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

the man who had been its owner thirteen years before, who was

its owner still.

 

“‘Could he tell me anything of the lady—Mrs. Gordon—who had been his

tenant in that past time?’ He pushed up his spectacles and looked at me

curiously.

 

“‘Humph!’ he said, ‘that is a very long time ago. Mrs. Gordon! Do I

remember her? I should think so, indeed—no one who ever saw that face

was likely to forget it in a hurry. Perhaps—would I mind telling

him?—perhaps I was Mr. Gordon—the gentleman whom he had the honor of

speaking to once before?’

 

“‘It can matter nothing to you,’ I answered, ‘who I am. I am interested

in Mrs. Gordon’s ultimate fate. Can you tell me where she is now?’

 

“He laughed in a grim sort of way.

 

“‘Well, no—seeing there is no telegraphic communication between this

world and the next. Mrs. Gordon is dead.’

 

“‘Dead!’ Whether we hate or love, the abrupt announcement of the death

of anyone we have intimately known must ever come upon us with

something of a shock. “‘Dead!’ then I was free! I drew a long breath—a

breath of great relief. ‘Will you tell me how she died?’ I asked after a

moment.

 

“‘It was a very shocking thing—oh; a very shocking thing, indeed. She

was killed.’

 

“‘Killed.’

 

“‘I don’t wonder you look startled. Yes, poor soul—killed in a railway

accident. Wait a moment—I have the paper somewhere—I generally cut out

such things and keep them.’

 

“He ransacked in his desk—produced a Montreal paper of four years

before, and pointed out a paragraph. It gave a detailed account of a

very terrible collision on the Grand Trunk Railway, of the loss of life,

the list of the wounded and killed. Among the killed I read the name of

Mrs. Gordon.

 

“‘Is that all your proof?’ I said to him. ‘That is nothing. Gordon is a

common name.’

 

“‘Ah, but look here.’

 

“He turned over the paper and pointed to another place. ‘The Mrs. Gordon

whose name is recorded in another column as among the number killed, was

a lady with a history of more than ordinary interest. She was of a

beauty most remarkable, by profession an actress of more than ordinary

talent. Her history must still be familiar to our readers, as the

heroine of the celebrated divorce case of nine years ago. A young

English officer of family and wealth, named Gordon Caryll,’ etc., etc.

In short, the whole miserable story was given of the actress, her

accomplice, and her dupe. ‘Since that time,’ the record went on to say,

‘she had returned to the stage and was rising rapidly to fame and

fortune when this most melancholy disaster ended her brilliant career.’

 

“I sat with the paper before me. And this was the end—the end of all

that beauty that, among all the women I had met since or before, I had

never seen equalled. The voice of Mr. Barteaux aroused me.

 

“‘Every year from the time she left, she returned for a flying visit of

a few days, to settle accounts with Joan Kennedy and to see the child. A

fine little girl now, and her mother’s living image.’

 

“I stared at him in blank amaze. ‘The child!’ I said. ‘What child?’

 

“He pushed up his spectacles once more, and scrutinized me over them.

 

“‘Then you are not Mr. Gordon, after all? Mr. Gordon Caryll, of course;

I mean the gentleman who married her, and who divorced her. I give you

my word, I thought you were.’

 

“‘It can’t matter to you who I am, my good fellow. Only I want to know

to what child you allude.’

 

“‘To Mrs. Gordon’s child, to be sure. Born in the House that Wouldn’t

Let, a few weeks after your last visit here, and left by Mrs. Gordon in

charge of Joan Kennedy, when she went away.’

 

“A child! I had never known of that—never thought of that. I sat for a

moment quite still trying to realize what I had heard.

 

“‘She named the little one Gordon, after its papa, I suppose. She

couldn’t take it with her very well, so she left it with Joan when she

went, and had ever since paid liberally for its support. Once a year,

too, she came to visit it, and it was returning from that ill-starred

visit this year she had met her terrible end.’

 

“I rose up, startled beyond all telling by this new revelation.

 

“‘Where does this Joan Kennedy live?’ I inquired. ‘I must see her at

once, if possible.’

 

“‘It is not possible,’ returned Mr. Barteaux. ‘I know nothing of Joan

Kennedy now. Three years ago she married a man named McGregor, and left

with him for the Western States. She took Mrs. Gordon’s child with her.

She could not have been more attached to it had it been her own. Since

then I have seen or heard nothing of her.’

 

“‘Can I not obtain her address?’

 

“‘Not here, sir—no one knows where they went. McGregor had no

particular location in view. You might advertise in New York and

Western papers, and see what will come of it.’

 

“I followed his advice—I did advertise, again and again, but with no

result. I wanted intensely to find that child. I travelled West, I

inquired everywhere—in vain. Then the civil war broke out, and I joined

the army. Two more years passed, and then in one of the great battles I

received a wound that was so nearly mortal as to incapacitate me from

further fighting. The moment I could quit hospital, I returned to

Europe—went at once to Rome, and took to painting, as the one last

ambition and love of my life. In Rome I saw you, saw my mother many

times, but I held aloof. I only knew I had driven her from England, that

my dishonor clung to her like a garment. I had no thought but if I came

before her I should be spurned once more. That I did not choose to bear.

Then my restless familiar again took possession of me—I came back to

England. I painted that picture, sent it to the Academy, and there, one

sunny May afternoon, met my fate and you.”

 

“And that picture,” France said, speaking as he paused and looked fondly

down upon her, “‘How the Night Fell,’ was your parting with her, was

it not?”

 

“It was.”

 

“Poor soul! Ah, Gordon! she was to be pitied, after all. She loved you

and lost you. I can think of no bitterer fate.”

 

“Don’t waste your pity, France. Of love, as you understand it, she knew

nothing. Good heavens! what an utterly vile and cold-blooded plot it

was! and what an easy dupe she and that scoundrelly old major found in

me! Don’t let us talk about it. I have told you—so let it end. I never

want to speak of her while I live again. Only—I should have liked to

find that child.”

 

They stand silently, side by side. The sun has set, but the sky is all

rosy, and purple and golden, with the glory it has left. France pulls

out her watch.

 

“Seven. How the hours have flown. I should have started long ago—it

will be quite dark before I reach the Abbey now. Do order round the

phaeton, Gordon, whilst I run up and put on my hat.”

 

She quits his side and runs lightly up the polished oaken stairs,

singing as she goes for very gladness of heart. She has always loved the

dear old house; she will love it now more than ever, since in it she has

been so supremely happy.

 

She adjusts the coquettish little bonnet and returns.

 

The lord of the manor, stately and tall, a very man of men, France

thinks, awaits her and assists her in. He gathers up the reins as one

who has the right, and drives her at a spanking pace away from

Caryllynne. The broad yellow moon is lifting her luminous face over the

pearl and silver sky, the rose and amethyst splendor is fading tenderly

out of the west. She sits beside him in silence, too happy to talk much.

All her life dreams are realized. Her artist lover is hers—and he and

Gordon Caryll are one. She has been wooed and won as romantically as the

most romantic girl could desire. His voice breaks the spell.

 

“I start for Rome to-morrow.”

 

“To-morrow!” She looks up for an instant. “Gordon! so soon?”

 

“She has waited sixteen years,” he answers. “Can I go too speedily? Yet

if you—”

 

“Oh, no, no! It is her right, it is your duty. You must go. Only you

will not stay very long?”

 

The nightingales are singing in the woods of Caryllynne—they alone may

hear his answer.

 

He drives her to the Abbey gates—he will not enter. He will walk back

to the village, he tells her; he needs a walk and a smoke, to calm his

mind after all this.

 

“Shall I see you to-morrow before you go?” she asks.

 

“I think not—no, I will leave by the first train—it would be too

early. Our parting will be to-night. Tell Lady Dynely; and let wonder be

over before I return.”

 

Then under the black shadows of the chestnut trees they clasp hands and

say farewell.

 

CHAPTER XVIII.

 

KILLING THE FATTED CALF.

 

The golden summer days are over. September is at an end—the sharp crack

of the fowling-pieces no longer rings the long days through, as the

doomed partridges wheel in the sun. The ides of October are here—the

steel-gray mornings, the frost-bound nights, the stripped branches of

the tossing trees, the shrill wild winds. It is October, the last week

of the month, the last hour of the day; and the night which the white

chill moon is heralding even now, is to be a grand field night at Dynely

Abbey. For my lady gives a ball, the first for many a year; half the

county are invited, and all invited are coming. Has not the news

spread;—has not Gordon Caryll, the black sheep of the flock, the “hero

of a hundred battles,” whose life reads, so far as they know it, like a

chapter from some old romance, returned to claim his own, and are they

not to behold him to-night? It has been something more than the ordinary

nine days’ wonder, this story that has been told of him; these good

people in a circuit of twenty miles have talked of nothing it would seem

since it came out first. They can recall him well, scores of them—a

tall, fair-haired, handsome lad, a dashing young trooper before he left

for that transatlantic world, where he met the siren who has been his

doom. It all comes back to them, the first dark whisperings of that

terrible scandal that broke his haughty father’s heart, that drove his

mother into exile forever. Then the full details of the story—the

public shame, the divorce, the return, the decree of banishment. They

had all thought him dead, and France Forrester the heiress of

Caryllynne, and lo! he starts up all in a moment, a distinguished and

popular artist, and the accepted lover of his mother’s heiress. He has

been in Rome all these weeks, visiting that mother herself; publicly

and joyfully recognized and received by her, and to-night he returns,

and they will see him face to face at Lady Dynely’s.

 

At Lady Dynely’s! Why, in the days that are gone, when he was but the

merest lad, there was an old story that he was his cousin’s lover. She

has not seen him