Now I am beggared for words, when I come to try any description of Cluny’s wonderful joy in the final fruition of his long-delayed hopes. When he landed, he was at first volubly happy. He told everyone he was going to be married. He expected everyone to rejoice with him. All his thoughts, words, and actions were tinctured with Christine. Men looked at him, and listened to him, with pity or envy, and one of the greatest of Glasgow’s mercantile magnates cried out enviously—“Oh, man! Man! I would gie all I possess to be as divinely mad as you are—just for one twenty-four hours!”
But joy at its very deepest and holiest turns strangely silent. The words it needs have not yet been invented, and when Cluny was free of all duty, and could come to the very presence of his Beloved, he could say nothing but her name, “Christine! Christine!” almost in a whisper—and then a pause, a pause whose silence was sweeter far than any words could have been. Speech came later, in passionate terms of long and faithful love, in wonder at her beauty, ten-fold finer than ever, in admiration of her lovely dress, her softer speech, her gentler manner. 359 She was a Christine mentalized by her reading and writing, and spiritualized by her contact with the sick and suffering little children of the past months. Also, love purifies the heart it burns in.
Everything was ready for the marriage, and it was solemnized on Saturday morning in the Ruleson home. The large living room was a bower of fresh green things, and made gay and sweet with the first spring flowers. The marriage table was laid there also, but the Domine stood on the hearthstone, and on the very altar of the home in which Christine had grown to such a lovely and perfect womanhood, she became the wife of Captain Cluny Macpherson.
That day when Cluny came in to the bridal, he wore for the very first time his uniform as captain of the new steamer just finishing for him. For he had asked one great favor for himself, which was readily granted, namely, that his commission as captain be dated on his wedding day. So then he received his wife and his ship at the same time. The room was crowded with men and women who had known him from boyhood, and when he appeared, it was hard work to refrain from greeting him with a shout of “Welcome, Captain!” But it was the light of joy and admiration in Christine’s face, which repaid him for the long years of working and waiting for this gloriously compensating hour.
The Colonel said he had the honor of assisting at the wedding of the handsomest couple in Scotland. 360 And it was not altogether an exaggeration. Christine in her white satin gown, with white rose buds in her golden hair, and on her breast—tender, intelligent, intensely womanly was the very mate—in difference—for Cluny, whose sea-beaten beauty, and splendid manhood were so fittingly emphasized by the gold bands and lace and buttons, which Jamie had once called “his trimmings.” He wore them now with becoming dignity, for he knew their value, because he had paid their price.
There was a crowded breakfast table after the ceremony. The Domine blessed the meal, and the Colonel made a flattering speech to the people of Culraine—his people—he called them; promising them better water, and better sanitary arrangements, and another teacher who would look especially after the boys’ athletic games and exercises. During this speech the Captain and his bride slipped away to the train, in the Colonel’s carriage, and when it returned for the Colonel, the wedding guests were scattering, and the long-looked-for event was over.
Over to the public, but to the newly-wed couple it was just beginning. To them, the long, silent strings of hitherto meaningless life, were thrilling with strange and overwhelming melodies. Marriage had instantly given a new meaning to both lives. For the key to life is in the heart, not in the brain; and marriage is the mystical blending of two souls, when self is lost, and found again in the being of another. It was with them,
That ever working miracle of God,
The green and vital mystery of love,