CHAPTER XIX.

THE WEDDING.

It was on a Monday afternoon in early March. The stage that day had left at the tavern three big trunks, around which were grouped in Anita's room the whole feminine portion of the household. These trunks had been opened, and part of the contents lay upon the floor, looking as though, having been relieved from the pressure of the covers, they had boiled over. Above these shining masses of color Anita hovered like a humming-bird over a bed of honey-laden flowers. This was her _trousseau_, forwarded by Luis from New York. She made a rapid little plunge on this side, a deft little plunge on that, bringing up each time a drop of sweets in the shape of a silk of pale blue, a ribbon of pale pink, or a velvet of lavender--those delicate old-fashioned tints of which we seem to have lost sight in our present carnival of color.

"What lovely, lovely lace!" exclaimed Cousin Kitty, lifting from its box the wedding-veil itself. "It's worth its weight in--diamond-dust! I don't believe the Empress of all the Russias has finer. The Señor Gonsalva must have a mint of money."

Just then Anita came up from one of her dives with a jewel-casket, which, on being opened, displayed such an array of brilliant gems lying in their velvet beds as almost struck the beholders dumb. Not quite, however.

"Oh, what are those?" asked Dolly, hanging over a set of opals, in the hearts of which, a spark of emerald and ruby flamed like imprisoned fire. "And oh what splendid, _splendid_ rubies!" Speech could go no farther, and she contemplated in rapt silence a diamond cross that sparkled and flashed like distant suns. Of a truth, as Cousin Kitty said, the Señor Gonsalva must have a mint of money.

"P'r'aps he's got a diamond mine," Ned contrived to whisper in her ear.

From another of her sudden plunges Anita emerged with a package neatly folded and directed to "Miss Makepeace," the contents of which took that imperturbable lady quite by surprise. On being opened, there slipped from it a black satin dress pattern of wonderful texture--"thick as a board," was Thankful's own descriptive term for it whenever in after-years she talked of it, which was pretty often, as you may suppose.

Other surprises followed quickly on the discovery of the black satin, viz., an India shawl for Mrs. Park, which could _almost_ be drawn through Anita's ruby bracelet, a pearl necklace, and a locket with her monogram in seed-pearls on the back, for Cousin Kitty, a similar one for Dolly, together with a dress pattern of creamy white satin embroidered with rose-buds for the latter, and one of pale pink satin for the former. These were presented to the two in their character as bridesmaids, in which capacity they had consented to serve at the coming wedding, which was to take place about the middle of April.

Having found and presented these packages, Anita stood with clasped hands, wrinkling up her forehead, and apparently much puzzled and perplexed.

"Ah, my good Ned--" she began, when her countenance suddenly cleared. She made a plunge into what might be called the north-east corner of the biggest trunk--it was certainly as big as a moderate state-room on a Sound steamer, and could consistently claim an interest in the points of compass--and brought up therefrom a box, which she presented to Ned with an expression of happy triumph. It contained that one treasure so unspeakably dear to every boyish heart, viz., a watch--a gold watch, at that--a watch that would "go," which cannot be said with truth of every boy's watch--a watch, too, with his monogram in tiny diamonds on the back--and furthermore, a watch with a gold chain attached.

Ned, who had not been able to resist the temptation of being present at the opening of these trunks, which had excited much neighborly curiosity when lifted off the stage that day, but who up to that time had kept somewhat in the background, feeling that it wasn't quite consistent with manly dignity to exhibit too much interest in "clothes," now came forward, blushing with delight, and thanked Anita.

"It's--it's bu--," he stammered, coming, in his confusion, within a hair's-breadth of the contraband word, and then stopping himself and beginning anew. "He's a trump, an' it's no end kind of him; but I guess you told him to, Anita;" and Anita dimpled and laughed, and did not deny it. And with her own brown little hand she took the old watch from his pocket--a watch which he had to wind up four times a day to keep it going, setting it ahead one hour every time it was wound--and replaced it with the gold one, hooking the chain into his button-hole.

"Luis is royal in his gifts," said Cousin Kitty afterwards in a private interview with Aunt Anna. "But ought we to accept them?"

"Ordinarily I should say not," replied Aunt Anna, who was admiring the beauties of her India shawl. And then she laughed, adding, "But in the ordinary course of things such a question isn't often likely to arise. We may accept these, I think, in the spirit in which they are offered. It's a sort of song of praise on Luis's part, you see, the giving of these. It's his way of celebrating the finding of Anita--a pæan of thanksgiving."

"A kind of recitative, you might say," added Cousin Kitty, "with my pearl necklace for high G, and your India shawl for low A. Well, I must say I'm not sorry that such is your decision, Auntie. For though I could have parted with these, if necessary"--looking from the pale pink satin in one hand to the pearl necklace in the other--"I'm very willing to keep them. But what a wedding it's going to be for the old tavern! and in what gorgeous raiment shall the bridesmaids shine, eh, Dotty?" and Dolly, who had been standing by, awaiting with no little anxiety Aunt Anna's decision, gave the creamy satin and the pearl necklace which she held in her arms a little hug of congratulation and possession. _Jubilate!_ they were hers! and she for one was glad that the Señor Gonsalva's pæan of thanksgiving had taken the form it had.

But the opening of the trunks was only the beginning of the end. A busy six weeks ensued. The old tavern was turned topsy-turvy. "It beat the c'nventions," said 'Zekle.

In the kitchen the wedding-cake was made in relays, seven loaves at a time--twenty-eight great fruity loaves in all, with frosting, over which Thankful exhausted her utmost skill in decoration.

In Anita's sunny room, amid the fragrance of her mignonette and the continuous chattering of the white Australian cockatoo, the wedding-clothes were "created," to use Cousin Kitty's own word for it. At first there had been talk of summoning a distinguished dress-maker from Quincy to preside over this department. She had made the gowns of the daughter of the Senator from that district for her _début_ at Washington. But Cousin Kitty vetoed this proposition.

"Let Pella cut them," she said. "Her fits are perfect, and I can tell her all the rest. I've the greatest knack at those things, Auntie, and I should so like to create Penelope's wardrobe."

So Pella, the Byfield dress-maker, whose baptismal name was Experience, came, and Anita was turned into a dummy, and tried on gowns from morning till night, while the two cut and fitted, and pinched in here and let out there, and as each fresh gown was finished, it was hung in the bedroom opening off the dancing-hall, which had been devoted to this purpose, and thither the myriad of callers at the tavern--for news of all these wonderful happenings there had run like wildfire through the town--were taken to view them.

With only one exception they pronounced them the most wonderful array of gowns they had ever set eyes on. Mrs. Davis was that one exception. She had a fictitious friend somewhere--like Sairey Gamp's Mrs. Harris--named Matilda Price. This Matilda Price, according to Mrs. Davis, once had a gown that united in itself all the glories of Anita's whole wardrobe, hearing of which assertion unbelieving Byfield cried out with Betsy Prigg, "I don't believe there's no sich a person."

The bridesmaids' gowns being a sort of side issue only, were to be made some time, and some time proving to be no time, it is a matter of no surprise that Pella sat up till three o'clock on the night preceding the wedding to finish them.

As to the wedding itself, a strictly private ceremony was talked of at first; but this intention becoming known, there arose such a howl of dissent and remonstrance through the length and breadth of Byfield that it was reconsidered. Anita said she would like to have all these people who had been so kind to her at her wedding, so three hundred invitations were issued, which comprised a large part of the inhabitants of the town, which numbered, all told, only about five hundred.

The ceremony was to take place in the dancing-hall, that being the biggest room in the house--the only one, in fact, into which three hundred guests could be comfortably put at one time. Indeed, if it had not been for this big hall, it is more than probable that these three hundred guests would not have been invited.

"And I wish we might have a wedding-bell," Cousin Kitty had remarked when they talked over the arrangements; "but that's past hoping for, I suppose." But on her explaining what she meant by a wedding-bell--a bell made of flowers, to ring down upon the bride after the ceremony--Ned said of course they could have one. "May-flowers enough in the woods t' make a dozen bells, Cousin Kitty."

The May-flower comes early in the land of the Pilgrims, coming often, as did the Pilgrim _Mayflower_ itself, "amidst the storms" and the frosts of a lingering winter. But this year spring came early. The heavy snow which had made the Señor Luis Gonsalva a willing prisoner for a week at the tavern, waiting for the roads to be broken out and made passable, had fled almost as quickly as it had come, before the melting power of the spring sun. Everywhere the grass was springing green in the last of March; the buds on the lilac-bushes at the south door of the tavern were swelling; and the tiger-lilies and none-so-pretties were showing above the brown soil. Bluebirds and robins had made their appearance, and Dolly and Ned were of the opinion that Nature herself was hastening to get on her bridal robes to do honor to the coming wedding. The old people said they "shouldn't wonder" if the grain were waving in the fields, and the apple-trees were pink with bloom, by the nineteenth of April, as they were on that famous day in 1775.

In this general and rapid advance of spring the May-flower was not a whit behind. The week before the wedding it was in its glory, and a score or two of boys and girls, enlisted by Ned, were rifling the woods and fields of this darling of bleak New England.

This was Dolly's first experience in May-flower gathering, but she soon learned where to seek for the shy beauties--under the moist pine-needles and in the shadiest nooks for the pink ones, and in the open fields and wood borders for the white. With only a slight brush of the fingers over the loosely-lying, dry, brown oak-leaves what a wealth of beauty was laid bare!

They brought these by the armful to Cousin Kitty, who carefully placed them in shallow troughs of water in one of those grewsome bins in the cool, dark cellar, to keep until the morning of the wedding, when they should be woven by myriads of helping fingers into the bell of wire which 'Zekle himself had fashioned in the wood-room chamber. These were, indeed, new times for 'Zekle. He never expected to have been called upon "t' build a weddin'-bell," and after he had finished it, its use was a mystery to him. Betty's mother, who, as usual, had been called in with Betty to assist in this avalanche of work so suddenly precipitated into the old tavern, waggled her head over it as something foreign if not heathenish, and Mrs. Davis could find no parallel for it in the experience of Matilda Price; but Thankful was sure that anything originating with Cousin Kitty and approved by Mrs. Park for the pleasure of the Little Madam _must_ be all right, to which irresistible logic Betty's mother at last gave up her doubts.

Luis arrived on the day but one preceding the wedding, and on the evening of the day before the wedding there arrived from Boston a renowned caterer, accompanied by six colored subordinates, and any number of mysterious packages and baskets. The boys who were now hanging continuously about the tavern, envying Ned his superior opportunities, and most of whom were among the invited guests, managed to get a peep into the dining-room where these mysterious baskets were being unladened, and carried home wonderful accounts of what they had seen.

At last the day and the hour arrived, and the guests were assembled early in the hall, awaiting the entrance of the bridal party. At the upper end hung the wedding-bell, filling the room with its fragrance. Near by stood the minister, a grave and courtly gentleman of the old school, whose very presence was a benediction.

The names of the three hundred guests are among the annals of the past. It will be enough to say that almost every one whom you have met in the course of this story was there--all but bedridden Matty and poor palsy-stricken Patty. And yet, strange as it may seem to you, it is a question if among those three hundred there were any who rejoiced more heartily over the Little Madam's restoration to happiness than did these two helpless, hapless creatures, to whom so much of what is supposed to constitute happiness was denied.

In the corner farthest away from the place where the bridal party was to stand, the boys congregated in that gregarious way common to boys. They occasionally exchanged a remark in a hoarse whisper, and now and then one would pinch his neighbor or tread on his toes, feeling safe from the danger of a retaliating blow.

The girls, on the contrary, had placed themselves as near the spot where the party was to stand as etiquette allowed, where they smiled and sparkled, and exchanged whispers, too; and Aunt Debby, looking up into that corner as she came in at the door near the lower end of the hall, said, "Bless 'em!" involuntarily and quite loud. She couldn't help it, they looked as though they were having a so thoroughly good time.

Nannie, who came in with Debby, wore her Marie Stuart lace cap--which Mrs. Park had given her for this very occasion--hind side before, and even Aunt Debby had failed to get on her somewhat dry and ancient "front" exactly straight; but her face beamed with good-will, and she shook all over in that jelly-like way fat people are apt to, as she exchanged smiles and greetings with each of the three hundred individually.

Mr. Emerson was there with his mother, who looked more bizarre in dress than usual, in a white satin, which she had disinterred from some one of those chests where she kept her relics of the past. It was extremely short, displaying a pair of thick blue woollen stockings and low shoes. Over her shoulders she wore a mantle of pea-green gauze, which was crossed in front and fastened behind in a sash-like drapery. As usual, she carried a bag, this time of crimson beads with a purple fringe; and to her cap she had added a bunch of artificial flowers so preposterous in size and color that the merry girls in the corner came near going off into explosions of laughter at the sight of it, and were only restrained by their respect for her really admirable qualities.

But "what a pity," as Cousin Kitty said, "that so excellent a woman should make such a guy of herself!" Well, to be sure, we must not expect to find all the virtues and graces in one bundle.

There chanced to be two guests at this wedding whose presence would have graced any assembly in the land. The mother of the beautiful Emily Marshall had come down for a brief rest, after a brilliant social winter, to drink fresh milk and to recruit on plain country fare, and she had been bidden to the wedding. She was not "the rose," but she was the mother of the rose, and her elegant manners and fine personal presence added not a little to its _éclat_. The other guest was Daniel Webster. He was here only for a brief hour _en route_, but it was an assembly after his own heart, of kindly, plain, but intelligent country-folk, and he enjoyed it accordingly.

"Here they come!" whispered Johnny Tuttle, catching a glimpse of Ned through the open door, and thinking that even for that wonderful gold watch he wouldn't have been in his shoes just then.

For Dolly and Ned were the first to enter, Ned looking very fine in his black velvet suit and scarlet necktie; and as to Dolly--well, the girls fairly devoured her with their eyes, and would have declared her "just too sweet for anything," if they had had the advantages of our modern manner of expressing ourselves. Both looked slightly conscious of the three hundred pairs of eyes, more or less, which were fastened upon them. It _was_ something of an ordeal, it is true, but they acquitted themselves very well.

Cousin Kitty and the brown-eyed doctor followed directly, and then came--ah, everybody held their breath as the tall, dark, handsome man entered, leading his _petite_ bride in bridal white, the filmy lace of her veil enveloping her like a silvery mist.

If the girls in the corner had dared, they would have given vent to their feelings in one prolonged, sighing "O--h!" As it was, they only breathed a little more deeply. And the boys ceased from their pinchings and punchings as the two stopped under the wedding-bell, and the minister came forward to his place in front of them.

The marriage-service is always brief--to the lookers-on--and it was soon over. One incident must not be forgotten. As Anita in her low, sweet voice began the formula, "I, Anita, take thee, Luis," a sob was heard--a queer sob, strangled in its birth apparently. It came from Thankful, who, feeling rather "shook," as she explained afterwards, with the events of the preceding weeks, had taken the precaution to shelter herself behind Mr. Webster's ample proportions; but when, just at that point in the service, she saw Skipper Joe draw the back of his hand across his eyes, it entirely "upsot" her. She escaped from the hall at once, but recovered her equanimity in time to preside over the wedding-cake, arrayed in the glories of her new satin.

The congratulations followed the service--very informal congratulations, but very genuine. Out from their corner fluttered the girls like a covey of gay-plumaged birds, and kissed the bride, and hovered and cooed around her. And up from their corner came the boys in somewhat more awkward fashion, and shook hands shamefacedly with the Little Madam--for to them she would always be that. Then followed the never-to-be-forgotten banquet, with its pyramids of ice-cream--ice-cream was not the every-day thing it is now--its translucent jellies, and luscious fruits from those islands lying midway between North and South America; and last, but not least, its thick slices of wedding-cake, of which each boy ate his to the last crumb, while the girls just tasted theirs, and took the remnant home to dream over.

And so went the Little Madam forth from the shelter of the old tavern.

THE END.

[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]