Together | Page 8

there was much commotion about the punch-bowl, the bride
wondered--were they happy? She had seen the engagement at Southern

Springs,--the two most ecstatic, unearthly lovers she had ever known....
But now? ...
Thus the stream of her little world flowed on, repeating its high-pitched
note of gratulation, of jocular welcome to the married state, as if to say,
'Well, now you are one of us--you've been brought in--this is life.' That
was what these smiling people were thinking, as they welcomed the
neophytes to the large vale of human experience. 'We have seen you
through this business, started you joyously on the common path. And
now what will you make of it?' For the occasion they ignored, good
naturedly, the stones along the road, the mistakes, the miserable
failures that lined the path, assuming the bride's proper illusion of
triumph and confidence.... Among the very last came the Johnstons,
who had lingered outside while the more boisterous ones pressed about
the couple. Isabelle noticed that the large brown eyes of the placid
woman, who always seemed to her much older than herself, were moist,
and her face was serious when she said, "May it be all that your heart
desires--the Real Thing!"
A persistent aunt interrupted them here, and it was hours afterward
when Isabelle's thought came back to these words and dwelt on them.
'The real thing!' Of course, that was what it was to be, her
marriage,--the woman's symbol of the Perfect, not merely Success
(though with John they could not fail of worldly success), nor
humdrum content--but, as Alice said, the real thing,--a state of
passionate and complete union. Something in those misty brown eyes,
something in the warm, deep voice of the older woman, in the
prayer-like form of the wish, sank deep into her consciousness.
She turned to her husband, who was chatting with Fosdick, a large,
heavy man with a Dr. Johnson head on massive shoulders. One fat hand
leaned heavily on a fat club, for Fosdick was slightly lame and rolled in
his gait.
"Isabelle," he remarked with a windy sigh, "I salute my victor!"
Old Dick, Vickers's playmate in the boy-and-girl days, her playmate,
too,--he had wanted to marry her for years, ever since Vick's freshman

year when he had made them a visit at the Farm. He had grown very
heavy since then,--time which he had spent roving about in odd corners
of the earth. As he stood there, his head bent mockingly before the two,
Isabelle felt herself Queen once more, the--American woman who,
having surveyed all, and dominated all within the compass of her little
world, has chosen the One. But not Dickie, humorous and charming as
he was.
"How goes it, Dickie?"
"As always," he puffed; "I come from walking or rather limping up and
down this weary earth and observing--men and women--how they go
about to make themselves miserable."
"Stuff!"
"My dear friends," he continued, placing both hands on the big cane,
"you are about to undergo a new and wonderful experience. You
haven't the slightest conception of what it is. You think it is love; but it
is the holy state of matrimony,--a very different proposition--"
They interrupted him with laughing abuse, but he persisted,--a serious
undertone to his banter. "Yes, I have always observed the scepticism of
youth, no matter what may be the age of the contracting parties and
their previous experience, in this matter. But Love and Marriage are
two distinct and entirely independent states of being,--one is the
creation of God, the other of Society. I have observed that few make
them coalesce."
As relatives again interposed, Fosdick rolled off, ostentatiously
thumping his stick on the floor, and made straight for the punch-bowl,
where he seemed to meet congenial company.
CHAPTER III
Meanwhile inside the great tent the commotion was at its height, most
of the guests--those who had escaped the fascination of the
punch-bowl--having found their way thither. Perspiring waiters rushed

back and forth with salad and champagne bottles, which were seized by
the men and borne off to the women waiting suitably to be fed by the
men whom they had attached. Near the entrance the Colonel, with his
old friends Beals and Senator Thomas, was surveying the breakfast
scene, a contented smile on his kind face, as he murmured assentingly,
"So--so." He and the Senator had served in the same regiment during
the War, Price retiring as Colonel and the Senator as Captain; while the
bridegroom's father, Tyringham Lane, had been the regimental surgeon.
"What a good fellow Tyringham was, and how he would have liked to
be here!" the Senator was saying sentimentally, as he held out a glass to
be refilled. "Poor fellow!--he never got much out of his life; didn't
know how to make the most of things,--went out