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

clerical hand in a black thread glove, “how are you? When did you come?”

“Just now. Where’s—I mean where are the girls?”

“Amelia, and Josephine, and Emiline are yonder, engaged in archery;

Cornelia and Victoria are playing croquet; Evangeline is with her

mother, and Elizabeth Jane was with me a moment ago. Arabella and

Belinda are at home,” answered calmly the Reverend Samuel.

“I saw Bella. Where’s Crystal?” asked Mr. Dennison, in desperation.

“Crystal is—ahem!” said the Reverend Mr. Higgins, looking meekly about

through his spectacles. “I don’t see Crystal. Elizabeth Jane, my child,

where is Christabel?”

“Crissy’s gone off for a sail with Lord Dynely, pa,” answered in a pert

tone the seventh Miss Higgins, with a sharp glance at Mr. Dennison. “If

you want to find them, Terry, I’ll guide you.”

Elizabeth Jane took Mr. Dennison’s arm and led him briskly across

meadows, down woody slopes, to where, between two sloping hills, a broad

mere, a miniature lake, lay. And there, half-way out, went floating a

little white boat like a great water lily, and in that boat a young

gentleman and a young lady sat.

“That’s Criss,” said Elizabeth Jane, sharply, “and that’s Lord Dynely. I

don’t know what Lord Dynely’s intentions may be, but if I were pa I

would ask.”

Terry’s face flushed. He turned suddenly and looked at her with a sharp

contraction of the heart.

“What do you mean, Lizy Jane?”

“This,” said the seventh and sharpest of the Misses Higgins, “that Lord

Dynely comes a great deal too often to the vicarage, and pays a great

deal too marked attention to our Criss for an engaged man. He is an

engaged man, isn’t he, Terry?”

“Yes—no—I don’t know—Elizabeth Jane, you don’t mean to say that

Crystal has—has”—his ruddy complexion turned white—“fallen in love

with Lord Dynely?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” retorted Elizabeth Jane, still

sharply; “I don’t go mooning about myself, reading novels and poetry

books, week in and week out; I have my district visiting, and Bible

society, and Dorcas meetings to attend. I don’t know anything about

falling in love and that sentimental rubbish,” says Elizabeth Jane, her

black eyes snapping; “but I do know, if I were pa, I’d not have a gay

young nobleman loafing about my house from morning until night, flirting

with my prettiest daughter, taking moonlight rambles, and sunlight

rambles, and early morning rambles, and lying on the grass at her feet

for hours at a stretch, reading Meredith and Tennyson, and holding

skeins of silk for her, and singing duets with her, and—bah!” says

Elizabeth Jane, with snappishness, “if pa had three pairs of glasses he

wouldn’t see what goes on under his nose.”

“And they carry on like this!” Terry asked, in blank dismay.

“Like this! You ought to see them. You can’t so much as mention his name

to Crystal but she blushes to the roots of her hair. I’ve told pa,

Bella’s told pa—what’s the use? ‘Tut, tut, tut, children; let the

little one enjoy herself. He’s only a good looking boy, she’s only a

child.’ That’s what pa says. Queer sort of child’s play, I think. And

ma, she’s worse. We all know what ma thinks, that she’ll have a ‘my

lady,’ for her daughter. I’ve no patience with such folly!” cries the

practical and matter-of-fact Miss Elizabeth Jane Higgins.

Terry stands dead silent. The ruddy heat has faded out of his

complexion, leaving him very pale. He looks with blank eyes at the

shining water. The little white boat has turned a wooded bend and

disappeared. Crystal is singing now.

Her sweet voice comes to them where they stand. The clear tenor tones of

Dynely blend presently with hers. They stand silent both, until the last

note of the music dies away.

“Come,” says Elizabeth Jane, looking up in Terry’s face, and not without

a touch of compassion in her own. She likes Terry; she is engaged to the

Rev. Edwin Meeke, her father’s curate, whose name but faintly sets forth

his nature, and can afford to be sisterly and practical, and her liking

for the big dragoon is beyond reproach. “Only if you’re a friend of Miss

France Forrester and our Crystal, drop Lord Dynely a hint to make his

vicarage visits more like angels’, few and far between.”

She leads him back. But the glory has gone out of the heavens, the

beauty from the earth. The sun no longer shines, or if it does, it

shineth not on Terry. For the first time in his life he is jealous.

Elizabeth Jane does with him as she pleases. She holds his arm and leads

him about, and talks to him in her sharp little staccato voice of the

house “Mr. Meeke” is furnishing—of the poor of the parish—of her

schools and societies, and it all falls dead flat on Terry’s ears. He

hears as he might hear the drowsy ripple of a mill stream—he

comprehendeth not. “Crystal and Eric—Eric and Crystal,” these united

names ring the changes over and over and over again in his dazed brain.

“There they are!” cries Elizabeth Jane, with another vicious snap of the

little dark eyes. “Pretty pair, aren’t they?”

The seventh Miss Higgins did not mean it in that sense, but they were

a pretty pair. They came together over the grass. Eric, tall, languid,

elegant, handsome, in faultless summer costume, a straw hat pulled over

his eyes; Crystal, in pale rose-pink gauze, a little straw flat tilted

over her pretty Grecian nose, and a bunch of big fragrant water lilies

in her hand. It was a specialty of the prettiest Miss Higgins that you

rarely saw her except covered with floral decorations. They espied

Elizabeth Jane and her escort, and Crystal gave a little nervous start

and gasp for breath.

“Oh!” she said, in that frightened whisper, “it is Terry!”

“Ah, ya-as—so it is, Terry,” drawled Lord Dynely, putting up his

eye-glass. “Where did he drop from? I say, little ‘un, how are you?”

He sauntered up to Terry with the words, and held out one languid hand.

Terry took it, and dropped it, as if it burned him. For the first time

the sight of Lady Dynely’s son gladdened neither his eyes nor his heart.

“Didn’t expect you, you know. Glad to see you all the same. Awfully warm

work travelling it must have been. Just come?”

“Just come,” Terry responded, coldly, his eyes fixed on Crystal’s face.

That face was flushed and drooping; the shy, averted glance, the shy,

reluctant hand, smote him to the heart.

“You are well, Crystal?” he said. “You received my letter?”

“Oh, yes, thank you.”

It is always Miss Crystal’s formula when greatly embarrassed, and then

she stood blushing and downcast, tracing figures on the grass with her

white parasol.

“You don’t ask after them at home, Dynely,” said Terry, looking at him;

“your mother or Miss Forrester?”

“Don’t I? It’s too warm to ask for anything or anybody at an August

picnic. Thanks for your reminder. How are my mother and Miss Forrester?”

There was a certain defiance in the coolly insolent glance of Eric’s

blue eyes, a certain defiance in the lazy drawl with which he repeated

Terry’s words.

“They are well—wondering a little though what can keep you so long in

foreign parts. You were to be back in a week.”

“Was I? I find my constitution won’t stand the wear and tear of a

perpetual express train. And really, on the whole, I think I prefer

Lincolnshire to Devonshire.”

Then he turns and says something in a lower tone to Crystal, at which

she laughs nervously, puts her hand within his arm, and turns to go.

“Ta, ta, Terry!” he says. “Amuse yourself well, only don’t make your

attentions to Elizabeth Jane too marked, else the Reverend Edwin,

lamb-like as he is, may turn jealous. And jealousy is a frightful

monster to admit into the human heart.”

They saunter away together as they came, and Elizabeth Jane’s black eyes

snap again as they look after them.

“There!” she says, “what do you think of that?”

“I think I shall go and have some claret cup, if there is any going,” is

Dennison’s response. “I see Mr. Meeke coming, ‘Liza Jane. You’ll excuse

me, won’t you?”

He hardly waits for ‘Liza Jane’s stiff “Oh, certainly.” He rushes off,

takes a long draught from the iced silver tankard, but all the claret

cup that ever was iced will not cool the fire of love and jealousy that

is raging within Terry. He wanders away, he doesn’t know

where—anywhere, anywhere out of the world. Presently he finds himself

far removed from the braying brass band, and sight and sound of the

picnicers, and flings himself face downward in the warm scented summer

grass.

He has lost Crystal!

Ay, lost her; though Eric should be playing his old game of fast and

loose with girls’ hearts, wooing them this hour with his charming grace

and debonnaire beauty, to throw them away the next, Crystal is lost to

him all the same. If her heart has gone to Dynely or any other man, then

she goes with it. The heart that comes to him for life must have held no

other lodger. And she loves Eric—it has ever been an easy thing for all

women to do that—he has seen it in the first glance of her eyes, in the

first flush of her cheek. And Eric—what does Eric mean?

“By heaven!” Terry thinks, his eyes flashing, “he shall not play with

her, as he has done with so many. He shall not win her love only to

fling it contemptuously away; he shall not woo her, and tire of her, and

spoil her life, and break her heart as he has done with others. I’ll

kill him with my own hand first.”

The day wanes, the sun sets, the stars come out, the evening wind

arises. Terry gets up cold and pale, and looking as unlike Terry as can

well be conceived, and returns to the merry-makers. Dancing is going on

by the white light of the stars, in the great canvas tent, the band

blares forth a German waltz, and little Crystal is floating round and

round like a whiff of eider-down in Lord Dynely’s practised arms. He

sees Terry, and smiles a curious sort of smile to himself. If Terry’s

purpose in coming were printed on his forehead it could not be plainer

reading to Lord Dynely. He has seen his state from the first, he knows

as well as the dragoon himself, that he has come down to Starling

Vicarage to woo and win the flower of the flock. And Eric’s arm tightens

around Crystal’s slim, pink waist, his blue eyes look with an

intolerable light of triumph down into her fair, childish face.

“She shall never belong to him—to any man but me,” he thinks. “I will

speak to-night, or that overgrown dragoon will to-morrow.”

His fancy for Crystal has never cooled, never for a moment. He loves

her—or thinks he does—with his whole heart. She will not be half so

creditable a wife as France, he feels that he will tire of that sweet,

shy, dimpling baby face a month after marriage; still—have her he must

and shall. Opposition and a rival have but fired him; come what will,

this little village beauty shall be his wife. This very evening he will

speak.

The waltz ends; he draws her away with him, from the dancing booth, out

into the white, star-gemmed twilight. She is ever willing