Treasured Brides Collection (25 page)

Eleanor pouted.

“Oh, dear! It wouldn’t hurt it in the least. It could be pieced together again without any trouble. Well, I don’t know as it will do then! I’ll have to buy some after all! I couldn’t think of putting it on if it doesn’t look right.”

“It isn’t in the least necessary to cut it, Eleanor,” said Euphemia patiently, and she took pins and tried to show her sister what effect could be got without cutting the lace.

Eleanor haughty, offended, and only half convinced, finally yielded to the inevitable, knowing in her heart that no money she could ever get together could buy half such priceless lace as this.

It was like this all the way through. Eleanor wanted a caterer, and Mrs. Martin insisted that they could not afford it. She and Euphemia baked and planned and worked with everything they had in them as the day drew near. And then it appeared that there was a bridesmaids’ dinner to be planned for and that she must furnish the bridesmaids’ dresses; or at least Eleanor had told the girls she was going to do so in order that they might be just what she wanted. She had planned for eight bridesmaids, and she insisted that Euphemia should have a new outfit of most expensive materials. And there were gifts to the bridesmaids, little gold vanity cases. Eleanor went to the city herself and got them, and had them charged to her father at a most expensive place where he had never had a charge account before. He was vexed almost beyond endurance.

All these things were accomplished finally as Eleanor desired, in very self-protection for the family, for Eleanor wept and wailed her way through till she got what she wanted, silk and satin and lace, flowers and ribbon and frills.

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” quoted Euphemia as she surveyed the house two nights before the wedding. “And what is going to happen after it’s all over?”

Eleanor was marrying a man from another state, and a number of his relatives came to the wedding. Eleanor demanded that a good many of them be entertained at the house. There seemed to be no end to the things that Eleanor wanted. Wouldn’t it ever be over? Euphemia wearily wondered, as she toiled down to the laundry and ironed a couple more old curtains for a window that had been forgotten in a room that had been hastily requisitioned for an extra guest room. Wearily she dragged herself up the steps again and found a rod and a hammer and screws and put up the curtains. She looked in on the array of handsome presents set out on their white-draped tables in the upstairs sitting room.

“Whatsoever things are lovely!” she quoted to herself, and wondered if things like these counted in the scheme of life. Of course they did count, somehow, else God would not have made so many lovely things, but hadn’t they somehow got out of proportion, sort of overrated their value? Weren’t there other things that were lovelier and more lasting? Euphemia was too tired to philosophize about it.

She saw her mother dragging up the stairs just then, looking old and tired to death. And forgetting her own weariness she flew down, and gathering her little mother in her strong arms, she carried her up and put her down on her bed.

“Now Mother dear!” she said, stooping to kiss the tired brow, “you’re not to get up until early morning. No”—as her mother tried to rise—“I don’t care how many things you have left undone; you are not to stir until morning. Wedding or no wedding, guests or no guests, you have got to rest.”

She helped her mother undress, in spite of protests, and put her inside the sheets, turned down the light, and closed the door. Fifteen minutes later the bride burst into the house and stirred them all up again. She woke her mother from the exhausted sleep into which she had sunk at once, with the startling announcement that Everett’s great uncle (Everett was the name of the bridegroom) was stopping off on his way to California and wanted to meet her parents and see the presents. No, he couldn’t stay overnight. He had to catch the midnight express to meet an appointment, but he was bringing a set of solid silver salt and pepper shakers, and her mother simply must get up and meet him.

Euphemia protested, and even tried to frighten her sister by saying that their mother would not be able to go to the wedding if she did not get some rest. But Eleanor swept her aside and dashed into her mother’s room, switching on both lights and deluging her startled mother with the whole story in a breath.

“You must put on your violet silk, Mother. He won’t be here to the wedding and he won’t know it is
the
dress. I want you to appear at your best. I’ll get my curling iron and fix your hair. You’ll have to hurry like the dickens. Everett only got the telegram ten minutes ago. He’s driven right down to meet him, and the train is due in about five minutes. Everett is
very
particular about him. He wanted me to make you understand that. He is
very
rich, you know.”

Half bewildered and sodden with weariness, Mrs. Martin dragged herself up and let them dress her.

Euphemia, with set lips, went about getting her things and putting up her hair, while Eleanor sat down and hurried them like a bumblebee.

When the car drove up, their mother lay back in the big chair in the living room, looking pale and spent in her pretty new dress. Euphemia was so worried about her and so angry at her sister for being so inconsiderate, that she very nearly said some sharp things to Eleanor. Eleanor acted almost as if it didn’t matter at all whether or not there was any mother left after the wedding was over.

But Eleanor would not have heard even if she had said the words that sprang to her lips. She was fluttering to the door to meet the guest.

And after all, the great uncle was deaf and indifferent and nearsighted, and didn’t even seem to see their mother, merely acknowledging the introduction haughtily and passing on to the room where the presents were spread out.

Euphemia hurried her mother back to bed as soon as they were gone, thankful that Eleanor had gone down to the midnight train with them to see the disagreeable uncle off again.

Euphemia, the next night, in her golden draperies, her arms full of yellow expensive roses, walking slowly, steadily, up the church aisle as maid of honor, studied the solid flabby face of the bridegroom and wondered what Eleanor saw in him to make her willing to sacrifice her whole family to please his dictatorial fancy. If Everett wanted to do expensive things for Eleanor after she was married, that was all right, but he had no right to insist on Eleanor’s family mortgaging their very souls to make his wedding appear great before his friends and family.

Coolly she walked up the aisle, her regal head lifted, her face full of something that seemed to lift her above the rest of the procession and make people look at her rather than watch for the bride. “Just look at Euphemia,” they whispered. “Isn’t she beautiful! She’s prettier than her sister.”

But Euphemia was looking her future brother-in-law over and weighing him in the balance as it were, in the light of his actions during the past weeks, and she was sorry for her sister. That selfish little puckered mouth, those expressionless eyes set too close together, the characterless chin. What had been his power over Eleanor? Was it his reputed wealth? She almost shivered at the thought as she drew nearer to the waiting bridegroom, and dropped her eyes to her flowers, taking her place at one side to await the bride. A wave of thankfulness went over her that it was not herself who was being married to Everett Wilcox. Would Eleanor be happy? Oh, would she? She had never been happy at home, although she had always got almost everything she cried for. But if one might judge from that stubborn, selfish mouth, Everett would never be one to give in to weeping. Poor Eleanor. For all that, disagreeable as she had been, Eleanor was her sister and she loved her.

As the awesome words of the marriage ceremony went forward, Euphemia’s thoughts followed them tremulously. Such terrible things to promise, if one were not
sure
. How could Eleanor promise all those things for Everett? Her very soul revolted at the thought. She felt sure that she herself would never be married. There would never be anyone who would care for her, who would be wise enough and great enough and dear enough to give one’s self to in such solemn pledges.

She came out from the ceremony with a saddened heart. It seemed as if they had just handed Eleanor over to suffer somehow. She could not get away from the thought. Strange that this feeling should have come down upon her so suddenly. Perhaps it was because she had been too busy before to realize that her sister was going out from the household forever.

It was over at last, the showers of rose leaves and rice, the white ribbons on the car, and the shouts and shrieks as the couple made their way to escape. The last guest was gone at last, the last hired servant paid, and the door locked. Euphemia turned to see her little frail mother sink suddenly down in her silken garments, a small, pathetic heap of orchid silk with a pale, white face above it.

She cried out as she sprang to kneel by her side, and her father rushed to them and knelt on the other side, his face ashen-gray in the garish light of the rooms still decorated for the wedding with flowers he could ill afford.

They got her to bed and telephoned for the doctor, but it was almost morning before they settled down to get any rest themselves. Even then they hardly dared to sleep, for their hearts were so anxious.

The next morning Mrs. Martin tried to get up, but found she could not. She said she was only tired and would get up in a little while, but when the doctor came in a little later, he wore an anxious look and asked a great many questions and commanded that she lie still for several days.

The several days stretched into a week, and then two, and three, and still she was unable to get up and go about.

At first the doctor talked cheerfully enough, saying she needed a good long rest, but as the weeks went by, it became evident that the trouble was more deep-seated than they expected. The poor nerves which had stretched and stretched until they almost snapped did not react, and Euphemia and her father gradually began to realize that the mother who had carried all their burdens and smoothed all their ways was down and out. And it was a serious question whether she would recover at all.

The knowledge of it came upon Euphemia like a crushing blow after the long hard going, for there was the house to be kept, and the poor servant utterly unable to cope with the situation, to say nothing of the mending and cleaning and baking, and the four-year-old baby to look after every hour in the day. There was her mother to be cared for like a baby herself; and there must be the most tender care, or she might slip away from them in a breath.

Mrs. Martin seemed satisfied only when Euphemia was with her. Of course a trained nurse might have relieved the situation greatly, but there was Mr. Martin harassed with a business crisis, submerged in debt, and struggling to pay some of the enormous bills that Eleanor had contracted for the wedding. The plain fact was they could not afford a nurse. And there was John, older, of course, a little, but still full of noise and mischief, and seemingly eager to coast down every wrong pathway of life that presented itself to his willing feet. More than half of their mother’s burden had been this same John, whose companions and habits had been for two years past wholly unsatisfactory and the last few months a plain daily anxiety. Something must be done for John. There was no end. And nobody but herself to fill the breach and bear all the burden. And there were her beloved books and her dreams of college by and by, and a wider sphere, although there was no need to complain of the narrowness of her sphere just now. It seemed to embrace almost every class and variety of work.

She sat in her room and thought about it awhile after the doctor had gone, when her mother and the restless four-year-old were asleep. “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,” kept going over and over in her mind. She was accustomed by this time to putting all her actions to that Philippian test. She knelt to pray and rose to shut her hopes and her books away in her closet and turn the key. Then she went down to her daily duties. This time she did not find the cat and the baby in the flypaper, but she found dismay and dreariness, for mother was upstairs sick, shut away from the household troubles. Mother could not bind up a cut finger, nor kiss a bumped head, nor get a boy bread and jelly when he was hungry, and the worst of it all was that there was uncertainty how long this terrible state of things might last. The young hearts whose heaven was Mother’s face could not see any light.

Then Euphemia found that she could comfort; she could think to do this thing and plan for that thing and give up her own ways and plans; teach a spelling lesson to one, tell a story to another, and yet with the help of God keep patient and sweet through it all.

She still kept her little time by herself alone to commune with Jesus, or she could not have done it. Here she brought all her troubles and worries to think about. Sometimes it seemed so strange to her to think her life, that had always somehow been under a sort of cloud, was cut off from things that other girls had. She would go back in her memory often to that lovely day and that ride when she met Lawrence Earle and recall the only really grown-up pleasure she had ever had in all her young womanhood, and wonder if it would always be the only one. Very likely it would, because she was growing old so fast. Poor child! She felt almost gray-haired.

But she did not sigh after those things long. Perhaps it would have been harder for her if she had been accustomed to going out a great deal. She was so continually busy and so really interested in her daily round that she had not time to be sad-hearted now. She sometimes got out her books, too, for after the first few months of self-abnegation, she saw that it was not necessary for her to sacrifice all her reading and study, and so she was not growing stupid. Sometimes when all was quiet and dark, she would wonder to herself if the only person besides her mother who had ever promised to pray for her had forgotten. Probably he had long ago forgotten her existence. It was a year since she had received even a postcard from him. She was not even sure in what land he was at present exiled. If he thought of her at all, he probably remembered her only as a disagreeable little girl whom he had tried to help to peace and happiness. And how wonderfully he had done it! If his witnessing in foreign lands for the rest of his life brought no results, he yet might count a humble star in his crown for the light he had brought into her discontented young heart. She would bless him always for it.