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

glad to see a face from home.

Sit down, Terry. When did you come, and how are they all?”

 

Her fingers lace and unlace nervously. Her lips tremble like the lips of

a child about to cry. She has grown nervous and hysterical of late from

being so much alone with her misery, and the sight of Terry has unnerved

her.

 

“All well,” he answers cheerily; “at least I’ve not been down at the

Vicarage, but I had a letter from Linda a week ago. I told them I was

going to cross over and look you up, and they sent no end of love and

all that.”

 

Then there is a pause—a painful one. The color has faded out of her

face, and it looks bluish white against the crimson velvet back of her

chair. Good heavens! Terry thinks, with a thrill of pain and anger, how

changed she is, how thin, how worn, how pallid. But he makes no mention

of her looks, he only asks in a constrained sort of voice:

 

“Eric is well, I hope?”

 

“Oh, yes, thank you!”

 

Her voice falters as she repeats the old formula. Again there is

silence. Terry is not a good one for making conversation, and silence is

little Crystal’s forte.

 

“Is Eric not at home?” he ventures after that uneasy pause.

 

“No,” she answers, her eyes fixed on the rings she is unconsciously

twisting round and round; “he is dining out. It—it is a bachelor party.

He could not take me.”

 

“And what business has he at bachelor parties now?” rises to Terry’s

lips, but he represses it. She is going to say something, he sees—the

sensitive color is coming and going in her face—something that she

finds hard to say. It comes out at last hurriedly.

 

“Terry! I wish you would take me to the theatre to-night.”

 

“Crystal!”

 

“To the Varietes. I—I want to go. I must go!” She lifts her eyes to

his, and they flash for a moment. “I have wanted to go all this week.

Will you take me to-night?”

 

He sets his lips. She has heard then. He asks no questions—he makes no

reply.

 

“Don’t refuse me, Terry,” she pleads, and the sweet lips tremble. “You

never did refuse me anything—don’t begin now. I want to go—oh, so

much! I want to see—that woman.”

 

The wifely hatred and jealousy she feels for “that woman” are in the

bitterness with which she pronounces the two words. It is hard to refuse

her—but Terry sits silent and troubled still.

 

“I would do anything for you, Crystal,” he says at length; “but this—is

this best?”

 

“I want to go—I will go,” she says, passionately, turning away. “I

did not think you would refuse, Terry Dennison.”

 

“I have not refused, Crystal,” he answers gently. “Of course I will

take you, with pleasure, since you wish it. There is plenty time, too.

While you put on your mantle and gloves, I will go and secure a box—if

one is to be had.”

 

She gives him a grateful glance.

 

“You were always good to me, Terry,” she repeats softly.

 

He sighs to himself as he leaves her. So changed! so changed! and she is

as dear to him as ever. The hottest anger he has ever felt against any

living man, he feels to-night against Lady Dynely’s son.

 

She dresses without the aid of her maid—dresses hurriedly, and stands

all ready as Dennison reappears.

 

“It is all right, Lady Dynely,” he says in his cheery voice; “by great

good luck there was one unoccupied box, and I got it. Our fiacre is at

the door.”

 

She slips her gloved hand within his arm and goes down; she is trembling

with nervous excitement, he can feel. She has never seen this beautiful,

wicked actress, who has charmed her darling from her—she has never

dared speak of her to Eric, and he has never offered to take her

anywhere. He may be angry when he hears of this—she has no intention of

concealing it from him—but she must see her, she must. She must look

upon the face fair enough to take the bridegroom from his bride before

the honeymoon is at an end.

 

The house is full when they reach it—a glittering horse-shoe of faces,

and toilettes, and gaslight, and perfume and fluttering fans. She sinks

into her seat and draws back behind the curtain. The play has begun, and

“La Sorci�re d’Or,” in her dark, insolent, triumphant beauty, and

dazzling raiment, is on the stage, electrifying the audience by her

passionate power.

 

Crystal looks at her and turns sick, sick at heart, sick with despair.

Yes, she is beautiful—terribly, brilliantly beautiful—insolently,

demoniacally beautiful, it seems to her. Her voice is like silver, her

eyes like dusk stars; and Eric worships beauty in all things, and this

woman—this, is her rival. She turns away in sick, mute despair as the

curtain falls. What power has she to hold him against a glittering

enchantress like this. At that moment a party of gentlemen enter the

box opposite; she gives a quick gasping cry—one of them is her husband.

 

He has been dining and wining evidently. His fair, girl’s complexion is

flushed—his blue eyes glitter with passionate excitement. He leans back

and sweeps the house with his glass—she shrinks tremblingly farther

from sight. Terry, too, draws back—Terry, whose face wears a look

Crystal has never seen it wear before.

 

The curtain rises on the second act. Lord Dynely’s double-barrels turn

from the people to the players. She is on the stage once more—his

opera glass devours her. He lies back and stares immovably all through

the act. When at its close loud plaudits ring through the house, his

primrose-kidded hands applaud to the echo. She comes—floral showers, as

usual, rain upon her. Crystal does not look at her now—her fascinated

eyes are riveted upon her husband. She sees him lean forward, a smile on

his handsome face—sees him take a little bouquet of fairy roses and

geranium leaves from his button-hole and fling it to the actress.

Crystal gives a little gasping cry of sheer physical pain. She formed

that little bouquet—she pinned it into his button-hole as she kissed

him good-by four hours ago. And now the actress lifts it—lifts it from

amid hosts of others, presses it to her lips—flashes one lightning

glance at the fair-haired Englishman in the box above, and disappears.

 

“You stand well with the Felicia, Dynely,” one of the party, a

compatriot of Eric’s, says, with a loud laugh. “She selects your bouquet

from all that pyramid. Lucky beggar! We poor devils stand no chance

against such a curled darling of the gods.”

 

The third act finishes—the golden witch dies at the stake, singing her

wondrous funeral song. The play is over.

 

“And I’d like to be the one to fire the fagots, by –-,” Terry grinds

out between his set teeth. Then he leans over and speaks to his

companion. “Are you tired, Crystal? You look pale,” he says—so gently

he says it.

 

She is more than pale; her very lips are colorless; but she lifts her

grateful, hopeless eyes, and repeats the old foolish formula:

 

“Oh, no, thank you.”

 

“The ‘Golden Witch’ is finished. There is a grand new ballet—do you

care to wait to see it?” he asks again.

 

“I will wait, Terry, if you please.”

 

She does not care for the ballet; she will not see it at all, very

likely; but Eric is yonder—her Eric—her husband—and while she can sit

and watch him, this place is better than any other in Paris.

 

But presently Eric gets up, leaves his box, and goes away. There is

rather a long interval before the ballet. People chat, flirt, laugh,

discuss the play and Felicia, and presently there is a stir, and a

bustle and a sensation amid them all.

 

Every glass in the house turns to one box as the curtain rises and the

new ballet begins. Terry and Crystal look, too.

 

In that stage-box the star of the night sits. Madame Felicia, in elegant

full dress, ablaze with diamonds, lies back in her chair, wielding a fan

with the grace of a Castilian donna, and listening, with a smile on her

perfect lips, to the whispered words of the man who bends over her. He

stoops so low that his blonde hair mingles with her jetty tresses. The

little knot of fairy roses nestle in these ebon locks; and the tall

cavalier who bends so closely, so devotedly, is Eric, Lord Dynely.

 

Crystal can bear no more. With a great sob, she turns to Dennison, and

holds out her hands.

 

“Oh, Terry,” the poor child says, “take me home!”

 

He does not speak a word. He rises, wraps her cloak around her, draws

her hand within his arm, and leads her out of the theatre. In the fiacre

she falls back in a corner and hides her face from the pitiless glare of

the streets. No word is spoken all the way—what is to be said? Both

know the worst.

 

He conducts her to her own door, still dead silent. There he pauses,

takes both her hands and holds them in his strong, friendly clasp, while

he looks down in the drooping, heart-broken face.

 

“Keep up heart, little Crystal,” he says; “I’ll fetch Eric home in an

hour.”

 

She lays her cold cheek down for a second on the warm, true hands.

 

“Dear old Terry!” she says, softly. Then he lets her go, and the

velvet-hung door closes behind her.

 

CHAPTER II.

 

“LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI.”

 

And this is how it has ended. Only five weeks married—and he has

wearied of her already—a newer, more brilliant beauty has won him from

her. Terry has known it would come—known it from the first, but not so

soon—good Heaven! not so soon. He takes his way into the street, the

hottest, fiercest wrath he has ever felt against any human being,

burning in his heart against Eric Dynely. How she has changed—what a

pale shadow of the lovely, happy face she took to the altar last New

Year’s day. What a pitiful, crushed, heart-broken look the sweet,

childish eyes wear. If she could have loved him—if he could have won

her—if Eric had never come between them, how happy he could have made

her! He would have made her life so blessed, she would have been all his

own in time, beyond the power of any man to come between them. With a

sort of groan he breaks off. His she is not, his she can never be. Eric

must return to her or she will die—the whole story is told in that.

 

“He shall return to her,” Terry says inwardly, setting his teeth, “or I

will know the reason why.”

 

He does not pause a moment—he hurries at once to the theatre. The

ballet is but just ended—the people are pouring forth, but nowhere

among them does he see Eric. At length in the crowd he espies a man he

knows, one of the four who first entered with him he is seeking, and he

makes his way to him and taps him familiarly on the shoulder.

 

“Boville, old boy,” he says with the Briton’s customary curt greeting,

“how are you?”

 

Mr. Boville looks over his shoulder and opens two small, sleepy-looking

eyes.

 

“What, Dennison! what, Terry! you here! thought you were at Aldershot.

Awfully glad to see you all the same.”

 

“I’m looking for Eric,” Terry responds, plunging at once into his

subject. “He came in with you. Where is he now?”