"You are not to talk," he tells her, kissing her softly and for the first time; "I will arrange it all. I will go for a clergyman I know, and explain everything. Oh, darling! you should have been my wife long ago—you shall be my wife at last, in spite of death itself."
Then he leaves her, and goes out. And Edith closes her eyes, and lies still, and knows that never in all the years that are gone has such perfect bliss been hers before. In death, at least, if not life, she will be Charley's wife.
He tells them very quietly, very resolutely—her father who is there from Sandypoint, his mother, sister, Nellie, the doctor.
They listen in wordless wonder; but what can they say?
"The excitement will finish her—mark my words," is the doctor's verdict; "I will never countenance any such melodramatic proceeding."
But his countenance does not matter it seems. The laws of the Medes were not more fixed than this marriage. The clergyman comes, a very old friend of the family, and Charley explains all to him. He listens with quiet gravity—in his experience a death-bed marriage is not at all an unprecedented occurrence. The hour fixed is ten, and Trixy and Nellie go in to make the few possible preparations.
The sick girl lifts two wistful eyes to the gentle face of Nellie Seton. It is very pale, but she stoops and kisses her with her own sweet smile.
"You will live now for his sake," she whispers in that kiss.
They decorate the room and the bed with flowers, they brush away the dark soft hair, they array her in a dainty embroidered night-robe, and prop her up with pillows. There is the fever fire on her wan cheeks, the fever fire in her shining eyes. But she is unutterably happy—you have but to look into her face to see that. Death is forgotten in her new bliss.
The bridegroom comes in, pale and unsmiling—worn and haggard beyond the power of words to tell. Trix, weeping incessantly, stands near, her mother and Mr. Darrell are at one side of the bed. Nellie is bridesmaid. What a strange, sad, solemn wedding it is! The clergyman takes out his book and begins—bride and bridegroom clasp hands, her radiant eyes never leave his face. Her faint replies flutter on her lips—there is an indescribable sadness in his. The ring is on her finger—at last she is what she should have been from the first—Charley's wife.