CHAPTER XXV.

FORGED FETTERS.

Richard Raleigh entered the church door, and like one in a dream Lillian followed him. She was scarcely conscious of her own actions. Her brain felt numb and dazed; her heart beat low and feeble in her breast; she was faint and trembling, with a slow horror creeping over her which was terrible. Life stretched out around her like a bleak and barren desert, upon which no green thing ever smiled. The future--ah, she dared not look forward to the future, which held not a ray of hope. Forsaken, hopeless--the man she loved, upon whose integrity she had staked her all of faith and trust in her fellow-creatures, false--false and base.

The young heart quailed, as young hearts always do, at sight of such wickedness, and shrunk back appalled.

Her father’s slayer! Could it be possible? A personal affair, which had ended disastrously, between the dead man, her beloved father, and the man she loved, and whose promised wife she had been for one whole bright, happy day.

“To think of it,” she muttered under her breath, as she moved onward at Richard Raleigh’s side, “to think how nearly I had come to being the wife of the man who took my father’s life. Yet, oh, how weak and feeble I am! I who swore beside my father’s lifeless body to track his slayer down to his just doom. Yet now I shrink--I tremble at the very thought of betraying Jack Lyndon’s guilty secret to the world. And I find myself weakly upholding my own weakness. ‘My father is dead,’ I say to myself, ‘and to deliver Jack Lyndon up to justice would do Gilbert Leigh no good. It would not bring him back to life, restore to me my lost content, or make my father in that other world any happier to know that the man who took his life must expiate that crime upon the gallows.’ Oh, fool, mad fool that I am! It is because my heart--my weak, womanish heart--still clings to Jack Lyndon, and will not hate him as he deserves. But I must learn to hate him, or at least to be free from him even in thought. And I may as well consent to this marriage that Richard Raleigh proposes, since the hateful marriage is to be, and since by that alone I can secure Jack Lyndon’s freedom from punishment. And--ah, Heaven help me!--we are at the church even now. It is too late to draw back. The die is cast!”

They were ascending the steps of the sacred edifice in the pale, gray shades of the gathering twilight. Down the long streets upon either side lights were beginning to twinkle, and the electric light at the corner had put forth its round, silvery eye, and was winking and blinking derisively upon the passers below.

One swift glance toward the towering granite building which held the office of the “Thunderer.” She could see the office windows brightly lighted, and could even discern the dim outlines of a dark figure seated at the long desk, with bowed head resting upon one hand in an attitude of melancholy and dejection.

For just a moment a swift pang shot through the girl’s tender heart; but she shrunk from it and pushed it aside, as wicked and unholy. She seemed to lose all consciousness of time and place. A black doom seemed to threaten her; a cloud hung over her life which nothing could lift or move; voices sounded in her ear. She was conscious of some one speaking, then asking a question in a slow, solemn voice. Something impelled her to answer, to assent, and she did so. Dim lights danced before her eyes, which, “as in a glass, darkly,” could discern a tall form standing before her, and then--like a knell of doom--came the words: “I pronounce you husband and wife!”

Faint and trembling, she reeled unsteadily, and would have fallen but Richard Raleigh caught the slight form in his arms.

“Poor child!” she heard him say, softly, and his voice sounded more gentle than she had ever heard it before. “She is quite overcome. Her father has just died, you see, and she is weak and faint and ill from want of sleep. She has been nursing him, sitting by his bedside for many weary nights.”

Lillian lifted her horror-filled eyes to his dusky, devil-may-care face. Standing at God’s holy altar, he was telling a deliberate falsehood for which there was no excuse or palliation. Heaven help her! What manner of man was this--the man who even now was drawing her passive hand through his arm? while a soft, silky voice--a voice which she had never hated more bitterly than now--now, when her hateful chains were forged forever--was whispering in her ear:

“My own little wife! mine forever!”

Trembling like an aspen, she faced him, white and still.

“There is some mistake,” she faltered, slowly, putting her hand to her brow, and pushing back the thick golden hair, as though its weight oppressed her. “I--I--do not know--Oh, sir”--turning to the surprised clergyman with a wild, imploring gesture--“tell me, am I really and lawfully the wife of this man, Richard Raleigh?”

“You are the wife of Richard Raleigh,” he returned, quietly, “and may Heaven grant you all happiness!”

“Happiness? Ha! ha!”

The shrill, unnatural laughter resounded through the silent church, and the two supernumeraries who had enacted the rôle of witnesses shrunk back in wonder and surprise not unmixed with alarm.

Richard beckoned the clergyman aside.

“She is really ill,” he explained, “poor child! I will take her home to my father’s house at once.”

“And you are quite sure, Mr. Richard, that your father approves the step that you have taken?” queried the clergyman, gravely.

“You may set your mind at rest upon that score, Mr. Woods,” he said, deferentially. “Indeed, the marriage has my father’s hearty approval. Only we did not expect to be married this evening, and that explains the privacy of the affair. My poor little wife is quite friendless and homeless, you see, and it seems right that I should give her a home at once. Just hand me the marriage certificate, Mr. Woods. Ah, yes--thank you.”

And the folded document was placed in his pocket, a generous fee bestowed upon the clergyman, a present added for the witnesses, and then Richard Raleigh led his unwilling bride from the church. The eyes of the clergyman followed the pair, and an uneasy look crossed his fine old face.

“I hope and pray that there is nothing wrong in this affair!” he murmured, slowly. “I had rather die than be guilty of a wrong of that kind! I consider clergymen somewhat responsible in such matters. They have no right to perform the marriage ceremony when they know that they are binding together two lives where one is perhaps coerced into the compact. Ah, well! I will watch this case from a distance, and I trust to Heaven that all is well!”

Out upon the pavement, Richard Raleigh halted to summon a passing cab. His face was flushed with triumph; his eyes shone with a fiendish light; he was arrogant and overbearing in his manner. He saw the way to victory now, and there was no more need to fear. As they stood beside the curb, and waited for the cab to halt, Jack Lyndon, passing down the street on his way home to a six-o’clock dinner, saw them, and his face grew as white as death. He came to a halt. They had just left the church. Jack could see that, and a slow horror crept over his heart like a chill.

Just at that moment Lillian lifted her head, and their eyes met--met for one brief, fleeting moment, yet long enough to hold a lingering glance. It was to be a farewell.

“I shall know that look when we meet beyond this ‘speck of time,’” quoted Jack Lyndon slowly to himself, as he moved down the street and was lost to sight.

Then Richard Raleigh aroused Lillian from the strange stupor which seemed to have taken sudden possession of her faculties.

“Come, darling,” he said, in a low, persuasive tone, as the cab drew up to the sidewalk, “let me assist you into the cab, and we will go home at once. You look tired out, and this unexpected wedding of ours has been too much for you.”

She was shivering like one with a chill, as he placed her in a cab and seated himself at her side. They drove rapidly away down the street, and Lillian’s head fell back upon the cushion of the seat. Into her beautiful eyes a strange, wild gleam crept swiftly. She looked like one who sees before her an awful precipice or bottomless abyss, from which nothing can save or rescue her.

“Take me to the grave-yard!” she moaned; “I want to go to papa’s grave. Oh, Richard--Mr. Raleigh, take me there for just a few moments, and I will ask no more.”

“You must be mad!” he panted, harshly. “The idea of asking such a thing. Your father’s grave, indeed, and you not a half hour married! Lillian, upon my soul, I believe that you are going mad!”

A wild light flashed into the starry-brown eyes.

“Yes, I am going mad!” she repeated, bleakly; “I have no doubt of that. I must have been mad when I consented to marry you, Richard Raleigh, for my life is utterly ruined, and--”

He wheeled about swiftly upon the seat and placed his hand upon her lips.

“Hush!” he hissed, sibilantly; “I forbid you to utter another word of that, Lillian Raleigh! You are to obey me henceforth, remember that! If you are obedient and tractable you will be a happy wife, and shall never regret the step that you have taken to-day. But if you--you defy me--” he drew his breath hard, and his voice died away into silence.

The cab stopped before the Raleigh mansion, and a few moments later Lillian was upstairs in her own room, its door securely locked; while Richard sought his father in the library.

“Won at last!” he cried, triumphantly, as he entered the room. “Lillian Leigh is my wife, and the Raleigh fortune is safe!”

He came to a startled halt. In his haste, and the mad exultation which had taken possession of him, he had not observed that there was another person present beside Grafton Raleigh--a diminutive figure in seal-brown velvet and flashing diamonds; an arch, smiling face, with a glare of malice peeping from her bright eyes--Bessie Vernon.

He fell back with a stifled exclamation; then rallied his forces and greeted her with effusion. Ten minutes later he left the library, and stole upstairs to the door of Lillian’s room, and rapped upon the panel.

“Open the door, Lillian, please?” he pleaded. “Don’t be cold and angry with me, sweetheart! I want you to come down with me to my father.”

The key grated in the lock, the door flew open, and there upon the threshold, looking like a spirit, in a flowing white cashmere robe, with her golden hair coiled loosely about her graceful head, stood Lillian. Her eyes glittered feverishly; her face was pale as death, and resolute.

“We may as well come to an understanding now, Richard Raleigh!” she said, in a clear, icy voice. “I have gone through this farce of a marriage, but I hate you, hate you, hate you! I am your wife in name only, and I desire that you keep out of my sight. If your father wishes to see me, he knows where he can find me. I married you to save Jack Lyndon--the man I love--from an awful doom; but I loathe and despise you unutterably, and I shall never look upon you as aught but a snake in the grass--a man whom I can never respect--my bitter enemy. Go! I have no more to say. I am dead to you now, Richard Raleigh--just as dead as though the grave had closed over my lifeless form.”

Lillian Leigh’s wedding-day was a thing of the past, and what had it brought her? Only black, bitter misery and woe unspeakable.