A MAD BRIDE.
“I thought you were lost, miss--I did, indeed,” protested Dakin, as
Miss Cranstoun, hardly deigning to notice her, swept past her into the
house. “And if Sir Philip thought I’d let you run out of the house
like that---- Lor’, here he is!”
Mistress and maid were crossing the wide hall as Sir Philip entered it
from the dining-room. Miss Cranstoun’s shawl had fallen back, and her
plentiful blue-black hair, disarranged by the woollen wrap, curled in
picturesque disorder round her face. The Baronet advanced to meet her,
and then suddenly stopped. He did not even see Dakin in attendance as
his pale face grew paler still, and his dry lips murmured:
“Clare!”
It was only a trick of light, no doubt, but he had never seen Stella
look so startlingly like her dead mother as she did to-night; the same
proud, defiant carriage of the head, the same flashing dark eyes, and
curved, scornful, red lips. Twenty years seemed to have slipped away,
and he himself to be taken back into the body of a young fool,
bringing his beautiful, low-bred bride into the home of his fathers.
Speech would dispel the hateful illusion; he realized that, and
uttered his daughter’s name sharply:
“Stella!”
“Yes.”
“Be sure that you are dressed in time to-morrow. The train for
Portsmouth leaves Grayling Station at two o’clock. Neither Lord
Carthew nor I like to be kept waiting. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“I shall probably not see you to-morrow until you are dressed for the
ceremony. You will, of course, wear the pearl necklace Lady
Northborough sent you. I hope you have by this time realized fully the
honor that Lord Carthew is conferring on you by making you his wife.”
No answer. She was looking him full in the eyes with an expression he
had never before seen in hers, such an expression as his own face
often wore--scornful, sarcastic, and hard.
“On my side,” he continued, longing to humble her untamable spirit,
“on my side, indeed, there is no question of honoring. The Cranstouns
can vie with the Guelphs for antiquity of race; but as the daughter of
such a mother as yours, it should, indeed, be gratifying to you that a
man of Lord Carthew’s rank should have asked for your hand.”
She did not answer in words, but broke into a low laugh of
unmistakable contempt. It was the second time that evening that she
had laughed at him, and something defiant and insolent in her manner
provoked him beyond endurance. He seized both her slender hands in one
of his, and shook her savagely.
“Be silent!” he muttered.
Into her dark eyes there flashed a look which seemed the reflex of his
own in savagery. Then, suddenly lowering her head, she buried her
teeth in his fingers, causing him instantly to let her go; whereat she
looked at him, laughed again, and fled away up the stairs.
The assiduous Dakin, who had stolen to the floor above unobserved
during the little passage of arms between father and daughter, led the
way to the turret bedroom. It made her flesh creep, she admitted
afterward, to hear Miss Cranstoun laughing to herself as she glided
in. Stella walked straight up to the wedding-dress, which lay upon the
bed, a perfectly plain garment of high-necked white satin, with a long
tulle veil.
As Miss Cranstoun turned the dress over, she laughed again, and
flitting about the room, she next lighted on the case containing the
pearl necklace. A little exclamation of pleasure escaped her lips as
she opened it; until that moment she had not troubled to do so. Now
she clasped it round her neck and stood before the looking-glass,
trying the effect.
Dakin, watching her, decided that she had never seen her look so
handsome. A feverish flush tinged her ordinarily pale face, and her
eyes shone with unnatural brilliancy. Seizing the wedding-dress, she
motioned to Dakin to assist her into it, grumbling the while in a low
undertone, quite unlike her usual clear, sweet voice, about the fit.
Dakin had very little doubt by this time that the poor girl’s mind was
temporarily deranged. She had been but a comparatively short time in
the Cranstoun service, but she knew enough of Stella’s outward manner
to be sure that this strange, restless irritability, these low,
cunning fits of laughter, and this rough impatience of movement,
differed entirely from Stella’s natural deportment. Once convinced
that Miss Cranstoun was a little “off her head,” Dakin was extra
anxious to please her. It was not her place, but Ellen’s, to help her
to dress, and to make alterations in the fit of her gown; but rather
than excite her to any outward paroxysm, Dakin pinned and stitched for
a good hour, and felt genuinely thankful that it was Ellen, and not
she, who had to sleep that night in the same room with the bride of
to-morrow.
When the lady’s maid at length entered the bedroom after supper, Dakin
was curious to see whether she also would note the alteration for the
worse in Stella’s manner. At first, the young woman was too much
absorbed in Mr. Stephen Lee’s compliments to pay heed to anything
around her; but gradually, as she whispered apart to Dakin, she became
aware that Miss Cranstoun, seated by the fire in a white cashmere
dressing-gown, with her black hair loose about her shoulders, was
listening to her silly confidences, and staring at her with great,
gleaming eyes.
Ellen tried to go on with her chatter, but came suddenly to a full
stop.
“What’s wrong with her?” she asked of Dakin, in an awestruck whisper.
Dakin, with her back to her young mistress, touched her forehead
significantly, and shook her head.
“Mad?”
Ellen’s pale lips formed rather than uttered the words.
Dakin nodded, and held up her finger warningly.
“They get that sharp when they’re that way,” she whispered,
confidentially. “If she’s violent in the night I’ll be sleeping in the
next room, and I’ll come to you.”
But this was not enough for Ellen. Shaking with fear, she protested
that she could not be left alone with a mad woman, and that unless
Dakin promised to sleep with her she would go right down to Sir Philip
and tell him then and there that the marriage must be put off because
his daughter was crazy. This threat had the effect of persuading Dakin
to stay, the more so as she could see Miss Cranstoun watching them,
and laughing softly to herself as the unhappy spies took whispering
counsel together. Neither of them slept that night, except for
occasional broken snatches, from which they were awakened with a start
by fitful bursts of the same crazy laughter from the bride of the
ensuing day.
Stella’s wedding morn was clear and fair. Scarcely a cloud marred the
blue clearness of the sky, and the sun shone bright upon the
bridegroom as he drove with his mother from Grayling Station in the
carriage sent from the Chase to meet them. Lord Northborough had been
unable to attend the ceremony, owing to a sudden Parliamentary crisis
and impending change of Ministry. But Lady Northborough made up by her
vivacity and high spirits for her husband’s absence. She was a typical
American, highly educated, witty, fascinating, and sympathetic. She
was not beautiful, but always exquisitely dressed, and dainty as a
Dresden china statuette. This morning, in silver-gray brocade and rare
old white lace, she looked a little picture as she chattered and
smiled at her son during the drive.
“I’m just mad with anxiety to see your lovely Stella,” she was saying.
“I’m so glad you are going to marry a beauty. I do love pretty women.”
“There isn’t the slightest doubt about Stella’s beauty, mother; but
I’m afraid you’ll think she looks terribly delicate. She has been
wearing herself to a shadow, crying over her mother’s death. There
seems to be no sympathy at all between her and her father. The man is
made of cast-iron. But Stella’s prettiness is her least charm. She is
so frank and innocent, so naïve, and at the same time so refined; her
face is as pure as a child’s, and yet as tender as a woman’s; but if I
once begin, I shall rhapsodize over her until we reach the house. She
has been bought up in the most conventual manner; even Tennyson has
been kept from her, and she listened to the ‘Lady of Shalott’ as a
child does to a fairy-tale. She has herself lived like that; shut up,
as the Lady of Shalott was, among dreams. It is by that name that I
like to think of her.”
“Fanciful boy!” his mother murmured, fondly tapping his cheek lightly
with her gloved fingers. “How can people consider you hard and
sarcastic? Only your little mother understands you as you really are.”
“Dear little mother! But one thing disappoints me. I can find no trace
of Hilary Pritchard. He has not returned to his rooms in town, nor is
he at his Yorkshire home. In the state he was in, with a gunshot wound
in his shoulder, his disappearance is the more inexplicable.”
“Don’t you think,” Lady Northborough suggested, with her fine woman’s
instinct, “that he, too, may have fallen a victim to the charms of
your beautiful Miss Cranstoun, and that that may be his reason for
stopping away?”
“Quite impossible,” her son answered, decidedly. “He had taken a most
unaccountable dislike against her at first sight.”
“Ah! That sounds bad!”
“And he saw nothing of her. He left the very day after his arrival,
while every one was having luncheon, rather than stay an hour longer
in the house, although he was not fit to travel.”
“Mysterious conduct on his part, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, part of his pride and independence, I suppose. Besides, why
should he keep away? He doesn’t even know that I am going to be
married to Miss Cranstoun.”
“Not when the fact has been announced in every society paper for the
past fortnight?”
“I forgot that. But I repeat, little mother, his absence has nothing
to do with my marriage, and his conduct in avoiding me hurts me very
deeply--unless, indeed, it may arise from illness. But here we are
within the Chase enclosure. Splendid timber, isn’t it?”
The Chase chapel had been unused, save as a lumber-room, for very many
years. The Cranstouns were not a religious race, and the beautiful
little mediæval building had been desecrated by being utilized
alternately as a barn and a box-room. But for the masses of white
flowers on the altar, there was no attempt at decoration, an omission
accounted for by Lady Cranstoun’s recent death.
Round about the arched graystone doorway of the chapel the servants
and retainers of the Chase were assembled, and a faint cheer went up
as Lord Carthew helped his mother to descend from the carriage. The
Squire was not popular with his tenants any more than with his
domestics; he had an absolute genius, indeed, for making himself
disliked by all classes among whom he moved. Still, he was all
powerful in the district, and great interest was felt in the beautiful
daughter whom hardly any one had ever seen outside the Chase
enclosure. The crowd round the chapel doors was necessarily a
comparatively small one, comprising, as it did, only the tenants of
farms and cottages within easy distance of the house, and among them a
little, wrinkled, aged woman, neatly dressed in a cotton gown, a
shawl, apron, and large straw bonnet, was hardly noticed at first,
each group supposing her to belong to some other in the party.
There was no way into the chapel save through the Norman archway, and
to enter it from the house it was necessary to walk some yards along
the terrace. Inside the little building, which smelt musty and
disused, two clergymen were waiting: Canon Wrextone, who had been a
college contemporary of Sir Philip Cranstoun, and the Rev. John
Turner, of Grayling. The Canon was a stout, genial man of the world;
the Vicar of Grayling, a pale, ascetic-looking man of middle age. In
one of the few high oak pews, too, there sat his Grace the Duke of
Lanark, the late Lady Gwendolen’s father, a tall, bent, old gentleman
of seventy-five, in deep mourning, with the pallor of eld upon his
face, which was almost as colorless as his snow-white hair.
The head of the house of Douglas had felt it to be his duty to grace
by his presence the union of her whom he believed to be his daughter’s
child with Lord Northborough’s heir, who himself had the extreme honor
of being connected by marriage with the Douglas family. His duchess
had not accompanied him, as she had an equally strong objection
against the Chase and its master, and considered that a wedding so
close on the heels of her daughter’s death was indecorous in the
extreme. But Lord Northborough and the Duke were political allies, and
the Earl had joined with Sir Philip in begging the favor of his
presence. The old gentleman had therefore journeyed down, attended by
his valet, who sat at some distance behind his master. The Duke was
curious to see his granddaughter, of whose remarkable beauty he had
heard with surprise. The Douglases had been plain for generations, and
it seemed a little sacrilegious for a Douglas’ daughter to be
beautiful.
But no eyes watched for the bride’s appearance more keenly than those
of the little, wizened old woman in the neat cotton gown and straw
bonnet. Her bent frame was actually quivering with excitement as she
hung on her stick, with her piercing eyes fixed upon the entrance
doors to the house through which the bride must pass on her way to the
chapel. Stephen Lee, having received strict orders not to recognize
his old relation, kept at some distance from her, attired, as were all
the grooms, gamekeepers, stable and farmhands among the crowd, in his
best clothes, and looking a handsome and attractive figure in his
brown velveteen coat, smart corduroys, and gaiters.
In his secret heart he was profoundly angry, anxious, and unhappy.
What did old Sarah mean by her promise to save Stella from a
distasteful marriage, when here they were at the church doors, waiting
for the girl to appear in her wedding-dress, and be married to this
infernal whipper-snapper of a swell, whom he, Stephen, could have
felled with one hand? What, too, had passed between Stella and Sarah
in the course of that interview in the woods last night, and what was
the meaning of that strange look he had seen in Stella’s eyes?
Sarah was up to some trick, that was certain, but of what nature he
had no means of divining; meantime the chapel held already a duke, a
countess, two ministers of the Church, and the young bridegroom, only
waiting for Stella’s appearance to begin the ceremony.
At last she came, radiant sunshine falling down on her as she emerged
from the doors on to the terrace, her fingers laid upon her father’s
arm, towering over him in height, and looking, in her plain trained
gown of white satin, taller and more commanding than she had ever yet
appeared. Sir Philip’s face was set like a mask. It was impossible to
say what were his feelings, but his cold heart in reality was aflame
with astonishment, indignation, and rage.
Stella had kept him waiting in the hall, watch in hand; had then
sauntered leisurely down the broad oak staircase in her wedding-gown,
attended at a distance by the two frightened satellites, Ellen and
Dakin, and by old Margaret, whose features wore a scared and troubled
look. Miss Cranstoun had offered no apologies to her father for
keeping him waiting, but had coolly crossed to where he was standing,
and looked at him with shining eyes, in which some strange laughter
seemed hidden, from behind her veil.
“What are you waiting for?” he had asked in his harshest tones.
“Your arm, of course.”
There was more than defiance, there was an insolence in her tone and
manner utterly new to him. Nevertheless, there was no time to be lost
in reprimands or punishments now. He dreaded beyond all things lest
she might make a scene in church before Lady Northborough and the
Duke. Her fear of him and constraint in his presence seemed to have
vanished. Some subtle change had come over her state of mind toward
him. She actually shook his arm impatiently as he stood a moment, pale
with anger, regarding her.
“Get on to the church,” she muttered, roughly. “Don’t waste time.”
The grasp of her fingers tightened on his arm. This time it was
actually she who was hurting him, as she clutched his skin through his
coat. He glanced at her quickly, and then at the faces of the women
behind her. The idea which possessed their brains entered his also,
and he asked himself whether grief and harsh treatment could have
temporarily deprived his daughter of her reason.
As Sir Philip led the bride along the terrace toward the church door,
a murmur of admiration ran through the crowd. Her face had lost its
pallor; through the tulle veil a bright color showed in her cheeks,
and contrasted with the intense purple-blue of her restless, gleaming
eyes. Two persons her gaze sought in the crowd about the doors. First
they lighted upon old Sarah Carewe, and that look in her eyes which
was almost a smile deepened and broadened. Next, her gaze sought out
Stephen Lee, and seemed to read in one piercing glance, as she passed
close to him, the hopeless passion for her which consumed him. As
though by accident, she dropped her lace handkerchief at the church
door. One or two persons among the crowd pressed forward to pick it
up, and among them Stephen, who, as he transferred it to the bride’s
hand, felt, to his utter astonishment, that she had slipped a piece of
paper into his fingers.
Speechless with amazement, he watched her enter the church; the doors
were clanged to behind her, and every eye was fixed upon her as she
walked proudly up the aisle, leaning on her father’s arm. Lady
Northborough could hardly refrain from a little cry of admiration. Her
son’s description had prepared her for something ethereal, thin and
pale to a fault; but this queenly young creature, with the proud
little dark head, the perfect figure, and startlingly brilliant
coloring, was no subject for pity, but rather for wondering
admiration.
“Gad! Where did the girl get her good looks from?” muttered the old
Duke, who had occasionally an awkward habit of thinking aloud.
As to Lord Carthew, he was enraptured by the alteration for the better
in his lovely bride’s appearance. The strange restlessness of her
glances he attributed to her natural nervousness, which caused her
also to whisper and mumble the necessary responses in the service with
even less than the ordinary bride’s accuracy. Sir Philip, watching his
daughter closely, felt every moment more convinced that the girl’s
brain and memory were momentarily clouded. She stared about her
without reverence, but with evident curiosity, during the service, to
which she paid not the slightest attention, and her bridegroom
especially she continually regarded with a kind of amused wonder, as
some specimen of humanity the like of whom she had never seen before.
But no one else seemed to heed her irreverent behavior or to note that
strange look as of suppressed laughter in her dancing eyes, and Sir
Philip drew a deep sigh of relief when the ceremony was over, and the
signing of the book followed.
Here again a strange thing happened. The newly made Lady Carthew,
after receiving with an odd little laugh the congratulatory kisses of
her grandfather, the Duke, and the Countess, her mother-in-law,
murmured that her hand shook so badly she could not hold a pen, and
was with difficulty persuaded to scrawl “Stella Cranstoun,” in an
almost undecipherable hand, on the page before her. Strange fears and
fancies filled Sir Philip’s mind. Was her feverish color, her strange
behavior, due to a partially paralyzed brain and nerves, he wondered.
Still, she was Lady Carthew, and he had triumphed; but that strange
likeness to her dead mother, which seemed so much stronger to-day than
it had ever been before, troubled him, and that incomprehensible laugh
in her eyes.
“I wish Carthew joy of his bargain,” was Sir Philip’s mental comment.
“But, in any case, she is in his charge now, and safely off my hands,
so that there is no chance of that senseless old gypsy prophecy being
realized.”