I
IT was a lovely morning in the early summer that Milly Clark’s lover brought her the engagement ring with which she was also to be wedded some sweet day. It was a plain hoop of gold, with the word Mizpah graven upon its inner side, not because there was any thought of parting between them then, but simply in accordance with a somewhat sentimental fashion of the day. Milly had been given her choice between the ring and a little padlocked bracelet of which Norton was to keep the key, after it had been safely fastened on her white wrist, and this, indeed, appealed to all the instincts of barbaric womanhood, in its suggestion of a lover’s mastery; but the ring was the holier symbol, and the pledge of love eternal.
The bees were buzzing around the syringa bushes in the corner of the old-fashioned garden, where the lovers stood looking out upon the road through the white fence which was built upon a stone wall, and covered with climbing roses. The road, shining in the sunlight, sloped down to a bridge half hidden by chestnut trees, and beyond was a glimpse of hills against the blue sky of June. The air, the countryside, the hum of unseen insects, contained that suggestion of joy unspeakable that comes only at this heavenly time of the year, but there were only the two by the garden wall to feel it in its perfection this morning. As far as the eye could see there was no other human being anywhere. At eleven o’clock in a New England village, after the marketing is seen to and mail time over, all self-respecting persons are at home behind the bowed green blinds of the white houses by the roadside, or at work farther off in the fields. For Milly and Norton to be out in the garden now was to be quite alone, and when he put his arm around her and drew her down beside him on the stone wall among the roses, she only smiled confidingly up into his face, and flushed sweetly as he kissed her.
“I can’t seem to get used to it,” she said.
“Get used to what, dear?”
“Your—loving me.”
“I don’t want you to get used to it!” he cried fervently. “I’m sure I never shall. Why, when we’re quite old people it will be just the same as it is now. Love can never grow old—not ours, anyway. Can it, Milly!”
She gave him a smile for answer and he gazed down at her admiringly, taking note anew of the deep blue of her eyes, the little veins on her forehead, where the soft brown hair was drawn smoothly back from it, and the pure curve of her throat and chin—a face of the highest New England type, fine and beautiful. He himself was the product of a different civilization, and cast in a rougher mold. It was the very difference that had drawn them close together, his rude strength giving sweetest promise of protection to her delicate fineness. She sat silently looking at him, her soul steeped in a delicious dream.
“Yes, we will be like this always,” she said at last with almost religious solemnity.
“Always,” he assented.
“Only growing better and better all the time, Norton. I feel as if I could never be good enough to show how thankful I am that you love me. Do you think I ever can?”
“Hush,” he said, frowning. “You must not talk in that way. I’m only a stupid, commonplace fellow at best, not half good enough for you. You’ll have to make me better.”
“Oh, Norton!” she protested.
“Ah, never mind now, dear! You haven’t put on my ring yet, Milly—remember it is not to come off until I have to put it on the next time—do you know when that will be? When we are married, when you are mine, really and forever. May that day soon come! Give me your hand now, dear, and let me ‘ring your finger with the round hoop of gold,’ as you were reading to me last night.”
“There is someone coming,” said Milly nervously. She stood up as the shadow of a parasol touched the roses, and met the gaze of the Episcopal clergyman’s wife, as she stopped to rest, panting a little, by the garden wall. She was a thin woman in a black and white print gown, and with a black lace bonnet trimmed with bunches of artificial violets surmounting her sallow face.
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Milly?” she asked with a kindly inflection of her rather sharp voice. “And Mr. Edwards, too, of course. Well, good morning to you both. Isn’t it a perfect day! A little hot in the sun though. It always tires me to walk up this hill; I have to stop a moment here to get my breath. I suppose you’re not going to the funeral, either of you? No, it’s not a bit necessary, but I fancied you might like to see the service performed as it should be for once.”
“I did not know anyone had died,” said Milly.
“My dear, it’s only a little boy from the poorhouse. His relatives—such as he had—are not able to bury him, and Mr. Preston did want to show the parish what a properly conducted funeral was like. You know what a frightfully bigoted place this is! We had to give up candles altogether, Mr. Edwards. It fairly makes me shiver at times—the ignorance! I wonder—I do wonder, they don’t knock the cross off the spire some day, because it’s a symbol. I wonder they even have a church, instead of a circus tent!”
“Oh, Mrs. Preston!” remonstrated Milly. She glanced sideways nervously at Norton, who was picking a rose to pieces with an imperturbable expression.
“You will hear the choir boys at any rate as they march in procession around the grave,” pursued Mrs. Preston, raising her parasol again. “I don’t suppose there will be a soul there but ourselves. Well, I put on my best bonnet, anyway, out of respect—I know you will both be glad when I’m gone, although you’re too polite to say so.”
She relaxed into a quizzical smile as she regarded them. “Well, good-by.”
“Thank Heaven! she’s gone at last,” said Norton with boyish petulance, as they watched her disappear behind the evergreens that bordered the churchyard. “What possessed her to give us so much of her society just now—the very wrong moment, wasn’t it, dear? She has left me only a quarter of an hour before the noon train to town, and I’ll not be back until Monday, you know, this time. To think that I shall be working for you now, Milly—for a sweet girl in a blue dress, with a dimple in one cheek and long brown lashes that droop lower and lower as I—oh, you darling!” They both laughed in joyously blissful content.
“Shall I put the ring on now?” he asked after a few moments. “Stand up beside me, then. There, that is right. This is our betrothal, Milly. Say the words, dear, since you would have them, while I slip on the ring.”
“Let us say them together. Oh, Norton, it is to be forever!”
“Forever. Give me your dear hand. Now with me. ‘The Lord’—‘The Lord,’”—her clear voice mingled with his deep one. “The Lord watch—between thee—and me—when we are parted—(but we never shall be!) when we are parted—the one from the other.” The ring shone on her finger, their lips met in a long kiss. He caught her to him and laid her head upon his breast and her arms around his neck, and they stood thus, silently, while the seconds passed. What power was in those words of might to bring a sudden hush upon both hearts, and to change the sunshine into the awesome, beautiful light of another world? Something deeper, nobler, purer than they stirred those two souls, and made them sacredly, divinely one. Each felt intensely what neither could have expressed. Never, while life lasted, could the witness of that moment be forgotten.
Long after her lover had left her Milly sat in the garden, her face half hidden in the roses, with the bees still booming around the syringas, and the sky growing bluer and bluer in the heat of noon. She heard the choir boys singing now in the little churchyard near by as they marched around the open grave,
“Brief life is here our portion,
Brief sorrow, shortlived care,
The life that knows no ending,
The tearless life, is there.
Oh happy retribution,
Short toil, eternal rest!
For mortals and for sinners,
A mansion with the blest.”
The words brought her no realization of the shortness of human life, of inevitable sorrow, of impending care, and no remembrance of the dead pauper child, or of the open grave—they only served to add to the fullness of her bliss the thought that after all this measureless happiness of earth, there was still the joy of heaven beyond.