The changed brides

by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

This fine old-fashioned drawing-room was as yet vacant, waiting for the evening crowd of wedding guests, if indeed the state of the weather and the roads should permit them to assemble.

Fires were kindled in the long dining-room, where a sumptuous supper was laid out for the expected company; and in all the bed-chambers which had been opened and aired, cleaned and decorated for such of the guests as should come from a distance, and need to change their dress and perhaps to lie down and rest.

In one of the most spacious and comfortable of these upper-chambers, late in the afternoon of this day, sat the bride elect.

She reclined in an easy chair, with her feet upon the fender and her eyes fixed moodily, dreamily upon the glowing fire before her, and listened to the beating storm without.

Here in this room, also, the ruddy blaze shone on dark wainscotted walls, relieved by crimson damask window curtains, and on a polished oaken floor, bare of carpets, except for the rugs that lay upon the hearth before the dressing-table and beside the bed.

This was indeed a lonely, silent, sombre scene in which to find a maiden on her bridal evening. The tempest raged without, and the wind and rain beat against the walls and windows as if they would batter them down. In the pauses of the storm she could hear the rushing of the swollen torrents and the roaring of the rising river. She knew that the roads must be almost impassable and the streams unfordable. In truth, no one had bargained for such weather on the wedding-day.

Of the hundred and fifty guests who had been invited, not one had yet appeared; not one of her bridesmaids; not the minister who was to perform the marriage ceremony; not even her bridegroom! And yet all these had been expected at an early hour of the afternoon.

Everything was ready for their reception and for the rites and festivals of the evening. Every nook and corner of the genial old home smiled its welcome in anticipation of the arrival of these expected guests; and yet not one of them came.

Nor, when she listened to the howling of the tempest without, could the young bride elect wonder at their absence.

Her rich and varied wardrobe and her rare and costly jewels were all packed in half a dozen large travelling-trunks that stood ready for removal outside her chamber door in the upper hall.