A Mad Marriage by May Agnes Fleming (best ebook reader android .TXT) đ
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beenâand to-morrow she must go forth out into the great, pitiless
world, with only her beautiful face and her wicked heart to make her
way. What dark story lay behind her? I wondered; and was this fair,
forsaken wife most to be pitied or blamed?
The hours of the evening crept onâten, eleven; she never stirred. And
when, sometime before midnight, I crept away with my baby to my room,
the motionless little figure was there at the window still.
Next morning dawned cloudless and fair. Bettine was up betimes to
prepare breakfastâfor the last time I served my little mistress. She
was dead silent through it all, and ate it in her travelling suit of
dark gray, all ready to depart. There was a train at nine; it was
half-past eight now, and the cabriolet ordered from Quebec was at the
door. She stooped for a moment over her babe; but even in this parting
hour she never kissed it, and my heart hardened against her once more.
âIt is as Bettine says,â I thought; âshe has the face of an angel and
the heart of a stone.â
Even as I thought it, she arose and looked at meâthat charming smile
upon her charming face, that had bewitched me against my will the very
first time we met, that bewitched me out of my hot anger once again. She
held out her hand.
âGood-by, my solemn Joan. Donât think too badly or me when I am goneâa
poor little woman with whom life has gone hard. You are a good girl, and
I shall always keep a grateful remembrance of you in my none too tender
heart. Take good care of my babyâyou shall be amply rewarded. I may
come back years from now to look at itâwho knows? At all events you
will hear from me monthly. And, if we never meet again, let me thank you
once more for your faithful and patient companionship all these months.â
They were the last words she ever spoke in Saltmarsh. In the yellow
sunshine of the soft summer day Mrs. Gordon passed out of the House to
Let, and out of my life forever. I watched her enter the cab, caught one
last glimpse of a pale, lovely face, of a little gloved hand waving from
the window, then the driver cracked his whip, and they were whirling
away in a cloud of dust to where quaint, gray, silent old Quebec slept
in morning quiet, the golden sunshine flooding its steep streets, its
tin roofs, its lofty spires, its high stone walls. Mrs. Gordon was gone.
Before nightfall I had taken the baby home and dismissed Bettine. Part
of the furniture I kept, part I sent into Quebec and sold. Late in the
evening I carried the key to Mr. Barteaux, with his rent, and on my
return my own hands replaced the placard over the gate. Saltmarsh was
once more a âHouse to Let.â
She had come among us a mysteryâshe left us a greater mystery still. I
write this record for the childâs sakeâone day it may need it. I feel
that the story I have told does not end here, that it is but the prelude
to what is to come. So surely as that woman and this child live and
meet, troubleâsad and deep trouble to that man Gordon Caryllâwill come
of it. I say again I write this for the childâs sake. One day, even what
I have set down here may be of use to her. If I die I will place it in
safe hands, to be given to her, and so I sign myself
JOAN KENNEDY.
CHAPTER V.
AT CARYLLYNNE.
Many miles away, many miles of land, many leagues of sea, far beyond
that âcity set on the hill,â Quebec, far away in fair England, lay the
broad domain of Caryllynne, Gordon Caryllâs ancestral home.
It lay in one of the brightest, sunniest of the sunny sea-side shires, a
fair and stately inheritance, stretching away for miles of woodland and
meadowland, to the wide sea, sparkling in the late August sunshine, as
if sown with stars.
Under a massive Norman arch, between lofty iron gates, you went up a
sweep of broad drive, with a waving sea of many-colored foliage on
either hand, slim, silver-stemmed birches, copper beeches with leaves
like blood-red rubies, sombre pines, hoary oaks, graceful elms, and
whole rows of prim poplars, those âold maids of the wood.â Far away this
brilliant forest of Caryllynne stretched to the emerald cliffs above the
bright summer sea, to the little village nestling between those green
cliffs, a village which for two centuries had called the Squire of
Caryllynne, lord.
You went up this noble avenue for a mile or more past the picturesque
Swiss cottage that did duty as a gate lodge, past green and golden
slopes of sward, past parterres bright with gorgeous autumnal flowers,
to the Manor house itself, an irregular structure of gray stone,
turreted and many-gabled and much ivy-grown. There was a stately portico
entrance, a flight of shallow-stone steps, and two couchant stone dogs,
with the ancient motto, âCave canim.â It was a very old house, one
portion as old as the reign of the greatly-married-man, Henry the
Eighth. A gift, indeed, from his Most Christian Majesty to Sir Jasper
Caryll, Knight, and cousin of Katherine Parr, on the happy occasion of
his last marriage.
Sir Jasper Caryll, Kt., had been sleeping beneath the chancel of
Roxhaven Church for three hundred odd years, with a brass tablet above
him recording his virtues; and many Carylls had been born and married,
and had died, within those gray stone walls since. The old, old business
of life, âHatching, Matching, and Dispatching,â had gone on and on
within those antique chambers; and Mistress Marian Caryll, widow of the
late Godfrey Caryll, reigned now in the Manor alone.
The old house had been modernized. Plate-glass windows, a tessellated
hall, velvet-carpeted stairways, conservatories gay with flowers, these
made the ancient dwelling bright. Flowers, indeed, were everywhere, in
gilded vases in half a hundred nooks, in swinging baskets from the
ceilings, and over all the amber August sunshine slanting like golden
rain.
The last light of the brilliant autumn day was falling softly over sea
and woodland, meadow and copse; the western windows of the Manor, facing
seaward, glinted through the trees like sparks of fire. The sweet,
tremulous hush of eventide lay over the land, as through the park gates
a pony phaeton dashed up the long, tree-shaded drive. Two black
high-steppers, a dainty little basket carriage, and a lady sitting very
erect and upright, driving with a strong, firm handâa lady in sweeping
crapes and sablesâin widowâs weedsâthe mistress of this fair domain.
A groom came forward to hold the horses. As she flung him the reins and
stepped out you saw that Mrs. Caryll was a very tall and stately lady,
bearing her forty years of life well. A tall, pale, rather cold, rather
stern, rather haughty lady, handsomer perhaps in her stately middle age
than she could ever have been in youth.
âI have driven the ponies very fast from Dynely Abbey, Morgan,â she said
to the groom; âsee that they are slowly exercised and well rubbed down.
Has the post arrived?â
The man made a sort of half military salute, as to his commanding
officer.
âPost came âalf an hour ago, maâam. Iâll attend to the ponies, maâam,
all right.â
Mrs. Caryll passed on with a slow and measured sort of tread up the
stone steps, past the great couchant dogs, along the vast domed hall,
hung with suits of mail and antlered heads, up the wide stairway and
into her own rooms. The rose light of the sunset filled those elegantly
appointed apartments, and lying upon an inlaid table the mistress of the
Manor saw what she looked forâa sealed letter. Her heart gave a bound,
cold and well disciplined as it was, but (it was characteristic of the
woman) before taking it up, she slowly laid aside her bonnet and veil,
drew off her gloves, and then deliberately lifted it. A moment she
paused to glance at the free flowing writing she knew so well, then she
opened and read:
LONDON, August 25th, 18â.
MY DEAREST MOTHER:âI have arrived but this moment. By the first
train I leave for home. I write this simply to announce my coming.
I will be with you almost as soon as my note. I know that in spite
of all you will grant me this last interview at least.
Your affectionate son,
GORDON CARYLL.
She crushed the brief letter in her strong white hand. Her fixedly pale
face, even in the glow of the sunset, seemed to grow paler, her firm
lips set themselves in one tight unpleasant line.
ââMy dearest mother!â âYour affectionate son,ââ she said, bitterly,
looking at the letter. âYes, I will see himâhe is rightâfor the last
time. After to-night I shall be as though I never had a child.â
She folded the letter, laid it aside methodically in a drawer with many
others. Slow, methodical habits had become second nature to Mrs. Caryll.
âYes,â she thought, âI will see him once moreâonce more. Whatever he
may have to say in his own defence I will hear. To him and to all
mankind I trust I shall always do my duty. But come what may, after
to-night I will never see him again.â
She looked at her watchâthe train that would possibly bring him was due
even now. In a little time he would be with her. For two years she had
not seen himâhe had been her darling, the treasure of her heart, the
apple of her eye, the âonly son of his mother, and she was a widow.â Her
whole soul cried out for him, and she stood here, and crushed down every
voice of nature, and calmly resolved after this once to see him no more
forever.
She walked across the room, and paused before the chimney-piece. Two
pictures hung above itâthe only two this room containedâtwo portraits.
One, the one at which she looked, was the portrait of her husband,
painted twenty years ago, in the gallant and golden days of his youth, a
present to his bride. A handsome face; the Carylls had ever been
handsome men; and this proud, self-contained woman had loved her husband
with a great and deathless love. Now, he too lay in Roxhaven church;
only a month ago they had laid him there, glad to escape by death the
shame brought upon him by an only son.
âThere are some things that Heaven itself will not ask us to forgive,â
was her thoughtââthis is one of them.â
Beneath this portrait hung the other, a smaller one, of her son. Two
years ago that had been painted, on the eve of his departure for Canada
with his regiment. The frank fair face of the lad of twenty, gray-eyed
and yellow-haired, smiled at her from the canvas. With a resolute hand
she took it down, and turned it with the face to the wall. A little
thing again, but it told how small the mercy Gordon Caryll might expect
when he stood before his mother.
It had grown darkâthe pale August moon rose up the misty sky. The
trees, waving faintly in the salt sea wind, cast long, slanting shadows
across the dusty whiteness of the high road, as from the town beyond,
from the brightly lit station, a fly from the railway drove through the
gates and up the moonlit avenue to the house. A young man sprang out,
paid and
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