CHAPTER XXIV.

THE BLOWING OF THE ROSE.

Day, ethereal and splendid, burst up the wide horizon like a hymn, and filled the sacred morning with light and love and joy. A morning ruled by a celestial sun—a morning blue and golden, and throbbing with immortality. To breathe was happiness. To drink the cool aërial wine of the clear, sweet atmosphere, was in itself rapture. In all the lustrous azure there was no cloud, and the heavenly day seemed set apart and consecrate to love.

Its glorious ray streamed through the crystal and purple panes of the rich library, and filled the perfumed air with floating lights of violet and gold. The chamber, decked and fragrant with a profusion of delicate and dewy blush roses, and swimming in the sumptuous colored radiance, had bloomed into a hymeneal bower. But more than all its adornments, was the youthful beauty of Emily and Wentworth. They sat by each other, her hand clasped in his, talking in gay, fond voices, and the sun never shone on lovers more joyous and handsome than they. His face, lit by the blue, sparkling eyes and the proud, brilliant smile, with the thick cluster of auburn locks carelessly curling on the passionate sloping brow and around the florid cheeks, was turned to hers; while she, magnificent in her Spanish beauty, her damask cheeks glowing through the clear gold of her complexion, and heightened by the darkness of her hair, gazed at him with lustrous eyes, the pearls of her curved carnation mouth half shown in her slow and indolent ambrosial smile. So sat they in the gold and violet glory of the room—a sight to make an anchorite forswear his weeds, and pray the saints to send him youth and love.

A bounding step was heard upon the stairs, and Emily turned, while Wentworth looked toward the door. It opened presently, and the martial figure of Harrington appeared. The color flashed upon the face of the superb brunette, and springing to her feet, she ran to him. Then, with her arms around him, she turned to Wentworth with a flushed and laughing face, and—

“Are you jealous, Richard, are you jealous?” she cried, with riant gaiety.

“Jealous? Jupiter Pluvius!” shouted Wentworth, bounding to his feet, and rushing over to Harrington.

Clasping him with an embrace of steel, Harrington bent his head, and kissed him on each cheek, then pushed him from him, with his hands upon his shoulders.

“That is the kiss of France,” he gaily cried. “That is the kiss of the Paris that I love. And here,” he added, grasping Wentworth’s hand, “here is the hand of the Old England and the New—the hand of love and faith and the oaken heart. Yours, Richard, now and always.”

Wringing the generous hand, his face convulsed, and his lip quivering, Wentworth gazed at his friend with humid eyes. A moment, and two bright tears rolled down his cheeks, and his head fell.

“Ah, John,” he faltered, “I do not deserve the hand, nor the heart that gives it. I treated you basely, and you”—

“Hush, Richard! Not a word of that. I know it all,” said Harrington, putting his right arm around Wentworth, and drawing him to his breast. “You, too, Emily,” and his left arm encircled her.

There was a moment of silence, deep and sweet as prayer. Standing so, with his beautiful and regal bearded face bent down to them, he gazed upon their features, solemn in that moment with the fervor of their love for him.

“Dear Emily—dear Richard,” he said, in his strong melodious voice, “we will not cloud the joy of this sacred day with any word of what has passed forever. Let us not look upon it with one regret. Let us think of it rather with gratitude and blessing; for it has bound us together closer than we were before. See, I had but two friends; and now, I, who have no brother or sister of my own, have found a sister and a brother in you. That is worth the mutual pain—that repays it all. Behold, a new heaven and a new earth have come to us, and the former things are passed away.”

His voice ceased, and the silence came like a benediction. In a moment, his arms fell, and he turned from them. There was a pause, in which Wentworth and Emily wandered to the windows, wiping their eyes.

“Ah, me,” presently sighed Wentworth, breaking into his volatile laugh, “as I always say, I feel as if I’d got religion. In fact, I’ve got religion several times the last few days.”

“So have I,” cried Emily, dropping her handkerchief from her eyes, and laughing merrily. “John!” she exclaimed, turning quickly, and sweeping, with a rustle of silks, toward Harrington—“now, Richard, don’t be jealous!” she archly said in passing—“John, you restored me to life. I was dying with my long vigil of suffering when you held me in your arms. You lulled me to that sweet sleep, and when I awoke it was to happiness. You gave me back my life, and Muriel gave me back my love. How can I ever thank and love you enough for all you did for me? How can I ever repay you? But I owe you one thing—the kiss you gave me. Oh, I was like an unloved, weary child, dying for affection that hour when I asked you to kiss me. See—I owe you that kiss, and I give it to you.”

Wentworth, touched by the simple and tender fervor of her voice, and by the child-like affection of her action, turned away, filled with emotion.

“Good, now!” he exclaimed, in a moment, wheeling around, and playfully assuming an injured air. “Just keep that up all day, will you! Continue! I’m placid. I can stand any amount of laceration. Don’t stop for me. I’ll bear it.”

They laughed gaily, and came toward him, arm in arm.

“Well, you’re a handsome couple anyway,” pursued the mercurial Wentworth, surveying them with an air of bland admiration—genuine admiration, too, mixed with his affectation of it. “As for Emily, she’s just what Muriel calls her—the gorgeous queen-rose of Ispahan. But you, Harrington—what have you been doing to yourself? I never saw you look so finely in my life. Walter Raleigh—the beautiful and tall Sir Walter—must have looked like you, though I don’t believe he looked so well.”

Emily, leaning on Harrington’s arm, looked up into his face, and saw that what Wentworth said was true. A change had fallen upon the masculine bearded countenance—a fine rapture lit its regular features—a faint color lessened its pallor, and the pure blue eyes swam in brilliance.

“Indeed, Richard, you are right,” said Emily. “He looks as beautiful as the sun-god.”

“Exactly. ‘Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself’”—

“Oh, come now,” interrupted Harrington, blushing. “Is this a meeting of the Mutual Admiration Society? You pair of gross flatterers! Praising my personal pulchritude to my face in this way! But do I look well? No wonder. Last night I slept the sleep of the blessed, and to-day I am happy. You know why. Ah! and you haven’t given me joy yet! Yes, and I, too, haven’t given you joy.”

“We know why? Given you joy? Why, what do you mean, John?” cried Emily.

“Hasn’t Muriel told you?” said Harrington.

“No,” cried Emily, breathlessly; but Wentworth saw what was coming, and a slow flush crept over his illumined face.

“Muriel and I plighted troth last night,” said Harrington, simply.

Wentworth flew across the room with a shout, and with the utmost deliberation began to dance. Emily dropped Harrington’s arm, stood for a moment pale, with her hands to her bosom, glowed into bright color again, and burst into tears.

“Oh, John!” she cried, springing back a pace, and seizing his hands, with a smile flashing splendid through the glittering rain on her impassioned face. “Oh, I am so happy! Joy, joy to you! I never dreamed of it—never! Joy, joy, joy!”

She wrung his hands in an ecstasy of delight, while Wentworth, breaking from his dance, came flying across the room, and over a chair that stood in his way, and clutching away the right hand from Emily, shook it as if he meant to shake it off, his face flushed and his lip quivering, and his congratulations breaking from his lips like wildfire.

“Everlasting cornucopias of happiness poured out upon you both for countless quadrillions of never-dying eternities!” he hallooed. “By the Capitolian Jove, John, but I’m too glad to say a syllable. Don’t ask me to give you joy, for there’s not enough words in the beggarly English language for me to do it with! Oh, thunder! if this is not the tip-top crown and summit of it all, then I’m a Dutchman!”

He burst away, panting, and hurling himself at full length upon a couch, burst into a ringing peal of jubilant laughter.

“Oh, Lord! I shall die!” he gasped, ceasing, and fanning himself with his hand. “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

Harrington, faint with mirth, sat down, and Emily, also laughing furiously, scurried over to Wentworth, and shook him till he laughed again, and shook him till, aching with laughter, he implored her to stop.

“Well, Emily,” exclaimed Harrington, as she relinquished her hold of her lover, “I declare I never saw you romp before, and I did not think you could.”

“’Pon my word, she’s as bad as Muriel,” cried Wentworth, with a comical look of mock anxiety. “I’m afraid her aristocratic morals are getting corrupted by the company she keeps in this house.”

“Well, John,” said Emily, a little flushed and panting with her exertions, and laughing in short fits as she spoke, “I believe you are right. Romping is, if not new to me, very unusual. But to-day I am so happy, I hardly know what I am doing. This glad news takes me out of myself completely. Oh, I am so rejoiced! And to think that Muriel never told me! Cunning fox! But I’ll be even with her for it. I see now why she has decked the room with such a wilderness of roses. She is going to make it a fete day in honor of her engagement.”

“Why, yes,” said Harrington, starting up. “I didn’t notice all these exquisite flowers before, but I suppose that _is_ the reason why she has filled the library with them.”

“You suppose,” said Emily. “Why, don’t you know?”

“Not I,” replied Harrington, laughing. “Muriel asked me to come and spend the day with her, and only said she was going to give me an agreeable surprise. She wouldn’t tell me what the agreeable surprise was, but I suppose this is it. How exquisite and sweet they are,” he murmured, bending over a shallow vase of Parian, filled with the roses, and inhaling their delicate fragrance.

“When are you to be married, John?” asked Emily.

“I declare I don’t know,” said he naively. “I never thought of asking Muriel.”

“Never thought—well, that’s a good one!” exclaimed Wentworth. “Why, almost the first thing I asked Emily after our betrothal was”—

“Now, Richard,” cried Emily, scampering up to him with a laugh, and sealing his mouth with her hand.

Wentworth struggled to get free, and succeeding in a minute, seized her hands, and held them, she, in turn, endeavoring to get them upon his mouth again.

“Hear me, for I will speak!” he declaimed, with serio-comic dignity. “The first thing I asked Emily, John, was—when are we to be married?”

“And what did she say?” inquired Harrington, amusedly.

“She said October, John,” replied Emily, laughing. “He shan’t tell you. I’ll tell you myself. Yes, John, we are to be married in October. See my betrothal ring. Is it not beautiful?”

He took the fair hand in his, and looked at the exquisite opal, whose soft, clouded flames of iridescent color shone on her finger.

“Beautiful,” he assented, pressing the hand to his lips. “I pray for your life-long happiness, dear Emily. Yours and Richard’s. And may I be present at your wedding?”

“Indeed you must,” she answered. “It would be but half a wedding if you were not there.”

“My sentiments,” cried Wentworth. “Without you, John, our wedding would be a fiasco. But it is to be a grand affair. In open church, crowds of guests, Emily in full bridal array, with a small army of bridesmaids, and I in gorgeous toggery, with a retinue of grooms which will astonish your Spartan simplicity. Oh, I tell you, we shall blow out in splendid hymeneal flower, amidst overpowering magnificence!”

“Hear the absurd fellow!” exclaimed Emily, smiling at Harrington, who stood listening half-amusedly, half-pensively, as the gay Richard ran on. “Only listen to him. But it is true, John—we are to have a splendid wedding.”

“I am glad to hear it,” he replied. “You are both splendid, and it is natural and proper for you to put forth splendid rays on such an occasion.”

“Nevertheless, I’ll bet you won’t find Harrington and Muriel flashing out like us, Emily,” cried Wentworth, showing his fine teeth in a brilliant laugh. “I wouldn’t be afraid to wager that you’ll see that young man married in his ordinary clothes, without a rag of a white kid glove, or an ornament of any kind whatever, or wedding cake, or cards, or guests, or anything.”

“Why, Richard, I don’t know,” said Harrington, smiling good-naturedly. “If Muriel were to wish the usual parade I would agree of course. But you are right—my choice would be as little external show as possible. Such simple rites would be more grateful to me than any pomp or display. Marriage to me is so private and spiritual a sacrament that it seems a sort of profanation to make it public—or surround it with factitious embellishments. These flowers for example, this sweet, rich room, Muriel lovely, and clothed as befits her loveliness, I in this plain coat, not very new, but well-fitting and graceful, Mrs. Eastman and you two loving friends here—what more could I desire to decorate my wedding? And less than this—yes, nothing of this—Muriel and I alone in some quiet room, or under the blue sky, or the forest trees, pledging ourselves to each other in spirit and in truth—this of itself would be enough, and would make the most imperial bridals seem gaudy and theatrical.”

“Then you object to our fine fashionable wedding, John,” said Emily, playfully.

“Oh no—not object,” returned Harrington, coloring, with an embarrassed air. “Have I said too much? Have I cast any personal reflections? I hope not, for I did not mean to. I only meant to say that the ideal nobleness and beauty of marriage are not very well expressed by the usual modish and artificial ceremonials and decorations. The thing itself is holy and poetic. Let the rites and adornments be holy and poetic too. That is all.”

Emily turned away, musing, and Wentworth twirled his gay moustache with an abstracted air.

“But where’s Muriel, I wonder?” said Harrington, after a pause.

“Here she is—no, it’s our dear mamma,” exclaimed Wentworth.

“Your mamma it is, children,” said Mrs. Eastman, coming into the room, silver-gay, with her bonnet on. “I have just returned from Milton, and heard your voices, or rather John’s voice, as I came up-stairs. But, bless me, where did all these flowers come from? Why, the library is turned into fairy-land!”

“Ah, mamma,” said Emily, “we are all in fairy-land to-day, and the fairy-prince has done it, with the help of this fairy chevalier,” and she bent her head toward Harrington.

“Why, what has happened to you, children?” asked Mrs. Eastman, laughing softly, as she removed her bonnet.

“Now, mamma,” said Wentworth, fronting her with Emily on his arm, “I’m going to surprise you. Prepare to be surprised.”

“Well, I’m ready,” said Mrs. Eastman, gaily.

“Emily and I are to be married in October,” said Wentworth, suddenly.

“My dear children, I am more glad to hear this than I can say,” fondly replied Mrs. Eastman, kissing both of them. “But, children, you don’t surprise me at all,” she added, with smiling equability. “I saw that you were lovers some time since, and was expecting this.”

Mrs. Eastman might have also said that she saw they had quarrelled, and knew what was the matter with Emily during her night and day of sorrow, but she was discreet and did not.

“There!” exclaimed Wentworth, with a grimace, “there’s my surprise now? Mamma, you’re a witch, and there’s no keeping anything from you!”

“Stop, Richard!” cried Emily. “Let John try his hand at a surprise.”

Mrs. Eastman was well named Serena, she was so sweetly calm, but the color rose to her face, and she trembled, as Harrington came toward her with outstretched arms.

“Mother,” he fervently said, holding her in his embrace, “you have your wish. I was mistaken. Last night, Muriel and I”—

Her eyes filled, and without a word she flew from his arms and out of the room. Harrington covered his humid eyes with his hand, and stood still. Wentworth and Emily moved silently away, with hushed faces.

It was but a moment, and she came back with a swift, free step, her calm face lighted between its silver tresses, the tears upon her cheeks, and put her arms around him.

“Hush!” she whispered. “Do not speak to me. Let me dream of this. I am too happy.”

His arms had enfolded her, and with his eyes closed, and his lips pressed to her beautiful silver hair, while her face lay upon his bosom, they stood still.

“Yes,” she murmured, after a long pause, looking up with a still and radiant face into his noble countenance, “yes, I have my wish, and I am happy.”

She placed her arm in his, and moved with him across the library.

“Well, mamma,” said Emily, with her ambrosial smile, “We did surprise you, after all.”

“Yes and no, dear Emily,” replied Mrs. Eastman, fondly looking at Harrington. “Yes and no. It was the evening star of my life; a cloud obscured it, but I still had faith that my evening star was there.”

There was a pause, filled by the pensive memory of her voice. Suddenly Wentworth and Emily uttered a low exclamation, and Mrs. Eastman and Harrington turned, started, and stood still. It was Muriel, but Muriel transfigured in resplendent beauty. A robe of rich, ethereal vivid crimson, at once soft and glowing, like the color of the rose, cut low, and encircling the shoulders by only a narrow gathered band, spread loosely around her bosom, and descending in many light folds, expressed her perfect form, and heightened the dazzling fairness of her complexion. Color faint as the hues of the blush roses whose ecstatic odors filled the room, bloomed on her cheeks and lips; her amber hair, encircled by a slender fillet of myrtle, bright green, small leaved, and terminating on either side with a rose, drooped low in rippling tresses around her radiant and hymn-like face; and her mouth rosy-pale against its milk-white teeth, was parted in an enchanting smile. Gliding forward, with her noble harmony of movement, the floating gold and violet glory that filled the chamber resting on her beauteous face and figure, and her sumptuous drapery falling around her faultless limbs, she seemed some wondrous vision of incarnate joy. So sacred, so transcendent was her bewildering loveliness, that they gazed upon her with strange awe, as in the presence of her in her immortality.

Harrington looked at her, rapt, and passion-pale; then with a thrill of melting tenderness, as if his soul was dissolving in his frame, he closed his giddy eyes and bowed his head upon his clasped hands.

“Harrington, my beloved!”

He started at the deep eolian music of her voice, and holding her in his arms, gazed with an impassioned face into her clear lambent eyes.

“Ah, Muriel, Muriel!” he fervently murmured, “I tremble lest you make life too sweet for me. Oh, dear friends,” he cried, “you can bear to see the dance, for you hear the music! Look at her; is she not beautiful?”

A low murmur of admiration ran from lip to lip, and Emily, breaking from her trance, embraced Muriel and kissed her fervently. Then her mother, with tender and pathetic words of endearment, folded her to her heart.

“Oh, my daughter,” she said, gently and mournfully, “what would I give if your father could see you now! He who hung over your cradle so often in your infancy, and called you so fondly his glorious little child, what would I give if he could see you now in your glorious womanhood!”

“Dear mother, he sees me,” answered Muriel, her face lit with a celestial smile, and her clear eyes upturned. “In this the best and brightest hour of my life, he sees me! He is alive and well, and he sees me!”

In the solemn pause which followed, while they stood with dim eyes and heads bowed, it seemed as if some silent spirit stood among them in the rich glory of the room.

The thrilling feeling slowly died away like failing music, and timidly looking up, Wentworth saw the eyes of Muriel sink from their celestial height and rest kindly and lovingly on him.

“Come to me, Richard,” she said. “You alone have not spoken to me—you alone have not expressed your joy.”

“Muriel,” he answered, moving near her, with a timid and tardy step, “if so bad a boy as I am”—

“Bad? oh, no! You are not a bad boy,” she said with tender playfulness, caressing him as she spoke. “You are my own dear brother Richard, gallant, and fond, and true. Could I love you if you were not? Could I kiss you thus, and thus, and thus, with magic kisses three?” she said, kissing him each time as she said the word, and smiling at him with bewitching gaiety. “Ah! I am very happy this morning! That is the reason you all admire me so. See: my joy has burst into its fullest flower, and this is its color and its symbol.”

Smiling upon them, she laid her hand on her gorgeous crimson robe.

“I see,” said Emily, “Madame de Staël said the color of the trumpet-sound was crimson, and the sound of the golden trumpet is the sound of joy. Oh, Muriel, I never saw you dressed so admirably. You are splendid as the sun!”

“Yes, and mark you now,” said Wentworth, gaily, “there is another symbol here. This is the color of the dress of the fairy prince. Ah, it is the same dress, too, if you only knew it. The fairy prince wove a spell of weird, gave one touch of the magic wand, and lo! the crimson cymar changed into a crimson robe, and the fairy prince stands before you transformed into a fairy princess!”

“Bravo, Richard!” said Harrington, “that is ingenious, now.”

“And then,” continued Wentworth, “the gold embroidery on the cymar melted into gold lustre, and passed into Muriel’s eyes. See how golden her eyes are this morning. Their clear grey looks through a transparent sheen of gold.”

“They are golden with love, then,” said Muriel, laughingly, “for the cymar is up-stairs, with all its embroidery intact. It is Harrington who is the fairy prince, and I am the Sleeping Beauty whom he waked from her sleep of twenty years, and now I am to follow him through all the world. But come, John, I promised you an agreeable surprise this morning, you know.”

“Well, and have you not given it to me?” said Harrington, smiling at her. “This beautiful room, all bedecked with roses, and then yourself in your miraculous beauty—why, I am in receipt of two agreeable surprises!”

“Ah, John,” she replied, with enchanting gaiety, “but I have a third more wonderful than those.”

“What is it?” asked Harrington, amusedly.

“I’ll tell you,” she answered. “Friends, attention! My dear mother, do you remember the little conversation we had at dinner the day before yesterday?”

“Perfectly,” replied Mrs. Eastman, coloring slightly, and looking at her charming daughter with some wonder.

“Well, my dear mother,” returned Muriel, with bewitching playfulness, “I reflected seriously all day yesterday on what you said, and I decided to oblige you. John, come here to me.”

Harrington, curious to know what was meant by this preface, approached, and stood before her with a sweetly smiling countenance. Slowly her beautiful white arms stole around him, clasped him lightly, and drew him to her. It seemed in that moment as if, in the noble features upturned to his, all the versatile expressions of which they were capable darted magically together in a bewildering and harmonious play, like the soft floating and intermingling of evanescent, tender rainbow hues on a clear and delicate air. But slowly through their indecisive enchantment broke a dazzling smile, a fairy tremor lifted her fine nostril, the color bloomed deeplier on her cheeks and lips, and her eyes glowed.

“John!” said she, in a clear, melodious voice, “this is our marriage morn.”

A splendid scarlet flamed on the face of Harrington, and with a start he clasped her to his breast, gazing into her face with eyes like wondering stars. Mrs. Eastman, ineffably astonished, but more ineffably amused, that Muriel had taken her at her word, sank into a chair, with her countenance flushed, and burst into low laughter; while Emily, with the rich color suffusing her features and her eyes and mouth orbed in wonder, pressed her folded hands to her bosom; and Wentworth stared vacantly, with his face as red as fire.

“This the morning of our marriage!” exclaimed Harrington. “This!”

“This it is, John,” she replied, gaily, “and this is my third agreeable surprise. How do you like it?”

Harrington, with a sudden motion, bent his head and kissed her.

“Muriel, Muriel!” he laughingly cried, “you are indeed a fairy princess! You touch the moment, and it bursts into the unexpected miracle-flower of joy.”

“Now by all the gods at once!” exclaimed the volatile Wentworth, and bounding up with three distinct pigeon-wings into the air, he came down again erect and gallant, and burst into a peal of mellow laughter.

“Well I declare!” ejaculated Emily. “Of all the splendid freaks I ever heard of, this is the most splendid. To be married this morning! But who’s to marry you? where’s the minister?”

“Oh, he’s coming,” returned Muriel, smiling. “I wrote a note to Mr. Parker this morning, and he is to be here at ten.”

“Good!” exclaimed Harrington. “If I am to have any minister to marry me, let it be Mr. Parker. It will be an added consecration.”

“I knew you would think so,” replied Muriel.

“To be sure,” he answered. “He would consider me a heathen, looking at me theologically, but that’s no matter.”

Muriel looked at his smiling countenance, and shook her finger at him.

“Oh, you Verulamian heretic!” she exclaimed, gaily.

“Well, Muriel,” laughed Emily, “I’m sure you’re very obliging to have even Mr. Parker. With your invincible hostility to Madame la Grundy, it is positively a remarkable concession.”

“Ah, dear Emily,” replied Muriel, smiling tenderly, “can the words of a clergyman make more holy the union of lovers, who love in spirit and in truth! Were Mr. Parker not in the world, and were we in Pennsylvania to-day, and not in Massachusetts, I would rather choose to stand up with John before our friends, avowing our love in the sweet and beautiful old simple Quaker fashion, and sparing every other rite beside. To have the spiritual marriage publicly recognized would be enough. But then,” she added, with gentle gaiety, “on this point, Mrs. Grundy has the law on her side, so I curtsey and submit, hoping to atone for the submission by a long series of flagrant rebellions, against which there is no statute! For while it is both proper and necessary, as things stand, that Mrs. Grundy should be obeyed, it is also proper and necessary as things stand, that the dear old woman should be defied. So there’s a paradox for you!”

“Bravo!” cried Wentworth. “Centripetality and centrifugality for ever!”

“Exactly so,” replied Muriel, with a frolic curtsey. “Now, mother, there you sit without saying a word, and you haven’t told me yet whether you are going to lend the light of your countenance to my extraordinary proceedings.”

“Of course I am, dear,” cried Mrs. Eastman, starting up to kiss her bewitching daughter, while they all rippled off into lively talk and the hilarity of the immortals.

“Come,” said Muriel in a few moments, “let us have music till Mr. Parker comes. Gluck and Mendelssohn and the divine Mozart and Beethoven, shall speak for us to-day. Color and fragrance, and dancing, and silence can express deep joy, but music expresses it as nothing else can, and to-day is the flower of my existence.”

She moved as she spoke to the organ, and the gorgeous tones of golden bronze rolled forth in sunset clouds of heavenly harmony, with her seraph voice singing sweet among them. Pass, hour of noble raptures, hour of the spirit, hour of celestial love and hope and joy, pass, fitting prelude for his coming—the valiant soul and tender, now blest among the blessed, whose disenchanted dust lies in the holy soil of Florence, and lends one hallowed memory more to the land of Dante’s grave!

It was like a sacred dream in which he came—the mighty, the well-beloved, the lion-hearted Theodore; he of the domed brow, the Socratic features, resolute and tender, and stern at times with the long battle he waged for Christian liberty; he of the beautiful and dove-like eyes whose clear sweetness the roaring hatred of his foes could never stain or change. It was like a sacred dream in which they heard the noble language of his charge inspiring them to lives of holiest and highest humanhood, and then while the dream deepened into an interval of unutterable calm, and a stiller glory seemed to swim, a more celestial fragrance seemed to flow, upon the quiet of the room, the pledges of the nuptials were spoken, and his voice arose in tender and fervent supplication to the Heavenly Father of the world—Father and Mother, too—Father of Love and Freedom and all that makes the world more fair—Lover of lovers, and Lover of the world He made—that the eternal spring-time of His Presence might rest upon their wedded lives, greenness and strength and beauty to them forevermore.

It was still a sacred dream, when he had gone. But the very air seemed to tremble with an ecstasy of painful happiness, and Muriel, pale with a joy which was insupportable, because voiceless, glided to the organ.

Softly again upon the glory of the air, drifted the molten bronze of the rich music and her clear soprano, sweet and low, arose and blended with the heavenly anthem. Sweet and low as the mother’s cradle hymn, and tender as the remembered songs of childhood, it floated on above the mellow murmur of the instrumental flow; and rising like a thrilling gush of perfume into more celestial melody, it rose again in rapturous ascension, intermingled with the surging and dilating swell of the organ-tones, and rang in pealing hallelujahs, draining the soul of every earthly thought and feeling, and lifting it pale and throbbing on the burning wings of seraphs into the light and odor of the Life Divine. Then sinking slowly, voice and music failed upon the palpitating air, failed from the spirits throbbing with the blended sweetness, and the room was still.

She rose from the organ with her face inspired, and turned to be folded in the arms of Harrington.

“Ah, Muriel,” he fervently murmured, “your songs are more than ‘the benediction that follows after prayer!’”

She did not answer, but stood silently in his embrace, with her face bent upon his breast. Lifting it to his at length, she looked upon him with glowing eyes.

“We are married,” she said. “Do you realize it?”

“Hardly,” he replied. “But it is true. We are one. One in love for liberty.”

“One in love for liberty,” she echoed. “One in love for all mankind.”

They stood in silence for a few moments. Then turning with their arms around each other, they saw Emily and Wentworth sitting together in deep abstraction.

“Well, Richard and Emily, what are you thinking of?” Muriel playfully demanded.

“I was thinking,” returned Wentworth more gravely than was usual with him, “that is before your singing, Muriel, lifted me out of my mind, as it always does—I was thinking what a man Mr. Parker is. How great and noble—how beautiful were his words and manner. Ah, that was a true marriage service!”

“And so was I,” cried Emily, who had been weeping a little. “I was thinking the same thing. I shall never hear our own minister with comfort again.”

“Oh, flower of Episcopalians, are you turning Parkerite?” gaily exclaimed Muriel.

“I declare I believe I am,” sighed Emily, so dolefully that Wentworth began to laugh, and she herself followed his example.

“Come,” cried Wentworth, starting to his feet, “this won’t do. Here are John and Muriel married. Do you realize that fact, Emily?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered, bounding up, and rushing over to the lovers to pour out the joy of her heart upon them.

Mrs. Eastman and Wentworth followed, and in a moment the room rang with gay talk and frolic hilarity.

“And just take notice,” cried Wentworth, amidst the affluent fun, “take notice that Harrington has his wish. He was wishing, Muriel, or rather in a little discussion we had as to the proper mode of doing the marriage ceremony up golden brown, he was observing that to be married in this room, just as he is, with never a ghost of a kid glove on him, or any wedding embellishments, and nobody present but us, would be the height of his ambition. So you see, his Spartan soul is gratified!”

“So it is!” laughed Harrington. “I had forgotten it amidst the excitement; but that is what I said, and you, dear fairy princess, have gratified me.”

“Hold on now,” burst in the mercurial Wentworth, interrupting Muriel in the gay reply she was about to make. “Hold on! An idea strikes me. To wit, that nobody has called this lady by her new name. Sweet Muriel Eastman, _vale, vale, vale_. Adieu forevermore! Vanish, flower of spinsters, vanish into the fragrant twilight of memory. Mrs. Harrington, appear! All hail, Mrs. Harrington!”

“Bravo!” exclaimed Emily, clapping her hands, and undulating backward into a low curtsey. “All hail, Mrs. Harrington!”

Muriel, still clasping her husband, looked at them in their mirth with a pensive smile.

“I had forgotten it,” she said gently, and almost dreamfully, “for I feel like Muriel Eastman, still, with unmerged individuality.”

“And Muriel Eastman you shall be,” laughingly said Harrington; “and with unmerged individuality, too.”

“Nay,” said Muriel, with tender gaiety. “My new, sweet name, John—Muriel Harrington. I accept it. At least to the world I will be Muriel Harrington, and you shall think of me, and call me Muriel Eastman, still.”

“As I will ever,” responded Harrington.

“Bravo!” cried Wentworth. “An amicable adjustment of a serious difficulty. And now, what next?”

“Next, music,” laughingly said Emily, moving to the organ.

Her rich contralto voice rose with the instrumental surge into a trumpet pæan, and so, amidst music and laughter, and many-colored festal talk, the golden banquet of the day passed by, and as they stood together at the single western window of the library, the evening overspread them with a sky of deepest azure, filled with vast clouds of purple and amber flame, like the wings of seraphim.

Slowly the burning magnificence of the celestial pageant faded from the sky, and the enchanted twilight came with soft and odorous southwind breathings. All the long evening, in the dim bloom of moonlight, too faint to veil the brightness of the stars, the long wafts of balmy odor hung swaying with the airy poise of spirits around the dwelling, rising in low whisperings, and slowly swooning away in sweetness. Gradually the sounds of life died away, the moon sank low, the shadows slept within the street, and the silence was unbroken save by the passionate whispers of the fragrant wind. Ear above the dark roofs, the bright stars were throbbing in the divine blue gloom, and over the vast night brooded the infinite presence of the triune Love and Life and Joy.