Part 19 (1/2)
Bernice claimed his attention several moments, then he turned to Lloyd again. ”Do tell me, Miss Lloyd,” he begged, ”what is that wonderfully and fearfully made thing in the front of the pulpit? Is it a doorway or a giant picture-frame? And what part is it to play in the ceremony?”
Lloyd's face dimpled, and an amused smile flashed up at him from the corner of her eye. Then she lowered her long lashes demurely, and seemed to be engrossed with her bunch of roses as she answered him.
”The coquettish thing!” thought Bernice, seeing the glance but not hearing the whisper which followed it.
”s.h.!.+ Don't make me laugh! Everybody is watching to see if the white folks are making fun of things, and I'm actually afraid to look up again for feah I'll giggle. Maybe it's a copy of Eugenia's gate of roses. It looks like the frame of a doahway. Just the casing, you know. Maybe it's a doah of mawning-glories they're going to pa.s.s through. I recognize those flowahs twined all around it. We made them a long time ago for the lamp-shades when the King's Daughtahs had an oystah suppah at the manse.
I made all those purple mawning-glories and Betty made the yellow ones.”
Glancing over his shoulder, he happened to spy a familiar face behind him, the kindly old black face of his uncle's cook.
”Howdy, Aunt Jane!” he exclaimed, with a friendly smile. Then, in a stage whisper, he asked, ”Aunt Jane, can you tell me? Are those morning-glories artificial?”
The old woman wrinkled her face into a knot as she peered in the direction of the pulpit, toward which he nodded. One of the words in his question puzzled her. It was a stranger to her. But, after an instant, the wrinkles cleared and her face broadened into a smile.
”No'm, Mistah Alex. Them ain't artificial flowahs, honey. They's made of papah.”
Again an amused smile stole out of the corner of Lloyd's eye to answer the gleam of mischief in Alex's. Not for anything would she have Aunt Jane think that she was laughing, so her eyes were bent demurely on her roses again. Again Bernice, leaning forward, intercepted the glance and misinterpreted it. When Alex turned to her to repeat Aunt Jane's explanation, she barely smiled, then relapsed into sulky silence.
Finding several other attempts at conversation received with only monosyllables, he concluded that she was not in a mood to talk, and naturally turned again to Lloyd.
He had not been out in the Valley for years, he told her. The last visit he had made to his uncle, old Doctor Shelby, had been the summer that the Shermans had come back to Lloydsboro from New York. He remembered pa.s.sing her one day on the road. She had squeezed through a hole in the fence between two broken palings, and was trying to pull a little dog through after her; a s.h.a.ggy Scotch and Skye terrier.
”That was my deah old Fritz,” she answered, ”and I was probably running away. I did it every chance I had.”
”The next time I saw you,” he continued, ”I was driving along with uncle. I was standing between his knees, I remember, proud as a peac.o.c.k because he was letting me hold the reins. I was just out of kilts, so it was a great honor to be trusted with the lines. When we pa.s.sed your grandfather on his horse, he had you up in front of his saddle, and uncle called out, 'Good morning, little Colonel.'”
These reminiscences pleased Lloyd. It flattered her to think he remembered these early meetings so many years ago. His relations.h.i.+p to the old doctor whom she loved as her own uncle put him on a very friendly footing.
The church filled rapidly, and by the time the seats were crowded and people were jostling each other to find standing-room around the door, a young colored girl in a ruffled yellow dress seated herself at the organ. First she pulled out all the stops, then adjusting a pair of eyegla.s.ses, opened a book of organ exercises. Then she felt her sash in the back, settled her side-combs, and raising herself from the organ bench, smoothed her skirts into proper folds under her. After these preliminaries she leaned back, raised both hands with a grand flourish, and swooped down on the keys.
”Bang on the low notes and twiddle on the high!” laughed Lloyd, under her breath. ”Listen, Mistah Shelby. She's playing the same chord in the ba.s.s straight through.”
”Is that what makes the fearsome discord?” he asked. ”It makes me think of an epitaph I once saw carved on a pretentious headstone in a little village cemetery:
”'Here lies one Who never let her left hand know What her right hand done.'”
”Neithah of Laura's hands will evah find out what the othah one is trying to do,” whispered Lloyd. ”She is supposed to be playing the wedding-march. Hark! There is a familiah note: '_Heah comes the bride_.'
They must be at the doah. Well, I wish you'd look!”
Every head was turned, for the bridal party was advancing. Slowly down the aisle came M'haley, in the pink chiffon gown from Paris. Mom Beck's quick needle had altered it considerably, for in some unaccountable way the slim bodice fas.h.i.+oned to fit Lloyd's slender figure, now fastened around M'haley's waist without undue strain. The skirt, though turned ”hine side befo',” fell as skirts should fall, for the fulness had been s.h.i.+fted to the proper places, and the broad sky-blue sash covered the mended holes in the breadth Lloyd had torn on the stairs.
With her head high, and her armful of flowers held in precisely the same position in which Lloyd had carried hers, she swept down the aisle in such exact imitation of the other maid of honor, that every one who had seen the first wedding was convulsed, and Kitty's whisper about ”Lloyd's understudy” was pa.s.sed with stifled giggles from one to another down both benches.
Ca'line Allison came next, in a white dress and the white slippers that had been thrown after Eugenia's carriage with the rice.
She was flower girl, and carried an elaborate fancy basket filled with field daisies. A wreath of the same snowy blossoms crowned her woolly pate, and an expression of anxiety drew her little black face into a distressed pucker. She had been told that at every third step she must throw a handful of daisies in the path of the on-coming bride, and her effort to keep count and at the same time keep her balance on the high French heels was almost too much for her.
During her many rehearsals M'haley had counted her steps for her: ”One, two, three--_throw_! One, two, three--_throw_!” She had gone through her part every time without mistake, for her feet were untrammelled then, and her flat yellow soles struck the ground in safety and with rhythmic precision. She could give her entire mind to the graceful scattering of her posies. But now she walked as if she were mounted on stilts, and her way led over thin ice. The knowledge that she must keep her own count was disconcerting, for she could not ”count in her haid,” as M'haley had ordered her to do. She was obliged to whisper the numbers loud enough for herself to hear. So with her forehead drawn into an anxious pucker, and her lips moving, she started down the aisle whispering, ”One, two, three--_throw_! One, two, three--_throw_!” Each time, as she reached the word ”throw” and grasped a handful of daisies to suit the action to the word, she tilted forward on the high French heels and almost came to a full stop in her effort to regain her balance.