For once the entire interest of any occasion which he happened to grace was not centered on Hepworth, who, with his usual invincible composure, awaited the bride at the altar, fortified by his best man, Wallace Martin.
But the owner of millions--unctuous sound--is worth more than a mere dismissing word. Let the bride continue to advance, he to await her, while he is presented in a lightning sketch.
Cresswell Hepworth was far from old, not fifty. He had more than three generations of cultivated ancestry behind him. In type he was American, approaching the Indian; tall, slightly aquiline of feature, somewhat granitic and imperturbable. His hair, which had been brown, was almost white, his eyes were gray, trained to express nothing, but startlingly penetrating when he chose to lift rather heavy lids with a peculiarly long droop at the corners.
Emerson says somewhere that "a feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds."
Hepworth was a strong man. He saw possible houses and farms, externalized them and became the acquirer of vast and profitable tracts of land--a fair map blackly dotted with mines and scrawled with the angular lines of intersecting railroads. In this yellow triangle, a great wheat farm. Here, in this square of living green, irrigated and profitable ranches. He stood, this "Colossus of Finance"--journalese--with his feet planted firmly on this solid map-basis, and, with a golden rake, drew toward him from countless clutching hands securities, stocks, bonds, curios, pictures (he was an ardent collector), loot of every description, and, it was even whispered through the church, his young and lovely bride.
But now he stepped forward to meet her with a smile that enlivened his whole face, even his eyes. The service flowed on. With that air of sulky geniality which represented his most urbane manner, Willoughby Hewston gave away the bride. The responses were duly made, and Mr. and Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth turned to walk through an aisle of smiling and nodding friends.
At that moment the mellow October sunlight fell through the stained windows enwrapping Perdita in a regal and impalpable vesture of scarlet and gold; and again a murmur of admiration rippled and echoed at this fresh revelation of her beauty. She had been pale as she walked up the aisle, but now her color had risen and the crimson on her brown cheek was the hue of a jacqueminot rose. Her hair, a deep chestnut at the temples, flowed into copper, dark in the hollows, gold where it caught the light. Her coloring was a harmony of all soft, warm, dusky shades, and one looked to the eyes to focus these tints in light or darkly rich topaz; but Perdita's eyes were gray, handed down perhaps from those Irish kings to whom her father had laughingly traced his descent.