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

peculiar a nature, my dearest child, so

unlike other girls of your age, so self-willed, and radical in your

opinions, that I fear for you. Not that you would ever marry

beneath you. I have no dread of that, you are far too proud; but

you may meet some one whom your fancy will idealize, whom you

cannot marry, and who will wreck the happiness of your life.

Something—I do not know what, tells me this will be so. Guard

against it—let your engagement with Eric be announced to the world

immediately it takes place. And write at once, my dear, dear

daughter, to your most affectionate

 

“MARIAN CARYLL.”

 

She threw the letter aside with a quick gesture of irritated impatience.

As a rule, she was not petulant, and all Mrs. Caryll’s wishes carried

force, but just now she felt intolerant of this husband thrust upon her,

whether she would or no.

 

“Eric Dynely,” she said, “a masculine wax doll, a perfumed coxcomb, a

dandy of the first water! I hate dandies! I detest pretty men! I would

sooner marry Terry Dennison any day!”

 

One of the windows stood open; the soft, chill morning breeze stirred

the curtains of silk and lace; she put them aside and leaned out into

the fresh coolness, the faint light of the dawn glimmering on her pink

silk, her roses and diamonds.

 

“The day for this sort of marriage should have ended a century ago,” she

thinks, full of impatient pain; “this kind of alliance should be left to

royalty. But noblesse oblige, it seems to be my fate. He is very well,

the best waltzer I know, the best second in a duet, he has the bow and

grace of a Beau Brummel—the good looks of an Apollo—what more can one

want? And yet one does. Loves me, does he, grandmamma? Ah, no! Eric,

Viscount Dynely, fell in love many years ago—with himself, and will be

the victim of that passion all his life. And after all the dreams and

the hero worship they laugh at, I am to marry Eric Dynely!”

 

Then through the mists of the morning there floats before her a face,

brown, bearded, grave, with deep lines of care and thought seamed upon

it, with threads of silver gleaming through the fairness of his hair, a

man who had been a leader of men, a man who had lived and suffered.

 

“You may meet some one your fancy will idealize, whom you cannot marry,

and who will wreck the happiness of your life.”

 

Was Mrs. Caryll among the prophets?

 

CHAPTER V.

 

LOVE TOOK UP THE GLASS OF TIME.

 

The leafy greenness of May, the soft and veiled warmth of June, had

passed; the feverish noontides of July had come, and Lady Dynely’s only

son had not returned from his idle wanderings to woo and win his bride.

 

To France Forrester this first season of hers had been bright and

beautiful as a fairy tale. She had been presented by Lady Dynely, had

created, as the critics of the Academy had predicted, a sensation. A

certain royal personage, whose approval was a patent right and seal of

popularity in itself, had condescended to place his gracious stamp of

approbation upon her, and Miss Forrester awoke and found herself “the

fashion.” “The fashion!” these two magic words told the whole story.

Women slandered her fiercely, hated her bitterly, and copied everything

she wore, from her coquettish head-gear to her little boots. Men

diplomatized for the favor of a waltz, as they might for princely

preferment. In the ride, in the ball-room, and opera-box, Miss Forrester

was still the best surrounded lady of the assembly, the _belle des

belles_. “And why is it?” her envious compeers asked. “It isn’t her

beauty; there are scores more perfectly and classically beautiful than

she, with her dark skin and irregular features.” Was it the dashing

independence of her manner, the careless audacity with which she looked

into their eyes, and laughed at their flatteries, and threw them lightly

over as whiffs of thistle-down? She was so thoroughly heart-whole, so

perfectly indifferent to their homage, that she piqued their

vanity—always a man’s strongest feeling—and rendered them, by that

imperious grace of hers, her veriest slaves. Whether she talked Italian

politics to Prince Di Venturini, with his wizen, murky face, and beady

black eyes, or the newest opera with Signor Carlo Dolce, the new

Venetian tenor, whether she discoursed art with long-haired, dreamy-eyed

students, and stately academicians, or the latest Belgravian gossip with

a dashing military duke, it was all the same. She was interested in the

theme, not the man; her heart, if she possessed one, was triply clad in

steel—no one, it seemed, had power to touch it. And then, presently it

leaked out that she had been engaged for years to Lord Dynely, and that

the engagement would be publicly announced to all whom it might concern,

immediately upon his return to England. “He must have great faith in his

affianced,” said the sneerers; he certainly seemed in no hot haste to

join her. This was after Miss Forrester had said “no” to two of the most

eligible gentlemen of the season, and who had followed her about the

summer through, like her lap-dog or her shadow.

 

This season, which had been such a brilliant career of victory to Miss

Forrester, had been a very busy one for Mr. Locksley the painter. Orders

flowed in—his fame and fortune seemed made. Madame Felicia sent by the

prince for a companion picture to “How the Night Fell.” The Marquis of

St. Albans had ordered a Canadian winter scene. Lady Dynely wished to

have her own portrait painted for her son. The sittings for this

portrait necessitated many visits to the Brompton Studio, and Miss

Forrester was almost invariably my lady’s companion. She wandered about

among the paintings at will, whilst the elder lady sat or lay back, and

listened with half-closed eyes to Mr. Locksley talking whilst he

painted. He talked well, and as he seemed to have been pretty much

everywhere, found subjects enough. Anecdotes of his Indian life, the

fighting, the campaigning, the pig-sticking, stories of the American

civil war, thrilling and vivid as truth could make them, of Canada, with

its brief, hot summers, and long, cold winters, until the hours of each

sitting were gone like a dream.

 

“Really, Mr. Locksley is a charming companion,” Lady Dynely was wont to

say; “talks better than any man I know. What a traveller he has

been—been everywhere and seen everything.”

 

It was a subject upon which Miss Forrester was suspiciously

reticent—Mr. Locksley and the charm of his conversation. And yet,

though she would not have owned it even to herself, those hours in the

Brompton cottage, sitting by the open window watching the afternoon sun

sink behind the tree-tops, leaving a trail of splendor behind, with the

scent of the summer roses perfuming the air, while Mr. Locksley painted

and talked, and Lady Dynely sat and listened, were the pleasantest hours

of her life. All were pleasant; this summer took a glory and a bliss

none other had known; but these were the foam of life’s champagne.

 

She and Mr. Locksley met tolerably often elsewhere. He still attended at

intervals Lady Dynely’s Thursdays, and there were literary and artistic

gatherings where Miss Forrester met him. It was curious on these

occasions to note the restless light in the great hazel eyes, the quick,

impatient glances at the door, the sudden stillness that came over her

when a new name was announced, the swift shade of annoyed impatience, or

the glad, quick light and warmth that spread over her face, as it was or

was not the name she wished to hear. And somehow—certainly it was not

Mr. Locksley’s doing; he was the most modest, least presuming of

men—presently he found himself by Miss Forrester’s side, holding the

little gloved hand she extended in frank, friendly greeting, and basking

in the sunshine of her sunniest smiles. In the park, too, leaning over

the rails, smoking his twilight cigar, Mr. Locksley was often favored

with a gracious bow from a certain coroneted carriage, and a dark,

lovely face, framed in a marvel of Parisian lace and rosebuds, shone

upon him for an instant like a dusk star. That tall, soldierly figure,

that bronzed, bearded face, that grave smile of recognition, Miss

Forrester would have known among ten thousand.

 

And still Lord Dynely did not come.

 

“It is very strange—it is incomprehensible, it is most annoying,”

Lady Dynely said, over and over again, to herself, or to Terry, knitting

her blonde brows; “I can’t understand. So fond as he used to be of

France, too, and see her now flirting with half the men in London.”

 

“I don’t call it flirting,” Terry would respond. “France can’t help

smiling on men and turning their heads any more than the

what’s-its-name—sunflower—can help turning the sun. And if the sun

scorches and shrivels them a little, I don’t see that the sun is to be

blamed either. Sounds poetical, that, don’t it?” said Terry, rather

surprised at his own performance.

 

“It is unpardonable of Eric,” Lady Dynely would retort, vexed, and

almost angry with her darling; “and so I shall tell him when I write.

Here it is the end of July, and we go down to Devonshire next week. His

birthday is in August, and who is to tell us whether he will even come

then. Of course France must feel piqued, though she conceals her

feelings so well.”

 

“Uncommonly well,” says Terry. “So well that I for one am disposed to

think that she isn’t in the least annoyed. Where is Eric loafing now?”

 

“Eric is still in Spain, and is evidently enjoying himself,” says Eric’s

mother, irritably.

 

“‘The girls of Cadiz,’” hums Terry, under his breath. “Well, don’t

worry. I’ll go over and fetch him if you like.”

 

“Nonsense, Terry! don’t be a simpleton. What would France and I have

done all this summer without you for an escort? You have been the best

of boys, and I know you have been longing more than once to break away

and go down to Lincolnshire.”

 

“Your pleasure must ever be first with me,” Terry answers, but he

smothers a little sigh as he says it. Truth to tell, he has been

longing many times to break away from flower show and opera, party and

park, dining and dressing, and all the rest of it, and rush down into

Lincolnshire, to the old vicarage of his boyhood, where his loadstar

shines. But Lady Dynely wills it otherwise, and Lady Dynely’s lightest

word is law to Terry.

 

“If I could only have got off duty for a week—just a week,” he had said

pathetically once to France, “I wouldn’t so much mind. You see, she’s

just the dearest, sweetest little darling in the world—”

 

“Of course,” interrupts France, gravely.

 

“And I’ve been awfully fond of her ever since I wore roundabouts, and

she short muslin frocks, tied up on the shoulder, and I’m dying to tell

her the good news, my commission and the five hundred a year and—and

something else.” Terry suddenly turns very red. “A fellow could marry

and keep a wife on his pay and five hundred a year, couldn’t he, France?

Just a little suburban villa, you know, a pretty parlor maid, and a boy

in buttons, and a one-horse shay—eh? Couldn’t they, France? My tastes

ain’t expensive, as Lady Dynely said the other day, and she—ah France!

I see lots of girls, you know—jolly girls, and dashing girls, and

pretty girls, but not one—no, I give you my word, not one-half as good,

or sweet, or pretty, as my little Crystal!”