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Grace Harlowe's Problem

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<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2><h3>THE NEW YEAR’S WEDDING</h3> It was New Year’s, and Anne Pierson’s wedding night. At half-past seven the ceremony linking her life forever to that of her school-day friend, David Nesbit, was to be performed in the beautiful old stone church on Chapel Hill which, in company with her chums, she had faithfully attended during her years spent in Oakdale. Anne had, at first, steadily refused to countenance the idea of a church wedding. She was a quiet, demure little soul, who, aside from her work, detested publicity. It was Mrs. Gray’s wish, however, to see the girl she had befriended married in the church which bore the memorial window to the other Anne, her daughter, who had died in her girlhood. So Anne had yielded to that wish. Although Grace was Anne’s dearest friend, she had insisted that Miriam should be her maid of honor. Privately she had said, “I’d rather be a bridesmaid with Nora and Jessica. You know there were only four of us in the beginning.” It had also been decided that in spite of the fact that Jessica and Nora were really eligible to the position of matrons of honor, that phase of wedding etiquette should, for once, be disregarded, and the three friends who had welcomed Anne as a fourth to their little fold should serve as bridesmaids and be dressed precisely alike. “It was,” declared Anne, who heartily despised form, “as though they were still three girls together, with husbands in the dim and distant future.” It was to be a yellow and white wedding, therefore the gowns they had chosen were of white silk net over pale yellow satin, and very youthful in effect. Miriam’s gown was a wonderful gold tissue, which made her appear like the princess in some old fairy tale, while Anne, contrary to tradition, had not chosen white satin. Her wedding dress was of soft, exquisite white silk, clouded with white chiffon, and was much better suited to her quiet type of loveliness than satin could possibly have been. Mrs. Gray, who was to give the bride away, wore a gown of her favorite lavender satin, and bustled cheerfully about the Piersons’ living room, in which the feminine half of the bridal party had gathered until time to drive to the church, where Anne was to play the leading part in a new and infinitely wonderful drama. Anne’s mother had insisted that it should be Mrs. Gray, rather than herself, who gave Anne into David Nesbit’s keeping. Always a shy, retiring woman, she had shrunk from the idea of appearing prominently before a church full of persons, many of whom were strangers to her. Dearly as she loved her talented daughter, she preferred to sit quietly beside Mary, her older daughter, in the place of honor reserved for the members of the families of the bridal party. She and Mrs. Gray had discussed the matter at length, and she had been so insistent that the former, as Anne’s friend and benefactor, should give away the bride that Mrs. Gray, secretly delighted, had consented to her request. “Anne makes a darling bride, doesn’t she?” praised Nora, lifting a fold of the veil of exquisite lace, Mrs. Gray’s wedding veil, by the way, and peering lovingly into her friend’s faintly flushed face. Anne smiled and reached out a slim little hand to Nora. She was occupying the center of the living room while her four friends, Mrs. Gray, her mother, Miss Southard and Mary Pierson hovered solicitously about her. “How dear you all are to me.” She held out her arms as though to clasp her friends in one loving embrace. “I am so glad now that I am going to have a real church wedding. I thought at first it would be nicer to be quietly married and slip away without fuss and feathers, but now I know that it is my sacred duty to my friends and to David to play my new part, as I’ve always played my other parts, in public.” “I always knew that Anne and David would be married some day,” declared Grace wisely. “I believe David fell in love with Anne the very first time he saw her. Don’t you remember Anne, we met him outside the high school, and he asked us to come to his aeroplane exhibition?” “I remember it as well as though it happened yesterday,” Anne’s musical voice vibrated with a tenderness called forth by the memory of that girlhood meeting with the man of men. “Those days seem very far away to me now,” remarked Miriam Nesbit. “I feel as though I’d been grown up for ages.” “I don’t feel a bit grown up. It seems only yesterday since I ran races and tore about our garden with Captain, our good old collie,” laughed Grace. “I’m like Peter Pan. I don’t want to, and can’t, grow up. And I shall never marry.” She glanced about her circle of friends with an almost challenging air. She looked so radiantly young and pretty in her dainty frock that simultaneously the thought occurred to them all, “Poor Tom.” Yet in their hearts, even to Mrs. Gray, they could find no fault with Grace’s straightforward words. If she were almost cruelly indifferent to Tom as a lover, she had the virtue at least of being absolutely honest. Even Mrs. Gray admired and respected her candor. “Did you ever see anything more beautiful than Anne’s and Miriam’s bouquets?” broke in Miss Southard, with the intent of leading away from a not wholly happy subject. Miriam held her bouquet at arm’s length and eyed it with admiration. It was composed of pale yellow orchids and lilies of the valley, while Anne’s was a shower of orange blossoms and the same delicate lilies. “If you are determined never to marry, Grace, you won’t try to catch Anne’s bouquet,” smiled Mrs. Gray. “Oh, yes, I shall,” nodded Grace. “I must do it because it’s hers. I always try to catch the bouquets at weddings. It’s good sport. So far, however, I’ve never secured one.” “I shall throw this one directly at you,” promised Anne. “Anne, child, the carriages are here,” broke in her mother’s gentle voice. Anne laid her bouquet on the centre table. “Come and kiss Anne Pierson for the last time, girls.” She opened her arms. One by one they folded her in the embrace of friendship. Her sister and mother came last. As the arms that had held her in babyhood closed about her, Anne drew nearer to her mother in this, her hour of supreme happiness, than ever before, if that were possible. It was not a long drive to the church. On the way there they stopped to pick up the two flower girls, Anna May and Elizabeth Angerell, two pretty and interesting children who lived next door to Grace, and of whom she and Anne had always been very fond. The little flower maidens were dressed in white embroidered chiffon frocks with pale yellow satin sashes and hair ribbons. They wore white silk stockings and white kid slippers and carried overflowing baskets of yellow and white roses. “Oh, Miss Harlowe,” cried Anna May, when she and Elizabeth were safely settled in the carriage, one of them on the seat beside Grace, the other on the opposite side with Anne, “this is about the happiest day Elizabeth and I ever had. I do hope I won’t be scared. Just think, we have to walk into that great big church, the very first ones, with all those people looking at us.” “I’m not the least bit scared,” was Elizabeth’s bold declaration. “Nobody is going to hurt us. Why, all the people are Miss Anne’s friends! I’m going to think that when I walk up the aisle, and I shan’t be a bit scared. I know I shan’t.” “Well, I’m not exactly scared,” asserted Anna May, greatly impressed with Elizabeth’s valiant declaration. “I guess I’ll think that, too.” “Oh, Miss Anne, you look too sweet for anything.” Elizabeth clasped her small hands in rapture. “When I grow up I shall certainly be married, and have a dress like yours, and just the same kind of a bouquet, and be married in the church where every one can see me.” “You can’t get married unless some one asks you,” informed Anna May wisely. “Some one will,” predicted Elizabeth. “Won’t they, Miss Harlowe?” “I haven’t the least doubt of it,” was Grace’s laughing assurance. “Still I wouldn’t worry about it for a good many years yet, if I were you. It’s just as nice to be a little girl and play games and dress dolls.” Anne smiled faintly. Grace was again unconsciously voicing her views on the marriage question. The two little flower girls kept up a lively conversation during the ride. They were divided between the fear of facing a church full of people and the rapture of being really, truly flower girls at the wedding of such a wonderful person as their Miss Anne. It was precisely half-past seven o’clock when two tiny flower maidens, their childish faces grave with the importance of their office, walked sedately down the broad church aisle toward the flower-wreathed altar. Following them came a dazzling vision in gold tissue that caused at least one’s man’s heart to beat faster. To Everett Southard Miriam was indeed the fabled fairy-tale princess. Then came the bride, feeling strangely humble and diffident in this new part she had essayed to play, while behind her, single file, in faithful attendance, walked the three girls who had kept perfect step with her through the eventful years of her school life. Mrs. Gray, who had preceded the wedding party to the altar, was waiting there with the bridegroom and his best man, Tom Gray. There was a buzz of admiration went the round of the church at the beautiful spectacle the bridal party presented. Then followed an intense hush as the voice of the minister took up the solemn words of God’s most holy ordinance. Perhaps no one person present at that impressive ceremony realized as did Tom Gray what the winning of Anne, for his wife, meant to David. On that June night, almost two years previous, when Hippy and Reddy had, in turn, made announcement of their betrothal to Nora and Jessica in the presence of Mrs. Gray and her Christmas children, David’s fate as a lover had been uncertain. Now David had joined the ranks of happy benedicts. Tom alone was left. As the minister’s voice rang out deeply, thrillingly, “I pronounce you man and wife,” involuntarily Tom’s glance rested on Grace, who was watching Anne with the rapt eyes of friendship. The words held no significance for her beyond the fact that two of her dearest friends had joined their lives. Her changeful face bore no sign of sentiment. As usual, her interest in love and marriage was purely impersonal. The reception following the wedding was held at Anne’s home, and long before it was over Anne and David had slipped away to take the night train for New York City. Anne’s honeymoon was to be limited to one week which they had decided to spend at Old Point Comfort. Anne and Mr. Southard were to open a newly built New York theatre in Shakespearian repetoire the following week. Their real honeymoon was to be deferred until the theatrical season closed in the spring, and was to comprise an extended western trip. True to her promise, Anne had aimed accurately, and Grace had received the bridal bouquet full in the face. It dropped to the floor. She picked it up and commented on her lack of skill in catching it. Tom’s face had brightened as he saw the girl he loved holding the fragrant token to her breast. It was a good omen. “I’m going to take you home in my car, Grace,” he said masterfully, as the guests were leaving that night. “All right,” returned Grace calmly. “We can take Anna May and Elizabeth with us. It’s awfully late for them. I promised Mrs. Angerell I’d take good care of them. They absolutely refused to go when Father and Mother went.” Tom could not help looking his disappointment. Nevertheless the two little girls were favorites of his, so he forgave them for being the innocent means of frustrating his intention of having Grace to himself. “I’m going back to Washington to-morrow night, Grace,” he said, as he took her hand for a moment in parting. “May I come to see you to-morrow afternoon?” “Yes, of course, Tom.” Grace could not refuse the plea of his gray eyes. “All right. I’ll drop in about four o’clock.” “Very well. Good night, Tom.” Grace could not repress a little impatient sigh. “He’s going to ask me again,” was her reflection, “but there is only one answer that I can ever give him.” <hr class="major" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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