The Unseen Bridgegroom - May Agnes Fleming (e books for reading .txt) 📗

rising and walking to the door. "You will lose no time. The poor child is, no doubt, in utter misery."

"I will lose no time. You must give me a week. This day week come back, if Mollie is not home, and I will meet you here."

Miriam bowed her head and opened the door.

"Mollie will thank you--I can not. Farewell!"

"Until this day week," Hugh Ingelow said, with a courteous smile and bow.

And then Miriam Dane was gone, flitting through bustling Broadway like a tall, haggard ghost.

Hugh Ingelow turned back to the window, his brows knit, his lips compressed, his eyes glowing with a deep, intense fire--thinking. So he stood while the low, yellow gleams died out of the western sky, and the crystal stars swung in the azure arch--thinking, thinking!


CHAPTER XVIII.

"SHE ONLY SAID, 'MY LIFE IS DREARY.'"

That same brilliant sunburst that transfigured the artist's studio in Broadway blazed into the boudoir of Mrs. Carl Walraven, and turned the western windows to sheets of quivering flame.

Elegant and handsome, in a superb dinner-dress of rose-bloom silk and pale emeralds, Mrs. Walraven lay back on her sofa and looked up in the face of her cousin Guy.

"Booted and spurred," as if from a journey, the young man stood before her, hat in hand, relating the success of their scheme. A little pale, a good deal fagged, and very anxious, Dr. Guy had sought his cousin the very first thing on his arrival in town. Mrs. Carl, arrayed for conquest, going out to a grand dinner-party, was very well disposed to linger and listen. An exultant smile wreathed her full, ripe lips and lighted the big black eyes with triumph.

"Poor little fool!" she said. "How nicely she baited her own trap, and how nicely she walked into it! Thank the stars, she is out of my way! Guy, if you let her come back, I'll never forgive you!"

"By Jove, Blanche!" said the doctor, bluntly, "if she ever comes back, it will matter very little whether you forgive me or not. I shall probably go for change of air to Sing Sing for the remainder of my mortal career."

"Pooh! there is not the slightest danger. The ball is in your own hands; Mollie is safe as safe in your dreary farmhouse by the sea. Your mother and Sally and Peter are all true as steel; no danger of her escaping from them."

"No; but they decline to have anything to do with my mad patient. It was no easy matter, I can tell you, to get them to consent to having her there at all. I must get her an attendant."

"That increases the risk. However, the risk is slight. Advertise."

"I mean to. I sent an advertisement to the papers before I came here, carefully worded. Applicants are to come to my office. Those who read it, and who know me, will think I want a nurse for one of my invalids, of course."

"You will be very careful in your selection, Guy?"

"Certainly. My life depends upon it. It is a terrible risk to run, Blanche, for a foolish little girl."

"Bah! Quaking already? And you pretend to love her?"

"I do love her!" the young man cried, passionately. "I love her to madness, or I would not risk life and liberty to obtain her."

"I don't see the risk," said Mrs. Blanche, coldly. "You have the cards in your own hands--play them as you choose. Only you and I know the secret."

Dr. Oleander looked at his fair relative with a very gloomy face.

"A secret that two know is a secret no longer."

"Do you dare doubt me?" demanded the lady, fiercely.

"No--yes--I don't know. Oh! never look so haughtily insulted, Mrs. Walraven. I almost doubt myself. It's my first felony, and it is natural a fellow should quake a little. But Mollie is worth the risk--worth ten thousand risks. If it were to do over again, I would do it. By Heaven, Blanche! you should have seen her as she stood there brandishing that dagger aloft and defying me! I never saw anything so transcendently beautiful!"

Mrs. Walraven's scornful upper lip curled.

"Lady Macbeth--four feet high--eh? 'Give me the daggers!' I always knew she was a vixen. Your married life is likely to be a happy one, my dear Guy!"

"Oh!" Dr. Guy aspirated, "if she only were my wife! Blanche, I would give all I possess on earth to know who that man is!"

"Indeed!" said Mme. Blanche, coolly. "Then I think I can tell you: it was Hugh Ingelow."

"Blanche!"

"I have no positive knowledge, you see, of the fact," went on the lady, adjusting her regal robes, "but an inward prescience tells me so. However, you may remarry her and welcome, Guy. I don't think she will hardly be tried for bigamy. The happy man, whoever he may be, will scarcely come forward and prove the previous marriage."

"And she loves this Hugh Ingelow?" the doctor said, moodily.

"She told that old lady so," Mrs. Blanche said, airily. "But, my dear love-struck cousin, what of that? To love, is one thing; to have, is another. She may love Ingelow, but she is yours. Make her your wife. Teach her to overcame that little weakness."

"As soon as I can settle my affairs," said Doctor Oleander, resolutely, "I shall leave the country. I have a friend in Havana--a physician. There is a promising opening out there, he tells me. I'll take Mollie and go."

"I would," replied Mrs. Walraven, cheerfully. "It's a nice, unhealthy climate; and then, when you are a widower--as you will be, thanks to yellow fever--come back to dear New York. There's no place like it. And now, my dear Guy, I don't wish to be rude, you know, but if you would depart at once, you would very much oblige me."

Mrs. Walraven stood up, walked over to the whole-length mirror, and took a prolonged and complacent view of her full-blown charms.

"How do you think I am looking, Guy?" languidly. "Rather too pale, am I not? I must have recourse to that vulgar necessity, rouge. Don't you think this new shade of pink lovely? and so highly suitable to my brunette style."

Dr. Oleander gave her a glance of disgust, took his hat, and turned to leave.

"I didn't come here to talk of new shades of pink, or your brunette style, either. Excuse me for trespassing on your valuable time, and permit me to wish you good-evening."

"Good-evening, cousin mine," Mme. Blanche responded, sweetly. "Come to-morrow, and we'll have another little chat. By the bye, how long do you expect to remain in the city?"

"Until I have engaged an attendant," answered the doctor, rather sulkily.

"Ah! and that will be day after to-morrow, at furthest. You will find dozens of applicants. Well, by-bye. Come again soon. I shall be anxious always for your success."

Dr. Oleander departed. His practice was extensive, and he had hosts of neglected patients to attend to.

Mrs. Walraven saw nothing of him all next day; but in the evening of the succeeding day, and just as she was getting very uneasy, Dr. Oleander entered, pale and fagged.

Dr. Oleander had spent a most harassing afternoon, his office besieged with applicants for that advertised situation. The number of incapables that thought themselves capable, and the number of capables who flatly declined the moment they heard they were to go down into the country, might have worn out the patience of a more patient man. And the capables willing to overlook the dreariness of the country in consideration of high wages rose up immediately and bid him good-day when informed the patient was a lunatic.

Dr. Oleander was driven to the verge of desperation, when, lo! just as he was about to give it up in despair, there entered an applicant who suited as if made to order.

The applicant--this "last, and brightest, and best"--was a woman of uncertain age, tall and stout, strong and strapping, and adorned with a head of violent red hair and a pair of green spectacles. Minus these two disagreeable items, she was a highly respectable woman, with a grave, shrewd face, and a portly person wrapped in a somber plaid shawl.

She stated her case. She had seen the advertisement, and had come to apply for the situation. She was accustomed to the office of sick-nurse, and considered herself fully qualified for it.

Her statement was plain and straightforward--much more so than that of her predecessors. Dr. Oleander was inclined to be pleased, despite the green spectacles.

"But I should wish you to go into the country--a very dull place indeed."

The applicant folded her cotton gloves one over the other, and met the doctor's gaze with composed green glasses.

"The country is no objection, sir. I'm used to quiet, and all places are alike to me."

"You have your credentials with you, I suppose?"

"I have, sir. Here they are."

She handed two or three certificates of capability to the toxicologist.

He glanced them lightly over, and saw that Mrs. Susan Sharpe was all that heart could desire in the way of sick-nurse.

"These are satisfactory," handing them back. "But I have one fact to mention that may discourage you: the lady--the patient--is insane."

Mrs. Susan Sharpe heard this startling statement without moving a muscle of her dull, white face.

"Indeed, sir! A violent lunatic, sir?"

"Oh, dear, no! merely insane. Subject to occasional fits of violence, you understand, but quiet generally. But even in her most violent fits she would be nothing in your hands--a strong, large woman like you. She is little more than a child in years, and quite a child in weakness. If you don't mind the dullness of the country, you would suit admirably, I think."

"I don't in the least mind, sir. The situation will suit me very well."

"I am very glad to hear it," said the doctor, immensely relieved. "We may consider it a bargain, then?"

"If you please, sir," rising quietly. "When will you want me to go?"

"To-morrow morning. By the way, Mrs. Sharpe," said the doctor, eying the obnoxious lunettes, "why do you wear green glasses?"

"My eyes are weak, sir." Mrs. Sharpe removed the spectacles as she spoke, and displayed a pair of dull gray eyes with very pink rims. "The light affects them. I hope my glasses are no objection, sir?"

"Oh, not in the least! Excuse my question. Very well, then, Mrs. Sharpe; just give me your address, and I'll call round for you to-morrow forenoon."

Mrs. Sharpe gave him the street and number--a dirty locality near the East River. Dr. Oleander "made a note of it," and the new nurse made her best obeisance and departed.

And, to inform Mme. Blanche of his success in this matter, Dr. Guy presented himself at the Walraven mansion just as the misty twilight was creeping out and the stars and street lamps were lighting up.

He found the lady, as usual, beautiful and elegant, and dressed to perfection, and ready to receive him alone in the drawing-room.

"I've been seriously anxious about you, Guy," Mrs. Walraven said. "Your prolonged absence nearly gave me a nervous fit. I had serious ideas of calling at your office this afternoon. Why were you not here sooner?"

"Why wasn't I? Because I couldn't be in half a dozen places at once," answered her cousin, rather