Iole Read online

  V

 

  The double wedding at the Church of Sainte Cicindella was pretty andsufficiently fashionable to inconvenience traffic on Fifth Avenue.Partly from loyalty, partly from curiosity, the clans of Wayne andBriggs, with their offshoots and social adherents, attended; and theysaw Briggs and Wayne on their best behavior, attended by Sudbury Greyand Winsted Forest; and they saw two bridal visions of loveliness,attended by six additional sister visions as bridesmaids; and they sawthe poet, agitated with the holy emotions of a father, now almostunmanned, now rallying, spraying the hushed air with sweetness. They sawclergymen and a bishop, and the splendor of stained glass through whichushers tiptoed. And they heard the subdued rustling of skirts and thesilken stir, and the great organ breathing over Eden, and a singleartistically-modulated sob from the poet. A good many other things theyheard and saw, especially those of the two clans who were bidden to thebreakfast at Wayne's big and splendid house on the southwest corner ofSeventy-ninth Street and Madison Avenue.

  For here they were piped to breakfast by the boatswain of Wayne's bigseagoing yacht, the _Thendara_--on which brides and grooms werepresently to embark for Cairo via the Azores--and speeches were said andtears shed into goblets glimmering with vintages worth prayerfulconsideration.

  And in due time two broughams, drawn by dancing horses, with the azureribbons aflutter from the head-stalls, bore away two very beautiful andexcited brides and two determined, but entirely rattled, grooms. Andafter that several relays of parents fraternized with the poet and sixdaughters, and the clans of Briggs and of Wayne said a number ofagreeable things to anybody who cared to listen; and as everybody didlisten, there was a great deal of talk--more talk in a minute than thesisters of Iole had heard in all their several limited and innocentlynatural existences. So it confused them, not with its quality, but itsprofusion; and the champagne made their cheeks feel as though the softpeachy skin fitted too tight, and a number of persistent musicalinstruments were being tuned in their little ears; and, not yetthoroughly habituated to any garments except pink sunbonnets andpajamas, their straight fronts felt too tight, and the tops of theirstockings pulled, and they balanced badly on their high heels, andAphrodite and Cybele, being too snugly laced, retired to rid themselvesof their first corsets.

  The remaining four, Lissa, now eighteen; Dione, fifteen; Philodice,fourteen, and Chlorippe, thirteen, found the missing Pleiads in thegreat library, joyously donning their rose-silk lounging pajamas, whiletwo 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 forfree-limbed dryads of the Rose-Cross wilds; and they kept the electricsignals going for ices and fruits and pitchers brimming with clear coldwater; and they sat there in a circle like a thicket of flutteringpale-pink roses, until below the last guest had sped out into theunknown wastes of Gotham, and the poet's heavy step was on the stair.

  The poet was agitated--and like a humble bicolored quadruped of theRose-Cross wilds, which, when agitated, sprays the air--so the poet,laboring obesely under his emotion, smiled with a sweetness sointolerable that the air seemed to be squirted full of saccharinity tothe point of plethoric saturation.

  "My lambs," he murmured, fat hands clasped and dropped before him asstraight as his rounded abdomen would permit; "my babes!"

  "Do you think," suggested Aphrodite, busy with her ice, "that we aregoing to enjoy this winter in Mr. Wayne's house?"

  "Enjoyment," breathed the poet in an overwhelming gush of sweetness, "isnot 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 thelittle things that are the most precious, so nothing, which is less thanthe very least, is precious beyond price. Thank you for listening; thankyou 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 inand 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 onBroadway, wouldn't there?" asked Lissa wistfully.

  Chlorippe, aged thirteen, kicked off her sandals and stretched herpretty snowy feet: "They were never in the world made to fit intohigh-heeled shoes," she declared pensively, widening her little rosytoes.

  "But we might as well get used to all these things," sighed Philodice,rolling over among the cushions, a bunch of hothouse grapes suspendedabove 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, ifwe 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 theirhoneymoon and give teas and dinners for all sorts of interesting youngmen."

  "Oh, the attractive young men I have seen in these few days in NewYork!" exclaimed Lissa. "Would you believe it, the first day I walkedout with George Wayne and Iole, I was perfectly bewildered and enchantedto see so many delightful-looking men. And by and by Iole missed me, andGeorge came back and found me standing entranced on the corner of FifthAvenue; and I said, "Please don't disturb me, George, because I am onlystanding here to enjoy the sight of so many agreeable-looking men." Buthe 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 theyare now--the bridal pairs?"

  "I wonder," mused Philodice, "whether they have any children by thistime?"

  "Not yet," explained Aphrodite. "But they'll probably have some whenthey return. I understand it takes a good many weeks--to----"

  "To find new children," nodded Chlorippe confidently. "I suppose they'vehidden the cunning little things somewhere on the yacht, and it's likehunt the thimble and lots and lots of fun." And she distributed sixoranges.

  Lissa was not so certain of that, but, discussing the idea with Cybele,and arriving at no conclusion, devoted herself to the large juicy orangewith more satisfaction, conscious that the winter's outlook was brightfor them all and full of the charming mystery of anticipations soglittering yet so general that she could form not even the haziest ideasof their wonderful promise. And so, sucking the sunlit pulp of theiroranges, they were content to live, dream, and await fulfilment underthe full favor of a Heaven which had never yet sent them aught buthappiness beneath the sun.