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

your manor—it is in his line, you know.”

 

France was herself again. The prospect of a week to quietly think the

matter out was a great deal. And who knew what even a week might bring

forth?

 

It was settled that they should go together; Lady Dynely’s consent had

been won at last.

 

“But, remember,” she said at parting, looking anxiously into Terry’s

eyes, “you are to return in a week, and meantime you are to say nothing

to Miss Higgins. This I insist upon. When you have heard what I have to

say—”

 

He looked at her in anxious wonder. What could it be, he thought, to

make Lady Dynely wear that face of pale affright? What secret was here?

He would obey her in all things; she hardly needed the assurance, and

yet it was with a darkly troubled face she stood on the portico steps

and watched the two young men disappear.

 

“Thank fortune,” France breathed devoutly, “we shall have a quiet week.

Men are a mistake in a household, I begin to find. Like yeast in small

beer, they turn the peaceful stream of woman’s life into seething

ferment.”

 

“France,” the elder lady said, taking both the girl’s hands, and looking

earnestly down into her eyes, “you are to give Eric his answer when he

returns—I know that. When does he return?”

 

“In a week.”

 

“And the answer will be—”

 

“Lady Dynely, you have no right to ask that. When the week ends, and

Eric returns to claim it, the answer shall be given to him.”

 

She dropped the hands and turned away with a heavy sigh.

 

“I will do my duty, I hope—I pray,” France went on, quietly. “If Eric’s

happiness were involved—if, indeed, he loved me, after the tacit

consent I have given all these years—I would not hesitate one moment,

at any sacrifice to myself. But he does not love me—he is incapable of

loving anyone but himself. Oh, yes! Lady Dynely, even you must hear the

truth sometimes about Eric. As a brother, I could like him well

enough—be proud of his good looks, his graceful manner, as you are; as

a husband, if he is ever that, I shall detest him.”

 

“France!”

 

“I shock, I anger you, do I not? It is true, though, and he will tire of

me before the honeymoon is over. If we marry, it will be a fatal

mistake; and yet, if you all hold me to this compact, what is left me

but to yield?”

 

“You are a romantic girl, France; you want a hero—a Chevalier Bayard—a

Sir Launcelot. Dear child, there are none left. Like the fairies, they

sailed away from England years ago—went out of fashion with tilt and

tournament. You will marry Eric, I foresee, and make a man of him. He

will go into parliament, make speeches, and be a most devoted husband to

the fairest and happiest wife in England. Oh, France, take my boy! I

love you so well that I will break my heart if this marriage does not

take place.”

 

“And I will break mine if it does,” France answers, with a curious

little laugh. “Let us not talk of it any more, ma m�re. We are due at

De Vere’s, are we not? We have a week’s grace, and much may happen in a

week. I have the strongest internal conviction that I will never be Lady

Dynely.”

 

CHAPTER VIII.

 

“WHO IS SHE?”

 

Scene, an old-fashioned country garden of an old-fashioned country

house; time, the mellow, amber hour before sunset; dramatis person�, a

young man and a young girl; names of dramatis person�, Mr. Terence

Dennison, of Her Majesty’s –-th Dragoons, and Miss Christabel Higgins,

eighth daughter of the Rev. William Higgins, Vicar of Starling, and

beauty of the family.

 

A beauty? Well, as Tony Lumpkin says, “That’s as may be.” If you liked a

complexion of milk-white and rose-pink, the eighth Miss Higgins had it;

if you liked big, childish, surprised-looking, turquoise blue eyes,

there they were for you; if you liked a dear little, dimpled, rosy

mouth, there it was also; if you liked a low, characterless forehead, a

round, characterless chin, and a feathery aureole of palest blonde hair,

the eighth Miss Higgins rejoiced in all these pretty and pleasant gifts.

If you fancied a waist you might span, a shape, small, slim, fragile as

a lily-stalk, little Crystal would have been your ideal, certainly.

Pretty? Yes, with a tender, dove-like, inane sort of prettiness, that

does its work with a certain sort of men. Mind, she had none; depth, she

had none; knowledge of this big, wicked world, she had none; in short,

she was man’s ideal of perfect womanhood, infringing on no claim

whatever of the lordly sex. And Terry Dennison was her abject slave and

adorer.

 

She was seventeen this sunny August afternoon. It seemed to Terry he had

idolized her—idolized was the way Mr. Dennison thought it—ever since

she had been seven. She knew she was pretty—dove-like innocence to the

contrary—and rejoiced in that prettiness as thoroughly as any embryo

coquette. Had she not been caressed, and kissed, and praised for those

blue eyes and golden tresses ever since the days of bibs and tuckers?

Had she not seen her seven elder sisters snubbed and passed over, and

the cakes and the sugar-plums always presented to her? It would be so

forever, Crystal thought. In the eternal fitness of things it had been

ordered so—the seven elder Cinderellas worked in kitchen and chamber,

sewed, baked, and mended; she, like the lilies of the field, toiled not

nor spun. The cakes and sugar-plums of life were to be hers always; they

belonged by right divine to pretty people with pale yellow hair and

turquoise eyes. Let the snub-noses, and freckled complexions, and the

dry-as-dust colored hair do the work. She would marry Terry Dennison

some day, and be, as Terry was, an offshoot of the aristocracy. This

great lady, who was Terry’s patroness and friend, would take her up,

would present her at court, would invite her to her parties, and the

world of her dreams would become the world of realities. She would see

this handsome Lord Eric Dynely, of whom Terry never tired talking—this

elegant Miss France Forrester, who was to marry him. And, who

knew—these beings of the upper world might condescend even to admire

her in turn.

 

Miss Crystal Higgins, strolling with her Tennyson or her Owen Meredith

in her hand through the old vicarage garden, had dreamed her dreams, you

see. That was the simple little life she had mapped out for herself. She

would marry Terry—that was settled. Terry had never asked her, but, ah!

the simplest little lassie of them all can read mankind like a book when

they have that complaint. Terry was in love with her, had always been;

she knew it just as well as Terry himself. And she liked Terry very

well; she wasn’t in love with him at all, but still she was fonder of

him than of any other young man she knew; and he was a dragoon, and

that threw a sort of halo over him. It was a pity, she was wont to

sigh, regretfully, that he was so homely; even being a dragoon could not

entirely do away with the fact that he was homely, and had red hair.

None of the heroes of Miss Higgins’ pet novels ever had hair of that

obnoxious hue. Still one mustn’t expect everything in this lower

world—papa and mamma instilled that into her sentimental little

noddle—it is only for beings of that upper world—like Miss Forrester,

for instance, to look for husbands handsome as Greek gods, titled,

wealthy. Less-favored mortals must take the goods their gods provide,

and be thankful. The wife of a dragoon, with five hundred a year, looked

a brilliant vista to the “beauty daughter” of the Vicar of Starling.

 

And now the question resolved itself. Why didn’t Terry speak? He had

written of his good fortune, of Lady Dynely’s boundless kindness, and

the Reverend Mr. and Mrs. Higgins congratulated themselves that

“Crissy’s” fortune was insured. Crissy herself simpered and cast down

her blonde eyelashes, and saw with secret satisfaction, the sour and

envious regards of the seven elder Misses Higgins, who were verging

helplessly toward the sere and yellow leaf. Then Terry wrote of his

speedy visit. “And I really think, Christabel, my love,” said Mamma

Higgins, “we might begin making up the outfit. It will take some time,

and of course he comes down with but one intention, that of proposing

immediately.” And a few things were commenced. The first week of August

came, the big dragoon with it, his frank face and good-humored eyes

fairly luminous with delight at being with them again. Those eager,

loving eyes actually devoured Crystal; not for five minutes at a stretch

could they leave that pretty doll face. He haunted her everywhere, as a

big, lumbering Newfoundland might follow a little curled, silky King

Charles. He looked love, he hinted love, he acted love, in ten thousand

different ways, but he never spoke it. He blushed if she suddenly looked

at him, stammered if she suddenly addressed him, touched the little

lily-leaf hand she gave him with the timidity characteristic of big,

warm-hearted men, very far gone indeed; but beyond that he never got.

“Miss Crystal Higgins, will you marry me?” was a conundrum he never

propounded. And Mamma Higgins’ matronly eyes began to look at him

wrathfully over her spectacles, the seven elder Misses Higgins to cast

sisterly, satirical glances after the beauty, and Crystal herself to

open those innocent turquoise orbs of hers to their widest, and wonder

what made Terry so awfully bashful. The last day but one of the visit

had come and Terry had not spoken.

 

It was Crystal’s birthday, and there was to be a little f�te; croquet in

the back garden—the family bleaching-ground on ordinary occasions—a

tea-drinking under the apple-trees afterward, and a dance by moonlight.

 

The company had begun to gather; but there were Mamma Higgins and the

seven other Misses Higgins to receive and entertain them, so Terry drew

his idol’s hand inside his coat-sleeve, and led her away for a little

last ramble “o’er the moor among the heather.”

 

“I go back to-morrow, and I cannot tell exactly how long Lady Dynely may

detain me, so let me gather my roses while they bloom,” said Terry,

growing poetical, as many young gentlemen do when in love.

 

“It seems to me, Terry,” said the eighth Miss Higgins, rather pettishly,

“you are a sort of companion for Lady Dynely’s lap-dog, to fetch and

carry, to come and go, as you are told. You are too big, I should think,

to let yourself be treated like a little boy all your life.”

 

It was not often Mlle. Crystal made so determined a stand as this, or

uttered so spirited a speech. But mamma had told her this very day that

something must be done; that if she couldn’t bring Terry to the point

herself, papa must ask his intentions. A little firing of blank

cartridge is very well, but if you want to bring down your bird, you

must use real powder and shot.

 

Terry’s face flushed. He understood the reproof, and felt he deserved

it. Love may be blind, but not quite stone blind; he saw well enough

what was expected of him by the vicar’s family, by the little beauty

herself, and knew he was exciting anger and blame for not doing what he

was dying to do. He deserved this reproof, and reddened guiltily. What

if Crystal knew it was by Lady Dynely’s command he did not dare speak,

how she would