The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales Part 40

"Cursed deceiver!" cried the s.e.xton, struggling frantically to free himself from the ligatures which bound him. "You have done an accursed deed. You have deprived me of my betrothed bride."

"Your betrothed bride!" said the queen of the gypsies. "Behold her!"

She waved her hand, and Myra stood before the s.e.xton of St. Hubert's.

"There she stands," said the gypsy. "Have you forgotten that your troth is plighted to her? The bride and the priest are ready. Man of guilt and pa.s.sion, wed her you may, wed her you must!"

"Never!" cried the s.e.xton. "When I sought your lawless crew to indulge my love of revelling and pleasure, the person of Myra lighted a fire in my breast. But it was an unholy flame. I will never marry her. Let her live--live to be branded with infamy and disgrace!"

"Ha!" cried the crone, rising from her seat. "Is it so? Speak, Myra!

child of my heart, is it so?"

The gypsy girl clasped her hands together, and hung her head in shame.

Her cheeks were suffused with crimson; then they became deadly pale, and she sank lifeless on the ground.

"You have killed her!" shrieked the gypsy queen, "and dearly shall you rue it."

She placed a whistle to her lips, and blew a shrill blast. But she received a far different answer than she had antic.i.p.ated; for one of the sheriff's men had succeeded in escaping from the hands of the gypsy crew, and galloped to the neighboring town, where a troop of horse was quartered. The commanding officer instantly repaired to the gypsy camp, where he arrived in time to apprehend the crew before they had committed any act of violence. The s.e.xton of St. Hubert's did not long survive this night, and Myra became a maniac. The fate of the lovers we shall next describe.

When the lover of Margaret received the message of the queen of the gypsies, he repaired to the spot where his mistress lay, to all appearance, in the arms of death. But life had not departed; and even as he hung gazing over her, a faint color mounted to her cheek, and her bosom began to heave beneath her white garment. He raised her in his arms, bore her to the air, and she revived. When her senses were fully restored, she consented to guard against another separation by marrying her lover and savior. William had provided a humble post-chaise to convey his bride far from the scene of her past perils and temptations. They journeyed by slow stages to the north, and at the close of a few days entered a romantic village. The lover bridegroom pointed out a gray and n.o.ble old pile, the turrets of which rose lofty above the waving trees of an ancient park. He asked if she should like to visit it. She replied in the affirmative, and they drove, unchallenged, through the gateway and along a n.o.ble avenue shaded by huge oaks. When they reached the portals of the building, the post-boy stopped the horses, dismounted, threw open the door of the chaise, and let down the steps. William lifted his companion from her seat in his arms.

"Margaret," said he, "look up. This is Woodley Castle, and you are Lady Armitage."

JACK WITHERS.

Every body liked Jack Withers. He was a handsome, active young fellow of five-and-twenty, of a good family, an orphan, who came into possession of thirty thousand dollars when he came of age. In this age of California gold, when fortunes are made by shovelling dust, and the wonders of Aladdin's treasure house are realized by men of no capital but pickaxes and muscles, thirty thousand dollars does not seem a prodigious sum. Yet our great-grandfathers retired from business on that amount, and were thought, at least, comfortably well off; and even nowadays, thirty thousand dollars, judiciously managed, will keep a man out of the poorhouse, and give him a clean s.h.i.+rt and a leg of mutton for his lifetime. But poor Jack was not a judicious manager, and a tandem team and champagne suppers, with a shooting-box and turf speculations, soon made ducks and drakes of a little fortune. Thus at twenty-five, our friend Jack was _minus_; or, in the elegant phraseology of the day, "a gentleman at large with pockets to let."

When a man's riches have taken wings and _vamosed_, when all his old uncles are used up, and he has no prospective legacy to fall back upon, he is generally cut by the acquaintances of his prosperous days.

The memory of "what he used to was" is seldom cherished, and the unhappy victim of prodigality discovers to his sorrow, that

"'Tis a very good world that we live in, To lend, or to spend, or to give in; But to beg, or to borrow, or get a man's own, 'Tis the very worst world, sir, that ever was known."

Jack, however, was not destined to drink the cup of this bitter experience. He was just as popular and just as much courted without a penny in his pocket, as he was when he possessed the means to be extravagant, when he

"Spread to the liberal air his silken sails, And lavished guineas like a Prince of Wales."

The secret of his prodigious popularity was his obliging disposition.

His time and talents--and he had plenty of the former, and no lack of the latter--were always at the service of his friends; and though the idlest dog in the world when his own affairs were in question, in the cause of his friends he was the busiest man alive. Thus he fairly won his dinners, his rides, his drives, and his opera tickets--they were trifling commissions on his benevolent transactions.

"Jack," one fellow would say, "my horse is too confoundedly high strung, and only half broke. He threw me yesterday."

"I'll ride him for you, Bill," would be the ready reply; "give me your spurs, and I'll give him a lesson."

And away he would go, without a thought of his neck, to mount a restive rascal that had half killed the rough rider of a cavalry regiment.

"Jack," another would say, "I've got an awkward affair on hand with Lieutenant ----; he fancies I've insulted him, and has thrown out dark hints about coffee and pistols."

"Make yourself perfectly easy, my boy; I'll bring him to reason or fight him myself."

So Jack had his hands full of business. Well, one dreary, desolate afternoon in March, when the barbs of all the vanes in the city were looking pertinaciously eastward, and people were s.h.i.+vering over anthracite grates, Jack Withers "might have been seen," as James would say, seated in the little back parlor of the coffee room in School Street, sipping Mocha with his particular friend Bill Bliffins, who had an especial claim upon his kindness, from the fact that he had already extricated Bill from sc.r.a.pes innumerable.

Mocha is a great prompter of social and kindly feelings, and prompts, in _tete-a-tetes_, to that unreserved confidence on one part, and that obliging interest on the other, which unite two congenial and kindred spirits in adamantine bonds.

"Jack," said Bill, smiting the marble table emphatically, "you are my best friend."

"Pooh, pooh! you flatter me," said Jack, blus.h.i.+ng like a peony; "I've never done any thing for you."

"Yes, you have, and you know it," persisted Bliffins. "Didn't you fight Lieutenant Jenkins, of the Salamander, when I ought to have fought him myself? Haven't you endorsed my notes when n.o.body else would back my paper?"

"I'll do it again, my boy," said Jack, with a gush of enthusiastic feeling.

"Ahem! your name on short or long paper isn't exactly what it used to be," said Bill, rather unfeelingly, perhaps.

"True, true," returned Jack, in a more subdued tone; "I haven't got many friends left in the synagogues."

"But what you have done, Jack," continued Bliffins, with enthusiasm, "emboldens me to trespa.s.s yet further on your patience."

"With all my heart," said Jack; and there was no reservation implied in the hearty tone in which the words were uttered.

"Then listen to my story, as the postilion of Longjumeau sings. Hear me for my cause, and be silent that you may hear."

"I'll be mute as the codfish in the House of Representatives."

"Well, then," said Bill, in a solemn tone, "I'm dead broke."

"Dead broke?"

"Yes; I'm running on my last hundred."

"Impossible!"

"True, though, for all that. Yet my circ.u.mstances are not so desperate, either. There's a vacant clerks.h.i.+p in the secretary of state's office; and the governor has been sounded, and I think he might be disposed to give it to me."

"Go to him at once, then, my dear boy. If he wants any reference, send him to me. I'll endorse your character, as I used to your paper when my name was worth something on 'change. Go to him at once."

"It's easy to say it, Jack; but the fact is, that I have such a confounded hesitating address that I fear I should make an unfavorable impression, and ruin my cause; whereas, if a plausible, voluble fellow like yourself could get his ear and plead for me, my appointment would be certain. Now will you----"

"Call on the governor? With all my heart--consider the thing settled."

"That's not all; you must be my advocate in another quarter. I'm over head and ears in love with Juliet Trevor--Trapp & Trevor--W. I. Goods, wholesale. You know the firm?"

"Like a book."

"I want you to see the girl and the old people; I haven't confidence to propose in person. You can do it for me?"

"With all my heart. I give you joy of the clerks.h.i.+p and the girl--they're yours."