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

look about him. Only two years since he had stood here last—two years.

Nothing had changed—nothing but his life, and the hot fever of his own

youthful fancy—the fair, treacherous face of a woman had spoiled that

forever.

He lifted the heavy bronze knocker and sent the echoes ringing dully

down the great hall. The man who opened the door, an old family servant,

started back with a cry of surprise and delight.

“Sure to goodness, if it isn’t Mr. Gordon come back!”

“Mr. Gordon come back—bad shillings always came back, don’t they? How

are you, Norton? Is my mother in?”

“Yes, Mr. Gordon. In her own rooms. You know the way—”

“Go and tell her I am here, Norton, and be quick about it, will you?

I’ll wait.”

The man stared, but obeyed. Gordon Caryll stood in the long, echoing,

deserted hall, staring moodily out at the moonlight, and not at all

sure, in spite of his letter, whether his mother would deign to see him

or not. But his doubts were speedily set at rest. Norton reappeared.

“My mistress will see you, Mr. Gordon, sir. She bids you come to her at

once in her morning room.”

He waited for no more; she would see him; he had hardly dared hope it;

she might forgive him—who knew? He ran lightly up the stairs and

tapped at the familiar door.

“Come in,” his mother’s calm voice said, and, hat in hand, he entered.

Mother and son stood face to face. A cluster of wax-lights lit the room

brilliantly. In their full glow Mrs. Caryll stood, her tall figure

upheld at its tallest, her widow’s weeds trailing the carpet, her

widow’s cap on her dark, unsilvered hair, her face like a face cut in

white stone. In that moment, if he could have but seen it, she bore a

curious, passing likeness to himself as he had stood, pale and

relentless, before the girl who had been his wife.

“Mother!”

She made a sudden, hasty motion for him to stand still and back, a

motion again like his own as he had repelled his most miserable wife. He

obeyed, closing the door, and knowing his whole fate in that second of

time.

She stood for fully a minute, silently looking at him, never softening

one whit. She saw the cruel changes those two years had made plainly

enough, the youthful face grown grave and worn, the hollow eyes, the

colorless cheeks. He had sinned, but he had also suffered. Well, it was

right; here and hereafter is not suffering the inevitable penalty of

sin?

“Mother,” he said, “forgive me.”

She made a motion of her hand toward the picture above the mantel.

“You know that he is dead?” were her first words.

“I know it. Oh, mother, I acknowledge all my wrongdoing, my shame, my

sin, if you will call it so. I was mad. All I could do to atone, I have

done. Mother, forgive me, if you can!”

“Forgive you!” Her eyes blazed out upon him for one moment with a lurid

fire. “I will never forgive you so long as we both live!”

He walked over to the low mantel, laid his arm upon it, and his bowed

face on his arm. She stood and looked at him, her breast heaving with

strong, repressed emotion, her eyes glowing like fire in her pale face.

“For three hundred years,” she said, in that tense tone of suppressed

passion, “the Carylls have been born, have lived and died beneath this

roof, brave men, noble gentlemen always. It was left for my son to bring

shame and dishonor at last. The name was never approached by disgrace

until you bore it. Your grandfather married a duke’s daughter; you, the

last of your name, take a wife from the sweepings of New York city—an

actress—a street-walker—a creature whose vile, painted face was

displayed nightly in the lowest theatre of the worst of American cities.

My son, did I call you? I take it back. After to-night I have no son!”

He never moved; he never spoke. His hidden face she could not see. That

very silence was as oil to fire.

“One month ago your father died—died of your shame. You stand there as

much his murderer as though you had stabbed him to the heart. He died

unforgiving you—every rood of land, every shilling of fortune left away

from you. Not an inch of Caryllynne is entailed—that you know—not one

farthing of the noble inheritance that was your birthright shall you

ever possess. The name you dishonor is yours beyond power to recall; but

that alone—not one thing more. And after to-night you never cross this

threshold again.”

Still no reply—still he stood like a figure of stone.

“You say you have atoned,” his mother went on, in that low, passionate

voice. “Atoned! That means you have dragged the name of Caryll through

the mire and filth of a divorce court—that your story and hers, that

lost wretch, is in the mouths of all men in Canada and England. Your

atonement is worse than your crime. Your atonement shall last your life

long. Now go! All I wish to say, I have said—I will never forgive

you—I will never look upon your face again!”

The very words he had spoken to his divorced wife! What fatality was at

work here? She ceased speaking, and Gordon Caryll lifted his haggard

face and looked at her—to the day of her death a look to haunt her with

a pain sharper than death itself.

“It shall be as you say,” he answered, very quietly. “I don’t think I

expected anything else—I suppose I deserve nothing better. I will not

trouble you again. For the name I have dishonored, have no fear—it

shall be dishonored by my bearing it no more. I leave it behind with all

the rest. Good-night, mother, and good-by.”

And then he was gone. The door closed gently behind him, and she was

alone. Alone! she would be alone her life-long now.

She was ghastly white—ashen white to the lips. But—she had done her

duty! That thought must console her in all the long, lonely years to

come. She stood for nearly half an hour in the spot where he had left

her, stock-still. Then she slowly turned, walked across the room, lifted

a velvet curtain, and entered what seemed an oratory. Over a sort of

altar, a painting of the Madonna di San Sisto hung—an exquisite copy;

and the heavenly mother, with the serene, uplifted face, holding the

child-Christ in her arms, was there before the earthly mother, who for

one rash act, had cast her only son off forever.

On a prayer-desk, before this altar, a Bible lay. At random she opened

it—in a blind sort of way seeking for comfort. And this is what she

read:

“Behold the king weepeth and mourneth for Absalom. And the victory that

day was turned into mourning unto all the people, for the people heard

say that day how the king was grieved for his son. But the king covered

his face, and the king cried with a loud voice, ‘Oh, my son Absalom! Oh,

Absalom, my son, my son!’”

CHAPTER VI.

GORDON CARYLL’S STORY.

His trial was over, his sentence was passed, and Gordon Caryll went out

from his mother’s presence an outcast and banished man.

“All for love, and the world well lost,” he said to himself, with

something that was almost a smile. “Ah, well! Come what will, I have

been blessed. For four months I had my fool’s paradise—let that thought

console me, in all the years of outlawry that are to come.”

He did not leave the house directly. On the landing he paused a moment

irresolute, then turned, ran up another stairway, opened one of the many

doors that flanked the long corridor, and entered the rooms that had

been his own. Only the moonlight lit them, but that was brilliant almost

as day. With that slight, sad smile on his lips he walked through them.

Everywhere traces of his dead father’s pride in him, his mother’s love

for him, were scattered with lavish hand. More luxurious almost were

those rooms than his mother’s own.

“They will serve for my mother’s heir,” the young soldier

thought—“whoever that may be. Lucia Dynely’s little son Eric, very

likely. She was always fond of Lucia; so, for that matter, was I. My

pretty cousin! It is but seven miles distant, and there is time and to

spare. Suppose I look her up for the last time before I go forth into

the outer darkness, and be heard of no more?”

He selected a few trifles, a picture of this mother, another of this

“Cousin Lucia” of his thoughts, a gold-mounted meerschaum pipe—then

with a last backward glance of farewell at the pretty moonlit rooms, he

ran down the stairs, out of the silent house, the great door closed with

a clang behind him, and all was over.

He made his way to the stables, startling grooms and stable boys as

though he had been a ghost.

“Saddle Dark Diamond, Morris,” he ordered; “I’m going to Dynely Abbey,

and will leave him there behind me. You can go over for him to-morrow.”

He vaulted lightly into the saddle, cantered down the avenue, out of the

great gates, and beyond the far-stretching park that was never to call

him master.

As he stopped for one last look, never, it seemed to him, had the old

ancestral home looked so noble and desirable as on this August night,

under the yellow light of the summer moon.

“A fair and stately heritage to yield for a girl’s face,” he thought,

bitterly. “May my successor be wiser than I, and be kept from that

maddest of all man’s madness—loving a woman!”

His horse was a fleet one—he spurred him on to a gallop. For miles, as

he rode, the woods of Caryllynne stretched, on the other hand the

cottage lights twinkled, the village forge flamed forth lurid red, old

familiar landmarks met him everywhere, and far beyond the broad sweep of

the silver-lighted sea.

Less than half an hour brought him to his destination, Dynely Abbey, the

seat of Viscount Dynely—a huge historic pile, that long centuries ago

had been a Cistercian monastery, in the days when the “Keys and Cross

and Triple Crown” held mighty sway through all broad England. As he rode

at a gallop up the entrance avenue, in view of the great gray Abbey,

pearly white in the moonlight, his horse shied at some white object, so

suddenly and violently as almost to unseat his rider. Gordon Caryll

laughed as he leaped off and patted him soothingly on the head.

“So ho, Diamond! Easy, old fellow. Does the sight of my pretty Cousin

Lucia, in her white dress and shawl, upset your nervous system like

this?”

He threw the bridle over a tree, and advanced to where a lady, in a silk

dinner dress, and wrapped in a white fleecy shawl, stood.

“Lady Dynely,” he said, lifting his hat, “good-evening.”

She had been slowly pacing, as though for an evening constitutional,

round and round a great ornamental fish-pond. As horse and rider

appeared she had paused in some alarm—then, as the unexpected visitor

approached, and the bright light of the moon fell on his face, she had

uttered a low cry of great surprise and delight, and held out to him

both hands.

“Gordon!” she cried. “Oh, Gordon! Can it be you?”

She was a