Up, up, fair bride, and call
Thy stars from out their several spheres—take
Thy rubies, pearls and diamonds forth, and make
Thyself a constellation of them all.—DONNE.
The first of April was a perfect day. The sky was a canopy of deepest, clearest blue. The sun shone in cloudless splendor. The trees in all the parks were in full leaf or blossom. The grass was of that fresh and tender green only to be seen at this season. The spring flowers were all in bloom, with radiance of color and richness of fragrance. Birds were singing rapturously from every bush and branch.
“A lovely day! Just the day for a wedding!” said Nanny Grandiere, as she threw open the shutters of her bedroom window, that looked out upon one of the most beautiful parks of the city.
Her three sisters, who occupied the same double-bedded room with herself, sleeping two in a bed, jumped up and ran across the room to join her.
“Yes, a beautiful day! ‘Blessed is the bride that the sun shines on,’ you know. Oh! I am so glad we all came here!” said Polly.
“And I am glad it is going to be a quiet wedding, with only ourselves. Oh, girls! I should not have wanted to come if they had been going to have a grand wedding, after the manner of these fashionable city people. I should have been scared to death among so many fine strangers. But now it will be real jolly!” said Peggy.
“And Mr. Force says that as there are enough of us we may have a dance, after the bride and groom have gone,” chimed in Sophy.
“‘After the bride and groom have gone!’” echoed Nanny. “That will be ‘Hamlet’ without the Prince of Denmark.”
“Well, it can’t be helped. We must have the dance without them or not at all. You know the ceremony is to be performed at half-past seven, the refreshments served at eight o’clock, and the bride and groom will leave the house at nine to catch the nine-thirty train to Baltimore, where they will stop. To-morrow morning they go on to New York, and the day after that they sail for Liverpool,” exclaimed Sophy.
“Yes, I know; but I don’t know why it should be so. I think they might just as well stay here and dance all night with us, and take an early train straight through to New York, as to start from here this evening and stop all night in Baltimore. I think it would be kinder in them, considering how far they are going, and how long they will be away.”
“But it would be so fatiguing to Odalite. At least, Mrs. Force said so. This is her plan,” Polly explained.
“Well, we had better hurry and dress. It is very warm in this room. Think of feeling summer heat on the first of April in a room where there is no visible fire! Oh! this heating by steam and lighting by gas is just wonderful!” exclaimed Sophy.
“I like open wood fires and astral lamps best,” said Nanny.
“Oh! but the modern improvements are so clean and tidy!” put in Peggy.
“I wonder what our colored servants would say to them,” mused Polly, aloud.
“And even others—Miss Sibby, for instance. What would Miss Sibby say to gas and steam?” suggested Sophy.
“Oh! I can tell you what she would say,” exclaimed Wynnette, who suddenly entered the room, and mimicked the old lady. “She would say: ‘Them as has the least to do with gas and steam, sez I, comes the best off, sez I.’ That would be her ipse dixit, for she don’t believe in newfangled notions, as she calls our boasted modern improvements.”
“Oh, Wynnette! Already dressed! and we not half ready! We shall be late, I fear,” exclaimed Sophy.
“You will that, if you don’t stir your stumps—I mean accelerate your action,” replied frank Wynnette.
“Well, don’t wait for us. You go down to breakfast, and don’t let them wait. I always lose my senses when I try to dress in a hurry,” said Nanny, sitting down on a hassock to put on her gaiters. “There! I said so! I have gone and put my right foot on my left boot!—I mean, my left foot on my right boot!—I mean——I don’t know what I mean! Please go down, and don’t bother!”
“Don’t go crazy; there’s time enough. Breakfast won’t be ready for half an hour yet,” laughed Wynnette, as she danced out of the room.
The flurried girls composed themselves as well as they could, and completed their toilets. Then they went downstairs to the parlor.
They found all the family and guests assembled.
“I hope we did not keep you waiting,” said Sophy, the eldest sister, after the morning greeting had been exchanged.
“Now, papa, don’t flunk. Beg pardon. I mean, don’t sacrifice truth to politeness. Let me reply. Yes, Miss Grandiere, you did keep us waiting just one minute and a half,” said Wynnette, pointing to the clock on the mantelpiece.
But Mr. Force had already given his arm to Miss Grandiere, and was leading the way to the breakfast room.
The others followed.
It was a merry breakfast. Yet the two happiest ones at the table were the most silent. Leonidas and Odalite neither originated a joke nor laughed at the joke of any other.
“Such is selfishness of love and joy,” whispered Wynnette to Rosemary, who was her next neighbor at the breakfast table.
When the meal was over, the young people—with the exception of the betrothed pair, who were away somewhere mooning by themselves—returned to the parlor, to discuss the duties and pleasures of the day.
“We must decorate the drawing room,” said Wynnette. “No, Messrs. Grandiere and Bayard, you are not to go to the capitol, or the departments, or to the White House, or to the patent office, or to the Smithsonian, or to the arsenal, or to the Navy Yard, or to the United States jail, or to the National Insane Asylum—that, I think, includes ‘the whole unbounded continent’—nor to any other public institution; no, nor on any other sightseeing expedition. You are just to get a Washington directory for your guide, and you are to make the round of all the conservatories in the city, and you are to bring us loads and loads and loads of the very best flowers to be had, and you are to order a marriage bell in orange flowers, with ropes of orange flowers, and you are to order——Take out your tablets, if you have any; if not, tear the margin off the morning paper, and make a memorandum, for I know the weakness of your minds and memories. Now, then you are to order the most æsthetic bouquet in the world for the bride, and you are to order nine of the next most utterly utter for the bridesmaids—for the Lord forbid that the bridesmaids’ bouquets should be equal to that of the bride!”
“Ten bouquets! Nine bridesmaids, you say! Why, I thought—I thought—this was to be a private wedding,” said Roland Bayard, driving his fingers through his red hair.
“And so it is, my dear. We are a very small company of family friends, and that is the very reason why every man-jack and woman-jenny in the company must be an officer. Like the village militia, don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t see, and I don’t understand.”
“Well, then, to come down to the level of your poor little wits, here are ten of us girls—Odalite, Wynnette, Elva, Rosemary, Melina, Erina, Sophy, Nanny, Polly and Peggy. Only one of us—Odalite, to wit—can be the bride, or the captain, say, but all the rest of us mean to be bridesmaids or officers, say!”
“Ah! And where are your rank and file?”
“Oh, the outside world, who are not invited to this entertainment. The officers must not be too familiar with the privates. And we are going to have an exclusive jollification. And now I hope you understand. And you had better be off at once, because we want all the flowers delivered by noon. And don’t attempt to go anywhere or do anything until you have executed this order,” said Wynnette, in conclusion.
Roland Bayard and the two Grandieres walked off.
Then little Elva whispered to her sister:
“Oh, Wynnette, those flowers will cost from thirty to fifty dollars. You know what awful prices mamma had to pay for decorating her rooms every time she had a party.”
“Well, what then?” inquired the thoughtless one.
“Why, those poor fellows will have to pay for them, and I don’t believe they have five dollars apiece.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Wynnette. “What a scatter-brain I am!”
And she ran out without bonnet or shawl, and was so fortunate as to catch the three young men, who had stopped at the gate to buy a paper from a newsboy.
“Say!” called Wynnette. “Come here, you Roland!”
And he came.
“I forgot to tell you. Have those flowers charged to my father. Mr. Abel Force, you know. They will understand. They have all supplied mamma for all her parties. You understand?”
“Yes, I understand. All right,” said Roland.
And Wynnette ran into the house, and Roland walked on and joined his companions.
But the deceitful, double-dealing young spendthrift never had bud or blossom charged to his host, but paid cash for all the flowers, thus making a deep hole in his savings of three years.
The day was spent in making the small final preparations for the wedding.
At noon the flowers came, fresh and blooming and fragrant, because just taken from their stalks. Besides the bouquets, there were—according to orders—“loads and loads and loads” of flowers to decorate the drawing room and the supper table.
The girls carefully laid away the bouquets, and went to work to decorate the rooms.
In the sliding doors between the front and rear drawing rooms they made an arch with festoons of orange blossoms, and from the middle of the arch hung a beautiful wedding bell of orange flowers. Under this they meant that the marriage ceremony should be performed. They meant to have everything their own way, or, to tell the literal truth, Wynnette meant to have everything her way, and to have every girl back her in that determination.
The arch finished, they decorated every available part of the room with flowers, until the place looked less like an apartment in a dwelling house than a bower in fairyland.
When their labor of love was completed the girls joined the family at an early dinner.
And when this was over they flew away to dress for the evening.
Still Wynnette had everything her own way. It was she who had decided that the six girls from the country should be enlisted as extra bridesmaids, “because,” she said, “it will please them, and give them something pleasant to talk about for a long time to come.”
She had said to her mother:
“They are going to be Odalite’s bridesmaids.”
And Mrs. Force had not objected. It was a matter of such little import.
She had said to Odalite:
“These girls have all brought their white organdie dresses, white roses, white gloves, and the rest, to wear to the wedding! And they want to stand up with you and smile every time you smile, and sigh every time you sigh, and howl every time you cry! You know! they want to back you in this game! I mean they wish to be and—they are to be your supernumerary bridesmaids!” said Wynnette, emphasizing the last clause, so there might be no possible misunderstanding.
Odalite was so happy that in answer to this she only quoted from Edmund Lear’s delicious “Book of Nonsense”:
“I don’t care,
All the birds in the air
Are welcome to roost in my bonnet.”
And so it was settled that there were to be one groomsman and nine bridesmaids. A most unheard-of arrangement; but as Wynnette emphatically declared—there was no law against it.
And now the girls were off to their rooms to dress for the occasion.