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

>Miss Forrester is Terry’s confidante; he gets on with her. For Lady

Dynely, much as he loves and venerates her, or rather because of that

great love and veneration, he stands in awe of her. But France

sympathizes with him, more than ever in these later days, and listens

dreamily, while Mr. Dennison pours forth the story of his love.

 

“What a good fellow you are, Terry,” she says now regretfully. “It is a

pity to throw you away upon any insipid little country girl. (I know by

her photograph she is insipid.) I have half a mind to fall in love with

you myself.”

 

“Oh, but don’t, please!” says Terry, piteously; “let it be half a mind,

don’t make it a whole one. If you insisted upon it, I should knock under

at once—women can always do what they please with me, and then two

clever people should never marry—it doesn’t work; besides, you belong

to Eric.”

 

“Do I?” France responds, gravely. “I am not so sure of that. Eric seems

in no hurry to come and claim his belongings.”

 

“It’s a shame,” says Terry; “and so Lady Dynely has just been saying.

She’s awfully angry. Eric deserves to be shot.”

 

“‘The absent are always in the wrong,’” Miss Forrester quotes. “I don’t

see why my lady should be angry with Eric—I’m not. Let the poor boy

enjoy himself. But, for you, Terry, you shall go down to Lincolnshire

to-morrow, if you wish it. It is too bad, and too selfish of us, to keep

you tied to our apron-strings when the prettiest and sweetest girl in

England is pining for you among the Lincolnshire fens and marshes. I

shall speak to Lady Dynely, at once. Yours is the most aggravated case

of ‘cruelty to animals’ on record.”

 

“No, no! It may annoy Lady Dynely—I would not for the world. My affairs

can wait,” Terry remonstrates in alarm.

 

“So can ours. I am very fond of my lady, but I don’t worship the ground

she walks on, as some people do. I shall ask her.”

 

Miss Forrester kept her word. She sought out Lady Dynely, and broached

the subject at once.

 

“Lady Dynely, can’t you let Terry off duty for a couple of weeks? The

poor fellow is falling a prey ‘to green and yellow melancholy,’ and the

‘worm i’ the bud is preying on his damask cheek.’ In plain English, he’s

in love; and now that your generosity has given him something to live

on, he naturally wants to go and tell her—wants to lay his hand and

fortune at her feet, and do the ‘come, share my cottage, gentle maid’

sort of thing, you know.”

 

France spoke lightly. Lady Dynely laid down her pen—she was writing

that indignant protest to Master Eric—and looked up with a face that

turned to the color of ashes.

 

“Wants to marry!—Terry!” was all she could say.

 

“Naturally. We have made him our ‘fetch and carry’ spaniel, I know; but

he is a man for all that. We have treated him as though he were a page

or footman; but he is a lieutenant of dragoons, and nearly twenty-four

years old. Not a Methuselah, certainly, but old enough to take unto

himself a wife if he wishes to perpetrate that sort of imbecility.”

 

“Terry! a wife!” Then Lady Dynely sits still, and over the gray pallor

of her face a look of anger flashes. “It is absurd!—it is preposterous!

Terry with a wife! Why, he is only a grown-up baby himself. I will not

hear of it.”

 

“He is more than three years older than Eric,” says Miss Forrester, her

eyes kindling at this injustice. “When it is Eric’s lordly will to take

a wife, you won’t put in that plea of youth, will you?”

 

“The cases are altogether different—there is no comparison,” says Lady

Dynely, coldly. “Who is the girl?”

 

“She is one of the Miss Higginses. There are nine Miss Higginses,” says

France, with a slight shudder. “She is the youngest but one, poor thing.

Terry and she have been in love with each other ever since they ate pap

out of the same bowl and wore pinafores. And I think it is a little too

bad, Lady Dynely,” concludes France, indignantly, “that poor Terry can’t

have a wife if he wants one.”

 

“Send Terry here,” is Lady Dynely’s answer. “I will speak to him on this

subject.”

 

“And don’t be too hard on the poor fellow,” pleads France, imploringly.

“Oh, Lady Dynely, he loves you as it is the fate of few mothers to be

loved. So well that I believe if you order him to give up this girl, to

go away and turn Trappist, he will obey you. As you are strong, be

merciful—don’t be hard on Terry.”

 

Then she goes, and Terry comes. He looks uncommonly foolish and guilty,

much as he used to do when caught apple-stealing down in Lincolnshire

long ago, and was called up before the vicar to answer for his crime.

Her ladyship is still pale, very pale, her lips are set, her eyes look

anxious, the hands that are folded in her lap tremble nervously at his

approach.

 

“What is this, Terry?” she asks, and her clear voice is not steady. “Is

it a jest of France’s, or do you really wish to—”

 

“Marry Crystal Higgins? Yes, Lady Dynely, with your permission,” Terry

answers, looking up firmly enough.

 

“You really wish it?”

 

“I really wish it, with all my heart.”

 

“Silly boy,” Lady Dynely says, “what folly is this? You are too young.

Oh, yes, Terry, you are—you are ten years younger than your years—in

spite of all you have lived in the world, you are as ignorant of it as a

girl in her teens. I don’t object to that; I like you the better for it

indeed. But you are not up to the r�le of Benedick, the married man. And

besides, the income that is sufficient for you, with your simple habits,

will not suffice for a wife and family. I can’t conceive of you in love,

Terry, you who treat all the young ladies of your acquaintance with an

indifference as unflattering as I am sure it is sincere.”

 

“I love Crystal,” is Terry’s answer, and his blue eyes light. “I have

loved her pretty much, I think, since I saw her first.”

 

“And she—”

 

“Oh, I don’t know—she likes me, that I am sure of. She is only

seventeen, Lady Dynely, and knows nothing of the world beyond the

vicarage, the village, and her native marshes. And yet I think when I

ask her to be my wife she will not refuse.”

 

“You mean to ask her then?”

 

“With your permission, Lady Dynely.”

 

She lays her hand on his head; her lips tremble.

 

“You are a good boy, Terry; it would be difficult to be hard to you if

one wished. But I don’t wish. I only ask this—postpone your visit for a

little, don’t ask her to be your wife until—until Eric comes.”

 

He lifts her hand and kisses it.

 

“It shall be as you please,” he answers.

 

“Until Eric comes,” she repeats, and that grayish pallor is on her face,

that troubled look in her eyes. “I have something to tell him—something

to tell you. When that is told you shall do as you please—you will be

absolutely your own master thenceforth.”

 

“You are not angry, Lady Dynely?” Terry asks, in a troubled tone.

 

“Angry! with you? Ah, no, Terry; you have never given me cause for anger

in your life.” She sighs heavily; she thinks of one, as dear to her as

the very heart beating in her bosom, who has given her cause for anger

often enough.

 

“It is a compact between us. You will wait until I have told you what I

have to tell before you speak?”

 

“I will wait,” he answers. And then, with a troubled, mystified look on

his face he goes out. “Something to tell; what can it be?” Mr. Dennison

wonders. He is not good at guessing; mysteries have never come near his

simple life, and they sorely perplex and upset him when they do. For

Lady Dynely, she drops her face in her hands with a passionate cry.

 

“I have put it off so long,” she sobs, “and now the day is here—is

here.”

 

“Well,” says Miss Forrester, imperiously, “has your superior officer

given you leave, Mr. Dennison?”

 

Terry explains—stammering a good deal. Not just yet—he is to wait

until Eric comes home.

 

“Until Eric comes home! Grant me patience!” is Miss Forrester’s prayer.

“Now what under the sun has Eric to do with it? If Lady Dynely could,

the whole world would revolve at Eric’s pleasure, the sun only shine

when it was his sovereign will. I need not ask, Mr. Dennison, if you

mean to obey?”

 

“You need not, indeed, Miss Forrester,” he answers, coolly; “I mean to

obey.”

 

She looks at him curiously—almost pathetically—and yet with admiration

too.

 

“I think better of my fellow-men, Terry, since I have known you. You

give me an exalted idea of human nature. I thought gratitude an extinct

virtue—went out with the dark ages—you teach me my mistake. You love

and venerate Lady Dynely in a way that is simply wonderful.”

 

“She has done so much for me,” Terry says, “no gratitude can ever repay

her.”

 

“Yours will, don’t be afraid. You will have chance enough of showing

it.” Miss Forrester has thrice the worldly wisdom of poor Terry. “How

was it all? Your relationship to the Dynely family seems somehow such a

hazy affair. What was your life like before she came for you?”

 

But on this point Terry’s recollections are misty. A troubled look

crosses his face—it was all wretchedness and squalor that he vaguely

remembers, also that those with whom his early years were spent were

kind to him, in a rude sort of way. Out of this blurred picture, the

rainy day upon which she entered their hovel, like a very angel of

light, with her fair face and rich garments, stands out clear. She came,

and all his life changed. No mother could do more for a son than she had

done for him.

 

“Could they not?” Miss Forrester says, rather doubtfully, thinking how

differently the lives of Eric and Terry are ordered. But she will not

throw cold water on his enthusiasm. It is beautiful in its belief and

simplicity, this worship of Lady Dynely in a world where gratitude is

the exception, not the rule.

 

“But why did she do it? And what claim have you really upon her?” she

asks.

 

Here Terry is “far wide” again. His father was some sort of relation of

the late Lord Dynely, that much her ladyship told the Vicar of Starling,

and that meagre scrap is all Mr. Dennison knows of himself or his

history.

 

“Curious,” France says, thoughtfully, looking at him. “Lady Dynely is

the last to adopt a ragged child through a whim and do for him as she

has done for Terry. There is something on the cards we don’t see, and

something I fancy not quite fair.”

 

So all thought of going down into Lincolnshire and making the eighth

Miss Higgins blessed for life, was given up by Mr. Dennison for the

present, and he resumed his “fetch and carry” duties as France called

them, and dutifully escorted his two lady friends everywhere. Even down

to the Brompton studio, which bored him most of all, for he didn’t care

for pictures, and Mr. Locksley—a good fellow enough—was monopolized by

the ladies and had no time