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

Felicia! She is a wicked, wicked woman, and I hate her!”

 

She is trembling from head to foot with nervous passion as she says it.

France stands petrified. Then all in an instant Crystal recollects

herself, and piteously clasps her hands.

 

“I did not mean to say that!” she cries; “it is very wrong of me. Please

don’t think anything of my angry words—I did not mean anything by

them—indeed I did not.”

 

France stoops and kisses her as a sister might, holding her close for a

moment; and a little sob she cannot wholly repress breaks from the poor,

jealous child, as she lays her head on France’s breast.

 

“My darling,” France whispers, in that warm kiss, “keep up heart. Eric

shall take you out of this wicked, tiresome’ Paris before the week ends,

or I will know the reason why.”

 

Then, with profoundest pity for this poor little girl bride, she goes,

her own day’s pleasuring totally spoiled.

 

“This is what Eric’s love-match comes to,” she think sadly. “Ah, poor

little Crystal!”

 

“‘I have lived and loved—but that was to-day;

Go bring me my grave-clothes to-morrow.’”

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

AT THE VARIETIES.

 

It is close upon luncheon hour when Miss Forrester returns to the

Faubourg St. Honor�. As she enters the drawing-room, still in her street

dress, she sees her lover sitting in an arm chair by the open window,

smoking a cigar, and immersed in the art criticisms of the _Revue des

Deux Mondes_. He throws down the paper and looks at her with lazily

loving eyes. Happiness and prosperity certainly agree with him—as

Gordon Caryll, the accepted suitor of Miss Forrester, he looks ten years

younger than did Mr. Locksley, the impecunious portrait painter.

Handsomer, nobler, France thinks, than Mr. Locksley, it is impossible

for mortal man to grow.

 

“Well,” he says, “you have returned. My thoughts were just turning

seriously to the idea of having out the detective police, and offering a

reward for your recovery. Is it admissible to ask, my child, where you

have been?”

 

She comes behind him, lays her little gloved hands on his shoulders, and

looks down into the gravely smiling face resting against the chair back.

They are not demonstrative lovers those two, but now, rather to Mr.

Caryll’s surprise, Miss Forrester impulsively stoops and leaves a kiss

on his forehead.

 

“And to think,” she says, drawing a tense sort of breath, “that I

might have married him!”

 

Mr. Caryll opens his handsome gray eyes. Both the kiss and the

irrelevant exclamation take him rather aback.

 

“You might have married him! You might have married whom? You have not

been proposing to any one this morning, have you? What are you talking

about France?”

 

“About Eric,” she answers, absently.

 

“And with the most woe-begone of faces. Melancholy has evidently marked

you for her own this morning. You are regretting you threw Eric over for

me—is that it, my dear?”

 

“Nonsense!” is France’s energetic answer. “I hate to have you say such

things, even in jest, Gordon. Thank Heaven, no! I liked Eric,

certainly—one could hardly fail to do that; but, I always had a most

thorough-paced contempt for him all the same. And if I had married

him—but no, I never would, I never could, if there had been no Crystal

Higgins, no Mr. Locksley, in the scheme of the universe. Gordon, I have

been to see them this morning.”

 

“So I inferred, my dear, from your very energetic language. And you

found them well, I hope?”

 

“Eric is well,” France says, resentfully; “he will be, to the end of the

chapter. But, Crystal—”

 

“Yes?” Mr. Caryll says, interrogatively. “Crystal is well also, no

doubt?”

 

“Well!” France cries, and then stops. “Ah! you should see her—wait

until you do. I never saw any one so changed in my life.”

 

“For the better?”

 

“For the worse. She is the shadow of herself—poor little soul! Her sad,

heart-broken face and voice haunt me like a ghost. Eric is a brute!”

 

“Indeed! Husbands invariably are, are they not? What has Eric done?”

 

“I don’t know what he has done,” Miss Forrester answers, indignantly. “I

only know he is breaking his wife’s heart. Why don’t you say ‘husbands

invariably do’? I daresay it is true enough.”

 

Mr. Caryll takes one of the gloved hands and gives it an affectionate

little squeeze.

 

“My dear child, don’t excite yourself. I intend to prove an exception.

Seriously, though, I am very sorry for little Lady Dynely. I am afraid

the rumors I have been hearing must be true.”

 

“Rumors? What rumors? I never heard you allude to them.”

 

“No; one does not care to talk about that sort of thing, and I knew it

would annoy you, and make his mother unhappy. But as you seem to be

finding out for yourself, well they do say he neglects the little one,

and runs about with—”

 

“With Felicia, the actress! Gordon, I am sure of it! With Felicia, the

dancer!”

 

“With Felicia, the dancer. But take it calmly, my love. How do you know

it?”

 

“I know it from Crystal herself. That is what she meant when I asked her

to come with us to the Varieties to see Felicia.”

 

“Ah, what did she mean?”

 

“She said she hated the Varieties, she hated Madame Felicia; that she

was a wicked, painted woman. And you should have seen those dove-eyes of

hers flash. My poor, dear little Crystal!” The dark, impetuous eyes fill

with tears and fire with indignation. “Only six weeks married!” she says

passionately. “Gordon, I hate Eric.”

 

“Now, France,” he says gravely, “don’t make yourself unhappy about this.

Lady Dynely must have known she ran no ordinary risk in marrying

Dynely—the most notorious male flirt in Europe. If she had had one

grain of sense in that pretty flaxen head of hers she must have known

that matrimony would work no miracles. A flirt he is by nature—there is

not a grain of constancy in his whole composition; and as she has taken

him, so she must abide by her bargain.”

 

“He is a brute!”

 

“So you said before,” answers Mr. Caryll, a half-smile breaking up the

gravity of his face. “Still, allowance must be made for him. He has been

spoiled all his life—he has never been thwarted—to wish has been to

have, and ladies have petted and made much of him for his azure eyes,

and golden curls, and his Greek profile, all his life long. Time may

cure him. Meanwhile, neither you nor I, Miss Forrester, can help

Crystal. And they say this Felicia plays the deuce with her victims.”

 

“Have you ever seen her, Gordon?”

 

“Never. I was too busy last year when she was at the Bijou, and besides,

I had an aversion to theatres and theatre-going. I shall see her

to-night, however.”

 

“She bought your picture, ‘How the Night Fell,’ didn’t she?”

 

“Yes. Di Venturini purchased it for her. By the bye, I promised at the

time a companion picture. They say she’s to marry Di Venturini

immediately upon his return from Italy.”

 

“Marry him! That woman!”

 

“My dear France,” Caryll says, laughing, “with what stinging scorn you

bring out that woman! There is nothing said against ‘that woman’

except that she is a most outrageous coquette.”

 

“But she is a dancer, and he is a prince.”

 

“That goes for nothing. The best blood of the realm takes its wife from

the stage in these days. I shouldn’t fancy it myself, but you know the

adage, ‘A burnt child dreads the fire.’”

 

“Poor little Crystal!” sighs France.

 

“Poor little Crystal, indeed. Rumor says he is altogether infatuated.

Let us hope rumor, for once, is wrong. Are they coming to dinner?”

 

“No. Eric pleads a prior engagement, and she does not seem to have heart

enough left to go anywhere. Here is Lady Dynely. By the bye, I forgot to

tell you Terry is in Paris.”

 

“Terry? Terry Dennison?” cries Lady Dynely, eagerly; “is he, really.

Where, France?”

 

“At the Hotel du Louvre. I stole a march upon you this morning, and made

an early call upon the happy pair.”

 

Her ladyship’s eyes light eagerly.

 

“And you saw them? You saw Eric?”

 

“I saw Eric, mamma.”

 

“How is he looking? Will they dine with us?”

 

“Eric is looking well—never better. And they dine at the Embassy this

evening. No doubt, though, Eric will call.”

 

“Here he is now,” Caryll interrupts, looking from the window, and France

disappears like a flash. She feels in no mood at present to meet and

exchange pleasant commonplaces with the Right Honorable the Lord

Viscount Dynely.

 

She goes to her room, throws off her bonnet and seal jacket, and pays a

visit to grandmamma Caryll, in her own apartments. Paralysis has

deprived her of the use of her limbs. She sits in her great invalid

chair the long days through. But in her handsome old face a look of

great, serene content reigns.

 

The restless, longing, impatient light that for years looked out of her

eyes has gone—she has found what she waited and watched for. Her son is

with her—France is to be his wife—she asks no more of earth.

 

The luncheon-bell rings. Mrs. Caryll’s is brought in, and France

descends. To her great relief, Eric has gone, and Terry is in his place.

Terry, who is changed too, and who looks grave and preoccupied.

 

“You were at the Louvre this morning, France,” he says to her as they

sit side by side. “You saw her?”

 

“Yes, Terry,” and France’s compassionate eyes look at him very gently.

“I saw her.”

 

“And you have heard–-”

 

“Everything—poor little Crystal. Terry, Eric must take her to England,

and at once.”

 

“Ah, if he only would,” Terry says with a sort of groan, “but he will

not. That is past hoping for. He is killing her—as surely as ever man

killed woman. And when he does,” Terry sets his teeth like a bulldog,

“my time of reckoning will come.”

 

“You must accompany us this afternoon, Terry,” Lady Dynely says, after

the old imperious fashion. “France is quite as much as Gordon is capable

of taking care of. I want you.”

 

Terry falls into the old groove at once. In his secret heart he is

longing to be at the hotel with Crystal, to cheer her in her loneliness;

but that may not be, may never be again. So he sighs and goes. They

spend the long, sunny, spring-like afternoon amid the lions of Paris,

and return to dine, and dress for the theatre.

 

“The whole duty of family escort will fall upon your victimized

shoulders, Dennison,” says Mr. Caryll, looking up from a letter that the

post has brought him. “This is a note from General McLaren—I served

under him at the beginning of the American civil war. He is at the Hotel

Mirabeau; and as he leaves Paris to-morrow, begs me to call upon him

to-night. You won’t mind, I suppose; and I will look in upon you about

the second act.”

 

“I always told Terry he was born to be a social martyr,” France says.

“The fetch-and-carry, go-and-come, do this and that r�le, has been

yours from your birth, my poor, boy.”

 

So it chances that when the curtain goes up, and the “Golden Witch”

begins, Gordon Caryll does not make one of the party of three who look

down from the front of their box, amid all the glittering “horse-shoe”

of gaslight and human faces. The