Chapter XIX: “i, Rex, Take Thee, Bertha.”

The words were said in the old Homestead about a year from the time when we first saw Bertha walking along the lane to meet her sister and holding in her hand the newspaper which had been the means of her meeting with Rex Hallam. The May day had been perfect then, and it was perfect now. The air was odorous with the perfume of the pines and the apple-blossoms, and the country seemed as fresh and fair as when it first came from the hands of its Creator. The bequest which Fred had made to Bertha, and which he wished he had doubled, had been quadrupled by Louie, who, when Bertha declined to take so much, had urged it upon her as a bridal present in advance. With that understanding Bertha had accepted it, and several changes had been made in the Homestead, both outside and in. Bertha’s room, however, where Rex had once slept, remained intact. This he insisted upon, and it was in this room that he received his bride from the hands of her bridesmaids. It was a very quiet affair, with only a few intimate friends from Worcester and Leicester, and Mrs. Hallam from New York. Bertha had suggested inviting Mrs. Haynes, but Rex vetoed that decidedly. She had been the direct cause of so much humiliation to Bertha that he did not care to keep her acquaintance, he said. But Mrs. Haynes had no intention to be ignored by the future Mrs. Rex Hallam, and one of the handsomest presents Bertha received came from her, with a note of congratulation. Louie and Phineas were master and mistress of ceremonies, Louie inside and Phineas outside, where he insisted upon caring for the horses of those who drove from Worcester and the village.

He’d “smile if he couldn’t do it up ship-shape,” he said, and he came at an early hour, gorgeous in swallowtail coat, white vest, stove-pipe hat, and an immense amount of shirt-front, ornamented with Rhine-stone studs. In his ignorance he did not know that a dress-coat was not just as suitable for morning as evening, and had bought one second-hand at a clothing-store in Boston. He wanted to make a good impression on Lucy Ann, he said to Grace, who had been at the Homestead two or three days, and who, declaring him a most delicious specimen, had hobnobbed with him quite familiarly. She told him she had no doubt he would impress Lucy Ann; and he did, for she came near fainting when he presented himself to her, asking what she thought of his outfit, and how it would “do for high.” She wanted to tell him that he would look far better in his every-day clothes than in that costume, but restrained herself and made some non-committal reply. Since meeting him on the ship she had had time to reflect that no one whose opinion was really worth caring for would think less of her because of her relatives, and she was a little ashamed of her treatment of him. Perhaps, too, she was softened by the sight of the old homestead, which had been her husband’s home, or Grace Travis’s avowal that she wished she had just such a dear codger of a cousin, might have had some effect in making her civil and even gracious to the man who, without the least resentment for her former slight of him, “Cousin Lucy Ann”-ed her continually and led her up to salute the bride after the ceremony was over.

There was a wedding breakfast, superintended by Louie, who, if she felt any regret for the might-have-been, did not show it, and was bright and merry as a bird, talking a little of Fred and a great deal of Charlie Sinclair, whom business kept from the wedding and whose lovely present she had helped select. The wedding trip was to extend beyond the Rockies as far as Tacoma, and to include the Fair in Chicago on the homeward journey. The remainder of the summer was to be spent at the Homestead, where Rex could hunt and fish and row to his heart’s content, if he could not have a fox-hunt. Both he and Bertha wished a home of their own in New York, but Mrs. Hallam begged so hard for them to stay with her for a year at least that they consented to do so.

“You may be the mistress, or the daughter of the house, as you please, only stay with me,” Mrs. Hallam said to Bertha, of whom she seemed very fond.

Evidently she was on her best behavior, and during the few days she stayed at the Homestead she quite won the hearts of both Mr. Leighton and Dorcas, and greatly delighted Phineas by asking him to spend the second week in July with her. In this she was politic and managing. She knew he was bound to come some time, and, knowing that the most of her calling acquaintance would be out of town in July, she fixed his visit at that time, making him understand that he could not prolong it, as she was to join Rex and Bertha in Chicago on the 15th. Had he been going to visit the queen, Phineas could not have been more elated or have talked more about it.

“I hope I sha’n’t mortify Lucy Ann to death,” he said, and when in June Louie came for a few days to the Homestead, he asked her to give him some points in etiquette, which he wrote down and studied diligently, till he considered himself quite equal to cope with any difficulty, and at the appointed time packed his dress-suit and started for New York.

This was Monday, and on Saturday Dorcas was surprised to see him walking up the avenue from the car.

He’d had a tip-top time, he said, and Lucy Ann did all she could to make it pleasant.

“But, my!” he added, “it was so lonesome and grand and stiff; and didn’t Lucy Ann put on the style! But I studied my notes, and held my own pretty well. I don’t think I made more than three or four blunders. I reached out and got a piece of bread with my fork, and saw a thunder-cloud on Lucy Ann’s face; and I put on my dress-suit one morning to drive to the Park, but took it off quicker when Lucy Ann saw it. Dress-coats ain’t the thing in the morning, it seems. I guess they ain’t the thing for me anywhere. But my third blunder was wust of all, though I don’t understand it. Between you ’n’ I, I don’t believe Lucy Ann has much company, for not a livin’ soul come to the house while I was there, except one woman with two men in tall boots drivin’ her. Lucy Ann was out and the nigger was out, and I went to the door to save the girls from runnin’ up and down stairs so much. I told her Mis’ Hallam wa’n’t to home, and I rather urged her to come in and take a chair, she looked so kind of disappointed and tired, and curi’s, too, I thought, as if she wondered who I was; so I said, ‘I’m Mis’ Hallam’s cousin. You better come in and rest. She’ll be home pretty soon.’

“‘Thanks,’ she said, in a queer kind of way, and handed me a card for Lucy Ann, who was tearin’ when I told her what I’d done. It was the servants’ business to wait on the door when Peters was out, she said, and on no account was I to ask any one in if she wasn’t there. That ain’t my idea of hospitality. Is’t yours?”

Dorcas laughed, and said she supposed city ways were not exactly like those of the country. Phineas guessed they wasn’t, and he was glad to get where he could tip back in his chair if he wanted to, and eat with his knife, and ask a friend to come in and sit down.

A few days later Dorcas and her father, with Louie, started for Chicago to join the Hallams. For four weeks they reveled in the wonders of the beautiful White City. After that Mrs. Hallam returned to her lonely house in New York, while Rex and Bertha and Louie went back to the old Homestead. There they spent the remainder of the summer, and there Bertha lingered until the hazy light of October was beginning to hang over the New England hills and the autumnal tints to show in the woods. Then Rex, who had spent every Sunday there, took her to her new home, where her reception was very different from what it had been on her first arrival. Then she was only a hired companion, dining with the housekeeper and waiting on the fourth floor back for her employer to give her an audience. Now she was a petted bride, the daughter of the house, with full authority to go where she pleased, do what she pleased, and make any change she pleased, from the drawing-room to the handsome suite which had been fitted up for her. But she made no change, except in Rex’s sleeping-apartment, where she did take the pictures of ballet-dancers, rope-walkers, and sporting men from the mirror-frame, and substituted in their place those of her father, Dorcas, and Grace. She would have liked to remove her own picture, with “Rose Arabella Jefferson” written upon it, but Rex interfered. It seemed to him, he said, a connecting link between his bachelor life and the great joy which had come to him, and it should stay there, Rose Arabella and all.

Mr. Leighton and Dorcas have twice visited Bertha in her home, and been happy there because she was so happy. But both were glad to go back to the old house under the apple-trees and the country life which they like best. Bertha, on the contrary, takes readily to the ways of the great city, although she cares but little for the fashionable society that is so eager to take her up, and prefers the companionship of her husband and the quiet of her home to the gayest assemblage in New York. Occasionally however, she may be seen at some afternoon tea, or dinner, or reception, where Mrs. Hallam is proud to introduce her as “my nephew’s wife,” while Mrs. Walker Haynes, always politic and persistent, speaks of her as “my friend, that charming Mrs. Reginald Hallam.”

THE SPRING FARM.