The Second Chance Part 29

"It's awful good of you, Martha, to help Arthur's wedding along so well," Pearl said, "but I know you are glad to do it. People ought to be kind to any one that's gettin' married, I do think. They need flowers and kind things said about them far more than people do when they are gettin' buried. Pshaw! When a person's dead they're clean out of the bush and not needin' help from any one; but getting married is awful. Ma saved the lilacs she had when she was married, and put them in a gem-jar, and I've often heard her tell what a comfort they were to her when she came home all tired and couldn't get the stains out of some one's tablecloth. She had a piece of the cake, too, sealed up in a vaseline jar, and the very maddest I ever saw Ma was when she found Danny eatin' it--he et her clove apple the same day, and we couldn't do a thing to him because it was his birthday."

Martha looked at Pearl wonderingly. There were no dried lilacs or sealed vaseline jars in her family, but she understood vaguely what it might mean.

"You are going to be the bridesmaid, Pearl," Martha said. "Arthur told me so!"

"Oh, goody!" Pearl cried, but a sudden thought occurring to her, she said, "You should be it yourself, Martha. Why don't you?"

"I'll tell you why, Pearl," said Martha. "I would look awful beside Thursa. She is fair and fluffy-haired, and she'd make me look worse than usual. Arthur asked me, but I told him I couldn't very well.

Anyway, there is the gravy to make and the pudding-sauce, and I'll have to be right there over it. You'll do it, won't you, Pearl?"

"Oh, yes, I'll do it," said Pearl. "Sure thing. Glad of the chance to wear the white dress Camilla made me and my bracelet--and--and all!"

She was about to ask Martha, question, but changed her mind suddenly and went on: "I just hope there'll be a lovely blue sky and snow on the ground and a real glitterin' sunshine, like what Christmas ought to be, with everything so lovely that it just hurts, and so much Christmas in it that you're dead sure the air is full of angels. And, Martha, we'll put blue ribbons on the table to make them think of the blue sky that was over them on their weddin' day. I tell you, Martha, it's a great thing to have blue skies to think of, even if you haven't got blue skies over you. It heartens a person up wonderful to know that up through the clouds the sky is blue anyway. It's just like havin' on a clean shirt, Martha, even if your outside clothes are not very clean. So, if there's a blue sky we'll try to pin down some of it, so they can use it when they need it. When is she comin', Martha?"

"Next week, she is in Brandon now. She is staying there a few days to see the shops, Arthur said."

Pearl wrinkled her forehead. "Isn't it a wonder she don't come hustlin'? You'd think she'd be far more anxious to see him than any store. She's seen loads of stores, and she hasn't seen him for two years. Say, Martha, there was an English painter in Millford when we lived there who sent home for his girl, and comin' over on the boat didn't she meet another fellow she liked better and she up and married him. Wouldn't it be awful if Thursa was to do that after Arthur gettin' all ready, too?"

Martha did not answer, and Pearl, looking up, was startled at the expression of her face--it was like the face of a shipwrecked sailor who has been looking, looking, looking over a desolate waste of water, dreaming of hope, but never daring to hope, when suddenly, before his weary eyes, there flashes a sail! Of course, it may not be a sail at all, and even if it is a boat it may never, never see the shipwrecked sailor, but still a great hope leaps into his face!

Pearl saw it all in Martha's face in that moment; she remembered Martha's saying that often when she sat at her embroidery she imagined foolish things that could never come true.

"Isn't she a brick?" Pearl thought to herself. "Gettin' ready for this weddin' just as cheerful as if her heart wasn't breakin'!" Then Pearl, in her quick imagination, made a new application: "Just like if it was me gettin' ready for Miss Morrison to marry--" She stopped and thought, with a stern look on her face. Then she said to herself grimly: "I believe this is the greatest piece of True Greatness I've seen yet, and if it is, then I haven't got a smell of it."

"No word from Bud, is there, Martha?" asked after a while.

"Nothing, only the card from Calgary saying he was working on a horse-ranch west of there. It's lonely without him, I tell you, Pearl. I wonder will he ever come back?" said Martha wistfully.

"Sure he will!" cried Pearl. "Bud'll come back, and it'll all be cleared up, and don't you forget it."

"I don't know how, Pearl."

"Some way we don't expect, maybe, but it'll all come right.

Everything will in time," Pearl answered cheerfully.

At tea-time the conversation naturally turned to weddings. Mr.

Perkins had been in a doleful frame of mind until the visitors came, but under the stimulus of fresh listeners he brightened up wonderfully. Here were two people who had not heard any of his stories. He was full of reminiscences of strange weddings that he had been at or had heard of. One in particular, which came back to him now with great vividness, was when his friend, Ned Mullins, married the Spain girl down "the Ot'way."

"Ned had intended to marry the youngest one," he said, "but when we got there, by jinks, there was Jane, the oldest one, all decked out with ribbons and smilin' like a basket of chips, while the pretty one, Rosie, that Ned wanted, was sittin' in a corner holdin' a handkerchief to her eyes. Old man Spain said he'd let no man cull the family--he'd have to take them as they come, by George! Poor Ned was all broke up. They wouldn't let him say a word to Rosie--they seemed to know which way her evidence would run. The timber-boss took Ned aside; I can hear him yet the way he said, 'Marry the girl, Ned, me boy; the Spaniards are too numerous for us! We mustn't make bad blood wid them!' Father Welsh was there all ready, kinda tapping his foot impatient-like, waiting to earn his money. Old Geordie Hodgins was there; he was one of the oldest river-drivers on the Ot'way, a sly old dog with a big wad o' money hid away some place, some said it was in the linin' of his cap. Old Geordie never looked at a girl--Scotch, you know, they're careful. Well, old Geordie began kinda snuffin'

like he always did when he got excited. Well, sir, he got up and began to walk around, slappin' his hands together, and all the clatter stopped, for every one was wonderin' what was wrong with Geordie; and old man Spain, he says: 'What's wrong, Geordie? Sit down, blame you, and let's get on wid the weddin'.' And then old Georgie straightens up and says, 'I'll take the old one, if ye like, and let Ned have the wan he wants,' and with that the little one with the red eyes bounces right out of her corner and she slaps a kiss on Geordie that you could hear for the brea'th of an acre. Old Geordie wiped it off with the back of his hand and says he, 'Look out, young Miss, don't you do that again or Ned'll have to take the old one after all.' And by jinks, as soon as she heard that the old one, who wasn't so slow after all, she bounced up and landed one on Geordie that sounded like an ox pullin' his foot out of the mud, and, then Ned he came to himself and says he, 'See here, Geordie's gettin'

more'n his share; where do I come in?' and then John McNeish, the piper, struck up his pipes, and we were all off into an eight-hand reel before you could wink. There wasn't enough girls to go round, and I had to swing around Bill Fraser with the wooden leg, and Bill was kinda topply around the corners, but we got the two couples married and they both done well."

Mrs. Perkins was something of a raconteur herself, and she, too, was ready with a story on the same subject. She and her husband never interfered with each other's story-telling. Each chose his or her own story and proceeded with it quite independent of the other one. But it was confusing to the audience when the two stories ran concurrently, as they did to-day.

Mrs. Perkins's story was about her youngest sister's husband's brother, who was the "biggest cut-up you ever saw." He'd keep a whole room full of people "in st.i.tches, and he was engaged to a girl called Sally Gibson--she was one of the Garafraxa Gibsons that ran the mill at 'the Soble'--well, anyway, this Sally Gibson gave him the slip and married a fellow from Owen Sound, and some say even kept the ring,"

though Mrs. Perkins was not prepared to say for sure; but, anyway, this was pretty hard on her youngest sister's husband's brother.

Henry Hall was his name and he had bought the license and all. "He was terrible cut up and vowed he'd marry some one and not lose his license altogether, so he came over to where Bessie Collins lived, and he came in at the back door, and there was Bessie scrubbin' the floor, and he says: 'Bessie, will you marry me?' and she says, knowin' what a cut-up he was, she says, 'Go on, Hank, you're foolin',' and he says: 'I'm not foolin', Bessie,' and he told her what Sally Gibson had went and done, and then Bessie says: 'Well, wait till I've finished this floor and do off the door-step, and I don't care if I do.' So she went and primped herself some and they were married and they done well, too!"

When Pearl and her aunt were walking home that night Aunt Kate said: "I like them people better one at a time. I never did like a two-ring circus. I never could watch the monkey trundlin' a barrel up a gangway when the clown was jumpin' through rings; it always annoyed me to be losin' either one or the other. Did you get any sense of it, Pearlie?"

But Pearl's thoughts were on an entirely different theme. "Miss Morrison ain't what you'd call a real pretty girl, not like Mary Barner or Camilla," she said absently.

CHAPTER XXV

THE COMING OF THURSA

Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer To still a heart in absence wrung.

I tell each bead unto the end, and there A cross is hung!

_----My Rosary._

EARLY in December Thursa came. Martha had asked Pearl to come over and help her to receive her guest, which Pearl was only too glad to do, for she knew how hard all this was for Martha.

"Just like sendin' out invitations to yer own funeral," Pearl said, as early in the morning of the eventful day she walked over the snowy road to the Perkins home. In spite of all, Pearl was determined to have Martha looking her very best. She was even prepared to put powder on Martha's face, and had actually secured some from Camilla for the occasion.

Martha had improved in many ways since the day she and Pearl had talked beside the lilac hedge. She stood straighter; she walked more gracefully; she was more at her ease in conversation. These were the outward visible signs; but the most important change that had taken place in Martha was that she now had a broader outlook on the world.

It was no longer bounded on the north by the a.s.siniboine River and the Brandon Hills, and on the south by the Tiger Hills and Pelican Lake. The hours that she had spent studying the magazine had been well spent, and Martha had really learned a great deal. She had learned that there were hundreds and hundreds of other girls like herself, living lonely lives of endless toil and sacrifice, and who still kept alive the little flame of ambition and the desire to make the best of their surroundings and themselves; and from the stories, which she now read with consuming interest, she learned that there were other women who loved hopelessly, but yet without bitterness, whose hearts were enriched by it, and who went on with their work day by day, bravely fighting the good fight; and with all this Martha's heart was greatly sustained and comforted. Martha had some blue days, too, when she was deeply conscious of her own dullness, and was disposed to give up all her efforts; but Pearl Watson was always able to fire her with fresh enthusiasm, for it was Pearl's good gift that she could inspire people to worthy endeavour.

It was not long before Arthur noticed that Martha was brightening up and that she seemed easier to talk to. After his long days of solitude he was glad of an opportunity to talk to an interested listener, and so he found his way over to the Perkins home three or four nights every week.

He told her stories of his school-days and of the glorious holidays he had spent at his uncle's country home. Arthur was a close observer and an interesting talker, and even Mrs. Perkins sometimes sat up to listen to him. Thomas Perkins said he didn't take much stock in the stories that young English chap told, and so he usually retired to the kitchen, where he would sit studying the catalogues. Mr. Perkins preferred the centre of the stage, if he were on it at all, and certainly would not consent to do a "thinking part" for anybody.

"Don't you be a bit worried, Martha," Pearl said soothingly, as she was combing Martha's hair that morning; "you'll look just as well as she does. Englishwomen always look queer to me with those big rough coats on them, all crinkly at the seams. They always wear them coming over on the boat, and it looks to me as if they fell in a few times and the stuff shrunk something awful; and their hair is always queer, done in a bun on the small of their neck."

"But Thursa is not like that," Martha said. "She is little and slight, and has a skin as fair as a lily and pink cheeks."

Pearl stepped back to look at Martha's hair, done in a braid around the top, before replying:

"Skin like a lily, has she? Well, that settles it--we'll use the powder. Now, don't say a word, Martha--it ain't wicked at all--it's paintin' and powderin' that's wicked. Now, I could make a bright glow on each of yer cheeks by usin' the red leaf of one of the roses on my summer hat. I thought of that, and I tried it myself--it was a fine colour and would improve you, Martha, but I'm afraid it wouldn't be just the thing to do it, and anyway you are looking fine now, and your red silk waist will give you a colour."

They went down-stairs when Martha's toilet was complete, speculating on what Thursa would be like. Martha was plainly nervous, which Pearl saw, but would not recognize. They were not left long in doubt, for in a few minutes they heard Arthur driving up to the door. Pearl and Martha held each other's hands in suspense until the door opened and Arthur said quite simply:

"Martha, this is Thursa."

And then poor Martha had need of her full supply of true greatness as Thursa's fresh young beauty burst on her, for Thursa was of that most bewitching type of young English girl, clear-skinned and violet-eyed, with a head of curling golden hair. She wore a long green coat and a little green cap that did not begin to hold down the rebellious curls.

If Martha was embarra.s.sed Thursa certainly was not. She kissed Martha impulsively and called her "the dearest thing," and then, turning to Pearl, cried gaily. "Come here, you brown-eyed witch. I should have known you anywhere. You two girls have spoiled Arthur, I am afraid, by dancing attendance on him. He will be so frightfully important and overlordish, but all that will be changed now. I am really a very domineering person."

When Martha took Thursa upstairs to remove her wraps she said, as she tucked in her curls before the gla.s.s: "It does seem so gorgeous to be away without an aunt. I have three of them at home, you know, and they have always taken the wildest interest in me, and there was always one ready to come with me every place. They are not old really, but they seem old to me, and I really expect they will never die. They have heaps of money, too, and so I simply had to be civil to them. I had a perfectly ripping time on the boat. My aunts put me in charge of the Bishop of Donchester, and he was a perfect love and went to his stateroom so early every evening, and slept in a steamer chair every afternoon until he got ill, the old dear, and then he didn't appear at all for three days, and I really had such jolly fun.

It did seem such fun not to be bothered with some one stalking me all the time. There were such pleasant people, too, on shipboard!'"