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

suspense.”

 

“There’s nothing mysterious about it,” responded Terry Dennison with a

suppressed yawn; “she is France Forrester, as I say, only child and

heiress of the late General Forrester, distant connection of Lady

Dynely, and adopted daughter and heiress of Mrs. Caryll, of Caryllynne.

‘To her that hath shall be given.’ I have spoken!”

 

“Like an oracle. Go on—tell us more.”

 

“There’s no more. Her mother a French Canadian, from whom mademoiselle

inherits her gypsy skin and beaux yeux, died when she was six. Her

father placed her in a Montreal convent, and there she lived until she

was fifteen. Then he died, left her a fortune, and made Mrs. Caryll

her guardian. That was three years ago; and if your limited knowledge of

arithmetic will permit you to add three to fifteen you will come at Miss

Forrester’s age. Mrs. Caryll, then and at present in Rome, had her ward

conveyed to the Eternal City. Until two months ago she moved and had

her being there—now she has come over, to come out under the auspices

of Lady Dynely. I wish you fellows wouldn’t make me talk so much,” says

Terry, with a sudden sense of injury, “the thermometer is high, and I

ain’t used to it.”

 

Then Mr. Dennison strolls away, and the four men from the F. O. stand

and gaze with languid interest at the Canadian-Roman beauty and heiress.

 

“Safe to make a hit,” one said; “haven’t seen anything so thoroughbred

for three seasons. What with mademoiselle’s beauty and grace, and that

poise of the head, and two fortunes tacked to her train, and her twenty

quarterings (they’re an awfully old family, the Forresters), she ought

to make a brilliant match before the season ends.”

 

“Ah! I don’t know,” another responded, “it doesn’t always follow. The

favorite doesn’t always win the Derby. Mrs. Caryll’s heiress—him-m! I

say, Castlemain! You ought to know—wasn’t there a son in that family

once?”

 

“Gordon Caryll—very fine fellow—knew him at Oxford,” Castlemain

answered, “commission in the Rifles—old story that—sixteen years

ago—all over and forgotten for centuries.”

 

“Dead?”

 

“Don’t know—all the same—extinct. Made a horrible mesalliance out

there in Canada—scandal—divorce—exchanged—went to India—never heard

of more. Sic transit—fate of all of us by and by. Deuced slow this,”

struggling with a yawn; “I say—let’s hook it.”

 

The quartette move on, others take their place, and the men, one and

all, turn for a second look at the fair, proud-looking beauty. With Lady

Dynely, she still stands where Mr. Dennison has left them, gazing at the

picture that has made the hit of the year. It is by an artist unknown to

fame and Trafalgar Square—it is marked in the catalogue “No. 556—_How

The Night Fell_.”

 

It is not an English scene. Tall, dark hills in the background lift

pine-crowned heads to the sky, clumps of cedar, and tamarac, and spruce,

painted with pre-Raphaelite fidelity, dot these dark hillsides. A broad

river, with the last red light of dying day glinting along the water,

and over hillside and tree-top and flowing river, the gray darkness of

coming night shutting down. On the riverside two figures stand, a man

and a woman. One red gleam from the western sky falls full upon the

woman’s face, a face darkly beautiful, but all white and drawn with

woman’s utmost woe. Passionate despair looks out of her wild eyes at the

man who stands before her. Her hands are outstretched in agonized

appeal. For the man, he stands and looks at her, one hand slightly

upraised as if waving her off. His face is partly averted, but you can

guess the hatred that face shows. You see that her doom is sealed beyond

redemption. Over all, the creeping night is darkening land, and river,

and sky.

 

The two ladies gaze in silence for a time—Lady Dynely looking weary and

rather bored—Miss Forrester’s fine eyes bright with admiration. She is

new to general society as yet, and when eye, or ear, or heart are

delighted, the expressive face shows it.

 

“It is beautiful,” she says in a low voice; “there is nothing like it in

the rooms. Look at that wonderful effect of light on the woman’s face,

and slanting along the river, and the gray darkness that you can almost

feel there beyond. Those trees are tamarac—can it be a Canadian

scene. ‘How The Night Fell,’” she reads from her catalogue. “Lady

Dynely, I must know the painter of that picture.”

 

“My dear France!”

 

“‘G. Locksley.’ H-m-m—a new candidate, probably. Certainly I must know

him. In Rome, we—Mrs. Caryll and I—made a point of taking up every

young artist who appeared. She was known as the patroness of art. Our

rooms on our art-reception nights used to be crowded. The man who

painted that is a genius.”

 

“Mrs. Caryll was the patroness of struggling artists for this reason, I

fancy—her son was a devotee of art once himself, and studied for a year

in Rome before entering the army.”

 

“Her son,” Miss Forrester repeated dreamily, “Gordon Caryll. Perhaps so,

she very seldom spoke of him, poor fellow. What a very striking scene it

is!” looking again at the picture through her closed hand; “there is a

fascination for me in the anguish and despair of that woman’s face. A

beautiful face, too. I wonder if the artist painted his picture from

life?”

 

“My dear France, no. They are all imaginary, are they not—suggested by

books, or something of that kind?”

 

“Ah, I don’t know. Artists, and poets, and novelists, all turn their

sorrows to account in these latter days,” says Miss Forrester cynically;

“they paint their woes in oil and water colors, write them in

hexameters, and make money of them. Like Lord Byron, if they weep in

private, they certainly wipe their eyes on the public.”

 

“My dear child,” says Lady Dynely, looking shocked, “where have you

learned your cynicisms so young?”

 

Miss Forrester laughed.

 

“I am but a debutante,” she answered gayly, “not come out yet before the

footlights; but I have seen a deal of life, I assure you, behind the

scenes. Here comes Terry.” She glances over her shoulder. “If the artist

of ‘How the Night Fell,’ be present, Terry shall fetch him up and

introduce him.”

 

“But, France—”

 

Miss Forrester laughs again—a very sweet, low laugh. She is unlike most

English girls—in fact, she is not an English girl. She has her French

mother’s blood and vivacity, as well as her dark complexion, and dark

eyes, with something of the frank-spirited independence of an American

girl. With these and her late Roman experiences, she is a bundle of

contradictions, and a bewilderingly charming whole.

 

“But, Lady Dynely,” she repeats, “I warned you fairly in Rome what you

might expect when you consented to become a martyr, and bring me out. I

have had my own way ever since I was born, and always mean to—if I can.

I have lived in a perpetual atmosphere of artists for the past three

years—the long-haired Brotherhood of the Brush have been ‘the playmates

of my youth—the friends of my bosom.’” Here, catching sight of Lady

Dynely’s horrified face, Miss Forrester breaks off and laughs again, the

sweetest, frankest, merriest laugh, that ever came from rosy lips.

 

“What’s the joke?” asks Mr. Dennison, sauntering up; “I don’t see

anything in that black, glowering man, and that woman of the woeful

countenance to excite your ill-timed merriment, Miss Forrester.”

 

“Terry,” says Miss Forrester, “do you know the artist?”

 

“Miss Forrester, it is the proud boast of my life that I know every one.

Locksley? Yes, I know him—he’s in the rooms now, by the same token.

Look yonder—talking to Sir Hugh Lankraik, the great academician—very

tall, very fair man. Crops his hair, and doesn’t look like an

artist—more of the heavy-dragoon cut than anything else. See him?”

 

“Yes,” the young lady answered. She saw, as Terry Dennison said, a very

tall, very fair man, with blonde hair and beard, a complexion fair once,

tanned to golden brown, two grave, gray eyes, and a thoughtful, rather

worn, face—a man looking every day of his seven-and-thirty years. Not a

particularly handsome face, perhaps, but a face most women liked.

Whether Miss Forrester liked it or not, who was to tell?

 

“Not bad looking?” commented Terry interrogatively. Mr. Dennison

belonged to that large nil admirari class to whom the acme of all

praise of mortal beauty is “not bad looking.”

 

“Women admire him, I believe,” pursues Dennison, “but he rather cuts the

sex. I give you my word, he might be the pet of the petticoats all this

season after that picture, but he won’t. Lives for his art—capital

fellow, you know, but doesn’t care for women.”

 

“Interesting misogynist! Bring him up here, Terry, and introduce him.”

 

“France!”

 

“Is your hearing deficient, Mr. Dennison? I said, bring him up here and

introduce him.”

 

“Now, France, what has that poor fellow ever done to you? He cuts the

fair sex, and is a happy and successful man! Do let him be. I know the

havoc you made among those painting fellows in Rome, but you can’t

expect to do in London as the Romans do. She made it a point—I give

you my word, Lady Dynely—of breaking the heart of every young artist in

the Eternal City, and now she wants to add poor Locksley, as harmless a

fellow as ever breathed, to her ‘noble army of martyrs!’”

 

“Little Terry Dennison! will you hold your tongue and fetch Mr. Locksley

here?”

 

Miss Forrester lifts her gold-mounted eye-glass and looks at him. Miss

Forrester’s brilliant, hazel eyes are not, in the slightest degree,

short-sighted; she merely wears this eye-glass as a warrior his sword.

When she particularly wishes to annihilate any one, she lifts it, stares

speechlessly for five seconds, and the deed is done. Mr. Dennison knows

the gesture of old, and shows the white feather at once.

 

“Mr. Locksley’s picture pleases me. I wish to know Mr. Locksley.”

 

“Yes’m, please’m,” says Terry, meekly; “hanything else?”

 

“Mr. Locksley has ceased talking to Sir Hugh. Lady Dynely admires ‘How

The Night Fell,’ and does him the honor of permitting him to be

presented. You understand, little Terry?”

 

Terry Dennison, from the altitude of his six feet, looks down upon his

dashing little superior officer, with a comical light in his blue eyes,

laughs under his orange beard, and turns to obey.

 

“As the queen wills,” he says; “but, alas! poor Yorick! He never did me

any harm—Locksley, I mean, not Yorick. It is rather hard I should be

chosen, as the enemy to lead him to his doom.” He makes his way to where

the painter of the popular picture stands, and taps him on the shoulder.

“If you are not done to death with congratulations already, Mr.

Locksley, permit me to add mine. There is nothing else on the walls

half-a-quarter so good. Lady Dynely is positively entranced, has been

standing there for the last half hour. Will you do her the pleasure of

coming and being presented?”

 

“Lady Dynely!” The artist paused for a moment with an irresolute look,

and glanced doubtfully to where her ladyship stood.

 

“My dear fellow,” Terry cut in in some alarm, “don’t refuse. I know you

give ‘em all the cold shoulder, but you will really be conferring a

favor in this instance. She—Lady Dynely I mean of course—is quite wild

on the subject of art and artists. Never heard her so exercised as on

the subject of that picture of yours.”

 

“Lady Dynely does me too much honor,” said the artist smiling gravely,

and Dennison linked his arm in his own, and