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

deferentially, her eyes fixed upon Mr. Locksley with a curiously

intense gaze. As she turned away she met her daughter, also domesticated

here.

“Who is it, mother?” the girl asked. “Who is the gentleman? Lord

Dynely—Mr. Dennison?”

“Neither,” her mother answered. “His name is Mr. Locksley; and if ever I

saw one man’s eyes in another man’s head, he has the eyes of Mr. Gordon

Caryll.”

CHAPTER XV.

“STAY.”

Miss Forrester ran lightly to one of the upper rooms to remove her

bonnet and lace scarf. It was but a moment’s work. Her guest awaited her

below; but she made no haste to rejoin him. She stood by one of the

windows looking down blankly at the rain-beaten garden, and trying to

realize what she had been told. He was going away—going away the first

thing to-morrow—never to return to England more.

She lingered, leaning against the window, while the rain lashed the

clear glass, and beat down the tall ferns and grasses and flowers,

heedless of how the moments passed.

All at once she awoke—as one might from a dream—broad awake. Why was

she lingering? To-morrow was still to-morrow; to-day was here and he

with it. He was her guest, in this house by her invitation; the duty of

hospitality called her to his side. The r�le of love-lorn damsel was a

r�le entirely out of her part in the drama of life. She would put off

all thought of what to-morrow must bring until to-morrow came.

She found Mr. Locksley loitering through the long drawing-room, looking

at the few pictures it contained, mostly family portraits, examining the

curiously carved ebony chairs and cabinets, the sandalwood caskets, the

great porcelain jars filled with roses and lavender, and touching

tenderly, as though they were sensitive things, the curious, old china,

the quaint, pretty trifles scattered everywhere, just as Mrs. Caryll’s

hand had placed them last.

“Isn’t it a darling old room,” France said. “Everything old-fashioned,

and quaint, and queer, and faded, with no modern newness or splendor

anywhere, and yet twice as beautiful as any of the grand

recently-fitted up rooms of the Abbey. Everything is just as it was left

when she went away—this room and her room. In Gordon’s too, poor

fellow, nothing has been changed.”

Mr. Locksley looked at her—a curious smile on his face, a curious

expression in his eyes, half cynical, half sad.

“What an interest you seem to take in Gordon Caryll, Miss

Forrester—this black sheep of a spotless flock, this one scapegoat of

an irreproachable family. Was he worthy of it.”

“Most worthy of it, I am sure. He was unfortunate, Mr. Locksley; he

ruined himself for a woman’s sake. It’s not a common act of folly—men

don’t do that now-a-days, they’re not capable of it. I think I should

like them a little better if they were. There’s a sort of heroism, after

all, about a man who deliberately throws up all his prospects in life

for a woman.”

“Very doubtful heroism, Miss Forrester, it seems to have been in his

case. He took a leap in the dark, and awoke to find himself in a

quagmire of disgrace, from which all his life long he can never arise.

What a pretty garden.”

He joined her at one of the windows and stood looking down. The

Caryllynne gardens covered in all some half-dozen acres, utterly

neglected of late years, and running wild, a very wilderness of

moss-grown paths, tangled roses and honeysuckles, clematis and syringa,

fallen statues, empty marble basins, where fountains once had been. Over

all, to-day, the wildly sweeping rain and vivid play of summer

lightning.

“Ruin and decay everywhere,” France said, with a sigh. “It is plain to

be seen no master’s eye ever rests here. The gardens of Caryllynne,

years ago, Mr. Locksley, were the glory of the place. This was Mrs.

Caryll’s; it has never been kept up since she went away.”

“But you, Miss Forrester, I should think that—”

“Nothing shall be changed—nothing altered by me. As Gordon Caryll left,

so he shall find it when he comes back.”

“You are so sure he will come back, then.”

“As sure as that I stand here. I don’t know why, but ever since I have

been old enough to hear about him and think about him I have known that

he will come back.”

“And that return will really make you—really make his mother happy?”

“It will be new life to his mother. It will make me happier than

anything,” she paused a moment and her color rose—”almost happier

than anything on earth.”

“Then in spite of the past Gordon Caryll ought to be a happy man. You

have never seen him—this forgotten exile in whom you take so deep an

interest?”

“I have never seen him, but I have seen his picture and have heard of

him from my earliest childhood, and whenever and wherever we meet I

shall know him.”

He gave a quick start, flushed slightly and laughed. She looked up at

him in surprise.

“You will know him—you who have never seen him—you think that, Miss

Forrester?”

“I think that, Mr. Locksley.”

“But he will have changed—sixteen years and more is a tolerable time.

No, Miss Forrester, you might meet him face to face, talk to him, clasp

hands, and still be as strangers. Time and trouble change men; sixteen

years knocking around the world, leading the sort of life he has led, a

free companion, a soldier of fortune, will change any man. Miss

Forrester, believe me, when you meet, if ever you do meet, you will not

know Gordon Caryll.”

He paused abruptly. The dark, penetrating eyes were watching him with a

suspicious intentness he did not care to meet.

“Mr. Locksley,” she said quickly, “you were a soldier of fortune—you

fought in India about the same time, or so Terry Dennison has told me.

Did you ever meet Gordon Caryll?”

His face flushed again, dark red. There was an instant’s silence—then

once more he laughed.

“You are a sorceress, Miss Forrester. What have I said to make you think

so?”

“You have said nothing. And yet—Mr. Locksley, if you know anything tell

me. I would give half my life to know.”

“Well, then—yes,” but the answer was given reluctantly, “I think I once

met Gordon Caryll.”

She clasped her hands together, and stood looking at him breathlessly.

“In India?” she asked.

“In India I met a man that I judge may have been the man you mean. He

was not called Caryll—how was it he called himself? And yet I know from

certain things he told me of his history that he was the man.”

Her eager eyes were fixed upon him, her eager lips were apart, the

sensitive color coming and going in her face.

“Go on,” she breathed.

“I have very little to tell. He told me his story one night as we lay

beside our bivouac fire—the story of his terrible mistake—of his

terrible awakening—of his divorce from the woman who had so utterly

deceived him—of his return to England—of his sentence of outlawry and

exile. I know he had no intention of ever trying to have that sentence

revoked—he felt that he deserved it. It was simple justice; he bowed

his head and accepted his doom. He had dishonored a name never

approached by disgrace until he bore it; he had broken his father’s

heart and brought him to the grave; he had driven his mother forever

from the home and the country he had resigned. What return—what earthly

redemption, could there be for him?”

“And yet there is—there is!” she broke forth vehemently. “From first to

last he was more sinned against than sinning. He loved that woman—that

wicked, wretched woman, whose memory I hate—and he would have given up

all things for love of her, had she not been the wretch she was. He came

to his mother in his trouble, and she thrust him forth. She has

repented—oh, how bitterly—and the only happiness life can hold for her

is to make atonement, to receive and forgive him again. Oh, Mr.

Locksley, if you know anything of him now, if you can aid me in finding

him, help me. Bring him back to us, to his mother, to his home, and the

whole gratitude of my life will be yours.”

She stretched forth both her hands to him. He took them, very pale, and

held them in his.

“He will rob you of a noble inheritance. Have you any right to throw it

away? What will Lord Dynely say to that?”

“Lord Dynely!” She looked at him in angry surprise. “What has Lord

Dynely to do with this!”

“Much, since he has to do with you. The day that restores Gordon Caryll

to his mother, robs you of half your fortune.”

“You spoke of that before, Mr. Locksley. Never speak of it again. What

are a thousand fortunes compared to the right?—to seeing her, my best

and dearest friend, happy, and him restored from wandering and exile to

his own?”

“And as Lady Dynely you can afford to be magnanimous—a fortune more or

less can concern you little.”

She looked at him still haughtily, but with a heart beginning to beat

fast. If he cared nothing for her, why this bitter tone, this pale,

stern face?

“As Lady Dynely. There is some mistake here, Mr. Locksley. I don’t know

what you mean.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Forrester. It is presumptuous, no doubt, in me

to allude to it, but as your engagement to Lord Dynely is no secret, I

may—”

“My engagement to Lord Dynely! Who says I am engaged to Lord Dynely? I

am nothing of the sort. Lord Dynely is engaged to a clergyman’s daughter

in Lincolnshire.”

He stood still, looking at her, his head in a whirl, wonder,

incredulity, blank amaze in his face.

“There was some sort of foolish compact between Mrs. Caryll and Lady

Dynely,” proceeded Miss Forrester, “to marry us when we grew up—a

compact in which I have had no part—and which we never could ratify.

Eric and I have grown up as brother and sister—more than we are now we

never will or could be to each other. With the ordering of my life or

fortune, he, at least, has nothing to do.”

There was a moment’s pause—a most awkward and uncomfortable pause for

Miss Forrester. Mr. Locksley stood still, so petrified by this sudden

revelation that his very breath seemed taken away.

“I thought—I thought,” he said, “you loved him.”

She made no answer.

“I thought you loved him,” he went on. “I thought you were engaged to

him. And last night, when he returned, I fancied I read new happiness in

your face—that his coming had brought it, and it was more than I could

bear. I had done with loving—or so I thought—done with women forever,

and yet I accepted Lady Dynely’s invitation and came down here. And I

thought you were to be his wife, that all your heart was his, and I—”

“Resolved to run away to Spain, and in painting dark-eyed Spanish

donnas, forget France Forrester.”

She laughed as she spoke. Her dark face was flushed, but the old, gay,

mischief-loving spirit was back. She could not look at her lover, but

she could laugh at him.

“Yes,” he said, moodily, “there are some dangers from which flight is

the only safeguard. You, a wealthy heiress in your first youth—I, a man

of forty, poor, unknown, an artist whose brush brings him the bread