“Isn’t it awfully strange that you should be the first of the bunch to get married?” burst forth Natalie, the most engaged and engaging of the group. “I thought I was to be the very first myself right after I graduated, and here we’ve had to put if off three times because Tom lost his position. And Pearl broke her engagement, and Ruth’s gone into business, and Jane is up to her eyes in music. It seems strange to have things so different from what we planned, doesn’t it? My, how we pitied you, Cornie, that day you had to leave. It seems an awful shame you had to go home then, when such a little time would have given you all that fun to remember. I don’t see why such things have to happen anyway. I think it was just horrid you never graduated. I don’t see why somebody couldn’t have come in here and taken care of things till you got through. It meant so very much to you. You missed so much, you know, that you can never, never make up.”
Cornelia from her improvised couch by the window smiled dreamily.
“Yes, but that was the day I met my new mother,” she said, almost as if she had forgotten their existence and were speaking to herself. “And she introduced me to Arthur. Probably I would never have seen either of them if I hadn’t come home just that day.”
A galaxy of eyes turned upon her, searching for romance, and studied her sweet face greedily.
“Don’t pity her anymore girls,” cried Natalie. “She’s dead in love with him and hasn’t missed us nor our commencement one little minute. She walked straight into the land of romance that day when she left us and hasn’t thought of us since. I wonder she ever remembered to invite us to the wedding. But I’m not surprised either. If he’s half as stunning as his picture, he must be a treasure. I’m dying to meet him! What kind of a prune is his mother? I think she must be horrid to demand your presence at the station to meet her two hours before the ceremony. I must say I’d make a fuss at that.”
“Oh,” said Cornelia, a haughty color coming into her cheeks. “You don’t understand. She didn’t demand! She doesn’t even know. Arthur and I are surprising her. Arthur just sent a telegram to the train for her to get off at the West Philadelphia station. She expected to go on to Broad Street. Oh! She is the dearest mother; wait till you see her.”
A tap at the door interrupted her, and Louise entered shyly. “Nellie, dear, I hate to interrupt you, but that man, that Mr. Ragan, has come, and he’s so anxious to see you just a minute Mother said I better tell you so you could send him down a message. It’s something about the curtains for his house. I think he wants birds on them, or else he doesn’t, I don’t know which. He’s so afraid you’ve already ordered the material, and he wants it the way you said first, she says.”
“That’s all right, darling. I think I’ll just run down and see him a minute; he’s so anxious about his little house, and it will reassure him if I explain about it. Tell him to wait just a minute till I slip on my dress.”
A chorus of protests arose from the bed.
“For mercy’s sake, Cornie, you’re suddenly not going down to see a man on business now! What on earth? Did you really get to be an interior decorator, after all? You don’t mean it! I thought you were just kidding when you wrote about it. What do you mean? They’re only poor people. Well, what do you care? You’re surely not going on with such things after you’re married?”
Cornelia, flinging the masses of her hair into a lovely coil and fastening the snaps of her little blue organdie, smiled again dreamily. “Arthur likes it,” she said. “He wants me to go on. You see we both regard it not exactly altogether as a business but as something that is going to help uplift the world. I’ve done two really big houses, and they’ve been successful; and I have had good opportunities opening, so that I could really get into a paying business if I chose, I think. But I don’t choose. Oh, I may do a fine house now and then if I get the chance, just to keep my hand in, for I enjoy putting rich and beautiful things together in the right way, but what I want is to help poor people do little cheap houses and make them look pretty and comfortable and really artistic. So many don’t have pretty homes who would really like them if they only knew how! Now, this man I’m going down to now is just a poor laborer, but he had been saving up his money to make a nice home for his girl, and he heard about me and came to me to help him. I’ve been having the best fun picking out his things for him. I won’t get a great fee out of it; indeed, I hate to take anything, only he wouldn’t like that, but it’s been great! Arthur and I have been together out to see the little cottage twice and arranged the new chairs for him; and I even made up the beds and showed him how to set the table for their first meal. They are to be married next week, and he’s so worried, lest the stuff I ordered for curtains won’t get here in time to finish his dining room. But Mother is going to finish them, and Harry and Carey will put them up, and I want to tell him so he will not worry.” With a bright smile Cornelia left them and flew downstairs to her customer.
“Goodness, girls! Did you ever see such a change in anyone? I can’t make her out, can you?” cried Jane, sitting up on the foot of the bed and looking after her.
“I should say not!” declared Pearl. “What do you suppose has come over her? I suppose it’s being in love or something, although that doesn’t generally make a girl do slum work at a busy time like this. But I guess we wasted our pity on her. She said she was coming home to a horrid, poor little house. Did you ever see such a pretty nest of a house in your life? That living room is a dream. I’m crazy to get back to it and look it over again.”
“Well, I never thought Cornie Copley would turn out to be that kind of a nut. Think of her going to the station to meet her mother-in-law just before the ceremony! Love certainly is blind. Girls you needn’t ever worry, lest I’ll do anything of that kind, not me!” cried Natalie. “That man must be some kind of a nut himself, or else she’s been all made over somehow.”
Jane tiptoed and shut the door; and then in a whisper she said, “Girls, I want to tell you. I believe it’s religion. It’s odd, but I believe it is. I heard her talking about praying for somebody down in the hall when I stood up here waiting for my trunk to be unlocked by her brother. She was talking to her little sister, and they seemed to be praying for something or somebody, and she mentioned the church every other breath since we came, and the minister, and— look at there! There’s her Bible with her name in it. I opened it and looked, and he gave it to her. ‘Cornelia from Arthur.’ That’s what it says. And see that card framed over the table? It’s a Christian Endeavor pledge card. I know for I used to belong when I was a child. She’s going to have the Christian Endeavor society all at her wedding, too. I heard her say the Christian Endeavor chorus was going to sing the wedding march before they came in, and she talks about the minister’s daughter all the time. You may depend on it, it’s religion that’s the matter with Cornie, not being in love. Cornie’s a level-headed girl, and she wouldn’t go out of her head this way just for falling in love. When religion gets into the blood it’s ten times worse than any falling in love ever. I wonder what her Arthur thinks of it. Maybe he means to take it out of her when he gets her good and tied.”
“Don’t!” said Ruth sharply. “You make me sick, Jane. I don’t care what it is that has changed Cornie. She’s sweet, I know; that’s all that’s necessary. And, if it’s religion, I wish we all had some of it. I know she looks all the time as if she’d seen a vision, and that’s what precious few other people do. Come, it’s time to take a nap, or we’ll look like withered leaves for this evening. Now stop talking! I’m going to sleep.”
The passengers in the parlor car glanced at the distinguished-looking lady with the sweet smile and happy eyes and glanced again, and liked to look, there was such joy, such content, such expectancy in her face. More than one, as the train slowed down at West Philadelphia and the porter gathered her baggage and escorted her out, sat up from his velvet chair and stretched his neck to see who was meeting this woman to make her so happy since that telegram had been brought to her. They watc
hed until the train passed on and they could see no more—the tall, handsome young man, who took her in his arms and kissed her, and the lovely girl in blue organdie with a little lace-edged organdie hat drooping about her sweet face, who greeted her as if she loved her. As far as the eye could reach Mrs. Maxwell’s fellow passengers watched the little bit of human drama and wondered and tried to figure out who they were and what relation they bore to one another.
“You precious child, you shouldn’t have done it!” said Mrs. Maxwell, nestling Cornelia’s hand in her own as her son stowed them away in the backseat of the car together and whirled them away to the Copley house. “But it was dear of you, and I shall never forget it!” she said fervently with another squeeze of the hand.
A few moments more and she entered the living room that had been wrought out with such care and anxiety and gazed about her, delighted.
“I knew you would do it, dear. I knew it! I was sure you could,” she whispered with her arm around the girl; and then she went forward with a sigh of relief to meet the sweet mother of the Copleys, who came to greet her. The two mothers looked long into each other’s eyes, with hands clasped and intense, loving, searching looks, and then a smile grew on both their faces. Mother Maxwell spoke first with a smile of content.
“I was almost sure you would be like that,” she said. “And I’m going to love you a great deal.” And Mother Copley, her face placid with a calm that had its source in deep springs of peace, smiled back an answering love.
Then came Father Copley and grasped the other mother’s hand and bade her welcome, too; and after that Mother Maxwell was satisfied and went to dress for the wedding.
The four bridesmaids did not see much of Cornelia, after all, for when she came back from her ride, they were all breathlessly manipulating curling irons and powder puffs, tying sashes, and putting on pretty shoes, and no one had time to talk of other things. It seemed to be only Cornelia who was calm at this last minute, who knew where the shoehorn had been put, could find a little gold pin to fasten a refractory ribbon, and had time to fix a drooping wave of hair or adjust a garland of flowers.
It had been Cornelia’s wish that her wedding should be very simple and inexpensive, and though the bridesmaids had written many letters persuading and suggesting rainbow hues and dahlia shades, and finally pleading for jades and corals, all was to no effect. Cornelia merely smiled, and wrote back:
I want you all in white, if you please, just simple white organdie, made with a deep hem and little ruffles. And then I want you to have each a garland of daisies around your hair and daisies in your arms.
“White for bridesmaids!” they cried as one maid. “Who ever heard of such a thing?”
But the answer came back:
This isn’t going to be a conventional wedding. We’re just going to get married, and we want our dearest friends about us. I love white, and the daisies will be lovely on it, and do away with hats. I’m going to wear a veil. I like a veil; but my dress is white organdie, too, and I’ll have white roses.
And so it was, all natural and sweet like an old-fashioned country affair and not one convention out of a thousand observed in the order and form of things.
For the bride herself had decked the church with the aid of her bridegroom and her brother and Grace Kendall. The lacelike boughs of tall hemlocks drooped back of the altar and smothered the pulpit; and against it rose a waving field of daisies with grasses softly blending. The little field flowers were arranged in concealed glass jars of water so that they kept fresh and beautiful and were so massed that they seemed to be growing there. All about the choir gallery the daisies were massed, a bit of nature transplanted to the quiet temple. Everyone exclaimed softly on entering the church at the wonderful effect of the feathery, starry beauty. It was as if a bit of the out-of-doors world had crept into the sanctuary to grace the occasion. God’s world and God’s flowers of the field.
There were not many mighty among the guests. A choice few of the Maxwell and Copley connection and friends; the rest were new acquaintances, of all stations in life, all trades and professions, many humble worshippers in the church whom Cornelia and Maxwell had come to respect and love.
The two mothers came in together and sat down side by side, attended by Harry and his father. Harry had most strenuously objected to being one of the wedding party when it was suggested. He said he “couldn’t see making a monkey of himself, all dolled up, going up the church aisle to music.”
Grace Kendall was at the organ, of course, and above the daisy-bordered gallery the Christian Endeavor choir girls all in white, with wreaths of green leaves in their hair, sang the bridal chorus; and from the doors at either side of the front of the church there filed forth the bridesmaids and the ushers. The bridesmaids were led by Louise as maid of honor, with a wreath of daisies among her curls and a garland of daisies trailing down from her left shoulder over the little white organdie that made her look like a young angel. Carey as best man led the ushers, who were four warm friends of Maxwell’s, and on either side of the altar they waited, facing toward the front door as Cornelia and Maxwell came arm in arm up the middle aisle together.
It was all quite natural and simple, though the bridesmaids were disappointed at the lack of display and the utter disregard of convention and precedent.
The minister spoke the service impressively and added a few words of his own that put the ceremony quite out of the ordinary, and his prayer seemed to bring God quite near among them, as if He had come especially to bless this union of His children. Mother Maxwell’s heart suddenly overflowed with happy tears, and the four bridesmaids glanced furtively and knowingly at one another beneath their garlands of daisies, as if to say, “It is religion, after all, and this is where she got it.” And then they began to listen and to wonder for themselves.
After it was over, the bride and the groom turned smilingly and walked back down the aisle, preceded by Louise and Carey, and followed by the bridesmaids and ushers; and everybody rose and smiled and broke the little hush of breathless attention with a soft murmur of happy approval.
“Such a pretty wedding, so sweet! So dear!” Mother Maxwell could hear them breathing it on every hand as she walked out with Mother Copley.
Then just a chosen few came home to the wedding supper, which had been planned and partly prepared by Cornelia herself; and everybody was talking about the lovely wedding and the quiet, easy way in which everything moved without fuss or hurry or excitement, right and natural and as it all should be when two persons joined hands and walked out together into the new life.
“It is something inside her that makes her different,” hazarded a sleepy bridesmaid several hours later, after the others had been quiet a long time and were almost asleep. “But wasn’t it lovely? Only field daisies and the grass and old pine trees, but it certainly was a dream even if we didn’t get to do much marching. Well, Cornelia Copley always did know how to decorate.”
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL (1865-1947) is known as the pioneer of Christian romance. Grace wrote more than one hundred faith-inspired books during her lifetime. When her first husband died, leaving her with two daughters to raise, writing became a way to make a living, but she always recognized storytelling as a way to share her faith in God. She has touched countless lives through the years and continues to touch lives today. Her books feature moving stories, delightful characters, and love in its purest form.
Love Endures
Grace Livingston Hill Classics
Available in 2012
The Beloved Stranger
The Prodigal Girl
A New Name
Re-Creations
Tomorrow About This Time
Crimson Roses
Blue Ruin
Coming Through the Rye
The Christmas Bride
Ariel Custer
Not Under the Law
Job’s Niece
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