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

weak, I

would have kept it to the end, but that I could not do. It is told; a

load is off my soul at last; you know the truth, and my son and I are

at your mercy.”

 

Then there was long and deep silence in the room. She was sitting

upright in her chair, her face gleaming out like marble in the gray

gloom, her slender hands clenched together in her lap, her eyes dry and

haggard, looking straight into vacancy. For Dennison, he sat stunned,

absolutely stunned, trying with his whole might to realize this. His

head was in a whirl. He Lord Dynely’s eldest son and heir!—not Terry

Dennison, the dependant, the poor relation, but a peer of the realm!

Eric, lordly Eric, his younger brother, with no claim to the title he

bore, to the thousands he squandered! Not a powerful mind at any time,

never a deep-thinking brain at best, mind and brain were in a helpless

whirl now.

 

“Tell me all about it,” was the first thing he said, in his dazed

bewilderment.

 

She drew a long, heavy breath, and set herself to the task. The worst

had been told—it was bitter almost as the bitterness of death, and yet

it was easier telling Terry than telling most men. Her secret had

weighed upon her so long, tortured her so unbearably, that she

absolutely felt a sense of relief already.

 

“Tell you all?” she repeated; “it seems very little to tell when all is

told. I suppose most of life’s tragedies can be told in few words—this

certainly. On the night of Lord Dynely’s death—sixteen years ago this

very night; was it not fit to choose that anniversary?—I learned it

first myself. I recall that night so well—like no other in all my life.

My cousin had come to me—you have heard of him, Gordon Caryll, poor

fellow!—to tell me his story. It was a brilliant moonlight night.

Arm-in-arm we walked round the fish-pond, while he told me his life’s

tragedy, in brief, bitter words. I see it all,” she said, looking before

her with dewy eyes, her voice softening, “like a picture. The white

light of the moon, the long, black shadows, the fish-pond like a sheet

of circular glass, the scent of the flowers, and the coolness of the

evening wind. There he said good-by—and he left me, my poor Gordon! and

I have never seen him since. That man, Locksley, reminds me of him

somehow; my heart warms to him whenever we meet for that chance

resemblance.”

 

She paused. She had drifted from the thread of her story, thinking of

the soldier cousin from whom she had parted this night sixteen years

ago.

 

“He left me,” she continued, after that pause, “and I still lingered out

there, thinking what a mistake life was for most of us, how we seem to

miss the right path, where happiness lies, and love and ambition alike

lead us astray. He had married for love—I for ambition; the end was the

same to both—darkest, bitterest disappointment. I had never cared for

Lord Dynely; he was many years my senior, and, though I never was a

sentimental girl, all the liking I ever had to give had been given to

Gordon Caryll. I had to do my duty as a wife in all things, but I was

not a happy wife, had never been; and, when they brought me word my

husband had met with an accident and lay dying, it was the horror we

feel for the merest stranger who meets a tragic end that filled me, not

the despairing sorrow of a loving wife.

 

“I hastened to him. He lay dying indeed—life was but just there when I

reached him. But he was a man of most resolute will; he would not die

until he had seen me. He had been very fond of me—ah, yes! I never

doubted that, in his own selfish, passionate way, he was very fond of

his wife. He had spared himself all his life, but now that he lay dying

he would not spare me. Thorough and utter selfishness has ever been the

chief characteristic of his race—I wonder sometimes, Terry, how you

managed to escape.”

 

She paused again and sighed. She was thinking of her son. Blindly,

devotedly as she loved and admired him, she could not be utterly blind

to his faults. Thoroughly and absolutely selfish all the Dynelys had

been, thoroughly and utterly selfish was the last Lord Dynely.

 

“As I knelt by his bedside there, Terry, he told me in few and broken

sentences the sad and shameful story. In his wanderings through Galway

he had met Maureen Gannon, a dark, Spanish-looking beauty, as many of

these Galway girls are, and, in his usual hot-headed fashion, he fell

in love with her. He had been noted for running recklessly after any

woman who struck his fancy his life long; another trait of his you seem

to have escaped and my poor Eric to have inherited. You know what Irish

girls are—the purest women under heaven—love-making that did not mean

marriage was utter madness. He was mad where his own selfish

gratification was concerned. He married Maureen Gannon.”

 

Again she paused, catching her breath with a painful effort. It was

quite dark now, and the rising wind, precursor of coming storm, soughed

through the park. An elm just outside tapped with spectral fingers on

the glass. She shuddered as she heard it, and drew closer to her silent

and listening companion.

 

“He had called himself Dennison from the first, and under that name he

married her. The ceremony was performed in the little rustic chapel by

the parish priest. Of his class and friends there were naturally none

present; her humble friends and family—that was all.

 

“He took her away at once, and they saw no more of her at home until she

returned to die. She came back with you in her arms, and the story of

her life was at an end. It was such an old story—hot fancy at first,

cooling fancy after, coldness, indifference, utter neglect, and finally

desertion. She died, and you were left, and Lord Dynely was free to woo

and win another.

 

“I was that other. Of the girl whose heart he had broken, of his only

child in poverty and neglect in Ireland, I believe he never once

thought—until Eric was born, and then remorse and alarm awoke within

him for the first time. She had been his lawful wife, you were his

lawful son and heir. He loved me, as I say, in his selfish fashion; he

also loved little Eric, and a great fear of the future of his youngest

son began to come to him.

 

“But he told no one, he took no steps about you, he just drifted on to

the end, putting all troublesome thoughts away from him, as was the

habit of his life. Only when he lay dying this night, and thought that

in some other world he might have to atone for the crimes of this, he

turned coward—once more self became his first thought. What did it

matter what became of Eric or me so that he atoned and escaped the

consequences of his wrongdoing. He sent for me and told the truth.

 

“‘You’ll find it all down in writing in my desk,’ he said. ‘I’ve made a

clean breast of it. The marriage certificate and the youngster’s

baptismal record are there too. The law might pick a flaw in an Irish

marriage like that, but, Lucia, when a man comes to die he sees these

things in another light from the law of the world. I couldn’t meet that

poor girl in the next world, as I may, and look her in the face, and

know the wrong I’ve done her son. He’s the heir, Lucia, mind that—not

Eric, poor little beggar. And I want you to do, when I am gone, what I

never had courage to do myself—the right thing by that little lad in

Ireland. My first marriage must be proven, and the young one come to his

rights. You are provided for in any case, as my richly dowered widow,

and your boy will have a younger son’s portion. But the one in Ireland,

poor Maureen’s boy, is the heir, mark that.’

 

“I knelt beside him, Terry, listening to this dreadful revelation,

frozen with a horror too intense for words or tears. I have loved Eric

from the day of his birth I think with fourfold mother love; he has all

I had; his father did not share my heart with him, as is the happy case

of most mothers. He was all I had on earth—all; and now I was called

upon to stand aside, to take him with me, and give his title and estates

to another woman’s son. Terry,” she cried out “he asked more than human

nature could give.”

 

Her voice broke in that fierce, hysterical, sobbing cry. Dennison took

both her hands in his and held them in that strong but gentle clasp.

 

“I think he did,” he answered sadly.

 

“He died as I knelt there,” she went on, “his glazing eyes fixed

threateningly on my face to the end.

 

“‘Mind,’ he said to me, ‘that you see justice done. I couldn’t do it;

you must. I won’t rest easy in my grave unless you promise. Promise me

you will seek out this boy, and see him righted before the world.

Promise.’ They were his last words. But the promise was never given—I

couldn’t speak—not to save his life as well as my own. I knelt there

stunned, stupefied, dazed, soul and body. While he still looked at me

the awful death rattle sounded. His eyes were fixed in ghastly threat on

my face when the film of death sealed them. I remember no more. Some

one, after a time, came to me, and I fell back and all was darkness.

 

“They buried him, and Eric and I went to the funeral as chief mourners!

They put black on my boy; I tore it off in horror. Mourning for the

father who had so bitterly wronged him—no! I wore it, but there was no

mourning, only fierce rebellion and passionate anger, in my heart. They

put up a marble tablet recording his social and domestic virtues, and

under the glowing record, ‘His works do follow him.‘ Ah, yes, they

followed him—in bitterness and remorse and shame. I could have laughed

aloud at the hollow satire of it all. I believe my mind to a certain

degree gave way, my health began to fail. I had a horrible dread of this

man, dead in his grave; that night and its revelations haunted me like

some ghastly nightmare. I could not—would not obey. I trembled with

horror at refusing, it seemed so awful to deliberately disobey a dying

command. He couldn’t rest easy in his grave, he had said, if I

disobeyed. A sickening, superstitious fear that he might rise from that

unquiet grave and pursue me, nearly froze me at times with terror. I

believe the struggle would have ended in insanity if it had gone on, but

the medical men ordered me to Italy for change of air. I went to Galway

instead, and found you. The rest you know. I compromised with my

conscience, paltered with the truth. As my own son you should be reared

and educated; share all his advantages—all but my affection. That, my

poor Terry, much as you deserved it, I could not give. The horror and

hatred I was wicked enough to feel for your father I was wicked enough

to feel for you. One day I thought, perhaps when I was dying myself I

would tell