Several days elapsed.
Mr. Lawlor called repeatedly to inquire, but a week passed before Julia was sufficiently recovered to receive him, and then the visit was one of courtesy and of sympathy, and the conversation turned upon her health, and on indifferent themes.
But some few days later it was otherwise. She was in the conservatory alone, pretty much herself again, when Mr. Lawlor was announced.
Physically she had recovered, or believed that she had, but her nerves had actually received a severe shock. She had made up her mind that the phenomena of the circling wind and the explosion were in some mysterious manner connected with Hattersley.
She bitterly resented this, but she was in mortal terror of a recurrence; and she felt no compunction for her treatment of the unfortunate young man, but rather a sense of deep resentment against him. If he were dead, why did he not lie quiet and cease from vexing her?
To be a martyr was to her no gratification, for hers was not a martyrdom that provoked sympathy, and which could make her interesting.
She had hitherto supposed that when a man died there was an end of him; his condition was determined for good or for ill. But that a disembodied spirit should hover about and make itself a nuisance to the living, had never entered into her calculations.
‘Julia – if I may be allowed so to call you’ – began Mr. Lawlor, ‘I have brought you a bouquet of flowers. Will you accept them?’
‘Oh!’ she said, as he handed the bunch to her, ‘how kind of you. At this time of the year they are so rare, and aunt’s gardener is so miserly that he will spare me none for my room but some miserable bits of geranium. It is too bad of you wasting your money like this upon me.’
‘It is no waste, if it afford you pleasure.’
‘It is a pleasure. I dearly love flowers.’
‘To give you pleasure,’ said Mr. Lawlor, ‘is the great object of my life. If I could assure you happiness – if you would allow me to hope – to seize this opportunity, now that we are alone together – ‘
He drew near and caught her hand. His features were agitated, his lips trembled, there was earnestness in his eyes.
At once a cold blast touched Julia and began to circle about her and to flutter her hair. She trembled and drew back. That paralysing experience was about to be renewed. She turned deadly white, and put her hand to her right ear. ‘Oh, James! James!’ she gasped. ‘Do not, pray do not speak what you want to say, or I shall faint. It is coming on. I am not yet well enough to hear it. Write to me and I will answer. For pity’s sake do not speak it.’ Then she sank upon a seat – and at that moment her aunt entered the conservatory.
On the following day a note was put into her hand, containing a formal proposal from the Hon. James Lawlor; and by return of post Julia answered with an acceptance.
There was no reason whatever why the engagement should be long; and the only alternative mooted was whether the wedding should take place before Lent[9] or after Easter. Finally, it was settled that it should be celebrated on Shrove Tuesday.[10] This left a short time for the necessary preparations. Miss Flemming would have to go to town with her niece concerning a trousseau, and a trousseau is not turned out rapidly any more than an armed cruiser.
There is usually a certain period allowed to young people who have become engaged, to see much of each other, to get better acquainted with one another, to build their castles in the air, and to indulge in little passages of affection, vulgarly called ‘spooning.’ But in this case the spooning had to be curtailed and postponed.
At the outset, when alone with James, Julia was nervous. She feared a recurrence of those phenomena that so affected her. But, although every now and then the wind curled and soughed about her, it was not violent, nor was it chilling; and she came to regard it as a wail of discomfiture. Moreover, there was no recurrence of the detonation, and she fondly hoped that with her marriage the vexation would completely cease.
In her heart was deep down a sense of exultation. She was defying James Hattersley and setting his prediction at naught. She was not in love with Mr. Lawlor; she liked him, in her cold manner, and was not insensible to the social advantage that would be hers when she became the Honourable Mrs. Lawlor.
The day of the wedding arrived. Happily it was fine.
‘Blessed is the bride the sun shines on,’ said the cheery Miss Flemming; ‘an omen, I trust, of a bright and unruffled life in your new condition.’
All the neighbourhood was present at the church. Miss Flemming had many friends. Mr. Lawlor had fewer present, as he belonged to a distant county. The church path had been laid with red cloth, the church decorated with flowers, and a choir was present to twitter ‘The voice that breathed o’er Eden.’
The rector stood by the altar, and two cushions had been laid at the chancel step. The rector was to be assisted by an uncle of the bridegroom who was in Holy Orders;[11] the rector, being old-fashioned, had drawn on pale grey kid gloves.
First arrived the bridegroom with his best man, and stood in a nervous condition balancing himself first on one foot, then on the other, waiting, observed by all eyes.
Next entered the procession of the bride, attended by her maids, to the ‘Wedding March’ in Lohengrin, on a wheezy organ. Then Julia and her intended took their places at the chancel step for the performance of the first portion of the ceremony, and the two clergy descended to them from the altar.
‘Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?’
‘I will.’
‘Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband?’
‘I will.’
‘I, James, take thee, Julia, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold – ‘ and so on. As the words were being spoken, a cold rush of air passed over the clasped hands, numbing them, and began to creep round the bride, and to flutter her veil. She set her lips and knitted her brows. In a few minutes she would be beyond the reach of these manifestations.
When it came to her turn to speak, she began firmly:
‘I, Julia, take thee, James – ‘ but as she proceeded the wind became fierce; it raged about her, it caught her veil on one side and buffeted her cheek; it switched the veil about her throat, as though strangling her with a drift of snow contracting into ice. But she persevered to the end.
Then James Lawlor produced the ring, and was about to place it on her finger with the prescribed words: ‘With this ring I thee wed – ‘ when a report rang in her ear, followed by a heaving of her skull, as though the bones were being burst asunder, and she sank unconscious on