Trembling almost to fainting, the poor girl came to me, and I
received her into my arms, with something of a tremor also. I felt
the prize would be one that I should be very loath to lose; and
joy led to anxiety, and my anxiety rendered me nervous to a womanly
degree. But I did not lose my composure and when I had taken her
into my arms, I thought it would be only a prudent precaution to
turn the key in the outer dour, and leave it somewhere along the
highway. This I did, absolutely forgetting, that, in thus securing
myself against any sudden pursuit, I had also locked up my friend,
the Kentucky trader.
Fortune favored our movements. Our preparations had been properly
laid, and Edgerton had the divine in waiting. In less than half
an hour after leaving the house of her parents, Julia and myself
stood up to be married. Pale, feeble, sad--the poor girl, though she
felt no reluctance, and suffered not the most momentary remorse for
the steps she had taken, and was about to take, was yet necessarily
and naturally impressed with the solemnity and the doubts which
hung over the event. Young, timid, artless, apprehensive, she
was unsupported by those whom nature had appointed to watch over
and protect her; and though they had neglected, and would have
betrayed their trust, she yet could not but feel that there was an
incompleteness about the affair, which, not even the solemn accents
of the priest, the deep requisitions of those pledges which she
was called upon to make, and the evident conviction which she now
entertained, that what had been done was necessary to be done,
for her happiness, and even her life--could entirely remove. There
was an awful but sweet earnestness in the sad, intense glance of
entreaty, with which she regarded me when I made the final response.
Her large black eye dilated, even under the dewy suffusion of its
tears, as it seemed to say:-"It is to you now--to you alone--that I look for that protection,
that happiness which was denied where I had best right to look for
it. Ah! let me not look, let me not yield myself to you in vain!"
How imploring, yet how resigned was that glance of tears--love in
tears, yet love that trusted without fear! It was the embodiment of
innocence, struggling between hope and doubt, and only strengthened
for the future by the pure, sweet faith which grew out of their
conflict. I look back upon that scene, I recall that glance, with
a sinking of the heart which is full of terror and terrible reproach.
Ah! then, then, I had no fear, no thought, that I should see that
look, and others, more sad, more imploring still, and see them
without a corresponding faith and love! I little knew, in that
brief, blessed hour, how rapidly the blindness of the heart comes
on, even as the scale over the eyes--but such a scale as no surgeon's
knife can cut away.