The White Lady (28 page)

“Say, those kind of pieces are real fine, but I jest believe she’d like it better if we put real flowers around. When I come over here, I stopped and asked her what her idea was, and she said she wanted you to fix it the way you liked it, but she would suggest to just have it simple flowers and greens. She likes the flowers that grow in your gardens. Why don’t you take honeysuckles, and roses, and white pinies, and white hollyhocks, and jest fill it up all white and green in back of the pulpit?”

And so they planned. Jennie contrived to keep things within some bounds, though the result perhaps was not just what it would have been had Constance done it herself. But Constance loved the people, and it mattered not to her.

The day was perfect, the sky shining clear, and the birds doing their best at the wedding march.

They carried old Mrs. Wetherill over early in a wheeled chair and made her comfortable close to a bower of white roses, and her old eyes were not so critical as to distinguish between roses and white hollyhocks and candytuft. She had reached the stage of her journey when she was quite satisfied with things as they were and did not wish to pull them to pieces because they were not just as she had always had them.

Jimmy stood at the front gate in a new suit earned by himself and bought in New York by Constance. He regarded the village boys on the curb in front of the church across the road with a great look of condescension. They openly admired and envied Jimmy. Why had not
they
carried Miss Constance’s bundles that day a year ago instead of squabbling over marbles? Then they might, too, have walked in fine array.

At five minutes before ten the train from the city came in. Jimmy looked at the passengers scornfully. Poor things, they had to travel on! They had no knowledge of the great event about to come off, and they had no right to look so carelessly over at the crowd already standing about the church. They were outsiders.

Two men were getting off. They were elegantly dressed; at least one was. The other had a slippery look to Jimmy.

They glanced about to get their bearings. Then the more elegant of the two pointed over toward Jimmy and the Cedars.

“They’ll find they’re mistook this time,” murmured the boy to himself. “No late breakfasts ner chops to be had here anymore!” Jimmy stood up straight, on guard. He enjoyed the situation. He hoped they would come over. He would show them!

They came. Jimmy watched every step with indolent disdain and studied indifference.

But they were not noticing Jimmy, and he planted himself more apparently in the gateway.

The two men were closer now. Jimmy eyed the elegant one keenly. Could it be? Yes, it was! His heart throbbed painfully. Here was possible danger, and a chance to show himself a hero. Here, yes, surely here was the old lover returned, just on the brink of the marriage, five minutes before the ceremony, come to stop the marriage and claim his own! It was like the yellow-covered book that Jimmy’s sister borrowed from Eliza Whitmeyer last winter.

The evening before, Morris Thayer, lately arrived from Europe, where he had gone to heal his rudely broken heart, had attended a dinner at the home of one of his mother’s friends, where, he was told, two heiresses of unimpeachable beauty would be present. He had found the heiresses already well appropriated, and the only other young woman present very dull and reported poor; so, when his old friend, the Wetherill’s lawyer, entered the room, he settled down to a business talk with him.

It was just after the ladies had left the table that the lawyer turned to him.

“By the way, Thayer, you’ll be glad to hear the good news. You’re an old friend of the Wetherills. I suppose you knew of their misfortunes. I was not supposed to tell, but you, of course, were in the secret. Well, I have just found out that some old stock that Constance’s father bought years ago—stock in a silver mine—has risen in value and is pouring in untold wealth. She will have more than ever before. I had an opportunity to buy the old home, which was sold three months ago, and I bought it. I’ve just sent her word about it this evening. She had no idea there was any such chance.”

Now indeed was Morris Thayer on the alert. He had spent a great deal of money on his trip abroad, having lost heavily in gambling, and he had come home determined to find and marry a rich wife. If it should prove to be Constance, he would be well pleased. Somehow he could not quite forget her.

His thick skin had long ago healed over any wounds she might have given his conceit, and he really had no fear but that he might win her if he only put himself out to do so. He had not half tried before, of course, but now it would be something worthwhile, and—he would take his man with him!

So he telephoned from the club to his man to pack a suitcase and bag, and meet him at the station in time for the next train going Constance-ward; for he reasoned that, if the lawyer had but just written Constance, he might reach her before the letter and so not seem to have come for financial reasons.

But when Thayer and his man reached the station, they found that the timetable had been changed that very week and that the late train was fifteen minutes earlier than they had supposed and had already left the station.

The next train was very early in the morning, but hard as it seemed, Thayer decided to take it. The lawyer had said there was a great deal, millions, perhaps, in that silver mine. It was worthwhile. He had never taken so much trouble before for anyone. Constance certainly ought to appreciate it. He began to feel a little abused.

But he did it—slept all night at the club and, irritable and sleepy, was driven in a taxi to the station at the last minute and was put on the train by his man, who always carried out his orders even if it did go against the grain.

But the unusually early rising and the unpleasant journey had not improved Morris Thayer’s temper. He was disposed to growl at everybody and everything. When he finally reached his destination, he felt like sitting down in the road like a spoiled child and demanding that Constance come out to him. But his man had his orders, and together they walked toward the Cedars.

They paid no more attention to Jimmy than if he were a cobweb stretched across the path. They would have gone right over him or brushed him away like a fly. But Jimmy bristled all over with fear and wrath and protectorship.

“This is private property, sir. You can’t come in here that way.”

“Isn’t this a tearoom, kid? What are you talkin’ ’bout? Get out o’ the way!” responded the valet, giving Jimmy a shove from the path. Morris Thayer had confided the whole story of his former visit. It was always best to give his man every fact in the case, and then he knew what to do. He felt now that the man had showed remarkable brilliancy in recalling this fact about the tearoom. He never would have thought of it if he had been alone.

“No, this here ain’t no tearoom anymore. It’s private property. The Wetherills lives here.”

The man looked significantly at his master. The tearoom was already a thing of the past! Had the news of the silver mine, then, preceded them?

“Well, sonny,” said the man, taking a new line, “it’s Miss Wetherill we’ve come to see. This gentleman is a dear old friend of hers. Just you step aside. I know what I’m about.”

“Not much he ain’t no dear old friend,” said Jimmy irreverently, standing his ground, “and she can’t see him. She’s very much took up with other things at present.
She’s engaged!
” He added the last two words in sudden remembrance of what Constance had taught him to say when he had waited upon the door for her sometimes.

“Well, that’s all right, sonny; you jest run along in and tell her who’s here, and she’ll see us all right.”

Jimmy eyed the house furtively. The car was standing at the side door, behind a cedar. Jimmy could see the minister already in the little chapel door, glancing over. It was time the bride was coming. Could he parley a little longer? Then he caught a glimpse of a white dress, a vision of a cloudlike veil, and he drew a sigh of relief. A moment more and all would be safe. He would hold the fort until she was in the church.

“Well, I s’pose you ken see her ef you wait long ’nough. At present there’s a wedding goin’ to be in about a minute, and she’s got to be at it. I can’t break in on weddings,” said Jimmy philosophically, watching the steady progress of the car down the cedar-lined drive a few paces from them.

“A wedding?” said Morris Thayer. “Whose wedding?” he asked sharply, suddenly suspicious.

The car had reached the side door of the church now.

Jimmy eyed the man warily.

“Why, the minister’s wedding, ’course.”

“Aw! The minister’s!” said Morris Thayer disinterestedly, dropping his eyeglass.

“What’s that got to do with Miss Wetherill, kid?” sneered the man. “Get out o’ the way. We want to see Miss Wetherill.”

“Well, she ain’t here,” said Jimmy, leisurely stepping aside and waving his hand magnanimously, “but ef you want to see her so awful bad, you kin swing on the gate till you see her go by or step over to the weddin’ an’ look at her. She’s in the church by now, an’ I reckon you’ll find her easy ’nough, ef you know her so terrible well. Anyhow, I’m goin’ over, an’ you kin come, too, ef you like.”

With which astonishing invitation Jimmy vanished into the crowd and was soon worming himself to the front of the church, breathless, and feeling himself a hero and a diplomat. Those two men could never get inside the church in time to forbid the marriage now, for the strange minister’s voice was already repeating those mystical sentences that would make Constance Wetherill and the minister one.

Hardly knowing what to do, the two men elbowed their way through the crowd and struggled into the church just in time to hear the words, “What God hath joined together let not man put asunder,” and Jimmy, turning a triumphant, searching eye for two visitors, saw them as they caught sight of the bride’s smiling face when she came down the aisle, leaning on the arm of her husband.

And so it was that Morris Thayer attended Constance Wetherill’s wedding.

In deep discomfiture he wended his way home without having revealed himself to the bride, and magnanimously covered his defeat by sending her a solid silver punch bowl as a wedding present.

GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL (1865–1947) is known as the pioneer of Christian romance. Grace wrote over one hundred faith-inspired books during her lifetime. When her first husband died, leaving her with two daughters to raise, writing became a way to make a living, but she always recognized storytelling as a way to share her faith in God. She has touched countless lives through the years and continues to touch lives today. Her books feature moving stories, delightful characters, and love in its purest form.