'Yes, she spends the winters there; she came here only yesterday.'
CHAPTER XVIII.
Ally and Rosey were to be married[3] in the little church, and, directly after supper, we all went to the wedding. The seats had been removed from the centre of the building, for, though duly consecrated to the use of the saints, the sinners were to exercise their heels in it after the ceremony was over. At its farther extremity, the carpenter's bench of which I have spoken, elongated at both ends, and covered with a white table cloth, was piled high with eatables; indicating that a time of 'great refreshment' was at hand. The bounteous supply of ham, chicken, wild duck, roast pig, fish, hoecake, wheat bread, tea, coffee, milk, and pumpkin and sweet-potato pies under which the bench groaned, showed that some liberal hand had catered for the occasion.
Black Joe, dressed in his 'Sunday best,' was seated on the rustic settee at the back of the desk, and Phyllis and Dinah occupied chairs inside the low railing, which faced the pulpit. Phyllis looked careworn and sad, but Ally's mother was as radiant as a brass kettle in a blaze of light wood. She wore a white dress, stiffly starched and expanded by immense hoops, and a crimped nightcap, whose broad border flapped about like the wings of a crowing rooster; and she looked, for all the world, like a black ghost in a winding sheet, escaped from below, and bound on a 'good time generally.' Two 'shining lights,' on either side of the pulpit, held aloft blazing torches of pine, which illuminated the sea of grinning darkness, and sent up a smoke like that arising from the pit which is said to be bottomless. About a hundred darkies were present; and the number of glossy coats, fancy turbans, gaudy bonnets, red shawls, and flaming dresses, which the light disclosed, was amazing. The poor worm that grubbed in the earth, had appeared ('for that occasion only') as a butterfly; and Lazarus, rid of his rags, had come forth dressed like a Broadway dandy.
Any person of sensitive olfactories would have halted in the doorway; but I elbowed through the woolly gathering, and followed Frank and Selma to the family pew. Tittering, laughing, and flaunting their red and yellow kerchiefs, the black people were enjoying themselves amazingly, when 'Dar dey comes,' 'Dar'm de happy pussons,' went round the assemblage, and the bride and groom, attended by two sable couples, entered the building. After some ludicrous mistakes, they got 'into position' in front of the railing, and Black Joe took a stand before them.
Rosey was dressed in white, with a neat fillet of pink and blue ribbon about her head; and Ally wore a black frock coat, with white vest, and white cotton gloves. One of the groomsmen—a rustic beau from a neighboring plantation—wore an immensely long-tailed blue coat with brass buttons, a flaming red waistcoat, yellow woollen mittens, and a neckerchief that looked like a secession flag hugging a lamp-post. Both of these gentry had hats of stove-pipe pattern, very tall, and with narrow brims; and—they wore them during the ceremony.
'Silence in de meetin',' cried Joe.
The boisterous sea of black wool subsided to a dead calm. Those not already standing rose, and Joe commenced reading the marriage service of the Episcopal Church.
The parties immediately interested appeared to have conned their lessons well; for they made all the responses with great propriety; but some of the congregation seemed less familiar with the service. When Joe repeated the words, 'If any man kin show cause why dese folks should not be lawfully jined togedder, leff him now speak, or else foreber hole his peace,' Dinah turned to the audience, and cried out:
'Yas, jess leff him come out wid it now. I'd like ter see de man dat's got onyting agin it.'