“I wouldn’t,” he said grimly. “You bet your sweet life I wouldn’t!”
“Won’t you hurry?” she urged.
“What for? Ain’t I dressed up enough? All I’m goin’ to do is wash my hands.”
“Then do,” she cried, as he moved to go indoors. “Please hurry!”
“Never you mind,” he returned crossly. “I don’t usually take more’n half a jiffy to just wash my hands, thank you!” And as he disappeared he was heard to mutter, not without vehemence: “Plague take it!”
A few moments later he reappeared, not visibly altered except that his irritated expression had become one of revolt. “Look a-here!” he said. “I don’t see as I’m called upon to promenade over there and join in with all this high jinks and goin’s-on!”
“Papa — —”
“I don’t mind an old-fashioned party,” he went on. “I used to go to plenty of ’em in my time, but when all they got for you to do is listen to half the women in town tryin’ to out-holler each other, why, you bet your bottom dollar I’m through!”
“But, papa — —”
“No, sir-ree!” he protested loudly. “You can well as not go on over there without me. Why, just look at the crowd they got in there already.”
He waved his hand to the neighbouring domain on the south, where the crowd he bitterly mentioned was not in sight, but was indicated by external manifestations. Open family carriages, surreys, runabouts, phaetons, and “station wagons” filled the Oliphants’ driveway, and, for a hundred yards or more, were drawn up to the curb on each side of the avenue. Coloured drivers sat at leisure, gossiping from one vehicle to another, or shouting over jokes about the hot weather. The horses drooped, or, with heads tossing at intervals, protested against their check-reins — and one of them, detained in position by a strap fastened to a portable iron weight, alternately backed and advanced with such persistence that he now and then produced enough commotion to bring profane bellows of reproof from the drivers, after which he would subside momentarily, then misbehave again.
One of the coachmen decided to settle the matter, and, sliding to the ground from the hot leather front cushion of a “two-horse surrey”, went to chide the nervous animal. “Look a-me, hoss!” the man shouted fiercely. “You gone spoil ev’ybody’s pleasure. Whyn’t you behave youse’f an’ listen to music?” He pointed eloquently to the Oliphants’ open windows, whence came the sound of violins, a harp and a flute. “You git a chance listen nice music when you stan’ all day in you’ stall, hoss? An’ look at all them dressed-up white folks goin’ junketin’. What they goin’ think about you, you keep on ackin’ a fool?” Here, to clarify his meaning to the disturber, he gestured toward some young people — girls in pretty summer flimsies and young men in white flannels — who were going in through the iron gateway. “You think anybody goin’ respect you, cuttin’ up that fool way? You look out, hoss, you look out! You back into my surrey ag’in I’m goin’ take an’ smack you so’s you won’t fergit it long’s you live!”
Mr. Shelby, becoming more obdurate on his veranda, found this altercation helpful to his argument. “Why, just listen! That crowd’s makin’ so much noise I’d lose my hearin’ if I went in there. I won’t do it!”
“But, papa,” his daughter pleaded, “it isn’t the people in the house who are making the noise; it’s that darkey yelling at a horse. You’ve got to come.”
“Why have I?”
“Because you’re their next-door neighbour. Because it’s a time when all their friends should go.”
“Why is it?” he asked stubbornly. “What they want to make all this fuss over her for, anyway? I guess, from what I hear, her folks didn’t make any fuss over them in New York. Just barely let ’em come to the weddin’ and never even asked ’em to a single meal! I should think the Oliphant family’d have too much pride to go and get up a big doin’s like this over a girl when her family treated them like that!”
“Please come,” Martha begged. “All that matters to Dan’s father and mother is that he is married and they want their old friends to meet the bride and say a word of welcome to her.”
“Well, I don’t want to say any welcome to her. Dan Oliphant hadn’t got any more business to get married right now than a muskrat; he’s as poor as one! I don’t want to go over there and take on like I approve of any such a foolishness.”
“You’re only making excuses,” Martha said, frowning, and she took his arm firmly, propelling him toward the veranda steps. “You know how they’d all feel if their oldest neighbour didn’t go. You are going, papa.”
“I won’t!” he protested fiercely; then unexpectedly giving way to what at least appeared to be superior physical force, he descended the steps. “Plague take it!” he said, and walked on beside his daughter without further resistance.
At the Oliphants’ open front doors they seemed to step into the breath of a furnace stoked with flowers. Moreover, this hot and fragrant breath was laden with clamour, the conglomerate voices of two hundred people exhausting themselves to be heard in spite of one another and in spite of the music.
“Gee-mun-nently!” Mr. Shelby groaned, as this turmoil buffeted his ears. “Why, this is worse’n a chicken farm when they’re killin’ for market! I’m goin’ straight home!” And he made a serious attempt to depart through the portal they had just entered, but Martha had taken his arm too firmly for him to succeed without creating scandal.
A head taller than her father, she was both powerful and determined; and his resistance could be but momentary. She said “Papa!” indignantly under her breath; he succumbed, indistinctly muttering obsolete profanity; and they went into a drawing-room that was the very pit of the clamour and the flowery heat, in spite of generous floor space and high ceilings. The big room was so crowded with hot, well-dressed people that Martha had difficulty in passing between the vociferous groups, especially as many sought to detain her with greetings, and women clutched her, demanding in confidential shouts: “What do you think of her?”
But she pressed on, keeping a sure hold upon her outraged father, until they reached the other end of the room; for there, in a trellised floral bower, with all the flowers wilted in the heat, Dan Oliphant stood with his bride and his father and mother.
The reception party appeared to be little less wilted than the flowers; Mr. Oliphant and Dan, in their thick frock coats, suffering more than the two ladies; but all four smiled with a brave fixity, as they had been smiling for more than an hour; and the three Oliphants were still able to speak with a cordiality that even this ordeal had been unable to exhaust.
The bride might have been taken for a somewhat bewildered automaton, greatly needing a rewinding of its mechanism. In white satin, with pearls in her black hair, she was waxy pale under the rouge it was her habit to use, and she only murmured indistinguishably as Mr. Oliphant presented his guests to her. The faint smile she wore upon her lips she did indeed appear to wear, and to have worn so long that it was almost worn-out; — no one could doubt that she longed for the time when she could permit herself to get rid of it. As a matter of fact, she granted herself that privilege when Mr. Oliphant presented Miss Shelby to her; for the smile faded to an indiscernible tracing as Lena found the statuesque amplitude of Martha towering over her. The small bride looked almost apprehensive.
“I hope — I do hope you’ll be able to like me,” Martha said, a little nervously. “I live next door, and I hope — I do hope you’ll be able to.” Then, as Lena said nothing, Martha gave Mr. Shelby’s arm a tug, unseen, and brought him unwillingly to face the bride. “This is my father. He’s a new neighbour for you, too.”
The old gentleman made a slight, hostile duck with his head. “Pleased to meet ye, ma’am,” he said severely.
At that the bride seemed to be astonished. “What?” she said.
“I bid you good afternoon, ma’am,” he returned, ducked his head again, and passed on as rapidly as he could.
Martha whispered hurriedly to D
an: “She is beautiful!” and would have followed her father, but Dan detained her.
“Martha, will you help us to get her to like it here?” he said. “You see she’s such an utter stranger and everything’s bound to seem sort of different at first. I’ve been hoping you’d let her be your best friend, because you — you’d — —”
“If she’ll let me, Dan,” Martha said, her voice faltering as she continued, “You know that I’d always — I’d always want to — —” She stopped, glancing back at Lena, whose own glances seemed to be noting with some interest the heartiness with which Dan still grasped the hand of this next-door Juno. “I know she’s lovely!” Martha said; and she moved away to overtake her father, who had every intention of leaving the house at once, but found himself again balked by his daughter’s taking his arm.
“What you so upset over?” he asked crossly. “What’s the matter your face?”
“Nothing, papa. Why?”
“Looks as though you’re takin’ cold. It’s the heat, maybe. Let’s go.”
“Not yet, papa.”
“Look a-here!” he said, “I’m not goin’ to promenade out in that dining-room and ruin my stomach on lemonade and doodaddle refreshments. It’s suppertime right now, and I want to go home!”
“Hush!” she bade him. “It wouldn’t be polite to rush right out. Just stay a minute or two longer; then you can go.”
“But what’s the use? I don’t want to hang around here with all the fat women in town perspiring against my clo’es. I hate the whole possytucky of ’em!”
“Sh, papa!”
“I don’t care,” he went on with husky vehemence. “Nothin’ to do here except stare at the bride, and she’s so little it don’t take much time to see her; she’s just about half your size — you made her seem like a wax doll beside you, and the way she looked at you, I guess she thought so, too. Anyway, she does look like a wax doll. Looks worse’n that, too!”
“No, no!”
“Yes, she does,” he insisted. “She’s got paint on her. Her face is all over paint.”
“It isn’t paint. It’s only rouge.”
“What’s the difference? It ain’t decent. She paints. She’s got red paint on her cheeks and black paint on her eye-winkers. Looks to me like Dan Oliphant’s gone and married a New York fast woman.”
“Hush!” Martha commanded him sharply. “People will hear you!”
“I can’t hardly hear myself!” he retorted. “Never got in such a gibblety-gabble in my born days. I tell you she paints! Her mother-in-law ought to take her out to a washstand and clean her up like a respectable woman. The Oliphant family ought to know what people’ll take her for, if they let her go around all painted up like that. If she was my daughter-in-law — —”
But here Martha’s protest was so vehement as to check him. “Everybody will hear you! Be quiet! Look there!”
She caught her breath, staring wide-eyed; and, turning to see what had so decisively fixed her attention, he realized that the clamorous place had become almost silent. Old Mrs. Savage, leaning upon her grandson Harlan’s arm, had entered the room and was on her way to the bride.
The guests made a passage for her, crowding back upon themselves until there was an aisle through which she and Harlan slowly passed. She was in fine gray silk and lace; and her hair, covered only in part by the lace cap, was still browner than it was white. But she could no longer hold herself upright as of yore; a cruel stoop had got into the indomitable back at last, and she was visibly tremulous all over. The emaciation, too, of such great age had come upon her; the last few months had begun the final shrivelling of everything except the self, but in her eyes that ageless self almost flamed; — it had a kind of majesty, for its will alone and no other force could have made the spent body walk. Thus, among these people who had known her all their lives, there was an awe of her, so that they had hushed themselves, silently making room for her to pass; and she was so frail, so nearly gone from life, that to many of them it seemed almost as if a woman already dead walked among them. They perceived that she could never again do what she was doing to-day, nor could any fail to comprehend in her look her own gaunt recognition that this was the last time she would thus be seen.
Slowly, with Harlan helping her, she went through the room, came to Lena, and stood before her, looking at her and making little sighing murmurs that told of the effort it cost her still to live and move. Then, in a voice not cracked or quavering, though broken a little, she said: “I thought so! But you’re welcome.”
Lena looked frightened, but Dan laughed and kissed his grandmother’s cheek, talking cheerfully. “Well, this is an honour, grandma! We hardly hoped you’d come out in all this heat. We certainly appreciate it, grandma, and we’ll never forget you thought enough of us to do it. It’s just the best thing could happen to us in the world!”
His free and easy full voice released the guests from the sympathetic hush put upon them by the apparition; they turned to one another again and the interrupted chatter was loudly resumed; but Mrs. Savage extended her right arm and with her gloved hand abruptly touched the bride’s cheek.
Startled, Lena uttered a faint outcry, protesting. “What — why, what do you mean?”
Mrs. Savage was looking fiercely at the tremulous fingertips of the white glove that had touched the rouged cheek.
“She’s painted!”
Dan laughed and patted the old lady’s shoulder. “You’d better go and get some iced coffee, grandma,” he said, and turned to his mother. “Couldn’t we all go and get something cold now with grandma? I don’t believe there are any more people coming and Lena’s pretty tired, I’m afraid.”
“I am,” Lena said. “I really am.” She came close to him, pleading in a faint voice: “For heaven’s sake let me go up to my room and lie down. I can’t stand any more!”
“Why, Lena — —”
“Please let me go, Dan.”
“Why — but — —” he began. “Couldn’t you stick out just a little longer? If we go to the dining-room with grandma I think it might please her. Besides, if the bride disappeared at her own reception I’m afraid they might think — —”
“Please, Dan!”
“Well — but, dear — —”
But Lena waited for no more argument; she made a gesture of most poignant appeal, slipped by him and went quickly out through a door that led into a rear hallway. Dan’s impulse was to follow her, but he decided that his first duty led him in another direction, and joined his grandmother who was on her way to the dining-room. When he had helped Harlan to bring the old lady iced coffee and such accompaniments as she would consent to nibble, it was time to return to the drawing-room to say farewell to the guests; for, according to a prevalent custom, they could not depart without assuring him that they had enjoyed themselves.
He explained to them that the heat had been too much for Lena, received their messages of sympathy for her and their renewed congratulations for himself, and finally, when they were all gone, ran anxiously upstairs to her. He found her lying face downward upon her bed in her bridal gown, an attitude less of exhaustion than of agitation, though it spoke of both. Both were manifest, too, in the disorder of her curled black hair and in the way one of her delicate arms was stretched upward across the pillow with a damp handkerchief half clenched in the childlike fingers.
“Why, Lena — —”
“You’d better let me alone!”
“But what is the matter?”
“Nothing!”
He touched the small hand on the pillow solicitously. “I’m afraid I let you get tired, dear.”
“‘Tired!’” she echoed, withdrawing her hand instantly. “‘Tired!’” And with that she abruptly sat upright upon the bed, showing him a face misshapen with emotion. What added to the disastrous effect upon her young husband was that her movement completed the disorder of her hair so that some heavy strands of it hung down, with the string of pearls, still enmeshed, dangling unheeded again
st her cheek. The picture she thus presented was almost unnerving to Dan, who had never seen a woman so greatly discomposed. His mother had wept heartbrokenly when her father died; but she had kept her face covered; and he had no recollection of ever seeing her with her hair in disorder.
“Why, Lena!” he cried. “What on earth — —”
“Nothing!” she said, and laughed painfully, satirizing the word. “Nothing! Nothing at all!”
“But, dear — —”
“Never mind!” She shivered, then sighed profoundly, and stared at him with curiosity, as if she were examining something unfamiliar. “So this is what it’s going to be like, is it?” she asked.
“What?”
“I mean this place! These people! This — this climate!”
But here Dan was touched upon his native pride. “Climate? Why, this is the best climate in the world, Lena! There isn’t any climate to compare with it! And as for this little warm spell just now, why, you see we do need some hot weather.”
“Like this?”
“Why, certainly! You see this is the greatest corn belt in the country, dear. If it wasn’t for a stretch or two of good corn-growin’ weather like this every summer, the farmers wouldn’t get half a crop, and there’d be a big drop in prosperity.”
“And you’d rather have it hot like this, then?” Lena asked, seeming to find him increasingly strange. “You want the farmers to grow their corn, no matter what happens to your wife?”
“But, my goodness!” he cried, in his perplexity. “I don’t run the weather, Lena! It don’t make any difference how I might want it, the weather just is the way it is. Besides, we don’t mind it so much.”
“Don’t you?” She laughed briefly, and shook her head as though marvelling at the plight in which she found herself, wondering how she had come to it. “No, I suppose you were born and brought up to such weather. I suppose that’s why you didn’t tell me about it before I came here. You probably didn’t realize what this deathly suffocating air might do to the nerves of a human being who’s always lived near the sea. And for your mother to make me stand hours in that oven, trying to talk to all those awful people — —”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 340