Mary Ware's Promised Land

by Annie F. Johnston

He went back to Louisville without telling Mary of his arrangement with Mr. Sherman which had changed all his plans. The home he had written so much about would be ready for her, but it would not be in the far West, as she expected. He could hardly wait for the day to come when he could witness her delight over the tremendous surprise which he had in store for her.

It was not many weeks before he had the pleasure of telling her, but it was over two months before she made a record of it in her diary. Then she wrote:

"There is room for just one more chapter in my Good Times book, and when that is finished it is to be laid away in the chest with my wedding gown and bridal roses. Maybe, a hundred years from now, some young girl rummaging through the attic may find my beautiful dress all yellowed with time, and the rose leaves dried and scentless. But I am sure my happiness will call to her from these pages like a living voice as young as hers.

"And when she sees how this record is blistered with tears in places, and reads how Disappointment and Duty and even Death rose up to 'close all the roads of all the world' to me, then she'll take 'heart of grace' if she is in any desert of waiting herself. For she'll see how true it is that Love's road is always open, and that if we only keep inflexible it will finally lead to the land of our desire. For here I am at last in Lloydsboro Valley.

"It has been more than two months since Phil and I were married at Saint Mark's Cathedral in Riverville, but I have been too busy to write the chronicles of that important affair. No one was there but Mr. and Mrs. Dudley Blythe. Dear old Bishop Chartley came down for the ceremony. His warm friendship with Mrs. Blythe made that arrangement possible. It was late in the afternoon, and the great stained-glass windows made it seem like twilight, and down the long dim aisles the altar candles gleamed like stars.

"I had thought at first that the vast place would seem empty and lonesome, and that it would be queer not to have the pews filled with friendly faces at a time like that. But when I went down the aisle I wasn't conscious of empty pews. The glorious organ music filled it, clear to the vaulted ceiling. And although Phil had teased me about not wanting to wear an ordinary travelling dress and hat, he had to acknowledge afterward that he was glad I chose to come to him all in white and in a filmy tulle veil. And he said some dear things about the way I looked, that were as sweet to me as the rose leaves I have scattered among the folds of my wedding gown's white loveliness. I have not put what he said into these pages for the girl to find a century from now. For fashions change so curiously that maybe she would smile and say how very queer my old-time garments are, and wonder how any man could have made a pretty speech about them.

"Phil proved he had some sentiment about such things himself, for soon after he bought me a real 'Ginevra' chest, all beautifully carved, with my name engraved on the brass plate on the lid: 'Mary Ware Tremont.'

"Not until we were aboard the train, and he showed me our tickets marked Lloydsboro Valley, did I know that we were bound for Kentucky, instead of the far West, and not until we were almost there did he spring his grand surprise, although he was nearly choking with impatience to tell. Of course I hadn't expected that we would set up much of an establishment. I supposed that wherever we went we would rent a modest little cottage, probably in the suburbs. I knew that Phil couldn't afford much. He never began to save anything at all until two years ago. He confessed when he first came back from Mexico that it was a lecture of mine about providing a financial umbrella for a possible rainy day which started him to doing it, and that as expenses were light in the construction camp, and his pay very large, he had put by enough to take us through almost anything, short of a cloudburst. But that was an emergency fund, of course, and not to be invested in houses and lands.

"He never told me that the tangle about his Great-aunt Patricia's holdings in England, whatever that may be, had been straightened out at last, and that his share, paid to him recently, was over five thousand pounds.

"That was the first part of the surprise. The second was that he had bought (mark that word, whoever you are, oh, little maiden of the far-off future, if you ever come across this record of happiness)—he had bought a home in Lloydsboro Valley. He had the deed in his pocket, and he showed how it was made out to me!