And such a wedding! One would say that when hard times were staring every one in the face, social forms would be observed most simply. But one would say so without reckoning with Mrs. Lycurgus Mason. As the groom and the bridesmaid and best man rode up from Sycamore Valley, two miles from Minneola, in the early falling dusk that night, the Mason House loomed through the darkness, lighted up like a steamboat. "You'll have to move along, John," said Bob Hendricks; "I think I heard her whistle."
On the sidewalk in front of the hotel they met Mrs. Mason in her black silk with a hemstitched linen apron over it. She ushered them into the house, took them to their rooms, and whirled John around on a pivot, it seemed to him, with her interminable directions. His mother, who had come over to Minneola the day before, came to his room and quieted her son, and as he got ready for what he called the "ordeal," he could hear Mrs. Mason swinging doors below stairs, walking on her heels through the house, receiving belated guests from Sycamore Ridge and the country,—for the whole county had been invited,—and he heard her carrying out a dog that had sneaked into the dining room.
The groom missed the bride, and as he was tying his necktie,—which reminded him of General Ward by its whiteness,—he wondered why she did not come to him. He did not know that she was a prisoner in her room, while all the young girls in Sycamore Ridge and Minneola were looking for pins and hooking her up and stepping on each other's skirts. For one wedding is like all weddings—whether it be in the Mason House, Minneola, or in Buckingham Palace. And some there are who marry for love in Minneola, and some for money, and some for a home, and some for Heaven only knows what, just as they do in the châteaux and palaces and mansions. And the groom is nobody and the bride is everything, as it was in the beginning and as it shall be ever after. Probably poor Adam had to stand behind a tree neglected and alone, while Lilith and girls from the land of Nod bedecked Eve for the festivities. Men are not made for ceremonies. And so at all the formal occasions of this life—whether it be among the great or among the lowly, in the East or the West, at weddings, christenings, and funerals—man hides in shame and leaves the affairs to woman, who leads him as an ox, even a muzzled ox, that treadeth out the corn. "The doomed man," whispered John to Bob as the two in their black clothes stood at the head of the stair that led into the parlour of the Mason House that night, waiting for the wedding march to begin on the cabinet organ, "ate a hearty supper, consisting of beefsteak and eggs, and after shaking hands with his friends he mounted the gallows with a firm step!"
Then he heard the thud of the music book on the organ, the creak of the treadle,—and when he returned to consciousness he was Mrs. Mason's son-in-law, and proud of it. And she,—bless her heart and the hearts of all good women who give up the joy of their lives to us poor unworthy creatures,—she stood by the wax-flower wreath under the glass case on the whatnot in the corner, and wept into her real lace handkerchief, and wished with all the earnestness of her soul that she could think of some way to let John know that his trousers leg was wrinkled over his left shoe top. But she could not solve the problem, so she gave herself up to the consolation of her tears. Yet it should be set down to her credit that when the preacher's amen was said, hers was the first head up, and while the others were rushing for the happy pair she was in the kitchen with her apron on dishing up the wedding supper. Well might the Sycamore Ridge Weekly Banner declare that the "tables groaned with good things." There were not merely a little piddling dish of salad, a bite of cake, and a dab of ice-cream. There were turkey and potatoes and vegetables and fruit and bread and cake and pudding and pie—four kinds of pie, mark you—and preserves, and "Won't you please, Mrs. Culpepper, try some of that piccalilli?" and "Oh, Mrs. Ward, if you just would have a slice of that fruit cake," and "Now, General,—a little more of the gravy for that turkey dressing—it is such a long ride home," or "Colonel, I know you like corn bread, and I made this myself as a special compliment to Virginia."
And through it all the bride sat watching the door—looking always through the crowd for some one. Her face was anxious and her heart was clouded, and when the guests had gone and the house was empty, she left her husband and slipped out of the back door. There, after the glare of the lamps had left her eyes, she saw a little man walking with his head down, out near the barn, and she ran to him and threw her arms about him and kissed him, and when she led Lycurgus Mason, who was all washed and dressed, back through the kitchen to her husband, John saw that the man's eyelids were red, and that on the starched cuffs were the marks of tears. For to him she was only his little girl, and John afterward knew that she was the only friend he had in the world. "Oh, father, why didn't you come in?" cried the daughter. "I missed you so!" The man blinked a moment at the lights and looked toward his wife, who was busy at a table, as he said: "Who? Me?" and then added: "I was just lookin' after their horses. I was coming in pretty soon. You oughtn't to bother about me. Well, John," he smiled, as he put out his hand, "the seegars seems to be on you—as the feller says." And John put his arm about Lycurgus Mason, as they walked out of the kitchen, and Jane reached for her gingham apron. Then life began for Mr. and Mrs. John Barclay in earnest.
CHAPTER IX
Forty thousand words—and that is the number we have piled up in this story—is a large number of words to string together without a heroine. That is almost as bad as the dictionary, in which He and She are always hundreds of pages apart and never meet,—not even in the "Z's" at the end,—which is why the dictionary is so unpopular, perhaps. But this is the story of a man, and naturally it must have many heroines. For you know men—they are all alike! First, Mrs. Mary Barclay was a heroine—you saw her face, strong and clean and sharply chiselled with a great purpose; then Miss Lucy—black-eyed, red-cheeked, slender little Miss Lucy—was a heroine, but she married General Ward; and then Ellen Culpepper was a heroine, but she fluttered out of the book into the sunlight, and was gone; and then came Jane Mason,—and you have seen her girlish beauty, and you will see it develop into gentle womanhood; but the real heroine,—of the real story,—you have not seen her face. You have heard her name, and have seen her moving through these pages with her back consciously turned to you—for being a shy minx, she had no desire to intrude until she was properly introduced. And now we will whirl her around that you may have a good look at her.
Let us begin at the ground: as to feet—they are not too small—say three and a half in size. And they support rather short legs—my goodness, of course she has legs—did you think her shoes were pinned to her over-skirt? Her legs carry around a plump body,—not fat—why, certainly not—who ever heard of a fat heroine (the very best a heroine can do for comfort is to be plump)—and so beginning the sentence over again, being a plump little body, there is a neck to account for—a neck which we may look at, but which is so exquisite that it would be hardly polite to consider it in terms of language. Only when we come to the chin that tips the oval of the face may we descend to language, and even then we must rise and flick the red mouth with, but a passing word. But this much must be plainly spoken. The nose does turn up—not much—but a little (Bob used to say, just to be good and out of the way)! That, however, is mere personal opinion, and of little importance here. But the eyes are brown—reddish brown, with enough white at the corners to make them seem liquid; only liquid is not the word. For they are radiant—remember that word, for we may come back to it, after we are done with the brow—a wide brow—low enough for Dickens and Thackeray and Charlotte Bronte, and for Longfellow and Whittier and Will Carleton in his day, and high enough for Tennyson at the temples, but not so high but that the gate of the eyes has to shut wearily when Browning would sail through the current of her soul. As to hair—Heaven knows there is plenty of that, but it had rather a checkered career. As she clung to her mother's apron and waved her father away to war, she was a tow-headed little tot, and when he came back from the field of glory he thought he could detect a tendency to red in it, but the fire smouldered and went out, and the hair turned brown—a dark brown with the glint of the quenched fires in it when it blew in the sun. Now frame a glowing young face in that soft waving hair, and you have a picture that will speak, and if the picture should come to life and speak as it was in the year of our Lord 1873, the first word of all the words in the big fat dictionary it would utter would be Bob. And so you may lift up your face and take your name and place in this story—Molly Culpepper, heroine. And when you lift your face, we may see something more than its pretty features: we shall see a radiant soul. For scientists have found out that every material thing in this universe gives off atomic particles of itself, and some elements are more radiant than others. And there is a paralleling quality in the spiritual world, and some souls give off more of their colour and substance than others, though what it is they radiate we do not know. Even the scientists do not know the material things that the atoms radiate, so why should we be asked to define the essence of souls? Yet from the soul of Molly Culpepper, in joy and in sorrow, in her moments of usefulness and in her deepest woe, her soul glowed and shed its glory, and she grew even as she gave her substance to the world about her. For that is the magic of God's mystery of life.