The affair of the brass band, with its dramatic and most unlooked-for ending, left an unpleasant memory in the minds of the members of the club, especially in Oliver's. His training had been somewhat different from that of the others present, and his oversensitive nature had been more shocked than pleased by it all. While most of the other participants regretted the ill-feeling which had been aroused in Miss Teetum's mind, they felt sure--in fact, they knew--that this heretofore kind and gentle hostess could never have fanned her wrath to so white a heat had not some other hand besides her own worked the bellows.
Suspicion first fell upon a new boarder unaccustomed to the ways of the house, who, it was reported, had double-locked herself in at the first crash of the drum, and who had admitted, on being cross-examined by McFudd, that she had nearly broken her back in trying to barricade her bedroom door with a Saratoga trunk and a wash-stand. This theory was abandoned when subsequent inquiries brought to light the fact that Mrs. Van Tassell, when the echoes of one of McFudd's songs had reached her ears, had stated a week before that no respectable boarding-house would tolerate uproars like those which took place almost nightly on the top floor, and that she would withdraw her protection from Miss Euphemia and leave the house at once and forever if the noise did not cease. This dire threat being duly reported to the two Misses Teetum had--it was afterward learned--so affected them both that Miss Ann had gone to bed with a chill and Miss Sarah had warded off another with a bowl of hot camomile tea.
This story, true as it undoubtedly was, did not entirely clear up the situation. One part of it sorely puzzled McFudd. Why did Miss Euphemia need Mrs. Van Tassell's protection, and why should the loss of it stir Miss Ann to so violent an outburst?
This question no member of the Skylarks could answer.
The solution came that very night, and in the most unexpected way, Waller bearing the glad tidings.
Miss Euphemia, ignoring them all, was to be married at St. Mark's at 6 P.M. on the following Monday, and Mrs. Van Tassell was to take charge of the wedding reception in the front parlor! The groom was the strange young man who had sat for some days beside Miss Euphemia, passing as Miss Ann's nephew, and who really was a well-to-do druggist with a shop on Astor Place. All of the regular boarders of the house were to be invited.
The explosion of this matrimonial bomb so cleared the air of all doubt as to the guilt of Mrs. Van Tassell, that a secret meeting, attended by every member of the Skylarks, was at once held in Waller's room with the result that Miss Ann's invitations to the wedding were unanimously accepted. Not only would the resident members go--so the original resolution ran --but the non-resident and outside members would also be on hand to do honor to Miss Euphemia and her distinguished chaperone. This amendment being accepted, McFudd announced in a sepulchral tone that, owing to the severity of the calamity and to the peculiarly painful circumstances which surrounded their esteemed fellow-skylarker, the Honorable Sylvester Ruffle-shirt Tomlins, his fellow-members would wear crape on their left arms for thirty days.
This also was carried unanimously, every man except Ruffle-shirt Tomlins breaking out into the "Dead Man's Chorus"--a song, McFudd explained, admirably fitted to the occasion.
When the auspicious night arrived, the several dress-suits of the members were duly laid out on the piano and hung over the chairs, and each gentleman proceeded to array himself in costume befitting the occasion. Waller, who weighed 200 pounds, squeezed himself into McFudd's coat and trousers (McFudd weighed 150), the trousers reaching a little below the painter's knees. McFudd wrapped Waller's coat about his thin girth and turned up the bagging legs, of the unmentionables six inches above his shoes.
The assorted costumes of the other members were equally grotesque. The habiliments themselves were of proper cut and make, according to the standards of the time--spike-tailed coats, white ties, patent-leather pumps, and the customary trimmings, but the effects produced were as ludicrous as they were incongruous, though the studied bearing of the gentlemen was meant to prove their unconsciousness of the fact.
The astonishment that rested on Mrs. Van Tassell's face when this motley group filed into the parlor and with marked and punctilious deference paid their respects to the bride, and the wrath that flashed in Miss Euphemia's eyes, became ever after part of the traditions of the club. Despite Mrs. Van Tassell's protest against the uproar on the top floor, she had invariably spoken in high terms to her friends and intimates of these very boarders--their acquaintance was really part of her social capital--commenting at the same time upon their exalted social and artistic positions. In fact, many of her own special guests had attended the wedding solely in the hope of being brought into more intimate relations with this distinguished group of painters, editors, and musicians, some of whom were already being talked about.
When, however, McFudd stood in the corner of Miss Teetum's parlor like a half-scared boy, pulling out the fingers of Waller's kid gloves, an inch too long for him, and Waller, Fred, and my Lord Cockburn stumbled over the hearth-rug one after the other, and Oliver, feeling like a guilty man and a boor, bowed and scraped like a dancing-master; and Bowdoin the painter, and Simmons and Fog-horn Cranch, talked platitudes with faces as grave as undertakers, the expectant special guests invited by Mrs. Van Tassell began to look upon her encomiums as part of an advertising scheme to fill Miss Teetum's rooms.
