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

had fooled and laughed at from first to last! A

very demon of fury seemed to enter me then. I turned, and went

home—with but one resolve—to have her life, and then end my own.

 

“She was not there. She had seen my first entrance; she had stolen down,

listened, and heard all; she had gone back to her room, dressed herself

for the street, taken all her money and jewels, and fled. They told me

all this—three or four of our fellows were there, and a strange, gloomy

hush lay over the house. Major Lovell was dead.

 

“After that, for a week or two, all is chaotic. I did not end my life—I

hardly know how I was kept from that last coward’s act—the fact

remained. They buried Lovell; and in a quiet way, the story of old

Lovell’s plot, and old Lovell’s daughter, was over the town.

 

“I made no attempt to follow her. The first paroxysm of fury passed, a

sullen, dull reaction set in. I filed a suit for divorce. A mere

separation would not do—every tie must be cut that bound me to her. I

wrote home, telling my father and mother all—all—hiding nothing. Then

my leave came, and I quitted Toronto forever. Months passed. I lived in

hiding in Montreal; then the decree of divorce was granted—I was free!

 

“I was going home. Before quitting Canada to return no more, I went to

Quebec to visit my mother’s old friend and my godfather, General

Forrester. My story had rung through Quebec, of course—was it not

ringing over the length and breadth of the land? But the kind old

general made no mention of it, and insisted upon my joining them the day

of my arrival at mess.

 

“I agreed. I had lived a hermit life for five months—I longed to see

familiar faces once more. At the mess dinner, while jokes and stories

were being bandied round, some one jovially proposed the health of the

‘Sleeping Beauty of the Enchanted Palace,’ and it was drunk with

laughing enthusiasm. I naturally made inquiry concerning this celebrated

lady, and learned, that in the present instance, her mortal name was

Mrs. Gordon, a youthful widow of fabulous beauty and wealth, who had

come to Quebec five months before, and had shut herself up in a deserted

old rookery, to weep in silence, no doubt, over the dear departed. Like

a flash the truth came upon me.

 

“‘Most thrilling indeed, Ercildoun,’ I said; ‘here’s towards her? Which

are we to drink—_belle_ blonde, or jolie brunette?’

 

“‘Brunette, brunette! a picture by Titian. Eyes like sloes, and hair

like that what’s-his-name’s wing!’ shouted Ercildoun.

 

“The toast was rapturously taken up. I was as hilarious as any of them.

There are times when thought must be drowned, no matter how.

 

“Next day I deliberately hunted her down. Her servant was pointed out to

me on the street; I followed her. And walking up and down by the river

side, in the summer sunset, I came full upon the girl who had been my

wife.

 

“I believe at first she imagined I had come to kill her. I speedily

reassured her. What need, Lucia, to speak of that interview? It was

brief, indeed. I have looked my last, I hope, on the woman who was for

four months my wife. I hope—and yet, so surely as I stand here, I

believe she will cross my path again. She vowed it, as we parted that

night, and for good or for evil she is one to keep her word.”

 

The story was told rapidly, at times almost incoherently, but told. He

stood beside her in the moonlight, with colorless face and eyes full of

passionate despair.

 

“The remainder you know,” he said, after a pause; “the shame that broke

my father’s heart and sent him to his grave—that has parted my mother

and me forever. For the rest, whatever fate befalls me in the time to

come, it is a fate richly earned. I blame my mother in no way. Your son

Eric, or General Forrester’s baby daughter, will inherit Caryllynne in

my stead. So let it be. I go from here to-night, in all likelihood

forever. Before the week is out I shall have left England.”

 

She had turned her face away from him, but he knew that her tears were

falling.

 

“Where do you go?” she asked.

 

“To India. I have exchanged into a regiment ordered out at once. When

one’s life comes to an end at home, it is well to be of some service

abroad. And so, Lucia, my best cousin, you at least will bid me good-by

and good speed before I go.”

 

He took both her hands, looking down into the fair, drooping face.

 

“And you,” he went on, “are you happy, Lucia? You are pale and frail

as a shadow. Tell me, does Dynely—,” he paused. She drew her hands from

his clasp, her face still turned away.

 

“I made a mercenary marriage,” she answered, sudden coldness and

hardness in her tone; “that you know. All the happiness such marriages

bring, I have. While I possess my boy, my Eric, I can never be utterly

miserable, Gordon!” She looked up suddenly, her fair face crimsoning.

“You knew Lord Dynely before his marriage—you were with him one autumn

in Ireland, were you not? Tell me—” she stopped.

 

“Well, Lucia? What?”

 

“It may be only fancy, but I have fancied there is some—some secret

connected with that Irish summer. It is seven years ago—you were only a

boy at the time. Still—” again she paused confusedly.

 

“Well?”

 

“There was no one, no girl, no peasant girl to whom Lord Dynely paid

attention that summer in Galway? I have heard a rumor—” for the third

time she broke off, afraid, it seemed, to go on.

 

Her cousin looked at her in some surprise.

 

“You know what Lord Dynely is—was, I mean, in his bachelor days,” he

said, quietly, “an admirer of every pretty girl he met, whether peeress

or peasant. There were many handsome Spanish-looking women to be seen

that long ago summer we spent fishing at the Claddagh, on the Galway

coast. His lordship admired them all, I am bound to say; I am also bound

to say, impartially, so far as I could see. Don’t take fancies into your

head, Lucia—facts are enough. And now I must go. By Jove! how the time

has flown! I have kept you here an unconscionable time in the falling

dew. Good-by, Lucia, keep a green place in your memory for the black

sheep of the flock. Kiss little Eric for me. Once more, good-by.”

 

Holding her hands in his, he bent down and touched her cheek. She broke

suddenly into a passionate sob.

 

“Oh, Gordon, cousin, it breaks my heart to see you go!”

 

He smiled.

 

“It is best so,” he said.

 

He dropped her hands, turned with the words, walked rapidly away, and

disappeared.

 

CHAPTER VII.

 

HOW LORD VISCOUNT DYNELY DIED.

 

Half an hour had passed away, and still Lady Dynely paced slowly where

her cousin had left her, heedless of falling dew, her thin dinner-dress

damp and heavy already in the night. In the days that were gone she had

been very fond of her boy cousin, three years her junior in actual

years, twenty in worldly wisdom and judgment. There had never been any

thought of love or love-making, marrying or giving in marriage, between

these two; she had given Viscount Dynely her hand of her own free will,

and yet, the sharpest, keenest pang of actual jealousy she had ever

felt, she had felt when she first heard of Gordon Caryll’s marriage. Not

a very fierce pang, though, after all—it might have been said of her as

of Lady Jane, in the poem:

 

“Her pulse is calm, milk-white her skin;

She has not blood enough to sin.”

 

It had been considered a very brilliant match, the match of the season

indeed, when Lucia Paget won Alexis, Viscount Dynely and twentieth Baron

Camperdown. She had been taken up to London at eighteen, and presented

by her kinswoman, the Countess of Haldane. She was tall, slim and white,

fair and fragile as a lily, “a penniless lass wi’ a lang pedigree”—a

trifle insipid to some tastes, but she suited Lord Dynely. He came home

from a yachting cruise around Norway and the Hebrides, presented himself

suddenly in Vanity Fair, the most desirable prize of the mall, with

mansions and estates in four counties, a villa at Ryde, a shooting-box

in the Highlands, and an income that flowed in like a perennial golden

river. He was a prize that had long been angled for (his noble lordship

was in his five-and-fortieth year), maids and matrons had put on their

war paint, and set their wigwams in order, long and many a day ago, for

him. But in vain; his scalp-lock hung at no belt. He admired all,

ballerinas, as a rule, more than baronesses, actresses more than

duchesses. But his day came at last; he saw Lucia Paget, by no means the

beauty of the season, and after his own impetuous fashion, where his own

gratification was concerned, threw up the sponge to Fate at once, and

surrendered at discretion. He proposed, was accepted, and the

wedding-day named, before Vanity Fair could recover its breath. It was

the wonder of the day—that pale, insipid nonentity—that blas�,

fastidious, worn-out rou�—What did he see in her?

 

“There were maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,

Who would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.”

 

But he had passed them all by, and thrown the handkerchief at the

indifferent feet of this pale-haired lass. Before the end of the season

they were married.

 

He was very much enamored of his bride, there was no denying that.

Fickle, in his fancies, to a proverb, he was yet loyal here. He took her

over the Continent for a year, then returned to England, with them

“little Eric;” and Lord Viscount Dynely was the fondest of fathers as

well as the most devoted of husbands. But from the birth of his son a

change came over him. He took a habit of falling into moody, darksome

reveries, he dropped mysterious and unpleasant hints of some wrongdoing

in the past, he spoke gloomily of his infant heir and some sin, sinned

against him. Lady Dynely grew pale as she listened—it was no common

wrongdoing of a man of the world of which he hinted—it was something

that might influence the future of his son, of herself—some crime

against them both. He spoke a woman’s name in his disturbed,

remorse-haunted slumbers—“Maureen”—his wife could catch. What did it

mean? She had never loved her husband, she had always been a little

afraid of him—she grew more and more afraid of him as the years went

on. Years did go on. Eric was five; the secret, whatever it might be,

was Lord Dynely’s secret still. Only once he had said to her:

 

“Lucia, if I die before you, I have something to tell you that you won’t

like to hear. People always make death-bed confessions, don’t they? On

the principle, I suppose, that come what may, they are past hurting. I

wonder if they sleep any easier in their six feet of clay, for owning

up? I’ll write it down, and leave it sealed with my will, and then if

I’m cut off in a hurry (and it is an interesting trait in the Dynely

succession that we always are cut off in a hurry), it will come to

light all the same. There’s one consolation,” he said with a short,

reckless laugh,