Treasured Brides Collection (24 page)

So that was that, and Euphemia looked up from her letter with a sad but patient face. Well, she had known in her heart that she would probably never see him again when he went away, but it was somehow a wrench to be sure that he would not be back for a long time, if indeed he ever came back. India! It seemed like going out of the universe. A kind of blankness filled her soul. But then she realized that she must not feel that way. She must be thankful all her life that his way had touched hers for a few days, for oh, what a difference he had made in everything to her! She could never lose the help he had given her, even if she never saw or heard from him again.

So the days and the weeks went by, and an occasional postcard with strange pictures and stranger postmark reached her. Once or twice, a brief letter came telling of the wonders of the new land, but they were hurried letters from a busy man. Already he seemed like a prophet who had larger interests than just to help her little life.

Euphemia put the letters all away in a little old writing desk with inlaid top and a lock and key, which had been the property of her Aunt Euphemia long years ago and had fallen to her lot. Nobody would ever open this, and here she hoarded all her little treasures. Sometimes she took them out and read them over, for they seemed somehow related to her Bible closely, and always there were quotations and suggestions which made her Bible study more interesting.

But the days grew into months, and the months into two and then three years, and Lawrence Earle was still in strange lands, connected with some island mission, preaching, teaching, traveling and establishing new stations, and training new teachers. He did not write much about himself when he wrote at all. She gleaned most of her information concerning his movements from the little magazine that came to her regularly from its far home and gave her a vivid picture of life as he was living it.

Still, it all seemed quite far away and unreal, and more and more she came to depend on her Bible and prayer for her daily strength.

Euphemia had finished school, had graduated from high school with honors not a few, in a gown that was faultless as to fit and appointments, and amid open admiration from her classmates. For the years had brought her a measure of good looks all her own, and her new ways had taught her to be always well groomed, and she looked as pretty as any of them. Flora Garner, who had been ill and had to stay back a year, graduated in the same class with her and seemed quite willing to be friendly with her, always making a point of walking to and from school in her company, and Euphemia was not anymore the lonely, wild thing she used to be.

But Euphemia had worked hard and had not taken much time for social life aside from keeping up her tennis, swimming, and skating, and these latter she managed to do very often in company with her brother John, who with a group of his “gang,” as he called them, was devoted to her and always ready to have her join them in their sports. So, in a measure, she was the same independent girl, walking much apart from the girls of her age.

Her mother worried over it sometimes, but she had her hands so full with Eleanor’s affairs that she had little time to do anything about her next daughter’s social life. The father said, “Well, Mother, don’t worry, perhaps it’s a good thing for the child. She hasn’t half as many temptations as Eleanor, and she has twice as much character as all those silly girls put together.”

“But she’ll grow old all alone,” mourned the mother, “and perhaps she’ll blame us.”

“Not she,” said her father. “She’s too sweet a nature for that. And she’ll not grow old alone; don’t you be afraid. Somebody’ll snap her up someday, somebody that knows a good thing, and then what’ll we do without her? Besides, if she should happen to grow old all alone as you say, she’ll be such a blessing as she goes that her life will be a happy one anyway. So don’t you worry about Euphemia! I have always told you she would turn out all right. You do your worrying for Eleanor. She needs it! Euphemia doesn’t.”

And Euphemia, who happened to be in the library at the time consulting the dictionary, heard them talking and smiled tenderly. At least she had won the good report with her father and her mother.

And Euphemia had developed a beauty of a kind, also.

Perhaps it was the peace that sat like a light upon her sweet face that made people turn when she went by and say, “Look! Did you see what a distinguished-looking girl that was?”

Her soft olive complexion, untouched by cosmetics, still had the healthy wild-rose glow, and her dark eyes had lost their unhappy restlessness and wore a constant light of settled joy and peace in them. Her heavy hair she had not kept bobbed, but had let it grow, and it set off her vivid face softly, in rich dark waves that would not brush entirely smooth, and needed no curling iron or any such thing, for it had a permanent wave of its own. Neither did she need lipstick on her lips, for they were red with nature’s own touch.

Neither was her body big and awkward anymore, for her outdoor life, and her suppleness, had made the muscles firm and given a fine slender line to her erect carriage. Altogether she was good to look upon, and Eleanor often watched her half jealously because of her free, graceful movements so utterly without self-consciousness.

For Eleanor was having a time of her own, and while she was a little more tolerant toward her sister now, because Euphemia often did a great deal for her in the way of mending and making over her dresses, and relieving her of her natural share of the household labors, still she had very little time or thought or love for anybody in the world but Eleanor Martin.

E
leanor was going to be married.

Sometimes it seemed to Euphemia as if Eleanor felt that no one worthwhile had ever been married before. Eleanor was determined to have the very best of everything, and plenty of it.

Euphemia overheard her father telling her mother that things at the office were in a very bad mix-up and money was going to be scarce for the next six months, and he wished she would go as easy as possible in spending for a while. But Eleanor wept bitterly when Mrs. Martin suggested buying more inexpensive clothes than she had picked out, and the household resolved itself into a gloomy place. Then up rose Euphemia.

“Eleanor, why can’t I make your lingerie? I’m sure I could save a lot of money on it. It’s ridiculous for you to pay five and six dollars apiece for those little wisps of crepe de Chine and lace, when we could make them for a dollar or two apiece.”

“The idea!” sneered Eleanor, and dissolved into tears once more. “If—I ca–can’t have a decent outfit, I w–won’t get m–married at all.”

“But you don’t want Father to go into debt for it, do you? He can’t buy things without money, can he?”

“He can borrow some money!” said Eleanor sharply from behind her sopping handkerchief.

“Well, Mother says he can’t. Mother says he has already borrowed up to his limit to save the business from going to the wall. Now it seems as if it is up to us to do a little something to help. Father went without a new suit when he bought the car to please you. He went without heavy underwear and got pneumonia the winter he bought your new piano. He does without things all the time to get us the necessities of life. I know, for I heard him talking to Mother. And there are going to be enough new things you’ll have to have for very decency without spending a fortune on imported underwear. I’m going to make some for you.”

“But you couldn’t
possibly
make them the way I want them. Those imported things have lines, and nobody but a French dressmaker can get those lines. Besides, they are perfectly darling, with lace insets and rosettes and satin rosebuds. It would be perfectly dreadful to have just plain things in my trousseau. I would be ashamed to show them to the girls!”

“Well, I don’t see that it would be an absolute necessity to show them to the girls, but even if it was, I don’t see that that has any point. You can’t buy what you can’t afford, and if you spend all that money on under things you can’t even have a wedding dress, let alone hat and shoes and going-away things. I heard Father say the check he gave you was positively all he could spare and we must make it do.”

“Well, if this is your wedding, go ahead and do what you like. Make your old patched-up lingerie. I won’t wear it.”

“You’ll have to, if there isn’t any other. And Eleanor, you can take me down to the stores and show me just what it is you would like to buy, and if I can’t make exactly as good and pretty and everything for less than half the price, I’ll say no more. I can copy anything I ever saw in that line.”

It ended in a compromise. Eleanor and Euphemia went shopping, saw all the prettiest lingerie, and Eleanor purchased a single garment of each style she desired for a copy. So Euphemia laid aside the precious books and her own preparations for her coming winter at college and plunged into the intricacies of glove silk and filet lace, and lingerie ribbons, and pink and blue and apricot and orchid, until the whole upper story of the house looked like a rainbow.

There were endless discussions in which Eleanor was constantly either weeping angry tears or blaming her parents for the things they had not done for her, until life became almost intolerable.

Mrs. Martin went about with a constant sigh on her lips, and her brows lifted in the middle anxiously. Sometimes Euphemia noticed that her lips were trembling and her hand trembled as she raised it to her aching head. And Euphemia was the buffer between the two. Euphemia gave up her own ways and her own plans and took as much of the burden as possible from her mother’s shoulders.

In those days also Father Martin was grave and abstracted, coming late to his meals and hurrying away, having eaten scarcely a bite sometimes. He lived on strong coffee. Euphemia, as she went about trying to help, trying to lift the burdens her parents were carrying, trying to hide Eleanor’s selfishness, and to lessen the household expenses, and to fling herself generally into the breach, wondered what the end was to be.

Then it developed that the wedding dress must have some real lace on it, and Eleanor demanded the best. Thirty dollars a yard was the lowest price she would hear to and said with a toss of her head that even that was not nearly as good as Margaret had had on her dress.

Now Euphemia had in her precious inlaid box, wrapped in soft old tissue paper, several yards of wonderful lace, yellow with age. Her heritage that came with her name, Euphemia, handed down from Aunt Euphemia, who had come into possession of it through her husband’s family. It was lace such as Eleanor never could hope to own, and Euphemia knew that she had often envied her for having it. And of course, the sacrifice that presented itself to this patient, thoughtful younger sister was that she ought to lend her lace to her sister. It was much the same breathtaking sacrifice that she had once contemplated about her watch, only that sacrifice had never been permitted by her parents. When she had hesitantly proffered the watch once to Eleanor to wear until her own was mended, her father had most summarily given his command, “That is Euphemia’s watch, and it’s a valuable thing that she will want to keep always. She alone is responsible for it, and it is not right for anyone else to have it. Eleanor, you get along without a watch until your own is mended. You are too careless to have charge of Euphemia’s, and we can’t run any risks of losing a thing like that. It couldn’t be replaced, you know.”

Euphemia stood at her bedroom window in the starlight when the idea first came to her that she must lend Eleanor her lace for the wedding, and had it out with her soul. She felt a little dismayed that she found so much selfishness still lingered in herself, but resolved that it should be conquered. So after kneeling down to ask for strength to make this sacrifice as if it were a joy, she sought her sister’s room at once, not wishing to leave the matter until the morning lest she might weaken.

She found her mother sitting in the moonlight beside Eleanor’s bed, trying to reason with the weeping Eleanor.

“Listen, dear,” Euphemia broke in, with a throb of almost joy in her voice. “Don’t worry another minute about that lace. You’re going to wear mine, of course. You know every bride has to wear something borrowed. ‘Something old and something new, something borrowed and something blue,’ ” she chanted happily. Switching on the electric light, she took out the lace in all its filmy yellowed richness. It settled down upon the pillow in a most amazing heap, a treasure that a princess might have been proud to wear.

“Oh, my dear!” said her mother, with a mingling of relief and protest in her voice. “Your lace! Your wonderful wedding lace! The lace that Aunt Euphemia left you!”

Eleanor sat up and mopped her red eyes and stared.

“You’re not going to let me wear your lace, are you, Pheem?” she asked in astonishment. “You certainly are a peach! Say, Pheem, you won’t mind if I don’t tell it’s yours, will you? You don’t mind if I say it’s an heirloom?”

“But it was to have been
your
wedding lace, my dear,” protested her mother fearfully, seeing in Eleanor’s request a hidden danger.

“I’m not being married myself yet. The lace won’t wear out in one wedding by any means,” said Euphemia lightly, trying to put down the rising lump of apprehension in her throat.

“Oh, Mother, Pheem’s not the marrying kind, and anyhow she doesn’t care for dresses. She’s too good!” declared Eleanor cheerfully, slipping out of the bed and going to the mirror to drape the rich flounce of lace around her shoulders and tip her head to one side to get the effect. “It suits me, doesn’t it? It’s just perfect, Pheem; you’re a peach! Would you mind if I cut it, darling? There’s enough to make a flounce on the skirt, too. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

“No!” said Euphemia sharply, wheeling toward her lace. “No, I
cannot
have it cut! I’ll arrange it so it will be pretty without that, but it must not be cut. It’s an heirloom!”

She turned appealing eyes to her mother, and Mrs. Martin seconded her.

“Certainly not, Eleanor, you mustn’t think of cutting the lace. Isn’t it enough that your sister has loaned it to you without your suggesting such a thing? It would be a defamation.”