THE WEDDING-DRESS
"My dear," the letter began, "I have your letter. Most happily my
rascal, Terence, forwarded it; most happily, and by the grace of
God, as I think, I thought to leave him the name of a halting-place
where I might pick up letters, yet I expected none. What a dullard
I was, Bawn, not to have known! I compared my years and sorrows and
my white hairs with your youth and beauty, and I thought you must
love that golden lad, your cousin. Heart's delight, it will take
all the years that are left to me to tell you my gratitude. There
will be no sacrifice, child, and I do certainly believe there is no
secret that Lord and Lady St. Leger need fear. I should come to you
on the wings of the wind if there was not a reason that I must stay
a little while, and if it were not that some one is hurrying to
Aghadoe whom I can trust to tear the web of lies to pieces. He will
come in time, and I shall not long delay to follow. And you are
mine and I am yours for ever and ever.
"Your devoted
"Anthony Cardew."
The letter at once delighted and bewildered me. For a while I gave
myself up to the delight, kissing it and crying over it like a mad
creature. Then I came back to the cold light of facts. Just four days
now to elapse before my wedding-day. What could happen in those four
days to save me? Anthony's messenger, nay, Anthony himself, could do
nothing. There was always my grandfather's face of suspense, by which I
knew he counted the hours, always my grandmother's piteous air of asking
for forgiveness. Not even Anthony Cardew could absolve me from what they
bound me to.
I tried to be sorry for having written him that letter. Nothing, indeed,
had been farther from my thoughts than that it should be forwarded to
him. He wrote from Assumption, an island in the South Seas. If he was by
my side he could hardly save me, unless he could prove that Uncle Luke
was innocent of the things Garret Dawson attributed to him and could
prove it to the world. And how could he do that?
I had never asked what the secret was, feeling that it must be something
very terrible indeed when my grandfather would not tell it to Miss
Champion. I never meant to ask. Let the proof of it be given up and
forgotten. There was even a certain dreary pleasure in feeling that I
was going to save the Lord and Lady St. Leger from that disgrace. It was
not right the old should suffer and be afraid.
At last I put the letter inside my bodice and returned to the house. I
got upstairs unobserved and put it away in the tall, spindle-legged
Sheraton desk which has held all my girlish treasures. I was going to
destroy the two letters from Anthony Cardew presently. Then the old life
would be done with indeed.
"Bless me, child," said my grandmother, coming in on me as I closed the
desk, "what a colour you have! I have not seen you look so well this
many a day. What have you been doing to yourself?"
"Not rouging, Gran, I assure you," I said lightly. "I have been out in
the frosty air and it has made my cheeks tingle."
"Your wedding-dress has come home," she said, "and Richard is here. He
wants to see you in it, Bawn."
I remembered the superstition and wondered that she should have
suggested such a thing. If I had been going to marry Anthony Cardew I
should have refused, but since I was going to marry Richard Dawson I was
not fearful of omens.
"Very well," I said; "I shall put it on and come downstairs."
I had a young maid from Dublin, newly come to me, and she had not our
superstitions, or she was too respectful to oppose her will to mine.
Anyhow, she dressed me in my wedding-dress, the fine thing of white
silk, veiled with my grandmother's old Limerick lace and hung with
pearls. She had dressed my hair high, quickly and deftly, and when I had
on my wedding-dress she threw my wedding-veil over my head and fastened
it with the diamond stars which were among my lover's gifts to me. When
she had dressed me she wheeled the long mirror in front of me that I
might look at myself.
I was not the same girl to look on that I had been. There was a bright
colour in my cheeks and my eyes were bright; but I had a swimming in my
head and I felt hot and cold by turns. I saw that I was splendid, for
Margaret had put on me as many as she could of the jewels with which my
lover loaded me, which used to lie about so carelessly that my
grandmother had rebuked me saying I should be robbed of them one of
these days. I hated them as though they had been my purchase-money; and
I had scandalized Margaret only the night before by letting my necklace
of emeralds and diamonds fall to the floor and lie there.
As I went down the stairs I met one or two of the servants, who drew to
one side to let me pass and lifted their hands in admiration. Margaret
walked behind me, being fearful, I think, that in my present mood I
might let the long train sweep the stairs and corridors instead of
carrying it demurely over my arm.
I paused for a moment outside the drawing-room door which stood ajar,
and I could hear my lover's deep voice within. Margaret let down my
train for me and I went in, up the long drawing-room to where my
grandmother sat in her easy-chair by the fire and Richard Dawson stood
on the hearthrug with his back to it.
As I came up the room I felt again the swimming of my head and things
swayed about me for an instant. Then I recovered myself.
Between the painted panels of the drawing-room at Aghadoe there are long
mirrors, in the taste of the time which could imagine nothing so
decorative as a mirror. In every one of them I saw myself repeated, a
slight, white figure scintillating with gems.
I had thrown back my veil and I saw the proud delight in my lover's
face. He advanced a step or two to meet me and I heard my grandmother
say--
"What a colour you have, child, and how bright your eyes are!"
He took up my hands and lifted them to his lips. Then he cried out, and
I heard his voice as though it was at a great distance.
"She is not well, Lady St. Leger," he said, and there was a sharp note
of anxiety in his tone. "Her hands were icy cold and now they are hot."
At the same moment some one came into the room and to my side. It was
Maureen, and I saw that she was very angry.
"I didn't believe it when that fool of a Katty told me," she said.
"Whoever heard of luck comin' to a bride who wore her wedding-dress
before the day? It only needs now for Miss Bawn to go runnin' back for
something after she leaves the house a bride. Sure, isn't there
misfortune enough without bringin' it on us? Come along with me, my
darlin' lamb, and let me get it off you. 'Tis in a fever you are this
minute."
Then suddenly I lost consciousness of everything, and would have fallen
on the floor in a faint if my lover had not caught me in his arms.
The next thing I knew was that the window-panes were showing themselves
as lighted squares in a grey, misty world, and I could hear that
somebody was speaking and what was said, even before I was awake.
"I've seen it comin' this long time," said a bitter, querulous voice
that was Maureen's. "She'll go through with it, but it'll be the death
of her, my darling jewel. If she's married before Master Luke comes,
then he'll come too late, after all."
"Haven't I suffered enough, Maureen?" my grandmother asked
pitifully--"having lost my one boy, and now to see this child slipping
away from me! And there's a change in Lord St. Leger; there is, indeed,
Maureen. Am I to lose them all, all?"
"Whisht, honey, whisht!" Maureen said, with sudden relenting in her
voice. "God's good. Sure, He wouldn't be so hard on you as to take his
Lordship, not at least till Master Luke comes home."
"And that will never be," my grandmother went on. "I've given up hope,
Maureen. Luke is dead and gone, and my husband is slipping out of life,
and this child is breaking her heart."
And then I opened my eyes, and they saw I was awake.