A Mad Marriage by May Agnes Fleming (mini ebook reader .TXT) 📕

you married and the settlements, and you’ll have them, you know, to the

end of the chapter, so you won’t break your heart.”

He had whistled to his dogs and walked moodily off, saying no more; and

his wife, listening with pale cheeks and dilated eyes, asked no

questions. She was not strong, either mentally, morally, or physically;

she shrank from pain of all sorts, with almost cowardly fear. If Lord

Dynely had wicked secrets, she wanted to hear none of them—she desired

no confessions—it was cruel of him to talk of making them. As he had

kept his dreadful masculine secrets in life, let him keep them in death.

She stood vaguely thinking this where Gordon Caryll had left her,

looking like some spirit of the moonlight in her white robes, her light,

floating hair, and colorless face. And even while she thought it, the

messenger was drawing near to summon her to hear that secret told.

The stable clock chiming loudly eleven awoke her from her thoughtful

trance. She started. How late it was, how chilly it had grown! She

shrank with the first sensation she had felt of cold and damp, and

turned to go. But she stopped, for the sylvan silence of the summer

night was loudly broken by the ringing clatter of horses’ hoofs dashing

up the avenue. Was it Gordon coming back? Little things disturbed

her—her heart fluttered as she listened. Horse and rider came in view;

the man espied her and vaulted off. No, this small, middle-aged man,

was not her tall cousin, but Mr. Squills, the village apothecary.

“My lady!”

He took off his hat and stood bowing before her. In the moonlight my

lady could see the frightened look the man’s face wore.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Oh, my lady—I don’t want to alarm you, I’m sure—they told me to break

it to you, but it’s so hard to break things. There’s been an accident,

my lady. The 9.50 express from Plymouth, and don’t let me frighten you,

my lady—his lordship was in it, and–-”

She laid her hand over her heart, turning for a moment sick and faint.

Then she rallied.

“Lord Dynely was on that train? There was an accident, you say. Was

he–-”

“Oh, my lady, prepare yourself. It—it’s a dreadful thing to break

things to–-”

“Was Lord Dynely hurt?” she asked.

“Yes, my lady, very badly hurt, I’m sorry to say.”

“Dangerously?”

“We’re afraid so, my lady. Mr. Glauber is with him, and they’ve

telegraphed to London for Doctor—”

“He is alive?” she interrupted, her voice sharp with horror and pain.

“Alive, my lady, but—it is best you should know the truth—he won’t be

alive by morning. The clergyman is with him, but he calls, my lady,

continually for you.”

“Where is he?”

“At the inn, in the village—the ‘Kiddle-a-wink.’ And, my lady, there is

not a moment to lose.”

She turned from him and ran to the house. On the way she met one of the

grooms, and ordered the carriage at once. She fled up to her room, threw

a dark mantle over her white evening-dress, put on her bonnet with

trembling fingers, and turned to depart. A sudden thought came to

her—she turned into an adjoining room—the nursery, where her boy lay

asleep.

The night-light burns low; he lies in his downy, lace draped bed, a

lovely baby-vision of health and beauty. Flushed, dimpled, his golden

curls falling over the pillow, a smile on the rosy lips—he is a sight

to make any mother’s heart leap. She stoops and kisses him with

passionate love. “Oh, my baby, my angel!” she whispers, “you are all I

have on earth. While I live, no harm, that I can avert, will ever come

to you.”

Then she flits out of the room—out of the house. The carriage is

waiting, and in a moment more she is rapidly whirling through the still,

white midnight to the village inn where her husband lies dying.

They lead her to the room. Physician and priest fall back, and give way

to the wife. The wounded man lies propped by pillows, his head bandaged,

his face awfully bloodless and ghastly in the wan light. She has heard

no details of the accident, she has asked none. He is dying—all is said

in that.

His eyes light as they turn on her, but his brow is frowning.

“Send them all away,” are his first words.

She motions them out of the room. She sinks on her knees by the bedside.

Her dark drapery slips off; her white dress, her soft laces, her fair,

floating hair, seem strangely to contradict the idea of death. She is

trembling from head to foot—her teeth chatter with nervous horror, her

eyes fix themselves, all wild and dilated, upon his face. She never

speaks a word.

He lies and looks at her—a long, steadfast, frowning gaze.

“I am dying,” he says; “you know it. You never cared for me—no,

never—not even in your wedding hour. You never cared for me—why should

I care for you? Why should I hesitate to tell you the truth?”

It has been the thorn in his rose-crowned life—this fact, that the

portionless girl he married, never gave him her heart.

“Tell me now,” he says, still with that dull, frowning gaze, “I was too

great a coward ever to ask you before—tell me now—you married the rank

and the rent-roll, not the man?”

“I did wrong,” she says, huskily, “but I have tried to do my duty as

your wife. Forgive me, Alexis.”

“Ah!” he answers bitterly, “we have both something to forgive—it makes

us quits. I have been a coward, a coward to you, a coward to her. It

is hard to say which has been wronged most. But you shall hear the truth

now, and you shall do as you see fit after. Draw near.”

She bends closer above him. He takes her hand in his cold fingers, and

whispers, hoarsely and brokenly, his death-bed confession.

Half an hour passes, an hour, another, and still from that closed room

there is no sound. It is very strange. Mr. Glauber, the doctor, and Mr.

Texton, the rector, think uneasily, looking at their watches, outside.

It is quite impossible Lord Dynely, in his fast-sinking state, can be

talking all this time—impossible, also, that he can have fallen asleep.

Presently Mr. Texton takes heart of grace, and taps at the door. There

is no reply. He taps again. Still silence. He opens the door and goes

in. Lord Dynely has fallen back among his pillows, dead, that frown

forever frozen on his face; my lady still kneels by the bedside—as

rigid, as upright, as white, as cold, as though turned to stone.

“My lady!” She does not speak or stir. “My dear Lady Dynely,” the rector

says, in an unutterably shocked tone.

She moves for the first time, and lifts two sightless eyes to his face.

He holds out his arms, for she sways unsteadily, and catches her, as

without word or sound she slips heavily back, and faints away.

PART SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

The brilliant noontide of a brilliant May day was passed—all London

looked bustling and bright under a sky as cloudless as that of Italy. In

Trafalgar Square there was a mighty gathering of carriages, an army of

coachmen and footmen in liveries, of all sorts and colors, for it was

the opening day of the Royal Academy.

The rooms were full—full to repletion, filled with a jostling crowd of

well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, but then “a mob is a mob though

composed of bishops.” Languid, dilettante-looking swells, with

eye-glasses; painters with long hair, and picturesque faces; art

critics, book and pencil in hand; academicians, receiving

congratulations; picture dealers, marking the quarry on which they meant

presently to swoop; stately dowagers, sweeping their silken trains over

the crimson drugget; slim, young English girls, with milk-and-rose

complexions and gilded hair.

The clock of St. Martin’s-in-the-fields was striking four as there

entered two ladies and a gentleman, who moved slowly through the swaying

throng, and who, even there, attracted considerable attention. One of

the ladies was approaching middle age, a fair, pale, pensive, pass�e

looking woman, with a stamp of high rank on every faded feature, in

every careless gesture. She was not the attraction. The escort was a

very tall, very broad-shouldered, very powerful-looking young man,

muscular Christianity personified, with a certain military air, that

bespoke his calling, a thick, reddish beard and mustache, reddish,

close-cropped hair, and two light, good-humored eyes. He was not the

attraction. Terry Dennison’s face was as well known about town as

Landseer’s couchant lions around Nelson’s pillar, in the square beyond.

It was the third of the trio, a girl, tall and slender, and very

graceful, with a figure that was rarely perfect, and a way of carrying

herself that was altogether imperial. A dark beauty, with a warm,

creamy, colorless skin, two vivid, hazel eyes, a profusion of hazel

hair, arranged � la mode, a handsome, decided, square-cut mouth, and a

general air of imperious command that said to all

“Incedo Regina!

I move a queen.”

She was dressed en passant, as it were, with a careless simplicity

that was the perfection of high art. An Indian muslin robe, a scarf of

black lace, caught up on one shoulder with a knot of yellow roses—on

her head a touch of point-lace, with just one yellow rose over the ear,

and in her pearl-kidded hand a bunch of the same scented yellow roses.

A covey of idle, elegant dandies of the Foreign Office, and guardsmen,

lounging in one of the doorways, put up their glasses and turned to

look again, roused for the moment almost to interest.

“Something new in Vanity Fair,” one said, “and the best thing I’ve seen

this season. Know who she is, any one?”

No one knew.

“Altogether new, as you say, Danby. Jove! what a regal air! There is

nothing on the walls—not a nymph or goddess of them all, with a

lovelier face. Who is she?”

“Her companion is Lady Dynely,” remarked a third.

“And her escort is Terry Dennison. He has placed them before the

picture of the year, that thing by Locksley, and has left them. Here he

comes. I say, Dennison! who is she?”

“Who is who?” asked Mr. Dennison, the sandy-haired and whiskered young

man, approaching. “‘Who is she?’ isn’t that the question the cynical

old French party always asked, when any fellow he knew came to grief?”

“Don’t be analytical, Terry, it isn’t your m�tier?. Who is that lady

you accompany? Handsomest thing out.”

“That,” answered Terry, thoughtfully stroking his beard, “is my Lady

Dynely; and where have you kept your eyes all these years not to know

it—”

“That will do. We don’t want chaff. Who is that girl?”

“All yellow roses and black lace, like a picture by Titian,” another

murmured.

“Who is she, Terry?” chorus all.

“Oh!” said Terry, opening his light blue eyes with an innocent air,

“that’s what you mean, is it? That girl is France Forrester.”

“France? Named after the dominion of his Imperial Majesty, Nap the

Third?”

“Her name is France—Frances, if you like it better,” answered calmly

Mr. Dennison.

“But who is she? Who is she, Terry? She’s new to all of us, and the

handsomest debutante of the season. Open the mysteries a little, old

man; and end our agonizing