The ceremony must be
deferred. As an old friend, let me entreat you to return home."
"Home! yes, but not without my bride," answered he, in the same
hollow accents. "You deem this mockery; perhaps madness. Had I
bedizened my aged and broken frame with scarlet and embroidery- had
I forced my withered lips to smile at my dead heart- that might have
been mockery, or madness. But now, let young and old declare, which of
us has come hither without a wedding garment, the bridegroom or the
bride!"
He stepped forward at a ghostly pace, and stood beside the widow,
contrasting the awful simplicity of his shroud with the glare and
glitter in which she had arrayed herself for this unhappy scene. None,
that beheld them, could deny the terrible strength of the moral
which his disordered intellect had contrived to draw.
"Cruel! cruel!" groaned the heart-stricken bride.
"Cruel!" repeated he; then, losing his deathlike composure in a
wild bitterness: "Heaven judge which of us has been cruel to the
other! In youth you deprived me of my happiness, my hopes, my aims;
you took away all the substance of my life, and made it a dream
without reality enough even to grieve at- with only a pervading gloom,
through which I walked wearily, and cared not whither.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16