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

to attend to him. The bright brief

season—for Parliament closed early that year—was at its end, all the

world of western London were turning their thoughts countryward, the

last sitting for Lady Dynely’s portrait was to be given. While she sat,

Miss Forrester prowled about as usual among the pictures, and lo!

brought one to light that was a revelation.

 

She had seen them all again and again. The Canadian winter scene for

the Marquis, a view from the heights of Quebec, with the river a

glistening ribbon of frozen silver-white, and the ice cone of

Montmorency Falls piercing the vivid blue sky—the glimpses of green

Virginian forests, picturesque negro quarters, rich sketches of northern

autumnal forests, all gorgeous splashes of ruby-red maple and orange

hemlock, and anon a glimpse of Indian life, dusky white-veiled Arabs,

and dreary sketches of sandy plain. The companion picture for Madame

Felicia was not yet begun. And thus it was that suddenly France came

upon her treasure-trove.

 

It was hidden from view in a dusky corner covered by half a dozen larger

canvasses—a little thing, merely a sketch, but struck in with a bold

hand, with wonderful gradation of light and shade. This is what she saw:

 

An old-fashioned garden; a tangled mass of roses and heliotrope and

honeysuckle; a night sky, lit by a faint, new moon; the dim outline of a

stately mansion rising in the background over the black trees; a girl in

a white dress, her face uplifted to the night sky. In the dim distance,

a darker shadow among the shadows, his face entirely obscured—the tall

figure of a man stands unseen, watching. The face of the girl is

France’s own. The blood rushed to her forehead as she looked, with a

shock, she could hardly have told—whether of anger or joy. She

understood the picture in a moment, and in that moment understood

herself. The figure in the background was his—and he was bidding her

a last farewell. That look of passionate love, of passionate

despair—how dared he! With the crimson of conscious guilt still red in

her cheeks, her eyes flashed. Did he suspect what until this moment she

had never suspected herself? A suffocating feeling of shame, of terror,

seized her. Did he suspect—did he dare suspect that she had stooped to

care for him unsought?

 

Yes, stooped! Was he not a nameless, struggling artist, one of the

toilers of the earth? And she—and then France stopped and knew in her

inmost soul that though he were a beggar, he was the one man of all men

born to be her master.

 

She sat like one in a trance looking at it—heedless how time flew,

until suddenly a slip of paper attached to the back caught her eye.

 

It was a short printed poem that told the story of the picture.

Mechanically she took it and read:

 

“So close we are, and yet so far apart;

So close I feel your breath upon my cheek;

So far that all this love of mine is weak

To touch in any way your distant heart;

So close, that when I hear your voice I start

To see my whole life standing bare and bleak:

So far, that though for years and years I seek,

I shall not find thee other than thou art.”

 

She laid it down. There was a step behind her, and then lifting her eyes

they met his full. He turned quite white, and made a motion as though to

take the picture from her hand.

 

“Miss Forrester! I did not mean that you should see that.”

 

“So I presume. You must pardon me for having seen it, all the same. May

I ask for which of Mr. Locksley’s patrons is this?”

 

“Miss Forrester does me less than justice,” he answered; “I have not

been so presumptuous as that. This picture is not to leave my studio.

Have you seen the poem? Yes—well, the fancy took me to put the story it

told on canvas. Almost in spite of me the girl’s face became yours. It

is but an instant’s work to dash it out if it displeases you.”

 

“The picture is your own; you will do as you please,” she said,

frigidly. “Ma m�re, is the sitting over at last? Shall we go?”

 

“Your picture, France?” Lady Dynely said, glancing at the apple of

discord, and putting up her glass. “Really; and very well done. ‘The

Last Parting.’ But what a despairing expression you give her, Mr.

Locksley. Who ever saw France with such a look as that?”

 

“No one, mother mine,” France said, gayly. There were times when she

called Lady Dynely by this title and thus gladdened her heart. “Nor ever

will. But these artists have such vivid imaginations.”

 

“I should like you to paint France’s portrait, really,” said her

ladyship. “I have none. What do you say? Throw over your engagements and

come down to Dynely and do me this favor.”

 

“It is quite impossible, madame,” the artist answered, moodily, standing

by his handiwork and looking down at it with gloomy eyes.

 

And then all of a sudden a change came over Miss Forrester. The look of

hauteur broke up, disappeared, and a smile like a gleam of sunshine

after a storm lighted her face.

 

“No one ever says impossible to Lady Dynely,” she said, in her old,

imperiously charming tone; “least of all with that look. And I really

should like to see myself as others see me, on canvas. That is not I,

for I could by no possibility ever wear such a look as that. You shall

paint my picture not once, but twice—once for Lady Dynely and once for

a dear old lady in Rome, who will prize it above rubies—Grandmamma

Caryll.”

 

He looked up, a faint flush under the golden tan of his skin.

 

“You mean that?” he asked.

 

“Most certainly. Let Felicia wait, and you may follow us down to

Dynely.”

 

“I shall take it as a favor,” chimed in Lady Dynely.

 

There is a moment’s pause, of strong irresolution, France can see. Then

he looks up and meets her eyes again.

 

“You are both very good,” he says, quietly. “I will come.”

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

“THE LORD OF THE LAND.”

 

Walking up and down the pier of Saint-Jean-sur-Mer, on the Brittany

coast, under the broiling sea-side sun, waiting for the English packet

anchored out in the roads, is a young English gentleman. The July sky is

blazing blindingly here by the sea; the heat quivers like a white mist

over the water; not a breath of air stirs the chestnuts or laburnums,

and the streets of Saint-Jean lie all baked and white in the pitiless,

brassy glare of that fierce midsummer sun.

 

But in all this tropical dazzle and heat the young Englishman saunters

up and down, and looks cool and languid still. His summer suit of palest

gray is the perfection of taste; his boots, his gloves, perfection also;

and the handkerchief which he flirts once or twice across his face is of

finest cambric, embroidered with a coronet and monogram, and perfumed

with attar of violets. He is tall and very blonde, as shapely as a

woman, broad-shouldered, slender-waisted, long-limbed, and very

handsome. His complexion is delicate as a girl’s; for such blue eyes and

blonde curls many a fair one might sigh with envy; very handsome, very

effeminate. He has a little golden mustache, waxed into minute points; a

straw hat is thrown carelessly on his fair hair. He is the most

beautiful, the most noble, the most perfect of all men, in one woman’s

eyes at least. He is Eric, Lord Viscount Dynely. He walks up and down,

and waits for the boat which is to convey him across the channel, to his

home and the lady he is to marry. But he is in no hot haste about it; he

has put off the evil day as long as possible.

 

France Forrester is a pretty girl, an elegant girl, a clever girl; a

suspicion has entered Lord Dynely’s handsome blonde head more than once

that she may be even cleverer than himself. That is a drawback. In

common with all men of good taste and sense, he dislikes clever women; a

suspicion of blue in the stockings would outweigh the charm of the

daintiest foot and ankle on earth. Still it is a settled thing among the

powers that be, and poor France expects it, no doubt; and it is less of

a bore, on the whole, to yield gracefully, and sacrifice himself in his

youth and loveliness on the altar of filial duty, than make a fuss about

it. And, besides, as a wife, he really doesn’t know any lady he would

prefer to Mrs. Caryll’s heiress.

 

At half-past ten he came down to the pier; it is a quarter of eleven

now, as he sees by the small jewelled repeater he draws from his pocket,

and Lord Dynely frowns a little.

 

“Confound it!” he mutters; “she promised to be here at half-past, sharp,

and now it is a quarter of eleven. The boat starts at eleven. Won’t she

come after all? and have I been ruining my complexion and eyesight in

this beastly glare for the last thirty minutes for nothing?”

 

Then he pauses, stops, smiles. She is coming—a dark-eyed, coquettish

little Frenchwoman, charmingly dressed, and who possesses the good looks

that come from youth, good health, good taste, and fine spirits. She is

Lord Dynely’s last flirtee, met at a Saint-Jean ball, where in ten

minutes she had waltzed herself completely into his fickle affections.

He had come to Saint-Jean, from his Spanish loiterings, with the

intention of crossing over at once, and lo! a fortnight had passed and

two merry black eyes and a vivacious French tongue had held him in rose

chains ever since. The two weeks’ passion had grown triste now, and he

was going, and madame had promised to trip down and bid him adieu on the

pier. Such was the gentleman decreed to become France Forrester’s lord

and master.

 

The fifteen minutes pass; they talk very affectionately, he with his

tall, fair head bent devotedly over her, his eloquent blue eyes speaking

whole encyclopedias of undying devotion. He is one of those men who

naturally delight to play at love-making, and throw themselves into the

moment’s r�le with all the depth that is in them. One of those men born

to be worshipped by women, and to make them suffer mercilessly at his

hands. Not robustly bad in any way, but simply without an ounce of

ballast in him, body or soul.

 

Eleven strikes from all the clocks of Saint-Jean-sur-Mer—the fatal hour

has come. There are tears in madame’s black, doll-like eyes as she

whispers adieu; beautifully pale, sad and tender Lord Eric looks. He

waves the perfumed coroneted handkerchief from the upper deck as long as

she is in sight, still mournful and pale to look upon despite the height

of the thermometer. Then he laughs, puts the handkerchief in his pocket,

lights a rose-scented cigarette, selects a shady spot on deck, orders

his valet to fetch him that last novel of George Sand, and in five

minutes has as completely forgotten the woman he has left as—the girl

he is going to.

 

He reaches London. It is a desert, of course. Everybody has gone. Some

three million are left, but they don’t count. He looks in weary disgust

at the empty, sun-scorched West End streets, at the bleached parks, the

forsaken Ladies’ Mile, and goes down at once to Devonshire. And in the

cool of a perfect summer evening he reaches the village station, and as

he is