As the time appointed for the marriage of Lady Wynde and Craven Black drew near, great preparations were entered upon for its celebration. One would have thought, from the scale of the arrangements on foot, that the heiress of Hawkhurst was to be the bride, rather than the baronet’s widow. Dress-makers came down from London, boxes were sent to and fro, new jewels from Emanuel’s or Ryder’s, were selected to replace the Wynde family jewels, which Mr. Atkins had compelled the handsome widow to yield up to her step-daughter, and Artress made a special trip to Brussels for laces, and to Paris for delicate and sumptuous novelties in attire. One or two of Madame Elise’s best work women spent several days at Hawkhurst in fitting robes, and Lady Wynde, with Neva, Artress and two maids, spent a week in London at the long-closed town house of Sir Harold.
The eventful day came at last, and was one of the mellowest of all that mellow October. The sun flooded the little village of Wyndham in waves of golden light. The pretty little stone church in which the marriage ceremony was to be performed was beautifully decorated with flowers. A floral arch vailed the door-way. A carpet of red roses, from the glass-houses at Hawkhurst, strewed the path the bride must traverse in going from her carriage to the church door.
Inside the church, myrtles and red roses festooned the walls, and were suspended above the spot where the bride and groom would stand, in the form of a marriage bell. The breath of roses filled the air with perfume sweeter than “gales from Araby.”
Long before eleven o’clock, the villagers and the tenants of Hawkhurst began to assemble at the church. They were all in gala attire, for Lady Wynde, with an insatiable vanity, had decreed that her third marriage-day was to be a gala-day for the retainers of the Wynde family. The villagers and tenants were all invited to a grand out-door feast at Hawkhurst, where a hogshead of ale, it was said, was to be broached, and deers and pigs roasted whole. A brass band from Canterbury had been engaged for the evening, and there would be colored lanterns suspended from the trees, and dancing on the terrace and on the lawn.
Soon after eleven, the carriages of various county families began to arrive at the church. Sir John and Lady Freise, with their seven blooming daughters whose ages ranged from eighteen to thirty-five, were among the first comers. One of the white-gloved ushers, with a bridal favor pinned to his coat, showed them into a reserved seat. Other acquaintances and friends, some curious, some full of condemnation, made their appearance, and were similarly accommodated. Lord Towyn and Mr. Atkins came in together.
It was nearly twelve o’clock when two carriages rolled up to the church door, bringing the bridal party from Hawkhurst. From the first of these alighted Neva and Rufus Black. The heiress was attired in white, with pink ribbon at her waist and pink roses securing the frill of lace at her throat, and Rufus wore the prescribed dress suit of black. They walked up the aisle side by side, and more than one noticed how pale the young girl was. They took their places in the Wynde family pew, for Neva had resolutely declined to enact the part of bride’s-maid to her father’s widow, and would have declined to appear at the wedding had not she realized that her absence would be more marked and conspicuous than her presence.
The young heiress had scarcely sank into her seat, when a fluttering at the door declared to the assembly that the hero and heroine of the occasion were at hand. In defiance of the custom of meeting at the altar, Craven Black and Lady Wynde came in together, she leaning upon his arm.
Her ladyship was dressed in a pink moire, with sweeping court train of pink velvet. She had worn white at her first marriage, pearl color at her second; and for the third, and most satisfactorily to her, had put on the color of love. A diadem set with flashing diamonds starred her black, fashionably dishevelled hair, above her low forehead. Her arms and neck were bare, and glittered with gems. Her face was flushed with triumph; her black eyes shone with a perfect self-content.
The bridal pair took their places before the altar, and the clergyman and his assistants began their office. The usual questions were asked and answered; the usual appeal made to any one who knew “any just cause or impediment why these two should not be united,” but which, of course, received no response; and her third marriage ring was slipped upon Lady Wynde’s finger, and for the third time she was a wife.
If any regret mingled with her present happiness, it was that by her third marriage she lost the title her second alliance had conferred upon her. But as there was a prospect that Craven Black would inherit a title some day, and that she would then be a peeress, she easily contented herself with her present untitled condition.
After the ceremony, the newly married pair proceeded to the vestry and signed the marriage register. Friends and curious acquaintances thronged in upon them with congratulations, and soon after, when the church bell began peeling merrily, the bride and groom reentered their carriage, and drove home to Hawkhurst.
Neva and Rufus Black followed in the second carriage.
The guests invited to the wedding breakfast entered their carriages, and followed in the wake of the bridal pair.
The villagers and tenants, in a great, straggling crowd, proceeded on foot along the dusty road, to take their part in the out-door festivities.
A magnificent green arch had been erected over the great gates, with the monogram of the bride and groom curiously intertwisted, and lettered in red roses upon the green ground. Three similar arches intersected at regular distances the long avenue. The marble terrace was bordered with orange trees, oleanders, lemon-trees, and tropical shrubs, all in wooden tubs, and the front porch was a very bower of myrtles and red roses.
“It is all in singularly bad taste,” was Sir John Freise’s exclamation, as he surveyed the scene. “It’s very fine, girls, and would do very well if it was all for Neva’s marriage, but it is worse than tomfoolery to invite Sir Harold Wynde’s tenantry and friends to rejoice at the wedding of Sir Harold’s widow to a man not worthy to tie his shoes. I must repeat that it is in singularly bad taste. The tenantry are not Lady Wynde’s; the house is not Lady Wynde’s. What can be done to give distinction to the marriage-day of the heiress, if all this display is made for Lady Wynde?”
Sir John’s sentiment was the general one among the house guests. Some were disgusted, and others privately sneered, but there were some to whom the proceedings of the baronet’s widow seemed eminently proper, and these fawned upon her now.
The wedding breakfast was eaten in the grand old dining-hall, among flowers which, by a rare refinement of taste, had been chosen for this room without perfume. The tables were resplendent with gold and silver plate. Fruits of rare species and delicious flavor, fresh from the hot-houses of Hawkhurst, were nestled among blossoms or green leaves. A noted French cook from London had charge of the commissary department, and the rare old wines from Sir Harold’s cellar were unequalled.
While toasts were offered and drank to the newly married pair in the banquet hall, the tenantry were amusing themselves with their barbecue and ale out of doors, and their hilarity corresponded to the lower-toned merriment within the house.
After the breakfast, Sir John Freise and his family, and several others, all of whom had come out of respect to Neva rather than to compliment Lady Wynde, took their departure. Many guests remained for the ball. Lord Towyn took his leave toward evening, and Neva retired to her own room, whence she did not emerge again that night.
She had tried hard to dissuade Lady Wynde from giving the ball, but her persuasions had not availed. Neva had declined to attend the ball, and Lady Freise had supported her in her refusal. How could she dance in honor of the third marriage of her father’s widow? All day her thoughts had been of India and of her father, and remembering his tragical fate, how could she rejoice at a union which could never have taken place but for his death?
Her step-mother was angry at what she deemed Neva’s obstinacy, and came to her and commanded her to descend to the ball-room. The young girl was sternly resolute in her refusal, and the bride went away muttering her anger and annoyance, but powerless to compel obedience.
There was dancing until a late hour that night in the old baronial hall that traversed the centre of the great mansion, and there was dancing outside upon the terrace and lawn to the music of a brass band. Mrs. Craven Black—Lady Wynde no longer—was the belle of the occasion, full of gayety and brightness. Mrs. Artress, to the amazement of everybody who had known her as the gray companion of Lady Wynde, flashed forth in the sudden splendor of jewels and a trained dress of crimson silk, and Craven Black danced one set with her, and saw her supplied with numerous partners. Mrs. Artress considered that her day of servitude was over, and that it was quite possible that she might make a “good match” with some wealthy country gentleman, for whom, during all the evening, she kept a diligent look-out.
Among the guests were two or three reporters of society papers from London, whom Craven Black, with an eye to the publicity of his glory, had invited down to Hawkhurst. These gentlemen danced and supped and wined, and in the pauses of these exercises wrote down glowing descriptions of the festivities, elaborate details of the ladies’ dresses, and ecstatic little eulogies of the bride’s beauty and connection with the Wynde family, and of the groom’s pedigree, stating the precise value of Craven Black’s prospects of a succession to his cousin, Viscount Torrimore.
The aunt of the bride, Mrs. Hyde of Bloomsbury Square, was not present. She lay indeed at the point of death, a fact which Mrs. Craven Black judiciously confined to her own breast, the news having reached her that morning as she was dressing for her bridal.
At twelve o’clock, midnight, fire-works were displayed on the lawn. They lasted over half an hour, and were very creditable. After they had finished, carriages were ordered, and the house guests departed in a steady stream until all were gone. The tenantry and villagers departed to their homes on foot or in wagons, as they had come. The colored lanterns were taken down from the trees; the musicians went away, and the lights one by one died out of the great mansion.
The bridal pair were to remain a week at Hawkhurst, and were then to go to Wynde Heights, the dower house of the baronet’s widow, and it had been arranged that Neva should accompany her step-mother. Rufus Black was to be a member of the party also, and much was hoped by Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black from the enforced propinquity of the young couple.
Silence succeeded to the late noise, confusion and merriment—a silence the more profound by contrast with what had preceded. The household had retired. Neva had long since dismissed her maid and gone to bed, thinking sadly of her father. Even before the last carriage had rolled away, Neva had fallen asleep, not-withstanding her wrapt musings concerning her father, and as the hours went on, and darkness and silence fell, that sleep had deepened into a strange and almost breathless slumber.
But suddenly she sprang up, broad awake, her eyes starting, a cold dew on her forehead, a wild cry upon her lips.
She stared around her with a look of terror. The white curtains of her bed were fluttering in the breeze from her open window, and around her lay the thick gloom of her chamber.
Her voice called through the darkness in a wild, piercing wail:
“Oh, papa, papa! I dreamed—ah, was it a dream?—that he still lives! I saw him, pale and ghastly, at the door of a hut among the Indian hills, and I heard his voice calling the names: ‘Octavia! Neva!’ He is not dead—he is not dead! So surely as I live, I believe that papa too is alive! Oh, my father, my father!”