THE WEDDING HOUR.
“An Italian night, all moonlight, deep blue sky, and flowers--it is
what I would have chosen over everything for my wedding night,” Fair
whispered to her lover, when they came to tell her that it was really
time for her to go into the house and put on her wedding dress.
She had been with him all the afternoon, contrary to all precedent, and
to the scandal of the bridesmaids, who declared that she ought to be
getting ready.
“Getting ready all the afternoon? Why, Betty can dress me in an hour,”
laughed the girl, and she went up to Mrs. Howard, put her arms around
the lady’s neck, and, lifting her sweet, coaxing face, murmured:
“Is it so very wrong for me to be with him a little while this
afternoon? He wishes it very much, and so do I.”
“But after to-day you will have him always, darling, and the girls all
seem to wish you to stay with them.”
“I know, but to-morrow he will be my husband. This is the last day I
shall have with my lover.”
“My dear girl, he will always be your lover.”
“I know, but not quite in the same fashion. You will not understand,
dear. But never mind,” sighing, “I will send him away.”
“No, you will not, dear, although we all think you both very silly, and
Gus says Bayard is ‘spoony,’ in his emphatic slang.”
“I don’t care what Gus says, but only for your wishes, mamma, love. I
only care for pleasing you and Bayard. I am very silly, perhaps, as you
say, for, mamma,” she lifted the large brown eyes wistfully, “it all
seems to me like I was losing him, instead of gaining him forever. Is
it not strange that I cling to him to-day as if he were going on a long
journey from me to-morrow? Did you feel that way on your marriage eve?”
“No, dear, but my imagination was not so vivid as yours. Calm yourself
and go to your lover. I will make excuses for you to the girls.”
So the selfish, absorbed lovers sat for hours on the particular garden
seat which by tacit consent had come to be appropriated to them alone,
and when twilight fell and the odor of the roses and orange flowers
grew strong and spicy around them, they parted with reluctance to
prepare for the marriage ceremony.
When Betty had delivered her message and discreetly turned her head,
he took his lovely betrothed in his arms and kissed her with solemn
tenderness.
“Good-by, sweetheart. In an hour you will be my bride,” he whispered,
and then she went away with Betty, a slim, white figure, with loose,
bright hair, on which his grave blue eyes lingered with dreamy
tenderness.
She went on with a heart full of happiness that was disturbed by an
uneasy sense of ill. She thought it was the weight of her secret
resting on her heart, and sighed to herself:
“Oh, I wish I had been brave enough to confess all! But I could not, I
could not, and I pray Heaven he may never know the truth now.”
The grand drawing-room was thronged with guests when she came down,
one hour later, “in gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,” an ideally
lovely bride, and met her splendid lover, who drew her hand through his
arm and led her before the waiting minister.
The crash and peal of the wedding march died away, and, save for the
low hum of eager admiration, all was momentary breathless silence.
Upon that sudden hush before the ceremony broke a loud, infuriated
voice close to the altar’s side, and the two words it uttered were:
“Traitoress, die!”
Bayard Lorraine glanced quickly up, and saw a stranger--a maniac, he
believed--pointing a gleaming pistol at the breast of his beautiful,
startled bride. With lightninglike rapidity, he sprang before her, and
received in his own breast the bullet that crashed through the air.
The beautiful, flower-decked drawing-room of the villa instantly became
a scene of confusion, for the bridegroom had fallen at the feet of
the bride, and the blood that spurted from his wound dyed the hem of
her white satin dress crimson. Women shrieked, fainted, or fell into
hysterics, and men rushed wildly to the scene of action. One or two who
had seen Prince Gonzaga fire the pistol believed that he was a maniac,
and rushed forward to secure him; but he shook them off with furious
strength, and made his way to the spot where Fair, with wild screams of
anguish, was kneeling by her unconscious lover, calling on his name in
an agony of fear and grief.
Prince Gonzaga put his thin, dark hands on the shoulders of the
white-robed form and lifted her roughly to her feet.
“Get up, curse you!” he cried, in a fury of mad passion; and, whirling
her fiercely around in front of him, he added: “That shot was meant
for you, do you know it? It would have found your heart had he not
interposed between us.”
Her wild eyes sought his face, and such a shriek of terror and wild
dismay rang through the room that every hearer shrank, appalled. She
had recognized in the rich Prince Gonzaga the man who had tricked
her into that fatal marriage in New York--the man she believed to be
dead--Carl Bernicci.
Some one put a hand on his shoulder, and said soothingly, as to a
dangerous lunatic:
“Come away, come away! You have killed Mr. Lorraine, and unless you
escape you will be put in prison.”
He heard the clamorous voices crying out that he was mad; but he
scorned to avail himself of any loophole of escape, and, still
clutching Fair’s trembling form, he turned his head, and, looking into
the excited faces around him, said loudly but clearly:
“You are mistaken. I am not crazed, but I am an outraged husband, who
has taken vengeance into his own hands. This woman is my wife. She fled
from me two years ago, and ever since I have carried around with me a
bullet for her false heart. Look at her. How guiltily she shrinks! She
will not deny that I am her husband.”
She looked at him with a face of horror, and shrieked out:
“You are my evil genius! You killed my mother, and now you have killed
my lover. Oh, may Heaven punish you for your sins!” and with those
words her senses reeled, and she slipped from his grasp, unconscious.
Pitying hands lifted and bore her away, followed by his jeering threat:
“She is my wife, remember, and if any one dares assist her to escape I
will make him suffer for it.”
“You must consider yourself under arrest,” he was told, and he did not
make any resistance when they confined him in a room in his own villa,
with two guards to prevent his escape. Every one honestly believed that
he was a maniac, that he had suddenly gone mad; and he was mad, but
only with jealous rage that his bullet had missed the white breast for
which it was meant.
“Curse her! I wish the same bullet had gone through both hearts. Then
they might have slept in the same grave,” he hissed savagely; but
he was mistaken in thinking that he had killed Bayard Lorraine. The
bullet had missed his heart and imbedded itself in the fleshy part of
his shoulder. The physicians who had been sent for probed the wound
and extracted the bullet. They expressed the opinion that it would not
result fatally.
The patient had recovered consciousness, and bore his pain with the
bravery of a hero. He listened eagerly to the physician’s verdict, and
then he said anxiously:
“Be frank with me. If there is the least doubt, let me know, for much
depends upon my knowledge of the truth.”
They told him that they could not certainly promise recovery, but there
were reasonable grounds for hope. Of course, much depended on his
constitution, on careful nursing, et cetera.
“Thank you,” he said, and, turning to Augustus Frayne, who stood beside
his pillow, he said:
“If the minister has not gone, and if Fair and her mother will consent,
I should like to have the interrupted ceremony go on, as, in the event
of my death, I wish Fair to have all my property.”
He had remembered that Fair would be friendless and penniless if Mrs.
Howard should die, and he wished to place her at once beyond either
possibility.
No one liked to tell him that, while he lay unconscious, the mad prince
had claimed Fair as his wife. Indeed, no one credited the statement.
All believed it the disjointed raving of a lunatic--at least, all but
Beatrix Consani. She remembered the story Prince Gonzaga had told her
yesterday, and she repeated it to all who would listen.
Most of the guests had gone away, leaving the bridal banquet untasted.
A few yet lingered in the grand drawing-room, waiting to hear whether
Bayard Lorraine would live or die, and these the beautiful Beatrix
entertained with her story.
“I believe that he was telling me his own story, with just enough
changes in it to mislead me,” she said. “I thought he seemed very much
excited, and that his interest in the girl was very great. There is
some mystery about it. She cannot really be Mrs. Howard’s daughter, for
he declared that she was poor and of obscure birth.”
Then Augustus Frayne came among them, declaring that the physicians
were uncertain whether their patient would live or die, and desiring
his sisters to ask Mrs. Howard to go at once to the wounded man, as he
particularly wished to see her and Fair.
Fair had come out of her swoon, and lay sobbing in her adopted mother’s
arms. No one had asked her any questions yet--waiting until they should
hear from the wounded man.
Nettie Frayne came in with a solemn face, and delivered the message.
“He wishes to see you both,” she said, and Fair shuddered and moaned.
They had removed the bloodstained wedding dress and veil, and she wore
a long, trailing tea gown of white India silk and lace. Her face was
as white as the dress as she lifted it to Mrs. Howard’s, and said
pitifully:
“Oh, he is dying, I know! Let us go to him at once.”
But it was not the face of a dying man that looked up to her from the
pillow, although ghastly pale and pain-drawn. The eyes were bright with
love as they looked up into her own.
They had all withdrawn from the room, leaving only her and her adopted
mother. She knelt down by the bed and looked at him with wide brown
eyes full of grief and despair.
“My darling!” he murmured, as he met that anguished glance, adding
tenderly: “Do not look so frightened. I do not believe that I am going
to die. The doctors seemed to have hope, but”--and his eyes turned from
her to Mrs. Howard--“I want the marriage to go on at once. It is not
best to run any risks.”
Mrs. Howard understood him at once. He was thinking of her darling’s
future.
“Bless you, Bayard!” she said tenderly, as she laid her hand on
his white brow, and she added: “You are right. The marriage should
certainly take place at once--that is, if you can bear the excitement.”
He smiled a faint yet reassuring smile, and asked:
“The minister?”
“He is here yet. He can be summoned in a minute.”
Then she cried out in alarm:
“Fair!”
The girl’s face had sunk down among the bedclothes, but at that cry she
lifted it wearily, and Mrs. Howard went on:
“You heard what Bayard said? He wishes the marriage to take place at
once. Of course, you are willing?”
To her amazement, the girl answered, in a voice fraught with agony:
“Oh, no, no, no, it cannot be--it cannot be! Oh, Heaven pity me and
strike me dead this moment, that I may not have to bear my misery any
longer.”
Mrs. Howard believed that she was foreboding her lover’s death, and
tried to soothe her with hopeful words:
“He is going to get well, I feel sure, dear, but he wishes to marry
you now that you may help to nurse him back to life. Come, we will go
and explain to our friends, and then the interrupted ceremony may go
on.”
“Not now--I cannot marry him now,” moaned the girl despairingly, and
her wounded lover, looking on, was so amazed that he could not speak.
Mrs. Howard put her hand on the waving tresses of red-gold hair, and
told Fair impatiently that she was acting like a baby, and that it was
imperative that she should be married at once, for if anything happened
to Bayard before they were married she would never have any of his
money.
“And you must not forget that if I were to die you would be friendless
and penniless,” she said warningly; but it seemed to her that there was
no reason left in the girl’s dazed head. She only flung her white hands
over her head, and answered despairingly:
“When my mother died, her last words were that there was nothing but
misery and despair in store for her darling. Oh, it was true--quite
true. She spoke with the tongue of a prophet.”
Then, taking no notice of Mrs. Howard, she put out her hand and touched
her lover’s brow, exclaiming wildly:
“Oh, my love--my lost love--I wish that fatal shot had gone at once
through both our hearts and killed us, that we might at least have
rested in the same grave!”
“Calm yourself, my darling girl, for I am not going to die. I shall get
well, for your sweet sake,” murmured her lover soothingly, full of pity
for her half-distracted state; but again she flung up her hands, and
moaned frantically:
“Oh, if I could die--if I could die!” and for several moments she raved
so wildly that they began to believe she was out of her senses.
Feeling himself growing weak under the excitement of her looks and
words, Bayard Lorraine at last advised Mrs. Howard to take Fair back to
her room.
“She is in no mood for the marriage now, and I think she needs a
physician’s care. We will not torment her any longer. At least, I can
make my will and leave my fortune to her,” he said sadly.
“Come dear,” Mrs. Howard said pityingly. “You are ill with nervous
excitement; I will take you to your room.”
Fair staggered up and put her hand through her mother’s to go; but,
on reaching the door, she pulled it away, and the next moment was
staggering back with uncertain footsteps toward her lover, saying
wildly:
“No, let me stay! I--I--cannot be--a coward--any longer. I must tell
him all.”
And she knelt down as before by the bed, and looked with anguished eyes
into her lover’s face.