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

them, the friends and neighbors maliciously think. And France Forrester

is to marry him. Is the actress wife dead then, they wonder? They had

thought Miss Forrester and Lord Dynely were engaged, and now it comes

out that Lord Dynely is to marry a clergyman’s daughter in

Lincolnshire—a Miss Higgins. Miss Higgins is to be present also

to-night—she and her father and one of her sisters are expected this

evening. Certainly a treat is in store for them—not one who is invited

will miss coming.

As the last light of day fades out and the white starry moonlight floods

earth and sky, Lady Dynely comes out of her dressing-room. In the

clustering wax-lights she looks pale, pale even for her who is always

pale, but fair and youthful and elegant in her trailing violet velvet,

her priceless point lace, and the Dynely diamonds flashing on slender

throat and wrists and hands. The very first of her guests will not

arrive for a full hour yet, but she has dressed early, and stands quite

alone, glad to be alone for a little before it all begins. Up in her

room France is dressing—in theirs Crystal and Crystal’s sister are

dressing likewise—Eric is in his—Terry in his. For Terry has broken

through his resolution of not putting in an appearance before Christmas,

and run down for a night. Lady Dynely has ordained it so, and Terry

knows no will of his own where she wills otherwise. The first sharp,

cruel pain of loss is not even yet obliterated—all his life long,

though he lived to be a hundred, no other woman will ever be to him

quite what little Crystal Higgins has been. In no way is she at all

remarkable; pretty, but scores he sees every day are as pretty; not

brilliant, not wise, not clever, and yet—she will stand alone among all

womanhood forever and ever to Terry Dennison. He has not met her yet.

She reached the Abbey early in the afternoon, he not half an hour

since, and he looks forward to the meeting with nervous dread that half

unmans him. She is Eric’s now—well, so that Eric is loyal, so that Eric

makes her life happy, he can forgive even him. On New Year’s eve she is

to be Eric’s wife, and he is bidden to the wedding. He has had an

interview with Lady Dynely—of necessity very brief. All his generosity,

all Eric’s disloyalty is in her mind as she comes forward to meet him,

and takes his hand in hers and holds it tight, and looks with pale

imploring eyes up in his face—a face that is just a thought graver and

more worn than she ever saw it before.

“It is all right,” he says, simply, knowing by intuition what she would

say. “So that Eric makes her happy, all the rest is nothing. I don’t

blame him much—her not at all. Who would look at me twice beside Eric?”

And then he kisses her cheek gently and goes up-stairs to his own old

room, and meets France on the upper landing on her way to dress.

“Dear old Terry,” Miss Forrester says, giving him both hands; “it is

like water in the desert to see you again. Go where I will, meet whom I

may, there is but one Terry Dennison.”

“And but one Mr. Locksley—no, I beg his pardon, but one Gordon Caryll.

So your hero has come at last, France. All your life you have been

worshipping him from afar off, now your demi-god has plumped from the

clouds at your feet. You have thrown over Eric and are going to marry

Caryll.”

“Thrown over Eric!” Miss Forrester retorts, forgetting grammar in

indignation. “I like that way of putting it, when everybody knows he

threw over me. A case of love at sight, wasn’t it, Terry? and, amazing

to relate, it seems to last. I suppose you know she’s here.”

“Yes, I know. Do you like her, France? But you do, of course.”

“I don’t perceive the of course. She is pretty enough—oh, yes, I don’t

deny her pretty Grecian features and pink and pearl complexion; but,

like her—that’s another thing. Little idiot!”

“And why little idiot, Miss Forrester?”

“She jilted you, Terry, for him—a man for a manikin. She led you on,

and would have married you if he had not come; and, at the first sight

of his ambrosial curls and little amber mustache and girl’s complexion,

she goes down at his lordly feet. Bah! I’ve no patience with her.”

“But you’ll be good to her, France, all the same. Poor little Crystal!

It looks a very brilliant match, and yet–-”

“And yet she would be ten thousand-fold happier as your wife. The woman

who is lifted to the honor and bliss of being my Lord Viscount Dynely’s

bride, bids fair, once the honeymoon is ended, to win the martyr’s

crown. The handsomest peer in the realm, the most notorious male flirt

in Europe, is hardly likely to be held long by the pretty, innocent,

baby face of Crystal Higgins. It was awfully good of you, Terry, to come

at all.”

“Her ladyship wished it,” is Terry’s quiet answer, as though all was

said in that, and Miss Forrester shrugs her imperial shoulders.

“As the queen wills! you should have been born of the Dynely blood and

race; the motto of the house suits you—’Loyal au mort.‘ You would be

faithful to the death, Terry, I think. It certainly does not suit

Eric—it is not in him to be faithful to any human being.”

“I wish he heard you, France.”

“He has heard it a thousand times. By the bye, Terry, it occurs to me to

ask exactly what relation are you to Eric?”

The clustering wax lights shed their lustre full upon Terry’s face, and,

as she asks the heedless, impulsive question, France sees that face turn

dark red from brow to chin. The swift abruptness of the simple demand

strikes him mute. The truth he may not tell—may never tell, and

falsehoods never come trippingly from Terry’s tongue. Miss Forrester

lays her slim ringed hand on the young man’s arm.

“I beg your pardon,” she says, hastily. “I know, of course—Eric’s

distant cousin; but, as you stood there, on my word you looked

sufficiently like him to be his brother. I have often noticed a vague

resemblance before, in height and bearing; but never, I think, so

markedly as now.”

The dark, painful flush deepens on Dennison’s face. He looks at her with

startled eyes. She is wonderfully acute in her surmises. Has some

inkling of the truth come to her? But no—the smiling face that meets

his is supremely unconscious. She pulls out her watch.

“Past seven. I should have been under the hands of Pauline an hour ago.

Ta, ta, Terry; run away, my dear boy, and make yourself beautiful

forever.”

She trips past and vanishes in one of the upper rooms; and Terry,

drawing a long breath, goes more slowly to his.

“No,” he thinks; “it was but a random shot that struck home. I am Eric’s

distant cousin. She suspects nothing.”

But Mr. Dennison was mistaken. It had been a random shot; but, as the

red light of guilt flamed out in the dragoon’s face, the first suspicion

of the truth that had ever come to her broke upon her then. She had

heard that vague story of distant kinship—she had heard, years ago,

that Lady Dynely had made a pilgrimage to some wild region of western

Ireland and brought Terry back, a little uncouth waif and stray; she

knew how zealously she had cared for him since—she knew of Terry’s

boundless love and gratitude, in which to her there was always something

almost pathetic; but she never dreamed there might be more on the cards

than met the eyes. “Sufficiently like Eric to be his brother.” She had

heard what manner of man the late Right Honorable Viscount Dynely had

been—Eric’s light-headed fickleness was as hereditary as the title. Who

was to say that Eric and Terry were not brothers, after all? Yes, that

was the secret of Lady Dynely’s compassionate care—of Terry’s humble,

patient devotion.

“Poor fellow!” she thought, “it is hard lines on him. The name, the

rank, the wealth, the love—all to the younger; to the elder brother

nothing. Ah, well! as poor Stephen Blackpool says, ‘Life’s aw a

muddle.’”

She sits musing for a while under Pauline’s practised hands, then her

thoughts shift away from Terry Dennison to Gordon Caryll. He will be

here to-night, and under the silk, and flowers, and laces her heart

gives a glad leap. Since that happy evening under the moonlit limes and

chestnuts they have not met; to-night he will be with her once more.

How strange, how romantically strange it all has been, she thinks. From

earliest childhood she has heard of him, set him up as a hero, and loved

him in her girlish, romantic way, without any hope of ever seeing him.

And now he is back—her own, forever.

“Hurry, Pauline—hurry, my child,” she says in French.

It wants but an hour until his arrival, and she must be the first to

meet him. Already wheels are crashing over the gravel, and the guests

are beginning to arrive.

There is a tap at the door.

“Please, Miss Forrester, may I come in?” says a timid little voice.

France breaks away from Pauline’s hands, opens the door, and sees

Crystal standing there dressed and ready to go down and trembling with

nervous dread of the ordeal. She has been but little accustomed to

society—until the coming of Lord Dynely and her fairy fortune she has

been looked upon as a baby at home. To-night she must do credit to

Eric’s taste—Eric, the most critical and sensitive of mankind—must

face half a county and be criticised, and see Eric’s mortification in

his face if her country manners fail. She loves him so wholly, that the

thought of his displeasure is as death.

Two great, imploring, blue eyes look up to Miss Forrester, shy, humble,

deprecating—the gaze of a very child. She is afraid of this stately,

dark-eyed heiress, but not half a quarter as she is of Eric.

“Please, Miss Forrester, may I come in and wait until you are dressed,

and go down with you?” she falters.

France takes her suddenly in her arms, all her prejudices fading away at

sight of that pathetic, baby face, puts back the feathery, flaxen hair,

and kisses her.

“You pretty little baby,” she says; “come in and let me look at you. My

dear, I had no idea you were half so lovely.”

“Oh, Miss Forrester”—Crystal’s pearly face flushes rose-pink with

pleasure—“do you think I am pretty? Do you think I will do? Do you

think Eric will not be ashamed of me?”

“Ashamed of you? Well, Eric is tolerably fastidious, tolerably hard to

please, but I think even he would find it difficult not to be fully

satisfied to-night. No, little vanity, I won’t flatter you, I won’t tell

you what I think of your looks. Only you are more like the queen of the

fairies, or a ‘lily in green covert hiding,’ than any ordinary mortal I

ever saw. Pauline, what do you think?”

Thereupon Pauline bursts forth into a vehement French outpouring of

praise and admiration, that brings smiles, and dimples, and blushes to

Crystal’s shy face. “Like a lily in green covert hiding?” Yes, the

poetic simile is a true one. With her filmy, gossamer dress of palest

green, her pale pearl ornaments, her paler floating, flaxen hair, her

pure,