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

and

not one word was spoken on either side. Outwardly all those years have

changed her little less than they have done me; she is very feeble. She

would have come with me if she had been able. Not being able, and

longing to see you, she bids me bring you and Lady Dynely when I go

back. Will you come, France?”

 

“Will I not?” she answers, lifting her happy eyes. “But my stay must be

a short one. Eric’s wedding takes place on New Year’s Eve, and I am to

be first bridesmaid.”

 

“Bridesmaid for the last time, then,” says Gordon Caryll. “Pity we can’t

make it a double wedding. I don’t see the sense of waiting, myself; and

I promise you this, I don’t mean to wait long. When will it be, France?

January?”

 

“No, sir; not January, not February, not March, nor April; not a day

sooner than May. And then, in the height of the season, with flying

colors, if you insist upon it, we will march to St. George’s, and you

shall be made miserable for life. No, it’s of no use putting on that

imploring face; when my decree is issued, all the eloquence of men fails

to move me. Go up to your room—you have not a moment to spare, you are

shamefully late as it is.”

 

She releases herself, and hastens back to the ball-room. Near the

entrance she meets Eric on his way for ices and orangeade, and in her

face he reads the truth.

 

“‘Lo! the conquering hero comes!’ and Miss Forrester’s eyes light up

their lamps, and Miss Forrester’s cheeks fling out the flag of welcome.

I had about given up the hero of the night as a laggard in love; but

better late than never.”

 

Half an hour passes, and then into their midst, so quietly that but few

find it out for the first hour, the “hero of the night” enters. He makes

his way to Lady Dynely’s side, and she who has met him daily but seven

short weeks before, greets him as though she had never looked upon him

since that August night by the lake.

 

“It is like a fairy tale,” she says; “I cannot realize it. I thought you

dead, in spite of all of France’s hopes, in spite of the yearly gifts to

your mother. And to think that we have you with us once more. But you

are greatly, wonderfully changed.”

 

“Well, yes,” Caryll answers; “a dozen years’ campaigning is apt to

change a man. Still, I think you half-recognized me that day at the

Academy.”

 

“You see, I could not realize it,” her ladyship answers, leaning on his

arm, and making her way slowly through the rooms. “The voice was the

same, and the eyes; but I had made up my mind so entirely never to look

upon you more, that I wouldn’t admit the likeness. Still, it drew me to

you. It was for the sake of that likeness I wished you so much to

accompany us here.”

 

“I came to my destiny!” he laughed. “But for that journey, France and I

would never have arrived at an understanding, and I should have gone

down to my grave ‘Gordon Locksley.’”

 

“France will make you a charming wife, Gordon. I congratulate you, with

all my heart. After all, you have not done so badly with your life. You

have won a name for yourself, with your sword, and with your brush, and

you have won France Forrester’s whole heart—such a great, generous,

loyal heart! I had thought to see her Eric’s wife; but you know how that

has ended.”

 

“Happily for me—yes; happily for him, I trust, also. Is that little

green-and-white fairy on his arm, with the apple-blossom face, the bride

elect? What a model for Undine! Present me, Lucia, will you?”

 

Mr. Caryll is presented and begins the business of the night by dancing

with the bride elect. As France has laughingly predicted, people stare,

in a well-bred way, until even curiosity is satiated. The hero and

heroine of the evening, meandering through the Lancers, are the observed

of all observers. France dances, too, with her lover, with Eric, with

Terry, whom she rescues from an elderly-young lady, with unpleasantly

prominent shoulder blades, and unpleasantly prominent rouged cheeks.

With the Prince Di Venturini last of all before supper. As this dance

ends Mr. Caryll advances to claim his property, and the Neapolitan

prince renews his acquaintance and presents his congratulations.

 

“Madame Felicia has been deploring her loss in your gain, monsieur,” the

prince says; “she fears now she will never receive what you promised

her—the companion picture to ‘How the Night Fell.’”

 

“Did I promise her?” says Caryll, carelessly. “Then let madame be at

rest. If it affords her any pleasure she shall yet have the companion

picture. What shall we call it? ‘How the Morning Broke?’”

 

He looks at France with a smile that says the dawn has come with her.

 

“A charming title,” cries Di Venturini. “May I ask has monsieur ever

seen Madame Felicia?”

 

“Never,” Caryll responds. “She was playing in London last season, I am

aware, and I naturally heard a great deal about her, but I never had

curiosity enough to go and see her. I was very busy, and I had long

lost my relish for theatre-going.”

 

His face clouds a little. Di Venturini looks at him with small, keen,

glittering eyes.

 

“Pardon, monsieur, but I inferred from what I have heard Madame Felicia

say, that she certainly knew you.”

 

“Impossible, prince. To my knowledge she never met me in her life.”

 

“Ah! my mistake then, of course. She will be charmed to learn that she

is to have the companion picture.”

 

He bows himself off, and France and Caryll go into supper together. That

pleasant banquet is prolonged. When it is over, a little knot of Miss

Forrester’s admirers press around and plead with her to sing. She yields

and is led to the piano, still on Gordon Caryll’s arm.

 

“Sing ‘Ay Chiquita,’” some one says.

 

She points to a pile of music, and Mr. Caryll tosses it over to find the

song. He places it upon the piano, and Frances’ slim fingers float over

the keys in tender prelude. He is replacing the loose sheets as he found

them, when all at once he stops still—stops with one of the pieces in

his hand and stares at it as though it were a ghost. He is gazing at the

outer page, not at the music, with a face from which every trace of

color slowly fades out. The song begins—Miss Forrester’s sweet,

vibrating voice fills the room. He never hears, he never heeds. Every

feeling of sight and sense, and hearing, seems concentrated in that

fixed rapt gaze on what he holds.

 

It is a waltz. “The Felicia Waltz,” composed by Prince Di Venturini, and

dedicated to Madame Felicia. Below the title is a colored vignette of

madame herself, leaning smilingly forward—en buste. It is a beautiful

face—even this highly-colored lithograph cannot make it otherwise—and

eyes and lips flash back their brilliant smile on all beholders.

 

So long he stands there holding it, that the song ends. There is a

murmur of pleasure and thanks from the group about the piano, but the

singer turns from all for a smile of praise from him. His face is

averted, he is bending over a piece of music, and does not speak a word.

 

“What is it you have there, Gordon?” she asks, gayly, “that holds you so

enchained?”

 

“Monsieur honors my poor composition with his closest attention,” says

the voice of Di Venturini; “or is it madame’s fair face that holds him

spellbound?”

 

Their words arouse him. He lays down the sheet and turns away, but his

face still keeps that startled pallor under its bronze.

 

“A fair face indeed, prince, and one I have surely seen before, though

the name is new to me. In America, or Canada probably—madame has been

there?”

 

He listens for the reply with an intensity of eagerness his outer

quietude does not betray. Prince Di Venturini looks at him with quick,

suspicious eyes.

 

“But no, monsieur—Madame Felicia has never crossed the Atlantic in her

life.”

 

“You are sure, prince?”

 

“I am very sure, monsieur. I have it from madame’s own lips. She detests

everything transatlantic.”

 

“I have been mistaken then,” Caryll says, calmly; “I really thought I

had seen that pictured face before. It is merely one of those chance

resemblances we meet sometimes. I once knew a person who looked very

like that.”

 

He offers his arm to France and leads her away. No more is said on the

subject, but through all the hours that follow the pale gravity never

quite leaves his face. And once, when all are dancing and the music-room

is entirely deserted, he goes back, tears off the page that has the

pictured face of Madame Felicia, and conceals it quietly in one of his

pockets for further inspection.

 

The chill October morning is gray in the east when the last carriage

rolls away from the great gates of Dynely Abbey, and the spent household

betake themselves to their rest. But for full an hour after, Gordon

Caryll sits in his room, that picture spread out before him, gazing

steadfastly down at the gaudily-colored portrait of the French actress

as though it held him by some sorceress’ spell.

 

“Her eyes, her smile, her every feature,” he says under his breath. “Can

there be two women on this earth so much alike? Years older, but the

same. Had she a sister, or—has the grave given up its dead? Has she

come back from Hades itself to torment me?”

 

CHAPTER XIX.

 

HOW THE OLD YEAR ENDED.

 

It is the night of the 31st of December, and the vicarage of Starling is

bright with lights, gay with people, merry with music, and festive with

feasting. The eve of the old year is going merrily out in “babble and

revel and wine.” And to-morrow is pretty Crystal’s wedding-day.

 

They are all down—Lord Dynely, his mother, France, Terry. They have

been here two days now, and to-night a score of guests, intimate friends

all, crowd the quaint, low-ceilinged, comfortable old vicarage to

repletion, to welcome in right merrily the blithe new year.

 

Gordon Caryll is not here—he is the only absentee of the family. He is

back with his mother under the genial Roman sky. She is not able to

travel, not able to bear the rigor of an English winter, and she grows

more and more exigeante in her old age, and cannot bear her restored

idol out of her sight. So he is with her greatly to Miss Forrester’s

regret.

 

She and Lady Dynely have but just returned from Italy for this wedding;

they go back for the winter when it is over. The first week in May she

and Gordon are to be married, and, after their bridal tour, settle down

at Caryllynne. Already the workmen are busy there, beautifying and

putting it in order. Eric and his wife will take up their abode at the

Abbey, his mother going to her jointure house, Dynely Hall. That is the

programme.

 

The vicarage rooms are full—the gayety is at its height. A set of

“Sixteen Lancers” are pounding away over the drawing-room carpet to the

piping of the eldest Miss Higgins, who adorns the piano stool. They will

support nature presently on lemonade and negus. Eric leads off the

revellers; looking happy and handsome, and in the wildest of wild high

spirits. It is a difficult thing to believe, but on this eve of his