Chapter V: The Bride

A Cunard steamer had landed its living freight at the wharf, where there was the usual scramble and confusion, as trunks and boxes were opened and angry, excited women confronted with their spoils by relentless custom house officers, bent upon doing their duty, unless stopped by the means so frequently employed upon such occasions. Outside the long building stood an open carriage in which a lady sat, very simply but elegantly attired, with money, and Paris, and Worth showing in every article of her dress, from her round hat to her dainty boots, which could not be called small, for the feet they covered harmonized with the lady herself, who was tall and well proportioned, with a splendidly developed figure, on which anything looked well. There was a brilliant color in her cheeks, and her brown eyes were large and bright and beautiful, but very sad as they looked upon the scenes around her without seeming to see anything. Nor did their expression change when she was joined by an elderly man, who, taking his seat beside her, said first to the driver:

“To the Windsor,” and then to her, “I was longer than I thought I should be; those rascally officers gave me a world of trouble, but we shall soon be at the hotel now. Are you very tired?”

The question was asked very tenderly, for Giles Thornton was greatly in love with his bride of a few weeks. He had first met her in Florence, where she was recovering from the long illness which had lasted for months and made her weak as a child and almost as helpless. During her sickness her hair had fallen out, and owing to some unusual freak of nature it had come in much lighter than it was before and not so curly, although it still lay in wavy masses upon her head, and here and there coiled itself into rings around her forehead. The Harwoods were staying at the same hotel with Mr. Thornton, and it was in the Boboli Gardens that he first met her as she was being wheeled in an invalid chair by her attendant.

“Will he know me?” was her first thought when he was presented to her.

But there was no fear of that, for Mildred Leach had passed as wholly out of his mind as if he had never seen her, and if she had not there was no danger of his recognizing the girl who had been his daughter’s companion in this lovely woman whose voice and manner and appearance were indicative of the refinement and cultivation to which for years she had been accustomed. To him she was Miss Gardner, an English girl, and during the half hour he walked by her chair in the gardens, he felt his heart throb as it had never throbbed since he buried his wife. He had loved her devotedly and had never thought to fill her place until now when love did its work at first sight, and when two weeks later the Harwoods left Florence for Venice and Switzerland, he was with them, to all intents and purposes Mildred’s lover, although he had not openly announced himself as such.

To Mrs. Harwood Mildred had said, “Don’t tell him who I am. I prefer to do that when the time comes. I am going to punish him for calling my father a peasant when you inquired about him. I heard him. I have not forgotten.”

And so Mr. Thornton went blindly to his fate, which came one day in Ouchy in the grounds of the Beau-Rivage, where Mildred was sitting alone, with her eyes fixed upon the lake and the mountains beyond, and her thoughts back in the old farm house, with her mother and Bessie and Tom and Hugh, of whom she had not heard a word for months.

“He has forgotten me,” she said to herself, “and why shouldn’t he? I was never much to him, and yet”——

She did not get any farther, for there was a footstep near; some one was coming, and in a moment Mr. Thornton said to her, “Alone, Miss Gardner, and dreaming? May I dispel the dream and sit beside you a moment?”

Mildred knew then what was before her, as well as she did half an hour later, during which time Giles Thornton had laid himself and his fortune at her feet, and what was harder than all to meet, had made her believe that he loved her. She knew that he admired her, but she had not counted upon his love, which moved her a little, for Mr. Thornton was not a man to whom one could listen quietly when he was in earnest and resolved to carry his point, and for an instant Mildred wavered. It was something to be Mrs. Giles Thornton, of Thornton Park, and ought to satisfy her ambition. With all her beauty and social advantages, she as yet had received no eligible offer. It was known that she had no money, and only an Italian count and the youngest son of an English earl had asked her hand in marriage. But both were poor, and one almost an imbecile, from whom she shrank in disgust. Mr. Thornton was different; he was a gentleman of wealth and position, and as his wife she would for a part of the year live near her family. But with the thought of them there came the memory of an overgrown, awkward boy, whose feet and hands were so big that he never knew what to do with them, but whose heart was so much bigger than his feet and hands, that it bore down the scale and Mr. Thornton’s chance was lost for the time being.

“Hugh may never be anything to me,” she thought, “but I must see him before I give myself to any one.”

Then turning to Mr. Thornton, she said, “I thank you for your offer, which I believe is sincere, and that makes it harder for me to tell you what I must. Do you remember a girl, Mildred Leach, who was your daughter’s little friend, as she called herself, for she was as proud as you, and would not be a maid?”

“Ye-es,” Mr. Thornton stammered, as he looked wistfully into the beautiful face confronting him so steadily. “I had forgotten her entirely, but I remember now. She left us to go with an English lady, a Mrs. Gardner. Why, that is Mrs. Harwood,—and,—and,—oh, you are not she!”

“Yes, I am,” was Mildred’s reply, and then very rapidly she told her story, not omitting her having overheard him liken her parents to peasants when speaking of them to Mrs. Gardner. “I determined then,” she said, “that if possible I would one day humble your pride, but if I have done so, it has not given me the satisfaction I thought it would, and I am sorry to cause you pain, for I believe you were in earnest when you asked me to be your wife, which I can never be.”

“No,” he answered slowly, like one who had received a blow from which he could not at once recover. “No, you can never be my wife; Mildred Leach; it does not seem possible.”

Then he arose and walked rapidly away, and when the evening boat left Ouchy for Geneva he was on it, going he cared but little where, if by going he could forget the past as connected with Mildred Leach.

“I cannot marry her family,” he said many times during the next few months, when he was wandering everywhere and vainly trying to forget her, for always before him was the face he had never admired so much as when he last saw it, flushed and pale by turns, with a wondrous light in the brown eyes where tears were gathering. “If it were not for her family, or if I could separate her from them, I would _not_ give her up,” he had often thought when in the following May he met her again at the Grand Hotel in Paris, where the Harwoods were stopping.

He could not tell what it was which impressed him with the idea that she had changed her mind, as she came forward to meet him, saying she was glad to see him, and adding that Mr. and Mrs. Harwood had gone to the opera. She seemed very quiet and absent minded at first, and then rousing herself, said to him abruptly, “You did not stop long enough in Ouchy for me to inquire after my family. You must have seen them often since I left home.”

“Yes,—no,” he answered in some embarrassment; “I have of course been to Thornton Park, but I do not remember much about them. I believe your father rents, or did rent, some land of me, but am not sure, as my agent attends to all that.”

“My father is dead,” Mildred answered so sharply as to make him jump and color painfully, as if guilty of a misdemeanor in not knowing that her father was dead.

“I beg your pardon. I am very sorry. I,—yes,—am very sorry,” he began; but she cut him short by saying, “Do you know Hugh McGregor?”

“Oh, yes. I know him well,” and Mr. Thornton brightened perceptibly. “He is my lawyer, and attends to all my business in Rocky Point; a fine fellow,—a very fine fellow. Do you know him?”

“Yes,” Mildred replied, while her breath came heavily, “I know him, and I hear he is to marry my sister Bessie.”

“Oh, indeed,” and as if memory had suddenly come back to him, Mr. Thornton seemed immensely relieved. “I remember now,—Bessie Leach; that’s the girl I have sometimes seen with Alice. Gerard taught her French,—a very pretty girl. And Mr. McGregor is engaged to her? I am very glad. Any girl might be proud to marry him.”

Mildred made no reply to this, and Mr. Thornton never guessed the dreary emptiness of her soul as she sat with her hands clasped tightly together, thinking of the man whom any girl would be proud to marry. A few months before she would have said that he was nothing more to her than the friend of her childhood, but she had recently learned her mistake, and that the thought of seeing him again was one of the pleasantest anticipations of her home going. There had come to the hotel a Mr. and Mrs. Hayford from America, who sometimes spent their summers at Rocky Point, where Mrs. Hayford was once a teacher. As Mildred had been her pupil, she remembered her at once, after hearing the name, and would have introduced herself but for a conversation accidentally overheard between Mrs. Hayford and a friend who had also been at Rocky Point, and to whom she was retailing the news, first of New York and then of Rocky Point, where she had spent a few days in April prior to sailing.

“Do you remember that Hercules of a lawyer, Hugh McGregor, whom you admired so much?” was asked. “They say he is engaged to Bessie Leach, a girl much younger than himself, but very pretty,—beautiful, in fact, and——

Mildred heard no more, but hurried away, with an ache in her heart that she could not quite define. Tom had intimated that Gerard was interested in Bessie, and now Hugh was engaged to her. Well, it was all right, she said, and would not admit to herself how hard the blow had struck her and how she smarted under it. And it was just when the smart was at its keenest that Mr. Thornton came again across her path, more in love, if possible, than ever, and more intent upon making her his wife. He had fought a desperate battle with his pride and had conquered it, and within twenty-four hours after meeting her in Paris, she had promised to marry him, and when her pledge was given she was conscious of a feeling of quiet and content which she had scarcely hoped for. In his character as lover Mr. Thornton did not seem at all like the man she had feared in her childhood, nor if he felt it did he gave the slightest sign that he was stooping from his high position. She had been very frank with him and had made no pretension of love. “I will be true to you,” she said, “and try to please you in everything. I am tired of the aimless life I have led so many years, and I think Mrs. Harwood is a little tired of me too. She says I ought to have married long ago, but I could not marry a fool even if he had a title. I shall be so glad to go home to my friends, although I am so changed they will never know me.”

Then she added laughingly: “Wouldn’t it be great fun not to write them who I am and see if they will recognize me?”

She did not really mean what she said, or guess that it harmonized perfectly with a plan which Mr. Thornton had in mind, and was resolved to carry out, if possible. If he could have had his wish he would not have gone to Rocky Point at all, but his children were there and Mildred’s heart was set upon it, and he must meet the difficulty in some way. He could marry Mildred, but not her family, and he shrank from the intimacy which must necessarily exist between the Park and the farm house when it was known who his wife was. In his estimation the Leaches were nobodies, and he could not have them running in and out of his house and treating him with the familiarity of a son and brother, as he was sure they would do if he did not stop it. If Mildred would consent to remain incognito while at the Park the annoyance would be prevented, and this consent he tried to gain by many specious arguments. His real reason, he knew, must be kept from sight, and so he asked it as a personal favor, saying it would please him very much and be a kind of excitement for her.

“Possibly you will be recognized,” he said; “and if so, all right; if not, we will tell them just before we go to New York in the autumn and enjoy their surprise.”

He did not add that, once away from Rocky Point, it would probably be long before he took her there again. He only talked of the plan as a joke, which Mildred did not quite see. She was willing to keep the secret until she met them, but to keep it longer was absurd and foolish, she said, and involved a deception, which she abhorred.

“I accepted you partly that I might be near them and see them every day,” she said, “and am longing to throw my arms around mother’s neck and tell her I have come back.”

“And so you shall in time, but humor my whim for once. You will not be sorry,” Mr. Thornton pleaded, and Mildred consented at last, and felt in a measure repaid when she saw how happy it made Mr. Thornton, whose real motive she did not guess.

This was the last of April, and six weeks later Mildred was Mrs. Giles Thornton, traveling through Scotland and Wales and trying to believe herself happy in her husband’s love and the costly gifts he lavished upon her. She had been courted and admired as Fanny Gardner, but the deference paid her now and her independence were very sweet to her, and if she could have forgotten Hugh and been permitted to make herself known to her family, she would have been content at least on the morning when she left New York and started for Thornton Park.