How could I call up such a train of sombre thought when speaking of Mary Gordon's marriage? None doubted her husband's truth, her own deep devotion, as they crowded around when the simple rite was ended to congratulate them, and breathe a fervent wish that their joy might increase as the years of their life rolled onward. They went forth from that quiet church with new and strange feelings springing up, and as Mary looked upon the throng who still reiterated their friendly wishes, she felt an inward consciousness that God had blessed and sustained her through those years of trial and probation.
"Who would have thought that the deacon's Mary would ever have grown up such a fine woman?" said Aunty Gould, as she wiped her spectacles upon the corner of her new gingham apron. "The deacon himself ain't got much sperit in him, and as for Miss Gordon, I don't believe she ever whipped one of them children in her life. She always let 'em have their own way a great deal too much to suit me. Jest think of her letting Mary go off to Lowell, in the midst of that city of iniquity, and stay three or four years, jest because James must be college larned. As if it warn't as respectable to stay to home and be a farmer, as his father and his grandfather was before him. I haven't much 'pinion of him, but Stephen Gordon is going to make the man. Steddy and industrious a'most as the deacon himself."
So we see the differences of opinion which exist in the narrowest community; for Mrs. Hall, as she turned toward her own bright home, said to her husband that Mary Gordon was a pattern to the young girls now growing up in the village. But for her honest independence and hardihood in braving the opinion of the world, her family might have been living without education, and without refinement. Now she had won for herself the love of a noble heart—could see her brother successful through her efforts, and knew that their parents were happy in feeling that they were so. "She has been the sun of that household," replied her husband, "and I doubt not will ever be the happiness of her own."
They were sitting alone—the newly made husband and wife—on the eve of their marriage-day. They were in their home, which was henceforth to be the scene of all their love and labors. The last kind friend had gone, and for the first time that day they could feel the calm, unclouded serenity which the end of a long and often wearisome toil had brought.
The moonlight trembled through the shaded casement, and surrounded as with a halo the sweet, serious face that looked out upon the night; and far around, even to the rugged mountains that rose as sentinels over the green valley, earth and air were bathed in that pure and tender radiance. The flowering shrubs that twined about the little porch seemed to give forth a more delicious perfume than when scorched by the sun's warm kiss. The neighboring orchards almost bending beneath the clusters of buds and blossoms that covered the green boughs, waved gently in the light breeze that showered the sunny petals as it passed upon the freshly springing grass beneath. The low cry of the whippo-wil came now and then from a far-off wood; save that, and the rustle of the vines clinging about the casement, no sound broke the sabbath-like repose. The church—scarce a stone's throw from the little parsonage—stood boldly relieved by the dark trees which rose beside it; and not far away—not too far for them to see by day the loved forms of its inmates—they could distinguish the sloping roofs and brown walls of Mary's early home.
The young bride turned from the scene without, and when she looked up into her husband's face he saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
"Are you not happy, my Mary?" said he, as he drew her more closely to his bosom.
"Happy! oh, only too happy!" was the murmured response, as he kissed the tears away. "I was but thinking of my past life; how strange it seems that I should have been so prompted, so guided through all. Then, stranger than the rest that you should love one so humble, so ignorant as myself. I may tell you now—now that I am your own true wife, how your love has been the happiness of many years. Ere I dared to hope that your letters breathed more than a friendly interest—and believe me I would not indulge the thought for an instant until you had given me the right so to do—though the wish would for an instant flit across my mind—I knew that one less wise, less noble than yourself would never gain the deep affection of my heart. I almost felt that I could live through life without dearer ties, if so you would always watch my path with interest, awarding, as then, praise and blame.
"But, strange as it may seem, you did love me through all, deeply, devotedly. Oh, what is there in me to deserve such affection! and when I read those blessed words—'I love you, Mary, have loved you from an early period of our correspondence,' it seemed as if my heart were breaking with the excess of wild happiness which rushed like a flood upon it. How could you love me? what was there in me to create such an emotion?"
Allan Loring thought that the wife was far more beautiful than the maiden, as she stood encircled by his arms, gazing with deep earnestness, as if she would read his very soul.