IX.--A BISHOP AND A HAY-WAGON

Juliet Marcy's prospective maid-of-honour found Anthony Robeson's best man at her elbow the moment she entered the waiting-room of the big railway station. Now, although she greeted him with a charming little conscious look, there was nothing either new or singular about the quiet rush he had made across the waiting-room the instant he saw her. The rest of the party of twenty people who were going down into the country to the Marcy-Robeson wedding understood it perfectly, although the engagement had not been announced and probably would not be until Wayne Carey should have an income decidedly larger than he had at present.

Judith Dearborn joined the group at once, and Carey reluctantly followed her. Judith had a way of joining groups and of giving her betrothed many impatient half-hours thereby.

"Just think of this," she said to the others. "When I knew Juliet had really given in to Anthony Robeson at last I thought I should be asked to a.s.sist at an impressive church wedding. But here we are going down to what Tony describes as 'a box of a house' in the most rural of suburbs. If it's really as small as he says even twenty people will be a tight fit."

"How in the world did they come to be married there?" asked the sister of the best man. Everybody had been summoned to this wedding so hurriedly and so informally that n.o.body knew much about it.

The son of the Bishop--whose father was going down to perform the ceremony--answered promptly:

"Tony tells me its Juliet's own choice. You see they furnished the house together, with her aunt, Mrs. Dingley; and Juliet fell so in love with it that she must needs be married in it. What's occurred to that girl I don't know. After the Robesons of Kentucky lost their money and everything else but their social standing I thought it was all up with Anthony. But he's plucky. He's made a way for himself, and he's won Juliet somehow. He seems to be a late edition of that obstinate chap who remarked 'I will find a way or make one.' By Jove--he must have made one when he convinced Juliet Marcy that she could be happy in a house where twenty people are a tight fit."

When the train stopped at the small station Judith Dearborn said in Wayne Carey's ear, as he glanced wonderingly from the train: "Is this it? Juliet Marcy must be perfectly crazy!"

"She certainly must," admitted Robeson's best man. But he stifled a sigh.

If Juliet Marcy could do so crazy a thing as to marry Anthony Robeson on the comparatively small salary that young man--brought up to do nothing at all--was now earning, why must Wayne Carey wait for several times that income before he could have Juliet's closest friend? Was there really such a difference in girls?

But at the next instant he was shouting hilariously, and so was everybody else except the Bishop and the Bishop's wife, who only smiled indulgently.

The rest of the party were young people, and their glee brooked no repression. The moment they reached the little platform they comprehended not only that they were coming to a most informal wedding--they were also in for a decidedly novel lark.

Close to the edge of the platform stood a great hay-wagon, cushioned with fragrant hay and garlanded with goldenrod and purple asters. Standing erect on the front, one hand grasping the reins which reached out over a four-in-hand of big, well-groomed, flower-bedecked farm horses, the other waving a triumphant greeting to his friends, was Anthony Robeson, in white from head to foot, his face alight with happiness and fun. He looked like a young king; there could be no other comparison for his splendid outlines as he towered there. And better yet, he looked as he had ever looked, through prosperity and through poverty, like a "Robeson of Kentucky."

Below him, prettier than she had ever been--and that was saying much--her eyes brilliant with the spirit of the day, laughing, dressed also in white, a big white hat drooping over her brown curls, stood Juliet Marcy.

In a storm of salutations and congratulations the guests rushed toward this extraordinary equipage and the radiant pair who were its charioteers.

All regrets over the probable commonplaceness of a small country wedding had vanished.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Standing erect ... one hand grasping the reins ... was Anthony Robeson."]

"Might have known they would do things up in shape somehow," grunted the Bishop's son approvingly. "This is the stuff. Conventionality be tabooed.

They're going to the other extreme, and that's the way to do. If you don't want an altar and candles, and a high-mucky-muck at the organ, have a hay-wagon. _Gee!_--Let me get up here next to Ben Hur and the lady!"

Even the Bishop, sitting with clerical coat-tails carefully parted, his handsome face beaming benevolently from under his round hat, and Mrs.

Bishop, granted by special dispensation a cushion upon the hay seat, enjoyed that drive. Anthony, plying a long, beribboned lash, aroused his heavy-footed steeds into an exhilarating trot, and the hay-wagon, carrying safely its crew of young society people in their gayest mood, swept over the half-mile from the station to the house like a royal barge.

As they drew up a chorus of "Oh's!" not merely polite but sincerely surprised and admiring, recognised the quaint beauty of the little house.

It was no commonplace country home now, though the changes wrought had been comparatively slight. It looked as if it might have stood for years in just this fashion, yet it was as far removed from its primitive characterless condition as may be an artist's drawing of a face upon which he has altered but a line.

Mrs. Dingley and Mr. Horatio Marcy--a pair whose presence anywhere would have been a voucher for the decorum of the most unconventional proceedings--welcomed the party upon the wide, uncovered porch.

"We're going to be married very soon, to have it over," called Anthony.

"But you may explore the house first, so your minds shall be at rest during the crisis. Just don't wander too far away in examining this ancestral mansion. There are six rooms. I should advise your going in line, otherwise complications may occur in the upper hall. Please don't all try to get into the kitchen at once; it can't be done. It will hold Juliet and me at the same time--all the rooms have been stretched to do that--they had to be; but I'm not sure as to their capacity for more. Now make yourselves absolutely at home. The place is yours--for a few hours.

After that it's mine--and Juliet's."

He glanced, laughing, at his bride, as he spoke from where he stood in the doorway. She was on the little landing of the staircase, at the opposite end of the living-room. She looked down and across at him, and nearly everybody in the room--they were thronging through at the moment--caught that glance. She was smiling back at him, and her eyes lingered only an instant after they met his, but her friends all saw. There could be no question that the Juliet Marcy who, since she had laid aside her pinafores, had kept many men at bay, had at last surrendered. As for Anthony----

"Why, he's always been in love with her," said the Bishop's son in the ear of the best man, as in accordance with their host's permission they peeped admiringly in at the little kitchen, "but any idiot can see that he's fairly off his feet now. Ideal condition--eh? Say, this dining-room's great--Jove, it is. I'm going to get asked out here to dinner as soon as they are back. Let's go upstairs. The girls are just coming down--hear 'em gurgling over what they saw?"

Upstairs the best man looked in at the blue-and-white room with eyes which one with penetration might have said were envious. Indeed, he stared at everything with much the same expression. He was the soberest man present.

Ordinarily he could be counted on to enliven such occasions, but to-day his fits of hilarity were only momentary, and during the intervals he was observed by the Bishop's son to be gazing somewhat yearningly into s.p.a.ce with an abstraction new to him.

n.o.body knew just how the moment for the ceremony arrived. But when the survey of the house was over and everybody had instinctively come back to the living-room, the affair was brought about most naturally. The Bishop, at a word from the best man, took his place in the doorway opening upon the porch, which had been set in a great nodding border of goldenrod.

Anthony, making his way among his guests, came with a quiet face up to Juliet and, bending, said softly, "Now, dear?" A hush followed instantly, and the guests fell back to places at the sides of the room. Anthony's best man was at his elbow, and the two went over to the Bishop, to stand by his side. Mr. Marcy moved quietly into his place. Juliet, with Judith, who had kept beside her, walked across the floor, and Anthony, meeting her, led her a step farther to face the Bishop. It was but a suggestion of the usual convention, and Anthony, in his white clothes, surrounded as he was by men in frock-coats, was a.s.suredly the most unconventional bridegroom that had ever been seen. Juliet, too, wore the simplest of white gowns, with no other adornment than that of her own beauty. Yet, somehow, as the guests, grown sober in an instant, looked on and noted these things, there was not one who felt that either grace or dignity was lacking. The rich voice of the Bishop was as impressive as it had ever been in chancel or at altar; the look on Anthony's face was one which fitted the tone in which he spoke his vows; and Juliet, giving herself to the man whose altered fortunes she was agreeing to share, bore a loveliness which made her a bride one would remember long--and envy.

"There, that's done," said the Bishop's son with a gusty sigh of relief, which brought the laugh so necessary to the relaxing of the tension which accompanies such scenes. "Jove, it's a good thing to see a fellow like Robeson safely tied up at last. You never can tell where these quixotic ideas about houses and hay-wagons and weddings may lead. It's a terrible strain, though, to see people married. I always tremble like a leaf--I weigh only a hundred and ninety-eight now, and these things affect me.

It's so frightful to think what might happen if they should trip up on their specifications."

There was a simple wedding breakfast served--by whom n.o.body could tell. It was eaten out in the orchard--a pleasant place, for the neglected gra.s.s had been close cut, and an old-fashioned garden at one side perfumed the air with late September flowers. The trim little country maids who brought the plates came from a willow-bordered path which led presumably to the next house, some distance down the road. There were several innovations in the various dishes, delicious to taste. Altogether it was a little feast which everybody enjoyed with unusual zest. And the life of the party was the bridegroom.

"I never saw a fellow able to scintillate like that at his own wedding,"

remarked the son of the Bishop to the best man's sister. "Usually they are so completely dashed by their own temerity in getting into such an irretrievable situation that they sit with their ears drooping and their eyes bleared. Do you suppose it's getting married in tennis clothes that's done it?"

"Tennis clothes!" cried the best man's sister with a merry laugh. "If you realised how much handsomer he looks than you men in your frock-coats you would not make fun."

"Make fun!" repeated the Bishop's son solemnly. "I joke only to keep my head above water. I never in my life was so completely submerged in the desire to get married instantly and live in a picturesque band-box.

Nothing can keep me from it longer than it takes to find the girl and the band-box. If--if--" his voice dropped to a whisper, and a hint of redness crept into his face which belied his jesting words, "you knew of the girl--I--er--say--should you mind living in a band-box?"

The best man's sister was the sort of girl who can discern when even an inveterate joker is daring to be somewhat more than half in earnest, and she flushed so prettily that the son of the Bishop caught her hand boyishly under the little table. He had hitherto been considered a hopeless old bachelor, so it may readily be seen that, now the contagion had caught him, his was quite a serious case.

X.--ON A THRESHOLD

When it was all over Judith Dearborn went upstairs with Juliet to help her dress for her going away. The maid-of-honour looked about the blue-and-white room with thoughtful eyes.

"This is certainly the dearest room I ever saw," she said. "Oh, Juliet, do you think you really will be happy here?"

"What do you think about it, dear?" asked Juliet.

"Oh--I--well, really--I never imagined that a little old house like this could be made so awfully attractive. But, Juliet--you--you must be very, very fond of Anthony to give up so many things. How well he looked to-day.

Seems to me he's grown gloriously in every way since he--since his family came into so many misfortunes."

Juliet smiled, but answered nothing.

"And you're so different, too. Never in my life would I have imagined you having a wedding like this--and yet it's been absolutely the prettiest one I ever saw. That's a sweet gown to go away in--but it's the simplest thing you ever wore, I'm sure. Juliet, where are you going?"

"We are going to drive through the Berkshires in a cart."

"Juliet Marcy!"

"'Robeson,'" corrected Juliet with a little laugh, but in a tone which it was a pity Anthony could not hear. "Don't forget that. I'm so proud of the name. And I think a drive through the Berkshires will be a perfectly ideal trip."