"I fear nothing, dear one, now that we are one. Do you know, mavourneen, that you can have no feeling, no thought, hereafter, that I shall not share, and that I shall experience no emotion you will not feel? Awful mystery, yet precious reality, this merging of two spirits into one!"
My eyes had turned from time to time to rest in rapt thankfulness upon sky and mountain; but now, suddenly, I was aware that the haunting mystery, lately brooding over the horizon, was gone, and in its place only a perfect peace beyond which the shining circle of the moon, climbing higher and higher in the azure dome, gave promise of joys beyond, infinite and eternal.
CHAPTER XXXI
Impatiently our household awaited Buford's return. Jean, his bride of two days, bore his absence, and the suspense of his still unsettled fate, with more fortitude than I the weary waiting for the coming of the priest, whose blessing was to give me my own—my Ellen. Each day, as I watched her minister more and more tenderly to Aunt Martha, who was slowly dying, and had now and then rare hours of confidential intercourse with her, my love, which I had thought already great beyond power of increase, grew and deepened, till every plan and aspiration centered around her, every thought and emotion was inspired by the glad consciousness of our mutual love.
Thomas and Nelly would not start to Kentucky while their mother lived, nor until after Buford's fate was settled.
There was much hot, foolish talk of banishing Tories, and the English government had been ordered to convey them to England. Through the strong influence which General Morgan and myself had been able to enlist for Buford, however, we hoped to procure for him, at least, a pardon. Both households lived on week after week in anxious suspense, made endurable by the love which brightened the lagging hours.
Meantime Ellen's home was building, planned as to its larger outlines after my vision, but in all details modeled to meet Ellen's tastes and wishes. Whenever the weather permitted, and it was possible for her to leave Aunt Martha—for even the new daughter could not take Ellen's place acceptably at the invalid's bedside—we rode together to the green knoll with its fair prospect, which our home was to crown, to inspect with almost affectionate interest each beam and brick, and to suggest, alter, and replan to the bewilderment of the tolerant workmen. Nevertheless the slow winter days dragged along, and Buford's repeated delays and excuses wore my patience to a thin edge as spring approached. Was I to wait forever for my long withheld happiness?
Aunt Martha had been beyond all suffering for a week, and Thomas and Nelly were almost determined to start to their waiting field of labor without again seeing Buford, when he returned—taking us all by surprise at last.
But he brought no priest with him. "None would come so far," he said, "in such unsettled times." One indeed had been at first willing, but could not get the requisite dispensation from his superior. He, Buford, would be obliged to go back at once to Philadelphia, but he could stand the separation no longer and had returned for Jean. Why not Ellen and I go with them, stop in Baltimore to be married, and then go on to Philadelphia to help him? With me to intercede, personally, for him, he felt sure of obtaining not only pardon but the restoration of his estates.