A Mad Marriage by May Agnes Fleming (mini ebook reader .TXT) 📕
I threw off my shawl and bonnet, laughing for fear I should break down and cry, and took my seat. As I did so, there came a loud knock at the door. So loud, that Jessie nearly dropped the snub-nosed teapot.
"Good gracious, Joan! who is this?"
I walked to the door and opened it--then fell back aghast. For firelight and candlelight streamed full across the face of the lady I had seen at the House to Let.
"May I come in?"
She did not wait for permission. She walked in past me, straight to the fire, a
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singing, dancing in that dress, that undress rather—gaped at by all
these people. His wife!
The lights, the faces, the stage, seem to swim before him in a hot, red
mist. He grasps the back of the chair he holds, and sets his teeth.
Great Heaven! is the Nemesis of his mad, boyish folly to pursue him to
the end?
And then France’s cool, sweet voice falls on his ear. “Do you like it,
Gordon!” she is asking, with a smile. The fair pure face, the loving,
upturned eyes, the trustful smile, meet him and stab him with a pang
that is like death. He has forgotten her—in the first shock of
recognition and dreadful surprise, he has forgotten her. Now he looks
down upon her, and feels without thinking at all, that in finding his
divorced wife he has lost his bride.
He cannot answer her—his head is reeling. He feels her wondering,
startled eyes, but he is beyond caring. He tries to answer, and his
voice sounds far off and unreal even to his own ears.
It ends. The curtain is down, the blinding stage-light is out, she is
gone. He can breathe once more now that fatal face is away. The whole
theatre has uprisen. Lady Dynely is moving out on the arm of her
son—France is clasping his and gazing up at him with eyes of wistful
wonder.
They are out under the cool, white stars—he has placed them in their
carriage, seen them roll away, and is alone.
Alone, though scores pass and repass, although dozens of gay voices and
happy laughs reach him; although all the bright city is still broad
awake and in the streets. He takes off his hat and lets the cold wind
lift his hair. What shall he do, he thinks, vaguely; what ought he do
first?
Rosamond, his divorced wife, is living—he has seen her to-night. And
France Forrester will marry no man who is the husband of a wife. They
have spoken once on the subject—gravely and incisively—he recalls the
conversation now, word for word, as he stands here.
“If she had not died, France,” he had asked her, “if nothing but the
divorce freed me—how then? Would you still have loved me and been my
wife?”
And she had looked at him with those clear, truthful, brave eyes of
hers, and answered at once:
“If she had not died—if nothing but your divorce freed you, there could
have been no ‘how then.’ Loved you I might—it seems to me I must; but
marry you—no. No more than I would if there had never been a divorce. A
man can have but one wife, and death alone can sever the bond. I believe
in no latter-day doctrine of divorce.”
They had spoken of it no more, he had thought of it no more. It all
comes back to him as he stands here, and he knows he has lost forever
France Forrester.
And then, in his utter despair, a wild idea flashes across his brain,
and he catches at it as the drowning catch at straws. It is not his
wife—he will not believe it. It is an accidental resemblance—it may be
a relative—a sister; she may have had sisters, for what he ever knew.
It is not Rosamond Lovell—the dead do not arise, and she was killed ten
years ago. Some one must know this Madame Felicia’s antecedents; it is
only one of these accidental resemblances that startle the world
sometimes. He will find out. Who is it knows Madame Felicia?
He puts his hand to his head as this delirious idea flashes through it,
and tries to think. Terry Dennison—yes, he is sure Terry Dennison knows
her, and knows her well. He will be able to tell him; he will follow at
once.
A moment later and he is striding with a speed of which he is
unconscious in the direction of the Hotel du Louvre. He finds his man
readily enough. Terry is standing in the brilliantly-lit vestibule,
smoking a cigar. Eric is bon gar�on, and has run up at once to his
wife. A heavy hand is laid on Terry’s shoulder, a breathless voice
speaks:
“Dennison!”
Terry turns round, takes out his cigar, and opens his eyes.
“What! Caryll! And at this time of night! What’s the matter? My dear
fellow, anything wrong? You look—”
“There’s nothing wrong,” still huskily. “I want to ask you a question,
Dennison. Come out of this.”
He links his arm through Terry’s, and draws him out of the hotel
entrance into the street. Terry still holds his cigar between his finger
and thumb, and still stares blankly.
“There must be something wrong,” he reiterates; “on my word, my dear
fellow, you look awfully.”
“Never mind my looks,” Caryll impatiently cries. “Dennison, you know
Madame Felicia?”
At this unexpected question, Dennison, if possible, stands more agape
than ever. Then he laughs.
“What! You, too, Caryll! Oh, this is too much—”
“Don’t laugh,” Caryll says, harshly. “Answer me. You know this woman?”
“Well, yes.”
“Intimately?”
“Well, yes, again. I suppose I may say tolerably intimately.”
“What is her history?”
“What?”
“Who is she? Where does she come from? What is her real name?” Caryll
asks, still in that same hoarse, breathless haste.
Mr. Dennison’s eyes dilate to twice their usual size. He altogether
forgets to resume his newly-lit cigar.
“My dear fellow–-”
“The devil!” Gordon Caryll grinds out between his set teeth. “Answer me,
cannot you?”
No jesting matter this, evidently, and Terry, slow naturally, takes that
fact in.
“Who is she? Where does she come from? What was the rest?” he demands
helplessly. “Good Lord! Caryll, how should I know? I’m not Felicia’s
father confessor.”
“You told me you knew her intimately.”
“I know her as well as most people know most people, and that goes for
nothing. What do we, any of us, know of any one else? Don’t grow
impatient, old fellow; all I know I’m willing to tell, but it’s precious
little. Now begin at the beginning and cross-examine. You shall have the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Only don’t keep the
steam up to its present height, or you’ll go off with a bang!”
There is a second pause. Terry resumes his cigar, thrusts his hands in
his coat pockets and waits. Gordon Caryll comes to his senses
sufficiently to make a great effort and calm down.
“I beg your pardon, Terry,” he says, more coherently than he has yet
spoken; “but this is a matter of no ordinary importance to me—a matter
almost of life and death.”
Again Terry’s eyes dilate, but this time he says nothing.
“I never saw Madame Felicia before to-night,” goes on Caryll; “and she
bears the most astonishing, the most astounding resemblance to another
woman, a woman I have thought dead for the past ten years. I want to
know her history, and I have come to you.”
“Go on,” says Terry, calmly.
“Was Madame Felicia ever in America?—ever in”—a pause—“in Canada?”
“She says not,” is Terry’s answer.
“Says not? Then you think—”
“I think she was. She has always been so vehement in denying it that I
have suspected from the first she lied. And since last night I felt sure
of it.”
“Since last night—”
“I don’t know that it’s quite fair to tell,” says Terry; “but I don’t
see that I’m bound to keep Felicia’s secrets—I owe her no good turn,
and if it’s of any use to you, Caryll—”
“Anything—everything connected with that woman is of use to me,” Caryll
answers, feverishly.
Without more ado, Terry relates the episode of last night—the rescuing
the girl in the street, her inadvertent words, and the bringing her to
Felicia.
“She asseverated again and again that Felicia had been in Canada. She
said she herself had been born there, in such a way, by Jove! that you
could only infer Felicia to be her mother. And she looked like Felicia.
And she had Felicia’s picture. And Felicia received her at once. And I
believe, upon my soul, that she is Felicia’s daughter.”
Gordon Caryll listened dumbly. Felicia’s child and—his. He knew there
had been a child—a daughter—had not Mr. Barteaux told him? And she too
was here.
“She called herself—?” he began.
“She called herself Gordon Kennedy. Gordon! By Jove!” For the first
time a sudden thought strikes Terry—a thought so sudden, and so
striking that it almost knocks him over. “By Jove!” he repeats again,
and stares blankly at his companion.
There is no need of further questioning. Assurance is made doubly
sure—Felicia and Rosamond Lovell are one, and this girl picked up
adrift in the Paris streets is his daughter. No need of further
questions, indeed. He withdraws his arm abruptly and on the spot.
“That will do,” he says. “Thanks, very much. And good-night.”
Then he is gone, and Terry is left standing, mouth and eyes open—a
petrified pedestrian. It all comes upon him—the story of Gordon
Caryll’s Canadian wife—the actress—the picture—the puzzling
resemblance to Felicia—her eager questions about him the evening
before. Terry is dumbfounded.
“By Jove!” he says again aloud, and at the sound of that dear and
familiar expletive his senses return. “By Jove, you know!” he repeats,
and puts his cigar once more between his lips, and in a dazed state
prepares to go home.
Gordon Caryll goes home too. He sees France’s face at the drawing-room
window as he passes, looking wistful and weary, and at the sight he sets
his teeth hard. He cannot meet her. He goes up to his room, locks the
door, and flings himself into a chair to think it all out.
He has lost her—forever lost her. To-morrow at the latest she must know
all, and then—he knows as surely as that he is sitting here—she will
never so much as see him again.
It is no fault of his—she will not blame him—she will love and pity
him, and suffer as acutely as he will suffer himself. All the same,
though, she will never see him more. And at the thought he starts from
his chair, goaded to a sort of madness, and walks up and down the room.
The hours pass. He thinks and thinks, but all to no purpose—not all the
thinking he can do in a lifetime can alter facts. This woman is his
divorced wife—and France Forrester will marry no divorced man. The law
can free him from his wife, but it cannot give him France. The penalty
of his first folly has not been paid—and it is to be paid, it seems, to
the uttermost farthing. His exile and misery are to begin all over
again.
He suffers to-night, it seems to him, as he has never suffered in the
past. And as the fair February morning dawns, it finds him with his
face bowed in his hands, sitting stone-still in absolute despair.
The first sharp spear of sunshine comes jubilantly through the glass. He
lifts his head. Haggard and pallid beyond all telling, with eyes dry and
burning, and white despair on every line of his face. His resolve is
taken. All shall be told, but first that there may not be even a shadow
of mistake, he will see this woman who calls herself Madame
Felicia—will see her and from her own lips know the truth.
Early as it is he rings for his man, and has a cold bath. It stands him
in the
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