Together | Page 3

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 passed 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 passed. 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 passing 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 passed 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