And the quiet days pass one by one—each one very like the other—until the last sun has set, and the evening lights gleam in the old farm-house on the last night before the wedding-day—that wedding-day which she had, to the very last, put off to the latest possible time. Under the hush of evening skies, in the flower-decked garden, in the dreamy grey air, in the sight of fallow fields glistening in the moonlight, Rube is saying good-night.
“To bed early,” was the parting injunction of Mell’s future lord; “we have a long journey before us.”
“Yes,” answered Mell, solemnly, “a very long journey. The journey of life.”
“However long, all too short,” was Rube’s fond reply. He stroked her lovely hair. “Mell!
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‘May never night ’twixt me and you With thoughts less fond arise!’” |
After he was gone Mell repeated those words, “a very long journey.” Then she sighed.
It would have to be a very long journey, indeed, to correspond with this sigh of Mell’s—a very long sigh.
Well, there is no better time for a woman to sigh than the night before she is married. Nor are tears amiss. Not one in ten knows what she’s about; for, if she did, she would not—
On the brink of the Untried there is room enough to stop and look about one, to think better of it, to turn around and go back; only no man or woman was ever yet gifted with brains enough to do it. The things unknown, which loom up so temptingly into sight upon the brink of the Untried, look far more desirable, infinitely more tempting, than all the known blessings of the past. And so Mell sighed—but lifted not a finger to save herself.