The Allen House Part 25

"Worth taking into the account, I suppose, as one of the reasons in favor of the choice," said my wife. "But I hardly think Wallingford is the man to let that consideration have much influence."

There was no mistake about the matter of furnishing Ivy Cottage, as the place was called. I saw carpets going in on the very next day. All the shrubbery had been trimmed, the grounds cleared up and put in order, and many choice flowers planted in borders already rich in floral treasures.

Curiosity now began to flutter its wings, lift up its head, and look around sharply. Many arrows had taken their flight towards the heart of our young bachelor lawyer, but, until now, there had been no evidence of a wound. What fair maiden had conquered at last? I met him not long after, walking in the street with Florence Williams. She looked smiling and happy; and his face was brighter than I had ever seen it. This confirmed to me the rumor.

Mrs. Wallingford was not to be approached on the subject. If she knew of an intended marriage, she feigned ignorance; and affected not to understand the hints, questions, and surmises of curious neighbors.

A week or two later, and I missed Wallingford from his office. The lad in attendance said that he was away from the town, but would return in a few days.

"I have a surprise for you," said my wife on that very afternoon. She had a letter in her hand just received by post. Her whole face was radiant with pleasure. Drawing a card from the envelope, she held it before my eyes. I read the names of _Henry Wallingford_ and _Blanche Montgomery_, and the words, "At home Wednesday evening, June 15th. Ivy Cottage."

"Bravo!" I exclaimed, as soon as a momentary bewilderment pa.s.sed, showing more than my wonted enthusiasm. "The best match since Hymen linked our fates together, Constance."

"May it prove as happy a one!" my wife answered, with a glance of tenderness.

"It will, Constance--it will. That is a marriage after my own heart; one that I have, now and then, dimly foreshadowed in imagination, but never thought to see."

"It is over five years since we saw Blanche," remarked Constance. "I wonder how she looks! If life's sunshine and rain have produced a rich harvest in her soul, or only abraded the surface, and marred the sweet beauty that captivated us of old! I wonder how she has borne the shadowing of earthly prospects--the change from luxurious surroundings!"

"They have not dimmed the virgin gold; you may be sure of that, Constance," was my reply to this.

"At home, Wednesday evening, June fifteenth."

And this was Tuesday. Only a single day intervened. And yet it seemed like a week in antic.i.p.ation, so eager did we grow for the promised re-union with friends whose memory was in our hearts as the sound of pleasant music.

It was eight o'clock, on Wednesday evening, when we entered Ivy Cottage, our hearts beating with quickened strokes under their burden of pleasant antic.i.p.ation. What a queenly woman stood revealed to us, as we entered the little parlor! I would hardly have known her as the almost shrinking girl from whom we parted not many years before. How wonderfully she had developed! Figure, face, air, manner, att.i.tude--all showed the woman of heart, mind, and purpose. Yet, nothing struck you as masculine; but rather as exquisitely feminine. It took but one glance at her serene face, to solve the query as to whether there had been a free gift of heart as well as hand. My eyes turned next to the pale, thin face of Mrs. Montgomery, who sat, or half reclined, in a large cushioned chair.

She was looking at her daughter. That expression of blended love and pride, will it ever cease to be a sweet picture in my memory? All was right--I saw that in the first instant of time.

The reception was not a formal one. There was no display of orange blossoms, airy veils, and glittering jewels--but a simple welcoming of a few old friends, who had come to heart-congratulations. It was the happiest bridal reception--always excepting the one in which my Constance wore the orange wreath--that I had ever seen. Do you inquire of Wallingford, as to how he looked and seemed? Worthy of the splendid woman who stood by his side and leaned towards him with such a sweet a.s.surance. How beautiful it was to see the proud look with which she turned her eyes upon him, whenever he spoke! It was plain, that to her, his words had deeper meanings in them, than came to other ears.

"It is all right, I see." I had drawn a chair close to the one in which Mrs. Montgomery sat, and was holding in mine the thin, almost shadowy hand which she had extended.

"Yes, it is all right, Doctor," she answered, as a smile lit up her pale face. "All right, and I am numbered among the happiest of mothers. He is not t.i.tled, nor rich, nor n.o.ble in the vulgar sense--but t.i.tled, and rich, and n.o.ble as G.o.d gives rank and wealth. I came to this land of promise ten years ago, in search of an estate for my child; and I have found it, at last. Ah, Doctor"--and site glanced upwards as she spoke--"His ways are not as our ways. And if we will only trust in Him, He will bring such things to pa.s.s, as never entered into the imagination of our hearts. I did not dream of this man as the husband of my child, when I gave my business into his care. The remote suggestion of such a thing would have offended me; for my heart was full of false pride, though I knew it not. But there was a destiny for Blanche, foreshadowed for me then, but not seen."

"It is the quality of the man," I said, "that determines the quality of the marriage. She who weds best, weds the truest man. The rank and wealth are of the last consideration. To make them first, is the blindest folly of the blindest."

"Ah, if this were but rightly understood"--said Mrs. Montgomery--"what new lives would people begin to live in the world! How the shadows that dwell among so many households--even those of the fairest external seeming--would begin to lift themselves upward and roll away, letting in the sunlight and filling the chambers of discord with heavenly music! I have sometimes thought, that more than half the misery which curses the world springs from discordant marriages."

"The estimate is low," I answered. "If you had said two-thirds, you would have been, perhaps, nearer the truth."

Blanche crossed the room, and came and stood by her mother's chair, looking down into her face with a loving smile.

"I am afraid the journey has been too much for you," she said, with a shadow of concern in her face.

"You look paler than usual."

"Paler, because a little fatigued, dear. But a night's rest will bring me up even again," Mrs. Montgomery replied cheerfully.

"How is the pain in your side, now?" asked Blanche, still with a look of concern.

"Easier. I scarcely notice it now."

"Blanche is over anxious about my health, dear girl!" said Mrs.

Montgomery, as the bride moved to another part of the room. "She thinks me failing rapidly. And, without doubt, the foundations of this earthly house are giving way; but I trust, that ere it fall into ruin, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens, will be ready for my reception."

There was no depressing solemnity in her tones, as she thus alluded to that event which comes to all; but a smiling cheerfulness of manner that was contagious.

"You think of death as a Christian," said I.

"And how else should I think of it?" she replied. "Can I not trust Him in whom I have believed? What is it more than pa.s.sing from a lower to a higher state of life--from the natural to the spiritual world? When the hour comes, I will lay me down in peace and sleep."

She remained silent for some moments, her thoughts apparently indrawn.

The brief, closing sentence was spoken as if she were lapsing into reverie. I thought the subject hardly in place for a wedding occasion, and was about starting another theme, when she said--

"Do you not think, Doctor, that this dread of dying, which haunts most people like a fearful spectre--the good as well as the bad--is a very foolish thing? We are taught, from childhood, to look forward to death as the greatest of all calamities; as a change attended by indefinable terrors. Teachers and preachers ring in our ears the same dread chimes, thrilling the strongest nerves and appalling the stoutest hearts. Death is pictured to us as a grim monster; and we shudder as we look at the ghastly apparition. Now, all this comes from what is false. Death is not the crowning evil of our lives; but the door through which we pa.s.s, tranquilly, into that eternal world, which is our destined home. I hold in my thought a different picture of Death from that which affrighted me in childhood. The form is one of angelic beauty, and the countenance full of love. I know, that when I pa.s.s along the dark and narrow way that leads from this outer world of nature, to the inner world from which it has existence, that my hand will rest firmly in that of an angel, commissioned of G.o.d to guide my peaceful footsteps. Is not that a better faith?"

"Yes, a better and a truer," said I.

"It is not the death pa.s.sage that we need fear. That has in it no intrinsic evil. It is the sleep of mortality, and the rest is sweet to all. If we give place to fear, let it be for that state beyond the bourne, which will be unhappy in the degree that we are lovers of self and the world--that is, lovers of evil instead of good. As the tree falls, so it lies, Doctor. As our quality is at death, so will it remain to all eternity. Here is the just occasion for dread."

She would have kept on, but her attention was drawn away by the remark of a lady who came up at the moment. I left her side and pa.s.sed to another part of the room; but her words, tone, and impressive manner remained with me. I turned my eyes often during the evening upon her pale, pure face, which seemed like a transparent veil through which the spirit half revealed itself. How greatly she had changed in five years!

There had been trial and discipline; and she had come up from them purer for the ordeal. The flesh had failed; but the spirit had taken on strength and beauty.

"How did Mrs. Montgomery impress you?" said I to my wife, as we sat down together on our return home.

"As one ready to be translated," she answered. "I was at a loss to determine which was the most beautiful, she or Blanche."

"You cannot make a comparison between them as to beauty," I remarked.

"Not as to beauty in the same degree. The beauty of Blanche was queenly; that of her mother angelic. All things lovely in nature were collated, and expressed themselves in the younger as she stood blushing in the ripeness of her charms; while all things lovely in the soul beamed forth from the countenance of the elder. And so, as I have said, I was at a loss to determine which was most beautiful."

I was just rising from my early breakfast on the next morning when I received a hurried message from Ivy Cottage. The angel of Death had been there. Tenderly and lovingly had he taken the hand of Mrs. Montgomery, and led her through the gate that opens into the land of immortals.

She received her daughter's kiss at eleven o'clock, held her for some moments, gazing into her face, and then said--"Good-night, my precious one! Good-night, and G.o.d bless you!" At seven in the morning she was found lying in bed with a smile on her face, but cold and lifeless as marble! There had been no strife with the heavenly messenger.

CHAPTER XIX.

No;--there had been no strife with the heavenly messenger. As a child falls asleep in its mother's arms, so fell Mrs. Montgomery asleep in the arms of an angel--tranquil, peaceful, happy. I say happy--for in lapsing away into that mortal sleep, of which our natural sleep is but an image, shall the world-weary who have in trial and suffering grown heavenly minded, sink into unconsciousness with less of tranquil delight than the babe pillowed against its mother's bosom? I think not.

As I gazed upon her dead face, where the parting soul had left its sign of peace, I prayed that, when I pa.s.sed from my labors, there might be as few stains of earth upon my garments.

"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, Yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them."

I found myself repeating these holy words, as I stood looking at the white, shrunken features of the departed.