A Mad Marriage, May Agnes Fleming [best big ereader .TXT] 📗

Lovell’s face I lost my head. You know

me well enough. Lucia,” the speaker broke off with a half laugh, “to

know I never do that sort of thing by halves. But this was different

from anything that had gone before. I looked on those wonderful dusky

eyes only once, and said to myself, ‘I will win Rosamond Lovell for my

wife, if it be in the power of mortal man to win her.’

 

“I lost no time in setting about my wooing. No wonder the other fellows

laughed. They admired old Lovell’s daughter, too, no doubt—that was a

matter of course—but not to the depth of lunacy. They left that for me.

I declined �cart�, I declined deviled kidney, declined the doubtful

sherry—I was sufficiently intoxicated already. The peerless Rosamond

smiled upon me but shyly; she was not accustomed to such sudden and

overpowering devotion—timid angel! Still, she did smile, and let me

accompany her to the distant corner where the piano stood, while the

other men played for ponies in the distance, and the major with great

impartiality fleeced all alike. She played for me on the jingly piano;

she sang for me in a rich contralto.

 

“I can see her now as she sat there that first fatal night, in a pink

dress, white roses in her belt and in her bosom, the lamplight streaming

across her rich, dusk loveliness. Paugh! the smell of white roses will

turn me sick all my life.

 

“It was late when we broke up, and Miss Lovell, shrinking pettishly from

the other men, held out her hand with a soft good-night to me. I went

out from the warm, bright room, into the black, rain-beaten midnight,

with head and heart in a whirl. The others, not too pensive over their

losses at first, chaffed me clumsily, but the hospitable major had bled

them all so freely at �cart�, that their deadly, lively jokes soon

lapsed into moody silence. To-morrow evening, they were to go back for

their revenge, and the friendly major had asked me too.

 

“‘Though you did throw us over, Caryll, my boy,’ he said in his big

debonnaire voice, ‘you’ll keep little Rosie from moping herself to

death. Yes, yes, come to-morrow and fetch her the new songs. She has a

passion for music, my little one, and a voice that would make Lind look

to her laurels if the poor old dad could afford to cultivate it.’

 

“I tossed feverishly through the dark morning hours. ‘Rosamond!

Rosamond!’ I kept repeating; ‘there is music in the very name, music in

her voice when she speaks, music celestial in her tones when she sings.

And to think that my little white “Rose of the World” should be daughter

to such a confounded old cad as that. But I will marry her and take her

home to Caryllynne and my mother,’ I thought; and I could picture to

myself my mother’s whole heart going out in love and welcome, to her

son’s fair young bride. I didn’t much fear a rejection—I was

constitutionally sanguine, and she had been as kind as heart could

desire. Unless—and I grew cold and hot at the mere fancy—unless she

had left a lover behind in Bermuda.

 

“‘At the very earliest possible hour next morning, I made an elaborate

toilet and sallied forth for conquest. I purchased an armful of music,

and presented myself at Major Lovell’s dingy little cottage. The major

was out—Miss Rosamond was in—that was what the grimy maid-of-all-work

told me. I entered the parlor, and Rosamond was there to meet and

welcome me, more fresh, and youthful, and lovely in the broad, bright

sunshine, than even under the lamplight last night.

 

“‘Oh, what quantities of music! Oh, how kind of me! All the songs she

liked best. Oh, how could she ever thank me enough!’

 

“‘By letting me come to—to see you every day. By—caring for me a

little. By letting me say how happy it will make me to be welcomed here

by you.’

 

“Stammering over this speech, blushing and floundering like any other

hobbledehoy in the agonies of calf-love, I lifted her hand to my lips,

� la Sir Charles Grandison, and kissed it.

 

“I can imagine now how she must have been laughing inwardly at the green

young fool she had hooked. But private theatricals were in her line, her

maidenly confusion and embarrassment were done to the life.

 

“I lingered for hours, while she tried over the songs, and dimly

realized two facts: that her knowledge of piano-forte music was but

meagre after all, and that she had really very little to say for

herself. Only dimly; I was much too far gone to realize anything very

clearly, except that she was the loveliest little creature the Canadian

sun shone on.

 

“That evening I was back. Again Rosamond and I had our corner, our

singing and our t�te-�-t�te; again that old wolf, Lovell, fleeced

those big innocent military lambs—as a shearer his sheep. That was the

story over and over for a week—at the end of that time, I walked up to

Major Lovell one forenoon, and demanded the priceless boon of his

daughter’s hand. The old rascal’s start of amazement and consternation

was capital.

 

“‘His daughter! his Rosie! his little girl! And only a week since we had

met! The difference in our positions, too! What did I mean!’ Here the

major inflated himself like an enraged turkey-cock, and glared fiercely

out of his fiery little eyes. ‘Not to insult him, surely! A poor man he

might be—alas! was, but always an officer and a gentleman.’

 

“Here he stopped sonorously to blow his nose. ‘Very little of a

gentleman,’ I remember thinking, even then.

 

“‘Have I taken a viper into the bosom of my family?’ pursued the old

humbug, melodramatically. ‘You, Mr. Gordon Caryll, sir, are heir to a

large estate and fortune—the last of an ancient and distinguished line;

it is also true that I am but one remove from a pauper, still—’

 

“‘Good Heaven, Lovell!’ I cried out, impetuously cutting short this

rhodomontade. ‘What bosh are you talking? I mean what I say, I mean it

more than I ever meant anything in my life. Insult—nonsense! I love

your daughter, and I ask you to give her to me for my wife. We have

known each other but a week, it is true. What of that? Love is not a

plant of slow growth—it can spring up like the gourd of Jonas, fully

grown in a night.’

 

“I think I must have read that somewhere. It struck me even at the time

as sounding rather absurd, and I looked to see if the major was

laughing. No doubt the old villain was, for he had turned away to the

window, and was elaborately wiping his eyes.

 

“‘And she—my Rosamond,’ he said, at length, in a voice husky with

emotion and much whiskey-punch—‘my little one, who, only a year ago, it

seems to me, played with her dolls, and—and marbles, and—er—that sort

of thing, can it be that she is indeed a woman, and returns

your—er—‘pon my life, very flattering passion?’

 

“I smiled exultantly as I recalled a little scene of last night, in that

musical nook of ours, the lamp turned low, the music at a stand-still,

and ‘I mark the king, and play,’ ‘Your deal, Deverell,’ ‘Five to one on

Innes,’ coming from the unromantic �cart� players at the other end—a

scene where I, holding Miss Rosamond Lovell’s two hands in mine, had

poured forth a rhapsodical story of consuming passion. And the hands had

not been drawn away, and, as the exquisite face drooped in the dim

light, she had whispered that which had made me the happiest man on

earth.

 

“‘Yes,’ I told the major, ‘that was all right; she had consented to be

my wife—nothing was needed but his sanction. And I hoped he would agree

to the marriage being at once. What need was there of delay? I was of

age, and two months over—what need of waiting? I wanted to make sure of

my prize.’

 

“It was the most out-and-out case of insanity on record. I was

mad—sheer mad. I cannot account for my besotted folly in any other way.

The old fox made a feint of not consenting at first. She was too

young—our acquaintance was so scandalously short—what would Toronto

say? What would my father and mother say? The thing was not to be

thought of.

 

“But I would listen to nothing. What did it matter what Toronto said?

Toronto might go hang! My father and mother had no thought but for my

happiness; their ultimate consent was all right. For the rest, if he

dreaded the world’s tongue, let the marriage be private, just as private

as he pleased, and in a month, or two months, or whenever I could get

leave of absence, I and my wife would sail for England. When the thing

was inevitable, talk would die out. Marry my darling I must; life

without her was insupportable, etc., etc., etc.

 

“I grow sick at heart, Lucia, when I recall that time. And yet I was

blindly, insanely happy—with that utter bliss that in the days of

our first youth and grossest folly we can only know. We were

married. Rosamond had but one female acquaintance, a young lady

music-teacher—she, of course, was bridesmaid, and Singleton, of

Ours, was best man. We were married in the cottage parlor, one dark

autumnal morning, all on the quiet. Clergyman, groomsman,

bridesmaid, all promised secrecy. Rosamond remained at the cottage

with her father as before. I kept my rooms in the town. I did not

write to announce my marriage—time enough for all that, I thought.

I would get leave of absence and take Rosamond home—they would have

to look in her face but once, to forget my rash haste, her poverty

and obscurity, and take her to their hearts forever.

 

“But days and weeks and months slipped away—four passed; and leave had

not yet been obtained. As might be expected, our secret had leaked out,

and was our secret no longer. The story of my mad marriage was whispered

throughout the town, and only my blindness was upon me still, I must

have seen the looks of pity that met me at every turn—pity blended with

amusement and contempt. But I saw nothing, suspected nothing, and when

the blow came, it fell like a thunderbolt, indeed.

 

“I have said this girl I had married was a perfect actress—I say it

again. Love itself she could counterfeit to the life; she fooled me to

the top of my bent; she made me believe her whole heart was mine. Her

face lighted when I came, saddened when I went, ay, after four months of

matrimony she held her dupe as thoroughly duped as on the first day.

Something preyed on her mind, that, at least, I saw. She looked at me

at times as though she feared me; she looked at the major as though she

feared him. The old fellow had taken to drinking harder than ever, had

been at death’s door with delirium tremens more than once since my

marriage, and in his cups (I learned after) babbled of what he had done.

 

“‘We hooked him, sir,’ the tipsy major would hiccough, winking his

bleary old eyes, and tottering on his rickety old legs, ‘hooked him like

the gonest coon! Oh, Lord! what fools young men are! a pretty girl can

twist the biggest of you gallant plungers around her little finger. I’ve

known regiments of fools in my lifetime, but that young ass, Caryll—oh,

by Jupiter! he puts the topper on the lot.’

 

“It was the major himself