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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“Chiefly, I think, because he wanted to make certainty more than
certain, partly because he knew his child—_our_ child—was with me, and
he wanted to see her.”
A pang that is like a red-hot knife-thrust goes through France
Forrester’s heart. Our child! Yes, this woman has been his wife, is
the mother of his child. She gives a little gasp.
“You—you let him see her?”
“I did not let him see her—I am not quite a fool. As I told him he
shall see her one day to his cost. She is mine, and I mean to keep her.
His name he took from me—his child he cannot.”
There is silence again. The pity has died out of Felicia’s face; it is
hard, and bitter, and relentless as she speaks again.
“All the evil he could work me he did. I loved him and he left me—he
cast me off with scorn and hatred. I swore revenge; but what can a
woman—even a bad woman—do? Look, here, Miss Forrester!” Her voice rose
rapidly and her eyes flashed. “In marrying me he fell a victim to a
plot, an unscrupulous plot, I don’t deny. I was not Major Lovell’s
daughter; I was no fit wife for such as he—I was taken from the lowest
concert-room of New York city. When I was a baby I was thrown upon the
streets; I had to make my own living, and earn the crusts I lived on. I
knew no mother, no father, no God. To make money—to wear fine clothes
anyhow—that was my religion. Lovell came and took me, and Gordon Caryll
saw and fell in love with me. He asked no questions—he married me. And
I loved him with a love that would have been my earthly salvation, if he
had let it. I was true to him, in thought, and word, and action; I would
have given my life for him. Then Lovell died, and dying told his story.
I fled, and hid myself from his first fury; I knew he would take my life
if we met. And then, months after, he found me out, and spurned me as
he would a dog, and showed me the decree of divorce, and left me
forever. Miss Forrester, I was a fool, I know, but I fell down there on
the sands where he quitted me like a dead woman. It would have been
better for him and for you to-day,” with another reckless laugh, “if I
had died. But—here I am.”
She broke off abruptly. In the dark eyes looking at her she read nothing
but a great and infinite pity.
“Poor soul!” France said, softly, “you loved him, and were his wife. It
was hard on you.”
Madame shrugged her shoulders.
“I have survived it, you see. Men die and worms eat them, but not for
love! That night my baby was born. There is the story. You have heard it
often before, no doubt. He is divorced—I cannot stop your marriage. Do
as you will—only I had to come and tell you this.”
She arose as she spoke. France stood up, too, and drew a step nearer.
“Madame,” she softly said, wistful wonder in her eyes, “do you—do you
love him yet?”
Once more madame laughed.
“Love! Ma foi! it is years since I knew what the word meant. Only fools
ever love. Not I, Miss Forrester! I hate him as I do—well, not the
devil—for I have no reason to hate him. No, no! it would be strange,
indeed, if I did; I finished with all that forever the evening we parted
by the Quebec shore. I am to marry the Prince Di Venturini in a month;
but marrying and loving—well, they are different things.”
“Does he know of this?” France asked, hardly knowing why she did ask.
“M. Di Venturini? Not yet—not at all if I can help it. And I don’t
think he ever will. Mr. Caryll will not tell, and I am quite sure I
shall not.”
She moved to the door; on the threshold she paused.
“Are you angry with me for coming?” she demanded, abruptly.
“Angry?” France echoed, wearily. “Oh, no, why should I be?”
Angry! No, she was angry with no one. She felt tired and sick, and worn
out—she would like to be alone, to darken her room and lie down, and
get away from the distracting music of that ceaseless band, from the
dazzling glare of the sunshine, from the heavy odor of the flowers. But,
angry—no. A touch of pity crossed again madame’s hard, insolent beauty.
“I am sorry for you,” she said. “You look good and gentle—you deserve
to be happy. Yes, I am sorry for you.”
And then she had left the room, and her silks were rustling down the
wide stairway, and France was alone.
Alone! She leaned her folded arms on the table, and laid her face down
upon them and drew a long, tired sigh. It was all over; and the woman
was gone, and out of France’s life all the happiness was forever gone,
too.
Gordon’s wife! How strangely it sounded. She was to have been
that—she never could be now. If he were dead and in his coffin, she
could not be one whit more widowed than she was. There was a dull sort
of aching at her heart—but no acute pain. She wondered at her own
torpor.
The band was striking up another tune. She could not endure that. She
arose and toiled slowly and wearily up the stairs to her own room. The
great hotel was very still. She reached her chamber, lowered the blinds,
threw herself face downward on the bed.
“Gordon’s wife! Gordon’s wife!” Over and over, like some refrain, the
words rang in her ears. Then they grew fainter and fainter—died out
altogether; and in the midst of her great trouble France fell fast
asleep.
CHAPTER IX.
“THE PARTING THAT THEY HAD.”
The last amber glitter of the sunset was gleaming through the closed
jalousies, and lying in broad yellow bars on the carpet, when France
awoke. Awoke with a great start, suddenly, and broad awake, her horrible
trouble flashing upon her with the vividness and swiftness of lightning.
Gordon’s wife was alive; she could never be that; she must give him up
at once and forever. Then a passionate sense of desperation and misery
seized her.
“I cannot! I cannot!” she cried out, clenching her hands and flinging
herself face downward among the pillows. “Oh, I cannot give him up!”
The yellow light flickered, faded, grew gray. One by one the golden bars
aslant the carpet slid out of sight. Ten minutes more and the closed
room was almost dark. And slowly the wild tempest of hysterical sobs was
subsiding, too violent to be long-lived, but France Forrester did not
move. Presently it died away altogether, and kneeling by the bedside,
her face bowed in her hands, she was seeking for strength to bear her
bitter sorrow where strength alone can be found.
“Thou whose life was all trouble,” France’s soul cried, “help me to bear
this!”
No thought had ever come to her that he was free—that legally she might
become his wife to-morrow in all honor before the world. Her French
mother had reared her in a faith which teaches that divorce is
impossible—a faith which holds marriage a sacrament, too holy to be
broken by law of man, in which, “until death doth ye part,” is meant in
the fullest and most awful sense of the words. His wife lived—his
wife, although she were Princess Di Venturini within the hour—and she
and Gordon, even as friends, must meet no more. Friends! Ah, no, they
could never meet as that; and so they must meet just once, and say
good-by forever.
She got up at last, utterly exhausted in body and mind. How still the
vast hotel was. How dark the room had grown. She drew up the blinds in a
sort of panic and let in the gray light of evening. It was almost night.
Perhaps Gordon had come and was waiting for her. She must go to him at
once, at once.
“Oh, my poor dear,” she thought, “you have borne so much—could you not
have been spared this last, bitterest blow?”
She went down stairs without pause. If he had returned at all, he would
be in the salon; he would not tell his mother until he had told
her—that she felt. She never stopped to think of her white cheeks and
swollen eyes; he was alone and in trouble, and she must go to him.
Yes, he had come. As she softly pushed the door open she saw him. He was
sitting where she had sat three hours ago. Three hours! was it only
that? Three years seemed to have passed since this morning. He sat, his
folded arms on the table, his head lying on them—his whole attitude
despairing and broken down.
He did not hear her as she entered and crossed the room, neither heard
nor saw, until she laid one hand lightly on his shoulder and spoke.
“Gordon!”
Then he looked up. To her dying day that look would haunt her, so full
of utter, infinite despair. Those haggard, hopeless eyes might almost
have told her the story, had Madame Felicia never come. Haggard and
hopeless as they were, they were quick even in this supreme hour to see
the change in her.
“You have been crying?” he said.
In all the months they had been together he had never seen the trace of
tears on France’s happy face before. The sight of those swollen eyelids
and tear-blotted cheeks struck him now as with a sense of actual
physical pain.
“What is it?” he asked. “‘Ill news travels apace,’ but I hardly think,”
with a harsh sort of laugh, “mine can have reached you already. France,
my own love, what is it?”
But she shrank away, drawing her hand from his grasp, and covering her
eyes with the other.
“Oh, Gordon, hush!” she cried out; “I cannot bear it. I–-,” with a
great gasp, “I know all.”
“All!” His face turned of a dull, grayish pallor, his eyes never left
her. “France, do you know what you are saying? What do you mean by all?”
“That—that–-” No, her dry lips would not speak the words. “Madame
Felicia has been here,” she said, with a quick desperate gesture, and
walked away to the window.
The bright street below was dazzling with gaslights—golden stars
studded the violet February sky. Carriages filled with brilliant ladies
flew ceaselessly by—the brilliant life of the most brilliant capital of
the world was at its height. And France leaned her forehead against the
cool glass and wondered, with a dull sickness of heart, if only this
time yesterday she had indeed been happier than the happiest of them
all.
Gordon Caryll had risen from his chair and stood looking at her,
actually dumbfounded by her last words. In whatever way she might have
heard the loathsome truth, he had never thought of this—that she
would have the untold audacity to force an entrance here.
“France!” he exclaimed, a dark flush of intense anger crimsoning his
face; “do you mean what you say?—that woman has dared come here?”
“Yes,” she said, wearily. “Ah, don’t be angry, Gordon. What does it
matter, since I must know it?—what difference who tells the tale? She
is not to blame, poor soul, for being alive.”
“Poor soul!” he repeats, in a strange,
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