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

despise him? And for the first time it occurred to him

that perhaps it was rather unkind of that best of women to have bound

him to this promise.

 

“I should never have come down here at all until I was free to say all

that is in my heart,” he thought. “Oh, my darling! before the sun sinks

out of sight yonder, you would know life holds no thought half so sweet

as the thought of making you my wife.”

 

She was looking very lovely in this roseate evening light—but Terry

thought when did she not look lovely? She wore flowing white muslin—she

was that sort of ethereal creature who seemed born to wear white muslin.

She had a bunch of roses in her breast, roses in her sash, roses in her

hand, and a heart-breakingly coquettish “Dolly Varden” on her head. She

had a cascade of white wax beads around her long, slim throat, and knots

of blue ribbon streaming from her golden locks. The yellow sunshine fell

full upon the perfect face without finding a flaw in it; the little

snowdrop of a hand rested on his arm; the soft, affectionate,

reproachful eyes looked up at him waiting in pathetic appeal.

 

“You know I like you; I know you love me; then why don’t you say so,

Terry, and please mamma and me? You have only to ask and receive; I

think it is a little too bad of you to go on like this.” That was what

that reproachful little look said, and Terry groaned in spirit as he saw

and understood and chafed against the fetters that bound him.

 

“See here, Crystal,” he said, “there’s something I want to say to

you”—Crystal’s heart gave a little flutter beneath the roses, Crystal’s

lips parted in an irrepressible smile—“but I can’t say it just now.”

 

He paused, for the smile faded away, and the light blue eyes looked up

in anger and alarm to his face.

 

“I can’t say it just now,” pursued Mr. Dennison, with a great gulp,

“because—because I’ve promised. I don’t know why, I’m sure, but there’s

something to be told, and I’m to go back and hear it before I return and

speak to you.”

 

Lucid this, certainly. With dilated eyes and parted lips, Miss Crystal

Higgins was staring up at him, while Terry floundered hopelessly through

this morass of explanation.

 

“I’m going to-morrow,” went on the dragoon; “I told her I would; but I’m

coming back—back immediately, mind. And then I shall have something to

say to you, Crissy, that I’ve been dying to say for the past year.

To-day I can explain no further. Only—you won’t be angry with me,

Crystal, and you’ll be patient, and trust me, and wait until I come

back!”

 

He looked at her imploringly—a woman blind, and deaf, and dumb, might

have understood all he meant. But Miss Crystal was a kittenish little

coquette, and her eyes were cast down now, and the rose-pink color had

deepened, and she was pulling her roses to pieces and scattering them

with a ruthless hand.

 

“I don’t understand a word you are saying, Mr. Dennison,” was her

answer. “What did we come here for, I wonder? Let us go back. I’m dying

for a game of croquet, and all the people must have come.”

 

“Won’t you promise me, then, Crystal?”

 

“Promise you what, Terry?”

 

“To wait until I return. To—to not forget me,” says poor Terry, with a

sort of groan.

 

Miss Higgins laughs. When a girl’s lover stands before her in an agony

of masculine awkwardness and bashfulness, that girl is immediately at

her ease.

 

“Wait until you return? I have no intention of running anywhere, you

stupid Terry. Forget you? Now how could I forget you if I tried, when

your name is a household word with the girls from morning until night?

Do let us go back and play croquet.”

 

“Wait one moment, Crystal. I bought you this, this morning. Wear it for

my sake until I return, and then I will replace it with a diamond.”

 

He produces from an inner pocket a tiny case, from the case a tiny ring

of pearls and turquoise only made for fairy fingers. But it slips easily

over one of Miss Christabel’s.

 

“Wear it Crystal,” he says softly, “for my sake.”

 

And Terry kisses the little hand, and Crystal looks up in his face, and

they understand one another, and there is no more to be said. She is a

good little thing after all, and not disposed to play with her big,

awkward lover. It is all right; Terry is a dear, good fellow, and she

will tell papa not to demand his intentions.

 

They stand a moment still. Over the flat, distant marshes the August sun

is setting, turning the pools that lie between the reeds into pools of

blood. The distant sea lies sleeping in the tranquil light. It is very

pretty—quite Tennysonian, Miss Higgins pensively thinks; but her soul

is with the croquet players. “Let us go back, Terry,” she is on the

point of saying for the third time, when she stops, surprised by the

look Terry wears. He is staring hard straight before him, a look of

mingled doubt, recognition, and pleasure on his face. Crystal looks too,

and sees coming towards them a man.

 

“It is!” says Terry, in delight. “By Jove! it is!”

 

“It is whom, Terry?”

 

“Eric. I wondered he hadn’t looked me up before. He has been stopping at

Sir Philip Carruthers’ place for the last five days. Yes, it is Eric.”

 

“Eric?”

 

“Yes, Eric—Lord Dynely, you know. No, by the bye, you don’t know, but

you have heard of him often enough from me.”

 

Yes, Miss Higgins certainly had, and looked with a little flutter again,

beneath the roses, at the young nobleman approaching, who had been

described to her by enthusiastic Terence Dennison “as the best-looking

fellow in England.”

 

Miss Higgins looked, and saw a young man of twenty-one, with fair hair,

handsome blue eyes, a little golden mustache, and the worn-out air of a

centenarian, who has used up all the pleasures of this wicked world some

sixty or seventy years ago.

 

“Eric, old boy, glad you’ve looked me up at last,” was all Terry said,

but his whole face lit as if the mere sight of the other were pleasant

to him. “Let me present you to Miss Crystal Higgins. Crystal, the friend

of my youth, the playmate of my happy childhood, as the novels have

it—Lord Dynely.”

 

Lord Dynely lifted his hat and bowed with that courtly grace for which

he was celebrated. His languid eyes kindled as the warrior’s when he

sees the battle afar off. Terry had said she was pretty. Pretty! Terry

was a Vandal, a Goth; the girl was a goddess!

 

“Are you a good one at croquet, Eric?” inquired Mr. Dennison. “If so,

you may come along. This is Crystal’s birthday; there is a croquet party

at the vicarage, and good players are in demand. Crystal’s past mistress

of the art; as the old song says:

 

“‘She’s a hard un to follow,

A bad un to beat,’

 

and as a rule, croquets me off the face of the earth in two minutes

and a half.”

 

“If Miss Higgins will permit me, I shall only consider myself too

happy,” murmurs Dynely, with a look that has done its work before, and

that sets Crystal’s foolish, rustic heart fluttering, and tremulous

blushes coming and going.

 

“Oh, yes, thank you!” is what she says, in her dire confusion of

blushes, and she clings unconsciously to Terry’s arm, and feels that the

days of the demi-gods are not extinct, since this seraphic young

nobleman exists.

 

“Don’t be afraid, Crissy,” says Terry’s loud, jolly voice, as he pats

the small clinging hand confidingly. “Eric’s not half so ferocious,

bless you, as he looks! Heard from France or the madre since you

came?”

 

Eric gives him a look and a frown. Terry has no tact. Is this a place to

talk of—h’m—France?

 

“I had a note from my mother by this morning’s post,” he answers. “She

bade me tell you not to fail in returning. That is why I looked you up.

Had I known you were dwelling in paradise,” he adds, gayly, “I would

have hunted you up long ago.”

 

They reach the vicarage. Lord Dynely is presented to Mr. and Mrs.

Higgins, the Misses Higgins and their guests, and strikes all the ladies

mute at once by his good looks, his courtly grace of manner, his

magnificent condescension. Yes, he can play croquet, and play it well.

He and the heroine of the f�te come off triumphant in every game. They

play croquet, and that other classical game yclept “Aunt Sally,” and he

lingers by Crystal’s side, and for the one thousandth time his

inflammable fancy fires, and a new fair face enchants him.

 

They go to tea under the gnarled old apple-trees. There is a snowy

cloth, old-fashioned china cups of pearl and blue, fragrant tea,

home-made pound cake and jelly; and Eric, whose luncheon has been a

glass of sherry and a biscuit, and who has not dined, makes a martyr of

himself, and drinks the tea, and partakes of the pound cake and jelly

and helps the young ladies, and pays compliments, and tells pretty

little stories.

 

The moon has arisen before they have done, and they dance by its light

to the music of the jingly vicarage piano, upon which the nine Miss

Higginses have practised for the last twenty years. Then they adjourn to

the drawing-room, and there is more dancing, and presently it is eleven

o’clock, and the party breaks up.

 

“You go back to-morrow then, Dennison?” Lord Dynely asks, carelessly, as

they shake hands at parting.

 

“Yes; and you?”

 

“I remain two or three days longer. Carruthers wishes it, it’s rather a

pleasant house, and he’s a good fellow. Capital quarters you have here,

old man—a very seraglio of beauty.”

 

“How do you like her?” Terry inquires.

 

“Which her? there are so many. Oh, the little queen of the revels, of

course. As charming a little woodland nymph as ever I saw. My taste

doesn’t generally run to rustic beauties, but she’s as sweet as one of

her own roses. When am I to congratulate you, Terry, my boy?”

 

“Soon, I hope,” Terry answers, with a laugh and a happy light in his

eyes; and Lord Dynely looks at him with a curious smile as he rolls up a

cigarette to light him on his homeward way.

 

She sees him to the gate—how he manages it no one can tell, but he is

exceptionally clever at these things. She goes with him to the gate and

gives him a shy little hand across it, the hand that wears Terry’s ring.

 

“May I come again, Crystal?”

 

Her name comes naturally and he speaks it. It fits her somehow, and Miss

Higgins is a horrible cognomen for this pearl of price. What she

answers, the stars and Lord Dynely alone know. It is satisfactory,

doubtless, for that half-smile is still on his lips as he saunters,

smoking, home.

 

“The most charming little fairy I’ve seen this many a day,” he thinks.

“And she is to marry Terry; big, uncouth, lumbering Terry. It would be a

sacrilege. How she blushes, and shrinks, and trembles—one sees so

little of that sort of thing that its novelty charms, I suppose. One of

those tender little souls whose heart a man could break as easily as I

knock the ash off this cigarette.”

 

It