Cape Cod Folks Part 24

After a brief pause, Lovell said; "You--you wouldn't mind if I should sing a little now, now would you, Miss Hungerford?"

I a.s.sured him that I should be very glad to have him do so, and he sang, I remember, all the rest of the way home. At the gate, I thanked him for the ride and its cheerful vocal accompaniment, and Lovell said; "Do you like to hear me sing, now? Do you--do you, really, now, Miss Hungerford?"

and turned away with a smile on his face to seek his home by the sea.

But Lovell was not long lonely, for, in less than a week, his father and mother returned from their visit at Aunt Marcia's and brought to Lovell a wife.

Mrs. Barlow herself informed me that "it was an awful shock to him, at first, oh, dreadful! but he'd made up his mind to get married, and he'd never a' done it in the world, if we hadn't took it into our own hands.

She was a good girl, and we knew it, and Lovell wasn't no more fit to pick out a wife, anyway, than a chicken, not a bit more fit than a chicken!"

This girl lived in the same town with Aunt Marcia, and was confidently recommended by her to Lovell's parents as one who would be likely to make him a wise and suitable helpmeet, and was, indeed, an uncommonly fair and wholesome looking individual. She had a mind, too, whose clear, practical common sense had never been obscured by the idle theories of romance. She was pure and hearty and substantial. She was neither diffident, nor slow of speech, nor vacillating. She came, at the invitation of Lovell's parents, to marry Lovell, and if he had refused, she would have boxed his ears as a wholesome means of correction, and married him on the spot.

So Lovell's destined wife was brought home to him in the morning, and in the afternoon of that same day the connubial knot was tied.

Half an hour after the arrival of the bride, it was known throughout the length and breadth of Wallencamp, to every one, I believe, save Lovell himself, who was gathering driftwood a mile or two down the beach, that Lovell was going to be married!

At three o'clock P.M., Brother Mark Barlow was despatched to West Wallen for a minister.

Small scouts had been sent out to watch, where the road from the beach winds into the main road, and when word was brought back that "Mark had gone by," the Wallencampers proceeded to make all due preparations; and soon might have been seen winding in a body towards the scene of interest.

The small paraphernalia of invitations and wedding cards were unknown in Wallencamp. The Wallencampers would have considered that there was little virtue in a ceremony of any sort, performed without the sanction and approval of their united presence.

In regard to the particular nature of this entertainment, there was some snickering in the corners of the room, but the general aspect was funereal.

The season during which, with Lovell at one end of the room, and the bride at the other, we sat waiting the arrival of the minister, was as solemn as anything I had ever known.

I made a congratulatory remark, in a low tone, to Mrs. Barlow, who sat at my side with her hands clasped gazing first at Lovell and then at the bride; but I was forced to experience the uncomfortable sensation of one who has inadvertently spoken out loud in meeting. No one said anything.

The helpless snicker which started occasionally from Harvey Dole's corner, and was echoed faintly from other quarters of the room, only heightened, by, contrast, the effect of the succeeding gloom.

The bride was perfectly composed, with a high, natural color in her cheeks, and an air of being duly impressed with the importance of the occasion.

She had a.s.sumed a large white bonnet, though I do not think that she and Lovell took so much as a stroll to the beach after the ceremony--and her plump and shapely hands were encased in a pair of green kid gloves. She gazed thoughtfully, at each occupant of the room in turn, not omitting Lovell, who never once stirred or lifted his eyes.

Mr. William Barlow was silently pa.s.sing the water, when Brother Mark arrived with the minister.

That grave dignitary advanced with measured tread to a small stand, draped with a long white sheet, that had been prepared for him in the centre of the room.

He took off his gloves, and folded them; he took off his overcoat, and laid it on the back of a chair; and if he had then reached down into his pockets and taken out a rope, and proceeded to adjust a hanging-noose, his audience could not have shown a more ghastly and breathless interest in his performance.

"Will the parties"--his sonorous voice resounded through the awful stillness--"Will the parties--about--to be joined--in holy wedlock--now--come forward?"

As Lovell then arose and walked, with an automatic hitch in his legs, across the room to his bride, there was about him all the stiffness and pallor of the grave without its smile of peace.

"Lovell and Nancy"--arose the deep intonation--will you--now--join hands?

It was a warm strong hand in the green kid glove. Its grasp might have sent a thrill of life through Lovell's rigid frame, for when the minister inquired:

"And do you, Lovell, take this woman?" etc., etc.

Lovell bent his body, moved his lips, and replied in a strange, far-away tone, "Yes'm, _I_ think so. _I_ do, certainly."

But when the question was put to the bride, she, Nancy, promised to take Lovell to be her wedded husband, to love and cherish, yes, and to cleave to, with a round, full "I do," that left no possible room for doubt in the mind of any one present, and seemed to send back the flood of frozen terror to Lovell's veins.

Lovell and Nancy were p.r.o.nounced man and wife, and Nancy then divested herself of her bonnet and gloves, and joined in the festivities which followed with a hearty good-will, that proved her to be quite at home among the Wallencampers, and won at once their affection and esteem. The manner, particularly, in which she carried beans from her plate to her mouth, gracefully balanced on the extreme verge of her knife, as an adroit and finished work of art, provoked the wonder and admiration of all those whose beans sometimes wandered and fell off by the way.

And all the while, Mrs. Barlow's adjectives flowed in a full and copious stream.

"Oh, Lovell had been so wild," she said to me. "Oh, dreadful! But didn't I think he looked like a husband now? So quick, too! Oh, yes, wasn't it beautiful! Abbie Ann said he looked as though he'd been a husband fifteen years!"

After the ceremony, Lovell had taken his pipe and retired a little from the active scenes which were being enacted around him.

I saw him, as I was going away, standing in the door and looking out upon the bay. I held out my hand to him, in pa.s.sing. "I congratulate you, Mr.

Barlow," I said. Lovell put his hand to his mouth and coughed slightly several times, as though he were striving to think of the polite thing to say. Then he replied: "I--I--ahem! I wish you the same, Miss Hungerford, _I_ do, certainly."

Lovell was not so pale as he had been, but looked very serious and pensive with his eyes fixed on the mysterious depths of the ocean. Lovell had propounded riddles to me, but never before had I caught such a glimpse of the deeply philosophical workings of his mind.

"When you come to think of it, life--ahem--life is very uncertain, Miss Hungerford."

I replied that it was very uncertain.

"And short, too, when you come to think of it. It's very short, too, Miss Hungerford."

"Oh, yes," I answered, "very."

"Ahem! It was--it was dreadful sudden, somehow," said Lovell.

"I suppose so, Mr. Barlow," I replied gravely; "great and unexpected joys are sometimes said to be as benumbing in their first effects as griefs coming in the same way."

"_I_ think so," said Lovell. "Ahem! _I_ think so, Miss Hungerford, _I_ do, certainly."

Madeline joined me at the door, and I bade Lovell good-night.

We clambered down the cliffs, walking a little while along on the beach on our way homeward.

It was growing dark, and the voice of the ocean was infinitely mournful and sublime. No wonder, I thought, that life had seemed very short and uncertain to Lovell as he stood in the door listening to the waves.

What a little thing it seemed indeed, comparatively--this life with its fears and hopes, its poor idle jests and fleeting shows.

"And there shall be no more sea"--but this poor human soul that looks out so blindly, and utters itself so feebly through the senses, shall live for ever and ever.

"Lovell's folks have picked out a good wife for him, anyhow," said Madeline, briskly. "She's got a sight more sense than anybody _he'd_ ever a' picked out."

I crept back into my sh.e.l.l again. "I think so, certainly, Madeline," said I, smiling at having unconsciously repeated Lovell's favorite phrase.

"She'll make Lovell all over, and get some new ideas into him, I can tell you," said Madeline.

And though I did not stay in Wallencamp long enough to witness with my own eyes the fulfillment of this prophecy, I know that it was abundantly fulfilled--that Lovell soon recovered from the shock incident to his wedding; that under the influence of his wholesome, active wife, and with the weight of greater responsibilities, he grew more manly and admirable in character, as well as happier, with each succeeding year; and that Lovell's children--a joyful and robust group, adored of Mrs. Barlow, senior--play on the "broad window seat" that looks off towards the sea.