The Man Between, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [the snowy day read aloud txt] 📗

how her innocent kindness had been misconstrued; and in each case she could imagine the conversation that took place, and the subsequent bestowal of pitying, scornful or angry feeling that would insensibly find its way to her consciousness without any bird of the air to carry it.

She felt, too, that reprisals of any kind were out of the question. They were not only impolitic, they were difficult. Her father had an aversion to Dora, and was likely to seize the first opportunity for requesting Ethel to drop the girl's acquaintance. Ruth also had urged her to withdraw from any active part in the wedding, strengthening her advice with the assurance that when a friendship began to decline it ought to be abandoned at once. There was only her grandmother to go to, and at first she did not find her at all interested in the trouble. She had just had a dispute with her milkman, was inclined to give him all her suspicions and all her angry words--"an impertinent, cheating creature," she said; and then Ethel had to hear the history of the month's cream and of the milkman's extortion, with the old lady's characteristic declaration:

"I told him plain what I thought of his ways, but I paid him every cent I owed him. Thank God, I am not unreasonable!"

Neither was she unreasonable when Ethel finally got her to listen to her own serious grievance with Dora.

"If you will have a woman for a friend, Ethel, you must put up with womanly ways; and it is best to keep your mouth shut concerning such ways. I hate to see you whimpering and whining about wrongs you have been cordially inviting for weeks and months and years."

"Grandmother!"

"Yes, you have been sowing thorns for yourself, and then you go unshod over them. I mean that Dora has this fine clergyman, and Fred Mostyn, and her brother, and mother, and father all on her side; all of them sure that Dora can do no wrong, all of them sure that Ethel, poor girl, must be mistaken, or prudish, or jealous, or envious."

"Oh, grandmother, you are too cruel."

"Why didn't you have a few friends on your own side?"

"Father and Ruth never liked Dora. And Fred--I told you how Fred acted as soon as he saw her!"

"There was Royal Wheelock, James Clifton, or that handsome Dick Potter. Why didn't you ask them to join you at your lunches and dances? You ought to have pillared your own side. A girl without her beaux is always on the wrong side if the girl with beaux is against her."

"It was the great time of Dora's life. I wished her to have all the glory of it."

"All her own share--that was right. All of your share, also--that was as wrong as it could be."

"Clifton is yachting, Royal and I had a little misunderstanding, and Dick Potter is too effusive."

"But Dick's effusiveness would have been a good thing for Fred's effusiveness. Two men can't go on a complimentary ran-tan at the same table. They freeze one another out. That goes without saying. But Dora's indiscretions are none of your business while she is under her father's roof; and I don't know if she hadn't a friend in the world, if they would be your business. I have always been against people trying to do the work of THEM that are above us. We are told THEY seek and THEY save, and it's likely they will look after Dora in spite of her being so unknowing of herself as to marry a priest in a surplice, when a fool in motley would have been more like the thing."

"I don't want to quarrel with Dora. After all, I like her. We have been friends a long time."

"Well, then, don't make an enemy of her. One hundred friends are too few against one enemy. One hundred friends will wish you well, and one enemy will DO you ill. God love you, child! Take the world as you find it. Only God can make it any better. When is this blessed wedding to come off?"

"In two weeks. You got cards, did you not?"

"I believe I did. They don't matter. Let Dora and her flirtations alone, unless you set your own against them. Like cures like. If the priest sees nothing wrong----"

"He thinks all she does is perfect."

"I dare say. Priests are a soft lot, they'll believe anything. He's love-blind at present. Some day, like the prophet of Pethor, [1] he will get his eyes opened. As for Fred Mostyn, I shall have a good deal to say about him by and by, so I'll say nothing now."

[Footnote 1: One of the Hebrew prophets.]

"You promised, grandmother, not to talk to me any more about Fred."

"It was a very inconsiderate promise, a very irrational promise! I am sorry I made it--and I don't intend to keep it."

"Well, it takes two to hold a conversation, grandmother."

"To be sure it does. But if I talk to you, I hope to goodness you will have the decency to answer me. I wouldn't believe anything different." And she looked into Ethel's face with such a smiling confidence in her good will and obedience, that Ethel could only laugh and give her twenty kisses as she stood up to put on her hat and coat.

"You always get your way, Granny," she said; and the old lady, as she walked with her to the door, answered, "I have had my way for nearly eighty years, dearie, and I've found it a very good way. I'm not likely to change it now."

"And none of us want you to change it, dear. Granny's way is always a wise way." And she kissed her again ere she ran down the steps to her carriage. Yet as the old lady stepped slowly back to the parlor, she muttered, "Fred Mostyn is a fool! If he had any sense when he left England, he has lost it since he came here."

Of course nothing good came of this irritable interference. Meddling with the conscience of another person is a delicate and difficult affair, and Ruth had already warned Ethel of its certain futility. But the days were rapidly wearing away to the great day, for which so many other days had been wasted in fatiguing worry, and incredible extravagance of health and temper and money--and after it? There would certainly be a break in associations. Temptation would be removed, and Basil Stanhope, relieved for a time from all the duties of his office, would have continual opportunities for making eternally secure the affection of the woman he had chosen.

It was to be a white wedding, and for twenty hours previous to its celebration it seemed as if all the florists in New York were at work in the Denning house and in St. Jude's church. The sacred place was radiant with white lilies. White lilies everywhere; and the perfume would have been overpowering, had not the weather been so exquisite that open windows were possible and even pleasant. To the softest strains of music Dora entered leaning on her father's arm and her beauty and splendor evoked from the crowd present an involuntary, simultaneous stir of wonder and delight. She had hesitated many days between the simplicity of white chiffon and lilies of the valley, and the magnificence of brocaded satin in which a glittering thread of silver was interwoven. The satin had won the day, and the sunshine fell upon its beauty, as she knelt at the altar, like sunshine falling upon snow. It shone and gleamed and glistened as if it were an angel's robe; and this scintillating effect was much increased by the sparkling of the diamonds in her hair, and at her throat and waist and hands and feet. Nor was her brilliant youth affected by the overshadowing tulle usually so unbecoming. It veiled her from head to feet, and was held in place by a diamond coronal. All her eight maids, though lovely girls, looked wan and of the earth beside her. For her sake they had been content with the simplicity of chiffon and white lace hats, and she stood among them lustrous as some angelic being. Stanhope was entranced by her beauty, and no one on this day wondered at his infatuation or thought remarkable the ecstasy of reverent rapture with which he received the hand of his bride. His sense of the gift was ravishing. She was now his love, his wife forever, and when Ethel slipped forward to part and throw backward the concealing veil, he very gently restrained her, and with his own hands uncovered the blushing beauty, and kissed her there at the altar. Then amid a murmur and stir of delighted sympathy he took his wife upon his arm, and turned with her to the life they were to face together.

Two hours later all was a past dream. Bride and bridegroom had slipped quietly away, and the wedding guests had arrived at that rather noisy indifference which presages the end of an entertainment. Then flushed and tired with hurrying congratulations and good wishes that stumbled over each other, carriage after carriage departed; and Ethel and her companions went to Dora's parlor to rest awhile and discuss the event of the day. But Dora's parlor was in a state of confusion. It had, too, an air of loss, and felt like a gilded cage from which the bird had flown. They looked dismally at its discomfort and went downstairs. Men were removing the faded flowers or sitting at the abandoned table eating and drinking. Everywhere there was disorder and waste, and from the servants' quarter came a noisy sense of riotous feasting.

"Where is Mrs. Denning?" Ethel asked a footman who was gathering together the silver with the easy unconcern of a man whose ideas were rosy with champagne. He looked up with a provoking familiarity at the question, and sputtered out, "She's lying down crying and making a fuss. Miss Day is with her, soothing of her."

"Let us go home," said Ethel.

And so, weary with pleasure, and heart-heavy with feelings that had no longer any reason to exist, pale with fatigue, untidy with crush, their pretty white gowns sullied and passe, each went her way; in every heart a wonder whether the few hilarious hours of strange emotions were worth all they claimed as their right and due.

Ruth had gone home earlier, and Ethel found her resting in her room. "I am worn out, Ruth," was her first remark. "I am going to bed for three or four days. It was a dreadful ordeal."

"One to which you may have to submit."

"Certainly not. My marriage will be a religious ceremony, with half a dozen of my nearest relatives as witnesses."

"I noticed Fred slip away before Dora went. He looked ill."

"I dare say he is ill--and no wonder. Good night, Ruth. I am going to sleep. Tell father all about the wedding. I don't want to hear it named again--not as long as I live."


CHAPTER VI

THREE days passed and Ethel had regained her health and spirits, but Fred Mostyn had not called since the wedding. Ruth thought some inquiry ought to be made, and Judge Rawdon called at the Holland House. There he was told that Mr. Mostyn had not been well, and the young man's countenance painfully confessed the same thing.

"My dear Fred, why did you not send us word you were ill?" asked the Judge.

"I had fever, sir, and I feared