The Unseen Bridgegroom by May Agnes Fleming (best free ebook reader .TXT) 📖

CHAPTER I.

THE WALRAVEN BALL.

A dark November afternoon--wet, and windy, and wild. The New York streets were at their worst--sloppy, slippery, and sodden; the sky lowering over those murky streets one uniform pall of inky gloom. A bad, desolate, blood-chilling November afternoon.

And yet Mrs. Walraven's ball was to come off to-night, and it was rather hard upon Mrs. Walraven that the elements should make a dead set at her after this fashion.

The ball was to be one of the most brilliant affairs of the season, and all Fifth Avenue was to be there in its glory.

Fifth Avenue was above caring for anything so commonplace as the weather, of course; but still it would have been pleasanter, and only a handsome thing in the clerk of the weather, considering Mrs. Walraven had not given a ball for twenty years before, to have burnished up the sun, and brushed away the clouds, and shut up that icy army of winter winds, and turned out as neat an article of weather as it is possible in the nature of November to turn out.

Of course, Mrs. Walraven dwelt on New York's stateliest avenue, in a big brown-stone palace that was like a palace in an Eastern story, with its velvet carpets, its arabesques, its filigree work, its chairs, and tables, and sofas touched up and inlaid with gold, and cushioned in silks of gorgeous dyes.

And in all Fifth Avenue, and in all New York City, there were not half a dozen old women of sixty half so rich, half so arrogant, or half so ill-tempered as Mrs. Ferdinand Walraven.

On this bad November afternoon, while the rain and sleet lashed the lofty windows, and the shrill winds whistled around the gables, Mrs. Ferdinand Walraven's only son sat in his chamber, staring out of the window, and smoking no end of cigars.

Fifth Avenue, in the raw and rainy twilight, is not the sprightliest spot on earth, and there was very little for Mr. Walraven to gaze at except the stages rattling up the pave, and some belated newsboys crying their wares.

Perhaps these same little ill-clad newsboys, looking up through the slanting rain, and seeing the well-dressed gentleman behind the rich draperies, thought it must be a fine thing to be Mr. Carl Walraven, heir to a half a million of money and the handsomest house in New York.

Perhaps you might have thought so, too, glancing into that lofty chamber, with its glowing hangings of ruby and gold, its exquisite pictures, its inlaid tables, its twinkling chandelier, its perfumed warmth, and glitter, and luxury.

But Carl Walraven, lying back in a big easy-chair, in slippers and dressing-gown, smoking his costly cheroots, looked out at the dismal evening with the blackest of bitter, black scowls.

"Confound the weather!" muttered Mr. Walraven, between strong, white teeth. "Why the deuce does it always rain on the twenty-fifth of November? Seventeen years ago, on the twenty-fifth of this horrible month, I was in Paris, and Miriam was--Miriam be hanged!" He stopped abruptly, and pitched his cigar out of the window. "You've turned over a new leaf, Carl Walraven, and what the demon do you mean by going back to the old leaves? You've come home from foreign parts to your old and doting mother--I thought she would be in her dotage by this time--and you're a responsible citizen, and an eminently rich and respectable man. Carl, my boy, forget the past, and behave yourself for the future; as the copy-books say: 'Be virtuous and you will be happy.'"

He laughed to himself, a laugh unpleasant to hear, and taking up another cigar, went on smoking.

He had been away twenty years, this Carl Walraven, over the world, nobody knew where. A reckless, self-willed, headstrong boy, he had broken wild and run away from home at nineteen, abruptly and without warning. Abruptly and without warning he had returned home, one fine morning, twenty years after, and walking up the palatial steps, shabby, and grizzled, and weather-beaten, had strode straight to the majestic presence of the mistress of the house, with outstretched hand and a cool "How are you, mother?"

And Mrs. Walraven knew her son. He had left her a fiery, handsome, bright-faced lad, and this man before her was gray and black-bearded and weather-beaten and brown, but she knew him. She had risen with a shrill cry of joy, and held open her arms.

"I've come back, you see, mother," Mr. Carl said, easily, "like the proverbial bad shilling. I've grown tired knocking about this big world, and now, at nine-and-thirty, with an empty purse, a light heart, a spotless conscience, and a sound digestion, I'm going to settle down and walk in the way I should go. You are glad to have your ne'er-do-well back again, I hope, mother?"

Glad! A widowed mother, lonely and old, glad to have an only son back! Mrs. Walraven had tightened those withered arms about him closer and closer, with only that one shrill cry:

"Oh, Carl--my son! my son!"

"All right, mother! And now, if there's anything in this house to eat, I'll eat it, because I've been fasting since yesterday, and haven't a stiver between me and eternity. By George! this isn't such a bad harbor for a shipwrecked mariner to cast anchor in. I've been over the world, mother, from Dan to--What's-her-name! I've been rich and I've been poor; I've been loved and I've been hated; I've had my fling at everything good and bad under the shining sun, and I come home from it all, subscribing to the doctrine: 'There's nothing new and nothing true.' And it don't signify; it's empty as egg-shells, the whole of it."

That was the story of the prodigal son. Mrs. Walraven asked no questions. She was a wise old woman; she took her son and was thankful. It had happened late in October, this sudden arrival, and now, late in November, the fatted calf was killed, and Mrs. Walraven's dear five hundred friends bidden to the feast.

And they came. They had all heard the story of the widow's heir, so long lost, and now, dark and mysterious as Count Lara, returned to lord it in his ancestral halls. He was a very hero of romance--a wealthy hero, too--and all the pretty man-traps on the avenue, baited with lace and roses, silk and jewels, were coming to-night to angle for this dazzling prize.

The long-silent drawing-rooms, shrouded for twenty years in holland and darkness, were one blaze of light at last. Flowers bloomed everywhere; musicians, up in a gilded gallery, discoursed heavenly music; there was a conservatory where alabaster lamps made a silver moonlight in a modern Garden of Eden; there was a supper-table spread and waiting, a feast for the gods and Sybarites; and there was Mrs. Walraven, in black velvet and point lace, upright and stately, despite her sixty years, with a diamond star of fabulous price ablaze on her breast. And there by her side, tall, and dark, and dignified, stood her only son, the prodigal, the repentant, the wealthy Carl Walraven.

"Not handsome," said Miss Blanche Oleander, raising her glass, "but eminently interesting. He looks like the hero of a sensation novel, or a modern melodrama, or one of Lord Byron's poems. Does he dance, and will he ask me, I wonder?"

Yes, the dusky hero of the night did dance, and did ask Miss Blanche Oleander. A tall, gray-eyed, imperious sort of beauty, this Miss Blanche, seven-and-twenty years of age, and frightfully _passée_, more youthful belles said.

Mr. Walraven danced the very first dance with Miss Oleander, to her infinite but perfectly concealed delight.

"If you can imagine the Corsair, whirling in a rapid redowa with Medora," Miss Oleander afterward said, "you have Mr. Walraven and myself. There were about eighty Guinares gazing enviously on, ready to poniard me, every one of them, if they dared, and if they were not such miserable little fools and cowards. When they cease to smell of bread and butter, Mr. Walraven may possibly deign to look at them."

It seemed as if the dashing Blanche had waltzed herself straight into the affections of the new-found heir, for he devoted himself to her in the most _prononcé_ manner for the first three hours, and afterward led her in to supper.

Miss Blanche sailed along serene, uplifted, splendidly calm; the little belles in lace, and roses, and pearls, fluttered and twittered like angry doves; and Mme. Walraven, from the heights of her hostess-throne, looked aslant at her velvet and diamonds with uneasy old eyes.

"The last of all you should have selected," she said, waylaying her son after supper. "A woman without a heart, Carl--a modern Minerva. I have no wish to interfere with you, my son; I shall call the day happy that brings me your wife, but not Blanche Oleander--not that cold-blooded, bold-faced, overgrown grenadier."

Madame hissed out the words between a set of spiteful, false teeth, and glared, as women do glare, upon the gray-eyed Blanche. And Carl listened, and laughed sardonically.

"A woman without a heart. So much the better, mother; the less heart the more head; and I like your clever, dashing women, who are big and buxom, and able to take care of themselves. Don't forget, mother mine, I haven't proposed to the sparkling Blanche, and I don't think I shall--to-night. You wouldn't have me fall at the feet of those mealy-winged moths fluttering around us, with heads softer than their poor little hearts--you wouldn't, I hope?"

With which Mr. Walraven went straight back to Miss Oleander and asked her to dance the lancers.

Miss Oleander, turning with ineffable calm from a bevy of rose-robed and white-robed young ladies, said, "Yes," as if Mr. Walraven was no more than any other man, and stood up to take his arm.

But there is many a slip. Miss Oleander and Mr. Walraven never danced that particular set, for just then there came a ring at the door-bell so pealing and imperious that it sounded sharply even through the noisy ball-room.

"The Marble Guest, surely," Blanche said, "and very determined to be heard."

Before the words were well uttered there was a sound of an altercation in the hall--one of the tall footmen pathetically protesting, and a shrill female voice refusing to listen to those plaintive protests. Then there suddenly fell peace.

"After a storm there cometh a calm," Mr. Walraven said. "Miss Oleander, shall we move on? Well, Johnson, what is it?"

For Johnson, the taller of the two tall footmen, stood before them gazing beseechingly at his master.

"It's a woman, sir, all wet and dirty, and horrid to look at. She says she will see you, and there she stands, and Wilson nor me we can't do nothing with her. If you don't come she says she'll walk up here and make you come. Them," said Johnson, plaintively, "were her own language."

Blanche Oleander, gazing up at her companion's face, saw it changing to a startled, dusky white.

"Some beggar--some troublesome tramp, I dare say." But he dropped her arm abruptly as he said it. "Excuse me a moment, Miss Oleander. I had better see her to prevent noise. Now, then, Johnson."

Mr. Johnson led the way down a grand, sweeping staircase, rich in gilding and carving, through a paved and vaulted hall, and out into a lofty vestibule.

There a woman stood, dripping wet and wretchedly clad, as miserable-looking a