procession entered, she was entirely forgotten in the excitement, and stood trembling near the door, until some one drew her into a seat in neighbourly sympathy.

The clergyman stood waiting, the bridesmaids grouped themselves behind papa, so that there was no retreat, but where was the groom and the best man? One, two, three minutes pa.s.sed, but no sign. He had been directed to the vestry door as the bridal party drove up. Could he suddenly have changed his mind, and disappeared?

The silence was awful, the Ponsonby girls giggled aloud, and finally got into such gales of laughter that I was ashamed. The organ had dropped into the customary groaning undertone that is meant, I suppose, to give courage to the nervous and weak-voiced during the responses.

Outside the church, in the rear, two men in evening dress might have been seen blundering about in the dark, vainly trying to find an open door, for besides the door to the vestry there were three others close together, one opening into the little chantry, one the Sunday-school room, and one into the cellar. They battered and pulled and beat to no purpose, until a mighty pound forced one in, and the two men found themselves flying down a flight of steps, and landing in a heap of coal.

Dazed, and not a little bruised, the groom struck a match, and looked about; the best man had sprained his ankle, and said so in language unbefitting the location, but Liberty Middleton arose superior to the coal. Judging by the music that the ceremony had begun, he told his crippled friend to sit still until he came back for him, and, by lighting a series of wax matches, found his way back to the front door of the church, and strode up the aisle dishevelled, and with a s.m.u.tty forehead, just as Papa Penney had succeeded in breaking through the bridesmaids, dragging Fannie with him. A sigh of relief arose. The couple stepped forward and the ceremony began. When, however, the giving away time came, it was found that Papa Penney had retreated to a pew, from which he could not be dislodged. Another hitch was only averted by the groom turning pleasantly toward his father-in-law, and saying, with a wave of his hand, "It's all right, don't trouble to move; you said 'I do,' I think; the Parson understands." The ceremony was ended without further complication.

When Fannie walked out upon the arm of the self-possessed Liberty, I thought that the travelling man had the makings of a hero in him after all. It afterward transpired that the hapless best man, left in the coal cellar, and not missed until the party was halfway home, had only wrenched his ankle, and made his escape to the village tavern for consolation, proving that even commercial travellers may be upset by a fas.h.i.+onable wedding ceremony.

X

THE WHIRL BEGINS

_May 30_. The People of the Whirlpool have come to the Bluffs, and the swirl and spray has, in a measure, followed them. I had well-nigh written, "are settled at the Bluffs," but the Whirlpoolers are perpetual migrants, unlike the feathered birds of pa.s.sage never absolutely settling anywhere even for the nesting season, sometimes even taking to the water by preference, at the time, of all others, when home is most loved and cherished by the "comfortably poor."

The houses, nominally closed since the holidays, have been reopened, one by one, ever since the general return from the south in April, after which season, Mrs. Jenks-Smith a.s.sures me, it is bad form to be seen in New York on Sunday.

This fiat, however, does not prevent members of almost every family from spending several days a week in the city, thus protecting themselves against the possible monotony of home living by lunching and dining, either singly or in informal groups, at the public restaurants.

Father has always held the theory that ladies should dress inconspicuously in the public streets and hostelries, and for a woman to do otherwise, he considered, was to prove that she had no claim upon gentility. Evan used to go so far as to say that the only people who display their fine clothes in hotels are those who have no homes in which to wear them.

Dear, innocent provincials, the Whirlpoolers have changed all that, and given the custom their hall mark that stamps it vogue. In fact, in glancing at the papers, by the light of our Bluff Colony, which, after all, is but a single current of the pool that whirls in the shape of the letter S, it seems to me that a new field has been opened for the society journalist--the reporting of the gowns worn at the restaurants in the "between seasons."

One evening, a few weeks ago, Evan and I went, by request, to one of the most celebrated of these resorts to call upon some friends of his, a bride and groom, then pa.s.sing through the city. We were directed where to find them in the corridor--midway would have been a better term. We found them, and many others beside!

"Where do these people come from?" I whispered to Evan, looking down the row of women of all ages and, if expression may indicate, all grades, who, dressed and undressed in lavish opulence, were lolling about, much as if expecting a call to go upon the stage and take part in some spectacle, but that the clothes and jewels were too magnificent to be stage properties.

"Brewers' wives from the west, and unknown quant.i.ties; people who come to New York to see and be seen," he answered carelessly; but almost as he spoke his words were checked by the entrance of an equally gorgeous group, composed of those who Lavinia Dorman had a.s.sured us were among the most conservative of our new neighbours, all talking aloud, as if to an audience, as they literally swept into the dining room, where Mrs. Center was already seated. To be sure, the clothes, in their cases, were worn with a difference,--the ease of habit,--but to all outward appearance the distinction began and ended there. Ah me! to think of having such things cross the horizon in May, when, unless one is forced to be miserable, one must be inexpressibly happy.

I have been working all the month in my garden, as of old, or trying to, at least, but upon the principle that no member of a community can either live or die wholly to, or by, himself, I here missed the untrammelled liberty of yore. Not that I care if I am detected collarless, in a brown holland ap.r.o.n, with earthy fingers, and sometimes even a s.m.u.tty nose, but the Whirlpoolers, unable to regard the work as serious, do not hesitate to interrupt, if nothing more.

Imagine the a.s.surance of the twenty-two-year-old Ponsonby girl, who came das.h.i.+ng up all of a fume last Sat.u.r.day morning, when I was comfortably seated on the old tea tray, transplanting a flat of my best ostrich plume asters, and begging me, her mother being away, to chaperon her to a ball game, in a town not far off up the railroad, with harmless, pink-eyed Teddy Tice, one of her brother's college mates. It seems that if she could have driven up and taken a groom it would have been good form, but there was some complication about the horses, and to go by rail unchaperoned, even though surrounded by a earful of people, was not to be thought of. I pointed to the asters that must be set out and covered before the sun was high, but she couldn't understand, and went off in a huff.

What a disagreeable word chaperon is at best, and what a thankless vocation the unlisted, active, and very irregular verb 'to chaperon'

implies. I quite agree with Johnson, who denounced the term as affected, for certainly its application is, though Lavinia Dorman says it is the natural effect of a definite cause, and that it is quite necessary from the point of view of the quarter where it most obtains.

Monday morning I was again interrupted in my garden operations by a Whirlpooler, but the reason was quite different. The twins have gardens of their own, which are as individual and distinctive as their two selves. Richard delights in straight rows, well patted down between, and treats the small seeds that he plants with a sort of paternal patience.

Ian disdains any seed smaller than a nasturtium or bean, whose growth is soon apparent, and has collected a motley a.s.sortment of bulbs, roots, and plants, without regard to size or season, and bordered his patch with onion sets for Corney Delaney's express benefit, the goat having a Gallic taste for highly flavoured morsels. Both boys are fairly patient with their own gardening operations, but their joy is to "help" me by handing tools, watering plants, and squirting insecticides, in my society and under my direction.

Of course I could do it all much quicker by myself, and it has hampered me this spring, for last season they were too irresponsible to more than play work a few minutes at a time.

Now I have come to the conclusion that it is their right to learn by helping me, and that it is the denial of companions.h.i.+p, either from selfishness or some absurd educational theory, that weakens the force of home ties later on.

I have been frequently lectured by those older, but more especially "new mothers" younger than I, about staying with the boys at bedtime until they grow drowsy. "The baby is put to bed, and if he cries I pay no attention; it is only temper, not pain, for he stops the minute I speak to him," they say. I feel the blood rush to my face and the sting to my tongue always when I hear this.

Not pain, not temper, but the unconscious yearning for companions.h.i.+p, for mother-love, is oftener the motive of the pitiful cry. Why should it be denied? The mother bird broods her young in the nest at twilight, and the father bird sings a lullaby to both. The kittens luxuriously sup themselves to sleep with the warm mother flesh responding to their seeking paws. In wild life I know not an animal who does not in some way soothe her young to sleep. Why should the human child, the son of man, be forced to live without the dream memories that linger about happy sleeping times? What can the vaunted discipline give to replace them? It is then, as they grow, and speech forms on their lips, that little confessions come out and wrongs are naturally righted through confidence, before they can sprout and grow.

I was not quite five when I last watched mother sowing her flower seeds, and yet I remember to this day the way in which she did it, and so when it came time to give my bed of summer roses its first bath of whale oil, soap, and water, and the boys gave whoops of joy when they saw Bertel wheel out the tub and I appeared with the s.h.i.+ning bra.s.s syringe, I resolved to let them have the questionable delight of administering the shower bath, even if it took all day.

I have appropriated a long strip of rich, deep soil for these tender roses, quite away from the formal garden and across the path from the new strawberry bed, which by the necessity of rotation has worked its way from the vegetable garden to the open spot under the bank wall by the stable where the hotbeds congregate. This wall breaks the sweep of the wind, and so both our tender roses and strawberries are of the earliest, the fruit already being well set and large.

It was the middle of the morning. The work was progressing finely, without more than the usual amount of slop and misdirected effort, when a violent tooting from the direction of the highway caused me to stop, and Ian dropped the squirter that I had newly filled for his turn, upon the gra.s.s border, while he and Richard scurried toward the gateway to see what was the matter, for the sound was like the screech of an automobile horn in distress. It was!

A streak of dark red and a glitter of bra.s.s flashed in between the gate posts, grazing them, and barely escaping an upset, and then came plunging toward me. I screamed to the boys, who seemed to me directly in the path of the _Thing_, which in another moment I recognized as an automobile of the battering-ram variety, belonging to Harvey Somers, Gwendolen Burton's fiance, which for the past week had been the terror of father's steady old gray horses, owing to its const.i.tutional eccentricities.

Mr. Somers was handling it single-handed, and though he was coming at a reckless speed, I expected that he would swing back of the house and come to one of the dramatic sudden stops, on the verge of an accident, for which he is famous. So he did, but not on the driveway!

The _Thing_ gave a lurch and veered toward the barn, spitting like a cageful of tiger cats. Somers was pus.h.i.+ng the lever and gripping the brake with all his athletic might, but to no purpose. The children, who, wild with excitement, had by this time sought the safety of the open barn door, seemed a second time to be in the monster's path.

Another lurch! Surely man and machine would be dashed to bits against the substantial stable wall!

Then the _Thing_ changed its course, and showing a ray of fl.u.s.tered intelligence, made a mighty leap off the bank wall and landed hub deep in the soft, friable soil of the new strawberry bed, where, after one convulsive effort, some part of its anatomy blew up with the triple report of a rapid-fire gun, and after having relieved itself of a cloud of steam, it settled down peacefully, as if a strawberry bed was the place of all others it preferred for a noonday nap.

Harvey Somers was shot with a left-handed twirl directly into one of the hotbed frames, from which the sash was pushed back, and landed in a doubled-up position, amid a tearing sound and the crash of broken gla.s.s.

Meanwhile, the boys, frightened at the cloud of steam, yelled "Fire!" at the top of their lungs.

As I flew to help him, I could for the instant think of nothing but the Lizard Bill's a.s.sisted progress up the chimney and into the cuc.u.mber frame, but as a rather faint voice said, "Not you; kindly call the Doctor," my mirth changed to alarm, which was not lessened when Timothy Saunders, hearing the uproar and the cry of fire, arriving too late to grasp the situation with his slow Scotch brain, and seeing me leaning over the plant frame, picked up the squirt and deluged the unfortunate man with whale-oil spray!

Coughing and choking, Mr. Somers finally sat up, but did not offer to do more, wiped his eyes, and said to me in most delightful and courteous tones, "Would you be so good as to allow your man to bring me either a bath robe or a mackintosh?"