Chapter XXVI

It was noon and it was June, and there was to be a wedding in Mrs. Morris’ boarding-house that was. It was not _the_ wedding, that is the wedding nearest and dearest to aunt Hannah’s heart; _that_ was to be later, and in the new chapel, and about it most of the boarders had not even heard, as yet. Later, when they knew, the bridegroom of the first wedding said it was a pity they had not fixed things up sooner, so they could have had a double wedding; that would have been “real nice,” and Celia and Horace Stafford had looked meaningly at one another, and never hinted that such an arrangement would have been other than entirely satisfactory to them, provided “things had been fixed up” in time. They had their little quiet laugh over it, of course, and kept their secret.

Meantime, the present wedding was a source of deep interest to every member of the household. Each one contributed something to the general plans. The parlor, that used to be so dismal was itself in bridal array. The organ at the further end was literally smothered in palms. The palms and flowers were Mr. Roger Houston’s contribution. He was not a boarder, but he had become a frequent visitor at the house, and seemed to be as much interested as any one in the event. But the arrangement of the palms was Celia’s, and Celia was to sit behind them and play the wedding march in the softest, sweetest tones she could coax from the old organ. They made a lovely background for the bride and groom, and they completely hid the organ and the player. Under the mantelpiece and above it, where used to hang the crayoned visage of the deceased Mr. Morris, were more palms; and the imitation-marble mantelpiece, which Celia always said looked as mottled as though it were made of slices of Bologna sausage, was covered with a bank of lovely roses, white and pink and yellow and crimson. If the wedding had been Celia’s, she would have preferred to have the roses all white, but the bride in this case was extravagantly fond of color, and had declared herself in favor of “lots of roses all colors” so longingly, that Roger Houston said “Let’s please her for once if she wants _green_ roses, even if the white would be better taste, Miss Murray. It’s her first wedding, you know, and after all a rose is a rose.”

But the colors were arranged with Celia’s own skill, and no two colors dared but harmonize.

Out in the dining-room the long white table was dressed in trailing vines of smilax, and roses; and the largest and most orthodox wedding cake that could be procured occupied the place of honor. All about it were evidences of Molly Poppleton’s art, and everything spoke of readiness for the ceremony to begin.

Up in her room the bride was being arrayed. The dress was a simple white muslin plainly made, but she was to wear a veil. It would perhaps have been more sensible to have worn a traveling dress, as she was to go away at once, but Mamie (for of course you know the bride was Mamie Williams, and the groom Bob Yates) had always cried and said she shouldn’t feel that she was really married if she didn’t wear white, when Miss Grant counseled economy and good sense. Seeing her heart so set they did not try to persuade her, but managed to change her purpose of purchasing a flimsy white silk which would never be of any use to her afterward, and persuaded her to take instead this simple white lawn. She had demurred, but finally consented. She was never wholly reconciled to the change, however, but was somewhat consoled by the fact that it was white and she was to have a veil.

Celia herself dressed her hair and arranged the soft folds of the veil, and kissed her, and told aunt Hannah afterward that Mamie Williams was really lovely in her pretty array. Miss Hannah thought so too as she came up to give the girl a few last words, as her mother might have done, perhaps, had she been there. She found Mamie standing by her bureau with her open Bible before her. Miss Grant did not know that the white vision of herself in the glass had prompted her to turn to that first Bible verse of hers and read it over again, “And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white; for the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints.” Nor could she know that the softened, glorified look on her face came from the thought in her heart that now, perhaps, even she might one day wear that pure heavenly dress of clean white linen, the garment of Christ’s own righteousness.

Bob Yates had saved up a nice little sum, and now there was waiting for them, not many blocks away, a new, neat house of four or five rooms, as daintily furnished as a bird’s nest. There Mamie was to put in practice the culinary arts she had learned from Miss Grant and Molly Poppleton, and to entertain her friends, and some of the young girls with whom she had grown intimate during her time of selling ribbons with Dobson and Co., for she had attained to that and taken Celia’s place, and now in turn was to give it up to a young girl from the minister’s Sunday-school class.

And they were to take a real wedding trip, too, like all the girls in the stories Mamie had read, in the days when she used to fancy Mr. Harold Adams held the key for her of all such delights. They were going to Atlantic City to a hotel for a whole delightful week, and then they were going to see Mamie’s mother, and all her little brothers and sisters, and her gruff, hard-working father. After that Bob Yates would take his bride to visit his married brother and sister out in Indiana—the far West, Mamie called it—and then they would come back to their little house and their new furniture, and their dear church and their respective Sunday-school classes. It was all very beautiful, and Mamie felt very happy and all the boarders felt happy for her. She went back in memory to the time when Mrs. Morris was there, and felt, rather than thought, how different her life was now, and in fact how different everything was, and thanked God for the change. She thought of Carrie Simmons with a pang, and wished that she could have done something for her. Perhaps, if Miss Grant had come sooner Carrie might have been saved. Mamie had so far forgotten her old pride that she actually felt a little glad that Carrie could not look in from all her own sorrow and misfortune and shame and misery, in which she had heard she dwelt, and see her own joy and happy surroundings.

Miss Grant had gone down to the kitchen to watch things while Molly Poppleton got on her best gown for the ceremony, and everything was progressing toward the last exciting minute, when the doorbell rang. The second girl who was setting chairs in the dining-room in the best possible way to economize room, went quietly to the door, her neat blue and white striped gingham and white waitress-apron and cap making a decided contrast to the slatternly Maggie who used to answer the door in Mrs. Morris’ time.

The large oldish-looking woman, and the tall, grizzled man, unmistakably a farmer, who stood together on the step stared at the girl when the door was opened, in undisguised amazement.

“Why!” said the woman at last, looking up at the number over the door as if mistaken in her whereabouts, “isn’t this,—at least—isn’t this a boarding-house?”

“Yes, it is,” responded the maid, “won’t you walk in? Miss Grant is busy just now, that is she will be in a minute, but I guess she can see you first. Did you want to get board?”

She had ushered them into the bedecked parlor, which happened at the moment to be entirely uninhabited, as the boarders were all in their rooms donning their gala attire.

But she saw that they had evidently not heard her question, so telling them to be seated, she went for Miss Grant.

The strangers, however, did not sit down. Instead, they stood staring around.

“For the land sake!” ejaculated the woman at last, looking around her more and more bewildered.

“Wal, it’s pretty nice, ’pon honor, M’ria, I wonder now you ever give it up fer an ole fellow like me,” and he looked at her quizzically.

But the look was lost this time. She was taking in the familiar pattern of the carpet, which somehow looked strangely bright, and noting all things new and old about the room.

Then came Miss Grant with her soft grey cashmere, made more lovely by the cloud of white tulle she wore about her neck, which seemed to blend so tenderly with the creamy white of her hair.

She stood a moment looking doubtfully at the visitors, seeing something familiar about the woman’s face, but for an instant not recognizing her.

“Miss Grant, don’t you know me? I’m Mrs. Morris—leastways that used to be me name. I’m Mrs. Sparks now. I married out there in Ohio, and I’m real comfortably fixed. He”—nodding her head toward the man—“has a farm and a nice house, and owns several houses in the town besides. But I couldn’t rest comfortably noways, a-thinkin’ of you an’ the hole I left you in, an’ at last me husband found out what was the matter, an’ he just brought me on to see how you was gettin’ along, and to say he’d help you out of it, if you got badly stuck and pay some of the bills I left behind me, but when we got here everything looked so kind of different, somehow I couldn’t think ’twas me own house. You don’t look as if you was hard up. What’s the meanin’ of it all ennyway, an’ what’s goin’ on? Are you expectin’ company?”

Miss Grant’s face shone with welcome and her greeting was cordial, even in the midst of this busy time.

“We’re going to have a wedding in half an hour,” she said, “and you’re just in time. They will both be delighted to have you here for they are two of your old boarders. And you can relieve your mind about me, for I’m not in any hole at all, and coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me in some ways. I’m grateful to you for giving me a full fledged boarding-house. I find every month that I am getting on a little more financially. It isn’t great riches, but it is sure.”

“A wedding! For the land sake!” said Mrs. Morris-Sparks, sententiously.

After Miss Grant had excused herself in haste, to answer a call from Molly, the guest called after her.

“It must be that nice niece of yours, Miss Murray, but I didn’t never think she’d take Bob Yates, she used to be so awful stiff with him, but land alive, you never can tell!”

Miss Grant smiled to herself as she hurried down the hall. She would not explain now, as the visitor would soon see for herself.

That evening, after all the guests were gone, and the bridal pair had departed, Miss Grant took Mrs. Morris-Sparks, and slipping out the front door, let her in by a latchkey to the adjoining house which had for months been closed, with a “For Rent” sign in the window. This however had disappeared. She carefully locked the door behind her, and turning up the gas, pointed out the place where wide double doors had been roughly drafted on the wall between the two houses. She also enlarged upon some other improvements, among them a wide bay window to be added in both first and second stories of the front of the house. Then she took her upstairs, and showed a suite of rooms beautifully furnished, and told the story of how the minister had bought this house and furnished these rooms for himself and Celia, and that the houses were to be connected, and the remainder of the room used to enlarge the boarding-house, in which scheme their hearts were deeply interested. She told her, too, how with careful looking to the little details she had been enabled not only to make both ends meet, but to have a trifle over, and how she hoped in the coming year with the enlargements and her present experience actually to make it a paying business.

And Mrs. Morris-Sparks looked and listened, and shook her head, but all she could say was, “For the land sake! Who would ’a’ thought it!”