I
While perhaps it may perturb strict sticklers for etiquette, nevertheless my own marital status was ignored and at Nathan’s earnest solicitation I was best man at his wedding.
Never did weeks speed past so swiftly as they did that summer. October was approaching almost before we realized it, least of all Nathan. What with acclimating himself at his new work, house-planning with Madelaine in those roseate New York days which followed, attending to the thousand and one details having to do with his approaching state as a benedict again, he was grateful when the time separating him from the Great Day narrowed down to a week, then three days, then two, then one,—grateful entirely outside his anticipation of having Madelaine with him permanently.
Three weeks before the event, the invitations had been mailed, and it was pathetic when Madelaine applied to her lover for a list of those he wished to invite to the nuptials.
“List?” he laughed sadly. “It’s a rather short list, dear girl. The Thornes, Caleb Gridley, Mother and Edith, old Sam Hod who published my first bally poems in his paper. And—and—that’s about all, I guess. Bill and his wife, of course, though Bill’s acting as best man.”
It was a pretentious wedding. It seemed as though everybody of consequence in Springfield was invited. Madelaine’s maids of honor were old school chums from Mount Hadley days. The gifts covered two great tables, facetiously mentioned by Murfins and old Steb in the servants’ quarters as “the great American pickle-dish exhibit”. Two days beforehand a rehearsal was held in which every one seemed as painfully self-conscious as possible and managed to get twisted up and in each other’s way and permit confusion to reign supreme. But through it all Madelaine never once lost her head and was its soul and guiding spirit.
The ceremony was scheduled for four o’clock, and Christ Church was a mammoth conservatory of flowers a day and a night beforehand. Then the evening before the great day, Mrs. Anna Forge and Edith arrived in Springfield, and Madelaine went with Nathan to the station to meet them and have dinner with them, that the mother might meet her son’s new wife informally.