V
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The double wedding at the Church of Sainte Cicindella was pretty and sufficiently fashionable to inconvenience traffic on Fifth Avenue.
Partly from loyalty, partly from curiosity, the clans of Wayne and Briggs, with their offshoots and social adherents, attended; and they saw Briggs and Wayne on their best behavior, attended by Sudbury Grey and Winsted Forest; and they saw two bridal visions of loveliness, attended by six additional sister visions as bridesmaids; and they saw the poet, agitated with the holy emotions of a father, now almost unmanned, now rallying, spraying the hushed air with sweetness. They saw clergymen and a bishop, and the splendor of stained gla.s.s through which ushers tiptoed. And they heard the subdued rustling of skirts and the silken stir, and the great organ breathing over Eden, and a single artistically-modulated sob from the poet. A good many other things they heard and saw, especially those of the two clans who were bidden to the breakfast at Wayne"s big and splendid house on the southwest corner of Seventy-ninth Street and Madison Avenue.
For here they were piped to breakfast by the boatswain of Wayne"s big seagoing yacht, the _Thendara_--on which brides and grooms were presently to embark for Cairo via the Azores--and speeches were said and tears shed into goblets glimmering with vintages worth prayerful consideration.
And in due time two broughams, drawn by dancing horses, with the azure ribbons aflutter from the head-stalls, bore away two very beautiful and excited brides and two determined, but entirely rattled, grooms. And after that several relays of parents fraternized with the poet and six daughters, and the clans of Briggs and of Wayne said a number of agreeable things to anybody who cared to listen; and as everybody did listen, there was a great deal of talk--more talk in a minute than the sisters of Iole had heard in all their several limited and innocently natural existences. So it confused them, not with its quality, but its profusion; and the champagne made their cheeks feel as though the soft peachy skin fitted too tight, and a number of persistent musical instruments were being tuned in their little ears; and, not yet thoroughly habituated to any garments except pink sunbonnets and pajamas, their straight fronts felt too tight, and the tops of their stockings pulled, and they balanced badly on their high heels, and Aphrodite and Cybele, being too snugly laced, retired to rid themselves of their first corsets.
The remaining four, Lissa, now eighteen; Dione, fifteen; Philodice, fourteen, and Chlorippe, thirteen, found the missing Pleiads in the great library, joyously donning their rose-silk lounging pajamas, while two parlor maids brought ices from the wrecked feast below.
So they, too, flung from them crinkling silk and diaphanous lace, high-heel shoon and the delicate body-harness never fashioned for free-limbed dryads of the Rose-Cross wilds; and they kept the electric signals going for ices and fruits and pitchers br.i.m.m.i.n.g with clear cold water; and they sat there in a circle like a thicket of fluttering pale-pink roses, until below the last guest had sped out into the unknown wastes of Gotham, and the poet"s heavy step was on the stair.
The poet was agitated--and like a humble bicolored quadruped of the Rose-Cross wilds, which, when agitated, sprays the air--so the poet, laboring obesely under his emotion, smiled with a sweetness so intolerable that the air seemed to be squirted full of saccharinity to the point of plethoric saturation.
"My lambs," he murmured, fat hands clasped and dropped before him as straight as his rounded abdomen would permit; "my babes!"
"Do you think," suggested Aphrodite, busy with her ice, "that we are going to enjoy this winter in Mr. Wayne"s house?"
"Enjoyment," breathed the poet in an overwhelming gush of sweetness, "is not in houses; it is in one"s soul. What is wealth? Everything!
Therefore it is of no value. What is poverty? Nothing! And, as it is the little things that are the most precious, so nothing, which is less than the very least, is precious beyond price. Thank you for listening; thank you for understanding. Bless you."
And he wandered away, almost asphyxiated with his emotions.
"I mean to have a gay winter--if I can ever get used to being laced in and pulled over by those dreadful garters," observed Aphrodite, stretching her smooth young limbs in comfort.
"I suppose there would be trouble if we wore our country clothes on Broadway, wouldn"t there?" asked Lissa wistfully.
Chlorippe, aged thirteen, kicked off her sandals and stretched her pretty snowy feet: "They were never in the world made to fit into high-heeled shoes," she declared pensively, widening her little rosy toes.
"But we might as well get used to all these things," sighed Philodice, rolling over among the cushions, a bunch of hothouse grapes suspended above her pink mouth. She ate one, looked at Dione, and yawned.
"I"m going to practise wearing "em an hour a day," said Aphrodite, "because I mean to go to the theater. It"s worth the effort. Besides, if we just sit here in the house all day asking each other Greek riddles, we will never see anybody until Iole and Vanessa come back from their honeymoon and give teas and dinners for all sorts of interesting young men."
"Oh, the attractive young men I have seen in these few days in New York!" exclaimed Lissa. "Would you believe it, the first day I walked out with George Wayne and Iole, I was perfectly bewildered and enchanted to see so many delightful-looking men. And by and by Iole missed me, and George came back and found me standing entranced on the corner of Fifth Avenue; and I said, "Please don"t disturb me, George, because I am only standing here to enjoy the sight of so many agreeable-looking men." But he acted so queerly about it." She ended with a little sigh. "However, I love George, of course, even if he does bore me. I wonder where they are now--the bridal pairs?"
"I wonder," mused Philodice, "whether they have any children by this time?"
"Not yet," explained Aphrodite. "But they"ll probably have some when they return. I understand it takes a good many weeks--to----"
"To find new children," nodded Chlorippe confidently. "I suppose they"ve hidden the cunning little things somewhere on the yacht, and it"s like hunt the thimble and lots and lots of fun." And she distributed six oranges.
Lissa was not so certain of that, but, discussing the idea with Cybele, and arriving at no conclusion, devoted herself to the large juicy orange with more satisfaction, conscious that the winter"s outlook was bright for them all and full of the charming mystery of antic.i.p.ations so glittering yet so general that she could form not even the haziest ideas of their wonderful promise. And so, sucking the sunlit pulp of their oranges, they were content to live, dream, and await fulfilment under the full favor of a Heaven which had never yet sent them aught but happiness beneath the sun.
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VI
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Neither Lethbridge nor Harrow--lately exceedingly important undergraduates at Harvard and now twin n.o.bodies in the employment of the great Occidental Fidelity and Trust Company--neither of these young men, I say, had any particular business at the New Arts Theater that afternoon.
For the play was Barnard Haw"s _Att.i.tudes_, the performance was private and intensely intellectual, the admission by invitation only, and between the acts there was supposed to be a general _causerie_ among the gifted individuals of the audience.
Why Stanley West, president of the Occidental Trust, should have presented to his two young kinsmen the tickets inscribed with his own name was a problem, unless everybody else, including the elevator boys, had politely declined the offer.
"That"s probably the case," observed Lethbridge. "Do we go?"
"Art," said Harrow, "will be on the loose among that audience. And if anybody can speak to anybody there, we"ll get spoken to just as if we were sitting for company, and first we know somebody will ask us what Art really is."
"I"d like to see a place full of atmosphere," suggested Lethbridge.
"I"ve seen almost everything--the Cafe Jaune, and Chinatown, and--you remember that joint at Tangier? But I"ve never seen atmosphere. I don"t care how thin it is; I just want to say that I"ve seen it when the next girl throws it all over me." And as Harrow remained timid, he added: "We won"t have to climb across the footlights and steal a curl from the author, because he"s already being sheared in England. There"s nothing to scare you."
Normally, however, they were intensely afraid of Art except at their barbers", and they had heard, in various ways as vague as Broad Street rumors, something concerning these gatherings of the elect at the New Arts Theater on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, where unselfish reformers produced plays for Art"s sake as a rebuke to managers who declined to produce that sort of play for anybody"s sake.
"I"ll bet," said Harrow, "that some thrifty genius sent Stanley West those tickets in a desperate endeavor to amalgamate the aristocracies of wealth and intellect!--as though you could shake "em up as you shake a c.o.c.ktail! As though you"d catch your Uncle Stanley wearing his richest Burgundy flush, sitting in the orchestra and talking _Arr Noovo_ to a young thing with cheek-bones who"d pinch him into a c.o.c.ked hat for a contribution between the acts!"
"Still," said Lethbridge, "even Art requires a wad to pay its license.
Isn"t West the foxy Freddie! Do you suppose, if we go, they"ll sting us for ten?"
"They"ll probably take up a collection for the professor," said Harrow gloomily. "Better come to the club and give the tickets to the janitor."
"Oh, that"s putting it all over Art! If anybody with earnest eyes tries to speak to us we can call a policeman."
"Well," said Harrow, "on your promise to keep your mouth shut I"ll go with you. If you open it they"ll discover you"re an appraiser and I"m a broker, and then they"ll think we"re wealthy, because there"d be no other reason for our being there, and they"ll touch us both for a brace of come-ons, and----"
"Perhaps," interrupted the other, "we"ll be fortunate enough to sit next to a peach! And as it"s the proper thing there to talk to your neighbor, the prospect--er--needn"t jar you."
There was a silence as they walked up-town, which lasted until they entered their lodgings. And by that time they had concluded to go.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
VII
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So they went, having nothing better on hand, and at two o"clock they sidled into the squatty little theater, shyly sought their reserved seats and sat very still, abashed in the presence of the ma.s.sed intellects of Manhattan.