University of Virginia Library

40. CHAPTER XL.
GETTING READY FOR THE BRIDAL.

ONLY once since Annie's death had Maude and
Edna spoken together of the suspicion, amounting
almost to a certainty, which had come to them both
as they watched Georgie Burton at Annie's bedside. Then
they had talked freely, and settling one point as a fact, had

wondered when, and where, and who, and had both repelled
the worst charge which can be brought against a woman.
Annie had been born in wedlock, they fully believed; but it
so, why so much reticence and mystery, they asked each
other; and did Roy know, or would he ever know the truth?

“Somebody ought to tell him, and I've half a mind to do
it myself,” Maude said; but Edna advised her to keep her
own counsel, as after all they knew nothing certainly.

Whatever Georgie might have been, she was greatly improved
since Annie's death, and even the servants at Oakwood
noticed how kind and gentle she was to every one
around her. She did not visit Leighton as much as usual,
and there was in her manner towards Roy a reserve, which
became her better than her former gushing style. And still
Roy was not satisfied, and often wondered at the feeling of
ennui he experienced in her society, and the satisfaction he
felt when he found her, as he frequently did, suffering from
headache, and unable to see him, leaving him free to go
back to Miss Overton, who never wearied him, but seemed
always fresh and new. Before he left New York he had been
a great deal with her, and he knew in his heart that the hours
he enjoyed most were those spent alone with “Brownie”
after his mother had retired. He had no intention of proving
false to Georgie, and he did not stop to consider the
wrong he was doing both to his bride-elect and Edna, until
his mother gently hinted to him that possibly he might be
doing harm by so much attention to Miss Overton. Though
nearly blind, she could judge pretty well of what was passing
around her, and could feel just how anxious and expectant
Edna was when Roy was not present, and how flushed and
excited and gay she became the moment he appeared, and
she raised a warning voice, and said it was not fair to Georgie,
that he ought to stay more with her, and less with Miss
Overton.

“Had you chosen Dotty first,” she said, using the pet
name which she had caught from Maude, and adopted as her
own. “Had you chosen Dotty, I do not think I should have
objected, for the girl is very dear to me; but you took
Georgie, and now I would have you deal honorably with
her, and not give her any cause for complaint, and, above
all, I cannot have Dotty harmed.”

She spoke more for Edna than for Georgie, and Roy saw
it, and wondered if it were true that Brownie cared for him,
or could have cared, if there had been no Georgie in the way.
There was perfect bliss for a moment in the thought that she
might have been won, and then, good, honest, true-hearted
man that he was, he said to himself:

“I have no right to lead her into temptation; no right to
run into it myself; I am bound to Georgie. I will keep my
vow, and keep it well, and Brownie shall not be the sufferer.”

After that there were no more interviews alone, no more
hours by the piano, or reading aloud to her from the books
they both liked best. Georgie had him all to herself, and
if ever man tried to get up enthusiasm for another, Roy tried
to do so for Georgie, and tried to make himself believe that
he loved her and could be happy with her. It was easier to
believe this in her present softened mood, and by being constantly
with her, and shutting from his heart that other, fairer
picture of a brown-eyed, sweet-faced maiden, he succeeded
pretty well, and was tolerably happy and content until Edna
went for the week to Rocky Point.

Then he awoke to the fact of all she was to him, and how
dreary Leighton would be without her. It had been a satisfaction
when returning from Oakwood to know that she was
at his home waiting for him. Very delightful, too, it had been
to have her opposite him at his table, pouring his coffee, and
making his tea for him, as she had done all winter, his mother
being now far too blind to see to do it; she had such pretty

little dimpled hands, and she managed so gracefully, and fixed
his coffee so exactly to his taste, that it was not strange he
missed her quite as much as his mother did, and hailed with
joy the day which brought her back to him.

He met her at the station himself. He certainly could do
so much, he thought, especially as Georgie was at home with
a nervous headache, and he had been sitting by her an hour,
bathing her head, and reading to her until she fell asleep.
He certainly had earned the right to go for Brownie, and
hold her hand a moment in his own, after he had lifted her
to the ground.

He did not tell her how glad he was to get her back; but
she saw it in his face, and felt it in his manner, as he drove
her slowly home.

It did seem like coming home, when Mrs. Churchill met
her with kisses and loving words, and told how lonely she
had been, and how rejoiced she was to see her again.

As they sat alone that evening, after Roy had gone to inquire
after Georgie's head, she recurred again to the forlorn
week she had passed, and said, a little hesitatingly:

“I seem to be nothing without you, and what I want to
say is this: I notice, sometimes, when Georgie is with me,
that you go out, as if you thought I would rather be alone
with her. I like her, of course, very much; but when she
comes, please let it make no difference; I want you with me
just the same. I am accustomed to you. I feel, somehow,
rested, when you are with me.”

Edna did not reply, but she felt a great throb of something
like homesickness rising in her heart as she thought
of going away forever from the gentle lady, who, she was sure,
did love, and would miss her so much.

Roy returned from Oakwood earlier than usual, reporting
Georgie better, and telling of a burglary which had been
committed the previous night, at a house up the mountain-road.

Nothing of value was taken, he said; but it showed
that thieves were around, and he charged Russell to be very
careful in securing the house.

“I would not like to suffer again, as we did in New York,”
he said; and then he told Edna how, years ago, his house in
New York had been entered, and a quantity of plate and
jewelry carried off, notwithstanding that Russell grappled
with the thief in the lower hall, and gave him a black eye, by
which he was afterward identified and brought to justice.
“He must have been a very ingenious villain,” he said, “as,
after he was tried, and found guilty, and sentenced to the
penitentiary, he managed to break out of prison, and is still
at large, and for aught I know, is the very scamp who robbed
the house last night.”

Edna was not cowardly, and forgot all about Roy's burglar
until the next day, when Georgie came over to Leighton, and
the story was told again by Mrs. Churchill, who had been a
little timid the previous night, and thought, once or twice,
that she heard something around the house.

Georgie was interested, and excited, and frightened.

“We had a burglar in our house once,” she said; “and
since then I cannot even hear the word without its setting
every nerve to quivering.”

“Then let's talk of something pleasanter,—those trunks,
for instance, which I saw in the express office this morning,
and which must have contained the wedding finery, eh?”
Roy said, playfully.

His allusion to the “wedding finery” was a fortunate one,
and diverted Georgie's thoughts from burglars to the beautiful
dresses which had that morning come up from New
York for herself and Maude, whose trousseau was purchased
by Mr. Burton himself, and was to be scarcely less elegant
than that of Georgie. Edna was to be one of the bridesmaids,
and Mrs. Churchill was having her dress made in

the house, and taking as much pride in it as if Edna had
been her daughter.

And Edna tried hard to be happy, and sometimes made
herself believe that she was, though a sense of loneliness and
pain would steal over her whenever she saw Roy riding down
the avenue, and knew where he was going, and that soon it
would be a sin for her to watch him thus. Charlie's grave
was visited oftener now, and the girlish widow tried to get up
a sentimental kind of sorrow for the dead, and to think that
her heart was buried with him, knowing all the while that a
hundred living Charlies could not make up for that something
she craved so terribly.

The bridal day was fixed for the 20th of June, and Edna
felt that she should be glad when it was over. She had no
thought, or even wish, that anything would occur to prevent
the affair, which was talked of now from morning till night in
Summerville, and was even agitating the higher circle in New
York; for many of Georgie's friends were coming out to see
her married, and rooms were engaged for them at the hotel
and every other available house.

And now but three days remained before the 20th. A
few of the city guests, Georgie's more intimate friends, who
were to be bridesmaids, had already come, and were stopping
at Oakwood; and on the afternoon of the 17th, they
went with Roy and Georgie to a pleasant point on the river,
where they had a little pic-nic, and dined upon the grass,
and made merry generally, until a roll of thunder overhead,
and the sudden darkening of the sky warned them to hurry
home if they would escape the storm, which came up so fast,
and so furiously, that the horses of the carriage in which
Georgie rode, frightened by the constant lightning and rapid
thunder crashes, became unmanageable, and dashed along
the highway at a rate which threatened destruction to the
occupants of the carriage.

“We are lost! we shall all be killed!” Georgie shrieked,
just as from a thicket of trees a man darted out, and, seizing
the foaming steeds by the bridle, managed, by being
himself dragged along with them, to check their headlong
speed, and finally quiet them.

“Thank you, sir. We owe our lives to you. Please give
me your name and address,” Roy said, but the man
merely mumbled something inarticulate in reply, and slouching
his hat over his face so as to shield it from the rain,
walked rapidly away, just as the other carriage driven by
Russell came up.

Roy's ladies were very much frightened and excited,
especially Georgie, whose face was white as ashes, when
Roy turned to speak to her, and who shook as if she had an
ague chill.

“I am so very nervous,” she said, by way of explanation,
when, after she was safe at Oakwood, Maude commented
upon her extreme pallor, and her general terrified appearance.

Through the blinding rain, which fell in torrents, she had
caught a glimpse of the stranger's face, as he sprang toward
the horses, and that glimpse had frozen her with horror for a
moment, and made her very teeth chatter with fear, and her
hair prickle at its roots. Then, as she remembered how
impossible it was for the dead to rise and assume a living
form, she tried to reassure herself that she had not seen
aright. It was a resemblance, nothing more; a mere likeness
which she in her weak, nervous state had magnified into
a certainty. He was dead, the curse of her life; she had
nothing to fear; she was Roy's wife, or would be in a few
days, and there was no lawful reason why she should not be
so. Thus she tried to reassure herself, until she became
more quiet, and dressed for the evening, and met Roy, when
he came, with a kiss and smile, and asked him in a rather

indifferent manner if he knew who the stranger was who had
come so bravely to their aid.

Roy did not know, but thought it very possible he was
some workman on the farm near by, though his appearance
was not quite that of a common laborer.

“Didn't he have queer eyes? Wasn't one of them
turned, or put out, or something?” was Georgie's next
query, and Roy answered laughingly:

“Really, you were more observing than I was. Why I
don't know whether the man had two eyes or four. I
only know that we owe our lives to him, whoever he may be.”

He did not tell her all that had transpired at Leighton
with regard to the stranger, or how, when he left home,
Russell was busy nailing windows which had no fastenings,
and barricading doors, and doing numerous things, which
indicated that from some quarter he was apprehending a
night attack upon his master's property. Russell, too, had
seen the stranger's face more distinctly than Georgie had,
and he could have sworn, ay, did swear, that he had seen it
before, and had his fingers on that throat down in the basement
of his master's house, years before, in New York.

“I know it is the same, and he'll be here to-night,
maybe, to try his luck again,” he said, to Roy and Edna,
who made light of his fears, and told him he was always seeing
burglars in the shade of every tree and around every
corner of the house.

Remembering Georgie's nervousness, Roy kindly suggested
that she should not be told of Russell's suspicion,
and so he answered her lightly when she questioned him of
the stranger, but felt a little startled when her description of
the disfigured eye tallied so exactly with what Russell had
said. He did not stay late at Oakwood that night, but returned
earlier than usual to Leighton, which he found
bolted, and barred, and locked, as if it had been some fortified

castle ready to be besieged; but Russell's burglar did
not make his appearance, a little to the disappointment of
the good man, who narrated to Edna the particulars in full
of his encounter with the midnight robber, who managed to
break away, and escape from justice after all.

“What was his name?” Edna asked, more by way of
saying something than because she was specially interested
in the subject.

“John Sand he gave, though we didn't believe it was
correct; we thought he took an assumed name to spare his
wife. They said he had one, a very handsome young girl,
and I think she was in the court-room when he was tried.”

Just then Edna was called away by Mrs. Churchill, and
Russell was left alone to think over the one adventure of
his life, his conflict with the robber, of which he was never
weary of talking.

What Georgie had endured the previous night no one
guessed. Tortured with doubts which nearly drove her
wild, she paced her room for hours, going over again and
again in her own mind all the evidence she had ever received
of his death, the his referring to the original of the
spectre haunting her so cruelly now.

“It must be that he is dead,” she said again and again,
and then as she grew more quiet, she calmly asked herself
what she would do if her fears proved true, and her answer
was, “If already married to Roy, I will abide by his verdict:
if not, if I know for sure before the twentieth, I'll kill
myself.”

There was a suicidal expression in her eyes as she said
this, and she had the look of a woman capable of doing any
thing if once driven to bay. It was nearly morning before
Georgie slept, if indeed that state can be called sleep, in
which so much of horror and fear is mingled as there was in
her troubled dreams.

She was very pale and haggard when she came down to
breakfast, and complained of her head, which she said was
aching badly. She had suffered a great deal from nervous
headache since Annie's death, and had sometimes expressed
a fear that she should one day be crazy. She almost looked
so now, with her unnaturally pallid face and glittering black
eyes, and Mrs. Burton, always alarmed when anything ailed
Georgie, made her lie down in a quiet, shaded little room in
the rear of the house, and then sat by her all the morning,
until Roy came and asked to see her. Then Georgie made
a great effort to shake off the incubus which had fastened
upon her, and dressing herself with the utmost care, went
down to her lover and friends, and tried to be merry and gay,
and felt a great load lifted from her spirits when Roy said:

“I think I have ascertained who our deliverer was. It
is a poor man living near the spot where we were providentially
saved from destruction, and I have charged Russell
to see him, and remunerate him properly. He has a large
family of children, I believe.”

“How did you hear who it was?” Georgie asked, and
Roy replied: “I saw a man this morning from that vicinity
who told me.”

After that Georgie did not longer doubt, and long before
Roy left her, her headache passed away and the bright color
came back to her cheeks, and one could almost see the filling
up of her shrivelled flesh, and the fading of the dark circles
beneath her eyes. Georgie was happy again, and that
night her sleep was undisturbed by troubled dreams, or horrid
dread of retributive justice overtaking her at the very
moment when the cup of joy was in her grasp and almost at
her lips.