The Missing Bride

The Missing Bride

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Missing Bride, by Mrs. E. D. E. N.
Southworth
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Missing Bride
Author: Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
Release Date: December 20, 2004 [eBook #14382]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
MISSING BRIDE***
E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE MISSING BRIDE
A Novel

by
MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH
Author of Self-Raised, Ishmael, Retribution, The Bridal Eve, The
Bride's Fate, Mother-in-Law, The Haunted Homestead, The Bride's
Dowry, Victor's Triumph, A Fortune Seeker, etc.
CHAPTER I.
LUCKENOUGH.
Deep in the primeval forest of St. Mary's, lying between the Patuxent
and the Wicomico Rivers, stands the ancient manor house of
Luckenough.
The traditions of the neighborhood assert the origin of the manor and
its quaint, happy and not unmusical name to have been--briefly this:
That the founder of Luckenough was Alexander Kalouga, a Polish
soldier of fortune, some time in the service of Cecilius Calvert, Baron
of Baltimore, first Lord Proprietary of Maryland. This man had,
previous to his final emigration to the New World, passed through a
life of the most wonderful vicissitudes--wonderful even for those days
of romance and adventure. It was said that he was born in one quarter
of the globe, educated in another, initiated into warfare in the third and
buried in the fourth. In his boyhood he was the friend and pupil of Guy
Fawkes; he engaged in the Gunpowder Plot, and after witnessing the
terrible fate of his master, he escaped to Spanish America, where he led
for years a sort of buccaneer life. He afterwards returned to Europe, and
then followed years of military service wherever his hireling sword was
needed. But the soldier of fortune was ill-paid by his mistress. His
misfortunes were as proverbial as his bravery, or as his energetic
complaints of "ill luck" could make them. He had drawn his sword in
almost every quarrel of his time, on every battlefield in Europe, to find
himself, at the end of his military career, no richer than he was at its
beginning--save in wounds and scars, honor and glory, and a wife and
son. It was at this point of his life that he met with Leonard Calvert,

and embarked with him for Maryland, where he afterwards received
from the Lord Proprietary the grant of the manor "aforesaid." It is
stated that when the old soldier went with some companions to take a
look at his new possessions, he was so pleased with the beauty,
grandeur, richness and promise of the place that a glad smile broke over
his dark, storm-beaten, battle-scarred face, and he remained still
"smiling as in delighted visions," until one of his friends spoke and
said:
"Well, comrade! Is this luck enough?"
"Yaw, mine frient!" answered the new lord of the manor in his broken
English, cordially grasping the hand of his companion, "dish ish loke
enough!"
Different constructions have been put upon this simple answer--first,
that Lukkinnuf was the original Indian name of the tract; secondly, that
Alexander Kalouga christened his manor in honor of Loekenoff, the
native village of his wife, the heroic Marie Zelenski, the companion of
all his campaigns and voyages, and the first lady of his manor; thirdly,
that the grateful and happy soldier had only meant to express his
perfect satisfaction with his fortune, and to say:
"Yes, this is luck enough! luck enough to repay me for all the past!" Be
it as it may, from time immemorial the place has been "Luckenough."
The owner in 1814 was Commodore Nickolas Waugh, who inherited
the property in right of his mother, the only child and heiress of Peter
Kalouga.
This man had the constitution and character, not of his mother's, but of
his father's family--a hardy, rigorous, energetic Montgomery race, full
of fire, spirit and enterprise. At the age of twelve Nickolas lost his
father.
At fifteen he began to weary of the tedium of Luckenough, varied only
by the restraint of the academy during term. And at sixteen he rebelled
against the rule of his indolent lymphatic mamma, broke through the

reins of domestic government, escaped to Baltimore and shipped as
cabin boy in a merchantman.
Nickolas Waugh went through many adventures, served on board
merchantmen, privateers and haply pirates, too, sailed to every part of
the known world, and led a wild, reckless and sinful life, until the
breaking out of the Revolutionary War, when he took