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

I paused a second and looked again. The same, beyond

doubt; the same, with a difference—worn and haggard, set and stern—the

same, yet that was the face of a frank, happy boy, this of a reckless,

desperate man. A straw hat was pulled over his eyes, a gray summer

overcoat was buttoned up—a soldier and a gentleman, that was evident at

a glance.

 

I turned up a side street and hastened breathlessly on. My first duty

was to my mistress. I must tell her that what she dreaded had come—that

the husband from whom she had fled, was here. I walked at my utmost

speed, and in half an hour was at Saltmarsh.

 

“She said he would kill her!” I thought, turning hot and cold; “and who

knows that he will not? He would not be the first husband that has

killed a runaway wife.”

 

I ran through the rooms, all flurried and breathless, calling out her

name.

 

She was not in any of them. Of late, since June had come, the fine

weather at times had tempted her out. This, most unfortunately, was one

of the times. I knew pretty well where to find her—on the river bank

below there was a strip of yellow sand, where she was fond of walking up

and down in the sunshine. She was sure to be there now.

 

I rushed out, looking wildly around. Yes, there was the tall, soldierly

figure in the straw hat and summery overcoat, coming rapidly toward me

at a swinging pace.

 

I declare I almost screamed, so nervous and overwrought had I become.

 

If he was before me—if he came upon her suddenly, the shock alone might

kill her, for she was far from strong of late. I turned and fled

headlong down the steep hillside path, still calling her name. Yes,

there, quite alone, pacing slowly up and down the sandy riverside path,

looking at the fast-flowing water, Mrs. Gordon walked.

 

She paused in her slow walk, and turned to me in wonder at my break-neck

descent.

 

How beautiful she was! even in that supreme moment, I remember that was

my first thought.

 

“For pity’s sake, fly!” I cried out; “fly at once. He is here!”

 

She laid both her hands suddenly over her heart. Across her face there

flashed the electric light of a great and sudden joy.

 

“Who?” she said, almost in a whisper.

 

“Your husband, the man whose picture you showed me. Fly at once if you

are afraid of him. I saw him, I tell you he is coming. Oh, Heaven!—he

is here!”

 

I fell back in consternation. Yes, he had followed me; he was coming

down the path, he was here.

 

I turned to my mistress. Would she faint? would she fly? Neither.

 

Who is to understand men’s wives! Terror was there, in that wild, white

face, it is true, but over and above it all, such rapture as I never

before saw in the face of man or woman. She loved him and she saw him

again—all was said in that.

 

He walked down the path. She came a step forward, with that transfigured

face, and held out to him both arms with an eloquent cry:

 

“Gordon! Gordon!”

 

CHAPTER III.

 

THE DECREE OF DIVORCE.

 

It had come. I could do no more. Nothing remained for me but to retreat

into the background, and wait with bated breath and beating heart for

this play of “powerful domestic interest” to play itself out.

 

He had descended the steep, hillside path and stood on the strip of

yellow sand, face to face with the wife who had deserted him. The full

light of the June afternoon fell upon his face as he stood there before

her, a face more hollow-eyed and haggard, more worn, than it had even

looked to me first. A face set and stern, with little of mercy or pity

in it.

 

He waved her back. Only the slightest motion of his hand, but she shrank

and shivered like a child who has got a blow.

 

“No nearer,” he said in a voice as cold and steady as the chill gray

eyes that looked upon her. “Unless your sense of hearing has become

dulled since the night of Lovell’s death, when you played eavesdropper

so well, you will be able to hear all I have to say, where you stand. I

will not detain you long, and you need not wear that frightened face. I

am not going to kill you—the time for all that is passed. But let me

tell you this: If you had not played eavesdropper that memorable night

five months ago, if you had not fled as you did, if I had found you

before me when I returned, you would never have lived to see the

morning. The greatest fool that ever walked the earth I had been—if you

and I had met that night I would have been a murderer as well.”

 

All this he said in a slow, self-repressed sort of tone, but the deep

gray eyes that watched her were full of such hatred as no words of mine

can tell.

 

“Spare me, Gordon,” she answered, with a sobbing cry.

 

“Spare you?” he repeated, with cold scorn; “have I not said so? I would

not lift a finger to harm a hair of your head, or to save your life if I

saw you drowning in the river yonder. You are as dead to me as though I

had gone home and strangled you that eventful night. The madness of love

and rage, alike, are past forever. I have cut you off utterly and

absolutely from my life. You have been in hiding here, they tell me, in

daily dread of your life no doubt. Let us end all that. You are free to

come and go where and how you will. After to-day I will never look upon

your face again of my own free will, alive or dead.”

 

She gave a shrill cry, like a culprit under the lash, her hands still

held out to him in dumb agony.

 

“I have not even come to Quebec now in search of you,” the cold,

pitiless voice went on; “don’t think it. I came to visit General

Forrester, stationed yonder at the Citadel, before leaving this accursed

Canada forever—accursed since in it I met you.”

 

Her outstretched hands went up, with a dull moaning sound, and covered

her face.

 

“Would you care to know how I found you out, and why I came?” he slowly

went on. “Listen: Last night at mess the fellows were speaking of a

widow lady, a most mysterious widow lady, young and beautiful, so rumor

said, who had taken a desolate old house in a marsh, and there shut

herself up, hidden from mortal man and light of day. Her name was _Mrs.

Gordon_. Where she came from, who she was, why she had come, no man

could tell. Before the name was uttered I knew it was you. Knew that

when you fled from Toronto you fled here; knew that the lost woman who

had been my wife was found.”

 

Her hands dropped. For the first time she stood upright before him and

looked him full in the face, stung, it would seem, into turning at bay

by these last words.

 

“Who had been your wife!” she cried, passionately; “who is your wife,

Gordon Caryll! Nothing,” a sort of exultation lit her face as she said

it, “nothing but death can ever alter that!”

 

For fully a minute he stood silently looking at her, a smile on his

lips, a pitiless triumph in his eyes.

 

“Nothing can change that?” he repeated; “nothing but death? Well, I will

answer that before we part. Let me go on. I knew it was you, this woman

they talked of, and I said to myself: ‘I will find her to-morrow; I will

look upon her face once more, for the last time, and I will see what

there was, if I can, in its wax-doll beauty, its yellow-black eyes, its

straight nose and silken hair, to turn men into blind, besotted fools.’

Take down your hands, Rosamond, and let me look at you.”

 

She had shrank from him, from his smile, in some nameless, dreadful

fear, that made her cover her white face once more. She dropped her

hands now, at his bidding, looking up with dilated eyes.

 

“Gordon, have mercy on me. I love you!”

 

Again she stretched forth her hands to him with that piteous cry. Again

he motioned her imperiously back, his lips set, his eyes pitiless, his

face like stone.

 

“Stand still!” he ordered.

 

She obeyed.

 

For fully two minutes this strange tableau was before me, and all

unseen, in my obscure nook, I stood gazing with an interest that held me

rapt and spellbound. He, drawn up to his full height, his face like

white stone, so hard, so cold, that chill, half smile still on his lips.

She, half cowering before him, her lovely, colorless face uplifted, her

eyes full of dreadful terror, her loose, feathery hair blowing in the

wind,—young, fair, innocent to see, at least. So they stood—stern

young judge, quivering little criminal, until it grew almost too much

even for my nerves to endure.

 

“You are a beautiful little woman, Rosamond,” he said, at length; “one

of those exceptional women, who, like Ninon de L’Enclos, will be

beautiful at eighty. And that fair face of yours will do its devil’s

work, I don’t doubt, to the end of the chapter. To possess that face for

four short months I have lost all that man holds dear—name, honor,

home, friends, fortune—all. For the name that you have borne and

disgraced, I will bear no longer. I have sold out—do you know it? my

father has disinherited me—I am the laughingstock of all who ever knew

me. I look back and wonder at my own infatuation. I loved you—I trusted

you. Oh, God!” he cried out, a spasm of anguish distorting his face; “I

married you—you! You played your game well, you and Lovell. It was

your trade; and with such a fool as I, it was an easy game enough. But

you had cause to fear, and you knew it—I say again you did well to fly.

I went out from Lovell’s death-bed a madman—if I had found you on my

return, by the light above us, I would have murdered you!”

 

She shrank back from him, trembling with pure physical terror now, from

head to foot.

 

“No need to tremble—no need to fear now,” he went on, his voice

losing its sudden fury, and sinking to its former cold monotone; “I have

told you all that is past and done with. But before we part, I should

like to hear once from your own lips, just once (not that I doubt) that

Major Lovell’s story was true.”

 

Her only answer was to cower still farther away, and with a great,

heart-wrung sob, to bury her face once again in her hands.

 

“Ah, hide it,” he said bitterly; “hide it forever from the sight of

man—the fairest, falsest face ever made. But speak—if such lips as

yours can speak truth, and tell me that Lovell’s story was true.”

 

“Gordon! have mercy.”

 

“Was it true?”

 

“I loved you, Gordon! As there is a heaven above us, I loved you with

all my heart.”

 

He half laughed—even in that moment.

 

“Your heart—yours! What witty things are said by accident! Never mind

your heart or your love. I know what both are worth.