University of Virginia Library

24. XXIV.
THE BRIDAL.

After the funeral was over, and Kate Cunningham
had looked for the last time on the dead face of her
only brother, Mrs. Hereford, urgently seconded by
Dick, had insisted on her removal to their own residence.
Emmie could not be spared to remain with
her any longer, and Dick would not consent to her
being left alone, in that deserted home. It was not
good for her to be there, they could all see that. She
would wander listlessly from room to room, sit in his
favorite seat, smooth the pillows on his bed, and take
up his books, opening one after another and laying
them down again with an air of patient sorrow, which
it broke their hearts to see.

And so they carried her away from it all. The
room she shared with Emmie Hereford, in the home
to which she was welcomed as a daughter, was bright,
and sunny as Emmie's own face. Paper of a light
and cheerful pattern was on the walls, flowers were in
the windows, and muslin curtains, lined with rose-colored
cambric, aided to give it a cheerful look. The

family circle, too, among which she came, had just that
happy, cheerful cast which was needed to restore the
tone of her mind. Now that Warren was once more
with them, Mrs. Hereford thought she had nothing
left for which to wish. His brilliant and successful
plea, and the circumstances attending it, had already
established his reputation among the members of his
own profession, and surrounded by those who had
loved him from infancy, his heart forgot its loneliness,
and he was happier than he had been for years. The
family sitting-room, “Sunbeam's room,” as they called
it, where they all assembled of an evening, remained
just as Simon had originally arranged it, save that
Dick had added, for Kate's accommodation, another
little chair and table, the counterpart of Emmie's own.
Here Simon came often of an evening, and found good,
motherly Mrs. Hereford; sweet, patient Mabel; Kate
in her haughty, womanly beauty, looking in her deep
mourning robes a little less proud and defiant than of
old; Warren, with his thoughtful, earnest look; Dick,
subduing his light-heartedness into tenderest care and
sympathy for his betrothed; and the one face which to
his eyes seemed so much fairer and sweeter than all,
her whom he had long ago called “Little Sunbeam.”

It was impossible to bear a heavy heart among
such cheerful and innocent happiness, and ere long
Kate Cunningham felt the weight being gradually
lifted from her soul. She chided herself when she

first discovered this. It seemed to her like injustice
to the memory of the dead, and stretching forth her
hand, she pushed back untasted the cup of pleasure,
and folded closer to her heart the old, desolate sorrow.
But it seemed to be gradually stealing away
from her while she slept, for each morning, as the
spring days grew longer, the first sun-rays stealing
through the muslin window-curtains, and making
meshes of light in her tangled curls, awoke her to a
fresher and more exultant sense of the young life
within.

But one evening, it was a sobbing April storm.
A long day, turbulent with rain, had gone down amid
clouds and darkness. It was twilight. One great
cloud canopied the sky from pole to pole. There was
not a single streak of blue, not one star hung out as a
night-lamp to point the way to Heaven. There had
been a lull, in which the wind had sobbed and wailed,
like the despairing cry of a human soul, and now the
storm burst forth again. Like grape-shot it rattled
against the windows, faster and ever fiercer, as it would
seem to retreat, and then come rushing up again to
the encounter. There was no light in the room, save
the bright glow from the blazing coal fire, and it
revealed the outline of Kate Cunningham's superb
figure dimly traced against the window pane. She had
flung back her long black curls, and they fell down
over her shoulders, mingling with the folds of her

mourning dress. Her hands were folded together,
and her great, mournful eyes looked out into the storm.
Mrs. Hereford was in another room, Mabel sat rocking
slowly back and forth, in a low chair before the fire,
repeating now and then snatches of hymns about
saints and martyrs. At a little distance sat Emmie,
mournfully watching her friend, but yet not daring to
interrupt her solemn reverie.

After a time, Kate turned toward her, pushing
the curls still farther from her pale brow. “It was
just such a night, Emmie,” she said in a low, yet
intense tone, “when he came home after he had committed
that forgery. He told me afterward that the
winds shrieked `forger' in his ear all the way. Oh, how
wet he was. I made him go to bed, and the next day
he was so sick, and he never got quite well again.
Didn't he suffer enough in this world; answer me
that?”

But Emmie dared not speak to her, in this mood
of sorrowful yet fierce excitement, and she exclaimed
more earnestly, “Why don't you answer? You all
hate him, and despise him; I know you do, and you
will not comfort me. Why don't you tell me he is
happy?”

“Kate,” it was Mabel's calm, steady voice which
spoke, “come away from that window, please, and
kneel down here beside my chair in the firelight.” It
was so seldom Mabel expressed a wish, and she was so

loved and reverenced in the household, that even Kate
Cunningham in her wildest moods was accustomed to
render her implicit obedience, so she went and knelt
down beside her on the carpet. The blind girl
threaded those masses of curls with her fingers, and
then she said, in a grieved tone, “Kate, you have hurt
me very much. Do you not love our Father in
Heaven, and where Love is should not Faith and Trust
walk beside her? Do you fear to trust Harry in His
hands, who died for his enemies? This impatient
sorrow is very wrong. You have love to bless you;
such passionate, absorbing love as may never be the
blind girl's portion. Is not Dick more to you than
even Harry ever was, and yet you murmur. Even I,
who cannot look upon a loved one's face, who cannot
see the stars nor the sunshine, and who can never listen
to love words from mortal lips, save the love of kindred,
yet sit by the fireside grateful, happy; and you,
rich in all those things for which my soul might long
in vain for ever, look forth into the storm and murmur!”

“I was wrong. Forgive me!” The rich voice
was penitent and tearful as the tones of an humbled
child, and the proud head was bowed in a passion of
tears on the gentle Mabel's lap. From that hour no
word of mourning or repining fell from Kate Cunningham's
lips. She wore a smile of hopeful resignation
that night when she greeted her betrothed, and

all that long, stormy evening, she sat beside him, with
her hand clasped in his, meekly, lovingly, all her pride
humbled, and her grief softened; as gentle as a three
year child.

Mabel's favorite position was by Warren's side,
her head lying upon his breast. She had been parted
from him so many years, that it was a perpetual delight
to touch him, to assure herself of his presence, to
realize thus that he was come back again, to be once
more her own brother. She reminded him, painfully,
at first, of his lost Grace, with her blue eyes, and the
pale gold of her hair, but gradually the resemblance
grew to be a pleasure, half tearful it is true, but yet
so exquisite, he would not have relinquished it for
worlds.

“Well, mother, congratulate me, I am a rich man,”
said Dick, coming home one evening in early June.
His mother smiled. “Ah,” he cried, gayly, “you
needn't look so incredulous, it's quite true, and I
brought along that sober-faced Warren to add the
weight of his testimony to mine. My employers called
me into their private room this morning, and told me
they felt that that unfortunate suit last spring must
have wounded me deeply, and they had wished to have
it in their power to make some amends; they had
always found me faithful and capable, and had concluded
to offer me a share in their business. It would
be many times more advantageous, they said, than my

present situation, and the only capital I need bring
was my talents. Of course I could only thank them,
in a gratitude altogether more sincere than eloquent.
They told me I might dispose as I pleased of my present
post of chief bookkeeper.

“What did you do with it?” asked Emmie,
eagerly.

“What do you think, Sunbeam? I gave it to
Mr. Ezekiel Sharpe. I knew he was a good bookkeeper,
and faithful to the firm, notwithstanding his
hatred to me, and I fancied he might like me better
after getting the situation which was so long the object
of his ambition. But where is Kate? Mr. S. spoke
so kindly about my prospect of entering into another
partnership, and they are desirous I should live in a
style suitable to the reputation of the firm, so the poor
errand-boy that was can give his bride a sumptuous
Up-Town residence after all?”

“You are my good boy, always,” said his mother,
kissing him with glistening eyes. “Kate is in the garden,
and I wish you God speed in your errand.”

It took many a prayer, many an entreaty to persuade
Kate to become a bride, so soon after the death
of her only brother. But Dick set before her how
long and how patiently he had already waited, how
many years he had loved her faithfully and well, and
at last he won a blushing, half-reluctant consent to the
early day he wished to name.

Emmie was to be bridesmaid, and Dick begged
that Simon might be invited to stand with her, he was
such an old friend. Kate consented, on condition
that Dick himself should superinted the manufacture
of a suit of clothes for that worthy individual, not
more than one inch too short at the wrists and ankles,
and that she might also have Mabel, to whom her
heart clung with peculiar tenderness. And so Warren
Hereford writing to invite his friend Percy to attend
the nuptials, added, “Mabel my sister is sweet, fair,
and graceful. Could you go to the altar with a blind
girl on your arm, without too great a sacrifice of pride?
Will you attend her as groomsman?”

And Percy Douglass answered it in person. At
the first glance, his artistic eye was charmed with the
perfectness of Mabel's features, and the pure, spiritual
cast of her young face. He said he could almost
fancy one of Titian's saints had stepped out of its
frame, to come among mortals. The low, sweet tones
of her voice were just suited to her face and figure, and
altogether there was a beautiful harmony about her so
that she charmed him like some saintly painting, or
some of Haydn's sublime yet low and soothing church
music.

The group standing before the altar of Holy
Trinity, on that bridal morning, would have been deeply
interesting even to a stranger. The young bride,
youngest of them all, yet so haughty in the carriage

of her dainty head, and her queenly step; so beautiful
with her irregular, piquant features, her flushed
cheeks, her hazel eyes, and crimson-threaded lips, and
the raven curls that shone through the misty folds of
her vail; so touchingly humble and gentle in the timid
glance she lifted now and then to the proud face bending
over her; so unstained in her woman's truth and
purity,—the groom, handsome, protecting, manly,—
Emmie in her simple, muslin robe, with her sunny face,
her smoothly braided brown hair, and her loving
brown eyes,—Simon, with the new garments, whose
extra length seemed an awkward encumbrance of
which he hardly knew how to dispose, with his ungainly
figure, and his irascible hair,—Mabel, with her
swaying form, her lily-like grace and purity,—Percy,
dreamy-eyed, ardent, in a word artist-like; and standing
near them Warren, with his mother on his arm,
her thoughts going back to the quiet little English
church where her own bridal vows were plighted, in
her vanished spring-time of youth and loveliness,
listening to a voice which had long been singing with
the angels; and his, making pictures of past scenes,
and dreaming about how bright had risen over his
own path the stars of hope and love, which had gone
down in night.

Bridals are always solemn, where the heart goes
with the hand; where the young, beautiful life is offered
up in meek trust and lovingness at the shrine of the

heart's worship. The sun-rays floated through the
stained glass windows, making the shadow of a cross
on Mabel's young, bowed head, and resting like a
crown of glory on the dark curls of the bride.
There was a silent prayer, trembling upward from
each quivering lip, and then rising they walked
down the aisle. Drawing the hand he held through
his arm, Dick bent downward to look in the hazel eyes
of his Kate, and whispered for the first time, those
sweet, fond words, “My wife.”

The bridal home, where they were to spend the
first day, was situated very pleasantly, in a fashionable
street. It was furnished with unostentatious
elegance. The paintings and statuary had been
Percy Douglass' bridal gift, and from the firm, into
whose number he had so recently been admitted, Dick
received a massive and elegant service of plate, marked
with the name of his bride. One little room opening
into the conservatory, was the gem of the whole
house, and Dick had furnished it for his wife's morning
room. In the golden-wired cage by the window,
a mocking bird was pouring forth his soul in song.
Vases of rare and costly flowers filled the air with
their fragrance; elegantly bound copies of the young
bride's favorite authors stored the shelves of a rosewood
book-case, and every little fancy of her capricious
nature had been minutely studied in its arrangement.

They went there alone, while the rest of the
party were examining the mansion.

For the first time that day Kate's eyes filled with
tears. Going up to his side, she laid her head with
child-like simplicity upon his arm, and said, “You
are very good to me, my husband,” and Dick, holding
her to his heart, in his arms, as he had longed to hold
her from the first hour he looked upon her beauty,
was silent in the fulness of his great joy.

Driving with the bridal cortége up Broadway,
Warren Hereford saw a familiar face. A carriage
closely shut drove by him, and looking through its
window Juno Clifford's reproachful eyes fell upon
him, sitting at his own true mother's side. There was
a look about that face which his heart ached to see; a
desolate, weary, forsaken look, as if earth had nothing
left worth living for, and yet her eyes were veiled that
she could not gaze toward Heaven. The two carriages
passed each other very slowly. He could see the
quadroon crouched in the corner, with the old look on
her dusky face; he could note the impatient movement
with which Juno pushed back the hair from her brow,
and the strained, eager glance with which her eyes
followed him. It recalled all her old love for him,
the tenderness which had so blessed his boyish life,
and the passionate idolatry which at length had driven
him from her side. He longed to go to her, to offer to

be her son once more; to pour out in one gush of eloquent
words, all his past love for her, all his grateful
remembrance of her kindness; but other duties were
upon him now, and he passed and made no sign.

She had heard of him in New York, and had purchased
a sumptuous mansion there, with the sole hope
of once more looking upon that face so madly and so
vainly loved. And now she had seen him. She gave
orders to be driven home. She went into her own room,
and sat down alone with the spectres of the past. So
many years she had wished John Clifford dead, for
this, for this. He had gone back now, this brave,
young lover, to the friends from whom she bought him
in his poverty-stricken boyhood. He had rewarded
her love with his cold scorn, and yet she loved him
still; that one look from his earnest eyes had thrilled
her heart as no other one's glance had done in all
her lifetime.

She smiled bitterly at her own folly. In a frantic
self-contempt, she tore the jewels from her hair; the
folds of lace and muslin from her heart. She abandoned
herself to a paroxysm of despair. She gnashed
her beautiful teeth, tears rained from her proud eyes,
and then, looking backward, she cursed him bitterly
under her breath.

That evening she went forth from her lonely room,
jewels flashing in her tresses, gleaming on her arms,
and burning on her bosom. Her eyes sparkled with

mirth, her lips were wreathed with smiles, and proud
Up-Town condescended to wonder at her toilette so
unequalled in its richness, and her stately beauty.

Many times after that Warren met her carriage in
his daily walks. The haughty, despairing face would
be pressed against the pane, the servant crouching in
the corner would look at him with her eyes of fire,
and so they two, who had shared one home so long,
who had so loved, and so parted, lived on in the same
city, and never spoke.