A Mad Marriage by May Agnes Fleming (best ebook reader android .TXT) 📖

face when he read it.”

 

And then France lay back and went off into a prolonged peal of

merriment.

 

Lady Dynely rose up on her sofa, her delicate cheeks flushing with

vexation.

 

“You wrote that, France—to Eric?”

 

“I wrote that, mamma, to Eric. I understand Eric better than you do, and

I’m not the least afraid of Eric, and you are. I could not have written

anything more to the point, if I had tried for a month. He might have

answered, though; I should like to know who my rival is this time.”

 

“France, do you really believe—”

 

“That Eric has fallen in love in Lincolnshire, for the one-millionth

time? Yes, Lady Dynely, as firmly as that I sit here. Now, who do you

suppose she can be? There are no ladies in Sir Philip’s household, and I

don’t think he would bestow his heart’s best affections upon the cook.”

 

“Miss Forrester, if you consider this a theme for jest—”

 

“Please don’t be dignified, mamma, and please don’t call me Miss

Forrester. Don’t I say, I don’t believe he would. It must be one of

Terry’s family—you know what I mean—one of the Council of Nine—one of

the nine Misses Higgins! It would be comical if Terry and he were

brothers-in-law after all, both married on the same day, in the same

church, in the same family, by the same pastor and papa. Quite a

pastoral idyl altogether.”

 

Miss Forrester laughed again. Of late, since the receipt of Lord

Dynely’s letter, the whole world had turned rose-color to the heiress of

Caryllynne. The portrait painting business was still going on; but not

even to herself would Miss Forrester admit that that had anything to do

with it.

 

Tears actually sprang to Lady Dynely’s pale blue eyes.

 

“You are cruel, France; you don’t mean to be, perhaps, but you are. I

have set my heart, my whole heart, on seeing you Eric’s wife, and you

treat the matter like this. You despise him—you must, since you hold

him and his feelings so lightly and contemptuously.”

 

France laid down her drawing, went over, knelt beside the elder lady,

and gave her a kiss.

 

“Now, mamma mine, look here,” she said, coaxingly, “it’s just this. You

love Eric, and love is blind; you don’t see him as he is. I’m not in

love with him, and couldn’t be if he lived in the same house for the

next hundred and fifty years, and I do see Eric as he is. He’s very

handsome, and very brilliant, and very charming, but he is as unstable

as water. He has no back-bone; and if I married him, and he didn’t break

my heart the first year, I should henpeck him to death, or—the divorce

court. For the rest, you’ll see I’m right. Some new face caught his

fickle fancy down there, and hence that magnanimous letter. I don’t

blame him, he was born so, I suppose, and can’t help it. Hark!”

 

She started to her feet and ran to the window. A fly from the railway

was just stopping, and a young gentleman in a light gray suit in the act

of leaping out. Again France laughed.

 

“‘By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes,’

 

as Hecate says. Speak of the angels and you hear their wings. Here’s

Eric now.”

 

Eric it was. He came in as she spoke, and met her laughing, roguish

glance, that seemed to read his inmost thoughts.

 

“At last! Just as your mother and I were turning our thoughts to crape

and bombazine. We had given you up for lost, Eric, and here you come

upon us like a beautiful dream once more. And now, while you tell her

all the news of your sojourn, I will run away and dress for dinner.”

 

She left the room, almost disconcerting Eric by her last saucy backward

glance. Almost, not wholly—nothing earthly ever entirely put his

lordship out of countenance.

 

“Really, Eric,” his mother began, pettishly, “I don’t see how France can

treat your desertion of her so lightly. In my days such conduct would

have been considered unpardonable.”

 

“Ah! but we don’t live in the dark ages now,” Eric responded, first

ringing the bell, then sinking into France’s vacated chair. “And my

desertion of France—please translate that, mother mine; I don’t

understand.”

 

“It is easily understood. You asked France to marry you before you left,

did you not?”

 

“I—I believe so. It is three weeks ago, and a man may naturally be

pardoned if his memory is somewhat hazy at that distance of time.”

 

“You asked her to marry you,” pursued his mother, overlooking this

persiflage, “and she told you to come for her answer in a week—did she

not?”

 

“My dear mother, what an admirable counsel for the prosecution you would

make. Yes, she did. Sherry and seltzer,” to the footman who entered.

 

“And you never came,” Lady Dynely said, her eyes flashing angrily.

“Eric, is that the conduct of a gentleman—a lover—a man of honor?”

 

“It was the conduct of a man of sense.

 

“‘If she be not fair for me?

What care I how fair she be?’

 

It would have been an act most unbecoming a gentleman to force a lady’s

inclination. So France gave me to understand; and so, upon sage second

thought, I came to see. I didn’t come for the answer; I wrote for it.”

 

“You did?”

 

“I did,” said Eric, filling himself a glass of sherry; “I wrote,

renouncing her unless she came to me of her own free will. It was a

most honorable, manly and high-toned letter, I consider myself.”

 

“And she said?” eagerly.

 

“She said,” said Eric, laughing at the recollection, “‘Who is she?’ I

believe Miss Forrester must be a sorceress. I haven’t taken the trouble

to tell her who she is, but I have taken the trouble to return here

to-day to tell you.”

 

“Eric,” his mother cried, starting to her feet, “you mean to tell me—”

 

“Mamma,” Eric said, plaintively, “do sit down. Don’t excite yourself.

Good Heaven! where’s the use of everybody taking things so seriously in

this way—getting steam up to such a height for nothing? I mean to tell

you that I have met a girl I like a thousand times better than France

Forrester; that I have asked her to marry me; that I have asked her

father for his consent, and that he has given his consent, contingent

upon yours. There is the whole matter for you in a nutshell.”

 

His mother dropped back, stunned.

 

“In three weeks,” she murmured, in a dazed voice, “all this in three

weeks’ time.”

 

“We live in a rapid age, mother,” responded the young man, coolly. “Time

is precious; why waste it? Strange it may seem, but no less strange than

true. And truth is stranger than fiction. It is an accomplished fact.”

 

“Who is she?” Lady Dynely asked, helplessly.

 

“France’s question over again. She is Miss Higgins.”

 

“Higgins!”

 

“Yes, poor child. It’s not a distinguished appellation, and a rose by

any other name does not smell as sweet. ‘Christabel—twenty-first

Viscountess Dynely, n�e Higgins,’ will not look well in Debrett.

However, there is no rose without its thorn, they tell me. She is the

Vicar of Starling’s eighth daughter.”

 

“France said so,” murmured her ladyship, still in that helplessly

stunned tone.

 

“Did she? Then we ought to have France burned as a witch. Terry hasn’t

been writing to her, has he?”

 

“I don’t know. This girl is the sister of the girl Terry is going to

marry?”

 

“No, madame,” said her son, coolly, filling another glass of sherry;

“not her sister, but herself.”

 

“What!”

 

“What an amount of talking these things seem to involve,” Eric said,

pathetically, “and how inexcusably void of comprehension people appear

to be. I repeat, my dear Lady Dynely, the young lady I intend to marry

is the young lady Mr. Dennison honored with his preference, and intended

to transform into Mrs. Dennison. Unfortunately for him, ‘I came, I saw,

I conquered.’ She preferred me to the big dragoon, and I left Terry

exclaiming, like Francis First at Pavia, ‘All is lost but honor.’”

 

He paused. His mother had risen to her feet, every trace of color

leaving her face, her eyes fixed in a sort of horror upon her son.

 

“Eric,” she said, huskily, “you tell me—you mean to tell me that you

have taken from Terry the girl he loved?”

 

Eric lifted his blonde eyebrows in weary resignation.

 

“If you put it in that sentimental way—yes, mamma.”

 

She stood and looked at him. She tried to speak—no words came. The

baseness of this, after all Terry had resigned, the noble self-sacrifice

he had shown—was too much. He had given up his birthright to Eric, and

this was Eric’s return.

 

“Mother,” Eric cried, rising to his feet, aroused to something like

alarm by the pale horror of her face. “What is the matter now? Why do

you take Terry’s affairs so much to heart? Isn’t he big enough and old

enough to look after himself? Am I to blame, is she to blame, if she

prefers me to him? I expected to be taken to task on France’s account,

but, gad! I certainly didn’t expect to on Terry’s.”

 

“You don’t know—you don’t know—” she said in a broken voice.

 

“No, I don’t know,” Eric answered, with an impatient frown, “but I

should uncommonly like to. What is Dennison that I should let his

feelings stand in my way? He hadn’t spoken, so he has no reason to

complain. Here is a note from him, by the way, to you.”

 

He presented her the letter, and sat watching her while she read it,

lying back among the cushions of his chair. It was short:

 

“DEAREST LADY DYNELY:—Eric has told you all by this time. If he

loves her, and is good to her, I ask no more. If he is not, then,

as I have told him, he shall answer to me. She loves him with all

her innocent heart, and she is so dear to me, that I would die to

save her a moment’s pain. Let him look to it, if he tires of her,

and tries to throw her over. For you, if I have any claim whatever

upon you, I ask this favor of you in return. Come here, take her to

your heart as your daughter, and I shall consider myself more than

repaid. Ever yours,

 

“TERRY.”

 

She sank back on her sofa, crushed the letter in her hand, laid her face

against the cushions, and burst into an unrestrained passion of tears.

Eric arose angrily to his feet.

 

“I don’t understand this,” he said. “What is Dennison that his interests

should be nearer to you than mine? What has he said in the letter?”

 

“Nothing that concerns you to see,” Lady Dynely said, proudly lifting

her head. “Have you anything more to say, Eric, before I go to dress?”

 

“This, that it is my wish you accompany me to Lincolnshire to-morrow,

and formally receive Crystal as my betrothed wife.”

 

He stood haughtily erect before her—a young Sultan issuing his

sovereign commands to his womankind.

 

“I will go,” she answered briefly. “Is there anything else?”

 

“That you will tell France—I don’t wish any chaffing on this subject;

it is a weakness of Miss Forrester’s to chaff a fellow, and is very bad

form. Tell her at once, and have done with it.”

 

The youthful autocrat must be obeyed. With a weary sigh Lady Dynely

sought out