Rensselaer Union, Volume 12, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1879 — THE BRIDAL VEIL. [ARTICLE]

THE BRIDAL VEIL.

A pretty, dark-eyed girl began to work it, whose lover wtu over tne sea. She was a French girl, and came of a family of lace-makers. “I’ll my own bridal veil in my leisure time,” she said. “So, when Walter comes to marry me, I shall be a gay bride.” But she never finished the veil. Walter came too soon. She married her English lover—as poor as herself—and went with hhn to London; and the half-finished veil went along, carefully away at the bottom of a trunk, and for the time being quite forgotten. It may have been forgotten in earnest during twelve years, for aught I know —certainly it lay that long unnoticed. A lovely bttle ten-year-old girl was the fairy that broke its long sleep at last. She had dark eyes like the little peasant of twelve years ago, but Walter’s golden hair. “Oh, the charming lace!” she cried, clapping her hands and dancing delightedly, as Elise shook it out of the folds. “ Dear mamma, what is it? and who made It? and why is it half doneP Can I have it for a dress for my doll, mum, ma?^ The pretty dark-eyed matron laughed and shook her head, and half sighed as she pressed the delicate fabric to her lips. Then she -told her child the history of its making. “ But it shall not be hidden so long from the light again,” she said, tenderly. “I will finish it, and when the time comes for my little Adele to be a bride she will have a veil to be proud of.” v. V - * Again the little taper fingers toiled merrily and busily over tne delicate lace, and faiiy-like„ferns and masses of graceful flowers grew steadily under them. Adele watched the progress of the work with interest. “ Mamma, teach me to work it,” she said one day. ; “My fingers are much finer and tinier than yours.” After that she would bring her little work-basket to her mother’s side and work at a veil for her doll. The facility with which she learned the graceful art was astonishing. At the age of fifteen so expert was she that Elise did not fear to let her take part in the creation of the bridal veil itself, but they worked at it now and then as the fancy seized them.

Louis Riviere was from France, like Adele’s mother—that had been a bond between them from the first—for Adele loved her mother** country for her mother’s sake, though she herself was proud of being called English, and she also loved the young Frenchman. Louis came of noble blood, and was well-to-do. He had some money—not enough to live upon in idle luxury, but plenty to secure him a fair start in business life. Unwilling to enter npon this course in Paris, where his noble relatives would not scruple to oppose him, he had chosen London as the scene of his future efforts, and embarked in business as a merchant there. . The happy weeks and months grew into years. Adele was now seventeen ; it was agreed and promised that when Soring time came, she should be Riviere sbride. “ We must finish the bridaL veil,” cried Elise, eagerly. “ I tell yod. Monsieur Louis, no lady of your proud house ever wore a laoe more exquisite and rich. Ah, shall I not be proud when I look at my beautiful child in her marriage rot*»s, and think of the poor little peasant girl of long ago, who toiled at the lace to earn coarse bread so far away over the seat” Louis turned quickly at these words, a look of displeased surprise in his dark eyes. “What peasant girl, madameP” he questioned, uneasily. ‘ * Myself!” she answered, happily, not marking the look or the tone. “What was I but a poor lace-maker when my Snerous young lover married me, the her of Adele P” He answered nothing, and Elsie went merrily chattering on; but Adele noted his suddenly downcast air and gloomy eyes, though she was far from suspecting the cause of either. His haughty family pride had received abfow. >

“A lace-maker T' be said to himself. “A peasant girl! 111 had bat known it!” All that night, and for days and nights afterwards, the thought of hit bride’s humble extraction tortured him; the sting to his pride would not be removed. Unconsciously to himself his annoyance affected hSs temper, he became irritable, fretful, impatient; sometimes to the verge of impoliteness even; above all he conceived an absurd bat violent dislike to the bridal veiL “ I detest the sight of it,” he cried, , one evening in a moment of forgetfulness, and when he and Adele were alone. “If indeed, yon love me, never work at 1 it in my presence, Adele; and if I dared ask one special favor of you, it should He paused suddenly—ehe was listening in great surprise. “Well?” she said. “Itshouldbe ” “Well, any other veil in the world but that to be married in.” ■ She folded up her wayk and let her fair bands fall upon it in her lap; one could see thoee little hands were trem- ! bling. She was greatly surprised at his man--1 ner and request, and also vaguely hurt, she scarce knew how or why. Indeed, ‘ she had wondered often lately at a sub--1 tie and unpleasant change in Louis. Could it be possible that sne was about | to discover its cause? “ Yon ask a singular favor,” she ! said, with forced quietness. “ Axe you aware that my dear mother worked I this veil?” The hot, impulsive temper answered I instantly, without a thought: “It is for that very reason that I | hate it!” And then she understood him. This daughter of England had been slow to suspect or comprehend the pride of the French aristocrat, but she would not many- the man who thought he stooped to take hei;. She folded up the veil and gently but firmly said: “ You did not know, when first you sought me for a bride, that mamma was a lace-worker in France; if yon had, perhaps jrou would not have loVed me. Since you learned this fact you •have regretted our engagement. You need not speak; I have seen a change in you—l feel that it is so! But there is no harm done,” she went on with simple dignity, “ since I have learned the truth before it is too late; and so” —she held out to him a little, trembling hand, which he took mechanically—“and so I will grant you the favor you covet, my friend. Your bride shall not ivear my darling mother’s bridal veil!”—here he kissed the hand, and she drew it quickly away —“ but that is because I shall not be your bride.” No need to dwell upon what followed. His prayers, his protestations—humble at first, then angry—his tears that had no power in them to sap the strength of her resolution. They parted coldly at last—lovers still in heart, for love dies not so easily, but outwardly seeming scarcely even friends. She stood proudly as he left the room; when the sound of < the street door closing after him struck like a knell upon her young and passionate heart, she flew to the window and watched him out of sight.

“ Go! go!” she cried, dashing away the tears that blinded her. “Go from my eyes, hateful tears, and let me see my love for the last time. My love! And I have lost him.” ' She sank down, sobbing. Just then the sound of her mother’s voice, singing merrily an old French song in a room above, came to her ears. Once more she dashed the tears away. “He despised you, my * darling mamma—you. No, no, I will neVer pardon him!” •. Her parents questioned her in vain. She haa quarreled with Louis; that was all they could learn. And before a chance for reconciliation came, Elise was smitten with mortal illness and died in three davs, and Adele, overwhelmed by the awful calamity, was prostrated with brain fever. At this juncture a summons came to Louis from France, demanding his immediate presence there. Strange changes had taken place. Two of the three lives that had stood between him and the title and estates of the Marquis de la Riviere had been suddenlv swept away, and the third, a frail, delicate child, lay dying. The present Marquis, himself a feeble old man, was also at the point of death, so they sent for Louis as the heir of the dying nobleman. The news bewildered him. His heart swelled with exultation and delight, but it sank again. Adele! Had he not lost Adele? “I care not for rank or wealth unless she shares them!” cried his heart. “ I will beg and implore her pardon.” He made the attempt, but in vain. He sought her father, and said a few words to him, however, that might make all well again had she ever heard them; but she never did. When her long and wasting sickness was over at last, and she began, slowly and feebly, to take hold on life, she found herself an orphan in very truth! Walter had followed Elise to a better world. Nor even then had she drained the cup of sorrow to the dregs; her father’s affairs had been terribly involved; when all was settled she was penniless. Poor Adele! Truly might it be said that her sorrows “came not single spies, but in battalions;” father, mother, lover, home, all gone! What had life left to offer her but patience and pains? And Louis! He would have written her immediately upon his arrival in Paris, but that he fq|t so blissfully sure that her father would make all well. A few weeks later he did write, informing her fully of his strangely-altered fortunes, and imploring her to pardon and accept once more as her true lover the Marquis de la Riviere. And the letter never reached her. The house to which it came was empty and deserted, the lately happy home was broken up, and the* little English girl, for whom a husband and title and fortune were waiting in sunny France, was earning a sorrowful living as a lace-maker!

Such are some of the strange reverses of real life, more wonderful than any fiction. So the Marquis waited for an answer in vain. x Then pride rose np in arms. “ She scorns me,” he thought. “ She, a poor peasant’s child! lam punished for my folly.” And he resolved to drive her from hip heart. But after many months his letter to Adele was returned to him, crossed and recrossed with many addresses. It was a messenger of hope to him. She had not slighted, she had hot scorned him; perhaps she had not ceased to love. Before another day and night had passed the Marquis was on his journey to London. Need I tell of his welcome there P When did wealth and title fail to find a

warm one? Or of the friends of former years who flocked to claim acquaintance? Has not prosperity always hosts of friends? Bat none could tell him of Adele, beyond the history of her bitter sorrows. She, being-poor, had fallen from their bright world. And after three tmonths r search he had failed to find her. He had money, influence, deepest heart interest to aid his search, ana* yet, in spite of all, he failed. “ She is dead,” he thought, with anSiish. “ I have come too late—it is in e grave I shall find my darling. If it be so, and I prove it so indeed, I will live and die single for her sake!” But such was nis resolve, unsuspected by any one; many brilliant beauties spread their nets to secure the splendid prise of a titled husband. Foremost among the many was Rosalind Hale; she was the fairest and wealthiest of them all, and her golden hair was not unlike Adele’s. It waar this that attracted him toward her more than the others—the memory of an old love.

She never suspected that, however; her vanity made her sure that he was in her toils. She arranged tableaux in which hq should sustain a part with her. It never occurred to her that he was too good-natured and too indifferent to refuse. The tableaux were suggestive enough. One upon which Miss Hale had set her heart was that of a bridal. Need it be said that Louis was the bridegroom, herself the bride! “He will speak now, sorely,” she thought, as she blushed and trembled beside him, while the curtain came slowly down. But no, he only bowed as he led her from the platform, and then one of the buttons of his coat caught in her bridal veil. It has been said that “trifles makeup' the sum of human happiness.” It seemed so now. As the Marquis stooped to disengage the lace, suddenly he uttered a strange cry. “I borrowed it of a lace-maker,” Miss Hale said in reply to his anxious questioning. “I had ordered one like it, but her health is bad, and she failed to have it finished in time. So then, I made her lend me this. She was quite unwilling, too,” she added, pouting; “ iust because it was her poor mothers work. Such fancies for a poor person!’ ’ “A young girl?” “Oh, no; very thin, and worn, and sad, with fine eyes; but too dull and pale to be called pretty. Bat an exquisite lacemaker. I shall be glad to give you her address if you have any work for her.”

Yes, he had work for her—work that they would share together; the blessed work of binding up an almost broken heart, of restoring love and happiness to both their lives! Miss Hale never received her veil—the Marquis claimed it. In its stead he sent her a complete set of laces that made her—in that regard, at least—the envy of society; and Louis married Adele. Pale and thin ant} somewhat careworn still was the bride of the Marquis on her wedding day; but to his eyes—the eyes of faithful love—* it was still the sweetest face in the whole world that smiled and wept beneath Elise's bridal veil. And he kissed the old lace and blessed it, because through it he had found her again. “I have it now!” said he. “I prize it next to yourself, dearest. It shall be kept as a treasure always.” And so it was. Many a fair and highborn bride wore the “ bridal veil of Riviere” in the years to come. It and its stoiy passed through many generations of proud and happy wearers. But among them all none were more truly blest than she who “through much suffering had attained to joy,” the poor lace-maker, whose mother was a peasant girl, but who, for true love’s sake, and lor love alone, was chosen from all other women to be Madame la Marquise de la Riviere.