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

Miss Forrester, and found her quite dressed and looking very

handsome, sitting gazing with dreamy eyes at the sun setting over the

green Devon woods.

 

“Well, ma m�re?” she asked.

 

“It is all as you said, France,” my lady answered; “he fell in love in

Lincolnshire.”

 

Miss Forrester laughed, and yet with a touch of feminine pique too.

 

“I knew it. I felt it in the uttermost depth of my prophetic soul—

 

“‘Oh, my cousin, shallow-hearted,

Oh, my Eric, mine no more.’

 

Who is she? One of the nine Misses Higgins?”

 

“One of the nine Misses Higgins.”

 

“And Terry and Eric will be brothers-in-law, as I said. What a capital

joke, Lady Dynely.”

 

“No, France—not brothers-in-law. It is—”

 

But France started impetuously to her feet.

 

“Lady Dynely don’t say it. Don’t say it is the particular Miss Higgins

Terry wanted. Don’t make me think so badly of Eric as that.”

 

But Lady Dynely sat sorrowful and mute, and France read all the truth in

that sad face.

 

“It is, then. Oh, this is too bad! too bad!—too bad of her, too bad of

Eric. It reminds one of the Scripture story of the cruel man who took

his neighbor’s one ewe lamb. My poor, good Terry!”

 

She sat down, her eyes flashing through bright tears.

 

“I knew him weak and fickle,” she said; “I never thought him

dishonorable. For her,” contemptuously, “she never could have been worth

one thought from Terry Dennison.”

 

“I have had a letter from Terry,” Lady Dynely said, sadly. “Poor fellow!

he makes no mention of coming back. He wishes me to accompany Eric to

Lincolnshire and formally countenance the engagement.”

 

“You will go, of course?”

 

“I can do nothing else. And you, France—you care wholly on Terry’s

account, I am sure, not at all on your own.”

 

“Not in the least on my own,” France said, holding her handsome head

high, her dark eyes still full of indignant fire. “But Terry loved this

girl, and Terry—I must say it, though I offend you, Lady Dynely—is

worth two hundred Erics. Oh, it is a shame—a shame!”

 

They met at dinner. Miss Forrester’s greeting was of the coldest and

most constrained. Eric was his own natural, languid, charming self, at

his best. His mother’s sad, pale face he would not see, France’s flushed

cheeks and angry eyes he overlooked.

 

“It takes two to make a row,” Eric thought; “you won’t make a row with

me.”

 

Once France spoke of Terry—her bright, angry eyes fixed upon his face,

her own wearing a very resolute look. Where was Terry? How had he left

him? Where was he going? When did he mean to return? Eric bore it

heroically.

 

“Io p�an,

Terry! Terry!”

 

he laughed. “How you ring the changes on that classical name. I don’t

know anything of Terry’s outgoings and incomings. Am I my brother’s

keeper? Your solicitude does Mr. Dennison too much honor.”

 

She turned from him.

 

“He has no heart,” she thought; “no sense of remorse; no feeling for any

human being but himself. I pity Miss Crystal Higgins.”

 

The evening brought Mr. Locksley, the artist.

 

“So he comes still,” Eric thought, watching with sleepy, half-closed

eyes his mother and the artist playing chess, while France sat at the

piano and sang softly. “I wonder—I wonder if this is the secret of your

queenly indifference, Miss Forrester, to me.”

 

Next day Lady Dynely and her son departed. France watched Eric out of

sight with a smile, the fag end of an old ballad on her lips:

 

“‘Lightly won and lightly lost,

A fair good-night to thee.’”

 

CHAPTER XIV.

 

“ONCE MORE THE GATE BEHIND ME FALLS.”

 

In that pleasant upper room of Dynely Abbey, set apart as Mr. Locksley’s

studio, and sacred wholly to that artist and his painting goods and

chattels, Mr. Locksley himself stood on the morning of the day that took

Lady Dynely and her son to Lincolnshire. He stood with folded arms and a

darkly thoughtful look, gazing at his own work. As he stood there, tall,

strong, erect, the soldierly air that told of his past calling was more

manifest than ever.

 

This portrait was a gem—something more than an ordinary portrait—as a

work of art, worthy of Reynolds or Romney. It had been a labor of love,

heart and soul had been in the work, and the result did what the works

of master hands seldom do, satisfied himself.

 

From a darkly misty background the face of France Forrester shone

vividly out, startlingly lifelike in coloring and expression. He had

caught her very look, that mischievous sparkle of eye and smile, that

brightly mutinous turn of the graceful head, as she leaned forward from

the canvas. Those darkly laughing eyes looked up at the artist now from

beneath that floating chevelure of rich, waving hair, the perfect lips

smiled upon him saucily, as though they understood his sombre thoughts

and mocked at them.

 

“As she would, most likely,” he thought, “if she knew all. But no—that

is not France Forrester. Proud she is, proud of the name she bears, the

lineage that lies behind her and the place she holds in life, but to

laugh at any mortal pain is not in her. I can see the first flush of

haughty anger and amaze at the nameless painter’s presumption—then the

soft womanly compassion for his suffering, that would make gentle and

tender her parting words. And yet I have thought that if she knew all,

the whole truth”—he paused suddenly and turned impatiently away towards

the window. “What a fool I am,” he muttered, half-aloud. “She loves that

handsome dandy, of course—he is the sort of gilded fop womankind make

idols of. Could I not see it in her face last night?”

 

He stood staring out at my lady’s carefully kept Italian garden, all

ablaze with gorgeous August flowers. It was a sultry, overcast

day—sunless, windless, gray. Early in the morning the sun had come out

with a dazzling brightness, only to vanish again and leave behind a low,

leaden sky, frowning with drifting cloud.

 

The great house was very still. My lord and lady had gone; Miss

Forrester’s clear voice, and the light, silken rustle of her garments

were nowhere to be heard. She was not to sit to Mr. Locksley any more;

the last sitting had been given a week ago, and though he still came

daily it was but to add the few last finishing touches to his perfected

work. He dined with the two ladies at intervals, and spent occasional

evenings at the Abbey when there were no other visitors. From general

society he shrank; but he never refused my lady’s cordial invitations

when she and her ward were alone. It might have been wiser if he had.

They were growing dangerously dear to him, these long t�te-�-t�te

evenings with the heiress of Caryllynne; perilously precious, this

standing beside her, turning over her music, listening to the old

ballads she loved to sing, watching the white, flying fingers, the

tender, lovely, spirited face—how dear, how precious, he was finding

out now to his cost.

 

He turned from the window and began pacing impatiently up and down the

long, lofty room. In spite of the wide open window the atmosphere was

almost painfully oppressive. So sultry, so airless was the leaden day,

that it was only by an effort one could breathe. The physical suffering

blended with the mental. He loosened the strip of black ribbon at his

throat, as though even that suffocated him. He was facing for the first

time the bare truth to-day. He had shut his eyes wilfully to his own

danger; the moth had seen the lighted candle, and intoxicated by its

brilliancy, had still flown headlong in. Was the moth to be pitied,

then, let him singe his wings ever so badly?

 

“I will go!” he said to himself, abruptly, “I will go to-morrow. Flight

is one’s only safeguard in these things. If I stay, if I see any more of

her I will commit the last crowning act of folly, and tell her all. My

work is finished—there is no cause to linger. Yes, I will go—I will

start for Spain to-morrow, and explore it from the Escurial to the

Alhambra, and in painting dark-eyed Morisco maidens and bull-fights I

will forget this summer’s fooling.”

 

He looked at his watch—two o’clock. Three was his dinner hour—it would

take him the hour to walk to the village. He made his headquarters at

the “Kiddle-a-wink” in the village of Dynely, and slept in that upper

chamber wherein sixteen years before, one summer night, Alexis Dynely

lay dying.

 

As he passed out from the house into the sultry afternoon, he glanced up

at the sky. It was growing darker every instant—a faint, damp rain was

beginning to fall. It was doubtful, good walker though he was, if he

would outstrip the storm and reach the inn before the summer rain fell.

He looked around as he walked rapidly away, to catch a glimpse of a

gauzy dress, to hear a girl’s sweet voice singing, to see a graceful

head bent over a book or a drawing. Miss Forrester, however, was nowhere

to be seen. It was as well so, perhaps.

 

“I will call this evening and make my adieux to both ladies,” he

thought, and, pulling his hat over his eyes, strode rapidly on his way.

 

Yes, he would leave England on the morrow—for good and all this time.

Where was the use of coming back, where the sight of the familiar

places, the familiar faces that knew him no more, brought nothing but

pain? He would make Rome his headquarters for life, and give himself up

utterly to his art. A boy’s mad folly, a woman’s base deceit had wrecked

his life sixteen years ago. He had been thrust out from his mother’s

home and heart with scorn and bitter words, his birthright given to a

stranger. It never occurred to him to sue for commutation of that

sentence. With the past he had nothing to do; he had deserved his fate,

he had disgraced his name; his mother had done rightly; in the future

the art he loved was all he had left him. He would start upon his second

exile to-morrow. This time there should be no looking back, this time it

should be life-long. To return to England meant returning to see her the

happy wife of Lord Dynely; to return and sue for his mother’s favor,

meant to oust her from her fortune, to rake up all the old dead-and-gone

scandal, to bring the shame from which that mother, the haughtiest woman

in England, had fled sixteen years before, back to her in its first

force. No, there was nothing for him but silence and exile to the end.

 

“Mr. Locksley?”

 

The clear sweet voice made him look up from his moody reverie with a

start. And then, like a vision, France Forrester’s brightly smiling

face, set in a ravishing bonnet, beamed upon him. Miss Forrester, with a

tiny groom behind her, drove a low, basket phaeton and a pair of

spanking little ponies. She drew up the ponies in dashing style, and

turned to the artist with that bewitching smile of hers.

 

“Are you going home, Mr. Locksley—I mean to the inn? Pray don’t go just

yet. Let me offer you this vacant seat. I have something to say to you.”

 

Was fate pursuing him when he meant to fly from danger? He took the seat

beside her, and Miss Forrester with a touch of her parasol-whip, sent

the little steppers briskly ahead.

 

“I am alone to-day—do you