“I want you just as you are,” Adele had said to him, “without one plea, not dressed up for an occasion;” and the healthy groom came so, fresh, and clean, and free—a true man.
Other lovers of nature present said he was “a splendid fellow—he looks it! Any girl ought to be proud of him”—the truth. He was indeed much more a veritable nobleman in appearance than when clothed in black.
He waited for Adele.
The bride, “arrayed in fine linen pure and white,” wore orange blossoms because symbolic among her people, the emblems festooning the bridal veil upon her shoulders. Her forehead was uncovered; and naught in her hair but a spray of blossoms held by a diamond cross—Paul’s gift. The cross glowed and sparkled in the sunlight, not unlike a flame. Some of the natives called it a “tongue of fire.” It was so, a flame of affection from Paul to herself. Her blonde hair like her mother’s, and intellectual dark eyes from her father, gave an alluring and mysterious beauty; a combination which appealed to the Orientals as angelic, and to many others as fascinating; human, yet spiritual.
Adele at first looked upwards, but not in assumption—it was her natural attitude when moving freely without fear; then bowed her head as in the presence of God whom she loved, and because she was with her beloved in human experience.
Upon her father’s arm she came forward, leaning in submission to him from whom she had received her life (bios); and embraced her mother, kissing her with arms around her neck, before the Creator and men, in token of that mother’s love she had received, namely her creation and preservation in this life; which she considered were divine attributes, divine gifts to be bequeathed to her own hereafter.
To Paul she seemed as one looking towards the Celestial regions from which she must have come, and to which he felt sure she was destined some day. And the Orientals present looked on rapturously, and some drew in their breath between their teeth with admiration and respect; their manner of doing this seemed to say that they wished to imbibe some of the happiness which her presence near them suggested. Another voiced the sentiment of all mankind: “She is too lovely to live, she will be taken;” but on the instant a twig in the grass caught the skirt of her gown, and as she felt inclined to pause and loosen it, the Doctor stooped to detach it, and the bride passed on.
Her father’s dignified presence, markedly paternal, was also suggestive—of what research after higher knowledge in systems may accomplish when Christianity is recognized as the great incentive to knowledge and ultimate unity. Truth was the one goal in Professor Cultus’ scientific investigations; but he was not one to accept mere knowledge as adequate. He must have the truth also. His intellectual head stood upon his finely proportioned shoulders, witness to the honesty and thoroughness of truth as he saw it; an honest man—God’s noblest work.
Mrs. Cultus, Carlotta Gains Cultus, the bride’s mother, was by heredity a positive character, practical, active and worldly-wise. She was the embodiment of that womanly knowledge of the science of social intercourse, the ethics of society; one, who after encountering men and things, learns to appreciate them at their real value—a value not set by fashion, but by the true commonsense standards. Mrs. Cultus was one not always properly appreciated by others, but ever active on principle whether appreciated or not; not solely in intellectual lines of various heterogeneous clubs, but also in the humanities when the appeal to her seemed reasonable, and therefore natural. Mrs. Cultus had learned through severe illness certain truths in life which appealed to her personally with practical force and significance; an avenue to conviction very different from that of her husband. Her presence now manifested that other dignity of truth and worldly wisdom which did not repel, but attracted all who really knew her, for confidence, aid and affection; her husband and daughter most of all, for they knew her best. Being a mother who had suffered, she had learned to feel a mother-tenderness for all—that divine affection for humanity ever characteristic of Him who took even little babes in His arms and blessed them. So did Mrs. Cultus, in this way, now strive to follow Him. Devoid of either hypocrisy or guile, she was ever “true to the life”—her natural life as God had made her.
And the bride’s friend, the friend of her own age; Adele and “Frank” Winchester, intimates; the one with whom her youthful thoughts and pranks had been unrestrained and free. It was this friend who had arrayed her in fine linen, pure and white, for her bridal, and by working faithfully, almost without ceasing, had embellished her wedding garment with an exquisite vine embroidered in white floss silk, encircling her bosom, trailing down to the hem. Affection and artistic skill guiding the willing fingers had produced this simple vine and branches. The art of loving simply, yet constantly, entwining truly, was in that vine, for there had been neither time nor place for elaboration; yet the vine was finished in season, and decked the bride at her wedding. It was a secret between these chums, how the worker had added clandestinely a small bunch of thorns embroidered in among the folds near the hem of her garment, where Adele could tread upon them if she chose. “Merely to remind you, my dear,” said Frank, laughing, “what a thorn in the flesh I’ve often been; these are the last—all future thorns are for Paul.” Adele cherished those precious thorns as if they were jewels; she would not have trod on them—no! no more than she would have wished her friend a pathway of thorns.