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

pretty woman—three-and-twenty, perhaps, with a fair blonde

face, a profusion of pale blonde hair, a tall, willowy, fragile figure.

The fair face, the pale blue eyes, lit up now with genuine delight.

 

“I, Lady Dynely. You hardly looked for me to-night, did you? And yet,

you must have known I would come.”

 

Her color rose. She withdrew the hand he held still.

 

“I did not know it. How could I tell? Your mother was here to-day—she

said nothing about it. When did you come?”

 

“Two hours ago. And as to-morrow morning, by the first train, I leave

again for good, I ran the risk of not finding you at home, and rode over

to say good-by. By the way, it’s rather a coincidence, but one August

night two years ago, you and I shook hands and parted on this very spot.

You were dressed in white that night, too, I remember, and looked as you

always do look, belle cousine, fair and sweet, and pale as a lily.”

 

Again her color rose, but the blue, startled eyes fixed themselves on

his face.

 

“Say good-by—leave for good!” she repeated. “What is it you mean?

Gordon, have you seen your mother?”

 

“Yes, Lucia, I have seen my mother. I have just come from Caryllynne. I

have bidden farewell to it and to my mother forever.”

 

She stood looking at him in painful silence—that sensitive rose-pink

color coming and going in her cheeks. In the crystal moonlight she could

see the great and saddening change in him. She clasped both hands around

his arm, and looked up at him with soft, pitiful eyes.

 

“Gordon—cousin,” she said, gently, “is it true, this story they tell,

that is in the papers, that all London rang with before we left? It must

be true, and yet—oh, Gordon! unless you tell me with your own lips I

cannot believe.”

 

“Then I tell you,” he moodily answered, “it is true.”

 

“That you married an actress—an—oh, Gordon!” she said passionately, “I

would rather see you dead!”

 

“You are not alone in that, I fancy,” he said, with a drearily reckless

laugh. “All the same, I have done it. All the same, too, I have had

enough of reproach and bitterness for one night—it is my last,

remember—don’t you take up the cry against me. Those gentle lips of

yours, ma belle, were never made to say cruel things. We have been

good friends always—let us so part.”

 

She sighed wearily, her hands still loosely clasped his arm, her blue,

pitying eyes still fixed on his face. His gloomy gaze was bent on the

water-lilies in the pond, whose pale heads he was mercilessly switching

off with his riding whip.

 

“I am sorry—I am sorry. But your mother, Gordon, surely she pities you

and forgives you. I know how stern and resolute she can be where she

thinks her duty is concerned; but you, her only son, whom she loves so

dearly—”

 

“She has disinherited and cast me off forever. It is all right, Lucia. I

don’t deny the justice of my sentence, only you see one looks rather for

mercy than for justice from one’s mother.”

 

“But she does not mean it—she speaks in anger. She will repent and call

you back.”

 

He smiled—a slow, hard, inexorable smile.

 

“It is a little late for all that. What is done is done. I will never go

back. She says truly, I have disgraced the name—the only atonement I

can make is to renounce it. She has ordered me from her sight and her

home forever—one does not wait to be told that twice.”

 

“How could she—how could she!” his cousin murmured, the soft blue eyes

filling and brimming over; “you, her only son—all she has left—whom

she loved so dearly. Oh! how could she do it! Gordon, I, too, have a

son, my little Eric, and I love him so devotedly, so entirely, that I

feel, I know, no crime he could commit, though it were murder itself,

could ever for one second change that love. Do what he might—yes, the

very worst man can do, I would still love him and take him to my heart.”

 

Her pale face glowed, her pale eyes lit, her voice arose. Her cousin

looked at her tenderly.

 

“I can believe that,” he said; “but you see, Lucia, there are mothers

and mothers—and Viscountess Dynely and Mrs. Caryll are of two very

different orders. I never did prefer the Spartan sort myself, ready to

run the knife through their nearest and dearest at a moment’s notice.

Still, I repeat, my sentence has been deserved, and is just.”

 

“Gordon, tell me all about it, will you? I know so little, I read the

papers, of course, but still—”

 

“Is it worth while, Lucia? It is not a pleasant or profitable story. Do

you really care to know?”

 

“Gordon!”

 

“Oh, I know all your affectionate interest in me and my concerns,

fairest cousin, and I don’t mind boring you with the details of a young

fool’s folly. Folly! good heaven above! What a fool I was! What a

gullible, wooden-headed, imbecile idiot I must have been!”

 

“You—you loved her, Gordon?”

 

“Well, yes, I suppose it was love, that blind and besotted fever her

beauty and her witcheries threw me into. She was a sorceress whose

accursed spells sent every man she met under sixty straightway out of

his senses. Why she threw the rest over for me (she had half the

battalion at her feet) was clear enough. I was the youngest, the

richest, and the greatest ass in Toronto. She turned scores of other

heads, but not to that pitch of idiocy which proffers wedding rings. I

had only seen her six times when I asked her to marry me—you may

faintly guess the depth and breadth of my imbecility when I tell you

that.”

 

“She was handsome, Gordon?”

 

“She was more than handsome, Lucia. She had a beaut� du diable whose

like I have never seen—that no man could resist—a dark,

richly-colored, Southern sort of beauty, of the earth earthy. She was

small and slender, with a waist you could snap like a pipe-stem, two

large black eyes, like a panther’s, precisely, and a smile that sent you

straight out of your senses. All the fellows in Toronto raved of

her—she was the toast of the mess, the talk of the town. Only the women

fought shy of her—they took her gauge by intuition, I suppose. Before

she had been a week in Toronto, Major Lovell and his daughter were the

topic, in ball-room, and boudoir, and barracks.”

 

“She was a Miss Lovell?” Lady Dynely asked, in a constrained sort of

tone. One hand still rested on his arm, and as they talked they walked

slowly round and round the fish-pond. In the days that were gone she had

been very fond of her dashing boy cousin and playmate—very fond—with

sisterly fondness she told herself—nothing more.

 

“You will hear. I had been a year in Toronto before she came, a dull and

dreary year enough, with nothing but the daily drill, the parade, the

routine of military life, the provincial balls and dinner parties, the

provincial flirtations with dark Canadian belles to break the monotony.

All at once she came, and everything changed. Major Lovell brought his

daughter among us—and it seemed to me my life began. He was a

disreputable old duffer enough, this Lovell, a drunkard, a sharper at

cards, a rooker at billiards, living on his half-pay and his whole wits.

He was a widower, with a daughter out in Bermuda with her mother’s

friends, who declined to live with her rascally old father. He was in

the habit of disappearing and reappearing in Toronto at odd times—this

time, after a longer absence than usual, he reappeared with his

daughter.

 

“He met me one bleak autumn night lounging aimlessly down one of the

principal streets, dressed for a heavy sacrificial dinner party, yawning

at the boredom in prospective, wishing all civilian dinner-givers at the

deuce, and, willy-nilly, he linked his seedy old arm in mine.

 

“‘En route for Rogers’, dear boy?’ he said, with a grin, ‘and looking

ennuied to death even at the thought of what is in store for you. Why

make a martyr of yourself, Gordon, my lad—why sacrifice yourself on

the altar of acquaintanceship? Throw over the bloated timber merchant,

come to my lowly wigwam, and let’s have a friendly game at �cart�, I’ll

give you a deviled kidney, and a glass of sherry—you can drop in at

Rogers’ when the heavy feeding’s over. Besides,’—after a pause, this,

and with a sidelong glance—‘I want to show you my little girl—bless

her! She’s come to keep house for her old dad at last.’

 

“I made some faint resistance—only faint, and yielded. I had a weakness

for �cart�; the major was past-master of the game, although he made his

lessons rather expensive to youngsters like myself.

 

“‘Neville and Dalton and two or three more of Yours are coming,’ he

said, as he inserted his latch key. ‘Rosie will give you a bit of supper

by and by, and sing you a song, if you like that sort of thing. Come in,

Gordon—come in, my boy, and thrice welcome to the old man’s modest

mansion.’

 

“And then I was in, out of the cold, dark Canadian night, in a fire-lit,

lamp-lit parlor, looking with dazzled eyes down upon the loveliest face,

I thought, that firelight or sunlight ever shone on.

 

“She had sprung up at our entrance—she had been crouched in kittenish

fashion on the hearth rug, and two big, wonderful eyes, of tawny

blackness, were looking up at me. I thought of Balzac’s ‘Girl with the

Golden Eyes’—these were black or yellow, just as the shifting firelight

rose or fell. As I stood staring in a stupefied trance of wonder and

admiration, the major’s fat, unctuous old voice droned in my ear.

 

“‘Rosamond, my child—my young friend, Mr. Caryll, of Caryllynne, Devon,

England, and Her Majesty’s—the Royal Rifles, Toronto, Canada. Gordon,

my boy—my little daughter Rosie.’

 

“Then a little brown hand slipped out to me, the dark luminous eyes and

the red dimpling lips smiled together.

 

“‘I am very pleased to meet Mr. Gordon Caryll of –- what’s all the

rest, papa? Very pleased to meet anybody, I’m sure, in this cold, nasty,

dreary Canada.’

 

“‘You don’t like Canada then, Miss Lovell?’ I managed to stammer. ‘I am

sorry for that. We must try and change your opinion of it before long.

What with skating and sleighing, it isn’t half a bad place.’

 

“She pouted and laughed like a child. She was singularly childish in

form and face, hardly looking sixteen.

 

“‘Not half a bad place! Where you grill alive three summer months and

shiver to death nine winter ones. Oh, my dear Bermuda! Where the hearts

were as warm as the climate, and the faces as sunny as the skies. No

fear of being lonely, or miserable, or neglected there. If papa would

let file, I would go back to-morrow.’

 

“‘But papa won’t,’ the major put in with a chuckle; ‘papa can’t spare

his one ewe lamb yet. Mr. Caryll here, I am sure, will do his best to

make time pass, little one. Hark! I hear a knocking in the south

entry—the other fellows at last.’

 

“Then with much laughter, and stamping and noise, three or four military

men came clattering in out of the cold and damp darkness, and were

presented to ‘My daughter, Rosamond.’

 

“I don’t know how it was with them; I can answer for myself—from the

first moment I looked on Rosamond