The Temple in the Sky - Fernando Herrera Jr (children's ebooks online .TXT) 📗

as if searching for something. He had no response to her question. Instead, he had a question of his own: “Daisy?”
“Yes, dear?” He knelt down behind her. She could see his reflection in the mirror. A long, tense moment followed, until finally, Daisy broke it by asking: “What are you doing down there?”
“I-I am asking you to-to marry me.” His voice trembled.
Daisy dropped her brush to the ground. She looked at her reflection in the mirror with a flabbergasted expression, then swallowed and turned to Jasper who was kneeling beneath her chin with an open engagement box in his right hand. He took the ring and dropped the box to the ground, then took her left hand and slipped her engagement ring off and replaced it with his. She inhaled deeply. There was a long pause once again. Birds chirped and leaves rustled into the bedroom through the open balcony doors. “Jasper,” she finally murmured.
“Marry me, Daisy. I love you.”
“Jasper?” she murmured again as she stood aghast for a moment. “Jasper! How dare you? Are you mad?” She began to gasp.
“If-if madness is what drives me to love you, then-then, yes... yes, I am-I am mad. I am m-mad... mad about you, Daisy. I’ve had this sort of madness malady which has poisoned my exuberance ever since childhood... and it has developed, Daisy... thereof forthwith like an irrevocable physiological disfunction... or illness, rather... yes, an illness which cannot and will not be cured... but can be treated... treated only by a very rare substance... a-a sort of elixir... a precious antidote that exists only on and by the surface of your beautiful lips. I need to kiss them every day until the day I die or else my soul will wither away into bitter nothingness. Marry me, Daisy.”
She glared at him with a sort of dread as he knelt so pathetically helpless under her chin with his fingers clinching to her skirt. He continued, “I’ve never loved anyone before. You are the only girl I’ve ever loved... and love like this I have for you does not happen twice. It is of the rarest kind. I may not know how to please a girl... yet. I never have before. But for you, my beloved Daisy, I have a god-given talent. I will be an amazing lover for you. Give me your lifetime to show you... to prove it to you. Leave that scoundrel of an imbecile named Scott. He is as dullard as a toad.”
Her breathing increased of tempo and her glare broadened. It seemed as though Jasper’s genuine terms had been futile. “You are speaking of the man I love! How-how dare you?! Jasper! I’ve never seen this side of you. Who are you? How could you?! Why didn’t you express your romantic intents with me before? These feelings, if genuine, were never conveyed to me in any way. It’s too late now! I’m getting married in days! Fool!” she paused and continued, “Either way, I don’t feel the same way as you in whatever way. I never will. I never have. We are not meant to be. No, I will not marry you Jasper Wilbur Covington!”
“Please forgive me. I didn’t figure you would go off and marry so soon. You’re so young. I always pictured us getting married as graduates. I thought you were brighter than a dilly to marry a simpleton like that. And are you even going to school anymore?”
She screeched as she struck his face with rage. “That does not concern you! I am getting married with the man I love and that’s more than you need to know!”
“But how could you be in love with that? Daisy, are you expecting? Is that it? Because if that’s the case I--”
She screeched. “You... bastard! How dare you judge me? How dare you judge me?! Who are you to judge me?! Did you ever consider my feelings? You barely even know him!” She was stifling with rage. “You’re mad--MAD! Get out! Get out of my room! Get out of my house! Now! I don’t ever want to see you again! I hate you! I hate you, Jasper!” She shrieked with such fury, her cheeks turned scarlet and tears filled her sockets. She slid the ring off and threw it at his face. It poked his eye. Jasper simply stood up and ran out of the house, never turning back and leaving the ring he had bought behind. As he ran across the front garden, he sobbed like a little girl as Daisy watched him leave the residence from her balcony. She was weeping upon the bannister.

A few days went by after the incident and Jasper and Daisy had not seen each other since. Both Jasper and Daisy had decided not to tell anyone about the incident. Jasper wanted to spare the embarrassment and though Daisy was furious at the irrationality of Jasper’s stunt, she was till very fond of him. They had grown up together, after all. In one way or another, they both loved each other dearly. Daisy had picked up Jasper’s ring after he left and was going to mail it to him once she got around to it.
A fancy wedding with a medieval theme was taking place on the lovely Sunday afternoon of the twenty second of May. “Don’t they make the marvelous couple?” Daisy’s mother whispered from the front bench to a stocky lady sitting next to her. “Oh, most certainly, they do,” the lady replied, wiping a tear from her eye with a handkerchief. Jasper had not attended. Daisy noticed.
The priest continued the ritualistic ceremony: “Wilt thee have this Woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thee love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her, in sickness and in health; and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live? 

The man answered with a coarse voice: “I will.” 

 As she stood on the altar beside her fiance, potential husband to be in seconds, the priest uttered to her a very sensible question to which the paradigm of onerous answers she would have to reply: “Wilt the have this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt the obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”
She looked deep into the groom’s eyes as she heard the question evanesce by her ear. But a wishful teenage dreamer such as she had envisaged that question multitudinous of times. It had configured in her nous permanently like a physiological brand. All those years she had so easily assumed yes would irrevocably be the answer to the question every girl dreams with all of her heart to answer one lovely day with a magical yes, and the day when that dream should come true, she found herself to be a dumbfounded fool without a magical reply. If we are but fools in love, then that was her case as well; but she realized then, while looking into the emptiness of the cold eyes in front of her, that the lovely foolishness that had possessed her was not excited by him and most certainly not meant for him. His features were too plain and simple: a dull mug that was synthetically appealing, but that would inevitably become tedious to admire sooner or later: not one she would want to endure for a lifetime. His eyes were too beady, his lips were too pallid, and his skin was awfully coarse and pale--he was superficially a beautiful bore--but that wasn’t all--she also realized then and there that he really was an imbecile who was as dullard as a toad--he was boring even to be with--he could not make her happy until death due them part. That man was barely a figment and representation of a lovely aspiration she had dreamed once upon a teenage fantasy. High society had blinded her from real love because of its required criterion. He was actually a fraud committed to her by her voguish, worldly mother.
Ten seconds had gone by. An uncomfortable tension had aroused in the atmosphere of the chapel. Grunts and lulled coughs echoed through the long alley. She pictured Jasper standing in front of her in a tuxedo uttering the exact words he had that afternoon when she had so convincingly denied him. Those words had finally begun to sink in. She ran the childhood memories she shared with him through her mind and giggled. She smiled at the priest and then shifted it towards her mother who was sitting near by with a terrible expression, and lastly, at her groom as she murmured to him this: “I’m sorry I realize this now, but we’re not meant for each-other.” She paused for a moment and added with much emphasis on the not: “I will not.” She hopped off the alter and began to run as fast as her long dress allowed her to do so through a narrow chapel aisle, removing her shoes and lifting her dress above her ankles. Every single head turned, but her mother and Meredith were the only two who chased after her. Meredith reached her first because she had been sitting further back. She pulled on her dress and yelled: “Daisy! Are you mad?”
Daisy calmed her pace but didn’t stop. “If madness is what drives me to love, then yes, I am mad!” she said with laughter.
“What are you talking about? This is crazy, Daisy! Get back up there and get married!”
“I will, Mrs Covington. That, I will. But not today... and not with him. I am in love! I am in love! Can’t you see? I am in love! I love him. I really do. I was blind all of this time... but I can see it now as clearly as the sun... and I see him. I am marrying your son, Mrs Covington!” She ran away laughing.
Meredith halted and asked quizzically: “J-Jasper..? Why?”

Daisy ran across busy streets and through convoluted alleys, not really knowing exactly where she was headed to. She did, however, lose everyone on her trail. A taxi cab nearly hit her as she ran across another street. It stopped in front of her. She pulled the back door open and jumped inside. “13326 Chesapeake St!” she ordered to the cab driver. “Please!” she added. Twenty minutes later, the cab pulled up beside the curb of Jasper’s place. “Wait here, please. I won’t be long,” she said to the cab driver as she shut the door and ran to the front gates of Jasper’s chateau. The only thing left to do was climb over the tall gates. She found that climbing ten foot steel gates was quite the difficult task when wearing a long wedding gown. As she ran across the front gardens, she slipped a few times and dirtied her dress. Once she arrived at the front doors, she found them to be unlocked and made her way inside. “Jasper! Jasper!” she cried. The African maid arrived to the living room with a cloth in her hands.
“Madam? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you--” she asked.
“Jasper! Where is he?” she interrupted.
“Madam, he has gone. I believe to your wedding. By god, you are a mess, my dear. Look at you. You look like you’ve just arrived from my country. Let me clean you up.”
“No! I’m fine. I need to talk to Jasper. Please.”
“But he isn’t here. If he’s not at the wedding, well, I don’t know where he is, madam.”

Daisy had