Together.
by Robert Herrick.
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
She stood before the minister who was to marry them, very tall and straight. With lips slightly parted she looked at him steadfastly, not at the man beside her who was about to become her husband. Her father, with a last gentle pressure of her arm, had taken his place behind her. In the hush that had fallen throughout the little chapel, all the restless movement of the people who had gathered there this warm June morning was stilled, in the expectation of those ancient words that would unite the two before the altar. Through the open window behind the altar a spray of young woodbine had thrust its juicy green leaves and swayed slowly in the air, which was heavy with earthy odors of all the riotous new growth that was pushing forward in the fields outside. And beyond the vine could be seen a bit of the cloudless, rain-washed sky.
There before the minister, who was fumbling mechanically at his prayer-book, a great s.p.a.ce seemed to divide the man and the woman from all the others, their friends and relatives, who had come to witness the ceremony of their union. In the woman"s consciousness an unexpected stillness settled, as if for these few moments she were poised between the past of her whole life and the mysterious future. All the preoccupations of the engagement weeks, the strange colorings of mood and feeling, all the petty cares of the event itself, had suddenly vanished. She did not see even him, the man she was to marry, only the rugged face of the old minister, the bit of fluttering vine, the expanse of blue sky. She stood before the veil of her life, which was about to be drawn aside.
This hushed moment was broken by the resonant tones of the minister as he began the opening words of the sacrament that had been said over so many millions of human beings. Familiar as the phrases were, she did not realize them, could not summon back her attention from that depth within of awed expectancy. After a time she became aware of the subdued movements in the chapel, of people breaking into the remote circle of her mystery,--even here they must needs have their part--and of the man beside her looking intently at her, with flushed face. It was this man, this one here at her side, whom she had chosen of all that might have come into her life; and suddenly he seemed a stranger, standing there, ready to become her husband!
The woodbine waved, recalling to her flashing thoughts that day two years before when the chapel was dedicated, and they two, then mere friends, had planted this vine together. And now, after certain meetings, after some surface intercourse, they had willed to come here to be made one...
"And who gives this woman in marriage?" the minister asked solemnly, following the primitive formula which symbolizes that the woman is to be made over from one family to another as a perpetual possession. She gave herself of course! The words were but an outgrown form...
There was the necessary pause while the Colonel came forward, and taking his daughter"s hand from which the glove had been carefully turned back, laid it gently in the minister"s large palm. The father"s lips twitched, and she knew he was feeling the solemnity of his act, that he was relinquishing a part of himself to another. Their marriage--her father"s and mother"s--had been happy,--oh, very peaceful! And yet--hers must be different, must strike deeper. For the first time she raised her shining eyes to the man at her side...
"I, John, take thee Isabelle for my wedded wife, to have and to hold ... in sickness and in health ... until death us do part ... and hereby I plight thee my troth."
Those old words, heard so many times, which heretofore had echoed without meaning to her,--she had vaguely thought them beautiful,--now came freighted with sudden meaning, while from out the dreamlike s.p.a.ce around sounded the firm tones of the man at her side repeating slowly, with grave pauses, word by word, the marriage oath. "I, John, take thee Isabelle,"
that voice was saying, and she knew that the man who spoke these words in his calm, grave manner was the one she had chosen, to whom she had willed to give herself for all time,--presently she would say it also,--for always, always, "until death us do part." He was promising it with tranquil a.s.surance,--fidelity, the eternal bond, throughout the unknown years, out of the known present. "And hereby I plight thee my troth." Without a tremor the man"s a.s.sured voice registered the oath--before G.o.d and man.
"I, Isabelle," and the priest took up with her this primal oath of fidelity, body and soul. All at once the full personal import of the words pierced her, and her low voice swelled unconsciously with her affirmation.
She was to be for always as she was now. They two had not been one before: the words did not make them so now. It was their desire. But the old divided selves, the old impulses, they were to die, here, forever.
She heard herself repeating the words after the minister. Her strong young voice in the stillness of the chapel sounded strangely not her own voice, but the voice of some unknown woman within her, who was taking the oath for her in this barbaric ceremony whereby man and woman are bound together.
"And hereby I plight thee my troth,"--the voice sank to a whisper as of prayer. Her eyes came back to the man"s face, searching for his eyes.
There were little beads of perspiration on his broad brow, and the shaven lips were closely pressed together, moulding the face into lines of will,--the look of mastery. What was he, this man, now her husband for always, his hand about hers in sign of perpetual possession and protection?
What beneath all was he who had taken with her, thus publicly, the mighty oath of fidelity, "until death us do part"? Each had said it; each believed it; each desired it wholly. Perversely, here in the moment of her deepest feeling, intruded the consciousness of broken contracts, the waste of shattered purposes. Ah, but _theirs_ was different! This absolute oath of fidelity one to the other, each with his own will and his own desire,--this irredeemable contract of union between man and woman,--it was not always a binding sacrament. Often twisted and broken, men and women promising in the belief of the best within them what was beyond their power to perform.
There were those in that very chapel who had said these words and broken them, furtively or legally... With them, of course, it would be different, would be the best; for she conceived their love to be of another kind,--the enduring kind. Nevertheless, just here, while the priest of society p.r.o.nounced the final words of union, something spoke within the woman"s soul that it was a strange oath to be taking, a strange manner of making two living beings one!
"And I p.r.o.nounce you man and wife," the words ran. Then the minister hastened on into his little homily upon the marriage state. But the woman"s thought rested at those fateful words,--"man and wife,"--the knot of the contract. There should fall a new light in her heart that would make her know they were really one, having now been joined as the book said "in holy wedlock." From this sacramental union of persons there should issue to both a new spirit...
Her husband was standing firm and erect, listening with all the concentration of his mind to what the minister was saying--not tumultuously distracted--as though he comprehended the exact gravity of this contract into which he was entering, as he might that of any other he could make, sure of his power to fulfil all, confident before Fate. She trembled strangely. Did she know him, this other self? In the swift apprehension of life"s depths which came through her heightened mood she perceived that ultimate division lying between all human beings, that impregnable fortress of the individual soul.... It was all over. He looked tenderly at her. Her lips trembled with a serious smile,--yes, they would understand now!
The people behind them moved more audibly. The thing was done; the priest"s words of exhortation were largely superfluous. All else that concerned married life these two would have to find out for themselves. The thing was done, as ordained by the church, according to the rules of society. Now it was for Man and Wife to make of it what they would or--could.
The minister closed his book in dismissal. The groom offered his arm to the bride. Facing the chapelful she came out of that dim world of wonder whither she had strayed. Her veil thrown back, head proudly erect, eyes mistily ranging above the onlookers, she descended the altar steps, gazing down the straight aisle over the black figures, to the sunny village green, beyond into the vista of life! ... Triumphant organ notes beat through the chapel, as they pa.s.sed between the rows of smiling faces,--familiar faces only vaguely perceived, yet each with its own expression, its own reaction from this ceremony. She swept on deliberately, with the grace of her long stride, her head raised, a little smile on her open lips, her hand just touching his,--going forward with him into life.
Only two faces stood out from the others at this moment,--the dark, mischievous face of Nancy Lawton, smiling sceptically. Her dark, little eyes seemed to say, "Oh, you don"t know yet!" And the other was the large, placid face of a blond woman, older than the bride, standing beside a stolid man at the end of a pew. The serene, soft eyes of this woman were dim with tears, and a tender smile still lingered on her lips. She at least, Alice Johnston, the bride"s cousin, could smile through the tears--a smile that told of the sweetness in life.....
At the door the frock-coated young ushers formed into double line through which the couple pa.s.sed. The village green outside was flooded with sunshine, checkered by drooping elm branches. Bells began to ring from the library across the green and from the schoolhouse farther down. It was over--the fine old barbaric ceremony, the pa.s.sing of the irredeemable contract between man and woman, the public proclamation of eternal union.
Henceforth they were man and wife before the law, before their kind--one and one, and yet not two.
Thus together they pa.s.sed out of the church.
CHAPTER II
The company gathered within the chapel for the wedding now moved and talked with evident relief, each one expressing his feeling of the solemn service.
"Very well done, very lovely!" the Senator was murmuring to the bride"s mother, just as he might give an opinion of a good dinner or some neat business transaction or of a smartly dressed woman. It was a function of life successfully performed--and he nodded gayly to a pretty woman three rows away. He was handsome and gray-haired, long a widower, and evidently considered weddings to be an attractive, ornamental feature of social life.
Mrs. Price, the bride"s mother, intent upon escaping with the Colonel by the side door and rejoining the bridal party at the house before the guests arrived on foot, scarcely heeded the amiable Senator"s remarks. This affair of her daughter"s marriage was, like most events, a matter of engrossing details. The Colonel, in his usual gregarious manner, had strayed among the guests, forgetful of his duties, listening with bent head to congratulatory remarks. She had to send her younger son, Vickers, after him where he lingered with Farrington Beals, the President of the great Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, in which his new son-in-law held a position. When the Colonel finally dragged himself away from the pleasant things that his old friend Beals had to say about young Lane, he looked at his impatient wife with his tender smile, as if he would like to pat her cheek and say, "Well, we"ve started them right, haven"t we?"
The guests flowed conversationally towards the door and the sunny green, while the organ played deafeningly. But play as exultantly as it might, it could not drown the babble of human voices. Every one wanted to utter those excitable commonplaces that seem somehow to cover at such times deep meanings.
"What a perfect wedding!"
"How pretty it all was!"
"Not a hitch."
"She looked the part."
"Good fellow--nice girl--ought to be happy ... Well, old man, when is your turn coming? ... Could hear every word they said ... looked as though they meant it, too! ..."
In an eddy of the centre aisle a tall, blond young woman with handsome, square shoulders and dark eyes stood looking about her calmly, as if she were estimating the gathering, setting each one down at the proper social valuation, deciding, perhaps, in sum that they were a very "mixed lot," old friends and new, poor and rich. A thin girl, also blond, with deep blue eyes, and a fine bony contour of the face, was swept by the stream near the solitary observer and held out a hand:--
"Cornelia!"
"Margaret!"
"Isn"t it ideal!" Margaret Lawton exclaimed, her nervous face still stirred by all that she had felt during the service,--"the day, the country, and this dear little chapel!"
"Very sweet," the large woman replied in a purring voice, properly modulated for the sentiment expressed. "Isabelle made an impressive bride."
And these two school friends moved on towards the door. Cornelia Pallanton, still surveying the scene, nodded and said to her companion, "There"s your cousin Nannie Lawton. Her husband isn"t here, I suppose? There are a good many St. Louis people."
The guests were now scattered in little groups over the green, dawdling in talk and breathing happily the June-scented air. The stolid man and his placid wife who had sat near the rear had already started for the Colonel"s house, following the foot-path across the fields. They walked silently side by side, as if long used to wordless companionship.
The amiable Senator and his friend Beals examined critically the little Gothic chapel, which had been a gift to his native town by the Colonel, as well as the stone library at the other end of the green. "Nice idea of Price," the Senator was saying, "handsome buildings--pleasant little village," and he moved in the direction of Miss Pallanton, who was alone.
Down below in the valley, on the railroad siding, lay the special train that had brought most of the guests from New York that morning. The engine emitted little puffs of white smoke in the still noon, ready to carry its load back to the city after the breakfast. About the library steps were the carriages of those who had driven over from neighboring towns; the whole village had a disturbed and festal air.
The procession was straggling across the village street through the stile and into the meadow, tramping down the thick young gra.s.s, up the slope to the comfortable old white house that opened its broad verandas like hospitable arms. The President of the Atlantic and Pacific, deserted by the Senator, had offered his arm to a stern old lady with knotty hands partly concealed in lace gloves. Her lined face had grown serious in age and contention with life. She clung stiffly to the arm of the railroad president,--proud, silent, and shy. She was _his_ mother. From her one might conclude that the groom"s people were less comfortably circ.u.mstanced than the bride"s--that this was not a marriage of ambition on the woman"s part. It was the first time Mrs. Lane had been "back east" since she had left her country home as a young bride. It was a proud moment, walking with her son"s chief; but the old lady did not betray any elation, as she listened to the kindly words that Beals found to say about her son.
"A first-rate railroad man, Mrs. Lane,--he will move up rapidly. We can"t get enough of that sort."
The mother, never relaxing her tight lips, drank it all in, treasured it as a reward for the hard years spent in keeping that boarding-house in Omaha, after the death of her husband, who had been a country doctor.
"He"s a good son," she admitted as the eulogy flagged. "And he knows how to get on with all kinds of folks...."
At their heels were Vickers Price and the thin Southern girl, Margaret Lawton. Vickers, just back from Munich for this event, had managed to give the conventional dress that he was obliged to wear a touch of strangeness, with an enormous flowing tie of delicate pink, a velvet waistcoat, and broad-brimmed hat. The clothes and the full beard, the rippling chestnut hair and pointed mustache, showed a desire for eccentricity on the part of the young man that distinguished him from all the other well-dressed young Americans. He carried a thin cane and balanced a cigarette between his lips.