The Twenty-Fourth of June: Midsummer's Day

by Grace S. Richmond

The wedding was to be at six o'clock. There was nothing about the whole affair, as it had been planned by Roberta, with his full assent, to make it resemble any event of the sort in which he had ever taken part. Not one consideration of custom or of vogue had had weight with her, if it differed from her carefully wrought-out views of what should be. Her ruling idea had been to make it all as simple and sincere as possible, to invite no guests outside her large family and his small one except such personal friends as were peculiarly dear to both. When Richard had been asked to submit his list of these, he had been taken aback to find how pitifully few people he could put upon it. Half a dozen college classmates, a small number of fellow clubmen—these painstakingly considered from more than one standpoint—the Cartwrights, his cousins, whom he really knew but indifferently well; two score easily covered the number of those whom by any stretch of the imagination he could call friends. The long roll of his fashionable acquaintance he dismissed as out of the question. If he had been married in church there would have been several hundreds of these who must unquestionably have been bidden; but since Roberta wanted as she put it, "only those who truly care for us," he could but choose those who seemed to come somewhere near that ideal. To be quite honest, he was aware that his real friends were among those who could not be bidden to his marriage. The crippled children in the hospitals; the suffering poor who would send him their blessing when they read in to-morrow's paper that he was married; the shop-people in Eastman who knew him for the kindest employer they had ever had:—these were they who "truly cared"; and the knowledge was warm at his heart, as with a ruthless hand he scored off names of the mighty in the world of society and finance.

"Dick, my boy, you've grown—you've grown!" was his grandfather's comment, when Richard, with a rueful laugh, had shown the old man the finished list, upon which, well toward the top, had been the names of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Carson. Of Hugh Benson, as best man, Matthew Kendrick heartily approved. "You've chosen the nugget of pure gold, Dick," he said, "where you might have been expected to take one with considerable alloy. He's worth all the others put together."

Richard had never realized this more thoroughly than when, on Christmas afternoon, he invited Benson to drive with him for a last inspection of a certain spot which had been prepared for the reception of the bridal pair at the first stage of their journey. He could not, as Hugh took his place beside him and the two whirled away down the frost-covered avenue, imagine asking any other man in the world to go with him on such a visit. There was no other man he knew who would not have made it the occasion for more or less distasteful raillery; but Hugh Benson was of the rarely few, he felt, who would understand what that "stout little cabin" meant to him.

They came upon it presently, standing bleak and bare as to exterior upon its hilltop, with only a streaming pillar of smoke from its big chimney to suggest that it might be habitable within. But when the heavy door was thrown open, an interior of warmth and comfort presented itself such as brought an exclamation of wonder from the guest, and made Richard's eyes shine with satisfaction.

The long, low room had been furnished simply but fittingly with such hangings, rugs, and few articles of furniture as should suggest home-likeness and service. Before the wide hearth stood two big winged chairs, and a set of bookshelves was filled with a carefully chosen collection of favourite books. The colourings were warm but harmonious, and upon a heavy table, now covered with a rich, dull red cloth, stood a lamp of generous proportions and beauty of design.

"I've tried to steer a line between luxury and austerity," Richard explained, as Hugh looked about him with pleased observation. "We shall not be equipped for real roughing it—not this time, though sometimes we may like to come here dressed as hunters and try living on bare boards. I just wanted it to seem like a bit of home, when she comes in to-night. There'll be some flowers here then, of course—lots of them, and that ought to give it the last touch. There are always flowers in her home, bowls of them, everywhere—it was one of the first things I noticed. Do you think she will like it here?" he ended, with a hint of almost boyish diffidence in his tone.

"Like it? It's wonderful. I never heard of anything so—so—all it should be for—a girl like her," Hugh exclaimed, lamely enough, yet with a certain eloquence of inflection which meant more than his choice of words. He turned to Richard. "I can't tell you," he went on, flushing with the effort to convey to his friend his deep feeling, "how fortunate I think you are, and how I hope—oh, I hope you and she will be—the happiest people in the world!"

"I'm sure you hope that, old fellow," Richard answered, more touched by this difficult voicing of what he knew to be Hugh's genuine devotion than he should have been by the most felicitous phrasing of another's congratulations. "And I can tell you this. There's nobody else I know whom I would have brought here to see my preparations—nobody else who would have understood how I feel about—what I'm doing to-day. I never should have believed it would have seemed so—well, so sacred a thing to take a girl away from all the people who love her, and bring her to a place like this. I wish—wish I were a thousand times more fit for her."

"Rich Kendrick—" Benson was taken out of himself now. His voice was slightly tremulous, but he spoke with less difficulty than before. "You are fitter than you know. You've developed as I never thought any man could in so short a time. I've been watching you and I've seen it. There was always more in you than people gave you credit for—it was your inheritance from a father and grandfather who have meant a great deal in their world. You've found out what you were meant for, and you're coming up to new and finer standards every day. You are fit to take this girl—and that means much, because I know a little of what a—" Now he was floundering again, and his fine, then face flamed more hotly than before—"of what she is!" he ended, with a complete breakdown in the style of his phraseology, but with none at all in the conveyance of his meaning.

Richard flung out his hand, catching Hugh's, and gripping it. "Bless you for a friend and a brother!" he cried, his eyes bright with sudden moisture. "You're another whom I mustn't disappoint. Disappoint? I ought to be flayed alive if I ever forget the people who believe in me—who are trusting me with—Roberta!"