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Title: A Mad Marriage. A Novel.
Author: Fleming, May Agnes (1840-1880)
Date of first publication: 1875
Edition used as base for this ebook:
New York: G. W. Carleton;
London: S. Low, Son, 1876
Date first posted: 6 October 2010
Date last updated: 6 October 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #634
This ebook was produced by:
Brenda Lewis, woodie4
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
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POPULAR NOVELS.
By May Agnes Fleming.
1.âGUY EARLSCOURTâS WIFE.
2.âA WONDERFUL WOMAN.
3.âA TERRIBLE SECRET.
4.âNORINEâS REVENGE.
5.âA MAD MARRIAGE.
6.âONE NIGHTâS MYSTERY.
7.âKATE DANTON. (_New._)
*
âMrs. Flemingâs stories are growing more and more popular every day.
Their delineations of character, lifelike conversations, flashes of
wit, constantly varying scenes, and deeply interesting plots,
combine to place their author in the very first rank of Modern
Novelists.â
*
All published uniform with this volume. Price $1.75 each, and sent
free by mail on receipt of price, by
G. W. CARLETON & CO., Publishers,
New York.
A
MAD MARRIAGE.
A Novel.
BY
MAY AGNES FLEMING,
AUTHOR OF
âGUY EARLSCOURTâS WIFE,â âA WONDERFUL WOMAN,â
âA TERRIBLE SECRET,â âNORINEâS
REVENGE,â ETC.
âSuch a mad marriage never was before.â
Taming of the Shrew.
NEW YORK:
G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers.
LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.,
MDCCCLXXVI.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by
G. W. CARLETON & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
JOHN F. TROW & SON, PRINTERS,
805-813 EAST 12TH ST., NEW YORK.
CONTENTS.
I.âJoan Kennedyâs StoryââThe House that Wouldnât Letâ 9
II.âA Woman with a Secret 18
III.âThe Decree of Divorce 25
IV.âA Strange Ending 32
V.âAt Caryllynne 42
VI.âGordon Caryllâs Story 50
VII.âHow Lord Viscount Dynely Died 72
PART II.
I.âIn the Royal Academy 78
II.âTerry 88
III.âMadame Felicia 100
IV.âLady Dynelyâs Thursday 107
V.âLove Took Up the Glass of Time 117
VI.ââThe Lord of the Landâ 130
VII.âA Weekâs Reprieve 142
VIII.ââWho is She?â 151
IX.âTelling Terry 162
X.âThinking It Out 174
XI.âAt the Picnic 181
XII.ââThey Shall Take Who Have the Powerâ 190
XIII.âLightly Won, Lightly Lost 200
XIV.ââOnce More the Gate Behind Me Fallsâ 214
XV.ââStayâ 224
XVI.ââGordon Caryllâ 230
XVII.âThrough the Sunset 237
XVIII.âKilling the Fatted Calf 246
XIX.âHow the Old Year Ended 263
PART III.
I.âHow the New Year Began 273
II.ââLa Belle Dame Sans Merciâ 292
III.âIn the Streets 307
IV.âDonny 317
V.âWhat Loveâs Young Dream Sometimes Comes to 325
VI.âAt the Varieties 335
VII.ââAfter Many Daysâ 346
VIII.âA Morning Call 357
IX.ââThe Parting that They Hadâ 367
X.ââIf any Calm, a Calm Despairâ 375
XI.âM. Le Prince 385
XII.âAt the Bal dâOpera 393
XIII.âAfter the Ball 400
XIV.âChez Madame 408
XV.ââHow the Night Fellâ 416
XVI.ââLoyal au Mortâ 424
XVII.âHow the Morning Broke 438
XVIII.âWhile it was Yet Day 446
XIX.ââPost Tenebrïżœ, Luxâ 454
A MAD MARRIAGE.
CHAPTER I.
JOAN KENNEDYâS STORYââTHE HOUSE THAT WOULDNâT LET.â
It lay down in a sort of hollow, the hillside sloping up behind, crowned
with dark pine woods, shut in by four grim wooden walls, two dark
windows, like scowling eyes, to be seen from the path, and was known to
all as âTHE HOUSE THAT WOULDNâT LET.â
It stood neither on street nor high road. You left the town behind
youâthe queer, fortified, Frenchified town of Quebec; you passed
through St. Johnâs Gate, through St. Johnâs street-outside-the-gate, to
the open country, and, a mile on, you came upon a narrow, winding path,
that seemed straggling out of sight, and trying to hide itself among the
dwarf cedars and spruces. Following this for a quarter of a mile,
passing one or two small stone cabins, you came full upon
Saltmarshâthis house that wouldnât let.
It was an ugly placeâa ramshackle place, the lonesomest place you could
see, but still why it wouldnât let was not so clear.
The rent was merely nominal. Mr. Barteaux, its owner, kept it in very
good repair. There was a large vegetable garden attached, where, if you
were of an agricultural turn, you might have made your rent twice over.
There was game in the woods; trout in the ice-cold brooks; but no
venturous sportsman took up his abode at Saltmarsh. It wasnât even
haunted; it looked rather like that sort of thing, but nobody ever went
exactly so far as to affirm that it was. No ghastly corpse-lights ever
glimmered from those dull upper windows, no piercing shrieks ever rent
the midnight silence, no spectre lady, white and tall, ever flitted
through the desolate rooms of Saltmarsh. No murder had ever been done
there; no legend of any kind was connected with the place, its history
was prosy and commonplace to a degree. Yet still, year in, year out, the
inscription remained up over the dingy wooden gateway, THIS HOUSE TO BE
LET; and no tenant ever came.
âTom Grimshaw must have been mad when he built the beastly old barn,â
the present proprietor would growl; âwhat with taxes, and repairs, and
insurance, there it stands, eating its own head off, and there it may
stand, for what I see, to the crack of doom. One would think the very
trees that surround it say, in their warning dreariness, as the
sentinels of Helheim used in Northern mythology:
ââWho passes here is damned.ââ
If this strong language rouses your curiosity, and you asked the
proprietor the history of the house, you got it terse and lucid, thus:
âOld Tom Grimshaw built it, sir. Old Tom Grimshaw was my maternal uncle,
rest his soul; it is to be hoped he has more sense in the other world
than he ever had in this. He was a misogynist, sir, of the rabidest
sort, hating a petticoat as you and I hate the devil. Donât know what
infernal mischief the women had ever done himâplenty, no doubt; it is
what they were created for. The fact remainsâthe sight of one had much
the same effect upon him as a red scarf on a mad bull. He bought this
marshy spot for a song, built that disgustingly ugly house, barricaded
himself with that timber wall, and lived and died there, like Diogenes,
or Robinson Crusoe, or any other old bloke you like. As heir-at-law, the
old rattle-trap fell to me, and a precious legacy it has been, I can
tell you. It wonât rent, and it has to be kept in repair, and I wish
to Heaven old Tom Grimshaw had taken it with him, wherever he is!â
That was the history of Saltmarsh. For eight years it was to be let, and
hadnât let, and that is where the matter began and ended.
Gray, lonely, weather-beaten, so I had seen the forlorn house any time
these twenty years; so this evening of which I am to write I saw it
again, with the mysterious shadow of desolation brooding over it, those
two upper windows frowning downâsullen eyes set in its sullen, silent
face. From childhood it had had its fascination for meâit had been my
Bluebeardâs castle, my dread, my delight. As I grew older, this
fascinating horror grew with my growth, and at seven-and-twenty it held
me with as powerful a spell as it had done at seven.
It was a cold and overcast February afternoon. An icy blast swept up
from the great frozen gulf, over the heights of Quebec, over the bleak,
treeless road, along which I hurried in the teeth of the wind. In the
west a stormy and lurid sunset was fading outâfierce reds and brazen
yellows paling into sullen gray. One long fiery lance of that wrathful
sunset, slanting down the pines, struck those upper windows of
Saltmarsh, and lit them into sheets of copper gold.
I was in a hurryâI was the bearer of ill newsâand ill news travels
apace. It was bitterly cold, as I have said, and snow was falling. I had
still half a mile of lonesome high road to travel, and night was at
hand; but the spell of Saltmarsh, that had never failed to hold me yet,
held me again. I stood still and looked at it; at those two red
cyclopean eyes, those black stacks of chimneys, its whole forbidding,
scowling front.
âIt is like a house under a curse,â I thought; âa dozen murders might be
done inside those wooden walls, and no one be the wiser. Will any human
being ever call Saltmarsh home again, I wonder?â
âThis house is to let?â
I am not nervous as a rule, but as a soft voice spoke these words at my
elbow, I jumped. I had heard no sound, yet now a woman stood at my side,
on the snow-beaten path.
âI beg your pardon; I have startled you, I am afraid. I have been here
for some time looking at this house. I see it is to let.â
I stepped back and looked at her, too much surprised for a moment to
speak. To meet a stranger at Saltmarsh, in the twilight of a bitter
February day, was a marvel indeed.
I stood and looked at her; and I thought then, as I think now, as I will
think to the last day of my life, that I saw one of the most beautiful
faces on which the sun ever shone.
I have said she was a womanâa girl would have been the fitter word;
whatever her age might have been, she did not look a day over seventeen.
She was not tall, and she was very slender; that may have given her that
peculiarly childish lookâI am a tall young woman, and she would not
have reached my shoulder. A dress of black silk trailed the ground, a
short jacket of finest seal wrapped her, a muff of seal held her hands.
A hood of black velvet was on her head, and out of this rich hood her
richer beauty shone upon me, a new revelation of how lovely it is
possible for a woman to be. Years have come and gone since that evening,
but the wonderful face that looked at me that February twilight, for
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