University of Virginia Library

51. CHAPTER LI.
THE WEDDING.

ON the same train with Mrs. Banker and Mark,
Bell Cameron came with Bob, but father Cameron
was not able to come; he would gladly have done
so if he could, and he sent his blessing to Katy
with the wish that she might be very happy in her second
married life. This message Bell gave to Katy, and then
tried to form some reasonable excuse for her mother's
and Juno's absence, for she could not tell how haughtily

both had declined the invitation, Juno finding fault because
Katy had not waited longer than two years, and
Mrs. Cameron blaming her for being so very vulgar as to
be married at home, instead of in church. On this point
Katy herself had been a little disquieted, feeling how
much more appropriate it was that she be married in the
church, but shrinking from standing again a bride at the
same altar where she had once before been made a wife.
She could not do it, she finally decided; there would be
too many harrowing memories crowding upon her mind,
and as Morris did not particularly care where the ceremony
was performed, it was settled that it should be at
the house, even though Mrs. Deacon Bannister did say
that “she had supposed Dr. Grant too High Church to do
anything so Presbyterianny as that.”

Bell's arrival at the farm-house was timely; for the unexpected
appearance in their midst of one whom they
looked upon as surely dead had stunned and bewildered
the family to such an extent that it needed the presence
of just such a matter-of-fact, self-possessed woman as
Bell, to bring things back to their original shape. It
was wonderful how the city girl fitted into the vacant
niches, seeing to everything which needed seeing to, and
still finding time to steal away alone with Lieutenant
Bob, who kept her in a painful state of blushing, by constantly
wishing it was his bridal night as well as Dr.
Grant's, and by inveighing against the weeks which must
intervene, ere the day appointed for the grand ceremony,
to take place in Grace Church, and which was to make
Bell his wife.

“Come in here, Helen, I have something to show
you,” Mrs. Banker said, after she had again embraced
and wept over her long lost son, whose return was not
quite real yet; and leading her daughter-in-law to her
bed-room, she showed her the elegant, white silk which
had been made for her just after her marriage, two years
before, and which, with careful forethought, she had
brought with her, as more suitable now for the wedding,
than Helen's mourning weeds.

“I made the most of my time last night, after receiving
Mark's telegram, and had it modernized somewhat,”

she said. “And I brought your pearls, for you will be
most as much a bride as Katy, and I have a pride in
seeing my son's wife appropriately dressed.”

Far different were Helen's feelings now, as she donned
the elegant dress, from what they had been the first
and only time she wore it. Then the bridegroom was
where danger and death lay thickly around his pathway;
but now he was at her side, kissing her cheek,
where the roses were burning so brightly, and calling
still deeper blushes to her face, by his teasing observations
and humorous ridicule of his own personal appearance.
Would she not feel ashamed of him in his soiled
uniform? And would she not cast longing glaces at her
handsome brother-in-law and the stylish Lieutenant
Bob? But Helen was proud of her husband's uniform,
as a badge of what he had suffered; and when the folds
of her rich dress swept against it, she did not draw them
away, but nestled closer to him, leaning upon his shoulder;
and when no one was near, winding her soft arm
about his neck once, whispering, “My darling Mark, I
cannot make it real yet.”

Softly the night shadows fell around the farm-house,
and in the rooms below a rather mixed group was assembled—all
the élite of the town, with many of Aunt Betsy's
neighbors, and the doctor's patients, who had come to
see their physician married, rejoicing in his happiness,
and glad that the mistress of Linwood was not to be a
stranger, but the young girl who had grown up in their
midst, and who, by suffering and sorrow, had been
moulded into a noble woman, worthy of Dr. Grant.
She was ready now for her second bridal, in her dress of
white, with no vestige of color in her face, and her great
blue eyes shining with a brilliancy which made them almost
black. Occasionally, as her thoughts leaped backward
over a period of almost six years, a tear trembled
on her long eyelashes, but Morris kissed it away, asking
if she were sorry.

“Oh, no, not sorry that I am to be your wife,” she answered;
“but it is not possible that I should forget entirely
the roughness of the road which has led me to you.”

“They are waiting for you,” was said several times,
and down the stairs passed Mark Ray and Helen, Lieut.

Bob and Bell, with Dr. Grant and Katy, whose face, as she
stood again before the clergyman and spoke her marriage
vows, shone with a strange, peaceful light, which made
it seem to those who gazed upon her like the face of some
pure angel.

There was no thought then of that deathbed in Georgetown—no
thought of Greenwood or the little grave in
Silverton, where the crocuses and hyacinths were blossoming—no
thought of anything save the man at her
side, whose voice was so full and earnest as it made the
responses, and who gently pressed the little hand as he
fitted the wedding-ring. It was over at last, and Katy
was Morris's wife, blushing now as they called her Mrs.
Grant, and putting up her rosebud lips to be kissed by
all who claimed that privilege. Helen, too, came in for
her share of attention, and the opinion of the guests as to
the beauty of the respective brides, as they were termed,
was pretty equally divided.

In heavy rustling silk, which actually trailed an inch,
and cap of real lace, Aunt Betsy moved among the
crowd, her face glowing with the satisfaction she felt at
seeing her nieces so much admired, and her heart so full
of good will and toleration that after the supper was
over, and she fancied a few of the younger ones were beginning
to feel tired, she suggested to Bell that she
might start a dance if she had a mind to, either in the
kitchen or the parlor, it did not matter where, and
“Ephraim would not care an atom,” a remark which
brought from Mrs. Deacon Bannister a most withering
look of reproach, and slightly endangered Aunt Betsy's
standing in the church. Perhaps Bell Cameron suspected
as much, for she replied that they were having a
splendid time as it was, and as Dr. Grant did not dance,
they might as well dispense with it altogether. And so
it happened that there was no dancing at Katy's wedding,
and Uncle Ephraim escaped the reproof which his brother
deacon would have felt called upon to give him had
he permitted so grievous a sin, while Mrs. Deacon Bannister,
who, at the first trip of the toe would have departed
lest her eyes should look upon the evil thing, was
permitted to remain until “it was out,” and the guests
retired en masse to their respective homes.

The carriage from Linwood stood at the farm-house
door, and Katy, wrapped in shawls and hood, was ready
to go with her husband. There were no tears shed at this
parting, for their darling was not going far away; her
new home was just across the fields, and through the soft
moonlight they could see its chimney tops, and trace for
some little distance the road over which the carriage went
bearing her swiftly on; her hands fast locked in Morris's,
her head upon his arm, and the hearts of both too full of
bliss for either to speak a word until Linwood was reached,
when, folding Katy to his bosom in a passionate embrace,
Morris said to her,

“We are home at last—your home and mine, my precious,
precious wife.”

The village clock was striking one, and the sound
echoed across the waters of Fairy Pond, awakening, in
his marshy bed, a sleeping frog, who sent forth upon the
warm, still air a musical, plaintive note as Morris bore
his bride over the threshold and into the library, where a
cheerful fire was blazing. He had ordered it kindled
there, for he had a fancy ere he slept to see fulfilled a dream
he had dreamed so often, of Katy sitting as his wife in
the chair across the hearth, where he placed her now,
himself removing her shawl and hood; then kneeling
down before her, with his arm around her waist and his
head upon her shoulder, he prayed aloud to the God who
had brought her there, asking His blessing upon their future
life, and dedicating himself and all he had to his
Master's service. It is such prayer which God delights
to answer, and a peace, deeper than they had yet known,
fell upon that newly-married pair at Linwood.