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.
II
Nathan was a little taken aback when he saw his mother and sister. Mrs. Forge had lost height and weight; she was a poor, pucker-faced, broken-down, little old lady. Nathan knew her to be fifty-three. She looked seventy. He felt a heart-stab when he saw her clothing, it was so poor and threadbare and out of taste. And Edith!
Edith was now the “mother of seven!” Verily! She had grown into a tall, awkward, raw-boned woman with a coarse face, sloppy cornflower hair and a hat which resembled a cross between a basket of flowers and a fried egg. The broken status of her corsets was immediately noticeable when she had removed her outer cloak, and her skirt hung lower in the rear than in the front. She was messy—alongside Madelaine—and looked as though she had hurriedly dropped a gummy baby in a clothes basket while she threw on any clothes lying handy to come to her brother’s “swell weddin’.”
Mrs. Forge clung to Nathan hysterically when she met him on the station platform. And she wept openly when Madelaine took her unceremoniously in her arms and kissed her. They went to the Worthy for rooms and dinner.
Madelaine waited in the ladies’ parlor while Nathan went up with his relatives. Edith first entered the room which Nathan had reserved as though her footfalls profaned the very carpets.