CHAPTER XVII.

A MAD BRIDE.

“I thought you were lost, miss--I did, indeed,” protested Dakin, as Miss Cranstoun, hardly deigning to notice her, swept past her into the house. “And if Sir Philip thought I’d let you run out of the house like that---- Lor’, here he is!”

Mistress and maid were crossing the wide hall as Sir Philip entered it from the dining-room. Miss Cranstoun’s shawl had fallen back, and her plentiful blue-black hair, disarranged by the woollen wrap, curled in picturesque disorder round her face. The Baronet advanced to meet her, and then suddenly stopped. He did not even see Dakin in attendance as his pale face grew paler still, and his dry lips murmured:

“Clare!”

It was only a trick of light, no doubt, but he had never seen Stella look so startlingly like her dead mother as she did to-night; the same proud, defiant carriage of the head, the same flashing dark eyes, and curved, scornful, red lips. Twenty years seemed to have slipped away, and he himself to be taken back into the body of a young fool, bringing his beautiful, low-bred bride into the home of his fathers.

Speech would dispel the hateful illusion; he realized that, and uttered his daughter’s name sharply:

“Stella!”

“Yes.”

“Be sure that you are dressed in time to-morrow. The train for Portsmouth leaves Grayling Station at two o’clock. Neither Lord Carthew nor I like to be kept waiting. Do you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“I shall probably not see you to-morrow until you are dressed for the ceremony. You will, of course, wear the pearl necklace Lady Northborough sent you. I hope you have by this time realized fully the honor that Lord Carthew is conferring on you by making you his wife.”

No answer. She was looking him full in the eyes with an expression he had never before seen in hers, such an expression as his own face often wore--scornful, sarcastic, and hard.

“On my side,” he continued, longing to humble her untamable spirit, “on my side, indeed, there is no question of honoring. The Cranstouns can vie with the Guelphs for antiquity of race; but as the daughter of such a mother as yours, it should, indeed, be gratifying to you that a man of Lord Carthew’s rank should have asked for your hand.”

She did not answer in words, but broke into a low laugh of unmistakable contempt. It was the second time that evening that she had laughed at him, and something defiant and insolent in her manner provoked him beyond endurance. He seized both her slender hands in one of his, and shook her savagely.

“Be silent!” he muttered.

Into her dark eyes there flashed a look which seemed the reflex of his own in savagery. Then, suddenly lowering her head, she buried her teeth in his fingers, causing him instantly to let her go; whereat she looked at him, laughed again, and fled away up the stairs.

The assiduous Dakin, who had stolen to the floor above unobserved during the little passage of arms between father and daughter, led the way to the turret bedroom. It made her flesh creep, she admitted afterward, to hear Miss Cranstoun laughing to herself as she glided in. Stella walked straight up to the wedding-dress, which lay upon the bed, a perfectly plain garment of high-necked white satin, with a long tulle veil.

As Miss Cranstoun turned the dress over, she laughed again, and flitting about the room, she next lighted on the case containing the pearl necklace. A little exclamation of pleasure escaped her lips as she opened it; until that moment she had not troubled to do so. Now she clasped it round her neck and stood before the looking-glass, trying the effect.

Dakin, watching her, decided that she had never seen her look so handsome. A feverish flush tinged her ordinarily pale face, and her eyes shone with unnatural brilliancy. Seizing the wedding-dress, she motioned to Dakin to assist her into it, grumbling the while in a low undertone, quite unlike her usual clear, sweet voice, about the fit.

Dakin had very little doubt by this time that the poor girl’s mind was temporarily deranged. She had been but a comparatively short time in the Cranstoun service, but she knew enough of Stella’s outward manner to be sure that this strange, restless irritability, these low, cunning fits of laughter, and this rough impatience of movement, differed entirely from Stella’s natural deportment. Once convinced that Miss Cranstoun was a little “off her head,” Dakin was extra anxious to please her. It was not her place, but Ellen’s, to help her to dress, and to make alterations in the fit of her gown; but rather than excite her to any outward paroxysm, Dakin pinned and stitched for a good hour, and felt genuinely thankful that it was Ellen, and not she, who had to sleep that night in the same room with the bride of to-morrow.

When the lady’s maid at length entered the bedroom after supper, Dakin was curious to see whether she also would note the alteration for the worse in Stella’s manner. At first, the young woman was too much absorbed in Mr. Stephen Lee’s compliments to pay heed to anything around her; but gradually, as she whispered apart to Dakin, she became aware that Miss Cranstoun, seated by the fire in a white cashmere dressing-gown, with her black hair loose about her shoulders, was listening to her silly confidences, and staring at her with great, gleaming eyes.

Ellen tried to go on with her chatter, but came suddenly to a full stop.

“What’s wrong with her?” she asked of Dakin, in an awestruck whisper.

Dakin, with her back to her young mistress, touched her forehead significantly, and shook her head.

“Mad?”

Ellen’s pale lips formed rather than uttered the words.

Dakin nodded, and held up her finger warningly.

“They get that sharp when they’re that way,” she whispered, confidentially. “If she’s violent in the night I’ll be sleeping in the next room, and I’ll come to you.”

But this was not enough for Ellen. Shaking with fear, she protested that she could not be left alone with a mad woman, and that unless Dakin promised to sleep with her she would go right down to Sir Philip and tell him then and there that the marriage must be put off because his daughter was crazy. This threat had the effect of persuading Dakin to stay, the more so as she could see Miss Cranstoun watching them, and laughing softly to herself as the unhappy spies took whispering counsel together. Neither of them slept that night, except for occasional broken snatches, from which they were awakened with a start by fitful bursts of the same crazy laughter from the bride of the ensuing day.

Stella’s wedding morn was clear and fair. Scarcely a cloud marred the blue clearness of the sky, and the sun shone bright upon the bridegroom as he drove with his mother from Grayling Station in the carriage sent from the Chase to meet them. Lord Northborough had been unable to attend the ceremony, owing to a sudden Parliamentary crisis and impending change of Ministry. But Lady Northborough made up by her vivacity and high spirits for her husband’s absence. She was a typical American, highly educated, witty, fascinating, and sympathetic. She was not beautiful, but always exquisitely dressed, and dainty as a Dresden china statuette. This morning, in silver-gray brocade and rare old white lace, she looked a little picture as she chattered and smiled at her son during the drive.

“I’m just mad with anxiety to see your lovely Stella,” she was saying. “I’m so glad you are going to marry a beauty. I do love pretty women.”

“There isn’t the slightest doubt about Stella’s beauty, mother; but I’m afraid you’ll think she looks terribly delicate. She has been wearing herself to a shadow, crying over her mother’s death. There seems to be no sympathy at all between her and her father. The man is made of cast-iron. But Stella’s prettiness is her least charm. She is so frank and innocent, so naïve, and at the same time so refined; her face is as pure as a child’s, and yet as tender as a woman’s; but if I once begin, I shall rhapsodize over her until we reach the house. She has been bought up in the most conventual manner; even Tennyson has been kept from her, and she listened to the ‘Lady of Shalott’ as a child does to a fairy-tale. She has herself lived like that; shut up, as the Lady of Shalott was, among dreams. It is by that name that I like to think of her.”

“Fanciful boy!” his mother murmured, fondly tapping his cheek lightly with her gloved fingers. “How can people consider you hard and sarcastic? Only your little mother understands you as you really are.”

“Dear little mother! But one thing disappoints me. I can find no trace of Hilary Pritchard. He has not returned to his rooms in town, nor is he at his Yorkshire home. In the state he was in, with a gunshot wound in his shoulder, his disappearance is the more inexplicable.”

“Don’t you think,” Lady Northborough suggested, with her fine woman’s instinct, “that he, too, may have fallen a victim to the charms of your beautiful Miss Cranstoun, and that that may be his reason for stopping away?”

“Quite impossible,” her son answered, decidedly. “He had taken a most unaccountable dislike against her at first sight.”

“Ah! That sounds bad!”

“And he saw nothing of her. He left the very day after his arrival, while every one was having luncheon, rather than stay an hour longer in the house, although he was not fit to travel.”

“Mysterious conduct on his part, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, part of his pride and independence, I suppose. Besides, why should he keep away? He doesn’t even know that I am going to be married to Miss Cranstoun.”

“Not when the fact has been announced in every society paper for the past fortnight?”

“I forgot that. But I repeat, little mother, his absence has nothing to do with my marriage, and his conduct in avoiding me hurts me very deeply--unless, indeed, it may arise from illness. But here we are within the Chase enclosure. Splendid timber, isn’t it?”

The Chase chapel had been unused, save as a lumber-room, for very many years. The Cranstouns were not a religious race, and the beautiful little mediæval building had been desecrated by being utilized alternately as a barn and a box-room. But for the masses of white flowers on the altar, there was no attempt at decoration, an omission accounted for by Lady Cranstoun’s recent death.

Round about the arched graystone doorway of the chapel the servants and retainers of the Chase were assembled, and a faint cheer went up as Lord Carthew helped his mother to descend from the carriage. The Squire was not popular with his tenants any more than with his domestics; he had an absolute genius, indeed, for making himself disliked by all classes among whom he moved. Still, he was all powerful in the district, and great interest was felt in the beautiful daughter whom hardly any one had ever seen outside the Chase enclosure. The crowd round the chapel doors was necessarily a comparatively small one, comprising, as it did, only the tenants of farms and cottages within easy distance of the house, and among them a little, wrinkled, aged woman, neatly dressed in a cotton gown, a shawl, apron, and large straw bonnet, was hardly noticed at first, each group supposing her to belong to some other in the party.

There was no way into the chapel save through the Norman archway, and to enter it from the house it was necessary to walk some yards along the terrace. Inside the little building, which smelt musty and disused, two clergymen were waiting: Canon Wrextone, who had been a college contemporary of Sir Philip Cranstoun, and the Rev. John Turner, of Grayling. The Canon was a stout, genial man of the world; the Vicar of Grayling, a pale, ascetic-looking man of middle age. In one of the few high oak pews, too, there sat his Grace the Duke of Lanark, the late Lady Gwendolen’s father, a tall, bent, old gentleman of seventy-five, in deep mourning, with the pallor of eld upon his face, which was almost as colorless as his snow-white hair.

The head of the house of Douglas had felt it to be his duty to grace by his presence the union of her whom he believed to be his daughter’s child with Lord Northborough’s heir, who himself had the extreme honor of being connected by marriage with the Douglas family. His duchess had not accompanied him, as she had an equally strong objection against the Chase and its master, and considered that a wedding so close on the heels of her daughter’s death was indecorous in the extreme. But Lord Northborough and the Duke were political allies, and the Earl had joined with Sir Philip in begging the favor of his presence. The old gentleman had therefore journeyed down, attended by his valet, who sat at some distance behind his master. The Duke was curious to see his granddaughter, of whose remarkable beauty he had heard with surprise. The Douglases had been plain for generations, and it seemed a little sacrilegious for a Douglas’ daughter to be beautiful.

But no eyes watched for the bride’s appearance more keenly than those of the little, wizened old woman in the neat cotton gown and straw bonnet. Her bent frame was actually quivering with excitement as she hung on her stick, with her piercing eyes fixed upon the entrance doors to the house through which the bride must pass on her way to the chapel. Stephen Lee, having received strict orders not to recognize his old relation, kept at some distance from her, attired, as were all the grooms, gamekeepers, stable and farmhands among the crowd, in his best clothes, and looking a handsome and attractive figure in his brown velveteen coat, smart corduroys, and gaiters.

In his secret heart he was profoundly angry, anxious, and unhappy. What did old Sarah mean by her promise to save Stella from a distasteful marriage, when here they were at the church doors, waiting for the girl to appear in her wedding-dress, and be married to this infernal whipper-snapper of a swell, whom he, Stephen, could have felled with one hand? What, too, had passed between Stella and Sarah in the course of that interview in the woods last night, and what was the meaning of that strange look he had seen in Stella’s eyes?

Sarah was up to some trick, that was certain, but of what nature he had no means of divining; meantime the chapel held already a duke, a countess, two ministers of the Church, and the young bridegroom, only waiting for Stella’s appearance to begin the ceremony.

At last she came, radiant sunshine falling down on her as she emerged from the doors on to the terrace, her fingers laid upon her father’s arm, towering over him in height, and looking, in her plain trained gown of white satin, taller and more commanding than she had ever yet appeared. Sir Philip’s face was set like a mask. It was impossible to say what were his feelings, but his cold heart in reality was aflame with astonishment, indignation, and rage.

Stella had kept him waiting in the hall, watch in hand; had then sauntered leisurely down the broad oak staircase in her wedding-gown, attended at a distance by the two frightened satellites, Ellen and Dakin, and by old Margaret, whose features wore a scared and troubled look. Miss Cranstoun had offered no apologies to her father for keeping him waiting, but had coolly crossed to where he was standing, and looked at him with shining eyes, in which some strange laughter seemed hidden, from behind her veil.

“What are you waiting for?” he had asked in his harshest tones.

“Your arm, of course.”

There was more than defiance, there was an insolence in her tone and manner utterly new to him. Nevertheless, there was no time to be lost in reprimands or punishments now. He dreaded beyond all things lest she might make a scene in church before Lady Northborough and the Duke. Her fear of him and constraint in his presence seemed to have vanished. Some subtle change had come over her state of mind toward him. She actually shook his arm impatiently as he stood a moment, pale with anger, regarding her.

“Get on to the church,” she muttered, roughly. “Don’t waste time.”

The grasp of her fingers tightened on his arm. This time it was actually she who was hurting him, as she clutched his skin through his coat. He glanced at her quickly, and then at the faces of the women behind her. The idea which possessed their brains entered his also, and he asked himself whether grief and harsh treatment could have temporarily deprived his daughter of her reason.

As Sir Philip led the bride along the terrace toward the church door, a murmur of admiration ran through the crowd. Her face had lost its pallor; through the tulle veil a bright color showed in her cheeks, and contrasted with the intense purple-blue of her restless, gleaming eyes. Two persons her gaze sought in the crowd about the doors. First they lighted upon old Sarah Carewe, and that look in her eyes which was almost a smile deepened and broadened. Next, her gaze sought out Stephen Lee, and seemed to read in one piercing glance, as she passed close to him, the hopeless passion for her which consumed him. As though by accident, she dropped her lace handkerchief at the church door. One or two persons among the crowd pressed forward to pick it up, and among them Stephen, who, as he transferred it to the bride’s hand, felt, to his utter astonishment, that she had slipped a piece of paper into his fingers.

Speechless with amazement, he watched her enter the church; the doors were clanged to behind her, and every eye was fixed upon her as she walked proudly up the aisle, leaning on her father’s arm. Lady Northborough could hardly refrain from a little cry of admiration. Her son’s description had prepared her for something ethereal, thin and pale to a fault; but this queenly young creature, with the proud little dark head, the perfect figure, and startlingly brilliant coloring, was no subject for pity, but rather for wondering admiration.

“Gad! Where did the girl get her good looks from?” muttered the old Duke, who had occasionally an awkward habit of thinking aloud.

As to Lord Carthew, he was enraptured by the alteration for the better in his lovely bride’s appearance. The strange restlessness of her glances he attributed to her natural nervousness, which caused her also to whisper and mumble the necessary responses in the service with even less than the ordinary bride’s accuracy. Sir Philip, watching his daughter closely, felt every moment more convinced that the girl’s brain and memory were momentarily clouded. She stared about her without reverence, but with evident curiosity, during the service, to which she paid not the slightest attention, and her bridegroom especially she continually regarded with a kind of amused wonder, as some specimen of humanity the like of whom she had never seen before. But no one else seemed to heed her irreverent behavior or to note that strange look as of suppressed laughter in her dancing eyes, and Sir Philip drew a deep sigh of relief when the ceremony was over, and the signing of the book followed.

Here again a strange thing happened. The newly made Lady Carthew, after receiving with an odd little laugh the congratulatory kisses of her grandfather, the Duke, and the Countess, her mother-in-law, murmured that her hand shook so badly she could not hold a pen, and was with difficulty persuaded to scrawl “Stella Cranstoun,” in an almost undecipherable hand, on the page before her. Strange fears and fancies filled Sir Philip’s mind. Was her feverish color, her strange behavior, due to a partially paralyzed brain and nerves, he wondered. Still, she was Lady Carthew, and he had triumphed; but that strange likeness to her dead mother, which seemed so much stronger to-day than it had ever been before, troubled him, and that incomprehensible laugh in her eyes.

“I wish Carthew joy of his bargain,” was Sir Philip’s mental comment. “But, in any case, she is in his charge now, and safely off my hands, so that there is no chance of that senseless old gypsy prophecy being realized.”