Treasured Brides Collection

by Grace Livingston Hill

  And Euphemia had developed a beauty of a kind, also.

  Perhaps it was the peace that sat like a light upon her sweet face that made people turn when she went by and say, “Look! Did you see what a distinguished-looking girl that was?”

  Her soft olive complexion, untouched by cosmetics, still had the healthy wild-rose glow, and her dark eyes had lost their unhappy restlessness and wore a constant light of settled joy and peace in them. Her heavy hair she had not kept bobbed, but had let it grow, and it set off her vivid face softly, in rich dark waves that would not brush entirely smooth, and needed no curling iron or any such thing, for it had a permanent wave of its own. Neither did she need lipstick on her lips, for they were red with nature’s own touch.

  Neither was her body big and awkward anymore, for her outdoor life, and her suppleness, had made the muscles firm and given a fine slender line to her erect carriage. Altogether she was good to look upon, and Eleanor often watched her half jealously because of her free, graceful movements so utterly without self-consciousness.

  For Eleanor was having a time of her own, and while she was a little more tolerant toward her sister now, because Euphemia often did a great deal for her in the way of mending and making over her dresses, and relieving her of her natural share of the household labors, still she had very little time or thought or love for anybody in the world but Eleanor Martin.

  Chapter 13

  Eleanor was going to be married.

  Sometimes it seemed to Euphemia as if Eleanor felt that no one worthwhile had ever been married before. Eleanor was determined to have the very best of everything, and plenty of it.

  Euphemia overheard her father telling her mother that things at the office were in a very bad mix-up and money was going to be scarce for the next six months, and he wished she would go as easy as possible in spending for a while. But Eleanor wept bitterly when Mrs. Martin suggested buying more inexpensive clothes than she had picked out, and the household resolved itself into a gloomy place. Then up rose Euphemia.

  “Eleanor, why can’t I make your lingerie? I’m sure I could save a lot of money on it. It’s ridiculous for you to pay five and six dollars apiece for those little wisps of crepe de Chine and lace, when we could make them for a dollar or two apiece.”

  “The idea!” sneered Eleanor, and dissolved into tears once more. “If—I ca–can’t have a decent outfit, I w–won’t get m–married at all.”

  “But you don’t want Father to go into debt for it, do you? He can’t buy things without money, can he?”

  “He can borrow some money!” said Eleanor sharply from behind her sopping handkerchief.

  “Well, Mother says he can’t. Mother says he has already borrowed up to his limit to save the business from going to the wall. Now it seems as if it is up to us to do a little something to help. Father went without a new suit when he bought the car to please you. He went without heavy underwear and got pneumonia the winter he bought your new piano. He does without things all the time to get us the necessities of life. I know, for I heard him talking to Mother. And there are going to be enough new things you’ll have to have for very decency without spending a fortune on imported underwear. I’m going to make some for you.”

  “But you couldn’t possibly make them the way I want them. Those imported things have lines, and nobody but a French dressmaker can get those lines. Besides, they are perfectly darling, with lace insets and rosettes and satin rosebuds. It would be perfectly dreadful to have just plain things in my trousseau. I would be ashamed to show them to the girls!”

  “Well, I don’t see that it would be an absolute necessity to show them to the girls, but even if it was, I don’t see that that has any point. You can’t buy what you can’t afford, and if you spend all that money on under things you can’t even have a wedding dress, let alone hat and shoes and going-away things. I heard Father say the check he gave you was positively all he could spare and we must make it do.”

  “Well, if this is your wedding, go ahead and do what you like. Make your old patched-up lingerie. I won’t wear it.”

  “You’ll have to, if there isn’t any other. And Eleanor, you can take me down to the stores and show me just what it is you would like to buy, and if I can’t make exactly as good and pretty and everything for less than half the price, I’ll say no more. I can copy anything I ever saw in that line.”

  It ended in a compromise. Eleanor and Euphemia went shopping, saw all the prettiest lingerie, and Eleanor purchased a single garment of each style she desired for a copy. So Euphemia laid aside the precious books and her own preparations for her coming winter at college and plunged into the intricacies of glove silk and filet lace, and lingerie ribbons, and pink and blue and apricot and orchid, until the whole upper story of the house looked like a rainbow.

  There were endless discussions in which Eleanor was constantly either weeping angry tears or blaming her parents for the things they had not done for her, until life became almost intolerable.

  Mrs. Martin went about with a constant sigh on her lips, and her brows lifted in the middle anxiously. Sometimes Euphemia noticed that her lips were trembling and her hand trembled as she raised it to her aching head. And Euphemia was the buffer between the two. Euphemia gave up her own ways and her own plans and took as much of the burden as possible from her mother’s shoulders.

  In those days also Father Martin was grave and abstracted, coming late to his meals and hurrying away, having eaten scarcely a bite sometimes. He lived on strong coffee. Euphemia, as she went about trying to help, trying to lift the burdens her parents were carrying, trying to hide Eleanor’s selfishness, and to lessen the household expenses, and to fling herself generally into the breach, wondered what the end was to be.

  Then it developed that the wedding dress must have some real lace on it, and Eleanor demanded the best. Thirty dollars a yard was the lowest price she would hear to and said with a toss of her head that even that was not nearly as good as Margaret had had on her dress.

  Now Euphemia had in her precious inlaid box, wrapped in soft old tissue paper, several yards of wonderful lace, yellow with age. Her heritage that came with her name, Euphemia, handed down from Aunt Euphemia, who had come into possession of it through her husband’s family. It was lace such as Eleanor never could hope to own, and Euphemia knew that she had often envied her for having it. And of course, the sacrifice that presented itself to this patient, thoughtful younger sister was that she ought to lend her lace to her sister. It was much the same breathtaking sacrifice that she had once contemplated about her watch, only that sacrifice had never been permitted by her parents. When she had hesitantly proffered the watch once to Eleanor to wear until her own was mended, her father had most summarily given his command, “That is Euphemia’s watch, and it’s a valuable thing that she will want to keep always. She alone is responsible for it, and it is not right for anyone else to have it. Eleanor, you get along without a watch until your own is mended. You are too careless to have charge of Euphemia’s, and we can’t run any risks of losing a thing like that. It couldn’t be replaced, you know.”

  Euphemia stood at her bedroom window in the starlight when the idea first came to her that she must lend Eleanor her lace for the wedding, and had it out with her soul. She felt a little dismayed that she found so much selfishness still lingered in herself, but resolved that it should be conquered. So after kneeling down to ask for strength to make this sacrifice as if it were a joy, she sought her sister’s room at once, not wishing to leave the matter until the morning lest she might weaken.

  She found her mother sitting in the moonlight beside Eleanor’s bed, trying to reason with the weeping Eleanor.

  “Listen, dear,” Euphemia broke in, with a throb of almost joy in her voice. “Don’t worry another minute about that lace. You’re going to wear mine, of course. You know every bride has to wear something borrowed. ‘Something old and something new, something borrowed and something blue,’ ” she chanted happily. Switchi
ng on the electric light, she took out the lace in all its filmy yellowed richness. It settled down upon the pillow in a most amazing heap, a treasure that a princess might have been proud to wear.

  “Oh, my dear!” said her mother, with a mingling of relief and protest in her voice. “Your lace! Your wonderful wedding lace! The lace that Aunt Euphemia left you!”

  Eleanor sat up and mopped her red eyes and stared.

  “You’re not going to let me wear your lace, are you, Pheem?” she asked in astonishment. “You certainly are a peach! Say, Pheem, you won’t mind if I don’t tell it’s yours, will you? You don’t mind if I say it’s an heirloom?”

  “But it was to have been your wedding lace, my dear,” protested her mother fearfully, seeing in Eleanor’s request a hidden danger.

  “I’m not being married myself yet. The lace won’t wear out in one wedding by any means,” said Euphemia lightly, trying to put down the rising lump of apprehension in her throat.

  “Oh, Mother, Pheem’s not the marrying kind, and anyhow she doesn’t care for dresses. She’s too good!” declared Eleanor cheerfully, slipping out of the bed and going to the mirror to drape the rich flounce of lace around her shoulders and tip her head to one side to get the effect. “It suits me, doesn’t it? It’s just perfect, Pheem; you’re a peach! Would you mind if I cut it, darling? There’s enough to make a flounce on the skirt, too. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

  “No!” said Euphemia sharply, wheeling toward her lace. “No, I cannot have it cut! I’ll arrange it so it will be pretty without that, but it must not be cut. It’s an heirloom!”

  She turned appealing eyes to her mother, and Mrs. Martin seconded her.

  “Certainly not, Eleanor, you mustn’t think of cutting the lace. Isn’t it enough that your sister has loaned it to you without your suggesting such a thing? It would be a defamation.”

  Eleanor pouted.

  “Oh, dear! It wouldn’t hurt it in the least. It could be pieced together again without any trouble. Well, I don’t know as it will do then! I’ll have to buy some after all! I couldn’t think of putting it on if it doesn’t look right.”

  “It isn’t in the least necessary to cut it, Eleanor,” said Euphemia patiently, and she took pins and tried to show her sister what effect could be got without cutting the lace.

  Eleanor haughty, offended, and only half convinced, finally yielded to the inevitable, knowing in her heart that no money she could ever get together could buy half such priceless lace as this.

  It was like this all the way through. Eleanor wanted a caterer, and Mrs. Martin insisted that they could not afford it. She and Euphemia baked and planned and worked with everything they had in them as the day drew near. And then it appeared that there was a bridesmaids’ dinner to be planned for and that she must furnish the bridesmaids’ dresses; or at least Eleanor had told the girls she was going to do so in order that they might be just what she wanted. She had planned for eight bridesmaids, and she insisted that Euphemia should have a new outfit of most expensive materials. And there were gifts to the bridesmaids, little gold vanity cases. Eleanor went to the city herself and got them, and had them charged to her father at a most expensive place where he had never had a charge account before. He was vexed almost beyond endurance.

  All these things were accomplished finally as Eleanor desired, in very self-protection for the family, for Eleanor wept and wailed her way through till she got what she wanted, silk and satin and lace, flowers and ribbon and frills.

  “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” quoted Euphemia as she surveyed the house two nights before the wedding. “And what is going to happen after it’s all over?”

  Eleanor was marrying a man from another state, and a number of his relatives came to the wedding. Eleanor demanded that a good many of them be entertained at the house. There seemed to be no end to the things that Eleanor wanted. Wouldn’t it ever be over? Euphemia wearily wondered, as she toiled down to the laundry and ironed a couple more old curtains for a window that had been forgotten in a room that had been hastily requisitioned for an extra guest room. Wearily she dragged herself up the steps again and found a rod and a hammer and screws and put up the curtains. She looked in on the array of handsome presents set out on their white-draped tables in the upstairs sitting room.

  “Whatsoever things are lovely!” she quoted to herself, and wondered if things like these counted in the scheme of life. Of course they did count, somehow, else God would not have made so many lovely things, but hadn’t they somehow got out of proportion, sort of overrated their value? Weren’t there other things that were lovelier and more lasting? Euphemia was too tired to philosophize about it.

  She saw her mother dragging up the stairs just then, looking old and tired to death. And forgetting her own weariness she flew down, and gathering her little mother in her strong arms, she carried her up and put her down on her bed.

  “Now Mother dear!” she said, stooping to kiss the tired brow, “you’re not to get up until early morning. No”—as her mother tried to rise—“I don’t care how many things you have left undone; you are not to stir until morning. Wedding or no wedding, guests or no guests, you have got to rest.”

  She helped her mother undress, in spite of protests, and put her inside the sheets, turned down the light, and closed the door. Fifteen minutes later the bride burst into the house and stirred them all up again. She woke her mother from the exhausted sleep into which she had sunk at once, with the startling announcement that Everett’s great uncle (Everett was the name of the bridegroom) was stopping off on his way to California and wanted to meet her parents and see the presents. No, he couldn’t stay overnight. He had to catch the midnight express to meet an appointment, but he was bringing a set of solid silver salt and pepper shakers, and her mother simply must get up and meet him.

  Euphemia protested, and even tried to frighten her sister by saying that their mother would not be able to go to the wedding if she did not get some rest. But Eleanor swept her aside and dashed into her mother’s room, switching on both lights and deluging her startled mother with the whole story in a breath.

  “You must put on your violet silk, Mother. He won’t be here to the wedding and he won’t know it is the dress. I want you to appear at your best. I’ll get my curling iron and fix your hair. You’ll have to hurry like the dickens. Everett only got the telegram ten minutes ago. He’s driven right down to meet him, and the train is due in about five minutes. Everett is very particular about him. He wanted me to make you understand that. He is very rich, you know.”

  Half bewildered and sodden with weariness, Mrs. Martin dragged herself up and let them dress her.

  Euphemia, with set lips, went about getting her things and putting up her hair, while Eleanor sat down and hurried them like a bumblebee.

  When the car drove up, their mother lay back in the big chair in the living room, looking pale and spent in her pretty new dress. Euphemia was so worried about her and so angry at her sister for being so inconsiderate, that she very nearly said some sharp things to Eleanor. Eleanor acted almost as if it didn’t matter at all whether or not there was any mother left after the wedding was over.

  But Eleanor would not have heard even if she had said the words that sprang to her lips. She was fluttering to the door to meet the guest.

  And after all, the great uncle was deaf and indifferent and nearsighted, and didn’t even seem to see their mother, merely acknowledging the introduction haughtily and passing on to the room where the presents were spread out.

  Euphemia hurried her mother back to bed as soon as they were gone, thankful that Eleanor had gone down to the midnight train with them to see the disagreeable uncle off again.

  Euphemia, the next night, in her golden draperies, her arms full of yellow expensive roses, walking slowly, steadily, up the church aisle as maid of honor, studied the solid flabby face of the bridegroom and wondered what Eleanor saw in him to make her willing to sacrifice her whole family to please his dictat
orial fancy. If Everett wanted to do expensive things for Eleanor after she was married, that was all right, but he had no right to insist on Eleanor’s family mortgaging their very souls to make his wedding appear great before his friends and family.

  Coolly she walked up the aisle, her regal head lifted, her face full of something that seemed to lift her above the rest of the procession and make people look at her rather than watch for the bride. “Just look at Euphemia,” they whispered. “Isn’t she beautiful! She’s prettier than her sister.”

  But Euphemia was looking her future brother-in-law over and weighing him in the balance as it were, in the light of his actions during the past weeks, and she was sorry for her sister. That selfish little puckered mouth, those expressionless eyes set too close together, the characterless chin. What had been his power over Eleanor? Was it his reputed wealth? She almost shivered at the thought as she drew nearer to the waiting bridegroom, and dropped her eyes to her flowers, taking her place at one side to await the bride. A wave of thankfulness went over her that it was not herself who was being married to Everett Wilcox. Would Eleanor be happy? Oh, would she? She had never been happy at home, although she had always got almost everything she cried for. But if one might judge from that stubborn, selfish mouth, Everett would never be one to give in to weeping. Poor Eleanor. For all that, disagreeable as she had been, Eleanor was her sister and she loved her.

  As the awesome words of the marriage ceremony went forward, Euphemia’s thoughts followed them tremulously. Such terrible things to promise, if one were not sure. How could Eleanor promise all those things for Everett? Her very soul revolted at the thought. She felt sure that she herself would never be married. There would never be anyone who would care for her, who would be wise enough and great enough and dear enough to give one’s self to in such solemn pledges.

  She came out from the ceremony with a saddened heart. It seemed as if they had just handed Eleanor over to suffer somehow. She could not get away from the thought. Strange that this feeling should have come down upon her so suddenly. Perhaps it was because she had been too busy before to realize that her sister was going out from the household forever.