Wife in Name Only, Charlotte Mary Brame [carter reed txt] 📗

Peters. "I cannot imagine why men who have beautiful young wives go yachting. It seems to me a terrible mistake."

Lord Arleigh laughed.

"The duke's yachting has very little to do with this matter," he said. "Lady Peters, before you listen to the duchess, let me make one appeal to you. With all my heart I beseech you to grant the favor that she will ask."

He bent his handsome head, and kissed her hand, while emotion rose to the lady's eyes.

"Is it something for you, Lord Arleigh?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied, "for my own unworthy self."

"Then I will do it if possible," she replied.

But when the Duchess of Hazlewood had told her what was needed, and had placed the whole matter before her, Lady Peters looked shocked.

"My dear Philippa," she said, "this is terrible. I could not have believed it. She is a lovely, graceful, pure-minded girl, I know; but such a marriage for an Arleigh! I cannot believe it."

"That is unfortunate," said her grace, dryly, "for he seems very much in earnest."

"No money, no rank, no connections, while he is one of the finest matches in England."

"She is his ideal," was the mocking reply. "It is not for us to point out deficiencies."

"But what will the duke say?" inquired her ladyship, anxiously.

"I do not suppose that he will be very much surprised. Even if he is, he will have had time to recover from his astonishment before he returns. The duke knows that 'beauty leads man at its will.' Few can resist the charm of a pretty face"

"What shall I do?" asked Lady Peters, hopelessly. "What am I to say?"

"Decide for yourself. I decline to offer any opinion. I say simply that if you refuse he will probably ask the favor of some one else."

"But do you advise me to consent, Philippa?" inquired Lady Peters, anxiously.

"I advise you to please yourself. Had he asked a similar favor of me, I might have granted or I might have refused it; I cannot say."

"To think of that simple, fair-faced girl being Lady Arleigh!" exclaimed Lady Peters. "I suppose that I had better consent, or he will do something more desperate. He is terribly in earnest, Philippa."

"He is terribly in love," said the duchess, carelessly, and then Lady Peters decided that she would accede to Lord Arleigh's request.


Chapter XXIII.


More than once during the week that ensued after his proposal of marriage to Madaline, Lord Arleigh looked in wonder at the duchess. She seemed so unlike herself--absent, brooding, almost sullen. The smiles, the animation, the vivacity, the wit, the brilliant repartee that had distinguished her had all vanished. More than once he asked her if she was ill; the answer was always "No." More than once he asked her if she was unhappy; the answer was always the same--"No."

"You are miserable because your husband is not here," he said to her one day, compassionately. "If you had known how much you would have missed him, you would not have let him go."

There was a wondrous depth of pain in the dark eyes raised to his.

"I wish he had not gone," she said; "from the very depths of my heart I wish that." Then she seemed to recover her natural gayety. "I do not know, though, why I should have detained him," she said, half laughingly. "He is so fond of yachting."

"You must not lose all your spirits before he returns, Philippa, or he will say we have been but sorry guardians."

"No one has ever found fault with my spirits before," said the duchess. "You are not complimentary, Norman."

"You give me such a strange impression," he observed. "Of course it is highly ridiculous, but if I did not know you as well as I do, I should think that you had something on your mind, some secret that was making you unhappy--that there was a struggle always going on between something you would like to do and something you are unwilling to do. It is an absurd idea, I know, yet it has taken possession of me."

She laughed, but there was little music in the sound.

"What imaginative power you have, Norman! You would make your fortune as a novelist. What can I have to be unhappy about? Should you think that any woman has a lot more brilliant than mine? See how young I am for my position--how entirely I have my own way! Could any one, do you think, be more happy than I?"

"No, perhaps not," he replied.

So the week passed, and at the end of it Lady Peters went with Madaline to St. Mildred's. At first the former had been unwilling to go--it had seemed to her a terrible _mésalliance_, but, woman-like, she had grown interested in the love-story--she had learned to understand the passionate love that Lord Arleigh had for his fair-haired bride. A breath of her own youth swept over her as she watched them.

It might be a _mésalliance_, a bad match, but it was decidedly a case of true love, of the truest love she had ever witnessed; so that her dislike to the task before her melted away.

After all, Lord Arleigh had a perfect right to please himself--to do as he would; if he did not think Madaline's birth placed her greatly beneath him, no one else need suggest such a thing. From being a violent opponent of the marriage, Lady Peters became one of its most strenuous supporters. So they went away to St. Mildred's, where the great tragedy of Madaline's life was to begin.

On the morning that she went way, the duchess sent for her to her room. She told her all that she intended doing as regarded the elaborate and magnificent _trousseau_ preparing for her. Madaline was overwhelmed.

"You are too good to me," she said--"you spoil me. How am I to thank you?"

"Your wedding-dress--plain, simple, but rich, to suit the occasion--will be sent to St. Mildred's," said the duchess--"also a handsome traveling costume; but all the rest of the packages can be sent to Beechgrove. You will need them only there."

Madaline kissed the hand extended to her.

"I shall never know how to thank you," she said.

A peculiar smile came over the darkly-beautiful face.

"I think you will," returned the duchess "I can imagine what blessings you will some day invoke on my name."

Then she withdrew her hand suddenly from the touch of the pure sweet lips.

"Good-by, Madaline," she said; and it was long before the young girl saw the fair face of the duchess again.

Just as she was quitting the room Philippa placed a packet in her hand.

"You will carefully observe the directions given in this?" she said; and Madaline promised to do so.

The time at St. Mildred's soon passed. It was a quiet, picturesque village, standing at the foot of a green hill facing the bay. There was little to be seen, except the shining sea and the blue sky. An old church, called St. Mildred's, stood on the hill-top. Few strangers ever visited the little watering-place. The residents were people who preferred quiet and beautiful scenery to everything else. There was a hotel, called the Queen's, where the few strangers that came mostly resided; and just facing the sea stood a newly-built terrace of houses called Sea View, where other visitors also sojourned.

It was just the place for lovers' dreams--a shining sea, golden sands, white cliffs with little nooks and bays, pretty and shaded walks on the hill-top.

Madaline's great happiness was delightful to see. The fair face grew radiant in its loveliness; the blue eyes shone brightly. There was the delight, too, every day of inspecting the parcels that arrived one after the other; but the greatest pleasure of all was afforded by the wedding-dress. It was plain, simple, yet, in its way, a work of art--a rich white silk with little lace or trimming, yet looking so like a wedding-dress that no one could mistake it. There were snowy gloves and shoes--in fact everything was perfect, selected by no common taste, the gift of no illiberal hand. Was it foolish of her to kiss the white folds while the tears filled her eyes, and to think of herself that she was the happiest creature under the sun? Was it foolish of her to touch the pretty bridal robes with soft, caressing fingers, as though they were some living thing that she loved--to place them where the sunbeams fell on them, to admire them in every different fold and arrangement?

Then the eventful day came--Lord Arleigh and Madaline were to be married at an early hour.

"Not," said Lord Arleigh, proudly, "that there is any need for concealment--why should there be?--but you see, Lady Peters if it were known that it was my wedding-day, I have so many friends, so many relatives, that privacy would be impossible for us; therefore the world has not been enlightened as to when I intended to claim my darling for my own."

"It is a strange marriage for an Arleigh," observed Lady Peters--"the first of its kind, I am sure. But I think you are right--your plan is wise."

All the outward show made at the wedding consisted in the rapid driving of a carriage from the hotel to the church--a carriage containing two ladies--one young, fair, charming as a spring morning, the other older, graver, and more sedate.

The young girl was fair and sweet, her golden hair shining through the marriage vail, her blue eyes wet with unshed tears, her face flushed with daintiest rose-leaf bloom.

It was a pleasant spectacle to see the dark, handsome face of her lover as he greeted her, the love that shone in his eyes, the pride of his manner, as though he would place her before the whole world, and defy it to produce one so graceful or so fair. Lady Peters' face softened and her heart beat as she walked up to the altar with them. This was true love.

So the grand old words of the marriage-service were pronounced--they were promised to each other for better for worse, for weal for woe--never to part until death parted them--to be each the other's world.

It was the very morning for a bride. Heaven and earth smiled their brightest, the sunshine was golden, the autumn flowers bloomed fair, the autumn foliage had assumed its rich hues of crimson and of burnished gold; there was a bright light over the sea and the hill-tops.

Only one little _contretemps_ happened at the wedding. Madaline smiled at it. Lord Arleigh was too happy even to notice it, but Lady Peters grew pale at the occurrence; for, according to her old-fashioned ideas, it augured ill.

Just as Lord Arleigh was putting the ring on the finger of his fair young bride, it slipped and fell to the ground. The church was an old-fashioned one, and there were graves and vaults all down the aisle. Away rolled the little golden ring, and when Lord Arleigh stooped down he could not see it. He was for some minutes searching for it, and then he found it--it had rolled into the hollow of a large letter on one of the level grave-stones.

Involuntarily he kissed it as he lifted it from the ground; it was too cruel for anything belonging to that fair young bride to have been brought into contact with death. Lady Peters noted the little incident with a