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

to the other.

"In Heaven's name, Miss Mollie, do you see the Marble Guest, or some invisible familiar, peeping over that fat gentleman's shoulder? What do you see? You look as though you were going to faint."

"Do you know that gentleman?" she managed to ask.

"Do I know him--Reverend Raymond Rashleigh? Better than I know myself, Miss Dane. When I was a little chap in roundabouts they used to take me to his church every Sunday, and keep me in wriggling torments through a three-hours' sermon. Yes, I know him, to my sorrow."

"He is a clergyman, then?" Mollie said, slowly.

Mr. Ingelow stared at the odd question.

"I have always labored under that impression, Miss Dane, and so does the Reverend Mr. Rashleigh himself, I fancy. If you choose, I'll present him, and then you can cross-question him at your leisure."

"No, no!" cried Mollie, detaining him; "not for the world! I don't wish to make his acquaintance. See, they are filing off! I fall to your lot, I suppose."

She took her rejected suitor's arm--somehow, she was growing to like to be with Hugh Ingelow--and they entered the dining-room together. But Mollie was still very, very pale, and very unusually quiet.

Her face and neck gleamed against her pink dinner-dress like snow, and her eyes wandered furtively ever and anon over to the Reverend Mr. Rashleigh.

She listened to every word that he spoke as though they were the fabled pearls and diamonds of the fairy tale that dropped from his lips.

"Positively, Miss Dane," Hugh Ingelow remarked in his lazy voice, "it is love at first sight with the Reverend Raymond. Think better of it, pray; he's fat and forty, and has one wife already."

"Hush!" said Mollie, imperiously.

And Mr. Ingelow, stroking his mustache meditatively, hushed, and listened to a story the Reverend Mr. Rashleigh was about to relate.

"So extraordinary a story," he said, glancing around him, "that I can hardly realize it myself or credit my own senses. It is the only adventure of my life, and I am free to confess I wish it may remain so.

"It is about three weeks ago. I was sitting, one stormy night--Tuesday night it was--in my study, in after-dinner mood, enjoying the luxury of a good fire and a private clerical cigar, when a young woman--respectable-looking young person--entered, and informed me that a sickly relative, from whom I have expectations, was dying, and wished to see me immediately.

"Of course I started up at once, donned hat and greatcoat, and followed my respectable young person into a cab waiting at the door. Hardly was I in when I was seized by some invisible personage, bound, blindfolded, and gagged, and driven through the starry spheres, for all I know, for hours and hours interminable.

"Presently we stopped. I was led out--led into a house, upstairs, my uncomfortable bandages removed, and the use of my eyesight restored.

"I was in a large room, furnished very much like anybody's parlor, and brilliantly lighted. My companion of the carriage was still at my elbow. I turned to regard him. My friends, he was masked like a Venetian bravo, and wore a romantic inky cloak, like a Roman toga, that swept the floor.

"I sat aghast, the cold perspiration oozing from every pore. I make light of it now, but I could see nothing to laugh at then. Was I going to be robbed and murdered? Why had I been decoyed here?

"My friend of the mask did not leave me long in suspense. Not death and its horrors was to be enacted, but marriage--marriage, my friends--and I was to perform the ceremony.

"I listened to him like a man in a dream. He himself was the bridegroom. The bride was to appear masked, also, and I was only to hear their Christian names--Ernest--Mary. He offered no explanations, no apologies; he simply stated facts. I was to marry them and ask no questions, and I was to be conveyed safely home the same night. If I refused--

"My masked gentleman paused, and left an awful hiatus for me to fill up. I did not refuse--by no means. It has always been my way to make the best of a bad bargain--of two evils to choose the lesser. I consented.

"The bridegroom with the black mask quitted the room, and returned with a bride in a white mask. She was all in white, as it is right and proper to be--flowing veil, orange wreath, trailing silk robe--everything quite nice. But the white mask spoiled all. She was undersized and very slender, and there was one peculiarity about her I noticed--an abundance of bright, golden ringlets."

The reverend gentleman paused an instant to take breath.

Mollie Dane, scarcely breathing herself, listening absorbed, here became conscious, by some sort of prescience, of the basilisk gaze her guardian's wife had fixed upon her.

The strangest, smile sat on her arrogant face as she looked steadfastly at Mollie's flowing yellow curls.

"I married that mysterious pair," went on the clergyman--"Ernest and Mary. There were two witnesses--my respectable young woman and the coachman; there was the ring--everything necessary and proper."

Mollie's left hand was on the table. A plain, thick band of gold gleamed on the third finger. She hastily snatched it away, but not before Mrs. Walraven's black eyes saw it.

"I was brought home," concluded the clergyman, "and left standing, as morning broke, close to my own door, and I have never heard or seen my mysterious masks since. There's an adventure for you!"

The ladies rose from the table. As they passed into the drawing-room, a hand fell upon Mollie's shoulder. Glancing back, she saw the face of Mrs. Carl Walraven, lighted with a malicious smile.

"Such a queer story, Mollie! And such an odd bride--undersized, very slender, golden ringlets--name, Mary! My pretty Cricket, I think I know where you passed that mysterious fortnight!"


CHAPTER XI.

A MIDNIGHT TETE-A-TETE.

Mollie Dane sat alone in her pretty room. A bright fire burned in the grate. Old Mme. Walraven liked coal-fires, and would have them throughout the house. It was very late--past midnight--but the gas burned full flare, its garish flame subdued by globes of tinted glass, and Mollie, on a low stool before the fire, was still in all the splendor of her pink silk dinner-dress, her laces, her pearls.

Mollie's considering-cap was on, and Mollie's dainty brows were contracted, and the rosebud month ominously puckered. Miss Dane was doing what she did not often do--thinking--and the thoughts chasing one another through her flighty brain were evidently the reverse of pleasant.

"So I'm really married," mused the young lady--"really and truly married!--and I've been thinking all along it was only a sham ceremony."

She lifted up her left hand and looked at the shining wedding-ring.

"Ernest! Such a pretty name! And that's all I know about him. Oh, who is he, among all the men I know--who? It's not Doctor Oleander--I'm certain it's not, although the height and shape are the same; and I don't think it's Sardonyx, and I know it's not Hugh Ingelow--handsome Hugh!--because he hasn't the pluck, and he's a great deal too lazy. If it's the lawyer or the doctor, I'll have a divorce, certain. If it were the artist--more's the pity it's not--I--well, I shouldn't ask for a divorce. I do like Hugh! I like him more and more every day, and I almost wish I hadn't played that shameful trick upon him. I know he loves me dearly--poor little, mad-headed me! And I--oh! how could I think to marry Sir Roger Trajenna, knowing in my heart I loved Hugh? Dear, dear! it's such a pity I can't be good, and take to love-making, and marriage, and shirt-buttons, like other girls! But I can't; it's not in me. I was born a rattle-pate, and I don't see how any one can blame me for letting 'nater caper.'"

She rose up impatiently and began pacing the room--always her first impulse in moments of perplexity.

"I'm a mystery and a puzzle to myself and to everybody else. I don't know who I am, nor what my real name may be--if I have any right to a name! I don't know what I am to this Mr. Walraven, and I don't know who that mysterious woman, Miriam, is. I don't know anything. I have a husband, and I don't know him--shouldn't recognize him if I met him face to face this instant. I'm like the mysterious orphans in the story-books, and I expect it will turn out I have a duke for a father, somewhere or other."

Miss Dane walked to the window, drew the curtain, and looked out.

The full April moon, round and white, shone down in silvery radiance upon the deserted avenue; the sky was aglitter with myriad stars; the rattling of belated vehicles came, faint and far off, on the windless night.

No-one was visible--not even a stray "guardian of the night," treading his solitary round--and Mollie, after one glance at the starry concave, was about to drop the curtain and retire, when a tall, dark figure came fluttering up the street, pausing before the Walraven mansion, and gazing up earnestly at its palatial front.

Mollie recognized that towering form instantly, and, impulsively opening the sash, she leaned forward and called:

"Miriam!"

The woman heard her, responded, and advanced.

Mollie leaned further out.

"Have you come to see me?"

"I should like to see you. I heard you had returned, and came here, though I did not expect to meet you at this hour."

"Wait one moment," said Mollie; "I will go down and let you in."

She closed the window and flew down-stairs, opened the house door softly, and beckoned.

Miriam entered. Ten minutes later, and they were safely closeted in the young lady's cozy room.

"Sit down, Aunt Miriam, and take off your shawl. You look cold and wretched and half starved."

The woman turned her hollow eyes mournfully upon her. They were indeed a contrast--the bright vision in the rose silk dress, the floating amber curls, the milky pearls, the foamy lace, and the weird woman in the wretched rags, with sunken cheeks and hollow, spectral eyes.

"I am cold and wretched and half starved," she said, in a harsh voice--"a miserable, homeless outcast, forsaken of God and man. My bed is a bundle of filthy straw, my food a crust or a bone, my garments rags from the gutters. And yet I accept my fate, since you are rich and well and happy."

"My poor, poor Miriam! Let me go and get you something to eat, and a glass of wine to refresh you. It is dreadful to see any human being so destitute."

She started impetuously up, but Miriam stretched forth her hand to detain her, her fierce eyes flaming up.

"Not half so dreadful, Mollie Dane, as the eating the bread or drinking the cup of Carl Walraven! No; I told him before, and I tell you now, I would die in a kennel, like a stray dog, before I would accept help from him."

"Miriam!"

Miriam made an impatient gesture.

"Don't let us talk about me. Let us talk about yourself. It is my first chance since you came here. You are well and happy, are you not? You look both."

"I am well and I am happy; that is, as happy as I can be, shrouded in mystery. Miriam, I have been thinking about myself. I have learned to think, of late, and I would