Читать книгу A Mad Marriage - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 11

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any miles away, many miles of land, many leagues of sea, far beyond that "city set on the hill," Quebec, far away in fair England, lay the broad domain of Caryllynne, Gordon Caryll's 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 "old maids of the wood." 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, "Cave canim." 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, "Hatching, Matching, and Dispatching," 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 hand—a lady in sweeping crapes and sables—in widow's weeds—the 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.

"I have driven the ponies very fast from Dynely Abbey, Morgan," she said to the groom; "see that they are slowly exercised and well rubbed down. Has the post arrived?"

The man made a sort of half military salute, as to his commanding officer.

"Post came 'alf an hour ago, ma'am. I'll attend to the ponies, ma'am, all right."

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 for—a 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, 18—.

My Dearest Mother:—I 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.

"'My dearest mother!' 'Your affectionate son,'" she said, bitterly, looking at the letter. "Yes, I will see him—he is right—for the last time. After to-night I shall be as though I never had a child."

She folded the letter, laid it aside methodically in a drawer with many others. Slow, methodical habits had become second nature to Mrs. Caryll. "Yes," she thought, "I will see him once more—once 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."

She looked at her watch—the 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 him—he had been her darling, the treasure of her heart, the apple of her eye, the "only son of his mother, and she was a widow." 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 it—the only two this room contained—two 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.

"There are some things that Heaven itself will not ask us to forgive," was her thought—"this is one of them."

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 dark—the 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 dismissed the man, and paused a moment in the pallid light to look about him. Only two years since he had stood here last—two years. Nothing had changed—nothing but his life, and the hot fever of his own youthful fancy—the fair, treacherous face of a woman had spoiled that forever.

He lifted the heavy bronze knocker and sent the echoes ringing dully down the great hall. The man who opened the door, an old family servant, started back with a cry of surprise and delight.

"Sure to goodness, if it isn't Mr. Gordon come back!"

"Mr. Gordon come back—bad shillings always came back, don't they? How are you, Norton? Is my mother in?"

"Yes, Mr. Gordon. In her own rooms. You know the way—"

"Go and tell her I am here, Norton, and be quick about it, will you? I'll wait."

The man stared, but obeyed. Gordon Caryll stood in the long, echoing, deserted hall, staring moodily out at the moonlight, and not at all sure, in spite of his letter, whether his mother would deign to see him or not. But his doubts were speedily set at rest. Norton reappeared.

"My mistress will see you, Mr. Gordon, sir. She bids you come to her at once in her morning room."

He waited for no more; she would see him; he had hardly dared hope it; she might forgive him—who knew? He ran lightly up the stairs and tapped at the familiar door.

"Come in," his mother's calm voice said, and, hat in hand, he entered.

Mother and son stood face to face. A cluster of wax-lights lit the room brilliantly. In their full glow Mrs. Caryll stood, her tall figure upheld at its tallest, her widow's weeds trailing the carpet, her widow's cap on her dark, unsilvered hair, her face like a face cut in white stone. In that moment, if he could have but seen it, she bore a curious, passing likeness to himself as he had stood, pale and relentless, before the girl who had been his wife.

"Mother!"

She made a sudden, hasty motion for him to stand still and back, a motion again like his own as he had repelled his most miserable wife. He obeyed, closing the door, and knowing his whole fate in that second of time.

She stood for fully a minute, silently looking at him, never softening one whit. She saw the cruel changes those two years had made plainly enough, the youthful face grown grave and worn, the hollow eyes, the colorless cheeks. He had sinned, but he had also suffered. Well, it was right; here and hereafter is not suffering the inevitable penalty of sin?

"Mother," he said, "forgive me."

She made a motion of her hand toward the picture above the mantel.

"You know that he is dead?" were her first words.

"I know it. Oh, mother, I acknowledge all my wrongdoing, my shame, my sin, if you will call it so. I was mad. All I could do to atone, I have done. Mother, forgive me, if you can!"

"Forgive you!" Her eyes blazed out upon him for one moment with a lurid fire. "I will never forgive you so long as we both live!"

He walked over to the low mantel, laid his arm upon it, and his bowed face on his arm. She stood and looked at him, her breast heaving with strong, repressed emotion, her eyes glowing like fire in her pale face.

"For three hundred years," she said, in that tense tone of suppressed passion, "the Carylls have been born, have lived and died beneath this roof, brave men, noble gentlemen always. It was left for my son to bring shame and dishonor at last. The name was never approached by disgrace until you bore it. Your grandfather married a duke's daughter; you, the last of your name, take a wife from the sweepings of New York city—an actress—a street-walker—a creature whose vile, painted face was displayed nightly in the lowest theatre of the worst of American cities. My son, did I call you? I take it back. After to-night I have no son!"

He never moved; he never spoke. His hidden face she could not see. That very silence was as oil to fire.

"One month ago your father died—died of your shame. You stand there as much his murderer as though you had stabbed him to the heart. He died unforgiving you—every rood of land, every shilling of fortune left away from you. Not an inch of Caryllynne is entailed—that you know—not one farthing of the noble inheritance that was your birthright shall you ever possess. The name you dishonor is yours beyond power to recall; but that alone—not one thing more. And after to-night you never cross this threshold again."

Still no reply—still he stood like a figure of stone.

"You say you have atoned," his mother went on, in that low, passionate voice. "Atoned! That means you have dragged the name of Caryll through the mire and filth of a divorce court—that your story and hers, that lost wretch, is in the mouths of all men in Canada and England. Your atonement is worse than your crime. Your atonement shall last your life long. Now go! All I wish to say, I have said—I will never forgive you—I will never look upon your face again!"

The very words he had spoken to his divorced wife! What fatality was at work here? She ceased speaking, and Gordon Caryll lifted his haggard face and looked at her—to the day of her death a look to haunt her with a pain sharper than death itself.

"It shall be as you say," he answered, very quietly. "I don't think I expected anything else—I suppose I deserve nothing better. I will not trouble you again. For the name I have dishonored, have no fear—it shall be dishonored by my bearing it no more. I leave it behind with all the rest. Good-night, mother, and good-by."

And then he was gone. The door closed gently behind him, and she was alone. Alone! she would be alone her life-long now.

She was ghastly white—ashen white to the lips. But—she had done her duty! That thought must console her in all the long, lonely years to come. She stood for nearly half an hour in the spot where he had left her, stock-still. Then she slowly turned, walked across the room, lifted a velvet curtain, and entered what seemed an oratory. Over a sort of altar, a painting of the Madonna di San Sisto hung—an exquisite copy; and the heavenly mother, with the serene, uplifted face, holding the child-Christ in her arms, was there before the earthly mother, who for one rash act, had cast her only son off forever.

On a prayer-desk, before this altar, a Bible lay. At random she opened it—in a blind sort of way seeking for comfort. And this is what she read:

"Behold the king weepeth and mourneth for Absalom. And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the people, for the people heard say that day how the king was grieved for his son. But the king covered his face, and the king cried with a loud voice, 'Oh, my son Absalom! Oh, Absalom, my son, my son!'"