“There is room enough in God’s temple for you and Helen too,” replied Arthur. Mittie remembered the words of her step-mother, so similar, and was struck by the coincidence. Her own views seemed very selfish and narrow, by contrast.
The flowers of spring unfolded, and Mittie did indeed revive and bloom again, but it was as the lily, not the rose. The love tint of the latter had faded, never to blush again.
There was a subdued happiness in the household, which had long been a stranger there.
Louis, though his brow still wore the traces of remorse, was happy in the consciousness of errors forgiven, confidence restored, and good resolutions strengthened and confirmed. He devoted himself to his father’s business with an industry and zeal more worthy of praise, because he was obliged to struggle with his natural inclinations. He believed it his father’s wish to keep him with him, and he made it his law to obey him, thinking his future life too short for expiation. There was another object, for which he also thought life too short, and that was to secure the happiness of Alice—whom he loved with a purity and intensity that was deepened by her helplessness and almost infantine artlessness. He knew that her blindness was hopeless, but it seemed to him that he loved her the more for her blindness, her entire dependence on his care. It would be such a holy task to protect and cherish her, and to throw around her darkened life the illuminating influence of love.
She was still with them, and Mrs. Hazleton had been induced to leave the seclusion of the Parsonage, and become the guest of Mrs. Gleason. It must have been a strong motive that tempted her from the hallowed shades, which she had never quitted since her husband’s death. Reader, can you conjecture what that motive was?
A very handsome new house, built in the cottage style, had been lately erected in the vicinity of Mr. Gleason’s, under the superintendence of the young doctor, and rumor said that he was shortly to be married to Helen Gleason. Every one thought it was time for him to be married, if he ever intended to be, but many objected to her extreme youth. That, however, was the only objection urged, as Helen was a universal favorite, and Arthur Hazleton the idol of the town.
Arthur had never made Helen a formal declaration of love. He had never asked her in so many many words, “Will you be my wife?” As imperceptibly and gracefully as the morning twilight brightens into the fervor and glory of noonday, had the watchfulness and tenderness of friendship deepened into the warmth and devotion of perfect love. Helen could not look back to any particular scene, where the character of the friend was merged into that of the lover. She felt the blessed assurance that she was beloved, yet had any one asked her how and when she first received it, she would have found it difficult to answer. He talked to her of the happiness of the future, of their future, of the heaven of mutual trust and faith and love, begun on earth, in the kingdom of their hearts, till it seemed as if her individual existence ceased, and life with him became a heavenly identity. There were other life interests, too, twining together, as the following scene will show.
The evening before the wedding-day of Arthur and Helen, as Mrs. Hazleton was walking in the garden, gathering flowers and evergreens for bridal garlands to decorate the room, Louis approached her, hand in hand with her blind child.
“Mrs. Hazleton,” said he with trembling eagerness, “will you give me your daughter, and let us hallow the morrow by a double wedding?”
“What, Alice, my poor blind Alice!” exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton, dropping in astonishment the flowers she had gathered. “You cannot mean what you say—and her misfortune should make her sacred from levity.”