§ 28
So far I have put together this story from the memories of Sylvia and Frank Shirley. But now I have come to the point where you may watch the events through my own eyes. I will take a paragraph or two to give you an idea of the quality of these eyes, and then proceed without further delay.
Mary Abbott, the teller of this tale, was at the age of forty a crude farmer’s wife upon a lonely pioneer homestead in Manitoba. In winter in that part of the world it begins to grow dark at three o’clock in the afternoon, and it is not fully light until nine o’clock in the morning. We were a mile from the nearest neighbor, and had often three feet of snow upon the ground, with fifty degrees below zero and a sweeping wind. I had a husband whom I feared and despised, and for whom I cooked and washed and sewed, whether I was well or ill. Under these circumstances I had raised three children to maturity. I had moved to town and seen them through high-school; and now, the girl being married, and the two boys in college, I found myself suddenly free to see the world.
You must not think of me as altogether ignorant. I had fought desperately for books, and had grown up with my children. Discovering in the town the perpetual miracle of a circulating library, I had read wildly, acquiring a strange assortment of new ideas. But that, I am ashamed to say, made very little difference when I reached the East. It is one thing to read up in the theory of Socialism, and say that you have freed yourself from bourgeois ideals; it is quite another to come from a raw pioneer community, and be suddenly hit between the eyes by all the marvels of the great New Nineveh!
I forgot my principles; I wandered about, breathless with excitement. Everything that I had ever read about, in Sunday supplements and cheap magazines—here it was before my eyes! I got myself a hall-room in a “Greenwich Village” boarding-house, and for days I went, thrusting my inquisitive country face into everything that was cheap enough. The huge shops with their amazing treasures of silks and jewels; the great hotels with their gold and stucco splendors; the dizzy, tower-like office-buildings; the newspaper offices with their whirling presses; the theatres, the museums, the parks; the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty, Grant’s Tomb and the Bowery—I was the very soul of that thing which the New Yorker derisively calls the “rubber-neck wagon!” I took my place in one of these moving grand-stands, and listened to all that came out of the megaphone. Here was the home of the steel-king, which had cost three millions of dollars! Here was the home where a fifty thousand dollar chef was employed! Here was the old van Tuiver mansion, where the millionaire-baby had been brought up! Here was the Palace Hotel, where Miss Sylvia Castleman was staying!
It was the day before the wedding; and I, like all the rest of the city, was thrilling over the Romance, knowing more about the preparations than the bride herself. I had read all the papers—morning papers and afternoon papers; I had read descriptions of the wedding-gown, the trousseau, the rooms full of gift-treasures with detectives on guard. I had stared at the outside of the church, and imagined the inside. Last of all, I had wandered up to the Palace Hotel and peered about in the lobby, amusing myself by imagining that each gorgeous female creature who floated by and disappeared into a motor-car might possibly be the Princess herself!
At the boarding-house we discussed the possibility of seeing the wedding-cortege, and everybody said that I could not come within a block of the church. “I’ll fight my way,” I declared; to which the reply was that I would find out something about New York policemen that would cure me of my fighting impulses. The result of the discussion was that I set out immediately after breakfast, fired with the spirit of the discoverers of Pike’s Peak.
I must get at least a glimpse, I told myself. What a tale to be able to tell at the Women’s Club receptions at home! To say: “I saw her! She was the loveliest thing! And oh, her dress! It was cream-white satin, with four graduated flounces of exquisite point-lace!” Of course I could have got all that from the newspapers; but I wanted to be able to say it truly.
The wedding-hour was noon, but at nine there was already a respectable crowd. I established myself upon the steps of a nearby house, with a newspaper to sit on and a pair of borrowed opera-glasses in my hand-bag. In the meantime I entertained myself talking with the other watchers, who were a new type to me, well-dressed women, kept in luxury, whether legal or otherwise, who fed their empty minds upon fashion sheets and “society notes,” and had no idea in the world beyond the decking of their persons and the playing of their little part in the great game of Splurge. We talked about the van Tuiver family, its history and its present status; we talked with awe about the bride; we talked about the presents, the decorations, the costumes—there was so much to talk about!
Shortly after ten o’clock a calamity befell us—the police began to clear the steps, driving the crowd far back from the church-entrance. What agonies, what expostulations! How outrageous—when we had waited there an hour already! Sometimes the steps were our own steps, sometimes they were the steps of friends; but even that made no difference. “I’m sorry, lady, the orders are to clear everything.” They were as gentle about it as they could be, but that was none too gentle; we had the butt-ends of clubs, pressing into our stomachs, and back we went, arguing, scolding, threatening, sometimes weeping or fainting.
I was tremendously disappointed. To have to go back to the boarding-house, and admit defeat to the milliner’s assistant who sat next to me at meals! To hear “I told you so” from the “floor-walker” who sat across the way! “I won’t do it!” I said to myself.
And then suddenly came my chance. Behind me there was a commotion, angry protests—“Officer, let us through here! We have cards!” Cards—how our souls thrilled as we heard the word! Here, right close to us, were some of the chosen ones! Let us see them at least—a bit of Royalty at second hand!
They pushed their way through—three women and two men. As they neared me, I saw the engraved invitations in their hands, and it flashed over me that in my hand-bag was a milliner’s advertisement of nearly the same size and shape. I dived in, and fished it out with trembling fingers, and fell in behind the party, and pushed through the crowd past the line of police. There before me was the open space in front of the church!
I had acted on impulse, with no idea what to do next. I could scarcely hope to get in to the wedding on a milliner’s card. But fortunately my problem solved itself, for there were always the guests pushing into the entrance, and everybody was perfectly willing to push ahead of me. All I had to do was to “mark time,” and I was free to stay, inhaling delicious perfumes and feasting my ears upon scraps of the conversation of the élite. I foresaw that the banner of the great Northwest would wave triumphantly in “Greenwich Village” that night!