The Unseen Bridgegroom by May Agnes Fleming (books to read for self improvement TXT) 📕

a beastly country road," answered her companion, "under a sky as black as Erebus, and in a down-pour that threatens a second flood. There's the sea. We're down by the sad sea waves now, Mollie."

Mollie listened. Above the roar of the elemental strife she could hear the deep and mighty bass of the roaring sea.

"We will be there in ten minutes more," said the man, briskly.

"Where is there?" inquired Mollie, in the same faint accent.

"Home, my pretty wife--our cottage by the sea, and all that, you know. Don't droop, my charming Cricket. We'll be as happy together as the days are long. I love you with all my soul--I swear it by all that's good and gracious; and I'll make you the best husband ever bright-eyed little girl had. Trust me, Mollie, and cheer up. Yoicks! Here we are."

The carriage stopped with a jerk that precipitated Mollie into her captor's arms; but, with an angry push, she was free again directly.

The man opened the door and sprung out. Wind howling, rain tailing, trees surging, sea roaring, and a big dog barking, made the black night hideous.

"Down, Tiger! Down, you big, noisy brute!" cried the man. "Here, Mollie, let me help you out."

There was no escape--Mollie let him. The salt breath of the sea blew in her face--its awful thunder on the shore drowned all lesser noises.

Through the blackness of the black night she could see the blacker outline of a house, from one or two windows of which faint lights shone. Tossing trees surrounded it--a high board fence and a tall, padlocked gate inclosed it.

"All right, Mollie," the man said. "This is home!"

He drew her arm within his and hurried her up a long, graveled path, under dripping, tossing trees.

The storm of wind and rain nearly beat the breath out of the girl's body, and she was glad when the shelter of a great front porch was gained.

"I hope you're not very wet, my little wife," said the man: "because I don't know as there is a change of garments in this establishment that will fit you. However, as you will retire directly, it doesn't so much matter."

He knocked with his knuckles a thundering reveille that echoed and re-echoed ghostily through the rumbling old house. In a moment there was a shuffling of footsteps inside, a rattling of a chain, and the noisy undoing of rusty bolts.

"Who's there?" asked a cracked old voice. "Is it the young master?"

"Yes, you old idiot! Didn't I send you word? Open the door at once, and be hanged to you!"

A key turned gratingly in the ponderous lock--bolts and chains fell, and the massive door swung back on creaky old hinges.

"Like an ancient castle in a story book," thought Mollie, in the midst of her trouble. "Where in the wide world am I? Oh, what an unfortunate little wretch I am! A stolen princess couldn't be abducted and imprisoned oftener."

The opening of the door showed a long, black, gloomy entrance hall--bare, bleak and draughty. Two people stood there--a grizzly old man, stooping, and bleared, and wrinkled, who had opened the door, and a grizzly old woman, just a shade less stooping, and bleared, and wrinkled, who held a sputtering tallow candle aloft.

"How are you, Peter? How are you, Sally?" said Mollie's conductor, nodding familiarly to these two antediluvians. "Is the room ready? Here's the lady."

He drew Mollie, whose arm he retained in a close grasp, a little closer to him, and Mollie noticed that, for some reason, the ancient pair shrunk back, and looked as though they were a little afraid of her.

"The room's all ready," said the old woman, with a pair of glittering little eyes fixed, as if fascinated, on Mollie's pretty face. "The missis and me's been a-tidying of it all day long. Poor creeter! so young and so pretty! What a pity!"

This last was _sotto voce_, but Mollie's quick ear caught it. She looked up at her conductor, but cloak and hat and whiskers disguised him as effectually as the mask had done on other occasions. She looked back at the old woman and held out her supplicating hands.

"My good woman, whoever you are, if you have a woman's heart, take pity on me. I have been brought here against my will by this man."

"Ah, poor creeter!" sighed the old woman, shaking her grizzly old head; "as if I didn't know that. Poor little creeter!"

"Help me!" Mollie cried. "Don't aid this man to keep me here. I don't know who he is--I have been wickedly entrapped. I am a little, helpless girl, but I have rich and powerful friends who will liberally reward you. Don't help this, bad, bold man to keep me a prisoner here."

"Ah, poor creeter!" sighed the old woman, plaintively, a second time; "only hear her talk now. And such a pretty little thing, too! Dear, dear! It goes to one's heart. Don't keep her standing in them wet clothes, sir. Come upstairs. Such a pity, such a pity!"

She hobbled away, muttering to herself and shaking her head. The disguised man laughed--a low, deriding laugh.

"You see, my dear little Mollie, you'll get any amount of pity, but nothing else. Old Sally will be very sincerely sorry for you, but she won't help you to escape. On the contrary, she'll keep you under lock and key as faithfully as though you were the Koh-i-noor. Come in, you may take cold in this nasty, draughty passage."

He drew her with him. Mollie seemed in a sort of dreamy swoon, and went passively. They ascended the stairs into another dark and draughty hall, flanked on either side by a couple of doors. One of these the old dame opened, and quite a new picture burst on Mollie's sight.

The apartment was not at all like the mysterious padded room of former experience; the four bare walls were plastered and blankly bare; the boarded floor was strewn with rags; the two big square windows were draped with paper-blinds. A huge fire of logs, such as Mollie had never beheld in her life before, roared gloriously in the old-fashioned fire-place, and lighted the room with a lurid glow. A four-post bedstead, the bed covered with a gaudy patch-work or counterpane, stood in one corner, a table with a white cloth stood in another, a chest of drawers in a third, and the door by which they entered in the fourth. This was Mollie's new prison.

"Elegant simplicity," observed the man, leading her in; "but we will do our best to make you comfortable during your stay. It need not be long--you know it depends on yourself, Mollie."

"On myself?"

She turned her pale face and angry, eyes upon him.

"I am your husband by a secret marriage, you know. Let that marriage be solemnized over again in public--no one need know of the other: consent to be my wife openly and above-board, and your prison doors will fly open that hour."

"In Heaven's name, who are you?" cried Mollie, impatiently. "End this ridiculous farce--remove that disguise--let me see who I am speaking to. This melodramatic absurdity has gone on long enough--the play is played out. Talk to me, face to face, like a man, if you dare!"

Her eyes blazed, her voice rose. The old woman looked from one to the other, "far wide" but in evident curiosity. The man had persisted in speaking to her in French, and Mollie had answered him in that language.

"Be it as you say!" cried her captor, suddenly; "only remember, Mollie, whether I am the person you prefer to see under this disguise or not, I am nevertheless your husband as fast as the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh can tie the knot. You shall know who I am, since it is only a question of to-night or to-morrow at the most. Sally, you can go."

Sally looked from one to the other with sharp, suspicious old eyes.

"Won't the young lady want me, sir? Is she able to 'tend to herself?"

"Quite able, Sally; she's not so bad as you think. Go away, like a good soul. I have a soothing draught to administer to my patient."

"Your patient!" said Mollie, turning the flashing light of her great blue eyes full upon him.

The man laughed.

"I had to invent a little fable for these good people. Didn't you notice they looked rather afraid of you? Of course you did. Well, my dear Mollie, they think you're mad."

"Mad?"

"Exactly. You are, a little, you know. They think you've come here under medical orders to recruit by the sea-shore. I told them so. One hate's to tell lies, but, unfortunately, white ones are indispensable at times."

The blue eyes shone full upon him, blazing with magnificent disdain.

"You are a poorer creature than even I took you to be, and you have acted a mean and dastardly part from the first--the part of a schemer and a coward. Pray, let me see the face of our modern Knight of Romance."

Old Sally had hobbled from the room and they stood alone, half the width of the apartment between them.

"Hard words, my pretty one! You forget it was all for love of you. I didn't want to see you the wife of an old dotard you didn't care a fillip for."

"So, to mend matters, you've made me the wife of a scoundrel. I must forever hate and despise--yourself."

"Not so, Mollie! I mean you to be very fond of me one of these days. I don't see why you shouldn't. I'm young; I'm well off; I'm clever; I'm not bad-looking. There's no reason why you shouldn't be very fond of me, indeed. Love begets love, they say, and I love you to madness."

"So it appears. A lunatic asylum would be the fitter place for you, if you must escape state prison. Are we to stand here and bandy words all night? Show me who you are and go."

The man laid his hand on his hat.

"Have you no suspicions, Mollie? Can't you meet me half-way--can't you guess?"

"I don't want to guess."

She spoke defiantly; but her heart was going in great, suffocating plunges against her side, now that the supreme moment had come.

"Then, Mollie, behold your husband!"

With a theatrical flourish he whipped off slouched hat, flowing beard and wig, dropped the disguising cloak, and stood before her revealed--Dr. Guy Oleander!

She gave one gasping cry, no more. She stood looking at him as if turning to stone, her face marble white--awfully rigid--her eyes starting from their sockets. The man's face was lighted with a sinister, triumphant glow.

"Look long, Mollie," he said, exultantly, "and look well. You see your husband for the first time."

And then Mollie caught her gasping breath at the taunt, and the blood rushed in a dark, red torrent of rage and shame to her fair face.

"Never!" she cried, raising her arm aloft--"never, so help me Heaven! I will sit in this prison and starve to death! I will throw myself out of yonder window into the black, boiling sea! I would be torn to pieces by wild horses! I will die ten thousand deaths, but I will never, never, never be wife of yours, Guy Oleander!"

Her voice rose to a shriek--hysterical, frenzied. For the instant she felt as though she were going mad, and she looked it, and the man recoiled