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

night of wind and rain upon which the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh performed that mysterious midnight marriage, Mr. Carl Walraven paced alone his stately library, lost in thought--painful thought; for his dark brows were contracted, and the Grecian heads in the brackets around him had no severer lines than those about his mouth.

While he paces up and down, up and down, like some restless ghost, the library door opens, and his wife, magnificently arrayed, with jewels in her raven hair, a sparkling fan dangling from her wrist, an odor of rich perfume following her, appears before him like a picture in a frame.

She is superbly handsome in that rose-colored opera-cloak, and she knows it, and is smiling graciously; but the swarth frown on her husband's face only grows blacker as he looks at her.

"You are going, then?" said Mr. Carl Walraven.

"Going?" Mrs. Walraven arches her black eyebrows in pretty surprise at the word. "Of course, my dear. I would not miss 'Robert le Diable' and the charming new tenor for worlds."

"Nor would you obey your husband for worlds, madame. I expressly desired you to stay at home."

"I know it, my love. Should be happy to oblige you, but in this case it is simply impossible."

"Have you no regard for the opinion of the world?"

"Every regard, my dear."

"What do you suppose society will say to see you at the opera, dressed like a queen, while we are all mourning poor Mollie's loss?"

"Society will say, if society has common sense, that Mrs. Walraven scorns to play hypocrite. I don't care for Mollie Dane--I never did care for her--and I don't mourn her loss in the least. I don't care that"--the lady snapped her jeweled fingers somewhat vulgarly--"if I never see her again. It is as well to tell you the truth, my dear. One should have no secrets from one's husband, they say."

She laughed lightly, and drew her opera-cloak up over her superb bare shoulders. Mr. Walraven's darkest scowl did not intimidate her in the least.

"Leave the room, madame!" ordered her husband, authoritatively; "and take you care that I don't assert my right and compel you to obey me, before long."

"Compel!" It was such a good joke that Mrs. Blanche's silvery laugh rang through the apartment. "You compelled me once, against my will, when you took your ward with you on your wedding-tour. I don't think it will ever happen again, Mr. Walraven. And now, how do you like my dress? I came in expressly to ask you, for the carriage waits."

"Leave the room!" cried Carl Walraven, in a voice of thunder. "Be gone!"

"You are violent," said Blanche, with a provoking shrug and smile, but prudently retreating. "You forget your voice may be heard beyond this room. Since you lost your ward you appear also to have lost your temper--never of the best, I must say. Well, my love, by-bye for the present. Don't quite wear out the carpet before I return."

With the last sneer and a sweeping bow, the lady quitted the library. As she closed the door, the house-bell rang violently. "The devoted baronet, no doubt," she said to herself, with an unpleasant smile; "come to condole with his brother in affliction. Poor old noodle! Truly, a fool of forty will never be wise! A fool of seventy, in his case."

One of the tall footmen opened the door. But it was not the stately baronet. The footman recoiled with a little yelp of terror--he had admitted this visitor before. A gaunt and haggard woman, clad in rags, soaking with rain--a wretched object as ever the sun shone on.

"Is Carl Walraven within?" demanded this grisly apparition, striding in and confronting the tottering footman with blazing black eyes. "Tell him Miriam is here."

The footman recoiled further with another feeble yelp, and Blanche Walraven haughtily and angrily faced the intruder.

"Who are you?"

The blazing eyes burning in hollow sockets turned upon the glittering, perfumed vision.

"Who am I? What would you give to know? Who are you? Carl Walraven's wife, I suppose. His wife! Ha! ha!" she laughed--a weird, blood-curdling laugh. "I wish you joy of your husband, most magnificent madame! Tell me, fellow," turning with sudden fierceness upon the dismayed understrapper, "is your master at home?"

"Y-e-e-s! That is, I think so, ma'am."

"Go and tell him to come here, then. Go, or I'll--"

The dreadful object made one stride toward the lofty servitor, who turned and fled toward the library.

But Mr. Walraven had heard loud and angry voices, and at this moment the door opened and he appeared on the threshold.

"What is this?" he demanded, angrily. "What the deuce do you mean, Wilson, wrangling in the hall? Not gone yet, Blanche? Good Heaven! Miriam!"

"Yes, Miriam!" She strode fiercely forward. "Yes, Miriam! Come to demand revenge! Where is Mollie Dane? You promised to protect her, and see how you keep your word!"

"In the demon's name, hush!" cried Carl Walraven, savagely. "What you have to say to me, say to me--not to the whole house. Come in here, you hag of Satan, and blow out as much as you please! Good Lord! Wasn't I in trouble enough before, without you coming to drive me mad?"

He caught her by one fleshless arm in a sort of frenzy of desperation, and swung her into the library. Then he turned to his audience of two with flashing eyes:

"Wilson, be gone! or I'll break every bone in your body! Mrs. Walraven, be good enough to take yourself off at once. I don't want eavesdroppers."

And having thus paid his elegant lady-wife back in her own coin, Mr. Walraven stalked into the library like a sulky lion, banged the door and locked it.

Mrs. Carl stood a moment in petrified silence in the hall, then sailed in majestic displeasure out of the house, into the waiting carriage, and was whirled away to the Academy.

"Turn and turn about. Mr. Carl Walraven," she said, between set, white teeth. "My turn next! I'll ferret out your guilty secrets before long, as sure as my name is Blanche!"

Mr. Walraven faced Miriam in the library with folded arms and fiery eyes, goaded to recklessness, a panther at bay.

"Well, you she-devil, what do you want?"

"Mary Dane."

"Find her, then!" said Carl Walraven, fiercely. "I know nothing about her."

The woman looked at him long and keenly. The change in him evidently puzzled her.

"You sing a new song lately," she said with deliberation. "Do you want me to think you are out of my power?"

"Think what you please, and be hanged to you!" howled Mr. Walraven. "I am driven to the verge of madness among you! Mollie Dane and her disappearance, my wife and her cursed taunts, you and your infernal threats! Do your worst, the whole of you! I defy the whole lot!"

"Softly, softly," said Miriam, cooling down as he heated up. "I want an explanation. You have lost Mollie! How was she lost?"

"Yes--how? You've asked the question, and I wish you would answer it. I've been driving myself wild over it for the past few days, but I don't seem to get to the solution. Can't your Familiar," pointing downward, "help you guess the enigma, Miriam?"

Miriam frowned darkly.

"Do you really intend to say you have not made away with the girl yourself?"

"Now what does the woman mean by that? What the deuce should I make away with her for? I liked Mollie--upon my soul I did, Miriam! I liked her better than any one in this house--the little, saucy, mischievous witch! She was on the eve of marrying a baronet, and going to her castle in Spain--I mean in Wales--when, lo! she vanishes like a ghost in a child's tale. I've scoured the city after her--I've paid detectives fabulous amounts. I've been worried, and harassed, and goaded, and mystified until I'm half mad, and here you come with your infernal nonsense about 'making away' with her. That means murdering her, I suppose. I always took you to be more or less mad, Miriam Dane, but I never before took you to be a fool."

The woman looked at him keenly--he was evidently telling the truth. Yet still she doubted.

"Who but you, Carl Walraven, had any interest in her, one way or the other? What enemies could a girl of sixteen have?"

"Ah! what, indeed? If a girl of sixteen will flirt with every eligible man she meets until she renders him idiotic, she must expect to pay the penalty. But I don't pretend to understand this affair; it is wrapped in blacker mystery than the Man in the Iron Mask. All I've got to say is--I had no hand in it; so no more of your black looks, Mistress Miriam."

"And all I've got to say, Mr. Walraven," said Miriam, steadfastly fixing her eyes upon him, "is that if Mollie Dane is not found before the month is out, I will publish your story to the world. What will Madame Walraven, what will Mrs. Carl, what will the chief metropolitan circles say then?"

"You hag of Hades! Ain't you afraid I will strangle you where you stand?"

"Not the least," folding her shawl deliberately around her, and moving toward the door: "not in the slightest degree. Good-night, Carl Walraven--I have said it, and I always keep my word."

"Keep it, and--"

But Miriam did not hear that last forcible adjuration. She was out of the library, and out of the house, ere it was well uttered--lost in the wet, black night.

Left alone, Carl Walraven resumed his march up and down the apartment, with a gloomier face and more frowning brows than ever.

It was bad enough before, without this tiger-cat of a Miriam coming to make things ten times worse. It was all bravado, his defiance of her, and he knew it. He was completely in her power, to ruin for life if she chose to speak.

"And she will choose!" growled Carl Walraven, in a rage, "the accursed old hag! if Mollie Dane doesn't turn up before the month ends. By the Lord Harry! I'll twist that wizen gullet of hers the next time she shows her ugly black face here! Confound Mollie Dane and all belonging to her! I've never known a day's rest since I met them first."

There was a tap at the door. The tall footman threw it open and ushered in Sir Roger Trajenna. The stately old baronet looked ten years older in these few days. Anxiety told upon him more hardly than his seventy yews.

"Good-evening, Sir Roger!" cried Mr. Walraven, advancing eagerly. "Any news of Mollie?"

He expected to hear "No," but the baronet said "Yes." He was deeply agitated, and held forth, in a hand that shook, a note to Carl Walraven.

"I received that an hour ago, through the post-office. For Heaven's sake, read, and tell me what you think of it!"

He dropped exhausted into a chair. Carl Walraven tore open the brief epistle, and devoured its contents:

"SIR ROGER TRAJENNA,--Give up your search for Mollie Dane. It is useless; a waste of time and money. She is safe and well, and will be at home in a week, but she will never be your wife.

"ONE WHO KNOWS."

Mr. Walraven read and reread these brief lines, and stood and stared at Sir Roger Trajenna.

"Good heavens! You got this through the post-office?"

"I did, an