Chapter XIII: The Meeting

“The staring madness, when she wakes, to find
That which she has loved—must love—is not that
She meant to love—
There is a desolation in her eye
He cannot bear to look on—for it seems
As though it eats the light out of his own.”—_Festus._

The day at length came upon which St. Gerald Ashley and his young bride, with their attendants, were expected to arrive at Ashley Hall. Early in the afternoon, the carriage had been sent to the village to meet them; and in the evening all the members of the family were assembled in the drawing-room, to await them. Many of the country gentry, who had been invited to meet the bridal party, had joined the circle in the course of the evening, and the rooms were now quite full. Among the guests present were the Right Honourable W—— R——, then Governor of the State; Judge M——, of the Supreme Court; and a few others, high in state or national authority, whose distinguished names are now historical. But there was no one present so proud or happy as old Colonel Ashley, who walked about gently rubbing his hands, in the simple gleefulness of his country heart and habits.

The carriage was behind time; for the reason, it was rumoured, that the bride and her attendants chose to rest an hour or two at the village. At length, however, the welcome wheels were heard to roll up to the door, and the travellers to alight and enter the hall. They retired to change their dresses before entering the drawing-room. In the meantime, among the country neighbours in the saloon, all was half-subdued excitement and expectancy. Among the company was Mark Sutherland, of course. He was not one to shade with his dark brow the brightness of other people’s gaiety. In the social temper of youth, he had sought to enter into the spirit of the time, and had laughed and jested with the young people, or “talked politics” with the elders, as the case demanded. He had heard the slight, subdued bustle in the hall, incident upon the arrival of the bridal party; and the instant absorption of the whole heart of the assembled company, in the interest of the moment, had left him free. He had stood a few moments quite alone and unobserved, when a slight tremulousness of the air near him, a slight disturbance of his own serenity, caused him to look up.

Rosalie Vivian was standing near him, with a deprecating, imploring look and gesture. Her face was white as the white crape dress she wore, and her wreath of snow drops quivered with the trembling of her frame.

Startled by her appearance, he asked hurriedly—“Dear Rosalie, has anything happened? What is the matter?”

“I ought to have told you before! _Some_ of us ought to have told you! _I_ ought to have done so!” she answered, somewhat vaguely and wildly.

“Told me _what_, dear Rosalie? What is it?”

“Give me the support of your arm into the next room—there is no one there.”

“My child, you are not well!” said Mark, looking at her now with painful anxiety, as he drew her hand through his arm.

“I am not _good_, you ought to say. I have not been good! I have been a coward! I have not been your friend, Mark! I have been a traitor.”

“A traitor! Rosalie, you rave!”

“I ought to have told you any time this month past; but I could not _bear_ to do it. And now it is scarcely any use at all; it is a mockery to tell you. But yet, indeed, I could not bear to see you standing there, so gay and unsuspicious. I could not bear to think how you would lose your self-command in _her_ presence. No, I could not endure the thought, Mark!” she said, more and more incoherently.

“Rosalie, you are very nervous; you have over-excited yourself about this wedding. Come, let me get you something,” said Mark, drawing her gently through the crowd.

As they passed, the buzz of conversation increased very much, and “They are coming;” “The bride is coming;” “There she is;” “Hush,” &c., were the sounds that heralded the entrance of the bridal party, just as Mark Sutherland led Rosalie Vivian into the next room. He took her to a sofa, seated her, handed her a glass of water; but she waved it aside, saying, “I do not need it—I do not need it! It is _you_ who need strength and calmness now. O, Mark! I wish you had left the house when I advised you to leave it!” she exclaimed, her agitation becoming momentarily greater. At last, forcing herself to speak again, she asked: “Mr. Sutherland! Mark! Do you know the name of the lady whom St. Gerald Ashley has married?”

“Certainly,” said Mark Sutherland, raising his eyebrows in an interrogative manner.

“You do!” exclaimed Rosalie, greatly surprised—excited.

“Certainly I do! How could I possibly remain in ignorance of it?”

“You do! You know it! And yet you are so calm! Nay, indeed, I am afraid you are mistaken; whom do you suppose it to be?”

“One once betrothed to myself—my cousin India!”

“You know it! And you are not unhappy about it! Oh, blessed Lord! I am so thankful—so glad!” And Rosalie dropped her face upon her hands, and wept softly and quietly.

“Dear Rosalie, has all this disturbance of yours been caused by your sympathy with unworthy me?”

“I remembered how you suffered at Cashmere—I feared—I dreaded if you met her suddenly here—the bride of another—that”——

“Well, dear Rose! That”——

“Oh, I fear you think me very impertinent. If you do, you may tell me so; indeed, I shall not take it amiss.”

“Tell me your thought, Rosalie. Was it that all those old wounds would be re-opened? That all those sufferings would be renewed?”

“Yes!”

“Yet you see that they are not.”

“No, thank Heaven, Mark! But I cannot understand it.”

“Well, then, understand it now. The advent of my promised bride, as the wedded wife of another, does not disturb a pulse of mine, because, in _my_ heart—in any honourable heart—love could not long survive esteem, more than it could survive hope or duty, and because”—— Here his whole manner grew most earnest, most intense, and passing his arm over her shoulder, he drew her face towards his own, and kissing away the tear drops from her eyes, said, “Because I love this single tear of true feeling better than the whole heart of yonder selfish beauty!”

And now, if Mark fancied tears, he might have a plenty of them; for now they fell warm and fast.

“What is the matter, Rosalie? Why do you weep now?” asked Mark.

But she did not answer. He repeated the question perseveringly.

At last, sobbing softly, and smiling, and sighing, and blushing, and averting her face, she said, archly, “Juliet wept at what she was ‘glad of.’”

“Are _you_ glad, Rosalie? Tell me, dear Rose. Are _you_ glad that I love you more than all the world that I have chosen you the guiding star of my life?”

She did not, could not answer.

He repeated this question, also searchingly, perseveringly, only to hear her answer; and he bent his ear, and averted his eyes, and quelled the beating of his heart, to win her reply.

At last it came, with her face hidden on his shoulder, and in a tone scarcely above her breath—“I always hoped you would like me at last; I did not think you would so soon, though.”

“But are you glad—are you _glad_?” persisted the unreasonable man.

“Yes, _glad_,” whispered Rosalie; and in proof of her truth the tears rolled quietly down her face.

“And so am I! Glad, happy, hopeful, confident, Rosalie! There will be no more faltering, and fainting, and failing now! You have infused new life into me. That any gossamer girl should have the power to do this! Yet such is the case, Rosalie.”

“Am I such a gossamer?”

“You are very fragile, Rosalie.”

“‘Out of the heart are the issues of life.’”

They were interrupted, of course; people always are when they are very blessed. It does not suit “the rest of mankind” to leave them so. This time it was old Colonel Ashley, who really was happy enough in himself to have left Mark and Rosalie alone in their content, if he had known it. He came in with a brisk step, with his slight figure seeming slighter, his grey hair lighter, and his thin, rosy face fiercer than ever, with the effervescence of his joy. He advanced, speaking—

“Ah, Mr. Sutherland, you are here! I have been looking for you. What! will you be the last to pay your respects to the bride, and she a relative—though a very distant one, I suppose, of your own? Come, let me present you.”

“Does India—does Mrs. Ashley expect me?” inquired Mr. Sutherland.

“I imagine not!” replied the old gentleman, raising his eyebrows; “but that does not matter, you know. Come!”

Pressing the hand of Rosalie, before relinquishing it, Mark Sutherland arose to accompany Colonel Ashley to the front drawing-room, and to the presence of the bride.

They could not at once approach her, on account of the number of persons around her; yet the room was not so thronged with company as to prevent their having a full view of the bride and her attendants.

There stood India receiving the homage of her circle—her superb form arrayed in the rich and gorgeous costume that was so well adapted to her majestic and luxurious style of beauty. Her cheeks were mantled with a rich, high colour, yet this seemed not the carnation bloom of youth and health, but the fire of a feverish excitement. Her eyes were dark and brilliant, yet not with the light of innocent love and joy, but with the blaze of a burning and consuming heart.

“Come,” whispered the old gentleman; “it is no use to stand here waiting our opportunity; for we might stand all night, and those fools wouldn’t give way. Poor wretches!—just like boys peeping at a gentleman’s conservatory, where they know they dare not touch even a rose-bud. Come, we must elbow through that circle of dandies; gently, you know—gently.”

And suiting the action to the words, Colonel Ashley adroitly insinuated himself through the outer crowd and through the nearer circle, and into the very presence of the bride.

She was not looking towards the new-comers. She was listening to a gentleman, who, having apparently exhausted all other subjects of adulation, was now expatiating upon the rare and exquisite beauty of the bouquet she held in her hand.

Colonel Ashley and Mr. Sutherland were before her.

“Mrs. Ashley”——

She looked round.

“Will you permit me to present to you my young friend, Mr. Sutherland—a distant relative of your own, may I hope?”

Mark Sutherland looked up, caught her eye, and bowed deeply. But before he had had time to do so, before even the deliberate ceremonious presentation speech of the old gentleman was half over—at the very instant she had turned around, and her eye had fallen upon Mark Sutherland—a change, an appalling change, had come over her lovely face and form, like that which might be supposed to sweep over the face of some beautiful and fertile oasis at the sudden blast of the simoom, that buries all its luxurious beauty in the burning and arid sands of the desert.

As by the sudden smite of death, all colour was dashed out from her cheek, and all light from her eye. For a moment she stood and gazed, transfixed, unable to withdraw her stony eyes from his; then, with a sudden cry, as if some tightly-strained heartstring had snapped—the tension of her form relaxed, and she fell to the floor!

In an instant all was confusion. Raised in the arms of her father, Clement Sutherland—who, until that moment, had remained obscure in the background—the swooning bride was borne into the adjoining room, and laid upon the sofa, while restoratives were anxiously sought for, to be administered.

In the meantime, in the saloon she had left, only two persons—Mark Sutherland and Mrs. Vivian—understood the cause of her fainting. Various innocent conjectures prevailed, far from the truth. “It was the heat of the room,” thought one; “Over-excitement,” opined another; “Standing so long,” fancied a third; “The fatigue of her journey,” imagined a fourth. “Really, it was too inconsiderate in Colonel Ashley to oblige his daughter to receive company upon the very evening of her arrival,” complained Mrs. Chief Justice M——, a large, heavy person, fanning herself slowly. “I noticed her face was very pale,” said a sympathetic lady, drawing upon her imagination for her facts. “Indeed! but I thought it was very flushed,” interrupted a matter-of-fact individual.

All these various conjectures were expressed in low, almost inaudible tones; while, undisturbed and smiling, Mrs. Vivian passed among the company, and, as it were, moved upon the troubled waters of their half-suppressed excitement, and, with her mere smile of self-possession, restoring calmness and order.

Presently the door of the inner room opened, and the bride reappeared, leaning lightly upon the arm of her father, and attended by her husband and bridesmaids. She entered, and passed up the saloon to her former position. Several country gentlemen zealously drew forward a cushioned chair, and several sympathetic old-fashioned ladies approached, with inquiries and expressions of condolence.

Pale and weary, but smiling and self-possessed, Mrs. Ashley gracefully accepted the services of the former, and replied to the interested questions and comments of the latter.

“It was very ill-judged on the part of the Colonel, my dear, to subject you to the fatigue of a reception, just off your journey—very indeed,” said Mrs. Chief Justice M——.

“I do really think we ought to exercise the good taste of retiring,” whispered another.

Whether India heard this remark or not, she answered—

“I am not fatigued. We made but a very short stage to-day, and rested several hours at the next village. No; it was the warmth and closeness of the room. The windows are open now, and the effect has gone with the cause,” she added, smiling brightly, while at the same moment the consciousness of the first falsehood she had ever uttered in her life brought a warm though transient blush to her cheek, that resembled the returning glow of strength, and reassured all doubt.

After a little, the musicians began to touch their instruments, and soon struck up a lively quadrille air. The younger portion of the company gave signs of restlessness. Gentlemen hesitated, and then chose their partners for the set, and remained awaiting the motions of Mrs. Ashley. As hostess, it was her right to select any gentleman present to honour with her hand for the quadrille; and as bride, it was her privilege to lead off the dance.

When India became aware that all were waiting for her, she threw her eyes over the assembly; and the aspiring heart of many a youth beat faster when their beams lingered for an instant on him. But he for whom she looked was nowhere to be seen. At last, a smile of scorn and _self-scorn_ writhed swiftly athwart her lips, and her eyes suddenly blazed as their light kindled upon the form of one who came in at the farthest door. Quick as lightning flashed and fled the spasm of that face, leaving it serene and smiling, as she arose and met the new-comer, and said sweetly—

“My cousin Mark, will you honour me?”

And before the astonished man could bow, she had placed her hand in his, and he found himself by her side, at the head of a set that instantly formed around them.

India spoke and smiled with her usual charming ease, and danced with her usual grace and dignity.

And after the dance was finished, and her partner had led her to her seat, she detained him near her, toying with her fan or bouquet, talking of a thousand nothings. She presented him to her husband; and Mark Sutherland, of course, politely expressed himself pleased to form the personal acquaintance of one with whose public life and services he had been so long familiar, &c.

Throughout the long evening, India maintained a regnant self-control. And Mark Sutherland wondered at the seeming inconsistency of her conduct. He did not know, or he did not reflect, that in the first instance of surprise, her _nerves_ had—so to speak—got the start of her _will_, and so betrayed her; but that after once the will had regained the ascendancy over the nerves, it was able to control them.

Not again that evening did Mark Sutherland find an opportunity to speak with Rosalie. India detained him at her side, smiling, chatting, and in her daring audacity carrying back their recollections into scenes and times and places that suggested the parallel of taking lighted candles among open casks of camphine or gunpowder. Her indifference was too well attested to be genuine. But Mark Sutherland’s perfect calmness—real and thorough, as hers was assumed and superficial—assisted her.

The drama of the evening was at last over. The company had departed, the lights were out, and India found herself, for a few moments, alone in her chamber. She had smiled, and glanced, and chatted, and charmed all eyes and ears to the last. She had gained the privacy of her chamber—she had angrily, then fiercely, rejected the services of her attendant, and turned her from the room. And now, for the moment, she was alone and free—the acting all was over—the mask might be laid aside—the miserable victim of pride might seem the wretch she really was.

And oh! the fearful change that came over that beautiful but agonized face when the mask of smiles fell! She threw herself, all robed, and gemmed, and wreathed, as she was, prostrate upon the bed—her form convulsed, her bosom heaving with the suffocating anguish, which, from its very excess could not be vented.

“False! false! false!” she wailed. “False to Mark! false to my husband! falser than all, to myself! Lost! lost! lost! Lost, body, soul, and spirit! Would that I could die!”

A light, gay footstep on the stairs, a low, love-tuned voice near the door, and it opened, and St. Gerald Ashley entered, with a smile of confiding affection on his noble face.

How will that erring woman meet his manly, trusting love?