The antique prophets prophesied successfully;
they practised with some ease that art since lost but partly rediscovered by M.Maeterlinck, who proves to us that the future already exists, simultaneously with the present.Well, if his proofs be true, then at this very moment when William thought menacingly of Freddie Banks, the bright air of a happy June evening--an evening ordinarily reckoned ten years, nine months and twenty-one days in advance of this present sorrowful evening--the bright air of that happy June evening, so far in the future, was actually already trembling to a wedding-march played upon a church organ; and this selfsame Freddie, with a white flower in his buttonhole, and in every detail accoutred as a wedding usher, was an usher for this very William who now (as we ordinarily count time) threatened his person.
But for more miracles:
As William turned again to resume his meditations upon the steps, his incredulous eyes fell upon a performance amazingly beyond fantasy, and without parallel as a means to make scorn of him.Not ten feet from the porch--and in the white moonlight that made brilliant the path to the gate--Miss Mary Randolph Kirsted was walking.She was walking with insulting pomposity in her most pronounced semicircular manner.
``YOU GET OUT O' HERE!'' she said, in a voice as deep and hoarse as she could make it.``
YOU GET OUT O' HERE!''
Her intention was as plain as the moon.She was presenting in her own person a sketch of William, by this means expressing her opinion of him and avenging Jane.
``YOU GET OUT O' HERE!'' she croaked.
The shocking audacity took William's breath.
He gasped; he sought for words.
``Why, you--you--'' he cried.``You--you sooty-faced little girl!''
In this fashion he directly addressed Miss Mary Randolph Kirsted for the first time in his life.
And that was the strangest thing of this strange evening.Strangest because, as with life itself, there was nothing remarkable upon the surface of it.But if M.Maeterlinck has the right of the matter, and if the bright air of that June evening, almost eleven years in the so-called future, was indeed already trembling to ``Lohengrin,''
then William stood with Johnnie Watson against a great bank of flowers at the foot of a church aisle; that aisle was roped with white-
satin ribbons; and William and Johnnie were waiting for something important to happen.
And then, to the strains of ``Here Comes the Bride,'' it did--a stately, solemn, roseate, gentle young thing with bright eyes seeking through a veil for William's eyes.
Yes, if great M.Maeterlinck is right, it seems that William ought to have caught at least some eerie echo of that wedding-march, however faint --some bars or strains adrift before their time upon the moonlight of this September night in his eighteenth year.
For there, beyond the possibility of any fate to intervene, or of any later vague, fragmentary memory of even Miss Pratt to impair, there in that moonlight was his future before him.
He started forward furiously.``You--you--you little--''
But he paused, not wasting his breath upon the empty air.
His bride-to-be was gone.
End
