As the preacher uttered the words which united his rival to the woman he loved, he tottered feebly from the pulpit. Mr. Salmon sprang to his assistance, but was waived away, the minister saying: “I am not well today.”
CHAPTER XIX. THE BRIDAL CHAMBER.
When Dr. Nugent left the church, which he did quickly, his breast was filled with emotions of a conflicting nature. Reason seemed to have been displaced with a mad, ungovernable rage. Why should this ignorant, low, base-born son of a Russian exile possess this goddess? What moral right had this usurper to loll at ease in her chamber, barring out his betters of all the world? He knew that he possessed all her mighty love, and yet he saw the fruit of it slipping away forever. He was seized with a strange, overmastering desire to prevent, at all hazards and at any cost, the actual consummation of the marriage. He struggled, wrestled, tried to fight it down, but his feet carried him toward her house. He reached it before the bridal party had arrived, and, being familiar there, he ascended into the bridal chamber, and there secreted himself.
“Like a thief,” he said to himself, “I steal into this now sacred apartment. Over my being creeps a determination so desperate, that I shudder at the spectacle of my own deformity. I have suffered more than mortal agony. There in the church, my much-abused spirit almost departed from me. Where was the artist to tear aside the flesh and paint the hearts as they really were? Paul, radiant and happy; Ouida, serene in the consciousness of self-imposed beauty, while I was burdened with the deepest sorrow of them all.”
He waited, and soon Ouida entered, and threw off her veil and wraps.
“The deed is done,” she murmured, “and yet I would it were undone. The marriage vows have been exchanged, and yet Paul is as far from me as I am from Paradise. Strange paradox am I. I know that Nugent’s love has in it the sting of guilt, yet, through its scorching rays, I clearly see myself. Oh, what a madcap freak, to rouse the slumbering passion of my ‘Modern Hercules,’ and yet the fault is all my own. And I must pay the penalty; must tread the path of sorrow to the end. This is a rude awakening of my dream. I once had thought to greet my lord with gleaming eyes, with passion, strong yet tender. Tonight he comes, and I am full of fear and trembling.”
She heard a slight noise.
“Is that you, Paul?”
Instead of Paul, Horatio Nugent stepped out from the darkness. His eye was full of strange, unnatural brilliance, but his face was drawn, pinched and haggard. At his appearance, Ouida’s heart almost ceased to beat; she was so full of horror and despair. She expected Paul at almost any moment. She knew his nature when once aroused, and she was ashamed within herself to confess that she feared a collision between the two men, more for the sake of the preacher than for her now lawfully wedded husband.