I will not trouble you, my dear brother, by giving you a detailed account of the double marriage the next day. The same person married us both--a Scandinavian preacher, a friend of the Jansen family. I was not very particular who tied the knot and signed the bill of sale of Estella, provided I was sure the title was good. But I do think that the union of man and wife should be something more than a mere civil contract. Marriage is not a partnership to sell dry goods--(sometimes, it is true, it is principally an obligation to buy them)--or to practice medicine or law together; it is, or should be, an intimate blending of two souls, and natures, and lives; and where the marriage is happy and perfect there is, undoubtedly, a growing-together, not only of spirit and character, but even in the physical appearance of man and wife. Now as these two souls came--we concede--out of heaven, it seems to me that the ceremony which thus destroys their individuality, and blends them into one, should have some touch and color of heaven in it also.
It was a very happy day.
As I look upon it now it seems to me like one of those bright, wide rays of glorious light which we have sometimes seen bursting through a rift in the clouds, from the setting sun, and illuminating, for a brief space of time, the black, perturbed and convulsed sky. One of our poets has compared it to--
"A dead soldier's sword athwart his pall."
But it faded away, and the storm came down, at last, heavy and dark and deadly.
CHAPTER XXX.
UPON THE HOUSE-TOP
A few days after our joint wedding Max came running in one day, and said:
"It is to be to-morrow."
He gave each of us a red cross to sew upon our clothes. He was very much excited, and hurried out again.