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

go to you?” she asks.

 

“Chiefly, I think, because he wanted to make certainty more than

certain, partly because he knew his child—_our_ child—was with me, and

he wanted to see her.”

 

A pang that is like a red-hot knife-thrust goes through France

Forrester’s heart. Our child! Yes, this woman has been his wife, is

the mother of his child. She gives a little gasp.

 

“You—you let him see her?”

 

“I did not let him see her—I am not quite a fool. As I told him he

shall see her one day to his cost. She is mine, and I mean to keep her.

His name he took from me—his child he cannot.”

 

There is silence again. The pity has died out of Felicia’s face; it is

hard, and bitter, and relentless as she speaks again.

 

“All the evil he could work me he did. I loved him and he left me—he

cast me off with scorn and hatred. I swore revenge; but what can a

woman—even a bad woman—do? Look, here, Miss Forrester!” Her voice rose

rapidly and her eyes flashed. “In marrying me he fell a victim to a

plot, an unscrupulous plot, I don’t deny. I was not Major Lovell’s

daughter; I was no fit wife for such as he—I was taken from the lowest

concert-room of New York city. When I was a baby I was thrown upon the

streets; I had to make my own living, and earn the crusts I lived on. I

knew no mother, no father, no God. To make money—to wear fine clothes

anyhow—that was my religion. Lovell came and took me, and Gordon Caryll

saw and fell in love with me. He asked no questions—he married me. And

I loved him with a love that would have been my earthly salvation, if he

had let it. I was true to him, in thought, and word, and action; I would

have given my life for him. Then Lovell died, and dying told his story.

I fled, and hid myself from his first fury; I knew he would take my life

if we met. And then, months after, he found me out, and spurned me as

he would a dog, and showed me the decree of divorce, and left me

forever. Miss Forrester, I was a fool, I know, but I fell down there on

the sands where he quitted me like a dead woman. It would have been

better for him and for you to-day,” with another reckless laugh, “if I

had died. But—here I am.”

 

She broke off abruptly. In the dark eyes looking at her she read nothing

but a great and infinite pity.

 

“Poor soul!” France said, softly, “you loved him, and were his wife. It

was hard on you.”

 

Madame shrugged her shoulders.

 

“I have survived it, you see. Men die and worms eat them, but not for

love! That night my baby was born. There is the story. You have heard it

often before, no doubt. He is divorced—I cannot stop your marriage. Do

as you will—only I had to come and tell you this.”

 

She arose as she spoke. France stood up, too, and drew a step nearer.

 

“Madame,” she softly said, wistful wonder in her eyes, “do you—do you

love him yet?”

 

Once more madame laughed.

 

“Love! Ma foi! it is years since I knew what the word meant. Only fools

ever love. Not I, Miss Forrester! I hate him as I do—well, not the

devil—for I have no reason to hate him. No, no! it would be strange,

indeed, if I did; I finished with all that forever the evening we parted

by the Quebec shore. I am to marry the Prince Di Venturini in a month;

but marrying and loving—well, they are different things.”

 

“Does he know of this?” France asked, hardly knowing why she did ask.

 

“M. Di Venturini? Not yet—not at all if I can help it. And I don’t

think he ever will. Mr. Caryll will not tell, and I am quite sure I

shall not.”

 

She moved to the door; on the threshold she paused.

 

“Are you angry with me for coming?” she demanded, abruptly.

 

“Angry?” France echoed, wearily. “Oh, no, why should I be?”

 

Angry! No, she was angry with no one. She felt tired and sick, and worn

out—she would like to be alone, to darken her room and lie down, and

get away from the distracting music of that ceaseless band, from the

dazzling glare of the sunshine, from the heavy odor of the flowers. But,

angry—no. A touch of pity crossed again madame’s hard, insolent beauty.

 

“I am sorry for you,” she said. “You look good and gentle—you deserve

to be happy. Yes, I am sorry for you.”

 

And then she had left the room, and her silks were rustling down the

wide stairway, and France was alone.

 

Alone! She leaned her folded arms on the table, and laid her face down

upon them and drew a long, tired sigh. It was all over; and the woman

was gone, and out of France’s life all the happiness was forever gone,

too.

 

Gordon’s wife! How strangely it sounded. She was to have been

that—she never could be now. If he were dead and in his coffin, she

could not be one whit more widowed than she was. There was a dull sort

of aching at her heart—but no acute pain. She wondered at her own

torpor.

 

The band was striking up another tune. She could not endure that. She

arose and toiled slowly and wearily up the stairs to her own room. The

great hotel was very still. She reached her chamber, lowered the blinds,

threw herself face downward on the bed.

 

“Gordon’s wife! Gordon’s wife!” Over and over, like some refrain, the

words rang in her ears. Then they grew fainter and fainter—died out

altogether; and in the midst of her great trouble France fell fast

asleep.

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

“THE PARTING THAT THEY HAD.”

 

The last amber glitter of the sunset was gleaming through the closed

jalousies, and lying in broad yellow bars on the carpet, when France

awoke. Awoke with a great start, suddenly, and broad awake, her horrible

trouble flashing upon her with the vividness and swiftness of lightning.

Gordon’s wife was alive; she could never be that; she must give him up

at once and forever. Then a passionate sense of desperation and misery

seized her.

 

“I cannot! I cannot!” she cried out, clenching her hands and flinging

herself face downward among the pillows. “Oh, I cannot give him up!”

 

The yellow light flickered, faded, grew gray. One by one the golden bars

aslant the carpet slid out of sight. Ten minutes more and the closed

room was almost dark. And slowly the wild tempest of hysterical sobs was

subsiding, too violent to be long-lived, but France Forrester did not

move. Presently it died away altogether, and kneeling by the bedside,

her face bowed in her hands, she was seeking for strength to bear her

bitter sorrow where strength alone can be found.

 

“Thou whose life was all trouble,” France’s soul cried, “help me to bear

this!”

 

No thought had ever come to her that he was free—that legally she might

become his wife to-morrow in all honor before the world. Her French

mother had reared her in a faith which teaches that divorce is

impossible—a faith which holds marriage a sacrament, too holy to be

broken by law of man, in which, “until death doth ye part,” is meant in

the fullest and most awful sense of the words. His wife lived—his

wife, although she were Princess Di Venturini within the hour—and she

and Gordon, even as friends, must meet no more. Friends! Ah, no, they

could never meet as that; and so they must meet just once, and say

good-by forever.

 

She got up at last, utterly exhausted in body and mind. How still the

vast hotel was. How dark the room had grown. She drew up the blinds in a

sort of panic and let in the gray light of evening. It was almost night.

Perhaps Gordon had come and was waiting for her. She must go to him at

once, at once.

 

“Oh, my poor dear,” she thought, “you have borne so much—could you not

have been spared this last, bitterest blow?”

 

She went down stairs without pause. If he had returned at all, he would

be in the salon; he would not tell his mother until he had told

her—that she felt. She never stopped to think of her white cheeks and

swollen eyes; he was alone and in trouble, and she must go to him.

 

Yes, he had come. As she softly pushed the door open she saw him. He was

sitting where she had sat three hours ago. Three hours! was it only

that? Three years seemed to have passed since this morning. He sat, his

folded arms on the table, his head lying on them—his whole attitude

despairing and broken down.

 

He did not hear her as she entered and crossed the room, neither heard

nor saw, until she laid one hand lightly on his shoulder and spoke.

 

“Gordon!”

 

Then he looked up. To her dying day that look would haunt her, so full

of utter, infinite despair. Those haggard, hopeless eyes might almost

have told her the story, had Madame Felicia never come. Haggard and

hopeless as they were, they were quick even in this supreme hour to see

the change in her.

 

“You have been crying?” he said.

 

In all the months they had been together he had never seen the trace of

tears on France’s happy face before. The sight of those swollen eyelids

and tear-blotted cheeks struck him now as with a sense of actual

physical pain.

 

“What is it?” he asked. “‘Ill news travels apace,’ but I hardly think,”

with a harsh sort of laugh, “mine can have reached you already. France,

my own love, what is it?”

 

But she shrank away, drawing her hand from his grasp, and covering her

eyes with the other.

 

“Oh, Gordon, hush!” she cried out; “I cannot bear it. I–-,” with a

great gasp, “I know all.”

 

“All!” His face turned of a dull, grayish pallor, his eyes never left

her. “France, do you know what you are saying? What do you mean by all?”

 

“That—that–-” No, her dry lips would not speak the words. “Madame

Felicia has been here,” she said, with a quick desperate gesture, and

walked away to the window.

 

The bright street below was dazzling with gaslights—golden stars

studded the violet February sky. Carriages filled with brilliant ladies

flew ceaselessly by—the brilliant life of the most brilliant capital of

the world was at its height. And France leaned her forehead against the

cool glass and wondered, with a dull sickness of heart, if only this

time yesterday she had indeed been happier than the happiest of them

all.

 

Gordon Caryll had risen from his chair and stood looking at her,

actually dumbfounded by her last words. In whatever way she might have

heard the loathsome truth, he had never thought of this—that she

would have the untold audacity to force an entrance here.

 

“France!” he exclaimed, a dark flush of intense anger crimsoning his

face; “do you mean what you say?—that woman has dared come here?”

 

“Yes,” she said, wearily. “Ah, don’t be angry, Gordon. What does it

matter, since I must know it?—what difference who tells the tale? She

is not to blame, poor soul, for being alive.”

 

“Poor soul!” he repeats, in a strange,