CHAPTER XX
Wedding Plans
No trouble was spared to clear the name of Wrack Peveril from the shadow that had rested upon it. The confession left by Mose Paget was read out in the meeting-house on the following Sunday. This was the only place and time, at that busy season of the year, when men and women could be got together for the purpose.
Pam was not present. She went across to the Gittins’s place and stayed with Reggie, who was too much of an invalid as yet to stand the shaking and bumping of the wagon on the rough trail. Galena insisted that she was going, and she left the house tricked out in the smartest clothes she possessed. She clambered up into the wagon to sit by the side of her brother, and looked as hard and defiant as you please. Just as the wagon started, Pam, yielding to an impulse, ran out, and, holding up her hand to Nathan to wait a moment, clambered up on the high step. Then, flinging her arms round Galena, she gave her a bear-like hug and a warm kiss.
“What is that for?” demanded Miss Gittins in a caustic tone, and she tossed her head, making the roses on her much-beflowered hat nod vigorously.
“Because I love you,” said Pam, looking into the hard face with the quiet daring of a real affection. She added, with a trifle of hesitation: “I shall be thinking of you every minute of the time you are at meeting.”
“Which means you think I ought not to go. But I should like to know why?” Again Galena tossed her head, and the roses nodded in reply.
“It is splendid and brave of you to be able to bear it, but I am afraid you will find it very hard; that is why I came.” Pam reached up and dropped another kiss on the cheek of Galena, then slid down from the wagon with a nod to Nathan in token that he could go on. Her eyes filled with tears as she watched the two elderly-young people bumping placidly across the rough pasture in the little wagon. She wondered if she could ever go to meeting to hear a confession of Don’s read to clear the name of someone of a wrongfully imputed crime. Of course she and Don were not betrothed. Pam had not really owned to herself in plain speech that she loved him. But standing there that morning, watching the backs of Galena and Nathan, she told herself that she could not have borne it. Then she went back to the house to talk as cheerfully as possible to Reggie, and to make the leaden-footed hours pass for him as pleasantly as might be.
Reggie was very white-faced this morning. He was grieving over his brother’s death in a fashion that seemed strange when one remembered the callous neglect of Mose.
“You see, I had him to look after. Ma left him to me, and I can’t help feeling that I have left something out that I ought to have done.” The boy’s tone was so wistful as he spoke that Pam found her heart aching for him so badly as to make her forget how sorry she had just been for Galena. Really, when one comes to think of it, there are so many people to be sorry for that one’s own private and particular pain has mostly to be thrust into the background.
“I think you did everything a boy could do, but it is hard to influence a man, you know.” Pam spoke soothingly, thinking that if Mose could ignore the affection of his small step-brother, and leave the child as he had done, there could not have been much good stuff in him.
Reggie spoke as if he had read her thoughts.
“Mose would have been different if he had seen anything ahead of him that he could reach. Things were terribly against him. When Galena threw him over because he was lazy, she ought to have said that if he’d work hard and show willing she’d hitch up with him again, but what she did say was that she hadn’t no use for lazy people, and that was all. Then there was that bit of creek frontage. If only Sam Buckle would have put a price on that, then Mose would have stirred round and found the money, and he would have been so busy getting what he wanted that he wouldn’t have had time to be lazy. His trouble was that he could not have what he wanted, and so he lost heart.”
Pam put her head down close beside the thin white face on the pillow.
“Perhaps Galena lost heart too,” she said, “and that was why she was not as wise as you wanted her to be. You will have to leave it now, Reggie, because it is all over, but you must not think hard things of Galena, for I am sure she is suffering horribly.”
“I should say she is by the way she tries to hustle Nathan round, but it takes a deal of pushing to get him to move, so it does not matter. She is downright good to me, and I like living here. I hope they will let me stay always; they won’t lose by it in the long run.”
“I am sure they will not!” said Pam. Then she fetched out The Pilgrim’s Progress, which was one of the few books to be found in the Gittins’s house, and read to him the stirring account of Christian’s fight with Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation. It was when she looked up to answer some eager question of his that she caught a glimpse of a figure in a very much beflowered hat coming rapidly across the field, and she realized that Galena had found the ordeal too much for her after all.
“There is the book, you can read about it yourself if you like,” she said, thrusting the musty-smelling volume into Reggie’s hands. Then she rose from her chair and hurried out to meet Galena.
“I could not face it. I made Nathan stop the horse and let me get out,” said Miss Gittins, who was very pale under the smart hat. “He wanted to turn round and drive me back here, but I just would not have that. Folks would have been able to talk fine if we had both been away from meeting; but if Nathan was there in his place, it would only look as if I had stayed at home with Reggie. I can’t help feeling that it is partly my doing that Mose went so wrong, and I am a miserable woman to-day.”
Pam slid her arm through Galena’s, and turned with her to the strip of forest that still remained on one side of the home pasture. There were big trees here, spruce and birch and maple, and to walk in their shade on this glowing summer morning was like being in some vast cathedral. There were the hush and the calm of the cloistered building, and the sense of nearness to the Infinite. Oh, the forest was wonderful on a day like this! especially when one could turn away from the sordid little brown house, with its clustering barns and piggeries, that stood on the edge of this forest fane.
Galena was sobbing and moaning in her pain. All the way back from the place where she had stopped the wagon she had walked with her head in the air and her mouth set in hard lines of endurance, but when Pam had met her with that silent sympathy, and had drawn her into the shade of the trees, her stoicism broke down, and she could only sob in her misery.
“If I could have the past over again!” wailed the stricken woman.
“You have the present and the future,” Pam reminded her, with the rare wisdom which came to her in moments of need like this.
“What do you mean?” demanded Galena sharply. “Mose is dead, and you can’t bring the dead to life, so the past is past—done with, altogether, I take it.”
“For him, not for you,” ventured Pam softly. How fearful she was of saying the wrong word, or of uttering a word too many! “You have the boy left, and the mistakes you feel you made with Mose can be rectified with his brother.”
“Reggie is not Mose,” snapped Galena, and Pam fairly winced at the revelation of heart hunger and exceeding wretchedness that the words revealed.
“No, I fancy he is much better stuff than Mose, so more worth the helping,” replied Pam. After much hesitation she ventured to say gently: “Don’t scorn him too much when he goes wrong. You could not expect a boy brought up as he has been to keep always above reproach, but it will help him to recover when he stumbles if he knows you love him all the time.”
“I wish that I was dead!” moaned Galena, and she looked a really tragic figure, her eyes swollen and red with weeping, her smart hat tipped rakishly askew, and her equally smart blouse pulled open at the throat, where she had clutched at it in order to give herself more air.
“No, you don’t!” said Pam cheerfully. “Down at the bottom you are just as glad to be alive as I am. You are very miserable just now, but when you have had a rest you will feel better. Shall I run to the house and fetch a rug for you to lie on out here, or would you rather go to your own bedroom?”
“Oh, I will go indoors, thank you, and lie on my bed like a Christian.” Galena turned back towards the house with something of her old arrogance as she spoke. “I don’t hold with sleeping rough when one can get shelter. Besides, the wind in the trees makes such a noise when you have nothing to do but listen to it, and the creeping things in the grass all seem to talk at once. Oh, I have no fancy for lying on the ground when I have a decent bed to go to.”
Pam laughed, but she made no further protest. It was good to hear the old dictatorial tone creeping into Galena’s speech; it was a sure and certain sign of returning spirit and courage. They went to the house together, then Pam went back to amuse Reggie for a while, and Galena went to her own chamber.
Nathan drove Pam back to Ripple when he got home from the meeting, and he imparted a piece of news on the way that made her cry out in dismay. Two of the young Griersons had sickened with something that looked like scarlet fever, and the Doctor would not allow Sophy to enter the house when she went home that morning.
“How dreadful for poor Mrs. Grierson!” cried Pam, and indeed the Doctor’s wife seemed to have anything but a rosy time with those younger children. “Whatever will they do about the wedding?”
“Miss Grierson will have to be married from some other place,” replied Nathan. “It is quite certain that the Doctor won’t let the wedding be held at an infected house. He is always preaching to other people to take care when there is infection about, and he is bound to do as he tells other folks to do. It is a chance for you, but if you don’t want the bother, there are plenty of other people ready and willing for the job.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Pam, turning a startled look on her companion.
Nathan cleared his throat, making so much noise over the business that the horse mistook it for a command to make haste, and tore onward at top speed, so that its driver had to quiet it down before he could say what was on his mind. Then he wanted to cough again, but did not dare because of upsetting the nerves of the horse.
“It is like this,” he began at last, and his speech was slower and more lumbering than usual; “Miss Grierson has been in your house all winter, and you would have been hard put to it without her.”
“Indeed I should!” said Pam in fervent outburst.
“Well, then, it is for you to insist that you shall have the wedding at your place.”
“But we haven’t things for a wedding!” cried Pam, aghast at the bare suggestion. “There are two cups with handles, and one without; we have four whole saucers and a half; there are six plates in the house, and about three dishes, and other things to correspond. Sophy wants to have a big wedding—that is, she has asked a lot of people. And—and—it is horrid to have to say it, but it is the truth, we have no money for a show of that sort. Besides, it is Grandfather’s house, and oh, suppose for yourself what would happen if he came home in the middle!”
Nathan laughed, and his great guffaws rang out with astonishing noise on the noontide stillness of the forest; and distressed as Pam was at the thing which had been suggested to her, she could not help laughing also.
“I will admit the poor old fellow might have reason for complaint if he came back to find the place stuffed as full of women and girls as it will be if the wedding is held there,” said Nathan. “You want him back, though, and everyone wants the mystery cleared up about his going, and as the wedding will certainly bring him back if anything will, I should just advise you to get on with it as fast as you can, and to keep smiling. As to the cups and that sort of thing, there ain’t no cause to fuss; you just say what you want, and the folks will bring it. That way saves a lot of trouble. We don’t give wedding presents in these parts, because we can’t afford it, and we haven’t the sort of stores that sell the kind of trash that is used for that purpose. But when anyone is asked to a wedding they understand that they will have to provide some of the food, or lend crockery or table-cloths, or truck of that sort, only they mostly wait until they are told what is wanted, because it saves confusion.”
“What a perfectly lovely idea!” cried Pam, with her eyes shining, as they always did at any mention of a frolic. “Thank you so much for telling me where my duty lies. But you will have to stand by me if Grandfather should suddenly appear on the scene, for I can imagine that the poor old man would be simply horrified at the bare idea of a wedding at Ripple.”
“Perhaps if there had been a wedding at Ripple in bygone years, instead of the runaway match your mother had to make, things would have been happier all round. But don’t you worry, Miss Walsh, we will all stand by you through thick and thin, though I am thinking you don’t need much outside championing when the Doctor’s son is knocking round, for he is a oner for making things hum!”
Nathan had had his joke, and he appreciated it so immensely that at the sight of the crimson he had called into the cheeks of Pam he burst into another guffaw that ended in a choking fit, and Ripple was reached before he had properly recovered.
“Will you come in and have some dinner?” asked Pam out of politeness, though she did not really want him. But he had driven her home and it was getting late, so she felt she must ask him.
“No, thank you, and you don’t want no company either. Just you get indoors and fix up about the wedding before anyone else chips in. And when you ask me and Galena, you ask her to bring food, and you ask me for the loan of our Mam’s best chinay, and the table-cloths that Aunt Selina gave us.”
“Oh, suppose the china got broken!” cried Pam, as Nathan swung her to the ground.
“A good thing if it did. Then we would buy a common sort that was not too good to use. I don’t hold with things that you can’t use, so you can smash the lot so far as I am concerned.” Nathan waved his hand in an airy flourish as he clambered back into the wagon, and then he drove off along the trail he had come by, while Pam went into the house with mingled feelings, for she rather doubted her ability to organize a proper wedding for Sophy, and yet she owed her friend so much that she would gladly do anything towards paying part of it back.
Jack was in the kitchen getting dinner ready, and told Pam that Sophy had gone upstairs to lie down, saying that she did not want anything.
“Did Nathan tell you that two of the kids have scarlatina, and so Sophy can’t be married at home?” he asked. “She is frightfully down about it. George being away for the week-end makes it all the worse for her, because she hasn’t him here to say comforting things to her.”
“I am going to say comforting things to her!” announced Pam, with her head in the air, although her heart was beating fast with excitement. “We are going to have the wedding here, Jack, and we must make the biggest splash possible, just to show Sophy how really we appreciate what she has done for me. Oh, I know we can’t afford it, but Nathan has told me how it can be done with but little expense, and for Sophy’s dear sake I am going to put my pride in my pocket, and ask my neighbours to lend me all the things we have not got. If you come to think of it, that is a tremendously long list, for we really have nothing except house-room, and it seems a mad venture, but we have got to do it somehow. Go on getting dinner ready, and be sure to lay a place for Sophy, for I am certain I can coax her into coming down.”
“You can mostly get people to do as you wish!” said Jack, and he began to stir round at a lively rate, while Pam went up the stairs two steps at a time, and burst into the bedroom where Sophy was lying face downwards on the bed with despair in every line of her body.
“Sophy, Sophy, we are going to have the wedding here, and the best sitting-room shall justify its existence for once!” cried Pam, hurling herself into the room with so much force that she caught her foot in a board that stood a little above the rest of the flooring. She stumbled and lurched forward, falling on to the bed and getting sadly mixed up with Sophy, who had sprung up at the sound of her voice, and who started at once to protest.
“Pam dear, it is most fearfully good of you, but I could not think of letting you do it. Father thinks I had better have a meeting-house wedding, and he will drive us straight from the church to Hunt’s Crossing to catch the down-river boat. Of course it is rather horrid, and I would much rather have had a house wedding, but no one can have all they want in this world.”
“Yes, they can!” stoutly affirmed Pam. “People can always get what they want, if only they will be careful only to want what they can get. We are going to have a gorgeous time, dearie, and I am really grateful to those children for taking fever just now, and giving me a chance to pay back something of my debt.”
“Pam, you must not take that money you had for the spruce; I could not bear it!” cried Sophy.
“Don’t worry, that money shall not be touched, dear; I am going to do the wedding at the expense of my neighbours. Nathan Gittins has put me on to the idea, and I am going to run it for all I am worth. He told me to ask for his mother’s best china—the loan of it, you know—and her table-cloths. He says that we can smash up the china if we like. Isn’t he a dear?”
“Of course, we could do the wedding that way; people often do. But, Pam, it will be most fearfully hurting to your pride. Just fancy how you will feel when you are pouring out the coffee if that awful Mrs. Brown should say: ‘Be careful how you spill that coffee, Miss Walsh; I paid top-price for it, and I can’t abide seeing things wasted!’ Oh, you would just squirm!”
“I am going to enjoy every bit of it!” announced Pam in a valiant tone, and she meant what she said. “Put your hair tidy and come down to dinner; I am fearfully hungry. We must make out the lists of what we want the folks to lend us to-day. By the way, who has a nice new sitting-room carpet? That will be a first necessity, for you can’t stand up to be married on bare boards.”
“It would have been bare boards at the meeting-house. Oh, Pam, it is lovely of you not to mind asking for the things! I had set my mind on a home wedding, and this house is just made for weddings and things of that sort; there is so much room, and the sitting-room is so big!”
Sophy was standing at the glass now, and winding up the heavy masses of her hair with quick fingers; all the despair was gone from her figure, and she looked almost radiant, in spite of red eyes and a swollen nose.
“Make haste down, we have got to hustle. Oh, I wish I could think of someone who had bought a new carpet this spring, for I do want you to have something gorgeous to stand upon. I know what I will do; I will get Galena to drive me to the houses over the Ridge, and we will make a systematic house-to-house collection, the same as they do in England when they want to have a rummage sale. Oh, it will be great fun!”
“Pam, you are shameless! It will be absolute begging!” laughed Sophy, and then she came hurrying downstairs in the wake of Pam, and Jack gave a long whistle of pure amazement. His last vision of her had been dismal enough. She had walked with him across the forest from the meeting-house, punctuating the distance with her sobs, and he had wanted to run away as badly as he had ever wanted to do anything, for this was a form of grief that he could not understand. To his way of thinking a fussy wedding was more bother than comfort, and provided she got married, nothing else really mattered.
Pam understood things better, and was able to view the situation from Sophy’s standpoint. All through the long, dark winter Sophy had sewed and planned. Her plans had all centred round her wedding day. Her new home would be a back district of the far west, so distant that her imagination would not stretch so far: but her wedding she could see in fancy, and she had planned and planned for it until she was perfect as to detail. Then came this crowning disaster of being shut out of her home by the infectious illness of the younger children, and her house of cards had tumbled all about her ears. A disaster of this sort would not have meant so much to Pam, for she was cast in a different mould, and the details of her wedding would not have mattered at all. But she sympathized so keenly with Sophy that she was ready to go to almost any length on behalf of her friend.
Dinner was a merry meal, with pencil and paper in constant requisition for jotting down the things that would be required to give Sophy a really good send-off. The ceremony was fixed for next Thursday, it was the busiest time of the year, and what had to be done must be done at once.
“It is lucky that I did not have to walk home this morning, because I am not tired,” said Pam. “If you and Jack will get the dinner dishes out of the way, I will toddle back to the Gittins’s place, and get Galena to take me out driving. She is a bit low-down herself to-day, and so the little outing will do her good. The turkeys will want looking after, Jack, for I may not be home until late. Do you think that we have put down everything that we shall need, Sophy? I am not used to this sort of thing, and so it is easy to make a muddle.”
“If you get all that you have set your mind on we shall have a record show,” replied Sophy briskly, and then she hurried to help Pam to get ready, for the afternoon was wearing, and the distances to be traversed were so great that Pam would hardly get through her list of friendly calls before bedtime.
Just as Pam was going out of the house, who should come driving up but Galena! Nathan had pitched her such a tale when he got home, after driving Pam to Ripple, that Galena cast her own sorrow and her private regrets to the winds, and leaving Nathan to wash the dinner dishes and look after Reggie, she had hitched the horse to her own wagon, and had come to offer everything she could to furnish the wedding feast.
Of course her prompt appearance on the scene made all the difference to Pam’s venture, and the two of them started out to make the round of their friends and neighbours. They went with the comfortable certainty of getting what they wanted, and they soon found that the chief difficulty lay in drawing a line as to the amount to be lent or given. Pam even secured the loan of the new carpet on which she had set her heart—a gorgeous affair, with roses as big as cabbages, and the sort of colouring that “hits you in the eye”; but it was new and gay, so nothing else really mattered. It was late when the day was ended, and Pam was tired, but her efforts were going to be crowned with success.