It was the seventeenth of October--the wedding day at “Ashland.” Little ruffles of south wind blew out of a fair sky, breathing the air of simplicity into grandeur. Up among the ivy leaves, a couple of birds flashed and sang. But indoors, people were so mightily interested in a pair of unwinged lovers, that these two sang their song out, and then flew away unheard.
Carriages bearing guests to the wedding were already rolling past. Those who alighted were the intimate friends. No stranger’s curious stare would fall upon this scene to contrast with its fairness. No shadow was necessary to the harmony of it.
Robert stood at an upper window, and his eyes fell upon the matted honey-suckle where Cherokee had first lifted so sad a face to him--so sad, that, though the first throb of grief awakened by his mother’s death had scarcely yet been stilled, he forgot his own sorrow in the effort to bring happiness again to her--his living love. How his words of tenderness had made her face soft like the late sunshine of a summer day. He looked with emotion upon the scene whose vividness came back with double force to-day. Could all this influence be as fleeting as it was charming? What would be his verdict at the end of a year--what hers?
He was called clever, and “people of talent should keep to themselves and not get married.” Yet his love had overruled the sage’s counsel. This feeling for Cherokee he knew could not be called another name less sweet. Since the first sight of her he had worshipped her from afar, as a devout heathen might worship an idol, or as a neophyte in art might worship the masterpiece of a master. And she was proud of him, too; women want the world’s respect for their husbands. Would he, could he, do anything to make her and the world lose that respect? No, he thought not now--he would be away from his old associations and temptings. “Artists are such funny chaps, they all have the gift of talk and good manners,” he mused, “but they are generally upon the verge of starvation; they are too great spendthrifts to be anything else but worthless fellows. Now I am not a spendthrift, and if I can but conquer _one little evil_, of which I should have told her, maybe, I will break the record they have made.”