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

a smoky pause.

 

Terry nods.

 

“You never were one of her victims though, were you,” the other

pursues.

 

“Not I, old fellow,” Terry laughs good-humoredly. “The r�le of quarry to

any woman’s hawk is not in the least my line. And I never could see, for

the life of me, what there was in belle Felicia, that men should go down

before her, like corn before the reaper. She’s a monstrous fine woman

for those who admire the swarthy sort, which I don’t, and knows how to

use those two black eyes of hers; but that dancer has never danced—were

it the daughter of Herodias herself—who could quicken my pulses by one

beat.”

 

“You’re a cold-blooded animal, Dennison, I’m afraid,” responds Mr.

Burrard. “Your insensibility to all womankind has passed into a proverb.

You always had the entr�e, too, when Felicia was in London.”

 

“I had the good fortune to be of some slight service to her on one

occasion, and, like all women, she magnified a mole-hill into a

mountain. So she is still as fatal as ever—who is the last unhappy

devil who has fallen into her clutches?”

 

“Their name is legion. There are two American millionaires over there,

ready to blow each other’s brains out about her. There is an Austrian

archduke, with five-and-twenty quarterings, an empty purse, and the

bluest of sang azure, ready, they say, at a moment’s notice, to make her

his wife. There is Prince Di Venturini, who has come to his own again,

since the young Italy party took the reins—that affair is old and

settled; it’s an understood thing if she behaves herself she is to be

Madame la princess. And last, but by no means least in the fair

Felicia’s eyes—since the bracelets, and rings, and rubbish of that sort

he gives her, they say would fill a Rue de la Paix jeweller’s window—is

young Lord Dynely.”

 

Terry has been lying back in his chair, dreamily watching the clouds of

smoke curl upward, and taking but a languid interest in the

conversation. At this name he sits suddenly upright, staring with round,

startled blue eyes.

 

“Who?” he asks, sharply and suddenly.

 

“Dynely—know him, don’t you? Oh, by the bye, yes—you and he are

connections, aren’t you? Married at Christmas—country parson’s

daughter, didn’t he, all on the quiet? Well, my word, he’s going the

pace now, I can tell you.”

 

“Burrard, do you mean to say Dynely is in Paris?”

 

“Been there the past three weeks. Went to Brittany or Normandy, or

somewhere for the honeymoon—so I was told; found love among the roses,

a week after matrimony, awfully slow work; most men do in like case,

poor devils; set the proprieties at defiance—couldn’t serve out his

sentence; came to Paris, and fell, like the greenest of all green

goslings, straightway into the talons of that bird of paradise, Felicia.

By the bye, birds of paradise haven’t talons, I daresay, but you know

what I mean.”

 

The color has faded out of Terry’s face, leaving him very pale. Mr.

Burrard, with whom the handsome dancer is evidently a sore subject, and

who is also suffering evidently from an attack of the green-eyed

monster, goes aggrievedly on:

 

“Never saw a fellow so far gone in so short a time—give you my honor,

Dennison! He’s mad, stark mad, running after that piratical little

demon. It’s early days to leave the pretty wife alone in their big

hotel. All Paris is talking about it, sotto voce, of course. Did you

know her, Terry?”

 

Burrard’s sleepy, half-closed eyes, look across at him, and note for the

first time the sudden, startled pallor of his face.

 

“Yes—I know her,” he answers slowly. “How is she looking, Burrard?”

 

“Never met her but once, and that was before the Felicia had gobbled her

husband up body and bones. I met them driving in the Bois, and I

remember everybody was turning to stare at the little blonde beauty. She

appeared also one night at an embassy ball, and was the talk of the

clubs for the next three days. It was her first and last appearance.

She’s there still, but invisible to the naked eye. While he follows

Felicia like her poodle or her shadow, the little one mopes at home. I

wouldn’t say all this, Dennison, you understand,” says Mr. Burrard,

fearing he has gone too far, “but it is public talk in Paris. Dynely’s

infatuation is patent to all the world.”

 

The face of Terry has settled into an expression Horace Burrard has

never seen on that careless, good-humored face before. It is set and

stern, the genial blue eyes gleam like steel. But he speaks very

quietly.

 

“And the Prince Di Venturini allows her to carry on like this? Wide

latitude for a future princess, you must own. Accommodating sort of

Neapolitan, the prince.”

 

“Understand me, Terry,” says Burrard, answering this last sneer rather

earnestly. “I don’t mean to say Felicia goes much further than some of

our own frisky matrons do. A flirt she is � outrance—she would flirt

with her own chasseur if no better game offered. Beyond that, scandal

goeth not. Di Venturini is most assuredly a man who can take care of his

own, a dead shot, and a noted duelist. Madame is also most assuredly his

fianc�e. She has an �me damn�e, who goes about with her

everywhere—the widow of an English curate, and propriety itself in

crape and bombazine. But she takes men’s presents, fools them to the top

of their bent, cleans them out, and throws them over, with as little

remorse as I throw away this smoked-out cigar. ‘One down, t’other come

on,’ that’s the fair danseuse’s motto.”

 

There was some bitterness in Burrard’s tone. Evidently he was one of the

“cleaned out and thrown over.” He arose as he spoke and looked at his

watch.

 

“Have you dined, Dennison? Because I have ordered—”

 

“Thanks—I dined two hours ago. Don’t let me detain you, Burrard, and

good-night.”

 

He went slowly up to his room, his face keeping that set, stern look.

 

“She has no father, no brother to take her part; I may be that to her,

if I may be no more. If Burrard’s story be true, then it is high time

some one went to the rescue.”

 

His own words came back to him. Had the time come already for him to

defend her against the husband she loved, and for whom she had jilted

him? He knew Eric well—knew how recklessly, insanely, he tore every

passion to tatters—knew how little hold principle or fidelity had upon

him, knew him weaker, more unstable than water, selfish to the core,

regardless of all consequences where his own fancies were concerned.

And into the keeping of such a man as this, little Crystal’s whole heart

and life had been given.

 

“If he is false to her,” Terry ground out between his set teeth, “I’ll

kill him with my own hand. Only one short month his wife, and neglected,

forsaken already. Oh, my little Crystal! My little, pretty, innocent

Crystal!”

 

He remembered his words to her on her wedding-day: “If you are ever in

trouble—if you ever need a friend, promise to send for me.” She had not

sent, poor child! but she had not forgotten those words, he knew. He

would go to her—go at once. While Eric was kind she had not needed

him—Eric had tired of her, was on with another love before the

honeymoon had waned—she needed him now. Yes, he would go at

once—to-morrow—by fair means or foul, Eric must be made to quit Paris;

and that painted sorceress, who wrought men’s ruin, must be forced to

give back his allegiance to his wife. He should not neglect her and

break her heart with impunity.

 

That night Terry Dennison spent tossing feverishly on his bed, listening

to the lashing rain, and chilly, whistling, February wind. Before the

dark, murky day had fairly broken he was at the London Bridge

station—at nightfall he was in Paris.

 

*

 

The February weather, so bleakly raw in London, is brilliant with

sunshine, sparkling with crisp, clear frost here in Paris. The great

avenues of the Bois and Champs Elys�es may be leafless, but the hoar

frost sparkles in the early sunshine like silver, the icicles glitter

like pendant jewels, and the bright, glad life, that never under the

Parisian sky grows dull, is at its brightest.

 

On this night that brings Dennison to Paris, gaslight has taken the

place of sunlight, and seems to his eyes, accustomed to London fog and

dreariness, no whit less dazzling. The bright streets are thronged—the

huge front of the Hotel Du Louvre is all a glitter of gaslights as his

fiacre whirls up, and deposits him and his portmanteau at the entrance.

 

“Can he have a room?” he asks the gentlemanly clerk.

 

And “Mais oui monsieur,” is the answer; “there is one room at

monsieur’s service, but it is _au cinqui�me num�ro quatre-vingts

douze_.”

 

Monsieur does not care; he prepares to mount, turns back and asks:

 

“Lord and Lady Dynely are here?”

 

“Certainly, monsieur. Their apartments are au premier, lately vacated

by his Serene Highness M. le Duc–-.”

 

Terry ascends to his cockloft, with a gravely meditative face. Are they

at home he wonders? is she? and how will Eric receive him? If what

Burrard says be true, it does not much matter—his and Eric’s day of

reckoning will have come.

 

At that very hour, in one of her gorgeous suite of rooms, Lady Dynely

sits, quite alone. Alone! ah, poor Crystal! when is she not alone now?

She sits, or rather crouches, on the wide velvet-cushioned window sill,

overlooking the brilliant, busy quadrangle below, where flowers bloom in

great tubs, and tall palms stand dark under the glass roof, heedless of

how she crushes her pretty dinner dress of blue silk, the hue of her

eyes. The soft blonde hair falls loose and half curled over her

shoulders. What does it matter? Eric is not here to see—Eric is never

here now it seems to her. What she wears, how she looks, have ceased to

interest Eric. He cares for her no more—after the deluge.

 

Her very attitude as she sits, huddled up here, is full of hopeless,

pathetic pain. The street lamps flare full upon the pretty, youthful

face—youthful still, childish no longer. She has eaten of the tree of

knowledge, and its fruit has been bitterer than death. All the sweet,

childlike, surprised innocence of the soft fair face, that made half its

charm, is gone—its peach-like, dimpled outline has grown sharp, the

pearly fairness has turned to fixed pallor—its delicate wild rose bloom

has entirely faded—the tender, turquoise eyes have taken a look of

patient despair, very sad to see. Not six weeks a bride, and the wife’s

despair shining from the sad, sweet eyes already.

 

Her cheek is pressed against the cool glass; her hands—from one of

which her wedding-ring slips, so wasted it has grown—are loosely

clasped in her lap; her tired eyes watch listlessly the crowds that

pass, the many vehicles that flash up to the great doorway, and flash

away again. Her mind is as listless as her looks. She has been alone for

two hours—two weeks it seems to her. She does not care to read, she

cannot go out, she cannot call in her maid and talk to her, and there is

no one else she knows. For Eric—well, the largest of the small hours

will bring Eric home—perhaps.

 

Suddenly she starts. From a fiacre that has just drawn up a man leaps

out. The lamp light