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

easy-chair, dressed for the day, waiting in an anguish of

suspense. As France came in she opened her arms, and without a word the

girl went in to them, and laid her pale face on the motherly bosom with

a great, tearless sob.

 

“My child! my child!”

 

She held her to her, and there was silence. The eyes of Gordon Caryll’s

mother were full of pitying tears, but the eyes of France were dry and

burning.

 

“I sent him away—from you who love him so dearly. Oh, mother, forgive

me. I did it for the best.”

 

She says it in a choked whisper, lifting her face for a moment. Then

again it falls on the other’s shoulder.

 

“It was like death, it was worse than death, but I told him to go,” she

says, again, in that husky undertone.

 

“My dearest,” Mrs. Caryll answers, “you did right. Dearly as I love him,

precious as your happiness is to me, I would rather part with him

forever, rather see you as I see you now, than let you be his wife

while that woman lives. I believe as you believe. No law of man can

alter the law of God. If she was his wife seventeen years ago—my child,

how you shiver! are you cold?—she is his wife still. It is right and

just that he should have put her away—that I believe; knowing her to be

alive now, it is right and just also that you should have sent him from

you. But, oh, my dear, my dear, it is hard on you—it is very hard on

him.”

 

“Don’t,” France says. “Oh, mother, not yet! I can’t bear it. This day

fortnight was to have been our wedding-day, and now—”

 

She breaks down all in a moment, and the tears come—a passionate rain

of tears. The mother holds her almost in silence, and so on her bosom

lets her weep her anguish out.

 

She is crying herself, but quietly. Great self-control has always been

hers—is hers still. To part with her lately-found son has been like the

rending of soul and body—more bitter than the bitterness of death; but

she has learned, in weary years of penitence and waiting, the great

lesson of life—endurance. So she comforts France now, in a tender,

motherly fashion, and France listens, as she could listen to no one on

earth, this morning, but Gordon’s mother.

 

“It is not for myself,” she says at last, after her old, impetuous

fashion, “it is for him. He has suffered so much, atoned so bitterly in

exile, and loneliness, and poverty, all the best years of his life for

that mad marriage of his youth, and now, when I would have made him so

happy, when he was happy, in one instant everything is swept from

him—home, mother, wife—and he must go out into exile once more. Oh,

mother! help me to bear it! It breaks my heart!”

 

The wild sobs break forth again. The mother’s heart echoes every word.

It is retribution, perhaps justice—none the less it is very bitter.

They both think of him, leaving all things, and going back to outlawry

and wretchedness; they think of her in her insolent, glowing beauty and

prosperity, the world going so well with her, glorying in her vengeance,

and it requires all the Christianity within them to refrain from hating

her.

 

But presently the storm of grief ends, and sitting on a low hassock, her

head bowed on Mrs. Caryll’s knee, France listens to her sad plans for

the future—so different, oh, so different from all the girl’s bright

hopes of but a day before.

 

“We will return to England, France,” Mrs. Caryll says, gravely; “to

Caryllynne. It has been deserted long enough. There we will live quietly

together, and hope, and pray, and wait—”

 

“Wait,” France repeats with mournful bitterness. “What is there to wait

for now?”

 

What, indeed! Both are silent. Unless this fatal woman dies—and in her

rich and perfect health she is likely to outlive them all—what can her

son ever have to hope for in this lower world? For France—well, as the

years go on, the elder woman thinks happiness may return to her. She

is so young, there may be hope for her—for him, none.

 

“Would you rather we went to Rome?” she asks, after a pause.

 

“No,” France says. “Let us return to Caryllynne. It was his home; I

shall be less wretched there than anywhere else on earth.”

 

So it is agreed.

 

“Terry will take us,” Mrs. Caryll says. “Terry knows all. And Lucia must

be told, my dear—it is impossible to keep the truth from her.”

 

“Yes, tell her,” Miss Forrester assents, wearily; “the sooner the

better. And ask her to spare me—to say nothing of altered looks, or

of—him. I will return to my room, and you had best send for her at

once. She was speaking of taking Crystal to Versailles—let her know

all, and make an end of it before she goes.”

 

Then France toils spiritlessly, cold and white, and wretched looking,

back to her room, and Lady Dynely is sent for, and the miserable sequel

to Gordon Caryll’s early marriage is told her, as she sits surprised and

compassionate, beside Gordon Caryll’s most unhappy mother.

 

*

 

“Where is he now?” is France’s thought, as she sits wearily down, and

lays her head on the table, as though she never cared to lift it again.

He is whirling along in a French express train—Calais-ward. To-night he

will cross the channel; by the first Cunarder that quits Liverpool he

will sail for New York, and so begins the second exile to which his

fatal wife has driven him.

 

CHAPTER XI.

 

M. LE PRINCE.

 

A quiet street near the Rue de la Paix. The hour, ten in the evening.

Almost absolute solitude reigning—only at long intervals the footsteps

of some passer-by awakening the echoes. Dim and afar off as it seems,

the turmoil of the great city coming mellowed and subdued.

 

One house, large, unlighted, gloomy, standing in a paved quadrangle, has

had a constant stream of visitors for the past two hours. They are all

men—men who have a stealthy and furtive look, who pass on rapidly, who

give a counter-sign to a waiting servant at the gate, who do not spend

more than fifteen minutes within those gloomy precincts, who flit away

and disappear, only to have others take their places. So it has been for

the past two hours, so it is likely to be until perhaps midnight.

 

This house is the property of his Excellency Prince Di Venturini; and M.

Di Venturini is the leader and moving spirit of a secret political

society. For upward of two months he has been absent on a mission of

grave import; this is the evening of his return, and the members of the

society—Italians all—have been summoned to their headquarters to

report progress to their leader.

 

Outside the gloomy and secluded mansion is wrapped in profound darkness;

inside, halls and passages are dimly lit—one room only, that in which

M. Di Venturini sits, being brightly illuminated.

 

He sits at a table strewn with papers, letters, pamphlets—small, spare,

yellow, with black, glancing eyes, sharp as stilettos, and thin,

compressed lips. One by one, his followers come and go; one by one,

their reports are noted down and docketed.

 

With sharp, quick precision he conducts each interview, with imperious

command he gives his orders, with scant ceremony he dismisses each man

of them all. Business of a still more private and delicate nature awaits

his attention—business purely personal to M. le Prince—and he rather

cuts short the latest comers, and hurries the levee to a close.

 

A clock over his head chimes eleven. With an impatient gesture he

dismisses his last client, flings himself back in his chair, pushes his

scant black hair, thickly streaked with gray, off his forehead with a

weary air, and then sits for some minutes lost in deep and anxious

thought. His thick brows knit, his lips set themselves in a tight, tense

line, then, with a second impatient motion, he seizes a silver hand-bell

and rings a sharp peal.

 

“I shall speedily learn whether it is truth or slander,” he mutters.

“Paujol and Pauline watch her well, and they belong to me soul and body.

I may trust their tale, and if she has played me false, why, then—let

her look to herself!”

 

The bell is answered almost immediately by the servant who has stood on

guard.

 

He bows and awaits.

 

“Have they all gone?”

 

“All, M. le Prince.”

 

“Has Paujol come?”

 

“Paujol has been awaiting your excellency’s commands, for the last

hour.”

 

“Let him enter.”

 

The man bows again and disappears.

 

M. le Prince lies back in his chair and plays a devil’s tattoo of

ill-repressed impatience on its arm. Then M. Paujol enters—a very tall

man, in a gorgeous uniform, no other, in fact, than Madame Felicia’s

huge chasseur in his robes of state.

 

“Ah! Paujol. You have been here for some time, Antoine tells me. Have

you obtained leave of absence, then, from madame?”

 

“Madame is not aware of my absence, M. le Prince. Madame departed one

hour ago to the bal d’opera at the Gymnase—the instant she left the

Varieties, in fact.”

 

“Ah-h!” the interjection cut the air sharply as a knife; “to the bal

d’opera at the Gymnase. With whom?”

 

“With the young milor Anglais—M. le Vicomte Dynely.”

 

A moment’s silence. An ominous flash, swift, dangerous, has leaped from

the eyes of the Neapolitan—his cruelly thin lips set themselves a

little tighter.

 

“It is true, then! all I have heard. He is the latest pigeon madame has

seen fit to pluck, this green young British lordling! He is with her at

all times, at all places. Paris rings with his infatuation—eh, Paujol?

is it so?”

 

“It is the talk of Paris, monseigneur, of the clubs and the salons, of

the streets and the theatre. Does your excellency wish me to tell you

what they say?”

 

“All, Paujol. Word for word.”

 

“They say, then, M. le Prince, that but the English noble has a wife

already, madame would throw over your excellency and marry milor Dynely.

They say that madame has fallen in love with his handsome face, and that

while your highness will be the husband and dupe, he will still remain

the favored lover.”

 

The hand—thin, sinewy, strong—that clasps the arm of the chair,

clutches it until the muscles stand out like cords. A fierce Neapolitan

oath hisses from his lips—otherwise he sits and listens unmoved.

 

“Go on, Paujol,” he reiterates. “Your report is most amusing, my friend.

He is at madame’s constantly, is he not?—he is her cavalier servante

to all places?—his gifts are princely in their profusion and

splendor?—again, is it not so?”

 

“It is so, Illustrissima—Pauline tells me the jewels he has given her

are superb. He is her nightly attendant home from the theatre, he is at

all her receptions, each day they ride in the Bois or the Champs

Elys�es, he spends hours in madame’s salon each morning. To none of the

many gentlemen whom madame has honored with her regard has she shown

such favor as to M. le Vicomte Dynely. Madame Dynely, it is said, is

dying of jealousy. All Paris laughs, monseigneur, and when your

excellency returns, wonders how the drama will end.”

 

“Paris will soon learn,” monseigneur answers grimly.

An ominous calm has settled upon him, the devil’s tattoo has quite

ceased now, his black eyes glitter diabolically. “Thou hast