The Unseen Bridgegroom, May Agnes Fleming [ebook reader for surface pro .TXT] 📗

Don't let us talk about it to-night. I am sorry for you, and if you have any sense left you will soon be sorry for yourself. Here comes Doctor Oleander, and I mean to be as fascinating as I know how, just to drive the other two to the verge of madness."

She danced away, leaving Mr. Walraven pulling his mustache, a picture of helpless perplexity.

"I wonder if I have put my foot in it?" he thought, as he looked across the long room to where Blanche stood, the brilliant center of a brilliant group. "She is very handsome and very clever--so clever that I don't for the life of me know whether I made love to her or she to me. It is too late now for anything but a wedding or heavy damages, and of the two evils I prefer the first."

Mrs. Walraven's dinner-party broke up very late, and Blanche Oleander went home with her cousin.

"A pert, forward, bold-faced minx!" Miss Oleander burst out, the moment they were alone in the carriage. "Guy, what on earth did you mean by paying her such marked attention all evening?"

"What did Carl Walraven mean by paying _you_ such marked attention all evening?" retorted her cousin.

"Mr. Walraven is no flirt--he means marriage."

"And I am no flirt--I mean marriage also."

"Guy, are you mad? Marry that nameless, brazen creature?"

"Blanche, be civil! Most assuredly I will marry her if she will marry me."

"Then you will repent it all the days of your life."

"Probably. I think I heard Miss Dane making a similar remark to your affianced about you."

"The impertinent little wretch! Let her wait until I am Mr. Walraven's wife!"

"Vague and terrible! When is it to be?"

"The wedding? Next month."

"Poor Walraven! There, Blanche, don't flash up, pray! When you are married you will want to get blue-eyed Mollie off your hands, so please transfer her to me, little flash of lightning that she is! I always did like unbroken colts for the pleasure of taming them."

Mrs. Walraven was told of her son's approaching marriage the day after the dinner-party; disapproved, but said nothing. Mollie disapproved, and said everything.

"It's of no use talking now, Mollie!" her guardian exclaimed, impatiently. "I must and will marry Blanche."

"And, oh! what a pitiable object you will be twelve months after! But I'll never desert you--never strike my flag to the conqueress. 'The boy stood on the burning deck.' I'll be a second Casi--what you may call him? to you. I'll be bride-maid now, and your protector from the lovely Blanche in the future."

She kept her word. In spite of Miss Oleander's dislike, she was first bride-maid when the eventful day arrived.

But fairer than the bride, fairest of the rosy bevy of bride-maids, shone blue-eyed Mollie Dane. A party of speechless admirers stood behind, chief among them Hugh Ingelow.

The bridal party were drawn up before the surpliced clergyman, and "Who giveth this woman?" had been asked and answered, and the service was proceeding in due order when there was a sudden commotion at the door.

Some one rushed impetuously in, and a voice that rang through the lofty edifice shouted:

"Stop! I forbid the marriage!"

Carl Walraven whirled round aghast. The bride shrieked; the bride-maids echoed the bride in every note of the gamut--all save Mollie; and she, like the bridegroom, had recognized the intruder.

For, tall and gaunt as one of Macbeth's witches, there stood the woman Miriam!


CHAPTER IV.

MOLLIE'S CONQUEST.

There was a blank pause; every eye fixed on the towering form of the specter-like woman.

"I forbid the marriage!" exclaimed Miriam. "Clergyman, on your peril you unite those two!"

"The woman is mad!" cried Carl Walraven, white with rage. "Men, turn her out!"

"Stop!" said Mollie--"stop one moment I know this woman, and will see what she means."

No one interfered; every one gazed in breathless interest as Miss Dane quitted her post and confronted the haggard apparition. The woman uttered a cry at sight of her, and caught her impetuously by the arm.

"Mad girl! have you forgotten what I told you? Would you marry that man?"

"Marry what man? What do you mean? I am not going to marry any man to-day. It is you who have gone mad, I think."

"Why, then, do you wear those bridal robes?"

"Bride-maid robes, if you please. Gracious me, Miriam, you didn't think I was going to marry Mr. Walraven, did you?"

Miriam passed her hand over her brow with a bewildered air.

"Whom, then, is it, if not you?"

"Miss Blanche Oleander, of course, as anyone could have told you, if you had taken the trouble to ask before rushing in here and making a scene."

"I only heard last night he was to be married," Miriam said, with a bewildered face, "and took it for granted that it must be you."

"Then you must have had a poorer opinion of my taste than I should have thought it possible for you to have. Come in and beg everybody's pardon, and tell them it was all a shocking mistake."

"One word first: Are you well and happy?"

"Perfectly well, and happy as a queen. Come on; there is no time to lose. People are staring dreadfully, and the bride is glaring with rage. Quick--come!"

She flitted back to her place, and Miriam, stepping forward, addressed the assembly:

"I ask your pardon, ladies and gentlemen. I have made a mistake. I thought the bride was Miss Dane. I beg the ceremony will proceed."

She pulled a veil she wore down over her gaunt face, and with the last word hurried out and disappeared. Mr. Walraven, suppressing his rage, turned to the minister.

"Proceed!" he said, impatiently, "and make haste."

The bride, very white with anger and mortification, resumed her place; the ceremony recommenced. This time there was no interruption, and in ten minutes the twain were one flesh.

Half an hour later they were back at the Walraven mansion to eat the wedding-breakfast, and then the new-made Mrs. Walraven, with an eye that flashed and a voice that rang, turned upon her liege lord and demanded an explanation. Mr. Walraven shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.

"My dearest Blanche, I have none to give. The woman must be mad. Speak to Mollie."

"Carl Walraven, do not dare to deceive me on my wedding-day. You know more of this than you choose to say."

"Mrs. Walraven, do not raise your angel voice to such a pitch for nothing. I said before, speak to Mollie. I say again, speak to Mollie; and here she is."

"So she is," said Miss Dane, sauntering in. "Do you want me to allay a post-nuptial storm already? Auspicious beginning! What is it?"

"Who was that woman?" demanded the bride.

"A very old friend of mine, madame."

"Why did she come to the church and try to stop the marriage?"

"Because she thought I was the bride. She said so, didn't she? And being very well acquainted with me, she was moved with compassion for the deluded man and came to warn him in time. I explained her little mistake, as you saw, and she apologized handsomely, and--exit, Miriam. Isn't that satisfactory?"

"Are you speaking the truth?"

Miss Dane laid her hand upon her heart, and bowed profoundly.

"Doesn't Mr. Walraven know her?"

"That is a question I can not take it upon myself to answer. Mr. Walraven is of age. Let him speak for himself."

"I told you before," said the bridegroom, angrily. "Let us have no more about it, Blanche, or I may chance to lose my temper."

He turned on his heel and walked off whistling, and the bride, in her snowy robes and laces, went down to breakfast, trying vainly to clear her stormy brow. Mollie puckered up her rosy lips into a shrill whistle.

"And this is their wedding-day! I told him how it would be, but of course nobody ever minds what I say. Poor guardy! what ever would become of him traveling alone with that woman! How thankful he ought to be that he has me to go along and take care of him!"

For Mollie had made it an express stipulation, contrary to all precedent, that she was to accompany the happy pair on their bridal tour. Miss Oleander's ante-nuptial objections had been faint; Mrs. Walraven, less scrupulous, turned upon her husband at the eleventh hour, just previous to starting, and insisted that she should be left at home.

"It will be ridiculous in the extreme," exclaimed the bride, "having your ward traveling with us! Let her remain at home with your mother."

Mr. Walraven looked his bride steadfastly in the eye for a moment, then sat down deliberately.

"Look here, Mrs. Walraven," said Mr. Walraven, perfectly cool, "you have made a little mistake, I fancy. Permit me to rectify it. Wearing the breeches is a vulgar expression, I am aware, and only admissible in low circles; still, it so forcibly expresses what I am trying to express, that you will allow me to use it. You are trying to don the inexpressibles, Blanche, but it won't do. My ward goes with us on our bridal tour, or there shall be no bridal tour at all. There! you have it in plain English, Mrs. Carl Walraven!"

Five minutes later Mr. and Mrs. Walraven descended to the carriage, Mrs. Walraven with her veil drawn down, and making her adieus in a smothered sort of voice. Mr. Walraven handed in his ward next, then followed; the coachman flourished his whip and they were gone.

The happy pair were merely going to Washington. Mr. Walraven had had a surfeit of Europe, and Washington, this sparkling winter weather, was at its gayest and best. The Walraven party, with plethoric purses, plunged into the midst of the gayety at once.

"I like this sort of thing," said Mollie to her guardian; "the theater, and the opera, and a ball, and two or three parties every night. I like dancing until broad daylight, and going to bed at six in the morning, and getting up to breakfast at one. I like matinees at three in the afternoon, and dinners with seventeen courses, and going to the White House, and shaking hands with the President, and sailing around the East Room, and having people point me out as the beauty of the season. It's new and it's nice, and I never get tired, or pale, or limpy, like most of the girls. I never enjoyed myself so much in my life, and you would say the same thing, guardy, only you're in your honey-moon, and not capable of enjoying anything."

"But, Mollie," Mr. Walraven remonstrated, "it isn't right to flirt so much as you do. There's young Ingelow. The way you devoted yourself to that young man last night set everybody talking."

"Let 'em talk," responded Miss Dane, loftily. "When Mr. Ingelow followed me all the way from New York, I think it was the very least I could do in common politeness. He found it a waste and howling wilderness without me--yes, he did; he said so. And then, Mr. Walraven, I like him."

"You like him?"

"Yes, ever and ever so much; and I'm dreadfully sorry for him, because I know it'll break his heart when I refuse him."

"He hasn't proposed yet, then?"

"Not yet, but I expect it shortly. I know the