A BRIDEMAID'S STORY.
A bridemaid! I had become a necessity. A sense of such importance was novel to me. It was a pleasant awakening to a consciousness that I had attained womanhood. To have been a bride would not have filled me with such unmingled joy; for then I might have been thinking over the possibilities of the future. Now I had only to play my part in the bright and bewildering present.
That there had been bridemaids before my time, of the loftiest and of the lowliest degree, from the jewelled princess to the humble dairy-maid, rendered my position none the less novel and refreshing. Then, too, the circumstances of the case were not to be lightly passed over—I had been chosen from among so many whose claims to consideration were far above mine.
An imaginative child always seeks and finds some object in which to concentrate its thoughts and its loves; something real to serve as an embodiment of its ideal fancies. Hence, all the wealth of my fervent nature had centred on Marian Howard.
From earliest childhood I had watched and wondered at her rare and high-born beauty. Every feature in her face seemed to have a distinct and separate fascination, while every adornment of dress that could enhance her varied charms was brought into requisition. To look upon her was a feast of pleasure to my eyes.
The quiet dignity of her manner kept a distance between us, so that she was a sort of far-off idol, after all. In her company we never gave way to our outgushing school-girl nature. I sometimes thought she would be happier if she were only more like us, or if we should welcome her with a girl's free and fervent greeting. But who dared try the experiment?
As we grew older, our paths in life diverged. Soon after leaving school, Marian went to live and to love in a foreign land, while I returned to the quiet pleasures of a rural home.
Four years passed, and then the fine old house which had so long remained silent again showed signs of life. They had returned—the widowed aunt and her beautiful niece.
The preparations for the wedding were immediately commenced, and Marian repaid my early devotion by offering me the highest mark of her confidence and regard.
The old tenderness came rushing back when I again beheld her more stately and more beautiful than ever. She told me it would be a quiet wedding—only a few friends, and I her only bridemaid. My arrangements were soon completed, and I awaited anxiously the appointed time. Soon it was the day before the marriage. I went over to assist in the final preparations, and was to spend the night with Marian. The morrow would witness, in the case of my friend, the great event of a woman's life—to be given away in marriage. I say of a woman's life, because marriage can hardly have the same significance for men; they are not given away.
The distinguished stranger who was so soon to call Marian his wife was certainly unlike any of the men I had ever known; but I had known so few, and my knowledge of the world was so limited, that I did not feel competent to pass judgment on him. Then there were such method, such calmness and system about the man, about the unbending aunt, about Marian, and about the whole house, that I felt cold with a chilling sense of not being able to get warm again, though it was a lovely summer afternoon. More of nature and less of art, I thought, might have warmed the approaching festivities.
The evening shadows were falling. We had just finished arranging and rearranging the costly bridal gifts, when Marian was summoned to attend her aunt.
Among the other presents was that grand conception, Gustave Doré's Wandering Jew. This work of human genius seemed a strange companion for the rare articles of luxury that surrounded it.
I took up the book and went out upon the balcony. The softly-fading twilight, the subdued spirit of the house, the reflective turn my own mind had taken, prepared me for impressions of the awful and sublime.
It is said that "real genius always rises, and in rising it finds God." Surely the force and truth of this thought were here exemplified; for who could look upon these scenes, so truthful and intense, without a feeling of awe and reverence?
I was thus occupied, I know not how long, when suddenly Mr. Gaston recalled me to myself. "How absorbed you are, Miss Heartly! I have been watching you with much interest. Pray, has the book any bearing upon the coming events of to-morrow? Court beauties, I suppose," he continued carelessly, as he came toward me.
"Why!" said I, "you have returned early, Mr. Gaston. You cannot have taken that delightful drive Marian proposed to you?"
"No," he answered; "I have no inclination for solitude; but you ladies are so occupied with these time-killing nothings, these endless little arrangements so indispensable to your happiness, that we lonely mortals are entirely ignored and forgotten."
"I think, sir, that calamity seldom befalls you," I replied, thus adding, perhaps, to vanity already sufficiently great.
"But the book?" he continued, opening it listlessly. "Oh! the old fable in a new dress. It is strange how women cling to the marvellous and impossible. They seem to have but two absorbing ideas—love and religion. Extremes in either usually lead to the same pernicious result. I suppose an idol is a necessity to them, and it matters little in which they find it."
"I do not understand you," I replied. "Are you in jest, or are you seriously denouncing revealed religion?"
"Revealed religion!" he repeated. "Is it possible that, at this stage of the world's advancement, you still cling to that antiquated idea of Christianity?"
The modern methods of fashioning a god to suit the impious desires of vain and conceited mortals was then unknown to me. I looked at the man with wonder and distrust. He read my confusion and hastened to explain himself.
"Religion," he said, "as you accept it, makes us cowards instead of men. My reason is my religion; I acknowledge no other guide."
"Ah! then," I exclaimed, "how often must you stumble by the way." I turned to the most effective picture in the book. "Here is an instance of the vanity of human pride. Here we can see the end of man's boasted strength—the anguish of a lost soul hopelessly looking for repose and peace."
"An imposing fable," he replied, "wanting only a woman's faith to give it substance and reality."
I was rising to put an end to this unprofitable and distasteful conversation, when Marian joined us. My disturbed manner plainly annoyed her, and she evidently suspected its cause; for she addressed Mr. Gaston in German quite earnestly. Soon turning to me he said, "Pray, excuse me, Miss Heartly; I was not aware that you were a Catholic. I know your people feel most keenly what they profess. Of course you have already stamped me a condemned heretic."
"It is not for me to pass judgment on you," I replied; "and if I did, my opinion could be of very little value."
"Come, come!" said Marian, "this is a most unapt and gloomy subject for my marriage eve; and the sun, too, has gone down sullenly. I hope there is nothing prophetic in all this."
"What! growing serious now?" I said, as I drew her arm within mine, and we went to look for the fiftieth time at the final arrangements for the morrow's festivities.
I could not, however, throw off the feeling of uneasiness that my interview with Mr. Gaston had left. He had a way of cheapening one, so that, without knowing why, you fell immeasurably in your own estimation. This is never a comfortable condition to find one's self in, and it takes a good deal of nice logic to bring one back to one's normal state.
Perhaps it was the loftiness of his style that awed me; for he had a magnificent way of carelessly throwing the world behind him and walking forth in a sort of solitary dignity. "His manners are courtly," Marian's aunt said, and certainly they possessed all the cold stiffness that characterized her particular circle; still, I felt I had no real grounds for this feeling of distrust and aversion to Mr. Gaston, and I began to think it was rather ungenerous to hold him in so unfavorable a light. I could not shake off, however, an undefined dread of the approaching marriage. The apathy and indifference which had always been peculiar to my young friend did not forsake her even now, when apparently on the very threshold of happiness. I thought that intensity of feeling perhaps kept her thus silent, for overpowering happiness has this effect sometimes. The delusion was, however, speedily dispelled.
That night a sealed chapter in Marian's life was laid open to me, and I saw her as I had never seen or thought of her before.
After locking the chamber-door, she seated herself by my side, and said, "This is the first time in my life that I have known perfect freedom; I mean a liberty to do and say what I like with a feeling of security.
"You remember the 'Greek Slave.' Well, I am not unlike that delicate girl chained in the market-place. Every inclination of my heart has been chained down and locked, and my aunt has kept the key.
"I was an uncomplaining, passionless child. In my cradle I received my first lessons in self-control. As I grew older, I learned another lesson, too unnatural for even a thoughtful child like me to understand. I was not needed here; I was considered only as a desirable ornament for this great house. I might as well have been placed upon a pinnacle and petrified at once, for all the childhood that was allowed to take root within me.
"My aunt's domestic misfortunes had embittered her, and she had no children to soften the natural austerity of her soul. My mother, who was her only sister, had, contrary to my aunt's wishes, married where her heart inclined. This was never forgiven or forgotten until she lay dead, and I was a wailing infant at her side.
"My father soon afterward perished at sea, and my aunt took me to her home.
"She was not designedly cruel; but she knew nothing of a child's requirements. The freezing system seemed to her the most effectual method of crushing out a young, impulsive nature. There was danger I might become rebellious, and hence she required the utmost meekness and submission.
"As soon as I came to understand the power of beauty, I saw that it was to mine I owed food and raiment; for it fed the exhaustless vanity of my aunt, with whom display was then, and still is, the moving spring of her existence.
"I was a drawing-room child, kept for exhibition at stated intervals. The tiny jewels on my neck and arms were hateful to me. My embroidered robe was a costly thing. I had given a young life for it.
"I had a mortal fear of losing my beauty. Our gardener's daughter—a comely, cheerful-looking girl, whom I was always glad to see, for she made the morning brighter with her fresh young face—had caught that loathsome disease, the small-pox. When she recovered, the change that had come upon her so terrified me, that I was seized with a sensation as of coming danger. I shrank from the girl, as if she would be the cause of some future misery to me.
"She had a mother to whom she seemed infinitely more dear now than she had ever been. But I, a lonely waif, what would become of me if I should be transformed like her?
"It was not altogether for my own gratification that I desired to retain this beauty. It was not my own beauty. It belonged to my aunt, and was all I had to give her in return for what she gave me.
"I was not a child that saw angels in the skies, or that expected manna to come down from heaven to feed me.
"Artificial and unsatisfying as my life has always been, I have a clinging desire to remain with it.
"At times I have had a vaguely conceived notion of one day getting away from it and of being free; but the bending and breaking system has so subdued me that I might lose myself if left to the guidance of my own free-will.
"Marriage is a solemn thing. Would you like to change places with me to-night, Mary?"
I could not say yes, and I dared not say no; for I saw that she was losing courage, and beginning to hesitate about the important event so soon to transpire.
"That is a strange question, Marian dear," I replied. "To-morrow ought to be, and I hope will be, the happiest day of your life. Surely you must love this man when you have promised to be his wife?"
"Oh! yes," said she, "as well as I understand what it is to love. I sometimes tremble for fear I have not the qualities that make woman lovable and attractive. You forget how little I know of Edward Gaston.
"Our acquaintance began in a little German town, where he was stopping, for the purpose of establishing his claims to a disputed inheritance. He is an American by birth and education. He soon became a constant visitor with us. My aunt and he were on the best of terms. My own interest in him had never passed beyond the civilities of an ordinary acquaintance until he again joined us at Naples, where he lost no time in making known the state of his feelings.
"My aunt seemed to have had some previous knowledge of his preference; but its announcement was to me a complete surprise.
"She was proud of her nice discrimination in the selection of her friends, and Mr. Gaston had come into our circle labelled and indorsed a gentleman.
"Her gracious consideration, however, of his offer, in no wise obscured her caution. Satisfied as to his worldly affairs, and well assured of his position at home, there was nothing wanting but my consent, which was really the most trifling part of the arrangement. I accepted this marriage engagement as I would have accepted any other condition so mapped out for me.
"Business of a pressing nature which could be delayed no longer, called Mr. Gaston to America, and I did not see him again until our return a month ago.
"You see how little I know of him. Can you wonder that I am constrained in his presence? Of course, every thing will be different when I come to know him better.
"But I have one cause of feverish anxiety. I am not above the petty subterfuges almost incidental to a life like mine. A desire to hide mistakes committed through childish ignorance made me unscrupulous, as any member of a household who is watched and suspected must naturally be. Habit may have made these little irregularities almost a second nature, but my blood recoils from a wilful and deliberate deception. I am afraid Edward is misled with regard to my aunt's pecuniary condition.
"This life of seeming affluence, which has become as necessary to her as the air she breathes, drains heavily on her slender resources. Such portion of her time as is not spent in her handsome carriage, or in drawing-room entertainments, is passed in a most frugal and even parsimonious mode of living, and it is only by an economy painful to contemplate that she has kept things floating thus far.
"I cannot acquaint Edward with my aunt's existing embarrassments. She is my only kinswoman; and misguided as she is, I have a tender affection for her. I hope to be able to offer her a home with us, when, as soon must be the case, the last act in this miserable farce shall have been played.
"Now, perhaps, you can understand why I thus passively submit to a marriage that I would turn from if I could. I cannot openly say to Mr. Gaston, 'I have no fortune, I hope you expect none;' even to covertly approach the subject would be to impugn his motives, and I certainly have no right to suspect him of harboring mercenary ones. Still, I wish he were acquainted with the truth; for the world, you know, looks upon me as sole heiress of my rich aunt.
"I have no knowledge of what passed between Edward and my aunt at Naples, when our marriage was agreed upon; but I have a constant dread least he may have been deceived. I once mentioned to him, in conversation, that he would claim a portionless bride; but he seemed to take no notice of what I said, and I fear he still thinks my aunt's circumstances to be in reality what they seem."
"In giving way," I replied, "to such groundless fears, dear Marian, you underrate your own worth. Think how many noble and honorable men would be proud to call you wife, and in giving you a life of happiness make amends for the past." Yet as I looked in the silver starlight upon that lovely face, which had so attracted me in my childhood, I could not but regret deeply and sadly that she was not of my faith; for then she might receive wiser counsel than I could give from one of those whom Christ in his mercy has ordained to be a guide and a staff to weak and wavering souls.
The wedding breakfast was all that even Marian's fastidious aunt could have desired. The few favored guests were of the most approved type. It would seem as if a judicious instructor had given each of them a select number of words, which they used with exemplary caution, and then retired to the contemplation of their own individual greatness.
As to Marian, the despondency of the night before had quite left her, and there was a high and noble resolve in her manner that made me truly happy to behold, while it calmed, if it did not entirely dispel, my own gloomy forebodings. The serene expression of her sweet face would have drawn me nearer to her, if that were possible.
How I loved her, as she stood before me, beautiful in the purity of her white robe, and infinitely more beautiful in the chastened security of her firm and lofty purpose—to be a true and honorable wife to Edward Gaston; to meet the conditions of her new life, whatever they might be, with a woman's trust and confidence, and better still, with a woman's hope in the never-failing reward of duty faithfully performed.
I could have been positively gay through desire to sustain Marian, and to let her know, without telling her in words, how thoroughly I appreciated and how heartily I approved her noble intentions, her courage and confidence; but as measured words and actions alone were allowed, I had to restrain myself. Still, the cooling process did not diminish my ardor, and when I got Marian all to myself, in her room, I kissed her so approvingly, and was so extravagant in the expression of all that I felt, that she folded me with loving tenderness to her breast, and kept me there so long that I felt with the quick beating of her warm heart she was giving me some of her own newly-found courage.
"Whatever happens to me, Mary dear, in the extremity of any darkness that may come upon me, I shall always know that you are true to me, that you are still my friend."
The tears that fell upon her hand as she gently raised my head, were my only answer, and she accepted them in the spirit in which they were shed.
In returning to my ordinary duties, I had much to reflect upon, much that made me still uneasy for Marian and her future, where so many doubts and fears seemed hanging on the will of one human being.
Vague rumors of Mr. Gaston had reached us, that he was a man wholly without fortune, drifting on the surface of events; darker things, too, were whispered with an indirectness which gave them an uncertain coloring. In my love for Marian, and in my fear for her, I could not credit these suspicions; yet my anxiety to again see her, and discover for myself the truth or fallacy of these reports, was intense. Indeed, my state of anxious doubt was becoming intolerable when I received a letter from Marian, telling me she was already tired of travelling, and would return soon to make a last visit to her old home before leaving for her future and distant one.
It was agreed that they should spend the day after their arrival with us. I was so happy and so occupied in preparing for their reception, that I had almost forgotten my previous anxiety in my present desire to have every thing ready and in perfect order.
The pleasure I felt in the prospect of having my darling with me so soon was dreadfully toned down by the consciousness of my own inability to satisfy her aunt's critical taste. I trembled as I thought of her scrutinizing glance; but I had a never-failing source of hope in my mother. Her good-natured hospitality was of such a melting kind that I dared hope that even the rigid aunt might thaw under it, which she really did, greatly to my relief and comfort.
The dinner passed off creditably. My tranquillity was now entirely restored, and I had time to devote to Marian.
Up to this moment I had viewed her through the medium of my excited condition; now I was calmed, and, so far as the affairs of the day went, contented.
Marian's manner was restless and uneasy. My perception was keenly alive to the slightest difference between what she did and said now and to what she did and said formerly. So solicitous was I, that I think the most trifling modulation in her voice had a significance for me.
Much as I had looked forward to this reunion, much as I had desired it, now that Marian was with me, I shrank from being alone with her. I think if we had been that summer evening even in the solitude of a mountain fastness, an intuitive delicacy would have kept both of us from speaking one word upon the only subject that filled our hearts.
My mother's humanizing influence was having its effect on the stately old lady. She was captured without knowing it. Mr. Gaston had gone out for a walk; so Marian and I were left alone. I tried to talk about her new home, and repeated some things Mr. Gaston had told me before the wedding.
"Edward has changed his mind," said Marian, "and has found it necessary to make some different arrangements; so I really cannot tell much about our home. It is very far away; don't you think so, Mary?" I saw that her feelings were beginning to get the upper hand, and I did not dare trust myself to reply. I turned from her immediately on the pretext of having forgotten some household duty. She strolled out to the garden in a spiritless way.
Every thing was revolving itself in my mind, and I was beginning to reproach myself; perhaps if I had encouraged her to speak, it might have lifted the load from her heart; another opportunity might not be permitted us; and yet, bowed down as the poor girl was, it would not have raised her in my esteem had she even with me disparaged her husband. To cover him with a wife's forbearance was now one of her hard but imperative duties, and I knew she would not shrink from it. This must be a check to our confidence, a bridge over which my kindliest sympathy must never pass.
Unmistakable evidences of a storm close at hand made me run to the arbor where I had last seen Marian. She was not there. While deliberating where I should next go, I heard Mr. Gaston's impatient tread. He stopped by a clump of trees near me, and in tones of suppressed anger commenced upbraiding his defenceless wife.
"What did you mean by suggesting such a thing as that?" he began; "have you any right to dispense hospitalities, to propose or consider them in that grand style of yours?"
"In expressing the wish," replied Marian, "that my aunt would be able to spend the winter with us, I had no intention of doing any thing beyond a natural act of gratitude; and I was not aware, Edward, that your feelings had so changed toward her. I am sure she has done nothing to merit your displeasure."
"Nothing to merit my displeasure? You are a most creditable disciple! She has made you like herself, truly. Is it nothing in your eyes that she has always lived a life of nicely-arranged deception? Your accomplished aunt has conducted a forlorn hope with a woman's tact, and the victims of her trickery are expected to bow to her superior sagacity. In a burst of universal sympathy you propose to take this wreck of decayed grandeur to my house. This was a part of the plot, I suppose."
"Edward," interrupted Marian, "how dare you speak in this way of my aunt, who has shown you so many marks of sincere regard? That she has not husbanded her resources, I grant; but that misfortune rests entirely with her, she is the only sufferer. She made you no promises, gave you no reason to expect a fortune with me; this I have learned since our marriage. Have no fear of the incumbrance. Dear as she is to me, I would rather let her beg from door to door than see her a recipient of your bounty!"
"Oh! you are proud now," he replied in a voice of withering scorn. "Take care," he continued; "you have not seen the end yet. Make yourself ready to depart. I want to leave this house instantly."
"Edward," she said, "however you choose to afflict me, whatever tortures you have in store for me, do not, I beseech you, subject me just yet to the pity of those I love, of those who love me. These people are my truest friends. I would not make them sharers of my misery. Spare me a little longer."
"Your fine speeches and these people are alike objects of indifference to me. Make yourself ready; I am going."
She made a movement to obey him; but turning round again, she said, "Edward"—the voice and tone I shall never forget; it was as if all she had ever valued in life had whispered a last farewell—"Edward, as I had hoped to give you a wife's unfailing duty, to be trustful, loving, and true; so I had hoped you would give me a husband's protection, and perhaps a husband's love."
"I am not fond of scenes," he interrupted; "your requirements are of so nice and delicate a nature that I would be quite incapable of gratifying them; so I shall not trouble myself to make the attempt; and for the future, spare yourself any unnecessary display of sentiment."
I could not have left the arbor without being seen. Marian passed by slowly, not to the house, but in an opposite direction, and Mr. Gaston started for the lower end of the garden. I caught a glimpse of him as he turned an angle of the walk. A wicked look had settled on his handsome face, as if dark spirits were urging him on.
A peal of thunder, prolonged and terrible, startled me. I ran to the house. The lightning was truly awful, and peal following peal of thunder made one shudder and long for human companionship. I had lost Marian in the gloom and darkness. She was not in the house; I did not see her in the garden. I went out into the storm in search of her.
I found her standing quite alone in sad and listless silence. Can it be, I thought, that death has no terrors for one so gifted and so young? She seemed imploring that doom which the most abject and miserable would flee from if they could. I knew then, as well as I knew afterward, that she would have welcomed death that night without one single regret.
"Marian, dear," I said, approaching her, "how can you remain alone, and exposed in this manner, when every thing about you is quaking with fear?"
"I do not heed the storm," she answered; "I like it, it is so wonderful."
"Come, come, darling! Why, the rain has drenched you," I replied, putting my arm about her and leading her to the house.
The storm had set in furiously. There was no leaving the house that night. I resolved that Marian should sleep with me; so I went to Mr. Gaston and told him I regretted our limited accommodations obliged me to offer him a temporary bed in the parlor.
When I told Marian of this arrangement, she seemed relieved. "I am glad to spend the night here and with you, Mary," she said. "All is so quiet and peaceful."
Quiet and peaceful! The greater storm in her own breast made her forget the contending elements without.
My aversion to Mr. Gaston was, I believe, heartily reciprocated, and he must have chafed at my influence over Marian. He took her away from her home, never to return, on the very next day. They sailed for Cuba shortly afterward.
The crisis Marian had feared for her aunt soon came, and she went, with the remnant of her fortune, to live in some western town.
Seven years had rolled by since all this, and Marian was fast passing into the shadows we like to call up when the world is hushed around us and, we are thinking—thinking.
I was married, and laughing children were crowding out these earlier remembrances.
An affection of the throat, from which my husband was suffering, rendered the best medical advice necessary. I accompanied him to New York, where I found—let me pause in telling it, to do reverence to the unseen hand that led me there—Marian.
In this lonely stranger how little do I behold of my childhood's earliest pride!
"From Clifton?" said the physician thoughtfully, after examining my husband's case. "I have a patient, a strange case; she is paralyzed, and her mental faculties are stunned. A Cuban family brought her here and placed her under my care. Her husband had committed a forgery, and had fled the country to escape arrest. She is an accomplished lady, I should judge. She was left in Havana quite poor and friendless. I have been led to speak to you about her because she is always writing two words—Mary and Clifton. The Spanish lady who brought her here knew nothing of her former history."
I was silent during this recital, and so white that the doctor offered me water. I thanked him, and expressed a wish to go to my friend immediately.
"I cannot return to the hospital this morning," he said; "but I will give you my card, which will admit you to the lady at once."
There I found her, a silent, faded figure, sitting still, and for all purposes of life quite dead.
I was awed as I stood before her. I sat down and took her poor, neglected hand in mine. She looked at me and made a feeble attempt to gather back her hair which had fallen in great disorder about her shoulders. I rose to do this for her. It was still glossy and beautiful as ever. I began to arrange it in the fashion she had worn it seven years before. She took my hand from her head, laid it in her lap, chafed it, then reverently raised it to her lips. I could restrain my tears no longer, and I hid my face in the folds of her faded dress. She turned me toward her and wiped the tears from my cheek.
"You are going home with me, Marian darling," I said; "to live always in our own old home."
"I know it," she whispered; "I have been waiting for you so long, so very long."
This was the first time she had spoken to me. The nurse had told me that she spoke occasionally, but always in an absent and incoherent manner.
Sea-bathing was recommended; but the doctor was of the opinion that her mind would never recover its original vigor.
I would like him to see her as she left me this morning, calm and beautiful, when the bell of the convent, where she is teaching German, summoned attendance.
My religion is no longer strange to her. She has accepted it as the crowning blessing of her life, and with a thankful spirit she speaks of the chastening hand that led her to this security and peace.