The end of August--the night before my marriage.
Several earthquakes have lately been felt in this part of the globe.
Coming events cast their shocks before.
The news of it certainly came like the shock of an earthquake to many
people of the town, who know perfectly well that no woman will allow
the fruit and flowers to be carried off a place as a man will. The
sagacious old soul who visits me yearly for young pie-plant actually
hurried out and begged for a basketful of the roots at once, thus
taking time--and the rhubarb--by the forelock. And the old epicurean
harpy whose passion is asparagus, having accosted me gruffly on the
street with an inquiry as to the truth of my engagement and been
quietly assured, how true it was, informed me to my face that any man
situated as happily as I am was an infernal fool to entangle himself
with a wife, and bade me a curt and everlasting good-morning on the
spot. Yet every day the theme of this old troubadour's talk around the
hotels is female entanglements--mendacious, unwifely, and for him
unavailing.
Through divers channels some of my fellow-creatures--specimens of the
most dreadful prose--have let me know that upon marrying I shall
forfeit their usurious regard. As to them, I shall relapse into the
privacy of an orchard that has been plucked of its fruit. But my
wonderment has grown on the other hand at the number of those to whom,
as the significant unit of a family instead of a bachelor zero, I have
now acquired a sterling mercantile valuation. Upon the whole, I may
fairly compute that my relation to the human race has been totally
changed by the little I may cease to give away and by the less that I
shall need to buy.
And Mrs. Walters! Although I prefer to think of Mrs. Walters as a
singer, owing to her unaccountable powers of reminiscential
vocalization, I have upon occasion classified her among the waders; and
certainly, upon the day when my engagement to Georgiana transpired, she
waded not only all around the town but all over it, sustained by a
buoyancy of spirit that enabled her to keep her head above water in
depths where her feet no longer touched the bottom.
It was the crowning triumph of this vacant soul's life to boast that
she had made this match; and for the sake of giving her so much
happiness, I think I should have been willing to marry Georgiana
whether I loved her or not.
So we are all happy: Sylvia, who thus enters upon a family right to my
flowers and to the distinction of being the only Miss Cobb; Dilsy, who,
while gathering vegetables about the garden, long ago began to receive
little bundles of quilt pieces thrown down to her with a smile and the
right word from the window above; and Jack, who is to drive us on our
bridal-trip to the Blue Lick Springs, where he hopes to renew his
scientific studies upon the maxillary bones. I have hesitated between
Blue Lick and Mud Lick, though to a man in my condition there can be no
great difference between blue and mud. And I had thought of the
Harrodsburg Springs, but the negro musicians there were lately hurried
off to Canada by the underground railway, out of which fact has grown a
lawsuit for damages between the proprietor and his abolitionist guest.
A few weeks ago I intrusted a secret to Georgiana. I told her that
before she condescended to shine upon this part of the world--now the
heavenlier part--I had been engaged upon certain researches and
discoveries relating to Kentucky birds, especially to the Kentucky
warbler. I admitted that these studies had been wretchedly put aside
under the more pressing necessity of fixing the attention of all my
powers, ornithological and other, upon her garden window. But as I
placed specimens of my notes and drawings in her hand, I remarked
gravely that after our marriage I should be ready to push my work
forward without delay.
All this was meant to give her a delightful surprise; and indeed she
examined the evidences of my undertaking with devouring and triumphant
eagerness. But what was my amazement when she handed them back in
silence, and with a face as white as though as fragrant as a rose.
"I have distressed you, Georgiana!" I cried, "and my only thought had
been to give you pleasure. I am always doing something wrong!"
She closed her eyes and passed her fingers searchingly across her brow,
as we sometimes instinctively try to brush away our cares. Then she
sat looking down rather pitifully at her palms, as they lay in her lap.
"You have shared your secret with me," she said, solemnly, at length.
"I'll share mine with yon. It is the only fear that I have ever felt
regarding our future. It has never left me; and what you have just
shown me fills me with terror."