"Nevertheless, he will come for me on the twenty-fifth of November,"

said Maria.

"Long before that time you will be Mrs. Richard Spencer," answered her father.

"I declare to you, father, I will not. You may carry me to the altar, that is as far as you can go; you cannot make me speak. I will not say one word that makes me Richard Spencer's wife. I entreat you not to force such a trial on me. It will make me the town's talk, you also."

"Do not dare to consider me as a part of such a mad scene. Go to your room at once, before I--before I make you."

She fled before his pa.s.sion, and terrified and breathless locked the door upon her sorrow. But she was not conquered. In fact, her resolution had gained an invincible strength by the mere fact of its utterance.

Words had given it substance, form, even life, and she felt that now she would give her own life rather than relinquish her resolve.

In reality her confidence did her case no good. Mr. Semple easily adopted the opinion of his wife that Maria had invented the story to defer what she could not break off. "And you know, Alexander," she added, "those Gordons will be back before the date she has fixed this pretended lover to appear, and in my opinion they are capable of encouraging Maria to all lengths against your lawful authority. As for myself, I am sure Mrs. Gordon disliked me on sight, I know I disliked her, and Maria was rebellious the whole time they were in London. I wonder Richard does not break off the wedding, late as it is."

"I should not permit him to do so, even if he felt inclined. But he is as resolute as myself. Why, Elizabeth, we two men should be the laughing-stock of the town for a twelvemonth if we allowed a chit of a girl to master us. It is unthinkable. Go on with the necessary preparations. The Spencers living in Durham and in Kendal must be notified at once. The greater the company present the more impossible it will be for her to carry out her absurd threat. And even if she will not speak, silence gives consent. I shall tell the clergyman to proceed."

After this there were no more pretenses of any kind. Maria's reluctance to her marriage was openly acknowledged to the household, and her disobedience complained of and regretted. Among the two men-servants and three maids there was not one who sympathized with her. The men were married and had daughters, from whom they expected implicit obedience.

The women wondered what the young mistress wanted: "A man with such black eyes and nice, curly hair," said the cook, "any proper girl would like; so free with his jokes and his money, too; six foot tall, and well set up as ever I saw a man. And the fine house he is giving her, and the fine things of all kinds he sends her! Oh, she's a proud, set-up little thing as ever came my way!" These remarks and many more of the same kind from the powers in the kitchen indicated the sentiment of the whole house, and Maria felt the spirit of opposition to her, though it was not expressed.

She could only endure it and affect not to notice what was beyond her power to prevent. But she wrote to her Uncle Neil and desired him to see Lord Medway and tell him exactly how she was situated. In this letter she declared in the most positive manner her resolve not to marry Mr.

Spencer, and described the uneasiness which her stepmother's remark about "restraint" had caused her. And this letter, with one to Mrs.

Gordon, were the only outside influences she had any power to reach.

At length the twenty-eighth day of June arrived. The Spencer house was filled with relatives from the Northern and Midland countries, and in Maria's home the wedding feast was already prepared. A huge wedding cake was standing on the sideboard, and in the middle of the afternoon her wedding dress came home. Mrs. Semple brought it herself to Maria and spread out its shimmering widths of heavy white satin and the costly lace to be worn with it.

"It is sure to fit you, Maria," she said. "Madame Delamy made it from your gray cloth dress, which you know is perfect every way. Will you try it on? I will help you."

"No, thank you. I would as willingly try my shroud on."

"I think you are very selfish and unkind. You know that I am not well; indeed, I feel scarcely able to bear the fatigue of the ceremony, and you are turning what ought to be a pleasure to your father and every one else into a fear and a weariness."

She did not answer her stepmother, but in the hurry of preparations going on down stairs she sought her father and found him resting in the freshly decorated drawing-room. He was sitting with closed eyes and evidently trying to sleep. She stood a little way from him, and with many bitter tears made her final appeal. "Say I am ill, father, for indeed I am, and stop this useless preparation. It is all for disappointment and sorrow."

He listened without denial or interruption to her words, but when she ceased in a pa.s.sion of weeping he answered, "There is no turning back and there is no delay, Maria. You are very silly to cry over the inevitable, especially when both my love and wisdom decide that the inevitable is good for you. You will certainly be married to Richard Spencer to-morrow morning. Prepare yourself for ten o'clock. I shall come to your study for you at five minutes before ten. At nine o'clock Madame Delamy will send two women to arrange your dress. See that you are ready in time. Good night."

There was nothing now to be done in the way of prevention, and a dull, sullen anger took the place of entreaty in Maria's mind. "If they will set my back to the wall, they shall see I can fight," she thought, as she wretchedly took her way to her room. The beauteous gown was shining on her bed, and she pa.s.sionately tossed it aside and lay down and fell asleep. When she awoke it was morning, a gusty, rainy morning with glints of sunshine between the showers. She was greatly depressed, and not a little frightened. What she had to do she determined to do, but oh! what would come after it? Then she was shocked to find that the scene she was resolved to enact, though gone over so often in her mind, slipped away from her consciousness whenever she tried to recall or arrange it. For a few minutes she was in a mood to be driven against her will, and she fully realized this condition. "I must be strong and of good courage," she whispered. "I must cease thinking and planning. I must leave this thing to be done till the moment comes to do it. I am only wasting my strength."

Fortunately, she was continually interrupted. Coffee was sent to her room. Then the hairdresser arrived, and the women to robe her for the ceremony. She was quite pa.s.sive in their hands, and when her father appeared, ready to answer his "Come, Maria."

The parlors were crowded with the Spencers and their friends, and congratulations sounded fitfully in her ears as carriage after carriage rolled away to St. Margaret's Church. Mr. Semple and Maria were in the last coach, and his wife and the bridegroom in the one immediately before them. So that when they arrived at the church, the company were already grouped around the communion railing.

Maria felt like a soul in a bad dream; she was just aware when she left the carriage that it was raining heavily, and that her father took her arm and sharply bid her to "lift her wedding dress from the plashy pavement." She made a motion with her hand, but failed to grasp it, and then she was walking up the gloomy aisle, she was at the rail, the clergyman was standing before her, the bridegroom at her side, the company all about her. There was prayer, and she felt the pressure of her father's hand force her to her knees; and then there was a constant murmur of voices, and a spell like that which held her during her last interview with Lord Medway was upon her. But suddenly she remembered this fateful apathy, and the memory was like movement in a nightmare.

The instant she recognized it the influence was broken and she was almost painfully conscious of Richard Spencer's affirmative:

"I will."

She knew then what was coming and what she had to do, and those who watched her saw the girl lift herself erect and listen to the priest asking those solemnly momentous questions which were to bind her forever to obey Richard Spencer, to love and honor him, and in sickness and health, forsaking all others, keep unto him as long as she lived. She had but to say two words and her promise would be broken, her lover lost and her life made wretched beyond hope.

"But I will never say them!" and this pa.s.sionate a.s.surance to her soul gave her all the strength she needed. When the clergyman stopped speaking she looked straight into his face and in a voice low, but perfectly distinct, answered:

"I will not."

There was a moment's startled pause. Her father's voice broke it:

"Go on, sir."

But before this was possible Maria continued:

"I am the promised wife of another man. I do not love this man. I will not marry him."

Her eyes, full of pitiful entreaty, held the clergyman's eyes. He looked steadily at the company and said, "G.o.d's law and the laws of this realm forbid this marriage until such time as the truth of this allegation be tried." And with these words he walked to the altar, laid the Book of Common Prayer upon it, and then disappeared in the vestry.

Before he did so, however, there was a shrill, sharp cry of mortal pain, and Mrs. Semple was barely saved by her husband's prompt.i.tude from falling p.r.o.ne on the marble aisle before the chancel. Immediately all was confusion. The sick woman was carried insensible to her coach. Mr.

Spencer took his sobbing sister on his arm, and the guests broke up into couples. With hurrying feet, amazed, ashamed, all talking together, they sought the vehicles that were to carry them away from a scene so painful and so unexpected. Maria sat down in the nearest pew and waited to see what would happen. She heard carriage after carriage roll away, and then realized that every one had deserted her.

In about twenty minutes the s.e.xton began to close the church, and she asked him, "Has n.o.body waited for me?"

"No, miss, you be here alone." Then she took a ring from her finger and offered it to him: "Get me a closed carriage and I will give you this ring," she said, but he answered:

"Nay, I want no ring from a little la.s.s in trouble. I'll get the carriage, and you may drop into the church some better day to pay me."

She went back home in the midst of a thunderstorm. The day was darkened, the rain driven furiously by the wind, and yet when she reached her father's house the front entrance stood open and there was neither men nor women servants in sight. She ran swiftly to her room, locked the door and sank into a chair, spent with fear and sick with apprehension.

What had happened? What would be done to her? "Oh, to be back in New York!" she cried. "n.o.body there would force a poor girl into misery and make a prayer over it, and a feast about it."

A sudden movement of her head showed her Maria Semple in her wedding dress. She turned herself quickly from the gla.s.s, and with frantic haste unfastened the gown and hung it up. All the trinkets in which they had dressed her were as quickly removed, and she was not satisfied until she had cast off every symbol of the miserably frustrated marriage. But as hour after hour pa.s.sed and no one came near her she became sick with terror, and she was also faint with hunger and thirst. Something must be ventured, some one must be seen; she felt that she would lose consciousness if she was left alone much longer.

After repeatedly ringing her bell, it was answered by one of the women.

"I want some tea, Mary, and some meat and bread. What is the matter with every one?"

"The doctors do say as Mrs. Semple is dying, and the master is like a man out of his mind." The woman spoke with an air of distinct displeasure, if not dislike, but she brought the food and tea to Maria, and without further speech left her to consider what she had been told.

Oh, how long were the gloomy hours of the day! How much longer those of the terrible night! The very atmosphere was full of pain and fear; lights were pa.s.sing up and down, and footsteps and inarticulate movements, all indicating the great struggle between life and death. And Maria lay dressed upon her bed, sleepless, listening and watching, and seeing always in the dim rushlight that white shimmering gown splashed with rain, and hanging limply by one sleeve. It grew frightful to her, threatening, uncanny, and she finally tore it angrily down and flung it into a closet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIA LAY DRESSED UPON HER BED.]

But the weariest suspense comes to some end finally, and just as dawn broke there was a sudden change. The terror and the suffering were over; peace stole through every room in the house, for a man child was born to the house of Semple.

CHAPTER XII.

LOVE AND VICTORY.

This event was in many ways favorable to Maria. She was put aside, nearly forgotten for a month, in the more imminent danger to the household. And by that time the almost brutal pa.s.sion which in the first hours of shame and distress could think of no equivalent but personal punishment, had become more reasonable. For men and women, if worthy of that name, do not tarry in the Valley of the Shadow of Death without learning much they would learn nowhere else.

Still her position was painful enough. Her father did not speak unless it was necessary to ask her a question, her stepmother for nearly eight weeks remained in her room, and the once obsequious servants hardly troubled themselves to attend to her wants or obey her requests. In the cold isolation of her disgrace she often longed for a more active displeasure. If only the anger against her would come to words she could plead for herself, or at least she could ask to be forgiven.

But Mr. Semple, though ordinarily a pa.s.sionate and hot-spoken man, was afraid to say or do anything which would disturb the peace necessary for his wife's restoration and his son's health. He felt that it was better for Maria to suffer. She deserved punishment; they were innocent. Yet, being naturally a just man, he had allowed her such excuse as reflection brought. He had told himself that the girl had never had a mother's care and guidance; that he himself had been too busy making money to instill into her mind the great duty of obedience to his commands. He had considered also that the very atmosphere in which she had lived and moved nearly all the years of her life had been charged with a.s.sertion and rebellion. It was the att.i.tude of every one around her to resist authority, even the authority of kings and governors. If she had been brought up in the submissive, self-effacing manner proper to English girls her offense would have been unnatural and unpardonable; but he remembered with a sigh that American women, as a rule, arrogated to themselves power and individuality, which American men, as a rule, did not ask them to surrender. These things he accepted as some palliation of Maria's abnormal misconduct; and also he was not oblivious to the fact that her grandparents had for a year given her great freedom, and that he, for his own convenience, had placed her with her grandparents.