University of Virginia Library

42. CHAPTER XLII.
FOR EVER AND EVER.

WHEN they had all re-entered the castle, Andrew
made them sit down. The old minister
did not see any escape from the fatal obstacle
of a lack of license, but Andrew was very mysterious.

“Virtue is its own reward,” said the Philosopher, “but it
often finds an incidental reward besides. Now, Julia, you are
the noblest woman in these degenerate times, according to my
way of thinking.”

“That's true as preachin', ef you'll except one,” chirped Jonas,
with a significant look at his Cynthy Ann. Julia blushed, and
the old minister looked inquiringly at Andrew and at Julia.
This exaggerated praise from a man so misanthropic as Andrew
excited his curiosity.

“Without exception,” said Andrew emphatically, looking first
at Jonas, then at Mr. Williams, “my niece is the noblest woman
I ever knew.”

“Please don't, Uncle Andrew!” begged Julia, almost speechless
with shame. Praise was something she could not bear. She
was inured to censure.

“Do you remember that dark night—of course you do—when
you braved everything and came here to see August, who would
have died but for your coming?” Andrew was now looking at
Julia, who answered him almost inaudibly.

“And do you remember when we got to your gate, on your
return, what you said to me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Julia.

“To be sure you do, and” (turning to August) “I shall never
forget her words; she said, `If he should get worse, I should
like him to die my husband, if he wishes it. Send for me, day or
night, and I will come in spite of everything.”'

“Did you say that?” asked August, looking at her eagerly.

And Julia nodded her head, and lifted her eyes, glistening
with brimming tears, to his.

“You do not know,” said Andrew to the preacher, “how
much her proposal meant, for you do not know through what
she would have had to pass. But I say that God does sometimes
reward virtue in this world—a world not quite worn out yet—
and she is worthy of the reward in store for her.”

Saying this, Andrew went into the closet leading to his secret
stairway—secret no longer, since Julia had ascended by that
way—and soon came down from his library with a paper in his
hand.

“When you, my noble-hearted niece, proposed to make any
sacrifice to marry this studious, honest, true-hearted German
gentleman, who is worthy of you, if any man can be, I thought
best to be ready for any emergency, and so I went the next day
and procured the license, the clerk promising to keep my secret.
A marriage-license is good for thirty days. You will see, Mr.
Williams, that this has not quite expired.”

The minister looked at it and then said, “I depend on your
judgment, Mr. Anderson. There seems to be something peculiar
about the circumstances of this marriage.”

“Very peculiar,” said Andrew.

“You give me your word, then, that it is a marriage I ought
to solemnize?”

“The lady is my niece,” said Andrew. “The marriage,
taking place in this castle, will shed more glory upon it than its
whole history beside; and you, sir, have never performed a marriage
ceremony in a case where the marriage was so excellent as
this.”

“Except the last one,” put in Jonas.

I suppose Mr. Williams made the proper reductions for Andrew's
enthusiasm. But he was satisfied, and perhaps he was
rather inclined to be satisfied, for gentle-hearted old men are
quite susceptible to a romantic situation.

When he asked August if he would live with this woman
in holy matrimony “so long as ye both shall live,” August,
thinking the two hours of time left to him too short for the
earnestness of his vows, looked the old minister in the eyes,
and said solemnly: “For ever and ever!”

“No, my son,” said the old man, smiling and almost weeping,
“that is not the right answer. I like your whole-hearted
love. But it is far easier to say `for ever and ever,' standing as
you think you do now on the brink of eternity, than to say
`till death do us part,' looking down a long and weary road of
toil and sickness and poverty and change and little vexations.
You do not only take this woman, young and blooming, but
old and sick and withered and wearied, perhaps. Do you take
her for any lot?”

“For any lot,” said August solemnly and humbly.

And Julia, on her part, could only bow her head in reply to
the questions, for the tears chased one another down her cheeks.
And then came the benediction. The inspired old man, full of
hearty sympathy, stretched his trembling hands with apostolic
solemnity over the heads of the two, and said slowly, with solemn
pauses, as the words welled up out of his soul: “The peace
of God—that passeth all understanding” (here his voice melted
with emotion)—“keep your hearts — and minds — in the
knowledge and love of God. — And now, may grace—mercy
—and peace from God—the Father — and our Lord Jesus
Christ — be with you — evermore—Amen!” And to the
imagination of Julia the Spirit of God descended like a dove
into her heart, and the great mystery of wifely love and the other
greater mystery of love to God seemed to flow together in her
soul. And the quieter spirit of August was suffused with a great
peace.

They soon left the castle to return to the mount of ascension,
but they walked slowly, and at first silently, over the intervening
hill, which gave them a view of the Ohio River, sleeping in its
indescribable beauty and stillness in the moonlight.

Presently they heard the melodious voice of the old presiding
elder, riding up the road a little way off, singing the hopeful
hymns in which he so much delighted. The rich and earnest
voice made the woods ring with one verse of

And then he broke into Watts's

There seemed to be some accord between the singing of the
brave old man and the peacefulness of the landscape. Soon he
had reached the last stanza, and in tones of subdued but ecstatic
triumph he sang:

And with these words he passed round the hill and out of
the hearing of the young people.

“August,” said Julia slowly, as if afraid to break a silence
so blessed, “August, it seems to me that the sky and the river
and the hazy hills and my own soul are all alike, just as full of
happiness and peace as they can be.”

“Yes,” said August, smiling, “but the sky is clear, and your
eyes are raining, Julia. But can it be possible that God, who
made this world so beautiful, will burn it up to-night? It used
to seem a hard world to me when I was away from you, and
I didn't care how quickly it burned up. But now—”

Somehow August forgot to finish that sentence. Words are
of so little use under such circumstances. A little pressure on
Julia's arm which was in his, told all that he meant. When love
makes earth a heaven, it is enough.

“But how beautiful the new earth will be,” said Julia, still
looking at the sleeping river, “the river of life will be clear as
crystal!”

“Yes,” said August, “the Spanish version says, `Most resplendent,
like unto crystal.”'

“I think,” said Julia, “that it must be something like this
river. The trees of life will stand on either side, like those
great sycamores that lean over the water so gracefully.”

Any landscape would have seemed heavenly to Julia on this
night. A venerable friend of mine, a true Christian philanthropist,
whose praise is in all the churches, wants me to undertake
to reform fictitious literature by leaving out the love. And
so I may when God reforms His universe by leaving out the love.
Love is the best thing in novels; not until love is turned out of
heaven will I help turn it out of literature. It is only the misrepresentation
of love in literature that is bad, as the poisoning
of love in life is bad. It was the love of August that had
opened Julia's heart to the influences of heaven, and Julia was to
August a mediator of God's grace.

By eleven o'clock August Wehle and his wife—it gives me
nearly as much pleasure as it did August to use that locution
—were standing not far away from the surging crowd of those
who, in singing hymns and in excited prayer, were waiting
for the judgment. Jonas and Cynthy and Andrew were with
them. August, though not a recognized Millerite, almost blamed
himself that he should have been away these two hours from the
services. But why should he? The most sacramental of all the
sacraments is marriage. Is it not an arbitrary distinction of theologians,
that which makes two rites to be sacraments and others
not? But if the distinction is to be made at all, I should apply
the solemn word to the solemnest rite and the holiest ordinance
of God's, even if I left out the sacred washing in the name of the
Trinity and the broken emblematic bread and the wine. These

are sacramental in their solemn symbolism, that in the solemnest
symbolism and the holiest reality.

August's whole attention was now turned toward the coming
judgment; and as he stood thinking of the awfulness of
this critical moment, the exercises of the Adventists grated
on the deep peacefulness of his spirit, for from singing their
more beautiful hymns, they had passed to an excited shouting of
the old camp-meeting ditty whose refrain is:

He and Julia hung back a moment, but Mrs. Abigail, who
had recovered from her tenth trance, and had been for some time
engaged in an active search for Julia, now pounced upon her,
and bore her off, before she had time to think, to the place of
the hottest excitement.