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

pretty, bright theatre is very full;

there is an odor of pastilles, a flutter of fans, a sparkle of jewelry.

Felicia is in great form to-night—she has heard from Lord Dynely

himself of the family party coming to view her with coldly-critical,

British eyes. They have laughed together over it in her little

dusk-shaded, perfumed, luxurious drawing-room, where his lordship has

made a much longer morning call than he made immediately before in the

Faubourg St. Honore.

 

She glances up now, swiftly and eagerly, as she comes forward to the

footlights, a golden goblet in her hand, her long hair floating loosely

over her shoulders, singing some wild bacchanalian, Theresa-like ditty.

She is gloriously beautiful in her scant drapery, and her rich voice

fills the theatre superbly. But as she tosses off her goblet, at the end

of her drinking song, she sees that the man she looks for is not in the

box.

 

Will he know her? He has never seen her since that long, far-off night

when they parted in the darkening day by the shore of the lonely

Canadian river. He thinks her dead. Will he know her? A wild, fierce

delight fills her soul, flames up in her eyes, and burns in her cheeks.

Will he know her? She will sing to-night (if he comes) the song she ever

sang for him, that first evening in the cottage of Major Lovell. It

will run very well with this play—that is much more song and dance than

drama. If he doubts her identity, surely, surely, he will remember

that.

 

She is wild with excitement, she surpasses herself. The audience applaud

to the echo—she flings herself into her part with a reckless abandon

that sweeps her listeners along with her. And still she watches that

box, and still he does not come. Will he not come at all? Amid a storm

of excited applause, amid a shower of bouquets, the curtain falls upon

the first act.

 

“How well she plays.” “How magnificently she is looking.” “Never saw her

dance half a quarter so well in my life before.” “By Jove! you know,

what a voice Felicia has.” These and a hundred such exclamations run

the round of the theatre.

 

“She is beautiful!” France exclaims, “with a beaut� du diable I never

saw equalled. And she dances and sings like a very Bacchante.”

 

“Wish to Heaven they would burn her as a witch,” growls Terry, under his

ruddy beard. “Such a woman should no more be let run loose than a

leopardess.”

 

“She sings very well,” Lady Dynely says, languidly; “but there is

something fierce and outre about her, is there not? I don’t like this

sort of exhibition. A ballet is bad enough—this kind of thing is

positively indelicate. What is she looking at our box for? I caught her

more than once.”

 

“She is looking for what she does not see. There is Eric yonder in the

stalls,” says Miss Forrester, in a tone of stony resentment.

 

“Is he, really?” Eric’s mother puts up her glass and leans forward. “So

he is, and quite alone. Where is Crystal, I wonder?”

 

“Crystal is at home, and quite alone also, you may be very sure,”

answers France, still in that tone of strong, suppressed indignation.

 

“I wonder if he sees us? Oh, yes, he does. There he is rising. No doubt

he will call upon us directly. France, why don’t you look? He is bowing

to you.”

 

But France’s bright, angry eyes are fixed steadfastly upon the rising

curtain—she will not see Lord Dynely. And Lord Dynely looks away from

her, feeling he has been snubbed, and knowing very well the reason why.

 

He has come to the theatre to-night, partly because he cannot stay away,

partly out of sheer bravado.

 

What! shall he stay away because he is afraid of Terry Dennison, and

France Forrester? Is he still a child in leading-strings, to be dictated

to? Not if he knows it. So he leaves early the ambassador’s saloon, and

goes to the Varieties, and sits out all the second act, directly under

the lorgnettes of the Gordon Caryll party.

 

Again madame surpasses herself—again the whole house rings with

applause—again bouquets are showered upon her. Lord Dynely adds his

mite to the rest, a bouquet of scarlet and white camellias. Again and

again, the black, fierce, restless eyes, flash their feverish light to

that one box. And still the man for whom she looks does not come.

 

He comes as the curtain falls for the second time, and France’s eyes and

smile welcome him.

 

“Am I very late?” he asks. “McLaren and I had a thousand things to

say, and time flew. I say, France, how do you like it?”

 

“Not at all! She fascinates one, but it is a horrid and unhealthy sort

of fascination. Her mad singing and dancing throw me into a fever.”

 

“Is there much more of it?” he says, standing behind her chair. “Is it

all over?”

 

“There is one more act. She is to be burned alive, Terry tells me, and I

want to wait and see her. I shall try to fancy the burning real, and

enjoy it accordingly.”

 

“By Jove!” he says, and laughs, “what a blood-thirsty spirit we are

developing! Ah! Dynely, you here?”

 

For the door opens, and Eric, languid and handsome, saunters in.

 

“How do, Caryll? Late, aren’t you? Well, France—well, ma m�re, how do

you like it? Superb actress, isn’t she?”

 

He looks at France. With a certain defiance, she sees and accepts.

 

“If dancing mad jigs, singing drinking songs, and capering about like a

bedlamite, go to constitute a fine actress, then yes. A little of Madame

Felicia goes a long way.”

 

His eyes flash, but he laughs.

 

“There is no accounting for tastes. She seems to please her audience, at

least.”

 

“Where is Crystal?” France abruptly asks. “I thought you were to dine at

the Embassy.”

 

“Crystal is at home. And you thought quite right; we were to dine at

the Embassy.” The defiant ring is more marked than ever. “I have dined

there, and on my way home dropped in here, knowing I would have the

pleasure of being in the bosom of my family.”

 

He looks at her steadfastly, and France turns her white shoulder

deliberately upon him. Her lover is leaning over the back of her

chair—ah! how she loves him, how she trusts him—how different he is

from this shallow-brained young dandy, with his Greek beauty, and

callous heart! How differently her life will be ordered from Crystal’s,

when she is his wife.

 

As she thinks it, the curtain goes up for the third time, and the

“Golden Witch” bounds on the stage.

 

She is singing as she springs to the footlights, a gleeful hunting

chorus this time. A troop of followers in green and gold come after, and

join in the chorus. Her costume is of green and gold also; a green

hunting cap, with a long white plume, is set jauntily on her raven

tresses. She is dazzling in the dress, she is radiant as she sings.

Again her sweet, high voice, rings to the domed roof. And it is the very

song Rosamond Lovell sang for Gordon Caryll, seventeen years ago, in the

Toronto cottage.

 

She flashes one fierce electric look up at their box.

 

Yes, he is there at last—at last. Thank Heaven for that! if she can

thank Heaven for anything.

 

He hears her, he sees her; recognizes the song. He knows her.

 

Her hour of triumph is complete. Her excitement reaches its climax. As

she never played before, she plays to-night. She holds the multitude

breathless, spellbound. She sings her own death-song, wild, wailing,

weird, unearthly, so ghastly in its tortured agony, that France

shudders and turns pale. The mimic flames arise—surround her, her

uplifted face is seen above them, as the curtain falls down, her ghastly

death-song dies wailing away.

 

For a moment, so rapt and petrified are the audience, that they cannot

applaud. Then—such a storm of clapping, of calling, shakes the walls

of the theatre, as never shook it before. “Felicia! Felicia!” they

shout, as with one voice.

 

She comes out smiling and kissing hands. Another tempest of applause and

delight breaks forth. Then flashing up one last look, straight into

Gordon Caryll’s face, she disappears.

 

There is a stir and commotion, an uprising and shawling of ladies.

 

“Ugh!” France says, with a shudder; “it is diabolical! it is like the

nightmare. I shall never come to see this outre spectacle again. Do

you like it, Gordon?”

 

She leans back, and looks up at him. He does not seem to hear her, he

does not seem to see her—he is staring at the stage like a man

stupefied.

 

“Gordon!” she cries.

 

His eyes turn slowly from the blank, green curtain to her, but his face

still keeps that dazed, stunned look. His bronzed skin, too, has turned

of a dead ashen gray.

 

“Gordon,” France says once more, this time in terror, “what is it?”

 

Her question seems to break the spell. He makes an effort—a mighty

effort, she can see, and answers her.

 

“Nothing. Will you come?”

 

His very voice is changed—it is hoarse and low. He offers her his arm

mechanically, and watches her arranging her opera-wrap, without trying

to help her. She takes it and goes with him out, and all the while he

keeps the dazed look of a man who is walking in his sleep.

 

“Oh, Gordon!” she cries out, “what is it? Do you know that woman?”

 

He wakes then—wakes to the whole horrid truth.

 

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t ask me,” he says, “to-night. Wait—wait until

to-morrow.”

 

Her eyes dilate. They are out under the frosty, February stars. He puts

them into the carriage—Lady Dynely and France—but he makes no effort

to follow them. Eric and Terry make their adieux and turn away.

 

“Are you not coming, Gordon?” Lady Dynely asks in surprise.

 

“No,” he answers, still in that low, hoarse tone. “Home,” he says to the

coachman. And as they whirl away, France leans yearningly forward, and

sees him standing under the street lamps, quite alone.

 

CHAPTER VII.

 

“AFTER MANY DAYS.”

 

He knows her! From the first moment in which his eyes rested on her,

from the first instant he has heard her ringing voice, he knows it is

his wife. The song she sang for him in Major Lovell’s dim drawing-room

so many years ago, she is singing again for him to-night, for him—he

knows that, too. His divorced wife stands yonder before him—this

half-nude actress—his divorced wife whom for the past ten years he has

thought dead. He knows it in that first moment of recognition as surely

as he ever knew it in the after days.

 

She has hardly changed at all—in the strong, white lime light, she does

not seem to have aged one day in seventeen years. The dusk, sensuous

beauty is riper and more of the “earth, earthy;” the delicate outlines

of first youth have passed, except that she is even more beautiful in

her insolent, voluptuous womanhood than in her slim, first girlhood. He

thinks this in a dazed, stupefied sort of way as he stands and looks at

her. And this is Rosamond Lovell—the woman who was once his wife.

 

His wife! his wife! The two words echo like a knell through his brain,

set themselves to the wild, sweet music that is ringing about him, fit

themselves in time to her flying feet. His