Helen was in raptures, but her conscience pricked her. She appealed to them. “Ought I to tell? You see, Mary’s gown will look miserably common beside it.”
The dressmaker was voluble. There was really nothing to tell; and besides, Helen was a Cresswell and it was to be expected, and so forth. Helen pursed her lips and petulantly tapped the floor with her foot.
“But the other gown?”
“Where is it?” asked the dressmaker, looking about. “It would make a pretty morning-dress—”
But Helen had taken a sudden dislike to the thought of it.
“I don’t want it,” she declared. “And besides, I haven’t room for it in my trunks.”
Of a sudden she leaned down and whispered to Zora: “Zora, hide it and keep it if you want it. Come,” to the dressmaker, “I’m dying to try this on—now. … Remember, Zora—not a word.” And all this to Zora seemed no surprise; it was the Way, and it was opening before her because the talisman lay in her trunk.
So at last it came to Easter morning. The world was golden with jasmine, and crimson with azalea; down in the darker places gleamed the misty glory of the dogwood; new cotton shook, glimmered, and blossomed in the black fields, and over all the soft Southern sun poured its awakening light of life. There was happiness and hope again in the cabins, and hope and—if not happiness, ambition, in the mansions.
Zora, almost forgetting the wedding, stood before the mirror. Laying aside her dress, she draped her shimmering cloth about her, dragging her hair down in a heavy mass over ears and neck until she seemed herself a bride. And as she stood there, awed with the mystical union of a dead love and a living new born self, there came drifting in at the window, faintly, the soft sound of far-off marriage music.
“ ’Tis thy marriage morning, shining in the sun!”
Two white and white-swathed brides were coming slowly down the great staircase of Cresswell Oaks, and two white and black-clothed bridegrooms awaited them. Either bridegroom looked gladly at the flow of his sister’s garments and almost darkly at his bride’s. For Helen was decked in Parisian splendor, while Mary was gowned in the Fleece.
“ ’Tis thy marriage morning, shining in the sun!”
Up floated the song of the little dark-faced children, and Zora listened.
XXII
Miss Caroline Wynn
Bles Alwyn was seated in the anteroom of Senator Smith’s office in Washington. The Senator had not come in yet, and there were others waiting, too.
The young man sat in a corner, dreaming. Washington was his first great city, and it seemed a never-ending delight—the streets, the buildings, the crowds; the shops, and lights, and noise; the kaleidoscopic panorama of a world’s doing, the myriad forms and faces, the talk and laughter of men. It was all wonderful magic to the country boy, and he stretched his arms and filled his lungs and cried: “Here I shall live!”
Especially was he attracted by his own people. They seemed transformed, revivified, changed. Some might be mistaken for field hands on a holiday—but not many. Others he did not recognize—they seemed strange and alien—sharper, quicker, and at once more overbearing and more unscrupulous.
There were yet others—and at the sight of these Bles stood straighter and breathed like a man. They were well dressed, and well appearing men and women, who walked upright and looked one in the eye, and seemed like persons of affairs and money. They had arrived—they were men—they filled his mind’s ideal—he felt like going up to them and grasping their hands and saying, “At last, brother!” Ah, it was good to find one’s dreams, walking in the light, in flesh and blood. Continually such thoughts were surging through his brain, and they were rioting through it again as he sat waiting in Senator Smith’s office.
The Senator was late this morning; when he came in he glanced at the morning paper before looking over his mail and the list of his callers. “Do fools like the American people deserve salvation?” he sneered, holding off the headlines and glancing at them.
“ ‘League Beats Trust.’ … ‘Farmers of South Smash Effort to Bear Market … Send Cotton to Twelve Cents … Common People Triumph.’
“A man is induced to bite off his own nose and then to sing a paean of victory. It’s nauseating—senseless. There is no earthly use striving for such blockheads; they’d crucify any Saviour.” Thus half consciously Senator Smith salved his conscience, while he extracted a certificate of deposit for fifty thousand dollars from his New York mail. He thrust it aside from his secretary’s view and looked at his list as he rang the bell: there was Representative Todd, and somebody named Alwyn—nobody of importance. Easterly was due in a half-hour. He would get rid of Todd meantime.
“Poor Todd,” he mused; “a lamb for the slaughter.”
But he patiently listened to him plead for party support and influence for his bill to prohibit gambling in futures.
“I was warned that it was useless to see you, Senator Smith, but I would come. I believe in you. Frankly, there is a strong group of your old friends and followers forming against you; they met only last night, but I did not go. Won’t you take a stand on some of these progressive matters—this bill, or the Child Labor movement, or Low Tariff legislation?”
Mr. Smith listened but shook his head.
“When the time comes,” he announced deliberately, “I shall have something to say on several of these matters. At present I can only say that I cannot support this bill,” and Mr. Todd was ushered out. He met Mr. Easterly coming in and greeted him effusively. He knew him only as a rich philanthropist, who had helped the Neighborhood Guild in Washington—one of Todd’s hobbies.
Easterly greeted Smith quietly.
“Got my letter?”
“Yes.”
“Here are the three bills. You will go on
