Читать книгу A Lantern in her Hand - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 11

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They were married on a winter's day of 1865, when Abbie was not quite nineteen and Will was twenty-three. The day was mild, even warm, a phenomenon for that time of year. "A weather-breeder," every one called it. A few men shed their coats and worked in their shirtsleeves during the middle of the day, so that they might tell of it in years to come.

Maggie Mackenzie and Abbie and Mary set the furniture out of the log house, so there would be room for the guests. Janet's two children were designated as a committee to keep the chickens off the various pieces, but so excited were the youngsters over the elaborate culinary preparations, that during a period of the abandonment of their posts, an old hen flew up on top of the high boy and laid an egg in the work-basket.

Abbie had made two new dresses from cloth sent out from Chicago. One was a wine-colored merino, the other a brown alpaca, both made fashionably full over hoop-skirts, with panniers at the side. A new little hat, the shape of a butter-bowl, with ribbon bows on it, added much to her pride.

Toward evening of the great day, Abbie was all of a-flutter because there were so many things to do. There was still water to be heated in a boiler on the stove and the wash-tub to be brought in for her bath. She had to skim a pan of milk, so that she could make the skin of her face and hands soft with cream. And she nearly forgot the flour she was to brown in the oven with which to powder her body. Basil, fifteen now, helped take the hot water on its perilous journey up the loft ladder with the saplings nailed across for steps, and lifted up the wooden tub on his strong young shoulder.

In spite of the unusually warm day, it was a little chilly for one's ablutions in the loft room, but Abbie was young and vigorous and used to it. She put on her muslin chemise and pantalets and her tight little stays, holding her breath until she could lace them so that her two hands could almost span her waist. Into her bosom she slipped a little netting sack of dried rose petals, which smelled faintly and tantalizingly of by-gone Junes. Then over her head she dropped and fastened the long collapsible hoop-skirt, with its nineteen bands of white covered wires. There were three white muslin petticoats, starched almost to chinaware stiffness and ruffled to the knees. Abbie and her mother had hemmed seventy-two yards of ruffles by hand. Grandma Deal had one of the Howe stitching machines, but not all families could afford one. Then, at last, she put on her wine-colored merino with its countless rows of flutings of the same material and side panniers.

She was patting her hair into place and pulling out the long shoulder curl, when her mother came puffingly, slowly, up the loft ladder. Mother was getting old now. She was forty-seven,--heavy and placid. Her fat round face in its white cap with strings tied under her two chins, appeared in the loft opening. Abbie went over to her and took her hand, so that she would not fall. She saw that her mother had the calf-skin covered box in her hand.

It was several moments before Maggie Mackenzie could talk, puffingly, after the climb. "Abbie, I want ye to have the pearls. I'm savin' the fan for Mary. Janet has the breast-pin, you know, and Belle the shawl. Belle always stuck 'n' hung fer the shawl. And the pearls are fer you. Ye'll ne'er starve as long as ye have 'em." She opened the little hairy-skinned chest and took out a small velvet box and from it the pearls themselves. She twined them through her short stubby fingers, their creamy shimmer incongruous in the plump peasant hand. "They were Basil's fine mother's. After she died, . . . Basil gave 'em to me in the days of wealth. Sure, but it wasn't the wealth that brought us happiness. Many's the time I've hated it . . . longin' for a little house somewhere, . . . out of the wind 'n' rain, . . . 'n' not many things at all, at all. . . ."

There were tears in Abbie's brown eyes when she took them. She held their creamy luster in the palm of her firm young hand. Into her mind came that old admiration for Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie. The touch of the jewels seemed to bring her near, to call up the vision of the lovely lady who was wearing them in the wide gold frame,--the lovely lady with the sweeping velvet and the long flowing plume and the fingers that tapered at the ends. Some day she was going to be like her. Some day she, too, would be lovely and gracious and wealthy. All of life was before her. All the future was hers. And that future now held Will, with his steady gray eyes,--Will Deal who was like a quiet harbor. Song, soft and meltingly tender came to her lips:

"Oh, the Lady of the Lea, Fair and young and gay was she,"

She held the pearls up to the wine-colored merino and looked in the small oblong glass.

"Beautiful exceedingly, The Lady of the Lea."

Then she turned to her mother. Her face was flushed, tender. "Thank you, Mother, . . . so much, . . . I'll keep them always. But with the dark dress and the high neck, . . . I'll just not wear them to-night. After awhile when Will and I are wealthy, I'll wear them. And maybe we'll have, . . ." Some reticences existing at the time, the blood swept Abbie's face, ". . . maybe we'll have a daughter some day and she can wear them on her wedding night, . . . in white satin . . . and all the things that go with it . . ."

Abbie swept across the dingy loft room, her hoops swinging in wiry bounces. She knelt down by her mother's chair, her skirts forming a huge circular mound, and laid her head against the older woman's. "And besides, Mother, you understand, don't you . . . when you follow your heart you don't need pearls to make you happy?"

It was time now. Abbie went down the ladder with the saplings nailed across for steps. She had to go backward so that her hoops could navigate the descension with some degree of modesty. The fiddlers were playing, "The Girl I Left Behind Me." Will, looking big and fine and handsome, was there in the black suit Grandma Deal had made him. Grandpa Deal, with his one arm and the kindly twinkle in his ice-blue eyes, was there,--joking. Grandma Deal, in a black cap with black strings tied under the face that was covered with the faint tracing of hosts of wrinkles, was there. She was nervous, fretful, scolding. Why didn't the men stand back? Why didn't they shut that door? Where was that preacher keeping himself? A thousand mental worries like a thousand gnats irritating the peace of her mind. Whole families had come in wagons. Regina Deal and her beau and Dr. and Mrs. Matthews were the only ones who had come in high-top buggies. When the doctor and his wife came in, there was a little buzz of excitement, some whispering that they wondered whether or not it was true that young Dr. Ed had wanted Abbie.

A solemn hush fell on the company.

"Inasmuch as we are gathered here together in the sight of the Lord." Suddenly, Abbie wanted to halt the ceremony. There seemed nothing in her mind but that odd thought of a wind rushing by, a wind she could not stop,--Time, going by,--Time which she could not stay. Stop Time for a minute, until she could think what queer thing was happening to her.

"Do you take this woman, . . . sickness, . . . health, . . . 'til death, . . ." What a queer thing to talk about now,--death,--when it was life that was before them. ". . . this man . . . lawfully wedded husband . . . ?"

"I do." But, oh Will . . . . Will . . . who are you? Do I know you?

And then, quite suddenly, Abbie Mackenzie was Abbie Deal. The fiddlers played "Money Musk," and "Turkey in the Straw." The company danced,--square dances of intricate design. Grandpa Deal wanted to take a partner, but Grandma Deal said no, it was foolish for an old man, fifty-five. But Maggie O'Conner Mackenzie danced,--alone, lightly and puffingly, in the middle of the floor, to:

"Oh the days of the Kerry dancing, Oh the days when my heart was young."

There were biscuits and chickens and cakes and cider to be eaten from tables formed by putting long boards over saw-horses. And then, more dancing.

Will Deal's dark serious face bent low above Abbie's creamy-petaled, flushed one. A long row of love-apples stood in the window.