Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse. Faith Sullivan
day as Mr. George’s wedding. June 16,” Elvira told her.
“Is that why you don’t want to go to the wedding?” Nell laid a plate of bread on the table.
“No.”
“Don’t you think the Lundeens will be hurt if you stay away?” Elvira shrugged and bit into a slice of bread.
“Is anything wrong at work?”
Elvira shook her head, then wiped her mouth. “I like the Lundeens. They’re good people.” She was near tears.
“Well, then?”
“I’m not a lady. I hadda leave school when I was twelve. I don’t know anything.”
Nell raised her brows. “You know how to keep house and care for a baby and work in a dry-goods store. You can read and write. You have curiosity. You have a good heart. Without that, any lady’s counterfeit.”
“You’re just trying to make me feel better, and that’s because you’re a lady. . . .”
Nell threw back her head and laughed. “What do you think a lady is?”
“Somebody who talks nice and knows what to wear and how to write a thank-you and how to act when she meets somebody. I don’t know any of that, and it’s too late now.” Elvira laid her head on her arms. “I’m a yokel.”
“You’re not. Elvira, you’re already a lady. The things you’re talking about are just . . . the trimmings.”
“Well, that’s what I want—the trimmings! And I’ll never have ’em.”
Nell didn’t want Elvira believing that “trimmings” made the lady—and she certainly didn’t want to play Pygmalion to Elvira’s Galatea. It would be false and patronizing. But the girl looked brokenhearted.
“If I teach you some trimmings, will you come with me to the wedding?”
Elvira nodded. “I’ll come. If you teach me what to say when I meet Mr. George’s bride.”
EACH TIME SHE GLANCED at the sewing machine in her bedroom—a wedding gift from her family—Nell warmed with gratitude. The family had gone without in order to buy it. But patting Nell’s hand, her mother had said, “Think of the money it’ll save you. And yer poor fingers, too.”
When not in use, the pale oak body made an attractive table, and Nell had always been pleased by the iron treadle with its intricate open-work design. Though she was not particularly adept, rocking the treadle back and forth with her feet was a satisfying exercise. And, as Mam had suggested, it had saved her fingers this week as she’d fashioned Elvira’s dress.
Now, though it meant starting up the cookstove to heat the iron, Nell spread towels on the kitchen table and pressed the birthday gown of peach lawn that she’d raced to finish before the wedding.
“Oooo, it’s pretty,” Elvira fluted, running her hands over the satin waistband. “Can I try it on? May I try it on?”
“Of course. Only be careful not to wrinkle it.”
Nell was pleased to see how the color set off the girl’s dark eyes and hair, and how the fitted bodice showed off her supple figure and small waist. “There was enough satin left to tie your hair back.”
Elvira stood before the mirror in Nell’s bedroom, turning around, studying herself over her shoulder. “I look like a town girl!” she cried.
George and Cora had scheduled their wedding for a Sunday so that no one from the store need miss it.
Since it was a Lundeen wedding, a few of the less scrupulous Catholics were on hand in the Methodist Episcopal Church, a matter that would surely find its way into Father Gerrold’s next sermon. Missing the occasion would have offended Nell’s conscience more than attending.
The weight of Bertha Rabel’s German Catholicism would not allow her to attend, though she did not begrudge Nell and Elvira, and so had offered to look after Hilly. “You’ll tell me all about it when you come home.”
The wedding was all that Harvester might have hoped. Though the church was plain, with only dark beams and paneling to relieve the simplicity, lilacs and peonies had burgeoned with timely consideration, and masses of them filled every possible space.
As the organ in the choir loft pumped out Handel, and the six bridesmaids in simple pink gowns hesitation-stepped their way toward the altar, the congregation stood “to gasp at the delicate beauty of Cora Pendleton in a seed-pearl-embroidered gown of silk organza over lightweight silk satin,” as the Standard Ledger would report.
In the first pew, Cora’s mother stood at her daughter’s approach. Mrs. Pendleton, blonde and youthful, smoothed her pale-blue gown, touched a handkerchief to her nose, and smiled a watery salutation. Mr. Pendleton, square shouldered and proud, led his daughter to the altar.
Following the ceremony, Mendelssohn accompanied the couple back up the aisle, the bride merry and laughing, dancing toward the open doors. Nell thought it a pity that all brides didn’t laugh and dance as they left the church.
Elvira pulled a tiny handkerchief from the waistband of her gown. Nell eyed her askance, noting tears gathered in the girl’s eyes.
Reception guests made their way to the picket-fenced backyard of the Lundeen home where crab apple trees, planted when the house was built, were coming into their maturity and dropping late-blossoming confetti onto the assembly. Beneath a grape arbor, a string quartet imported from Minneapolis played Offenbach, Mendelssohn, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Strauss.
Following Nell through the receiving line, Elvira cast the bride a nervous smile and in clarion voice improvised, “I’m Elvira Stillman, and I work for the Lundeens at the dry-goods store. I think you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Best wishes.”
A moment’s pause followed. Then Cora Pendleton Lundeen grasped the girl’s shoulders and lay her cheek against Elvira’s. “Thank you.”
Smiling, Nell took the moony child’s hand and led her toward a long table dressed in pink linen where a banquet was spread, and girls in white frocks brushed away flies with palm fans. On a separate table, a tall wedding cake sat amidst a snowy scattering of white-satin rosettes.
After filling their plates from an array of fancy sandwiches, caviar and its accompaniments, several salads, and delicate cookies with pale icings, Nell and Elvira moved along to the drinks—fruit punch and champagne, ladled and poured by two young men who had declined to sign the temperance card at the Epworth League.
Recovering from her rosy oblivion, Elvira cast Nell an inquiring look.
“One glass of champagne,” Nell conceded, nodding to the servers.
Toward the back of the deep yard, the women found a table among the many that were dressed—like the buffet—in pink linen and furbished with squat vases of roses, satin streamers, and tiny boxes of groom’s cake.
Minutes later, fortyish Anna Braun, who operated the little telephone switchboard at the dry-goods store, came scurrying along, heedful not to spill champagne on her best gown. She settled herself at the table, placing an open palm on her breast as if something inside threatened to explode.
“Don’t this beat all?” she said, spreading a napkin across her lap and glancing around with visible delight. “Everything so beautiful. They don’t do it any better in Boston, I’m sure. Not that I’ve had the pleasure, but what could be more elegant than this?”