CHAPTER
VI
The Wedding Gown
"The gay belles of fashion may boast of excelling
In waltz or cotillon, at whist or quadrille;
And seek admiration by vauntingly telling
Of drawing and painting, and musical skill;
But give me the fair one, in country or city,
Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart,
Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty,
While plying the needle with exquisite art:
The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle,
The needle directed by beauty and art."
The next morning Miss Amelia finished the chapter--that made two
for our family. Father always read one before breakfast--no wonder
I knew the Bible quite well--then we sang a song, and she made a
stiff, little prayer. I had my doubts about her prayers; she was
on no such terms with the Lord as my father. He got right at Him
and talked like a doctor, and you felt he had some influence, and
there was at least a possibility that he might get what he asked
for; but Miss Amelia prayed as if the Lord were ten million miles
away, and she would be surprised to pieces if she got anything she
wanted. When she asked the Almighty to make us good, obedient children,
there was not a word she said that showed she trusted either the
Lord or us, or thought there was anything between us and heaven
that might make us good because we wanted to be. You couldn't keep
your eyes from the big gad and ruler on her desk; she often fingered
them as she prayed, and you knew from her stiff, little, sawed-out
petition that her faith was in implements, and she'd hit you a crack
the minute she was the least angry, same as she had me the day before.
I didn't feel any too good toward her, but when the blood of the
Crusaders was in the veins, right must be done even if it took a
struggle. I had to live up to those little gold shells on the trinket.
Father said they knew I was coming down the line, so they put on
a bird for me; but I told him I would be worthy of the shells too.
This took about as hard a fight for me as any Crusade would for
a big, trained soldier. I had been wrong, Laddie had made me see
that. So I held up my hand, and Miss Amelia saw me as she picked
up Ray's arithmetic.
"What is it?"
I held to the desk to brace myself, and tried twice before I could
raise my voice so that she heard.
"Please, Miss Amelia," I said, "I was wrong about
the birds yesterday. Not that they don't fight--they do! But I was
wrong to contradict you before every one, and on your first day,
and if you'll only excuse me, the next time you make a mistake,
I'll tell you after school or at recess."
The room was so still you could hear the others breathing. Miss
Amelia picked up the ruler and started toward me. Possibly I raised
my hands. That would be no Crusader way, but you might do it before
you had time to think, when the ruler was big and your head was
the only place that would be hit. The last glimpse I had of her
in the midst of all my trouble made me think of Sabethany Perkins.
Sabethany died, and they buried her at the foot of the hill in our
graveyard before I could remember. But her people thought heaps
of her, and spent much money on the biggest tombstone in the cemetery,
and planted pinies and purple phlox on her, and went every Sunday
to visit her. When they moved away, they missed her so, they decided
to come back and take her along. The men were at work, and Leon
and I went to see what was going on. They told us, and said we had
better go away, because possibly things might happen that children
would sleep better not to see. Strange how a thing like that makes
you bound you will see. We went and sat on the fence and waited.
Soon they reached Sabethany, but they could not seem to get her
out. They tried, and tried, and at last they sent for more men.
It took nine of them to bring her to the surface. What little wood
was left, they laid back to see what made her so fearfully heavy,
and there she was turned to solid stone. They couldn't chip a piece
off her with the shovel. Mother always said, "For goodness
sake, don't let your mouth hang open," and as a rule we kept
ours shut; but you should have seen Leon's when he saw Sabethany
wouldn't chip off, and no doubt mine was as bad.
"When Gabriel blows his trumpet, and the dead arise and come
forth, what on earth will they do with Sabethany?" I gasped.
"Why, she couldn't fly to Heaven with wings a mile wide, and
what use could they make of her if she got there?"
"I can't see a thing she'd be good for except a hitching post,"
said Leon, "and I guess they don't let horses in. Let's go
home."
He acted sick and I felt that way; so we went, but the last glimpse
of Sabethany remained with me.
As my head went down that day, I saw that Miss Amelia looked exactly
like her. You would have needed a pick-ax or a crowbar to flake
off even a tiny speck of her. When I had waited for my head to be
cracked, until I had time to remember that a Crusader didn't dodge
and hide, I looked up, and there she stood with the ruler lifted;
but now she had turned just the shade of the wattles on our fightingest
turkey gobbler.
"Won't you please forgive me?"
I never knew I had said it until I heard it, and then the only way
to be sure was because no one else would have been likely to speak
at that time.
Miss Amelia's arm dropped and she glared at me. I wondered whether
I ever would understand grown people; I doubted if they understood
themselves, for after turning to stone in a second-- father said
it had taken Sabethany seven years--and changing to gobbler red,
Miss Amelia suddenly began to laugh. To laugh, of all things! And
then, of course, every one else just yelled. I was so mortified
I dropped my head again and began to cry as I never would if she'd
hit me.
"Don't feel badly!" said Miss Amelia. "Certainly,
I'll forgive you. I see you had no intention of giving offense,
so none is taken. Get out your book and study hard on another lesson."
That was surprising. I supposed I'd have to do the same one over,
but I might take a new one. I was either getting along fast, or
Miss Amelia had her fill of birds. I wiped my eyes as straight in
front of me as I could slip up my handkerchief, and began studying
the first lesson in my reader: "Pretty bee, pray tell me why,
thus from flower to flower you fly, culling sweets the livelong
day, never leaving off to play?" That was a poetry piece, and
it was quite cheery, although it was all strung together like prose,
but you couldn't fool me on poetry; I knew it every time. As I studied
I felt better, and when Miss Amelia came to hear me she was good
as gold. She asked if I liked honey, and I started to tell her about
the queen bee, but she had no time to listen, so she said I should
wait until after school. Then we both forgot it, for when we reached
home, the Princess' horse was hitched to our rack, and I fairly
ran in, I was so anxious to know what was happening.
I was just perfectly amazed at grown people! After all the things
our folks had said! You'd have supposed that Laddie would have been
locked in the barn; father reading the thirty second Psalm to the
Princess, and mother on her knees asking God to open her eyes like
Saul's when he tried to kick against the pricks, and make her to
see, as he did, that God was not a myth, Well, there was no one
in the sitting-room or the parlour, but there were voices farther
on; so I slipped in. I really had to slip, for there was no other
place they could be except the parlour bedroom, and Sally's wedding
things were locked up there, and we were not to see until everything
was finished, like I told you.
Well, this was what I saw: our bedroom had been a porch once, and
when we had been crowded on account of all of us coming, father
enclosed it and made a room. But he never had taken out the window
in the wall. So all I had to do when I wanted to know how fast the
dresses were being made, was to shove up the window above my bed,
push back the blind, and look in. I didn't care what she had. I
just wanted to get ahead of her and see before she was ready, to
pay her for beating me. I knew what she had, and I meant to tell
her, and walk away with my nose in the air when she offered to show
me; but this was different. I was wild to see what was going on
because the Princess was there. The room was small, and the big
cherry four-poster was very large, and all of them were talking,
so no one paid the slightest attention to me.
Mother sat in the big rocking chair, with Sally on one of its arms,
leaning against her shoulder. Shelley and May and the sewing woman
were crowded between the wall and the footboard, and the others
lined against the wall. The bed was heaped in a tumble of everything
a woman ever wore. Seemed to me there was more stuff there than
all the rest of us had, put together. The working dresses and aprons
had been made on the machine, but there were heaps and stacks of
hand-made underclothes. I could see the lovely chemise mother embroidered
lying on top of a pile of bedding, and over and over Sally had said
that every stitch in the wedding gown must be taken by hand. The
Princess stood beside the bed. A funny little tight hat like a man's
and a riding whip lay on a chair close by. I couldn't see what she
wore--her usual riding clothes probably--for she had a nip in each
shoulder of a dress she was holding to her chin and looking down
at. After all, I hadn't seen everything! Never before or since have
I seen a lovelier dress than that. It was what always had been wrapped
in the sheet on the foot of the bed and I hadn't got a peep at it.
The pale green silk with tiny pink moss roses in it, that I had
been thinking was the wedding dress, looked about right to wash
the dishes in, compared with this.
This was a wedding dress. You didn't need any one to tell you. The
Princess had as much red as I ever had seen in her cheeks, her eyes
were bright, and she was half-laughing and half-crying.
"Oh you lucky, lucky girl!" she was saying. "What
a perfectly beautiful bride you will be! Never have I seen a more
wonderful dress! Where did you get the material?"
Now we had been trained always to wait for mother to answer a visitor
as she thought suitable, or at least to speak one at a time and
not interrupt; but about six of those grown people told the Princess
all at the same time how our oldest sister Elizabeth was married
to a merchant who had a store at Westchester and how he got the
dress in New York, and gave it to Sally for her wedding present,
or she never could have had it.
The Princess lifted it and set it down softly. "Oh look!"
she cried. "Look! It will stand alone!"
There it stood! Silk stiff enough to stand by itself, made into
a little round waist, cut with a round neck and sleeves elbow length
and flowing almost to where Sally's knees would come. It was a pale
pearl-gray silk crossed in bars four inches square, made up of a
dim yellow line almost as wide as a wheat straw, with a thread of
black on each side of it, and all over, very wide apart, were little
faint splashes of black as if they had been lightly painted on.
The skirt was so wide it almost filled the room. Every inch of that
dress was lined with soft, white silk. There was exquisite lace
made into a flat collar around the neck, and ruffled from sight
up the inside of the wide sleeves. That was the beginning. The finish
was something you never saw anything like before. It was a trimming
made of white and yellow beads. There was a little heading of white
beads sewed into a pattern, then a lacy fringe that was pale yellow
beads, white inside, each an inch long, that dangled, and every
bead ended with three tiny white ones. That went around the neck,
the outside of the sleeves, and in a pattern like a big letter V
all the way around the skirt. And there it stood-- alone!
The Princess, graceful as a bird and glowing like fire, danced around
it, and touched it, and lifted the sleeves, and made the bead fringe
swing, and laughed, and talked every second. Sally, and mother,
and all of them had smiled such wide smiles for so long, their faces
looked almost as set as Sabethany's, but of course far different.
Being dead was one thing, getting ready for a wedding another.
And it looked too as if God might be a myth, for all they cared,
so long as the Princess could make the wedding dress stand alone,
and talk a blue streak of things that pleased them. It was not put
on either, for there stood the dress, shimmering like the inside
of a pearl-lined shell, white as a lily, and the tinkly gold fringe.
No one COULD have said enough about it, so no matter what the Princess
said, it had to be all right. She kept straight on showing all of
them how lovely it was, exactly as if they hadn't seen it before,
and she had to make them understand about it, as if she felt afraid
they might have missed some elegant touch she had seen.
"Do look how the lace falls when I raise this sleeve! Oh how
will you wear this and think of a man enough to say the right words
in the right place?"
Mother laughed, and so did all of them.
"Do please show me the rest," begged the Princess. "I
know there are slippers and a bonnet!"
Sally just oozed pride. She untied the strings and pushed the prettiest
striped bag from a lovely pink bandbox and took out a dear little
gray bonnet with white ribbons, and the yellow bead fringe, and
a bunch of white roses with a few green leaves. These she touched
softly, "I'm not quite sure about the leaves," she said.
The Princess had the bonnet, turning and tilting it.
"Perfect!" she cried. "Quite perfect! You need that
touch of colour, and it blends with everything. How I envy you!
Oh why doesn't some one ask me, so I can have things like these?
I think your brother is a genius. I'm going to ride to Westchester
tomorrow and give him an order to fill for me the next time he goes
to the city. No one shows me such fabrics when I go, and Aunt Beatrice
sends nothing from London I like nearly so well. Oh! Oh!"
She was on her knees now, lifting the skirt to set under little
white satin slippers with gold buckles, and white bead buttons.
When she had them arranged to suit her, she sat on the floor and
kept straight on saying the things my mother and sisters seemed
crazy to hear. When Sally showed her the long white silk mitts that
went with the bonnet, the Princess cried: "Oh do ride home
with me and let me give you a handkerchief Aunt Beatrice sent me,
to carry in your hand!"
Then her face flushed and she added without giving Sally time to
say what she would do: "Or I can bring it the next time I come
past. It belongs with these things and I have no use for it. May
I?"
"Please do! I'll use it for the thing I borrow."
"But I mean it to be a gift," said the Princess. "It
was made to go with these lace mitts and satin slippers. You must
take it!"
"Thank you very much," said Sally. "If you really
want me to have it, of course I'd love to."
"I'll bring it to-morrow," promised the Princess. "And
I wish you'd let me try a way I know to dress hair for a wedding.
Yours is so beautiful."
"You're kind, I'm sure," said Sally. "I had intended
to wear it as I always do, so I would appear perfectly natural to
the folks; but if you know a more becoming way, I could begin it
now, and they would be familiar with it by that time."
"I shan't touch it," said the Princess, studying Sally's
face. "Your idea is right. You don't want to commence any new,
unfamiliar style that would make you seem different, just at a time
when every one should see how lovely you are, as you always have
been. But don't forget to wear something blue, and something borrowed
for luck, and oh do please put on one of my garters!"
"Well for mercy sake!" cried my mother. "Why?"
"So some one will propose to me before the year is out,"
laughed the Princess. "I think it must be the most fun of all,
to make beautiful things for your very own home, and lovely dresses,
and be surrounded by friends all eager to help you, and to arrange
a house and live with a man you love well enough to marry, and fix
for little people who might come----"
"You know perfectly there isn't a single man in the county
who wouldn't propose to you, if you'd let him come within a mile
of you," said Shelley.
"When the right man comes I'll go half the mile to meet him?
you may be sure of that; won't I, Mrs. Stanton?" the Princess
turned to mother.
"I have known girls who went even farther," said my mother
rather dryly.
"I draw the line at half," laughed the Princess. "Now
I must go; I have been so long my people will be wondering what
I'm doing."
Standing in the middle of the room she put on her hat, picked up
her whip and gloves, and led the way to the hitching rack, while
all of us followed. At the gate stood Laddie as he had come from
the field. His old hat was on the back of his head, his face flushed,
his collar loosened so that his strong white neck showed, and his
sleeves were rolled to the elbow, as they had been all summer, and
his arms were burned almost to blisters. When he heard us coming
he opened the gate, went to the rack, untied the Princess' horse
and led it beside the mounting block. As she came toward him, he
took off his hat and pitched it over the fence on the grass.
"Miss Pryor, allow me to make you acquainted with my son,"
said mother.
I felt as if I would blow up. I couldn't keep my eyes from turning
toward the Princess. Gee! I could have saved my feelings. She made
mother the prettiest little courtsey I ever set eyes on, and then
turned and made a deeper one to Laddie.
"I met your son in one of the village stores some time ago,"
she said. "Back her one step farther, please!"
Laddie backed the horse, and quicker than you could see how it was
done, she flashed up the steps and sat the saddle; but as she leaned
over the horse's neck to take the rein from Laddie, he got one level
look straight in the eyes that I was sure none of the others saw,
because they were not watching for it, and I was. Laddie bowed from
the waist, and put the reins in her fingers all in one movement.
He caught the glance she gave him too; I could almost feel it like
a band passing between them. Then she called a laughing good-bye
to all of us at once, and showed us how to ride right, as she flashed
toward the Little Hill. That was riding, you may believe, and mother
sighed as she watched her.
"If I were a girl again," she said, "I would ride
as well as that, or I'd never mount a horse."
"She's been trained from her cradle, and her father deals in
horses. Half the battle in riding is a thoroughbred," said
Laddie. "No such horse as that ever stepped these roads before."
"And no such girl ever travelled them," said my mother,
folding her hands one over the other on top of a post of the hitching
rack. "I must say I don't know how this is coming out, and
it troubles me."
"Why, what's up?" asked Laddie, covering her hands with
his and looking her in the eyes.
"Just this," said my mother. "She's more beautiful
of face and form than God ought to allow any woman to be, in mercy
to the men who will be forced to meet her. Her speech is highly
cultured. Her manners are perfect, and that is a big and unusual
thing in a girl of her age. Every word she said, every move she
made to- day, was exactly as I would have been proud to hear, and
to see a daughter of mine speak and move. If I had only myself to
consider, I would make her my friend, because I'm seasoned in the
ways of the world, and she could influence me only as I chose to
allow her. With you youngsters it is different. You'll find her
captivating, and you may let her ways sway you without even knowing
it. All these outward things are not essential; they are pleasing,
I grant, but they have nothing to do with the one big, elemental
fact that a Godless life is not even half a life. I never yet have
known any man or woman who attempted it who did not waste life's
grandest op |