Kidnapped at the Altar: or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain

"You need have no fear, sir," returned the man.

For an hour or more Captain Frazier paced slowly up and down under the trees, smoking cigar after cigar in rapid succession.

"It is a terrible thing," he muttered, "when love for a woman drives a man to the verge of madness. I swore that Gerelda should never marry Hubert Varrick, if I had to kill her. But I have done better. He will never look upon her face again."

At length he walked slowly to the house. He was met on the porch by a little French maid who seemed to be looking for him.

"Well, Marie?" said Captain Frazier.

"I have been looking for you, sir," returned the girl quickly. "I can do nothing with mademoiselle. She will not speak; she will not eat. She lies there hour after hour with her beautiful face turned toward the wall and her white hands clasped together. She might be a dead woman for all the interest she evinces in anything. I very much fear, sir, that she will keep her vow —never to speak again—never in this world."

"You must keep close watch that she does not attempt to make away with herself, Marie," he continued, earnestly. "Heaven only knows how she obtained that revolver I took away from her out in the grounds to-night. She was kneeling down in the long grass, and had it already pressed to her temple, when I appeared in the very nick of time and wrenched it from her little white hand. She would do anything save drown herself to escape from here. Her father lost his life that way, and she would never attempt that means of escape, even from this place."

"She even refuses to have her bridal-dress removed," said the maid; "and I do not know what to do about it. She has uttered no word since first she crossed your threshold; she will not speak."

Captain Frazier looked troubled, distressed.

Would Gerelda keep her vow? She had said when she recovered consciousness and found herself on the island, and the boatman gone:

"I will never utter another word from this hour until I am set free again. You are beneath contempt, Captain Frazier, to kidnap a young girl at the altar."

He never forgot how she looked at him in the clear moonlight as he turned to her, crying out passionately:

"It is your own fault, Gerelda. Why did you draw me on to love you so? You encouraged me up to the last moment, and then it was too late for me to give you up."

Chapter VI.

THE SWEET AND TENDER LETTERS THAT SUDDENLY CEASED TO COME

Gerelda Northrup neither spoke nor stirred.

"You drew me on – ay, up to the very last moment – or this would never have happened. I come of a desperate race, Gerelda," he went on, huskily, "and when you showed me so plainly that you still liked my society, even after you had plighted your troth to another, I clung to the mad idea that there was yet hope for me, if we were far away from those who might come between us. On this lone island we will be all the world to each other – 'the world forgetting, by the world forgot.' Marry me, Gerelda, and I will be your veritable slave!"

He never forgot the look she turned upon him.

"When your anger has had time to cool, you will forgive me, my darling," he pleaded, "and then I am sure you will not say me nay when I beg for your heart and hand. I shall not force you into a marriage. I will wait patiently until you come to me and say: 'Robert, I am willing to marry you!'"

He remembered how she had turned from him in bitter anger and scorn too terrible for any words. He had given her over into the hands of Marie, the little French maid.

She offered no resistance as the girl took her hand and led her into the house; but there was a look on her face that boded no good, while the words she had uttered rang in his ears: "I shall never speak again until you set me free!"

Twice she had made the attempt, during the forty-eight hours which followed, to take her own life, and both times he had prevented her. Even in those thrilling moments she had never uttered a word. She kept her vow, and Captain Frazier was beside himself at the turn affairs had taken.

But what else could he have done, under the circumstances? He could not stand by and see her made the bride of another.

Only that day, by the merest chance, Frazier had found out about Hubert Varrick practically adopting the village beauty – saucy little Jessie Bain – and that he had secretly sent her to a private school, to be educated at his own expense, and he lost no time in communicating this startling news to Gerelda, and giving her proof positive of the truth of this statement.

He saw her face turn deathly white, and he knew that the arrow of bitter jealousy had struck home; but even then she uttered no word. But when darkness gathered she stole out into the grounds, and tried to end it all then and there, and she would have succeeded but for his timely happening upon the scene at the very moment that the flash-light had shone so suddenly upon her.

Yes, the story concerning Jessie Bain had come like a thunder-bolt to Gerelda Northrup. She had fallen on her face in the long green grass, and was carried into the house in a dead faint.

Only heaven knew what she suffered when consciousness came to her. She was almost mad with terror at finding herself snatched from the arms of her lover at the very altar – kidnapped in this most outrageous manner.

She pictured her bridegroom's wild agony when he returned with the glass of wine which he had hurried after, and found her missing.

But the knowledge that he had consoled himself so quickly by taking an interest in some other girl almost took her breath away. Then she sent a note to Captain Frazier. It contained but a few words, but they were enough to send him into the seventh heaven of delight. They read as follows:

"Prove to me, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that Hubert Varrick is really in love with the rustic little village maid you speak of to such an extent that he has secretly undertaken the care of her future, and, madly as I love him, I will give him up and marry you within six months from this time. But, in the meantime, you must return me at once to my home and friends. This much I promise you: I shall not see Hubert Varrick until this matter has been cleared up."

To this note Frazier sent back hurried word that she should have all the proof of Hubert Varrick's perfidy that she might ask.

There was but one thing which it was impossible to do, and that was to set her free during the six months' probation.

This was impossible. He could not do it; he loved her too madly. He would go away, if she liked, and leave her to reign "queen of the isle." She should have everything which heart desired – everything save permission to leave the place.

To this Gerelda was forced to submit.

"If I were convinced that Hubert Varrick loved another, life would be all over for me," she moaned again and again.

Meanwhile, as days and weeks rolled by, and no tidings reached Hubert Varrick of the bride who, he supposed, had deserted him at the very altar, his heart grew bitter against Gerelda.

He plunged into his practice of law, with the wild hope that he might forget her.

The only diversity that entered his life was the letters which he received from little Jessie Bain.

Girl-like, she wrote to him every day.

"I do wish you would adopt me, guardy," she wrote one day, "and bring me home; I am so tired of this place. The principal always calls upon me to look after all the little young fry in his school. Morning and night I have to hear their prayers and hunt the shoes and stockings that they throw at one another across the dormitory. Each one denies the throwing, and I slap every one of them right and left, to be sure to get the right one. I'm sick and tired of books. I wish I could come to you."

Suddenly the letters ceased, and, to Varrick's consternation, a week passed without his hearing one word from little Jessie Bain, and he never knew until then, how deep a hold the girl had on the threads that were woven into his daily life.

In his loneliness he turned to the letters, and read and reread them. It was like balm to his sore heart to find in them such outpourings of love and devotion.

Was she ill? Perhaps some lover had crossed her path.

The thought worried him. He was just on the point of telegraphing, when suddenly there was a rustling sound at the open French window, a swish of skirts behind him, and the next instant a pair of arms were thrown about his neck.

"Now don't scold me, guardy – please don't! I am going to own up to the truth right here and now. I ran away. I couldn't help it, I got so tired of hooking young ones' dresses and hearing their prayers."

With an assumption of dignity, Hubert Varrick unwound the girl's arms from about his neck. But somehow they had sent a strange thrill through his whole being, just such a thrill as he had experienced during the hour in which he had asked Gerelda to be his wife, and she had answered in the affirmative.

He tried to hold her off at arm's-length, but she only clung to him the more, giving him a rapturous kiss of greeting.

The story of little Jessie Bain had been the only one which Hubert Varrick had kept from his mother.

It seemed amusing, he had told himself repeatedly, for a young man of five-and-twenty to be guardian, as it were, to a young girl of sixteen – that sweet, subtle, dangerous age "where childhood and womanhood meet."

"Aren't you glad to see me, Mr. Varrick?" cried Jessie.