Kitabı oku: «Guy Kenmore's Wife, and The Rose and the Lily», sayfa 16

CHAPTER II

Inside the elegant, ornate white villa all is confusion and excitement. The house is crowded with guests, and the preparations for the wedding are going blithely on.

In the dining-hall the long table glitters with plate of silver and gold, and all the luxuries of home and foreign countries are temptingly spread thereon. Flowers are lavishly arranged everywhere. Trained domestics hurry to and fro, bent on perfecting every arrangement, for the wedding of Mr. Langton's beautiful niece is a very grand occasion indeed, and every honor must be paid to the heiress, and the husband of her uncle's providing.

Mr. Langton himself was an old man, old and peculiar to the verge of whimsicality, as was proved by the fact of his adopting one orphan niece as the heiress to all his possessions, and leaving the other, a frail, weak girl, to fight her battle with the cold world alone.

Latterly Mr. Langton had become displeased with his favorite, Maud, because she had countenanced a suitor of whom he did not approve—a rascally fortune-hunter, he irascibly declared. The upshot of the whole matter was that he wrote to a clever young lawyer, the son of an old sweetheart long dead, and bade him come and marry Maud, to which the young man replied that he would marry her if she was pretty, and he fell in love with her, but not otherwise.

We have heard the result announced in the words of Vane Charteris to his betrothed. He was conquered at once by her peerless beauty. Mr. Langton privately confided to the young lady that she must marry the husband he had selected for her, or he would cut her off with a shilling. Maud acquiesced meekly, prudently banished her obnoxious lover, and Mr. Langton announced to his friends the near consummation of what he happily termed a love-match.

That it was a love-match on one side, the words of Vane Charteris have assured us. Whether it was the same on Maud's part remains to be seen.

"Can we assist you in any way?" asked the gay bevy of bride's-maids, coming into Maud's room en masse as the dressing hour drew near.

The beautiful bride-elect sat in the midst of the bridal finery, loosely wrapped in a dainty dressing-gown, her beautiful golden hair unbound, and flowing over her shoulders. She was very pale, and her blue eyes glittered with excitement.

"Thanks, no," she answered, in her languid, well-trained voice. "My maid can do everything, and you will need all your time to beautify yourselves."

They laughed and protested, but lingered in the room, admiring the elegant white satin dress, with its frosting of seed-pearls, the beautiful Brussels veil, and the costly set of pearls, Mr. Langton's bridal gift to his well-beloved niece. Maud did not talk to them much, and Reine Langton's quick eyes saw that she was growing nervous and impatient.

"Come, girls, let us go," she said. "It is time to dress, and Maud wants a little time to herself. Remember that this is her last hour of 'maiden meditation, fancy free.'"

The gay, pretty troop ran away, nothing loth, to don their bridal finery. Reine went to her own airy chamber thoughtfully.

"How calmly and coolly my cousin takes it all," she thought, "while I—I would give my two ears, I know, to be in her place. Oh, Vane, Vane! how cruel you are to me, and how much you despise me. What a fool I am to love you so!"

And full of indignant self-scorn, she threw herself into a chair, and wept until her eyes were red, a calamity which necessitated a copious mopping with cologne water.

"My looks are spoiled for the evening, that's clear," she says to herself, ruefully. "I shall look a fright; no one will give me a second glance. But who will care for poor Reine Langton, anyway?"

But when the pretty bride's-maid dress, Mr. Langton's gift, is on, and the dark, curling tresses are looped back with pale rose-buds and some long, trailing sprays of feathery white, she is well worth looking at.

The mellow brune tint of her skin is brightened by the vivid, yet changeful rose-flush on the round, dimpled cheeks; the dark eyes are none the less dazzling for the new touch of dreaminess that has come into their subtle depths beneath the drooping lashes, "like to rays of darkness."

Dressing has taken but a little time. It is a process over which Reine never lingers. She adjusts the last flower with one careless glance into the mirror, and goes to the window. The dim, mysterious twilight has fallen over everything. The silver sickle of a young moon hangs in the amethystine sky, the summer air is heavy with perfume and dew. Reine props her dimpled chin in the hollow of one small hand, and falls to musing.

To-morrow she goes back to the old dull life of care and labor, to the made-over dresses, the shabby boarding-house, the stupid, stubborn pupils of her village school.

These three weeks she has "fed on the roses, and lain in the lilies of life." Servants have waited on her, she has had her time at her own disposal, she has thoroughly enjoyed every hour of it in her eager, active fashion. This brief visit has been like a green oasis in a desert land. To-morrow she will step across its green borders, and journey on through the sandy reaches of a dreary, uncongenial life again.

"The same old, tiresome life," she says, yet even as she speaks she knows it will not be the same.

Something has come into her life these brief, bright summer days that she knew not of in the old days—even love.

"After to-morrow I shall never see him again," she says to herself with patient gravity, and there comes to her a shamed remembrance of his words that morning: "After to-morrow I shall be forever out of reach of your shrill voice and scolding tongue."

"Forever!" The word, never dwelt upon before, acquires a strange, terrible meaning in her thoughts. She realizes, with a gasp of terror, what Maud's lover really is to her. Though she has gibed him, teased him, pitilessly derided him, she has given him her whole, foolish, girlish heart. She flushes hotly with a passionate shame.

"I love him—when he will be Maud's husband in less than an hour!" she cries to herself. "For shame, Reine Langton. Shake off this disgraceful weakness, and be your own brave self again."

There is a tap at the door, unheeded and unheard in her preoccupation.

It opens, and the house-maid enters, flurried and excited.

Reine starts up in a panic and looks at the clock.

"Oh, dear, it is past the time," she cries. "How could I be so careless? Are they all waiting for me, Mary?"

"No, Miss Langton—leastways I don't think they need you."

"Not need me? What do you mean? Isn't the bride dressed yet?"

"No, miss—yes, miss—that is, I don't quite know. She's run away," the girl stammers, blankly.

"Who has run away?" Reine demands, sharply.

"The bride—Miss Maud," is the startling reply.

"Where has she gone? What for?" Reine demands, inelegantly, in the shock of her great surprise.

"To marry her old lover, Mr. Clyde, that she loved, and she couldn't love Mr. Charteris, miss," said the house-maid, succinctly.

There is a moment's silence. Reine drops back into a chair, dazed with the suddenness of the news.

"You see she left a little note to her uncle, miss, to let him know where she'd gone, and the old gentleman's that mad, miss, he up and swore bad enough to lift the roof off!"

There is a quick, startling rap at the door. Mary runs to open it in a hurry, and Reine glances up with dark, anxious eyes.

The next instant she starts to her feet with a smothered cry.

On the threshold stands Vane Charteris, pale as death itself, but superbly handsome in the customary suit of solemn black that makes gentlemen appear like mourners on all festive occasions.

CHAPTER III

Fifteen minutes before, while Reine Langton dreamed at the window, there had been great excitement in the villa. The house-maid's tale was a true one. The bride-elect has eloped with another man.

They have the terrible story down in uncompromising "black and white"—in her own hand-writing. She has gone away to marry Mr. Clyde.

"Because I loved him all the while, uncle," she writes, pleadingly, "and at last I found it would break my heart to give him up. I could not love Mr. Charteris, though I tried hard, because you wished it. And indeed, Uncle Langton, you are deceived in Vane Charteris. It was your money he wanted, not me; but poor Clyde loves me for myself alone. I know you will forgive me when I come back to you, for you cannot long be angry with your own loving Maud."

All this to the uncle she had disobeyed, but not one word to the lover she had betrayed and deserted. He stands silent, biting his lips to keep back the words that rush to them, a lurid flame of angry scorn burning in his dark blue eyes.

"I could bear all else but that most cruel thrust," he says to his old friend, hoarsely, when the dismayed bride's-maids have left them together, amid the splendid paraphernalia of the bridal chamber. "When she knew how I loved her, to cast that wretched money into my face! Great God! the falsity of women! Henceforth I live only for revenge!"

The old man, so old and feeble that people said of him already that he had "one foot in the grave and the other on the brink," whirled around, and paused in his terrible revilings of Maud and her chosen lover, and looked strangely at his favorite.

"So you want revenge, my boy," he said, chuckling wickedly. "You are right to live for it. Very well, you shall have it ready made to your hand."

"How?" Vane Charteris asked, eagerly.

"That false, deceitful jade shall never receive a penny from my hoarded wealth!" declared Mr. Langton. "You shall have all."

But Vane Charteris shakes his head, decisively.

"No," he says, firmly, "I will not have my revenge that way. It would be defrauding another. You have another niece."

"I have not forgotten her claims," Mr. Langton says, grimly. "I was going on to speak of her when you interrupted me. What I was about to say was this: Reine Langton shall be my heiress, and you shall be her husband."

Vane Charteris starts and recoils.

"No, no!" he exclaims.

"What! you refuse my niece's hand when I offer it to you?" he storms.

"Yes; I cannot marry her, for I do not love her," Vane answers, firmly.

"You handsome idiot! Who said anything about love? I thought we were discussing revenge," cries the old man, testily.

"So we were, but I cannot take my revenge like that! I would sooner die than have an unloved wife tied around my neck like a mill-stone," Vane Charteris answers, gravely.

"An unloved wife," the old man repeats; "and pray, couldn't you love my niece, Reine? She's a bright little beauty to my thinking."

"Love that little hoiden, that incorrigible vixen!" the young man cries, regarding his mother's old friend as if he thought he had taken leave of his senses.

Mr. Langton frowns darkly.

"Take care," he says, "you are speaking of my heiress, remember. I see how it is. Maud disliked Reine—jealous of her bright prettiness, perhaps—she has set you against her."

"She has not," declares Vane. "Reine has done it, herself. You cannot deny her brusk manners, and her sharp, ungoverned tongue, Mr. Langton."

"Pooh! mere girlish fun," retorts Mr. Langton. "I have never disliked her sprightly ways, myself; I like the vim and spirit of Reine. She makes me think of Lelia, a 'rosebud set with little willful thorns,' much more charming than Maud's 'passionless, pale-cold calm.'"

"'The king is dead, long live the king,'" Vane Charteris quotes with grim sarcasm.

"Yes, Maud is dethroned, and Reine shall reign in her stead," Mr. Langton replies; "and if you are wise, Vane Charteris, you will reign with her."

There is a moment's silence, and then Mr. Langton goes on:

"You talk of revenge. Marry Reine and you have it in full measure. Maud believes that she can marry Clyde, and come back and wheedle me into taking them both into my good graces. How glorious for Reine to take her place in my favor and in your heart!"

"She could not do that," Vane answers. "I was proud of Maud's beauty, and grace, and refinement. I loved her gentleness."

"The silky, purring deceitfulness of a treacherous cat," interpolates Maud's outraged uncle.

Vane flushes deeply.

"Still I should never love Reine," he said. "She continually jars upon me. She keeps my nerves upon edge. You are right to make her your heiress, but forgive me for saying that I can never make her my bride."

"She shall not be one without the other," declares the old man stubbornly.

"You mean—" Vane says, aghast.

"That if you refuse to marry Reine, she shall go back to her life of toil to-morrow, and I'll leave my money to found an asylum for idiots and fools," storms the old man, violently.

"You would never be so unjust, Mr. Langton," Vane exclaims, incredulously. "Let me reason with you. Though I do not admire Reine, I pity her. She has a hard life. Let me plead for the poor orphan girl. Take her in the place of Maud, and give her your love and your wealth."

"No, I have announced my ultimatum. To-morrow she leaves here, and to-morrow you leave here. She to her life of slavery, you as a mark for the finger of scorn to point at, a jilted man! How false-hearted Maud and her successful husband will laugh at the misery of the man they fooled so shamelessly; how the minister, waiting down-stairs, and the wedding guests will laugh in their sleeves at the deserted bridegoom. Go, now, sir, and remember that your cursed obstinacy has beggared you, and cheated Reine Langton of fortune."

He glares with bleared, furious eyes at the uncompromising young fellow. Vane looks troubled, reckless all at once.

"I do not want to cause Reine such a misfortune," he says, sadly. "Give me five minutes to decide in, Mr. Langton."

"Take them," the host says, shortly. Vane walks to the window and stares silently out at the dewy, odorous, tranquil summer night. Many thoughts crowd into his mind.

He has loved Maud Langton dearly, and he is cut to the heart by the bitter humiliation she has put upon him. He is a jilted man. How shall he face the sneering world again? that world that but a little while ago fawned upon him because he was going to marry Mr. Langton's heiress.

Mr. Langton waits impatiently, watch in hand, for the stipulated five minutes to pass. He is very anxious to have his way and spite Maud for her falsehood and disobedience. Inwardly he curses Vane's Quixotic foolishness in refusing a fortune, no matter how burdened.

"The time is up," he says, impatiently. "Yes or no. Marry Reine to-night and I will make my will to-morrow, and leave everything to you and your wife. For the present, until my death, which can't be far off," with sardonic humor, "I'll settle twenty-five thousand a year upon you; refuse, and you both go."

Vane Charteris turns upon him a white, desperate face.

"For myself I despise your threat," he says. "I am a man. I can carve my own way to fortune, yet I should hate for Reine to blame me with her loss of fortune. Mr. Langton, I will marry her if she will have me."

"Of course she will; no girl in her senses would refuse a handsome man like you, let alone the fortune," Mr. Langton cries, with returning good humor.

"On one condition," Vane continues, haughtily.

Mr. Langton lifts his eyebrows interrogatively.

"This: that I may go abroad to-morrow to be absent a year—you may offer any evasive excuse to the bride—and that while I am gone you will train Reine to be a graceful, dignified woman, whom I can respect and honor."

"Like Maud, for instance," Mr. Langton says.

"Maud's manners were perfect," Vane answers, flushing. "I could not wish more grace and refinement for my own wife so that her heart is kept truer."

"You are quite decided to go away?" Mr. Langton inquires, disappointed.

"Yes," decidedly. "I can marry Reine, but I cannot live with her just yet."

"Very well, you shall have your way. Now go and ask her if she will have you."

"Where shall I find her?"

"In her own room, I think. I have not seen her in all the bustle. I will wait here. If she says yes, bring her to me."

And Vane turns away with a white, set face, to obey him.

CHAPTER IV

Vane Charteris enters the room and motions the maid to withdraw, closes the door, and stands face to face with Reine Langton. It strikes him suddenly on what a ridiculous errand he has come. This morning he offended her, and she refused to pardon him. Tonight he has come to ask her to be his wife.

But Reine—passionate, impulsive Reine—has quite forgotten all that now. After that one startled moment of indecision and surprise, she goes forward to him, she puts her small hand on his coat sleeve, she looks up into his white, haggard face with dark, pitying eyes.

"You are come to tell me," she says, forgetting in her eager excitement how strange it would be for him to seek her sympathy. "But I have heard. Believe me, I am very sorry for your disappointment. It was mean and cruel," indignantly, "in Maud. I would not have done it, bad as you think me."

How soft the dark, uplifted eyes; how gentle the pitying voice, how kind the words! Can this be Reine—sharp-tongued, restless, gibing Reine? He stares in great surprise.

"I should not care if I were you," she goes on. "I should be too proud to grieve for one so false and unkind. She never loved you; I saw that as soon as I came here, but I did not know she could be so mean. I will never speak to her again."

"You take my part," he says, unconsciously pleased.

"Yes, because you have been treated unfairly," she says, warmly. "You have been jilted at the very altar—you so handsome, so noble–" she stops, biting her lips, vexed at herself for these outspoken words.

But Vane Charteris smiles.

"Thank you for those words," he says. "They give me courage to ask what I came for—Reine, will you be my wife?"

The white hand falls from his arm, she steps backward a pace, and stares at him mutely, with great, wondering, dark eyes.

He repeats the words:

"Reine, will you be my wife? Will you go down-stairs and marry me, a jilted man? Will you take the man your beautiful cousin deemed worthless?"

A passionate sarcasm quivers in his tone. She looks at him, the deep, rich color flushing into her cheeks.

"You do not mean it; you are jesting!" she cries, in a vaguely troubled tone.

"I do," he answers. "The guests are here; the feast is provided; the minister waits. Nothing is lacking but the bride, who has fled to the arms of another. Will you throw yourself into the breach, Reine, and make everybody happy?"

"If I thought I could," she begins, with a questioning glance, and a delicious thrill at her heart. Something whispers to her that he would wed her to spite Maud, yet her instinct prompts her to take him at his word. In time her tender love must win a return from him.

"You must not stop to think," the strange wooer says, impatiently. "Everyone is waiting, and your uncle is most impatient. I have his permission to win you if I can."

"Uncle Langton wishes it?" she asks, wondering.

"Yes. What is your answer, Reine?"

"It is yes," she answers, simply, frankly, and happily.

"Thank you," he says; "come, then, Mr. Langton is waiting for us."

Then, softened by her gentle mood and the sparkling beauty he cannot help but acknowledge, he says, with a dash of mischief:

"You are changed from this morning Reine. So you do not hate me after all?"

A spark of the morning's diablerie flashes into the bright eyes again.

"Yes, I do," she retorts, "and I am only taking you that I may torment you to death."

He checks the impatient sigh, and leads her to Mr. Langton.

"Sensible girl," he chuckles, beaming upon her. "Knew better than to refuse uncle's fortune, didn't you, Reine?"

She stares at him, her rosy cheeks grow pale.

"I don't understand," she falters.

"Didn't you tell her?" Mr. Langton demands of Vane.

"No, I forgot. After all, it wasn't necessary," he answers.

"Cunning dog," the old man laughs. "So she took you for yourself alone? Well, I told you so. She has a true heart in spite of her wild ways."

But Reine stares from one to the other, vaguely troubled.

Mr. Langton bends and kisses the fair, low brow.

"Reine, you are my heiress now," he says. "I shall cut Maud off with a shilling. You and Vane will have all my money when I am dead."

"Oh, if you please, Uncle Langton, I'd rather not," she cries, breathlessly, then she looks at Vane. "Is he taking me for the money?" she says, with a flash of disdain in her great, black eyes.

Vane flushes an angry crimson, but his old friend interferes.

"No, you little goose," he replies, severely, "He's taking you because you're a deuced pretty girl, and worth a dozen disobedient Mauds. Now will you put on that wedding-veil there, and go down-stairs with him and show those gaping, gossiping simpletons that there's a bride after all, and the wedding-feast will not be spoiled by the groom's sorrow?"

He rings the bell with the words. A trim maid appears with a quickness that would argue that she had been listening outside the door.

"Put that wedding-veil on Miss Langton," commands her master. "She will be the bride, and also my heiress."

"Miss Reine, let me congratulate you," the girl exclaims, with a heartiness that shows how Reine has won her way since she came to Langton Villa.

In five minutes the veil is on, with the trailing sprays of orange flowers meant for Maud. The rich, white silk, with its lace flounces, makes no inappropriate bridal dress. But Reine stands still, a lovely bride, grown suddenly strangely pale and grave-looking.

"Now, Mary, hunt up the bride's-maids while I go down and notify the minister," adjures Mr. Langton.

They go, and the bride and groom remain alone together. She stands shyly in the center of the room, with drooping eyes, dark, slender, lovely, but strangely unlike the fair and stately Juno Vane Charteris has pictured these many days as his bride.

They speak no word to each other, and the laughing "men and maidens" come in and surround them.

"It is just like a novel," one says; and another: "It serves Maud right," and all agree that it is "just too romantic for anything," and are glad there will be a wedding after all.

But the two principals say nothing in all the babble of idle tongues. Arm in arm they go forward to the marriage altar, side by side they breathe those solemn vows that bind together their antagonistic lives. It is all like a dream to Reine: the wedding march, the wedding flowers, the curious faces, the solemn words, the circle of gold upon her finger. But as she turns to meet the congratulations of the guests, one precious thought is blooming like a full and perfect rose in her passionate heart:

"He is all my own now. I shall not be parted from him to-morrow."

After the hum of congratulations is over there ensues a momentary pause. The bride is led to a seat, and Vane Charteris drifts away from her side. The good wishes, the pretty sentiments of the guests fall meaningless on his ears.

"What happiness can I promise myself as the husband of that little vixen?" he says to himself, darkly.

So he stands apart in moody silence, and the curious glances of a hundred eyes note the handsome, troubled white face, and turn again pityingly on the girlish young bride.

"She will never be happy with him," they say, decidedly. "He has only married her to spite Maud."

Suddenly, in that momentary lull and stillness, the door is flung violently open, a tall, queenly figure, clad in a gray traveling-dress, wavers a moment on the threshold, then rushes across the room to Mr. Langton. She falls on her knees before him.

"Oh, for God's sake, tell me I am not too late," she cries. "Uncle Langton, I have repented my folly before it was too late. Forgive me, uncle. I have come back to marry Mr. Charteris."