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

retired about midnight, still

seemingly perfectly well. In the morning her maid found her dead

in her bed. Suspicion of foul play is at work, and a post-mortem

will probably discover the cause of this death, which all

theatre-going Parisians will deeply regret.”

 

*

 

It is the close of an exquisite June day. The old, long-deserted

gardens of Caryllynne glow in the warm rose light. Down one of the paths

an elderly lady, with snow-white hair, is being wheeled in an invalid

chair by a dark damsel, with black sombre eyes and a look of prophetic

melancholy on her face. The elderly lady glances over her shoulder with

tender, kindly eyes.

 

“Are you not tired, Donny?” she asks, gently. “You must be. You have

been wheeling me for fully an hour. Do call Esther, my child.”

 

The black, melancholy eyes light.

 

“Oh! no, grandmamma—I never grow tired when with you.”

 

“My dear, how mournful you look, though. Do we not make you happy,

little one? Tell grandmamma what it is.”

 

“Happy!” she clasps her hands almost with passion. “Oh, so happy!—so

happy that I grow afraid. It is like Heaven to be with you, and papa,

and mamma France. No one was ever good to me before since Joan

died—except that night—him.”

 

“Poor Terry!” Mrs. Caryll sighs; “he was good to all things. And so it

is excess of happiness that makes you sad? A paradox, surely, but I am

glad it is no worse.”

 

She takes her in her arms and kisses her fondly.

 

“I want you to be happy, my child—I want to make you happy, to atone in

some way for all the unhappiness I have given your father. Love him,

Donny, for his past life—oh, my own dear Gordon has been dreary and

loveless enough.”

 

“I do love him,” the girl answers, her great eyes shining. “Who could

help it? So noble, so handsome, so good he is. And he is happy now—who

would not be happy with Mamma France? And to think that to-morrow is

their wedding day, and that I am to be one of the bride-maids! How

strange it seems.”

 

“It is a happiness he has waited for long—poor Gordon,” his mother

answers.

 

“And I have been thinking, too, grandmamma, of—of her,” she drops her

voice, and the great eyes dilate; “it was all so sudden, and so

dreadful. Oh! I wonder what it was!—what made her die like that? Did

they ever find out?”

 

“Not for certain, Donny, dear. Ah! don’t let us talk about it

to-night—on this happy bridal eve. Poor soul! it was a terrible fate.”

She shudders as she says it. She will not tell the daughter she was

poisoned. Poisoned—whether by herself, maid, or whom, has never been

discovered. There are those who have strong suspicions of the truth,

but—in Naples, Prince Di Venturini reigns in the halls of his

forefathers, and in this world at least justice does not seem likely to

reach him.

 

On the terrace above, Gordon Caryll walks, France by his side, and both

pace to and fro in the roselight of the summer sunset, with hearts too

full of bliss for many words. France looks down at the pair below, the

pink flush of the sky kindling into brightness Donny’s dusk face.

 

“She will be very handsome,” Miss Forrester says; “and—very like her

mother.”

 

His face clouds for a second.

 

“Poor child!—yes. Let us trust the likeness will end there. How fond my

mother seems of her. They are never happy apart. France!” he looks at

her suddenly, and a smile that is more radiant than the sunset lights

his grave face, “this time to-morrow you will be suffering agonies of

seasickness crossing the channel. You always are seasick, you know.”

 

“Yes, I know.” She smiles back for a moment, then grows grave. “Don’t

let us visit Paris, Gordon, I never want to see Paris more. I can

never—no, never—suffer again in this life as I have suffered there.”

 

“We will go wherever you please, my own France.”

 

There is silence again. The rose light is fading from the sky—its

last rays fall on one of the many painted windows of the old manor,

the motto of the house, cut in the panes, shines out:

 

“Post tenebr�, lux,” she reads. “Oh, Gordon! the past has been very

dark for you—if my love can lighten the future there will never be

another dark hour.”

 

*

 

In her dower house Lady Dynely, the elder, dwells alone. She has never

quite recovered from the shock of that death bed in Paris—she never

will.

 

“From first to last my own selfish love for my son spoiled his life,”

she ever says; “he did not know what selfishness meant. I and mine

blighted his existence—brought him to his death. He forgave

me—Heaven may—I never will forgive myself.”

 

So she lives on, quietly doing good to all. No one can accuse her of

selfishness now. Her son is a better son than he ever was before, but

she knows that he, who died that rainy February morning, loved and

honored her, as no human being ever did before, ever will again. They

brought him home, and the great vault of the Dynelys was opened, and he

was laid to sleep with them. People wondered at it a good deal—but then

Lady Dynely had always been a little eccentric since her husband’s

death. They wonder still more as they read the inscription above him. It

is a slab of plain gray granite, with gold lettering, and it says this:

 

SACRED TO THE MEMORY

OF

TERENCE DENNISON,

 

Who Gave His Life To Save Another’s,

FEBRUARY 29TH, 18—.

�TAT 25 YEARS.

 

“_Greater love than this no man hath:—That he lay down his life for his

friend._”

 

*

 

In this same rosy sunset, Crystal, Viscountess Dynely, sits alone, fair

and sweet, and youthful, as this time last year when she walked about

the Lincolnshire lanes and waited for Terry Dennison to come and ask her

to be his wife. She is alone, dressed for dinner in the crisp white

muslin and blue ribbons that become her childish fairness best, and

which her husband best likes to see her wear. And if that husband

fancied hodden-gray or sackcloth and ashes, be very sure this

exceptional wife would never have donned other array. She is waiting for

him now to come to dinner, listening with love’s impatience for the

first sound of the footstep, the first note of the gay whistle she

knows so well. For she is happy once more, poor Crystal, and Eric is all

her own again.

 

She knows the whole story. Weeks after, when strength had come back to

the weak frame, and light to the dim blue eyes, sitting side by side,

his arm around her, Eric had told all—all. Nothing had been hidden, and

she learned at last how noble was the heart she had refused, the heart

stilled forever. The blue eyes dilated, the lips parted and quivered,

the tender face grew very pale, and she flung her arms about her husband

wildly, and strained him to her.

 

“Oh, Eric!” she cried out; “to think it might have been you!”

 

Oh, selfish human heart! To the depths of her soul she wondered at the

brave generosity of him who was gone; to her inmost heart she bowed down

in reverence. She wept for his loss, real and passionate tears—dear,

brave, noble Terry! her playmate and friend,—but her first thought was

for her own idol, her first impulse one of unutterable gladness that it

had not been he. She caught her breath, with the horror of it, and while

her tears fell for Terry, she held the man for whom Terry had died,

close to her impassioned little heart, and cried, again and again:

 

“Oh, my darling! my darling! to think it might have been you!”

 

As Eric never had, never would, she knew Terry had loved her. She was

grateful to him; she strewed his coffin with flowers; she wept her

pretty eyes red, again and again, over his grave; but she loved Eric,

and she never thought of that dreadful morning under the dripping trees

of the Bois de Boulogne without a prayer of trembling thankfulness that

it was he who was taken, and not her beloved.

 

And Eric is very good to her, very gentle and tender with her, very

affectionate, after the manner of men and husbands. And she does not ask

much; she gives so greatly that a small return suffices. That small

return, let me say, the Right Honorable Lord Viscount Dynely gives

willingly and from his heart; and Crystal is happy—and the curtain

falls to universal felicity? Well, as the leopard cannot change his

spots, nor the Ethiop his skin, so men of Lord Dynely’s stamp do not

change their nature. Kind he will be to her always—Terry Dennison’s

dead face would rise from the grave to haunt him if he were

not—affectionate, too, after his light, for in a sultan-like, off-hand

way, lordly Eric is fond of his little wife; faithful, also, with a

fidelity that will include more or less admiration and attention for

every pretty woman he meets; but for Crystal, or France, or one of us

all, to be perfectly happy, is not given to anyone born of woman.

This, Crystal knows—that all the happiness that is hers, all that

ever will be hers, has come to her across Terry Dennison’s grave.

 

THE END.

+––––––––––––––––––––—+

| Transcriber’s Note: |

| |

| Printer’s punctuation errors were corrected. |

| |

| The following suspected spelling errors were addressed. |

| |

| Page 36 ‘Waters’ to ‘Watters’ |

| ‘with Mrs Watters if you will’ |

| |

| Page 56 ‘sideling’ to ‘sidelong’ |

| ‘and with a sidelong glance’ |

| |

| Page 62 ‘ail’ to ‘all’ |

| ‘keep me from seeing him at all’ |

| |

| Page 73 ‘no was’ to ‘was no’ |

| ‘there was no denying that’ |

| |

| Page 118 ‘anounced’ to ‘announced’ |

| ‘publicly announced to all’ |

| |

| Page 136 ‘think I’ to ‘I think’ |

| ‘I think he will recall me’ |

| |

| Page 164 ‘hvve’ to ‘have’ |

| ‘until you have heard all’ |

| |

| Page 318 ‘etcetra’ to ‘etcetera’ |

| ‘the diamond bracelets, etcetera were not’ |

| |

| Page 325 ‘wofully’ to ‘woefully’ |

| ‘face looks woefully wan’ |

| |

| Page 333 ‘Luxemboug’ to ‘Luxembourg’ |

| ‘we visited the Luxembourg’ |

| |

| Page 360 ‘insolently’ to ‘insolent’ |

| ‘a coolly insolent smile’ |

| |

+––––––––––––––––––––—+

1876.

 

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