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

thrall.”

 

He had reached his hotel. It was past two now. But few lights

burned—Eric’s rooms were in darkness.

 

Rather fagged, Terry made his way to his own sky-parlor, and soon forgot

his first eventful Paris evening in sound, fatigued sleep.

 

CHAPTER IV.

 

DONNY.

 

The departure of Lord Dynely and Dennison was the signal for the

departure of the rest of madame’s guests. Half an hour later and the

lights were fled, the garlands dead, and Felicia was alone in her own

pretty, rose-hung, gaslit drawing-room. She lay back in the soft depths

of her fauteuil, a half-smile on her lips, too luxuriously indolent as

yet even to make the exertion of retiring. The picture “How the Night

Fell” was the object upon which her long, lazy eyes rested, while that

well-satisfied smile curled her thin red lips.

 

“So he is coming,” she was thinking; “and he is to be married. To be

married to France Forrester, one of the very proudest girls in England,

as I have heard. She knows all about my story, no doubt. And she thinks,

and he thinks, and they all think, I was killed in that railway accident

so many years ago. Her mother was a French Canadian; and she is of her

mother’s religion, so they tell me; and even if her pride would permit,

her religion would forbid her to marry a man who is the husband of one

living divorced wife. And this, then, is the form my vengeance is to

take after all. I have wondered so often, so often—it seemed so

impossible my ever being able to reach him, my ever being able to make

him suffer one tithe of what he has made me. But, ‘I have him on the

hip’ now. Through his love for this girl I will stab him to the heart. I

will part them and stand between them—ay, even if I have to make my

history patent to the world. If I have to confess to Di Venturini, to

whom I have lied so long. I will prevent his marriage if I have to do

it by the forfeit of my own.”

 

She paused a moment to roll up and light a rose-scented cigarette, her

face clouding a little at her own thoughts.

 

“It will be a sacrifice too, if I should have to make things public,

to confess to the prince. He knows nothing of my past life, except the

pretty little romance I invented for his benefit. At my worst he

believes me to be an outrageous coquette with more head than heart, not

in the least likely to be led astray by the tender passion, and with no

false pride to stand in the way of my accepting costly presents. Indeed,

in the very fishy state of the prince’s own exchequer since I have known

him, the diamond bracelets, etcetera, were not at all obnoxious in his

sight.” She lifted her dusk, lovely arm, and looked with glittering eyes

at the broad band of yellow gold, ablaze with brilliants. “What a fool

that boy lordling is!” she thought, contemptuously; “so great a fool

that there is really no credit in twisting him round one’s finger. And

he has a bride of six weeks’ standing, they tell me—neglected and alone

for me—at the Louvre. Ah! these brides!” with a soft laugh. “She is

not the first whose bridegroom has left her to spend the honeymoon at my

feet. He is a relative of Caryll’s, too. Will his neglect of her, and

besotted admiration of me, be another dagger to help stab him? If there

were no bracelets in question I think that motive would be strong enough

to make me hold fast.”

 

She flung away her cigarette and began abruptly drawing off the many

rich rings with which her fingers were loaded. On the third finger of

the left hand, one—a plain band of gold, worn thin by time—alone

remained—the only one she did not remove. She lifted her pretty,

dimpled brown hand, and gazed at it darkly.

 

“I wonder why I have worn you all this time?” she mused. “My wedding

ring! that for sixteen years has meant nothing—less than nothing. And

yet by day and by night, I have worn you in memory of that dead time—of

that brief five months, when I was so happy, as I have never, in the

hours of my greatest triumph, been happy since. Di Venturini says it is

not in me to love. He is in love, poor little old idiot! If he could

have seen me then!”

 

Her hands fell heavily in her lap, she sighed drearily.

 

“How happy I was! how I did love that man! what a good woman I might

have been if he would have but forgiven and trusted me. But he spurned

me, he drove me to desperation, to death nearly. What did he care? I

vowed my turn would come—for sixteen years I have waited, and it has

not. But the longest lane has its turning, and my hour is now.”

 

She arose and walked up and down, her floating muslin and laces sweeping

behind her. Once she paused before the picture, leaning over the back of

a chair, and looking up at it with a curious smile.

 

“What an agonized face he has painted,” she said softly; “what anguish

and despair in those wild eyes. Did I really look like that, I wonder?

and what was there in him that I should wear that tortured face for his

loss. Good Heaven! if it comes to that, what is there in any man that

women should go mad for their loss or gain—selfish, reckless fools, one

and all! Even he is ready to paint his own folly and madness of the

past, to make money of it in the present.”

 

She turned away with an impatient, scornful last glance and slowly left

the room. Up in her own chamber, she rang for her maid, and with a yawn

resigned herself into her hands for the night.

 

“If I can only make it all right with the prince,” she mused, as the

Frenchwoman brushed out her thick, black hair. “I don’t want to lose

him, particularly now, as he has come to his own again. Madame la

Princesse Di Venturini! My faith! a rise in life for the little beggarly

singer of the New York concert hall, for poor old Major Lovell’s

accomplice, for Gordon Caryll’s cast-off wife. No, I must not lose the

prize if I can, and he is most horribly jealous. Let the truth reach

him—that I have had a husband, that I have a daughter, and much as he

is infatuated, I really and truly believe he will throw me over.”

 

Her thoughts wandered off into another channel, suggested by the

incidental remembrance of her daughter.

 

“What shall I do with the girl?” she thought, “now that Joan is dead,

and Joan’s boor of a husband does not want her. He will be sending her

to me one of these days if I do not take care. I must answer his

insolent letter to-morrow, and tell him at all risks to keep her from

coming here. From what Joan has written of her, I believe her to be

quite capable of it.”

 

Madame’s toilette de nuit was by this time complete. The maid had

departed, and madame was in the very act of depositing her loveliness

between the lace and linen of the rose-curtained bed, when the woman

suddenly and excitedly reappeared, the packet in her hand. In a dozen

voluble sentences she related the cause of the disturbance.

 

“A tall, blond English monsieur—Deens-yong—it was impossible to

pronounce the name, but one of the English gentlemen who had been

present this evening, and a young lady with him, who insisted upon

seeing madame, and Monsieur Deens-yong, with his compliments, had sent

madame this.”

 

“Mr. Dennison,” madame repeated, aghast, “and a young lady.” She looked

at the superscription and turned white. “Mon Dieu!” she thought, in

horror, “Joan’s writing! Can it be possible she is here?”

 

It was quite possible—the contents of the little packet left no doubt.

It was a rare thing for madame to turn pale, but the dusk complexion

faded to a sickly white by the time she had finished the letter.

 

“I will see this young person, Pauline, mon enfant,” she said

carelessly, feeling the needle-like eyes of the waiting woman on her.

“Show her up here at once, and wait until I ring; I may need you.”

 

The woman departed, marvelling much. And Felicia, throwing a

dressing-gown over her night robe, and thrusting her feet into slippers,

sat down to await the advent of her daughter.

 

It was two o’clock—what an hour to come, and with Terry Dennison, of

all men. What did it mean? How did the girl come to be in Paris at all,

and what should she do with her, now that she was here? She had not seen

her for ten years. Although Joan and her husband had removed to

Scotland—she had never felt any desire to see her. From what Joan wrote

of her, she was a wilful, headstrong, passionate creature, whom love

alone could rule, upon whom discipline of any kind was lost, reckless

enough if thwarted for any desperate deed. And now she was here. What

should she do with her? If the truth reached the ears of Di Venturini!

No, it must not—at any hazard it must not. She must win the girl over

by kindness, by pretence of affection, and, when opportunity offered,

get rid of her quietly and forever.

 

And then the door opened, and Pauline ushered her in. For an instant

there was silence while mother and daughter looked at each other full. A

very striking contrast they made—the mother in her mature and

well-preserved beauty, her loose robe of violet silk, her feet in violet

velvet slippers, elevated on a hassock, lying indolently back in her

chair, the lamplight streaming across her rich dark beauty. The daughter

draggled and wet, her black hair disordered, her pale, pinched face

bluish white, her great dusk eyes half shy, half defiant.

 

“Come here, child,” said the soft silky tones of Felicia.

 

The girl advanced, still with that half-shy, half-defiant air and

attitude, ready to be humble or fierce at a moment’s notice. Madame

stretched forth her hand, drew her to her, and kissed her cold, thin

cheek.

 

“You are Gordon Kennedy?”

 

“And you are my mother!”

 

She made the answer with a certain defiance still—prepared to fight for

her rights to the death.

 

“Hush-h-h!” madame said, with a smile; “that is your secret and mine.

No one knows it here—no one must know it as yet. My marriage was a

secret in the past, is forgotten in the present. I was divorced long

ago. But you know all that.”

 

“Of course I know; Joan told me everything. Look here.”

 

She pushed up her sleeve, and showed on the upper part of her arm the

initials “G. C.” in India ink.

 

“You did that, Joan said,” went on the girl still defiantly. “She told

me to show it to you, and remind you of the day you sent her away and

did it yourself.”

 

“I remember very well,” Felicia said, still smiling, still holding the

girl’s cold hand. “My child, how chill you are, how wet. Here, sit down

on this hassock and tell me how in the world you come to be in Paris at

this unearthly hour, and in charge of Mr. Dennison.”

 

Gordon Kennedy obeyed. The defiance was gradually melting out of her

face, but there was a visible constraint there