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

to go—to ends

of the earth, so that he leads the way. She has been living in a trance

of bliss ever since she saw Lord Dynely first.

 

“Oh, what a day it has been!” she sighs, swinging her hat by its rosy

ribbons, and looking up at the star-studded sky; “I never enjoyed myself

so much in my life.”

 

“Particularly since Terry Dennison has come!” puts in his lordship.

 

“Oh, Lord Dynely!—Terry! as if I cared for Terry!” Crystal says, with a

pretty, petulant gesture.

 

“No? You are sure, Crystal? You don’t care for Terry?”

 

“Lord Dynely, you know I don’t.”

 

“Then you do care for some one else. Who is it, little one? Such hosts

of lovers you have. You don’t know how madly jealous I have been before

now.”

 

She glances up at him quickly, almost angrily, to see if he is in

earnest. Eyes and lips are smiling—he is looking at her with a gaze she

cannot meet. She flushes rosy red and shrinks from him ever so little.

Then all at once he speaks.

 

“I love you, Crystal,” he says; “I want you to be my wife.”

 

*

 

It is an hour later. The picnicers are beginning to disperse. Lord

Dynely is to drive Miss Crystal home in his phaeton. Everybody is

thronging to their carriages when they return to the starting spot.

 

What a face Crystal wears! transfigured with bliss. Lord Dynely is, as

he ever is, cool, languid, self-possessed, and outwardly at least, a

trifle bored. But in the phaeton, alone with Crystal, he is not in the

least bored.

 

“I shall speak to the dear old dad to-morrow,” he is saying. “Of course

we know what the answer will be. And I must get you an engagement ring.

Let’s see; give me this little blue and white concern as a guide.”

 

“Oh!” Crystal cries, a sudden pain in her voice, “Terry gave me that!”

 

“Did he?” said Dynely, coolly, abstracting it and putting it in his

waistcoat pocket; “then we’ll return it to Terry, and he can give it to

Victoria, or Evangeline, or Josephine, or any of the rest he fancies.

You wear no man’s ring but mine henceforth forever.”

 

CHAPTER XII.

 

“THEY SHALL TAKE WHO HAVE THE POWER.”

 

They spend a very pleasant evening at the vicarage and end a delightful

day in a very delightful manner. Delightful at least to Crystal and her

lordly lover. They show little outward sign of the rapture within; but

Crystal’s eyes keep that radiant light of great joy, and there is a half

smile of exultation and triumph in Eric’s. They drink tea out of their

egg-shell china, and partake of lemon cakes and thin bread and butter,

and Crystal trips down to the gate, by her lover’s side.

 

“I will be here to-morrow as early as common decency will allow, little

one,” he says, taking the pretty dimpled face between both his hands,

“for that private interview with papa. Good-night, ‘queen rose of the

rosebud garden of girls,’ and dream of me.”

 

Will she not? She watches him out of sight. How handsome he is! A very

king among men! How noble, how great, how good! So far above her, yet

stooping in his wonderful condescension to love her and make her his

wife. Oh, what a thrice-blessed girl she is! Surely some beneficent

fairy must have presided at her birth that she should be thus chosen the

elect of the gods.

 

Then she is aroused from her reverie, for the Rev. Edwin and Elizabeth

Jane are crunching over the gravel behind her.

 

“Are you going to stay mooning here all night, Crystal?” sharply

inquires the elder sister. “Do you know that the dew is falling, and

that your dress is grenadine? Where is he?”

 

“Lord Dynely has gone,” Crystal answers, gently. “Good-night, Mr.

Meeke,” and then she lifts two lovely, compassionate eyes to Mr. Meeke’s

face.

 

Poor little fellow, she thinks, what a life Elizabeth Jane will lead

him, and how different her life is ordered from poor, plain Elizabeth

Jane’s. She feels a great pity for them both, so hum-drum and

commonplace their wooing is; a great pity for the whole other eight, so

far less blessed than she.

 

“What have I ever done that I should be so happy?” she muses. “What can

I ever do to prove how thankful and grateful I am?”

 

She stops and recoils, a swift flush of pain and shame darkens her

lily-leaf face, for, tall and dark, Terry looms up before her.

 

“I’ve had no chance to say a word to you all day, Crystal,” he says,

trying to speak cheerfully. “You have been so completely monopolized by

Dynely. It is a lovely night—let us take a turn around the garden?”

 

“What—at twelve o’clock? Oh, Terry!” she laughs, “I am dead tired

besides after the picnic. Some other time. Good-night.”

 

She flies up the stairs lightly, a small roseate vision, kisses her hand

to him from the upper landing, and disappears.

 

The Rev. Mr. Higgins’ nine daughters are paired off two by two. It is

Crystal’s misfortune to be billeted with Elizabeth Jane. And when

Elizabeth Jane comes up, half an hour later, and finds her “mooning”

again, sitting, leaning out of the window, heedless of dew and

grenadine, the window is closed with asperity, and Miss Crystal ordered

peremptorily to “have done fooling and go to bed.”

 

She goes, she even sleeps, but she wakes early, to find the sun of

another lovely day flooding her chamber, and a hundred little birds

trilling a musical accompaniment without, to Elizabeth Jane’s short,

rasping snores within. Again Crystal thinks of the Rev. Edwin, and

laughs and shudders as she looks at Elizabeth Jane asleep, with her

mouth open, and pities him with unutterable pity. Yesterday’s bliss

comes back to her as she springs lightly out of bed and dresses. To-day

he is coming to ask papa—in two or three hours at most he will be here.

She sings softly as she dresses, for very gladness of heart, and flies

lightly down the stairs, and out into the fresh, sweet summer morning.

All within is still and asleep, all without is awake and full of

jubilant life. The roses turn their crimson, pink and snowy faces up to

that cloudless sky, a hundred choirs of birds pour forth their matin

song; over all the sun rises in untold Summer splendor. Involuntarily

Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise rises to her lips—“Let all that hath life

and breath sing to the Lord.”

 

She runs down to the gate and leans over it, still singing. Her song

reaches another early riser, lounging aimlessly against an elm near by,

smoking a matinal cigar. He starts, flings the cigar away, and crashes

through the dewy Lincolnshire grass to join her. It is Terry. Who else

in that household of women smokes regalias at five in the morning?

 

Terry has not slept well—has not slept at all—and looks haggard and

anxious in this brilliant morning light. He pulls his straw hat farther

over his eyes to exclude the dazzling sun, and sees Crystal’s sweet face

cloud, and hears her glad song die away as he joins her. A nervous,

troubled look fills the gentle eyes, the loveliest, he thinks, on earth.

 

“You were always an early riser, Crystal,” he says, with a faint smile.

“I see you keep up your good habits. I hope you have quite slept away

yesterday’s fatigue.”

 

“Oh, yes, thank you,” replies Miss Crystal. “I hope your dreams were

pleasant, Terry?”

 

“I neither slept nor dreamed at all,” Terry answers, gravely.

 

She glances up at him shyly, then turns away and begins pulling

nervously at the sweetbrier growing over the gate. He takes one of the

little destructive hands and holds it fast, and looks at the finger upon

which he had placed the pearl and turquoise ring. “It is gone,” he says,

blankly.

 

She snatches her hand away, half-frightened, half-petulant, and says

nothing.

 

“You promised to wear it, Crystal.”

 

“I beg your pardon, Terry, I did not. You put it there, and I wore it

until—”

 

“Until—go on, Crystal.”

 

But she will not, it seems. She turns farther from him and tears the

sweetbrier sprays wantonly.

 

“Until when, Crystal? Answer me.”

 

“Until last night, then.”

 

“And what became of it last night?”

 

He tries to see her face, but she holds it low over the fragrant

blossoms, and is silent again.

 

“Crystal! Crystal!” he cries out; “what does it all mean? Who removed my

ring?”

 

Then all at once she turns at bay and looks at him full.

 

“Lord Dynely took it last night. He had a right to take it. I can wear

no man’s ring but his all the days of my life. I will give it to you

back to-day. I—I don’t want to hurt you, Terry, but—I love him.”

 

Her courage dies away as quickly as it came. She grows crimson all over

her pearl-white face, and returns once more to the suffering sweetbrier.

 

For Terry—he stands as a man who receives his death-blow—white, mute.

And yet he has expected it—has known it. Only that does not seem to

make it any the easier now.

 

The silence frightens her. She steals a look at him, and that look

frightens her more.

 

“Oh, Terry, don’t be angry,” she falters, the ready tears springing to

her eyes. “How could I help it? How could I—how could anyone help

loving him?”

 

“No,” Terry answers, a curious stiffness about his lips, a curious

hardness in his tone; “you could not help it. I might have known it. You

are only a child—I thought you a woman. You could not help it; but

he—by Heaven, he’s a villain!”

 

She started up—stung into strength by that.

 

“It is false!” she cried out, passionately. “How dare you, Terry

Dennison! You say to me behind his back what you dare not say to his

face. He is the best and noblest man that ever lived.”

 

He turned and looked at her. He caught both her hands, and the blue eyes

looked up fearless and flashing into his own.

 

“You love him, Crystal?”

 

“With my whole heart—so well that if I lost him I should die.”

 

“And he—he tells you he loves you, I suppose?”

 

“He tells me, and I know it. I know it as surely and truly as I stand

here.”

 

He dropped her hands and turned from her, leaning his folded arms across

the pillar of the gate.

 

“He tells you, and you know it! I wonder how many score my Lord Dynely

has told that same story to in his one-and-twenty years of life? We live

in a fast age, but I doubt if many men go quite so fast as that. I

wonder what France Forrester will say to all this?”

 

The angry color faded out of her face, the angry light died out of her

eyes. She stood looking at him, growing ashen gray. She had utterly

forgotten that.

 

“Miss Forrester!” she responded, slowly; “I forgot! I forgot! And last

night he told me—he told me–-”

 

“He told you nothing about her, I’ll swear!” Dennison said, with a

short, mirthless laugh: “that it has been an understood thing from his

boyhood that he was to marry her; that he returned home three weeks ago

to ask her to be his wife; that he did ask her, beg her, entreat her,

and that she sent him down here out of the way, pending