Читать книгу A Mad Marriage - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 13

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is trial was over, his sentence was passed, and Gordon Caryll went out from his mother's presence an outcast and banished man.

"All for love, and the world well lost," he said to himself, with something that was almost a smile. "Ah, well! Come what will, I have been blessed. For four months I had my fool's paradise—let that thought console me, in all the years of outlawry that are to come."

He did not leave the house directly. On the landing he paused a moment irresolute, then turned, ran up another stairway, opened one of the many doors that flanked the long corridor, and entered the rooms that had been his own. Only the moonlight lit them, but that was brilliant almost as day. With that slight, sad smile on his lips he walked through them. Everywhere traces of his dead father's pride in him, his mother's love for him, were scattered with lavish hand. More luxurious almost were those rooms than his mother's own.

"They will serve for my mother's heir," the young soldier thought—"whoever that may be. Lucia Dynely's little son Eric, very likely. She was always fond of Lucia; so, for that matter, was I. My pretty cousin! It is but seven miles distant, and there is time and to spare. Suppose I look her up for the last time before I go forth into the outer darkness, and be heard of no more?"

He selected a few trifles, a picture of this mother, another of this "Cousin Lucia" of his thoughts, a gold-mounted meerschaum pipe—then with a last backward glance of farewell at the pretty moonlit rooms, he ran down the stairs, out of the silent house, the great door closed with a clang behind him, and all was over.

He made his way to the stables, startling grooms and stable boys as though he had been a ghost.

"Saddle Dark Diamond, Morris," he ordered; "I'm going to Dynely Abbey, and will leave him there behind me. You can go over for him to-morrow."

He vaulted lightly into the saddle, cantered down the avenue, out of the great gates, and beyond the far-stretching park that was never to call him master.

As he stopped for one last look, never, it seemed to him, had the old ancestral home looked so noble and desirable as on this August night, under the yellow light of the summer moon.

"A fair and stately heritage to yield for a girl's face," he thought, bitterly. "May my successor be wiser than I, and be kept from that maddest of all man's madness—loving a woman!"

His horse was a fleet one—he spurred him on to a gallop. For miles, as he rode, the woods of Caryllynne stretched, on the other hand the cottage lights twinkled, the village forge flamed forth lurid red, old familiar landmarks met him everywhere, and far beyond the broad sweep of the silver-lighted sea.

Less than half an hour brought him to his destination, Dynely Abbey, the seat of Viscount Dynely—a huge historic pile, that long centuries ago had been a Cistercian monastery, in the days when the "Keys and Cross and Triple Crown" held mighty sway through all broad England. As he rode at a gallop up the entrance avenue, in view of the great gray Abbey, pearly white in the moonlight, his horse shied at some white object, so suddenly and violently as almost to unseat his rider. Gordon Caryll laughed as he leaped off and patted him soothingly on the head.

"So ho, Diamond! Easy, old fellow. Does the sight of my pretty Cousin Lucia, in her white dress and shawl, upset your nervous system like this?"

He threw the bridle over a tree, and advanced to where a lady, in a silk dinner dress, and wrapped in a white fleecy shawl, stood.

"Lady Dynely," he said, lifting his hat, "good-evening."

She had been slowly pacing, as though for an evening constitutional, round and round a great ornamental fish-pond. As horse and rider appeared she had paused in some alarm—then, as the unexpected visitor approached, and the bright light of the moon fell on his face, she had uttered a low cry of great surprise and delight, and held out to him both hands.

"Gordon!" she cried. "Oh, Gordon! Can it be you?"

She was a pretty woman—three-and-twenty, perhaps, with a fair blonde face, a profusion of pale blonde hair, a tall, willowy, fragile figure. The fair face, the pale blue eyes, lit up now with genuine delight.

"I, Lady Dynely. You hardly looked for me to-night, did you? And yet, you must have known I would come."

Her color rose. She withdrew the hand he held still.

"I did not know it. How could I tell? Your mother was here to-day—she said nothing about it. When did you come?"

"Two hours ago. And as to-morrow morning, by the first train, I leave again for good, I ran the risk of not finding you at home, and rode over to say good-by. By the way, it's rather a coincidence, but one August night two years ago, you and I shook hands and parted on this very spot. You were dressed in white that night, too, I remember, and looked as you always do look, belle cousine, fair and sweet, and pale as a lily."

Again her color rose, but the blue, startled eyes fixed themselves on his face.

"Say good-by—leave for good!" she repeated. "What is it you mean? Gordon, have you seen your mother?"

"Yes, Lucia, I have seen my mother. I have just come from Caryllynne. I have bidden farewell to it and to my mother forever."

She stood looking at him in painful silence—that sensitive rose-pink color coming and going in her cheeks. In the crystal moonlight she could see the great and saddening change in him. She clasped both hands around his arm, and looked up at him with soft, pitiful eyes.

"Gordon—cousin," she said, gently, "is it true, this story they tell, that is in the papers, that all London rang with before we left? It must be true, and yet—oh, Gordon! unless you tell me with your own lips I cannot believe."

"Then I tell you," he moodily answered, "it is true."

"That you married an actress—an—oh, Gordon!" she said passionately, "I would rather see you dead!"

"You are not alone in that, I fancy," he said, with a drearily reckless laugh. "All the same, I have done it. All the same, too, I have had enough of reproach and bitterness for one night—it is my last, remember—don't you take up the cry against me. Those gentle lips of yours, ma belle, were never made to say cruel things. We have been good friends always—let us so part."

She sighed wearily, her hands still loosely clasped his arm, her blue, pitying eyes still fixed on his face. His gloomy gaze was bent on the water-lilies in the pond, whose pale heads he was mercilessly switching off with his riding whip.

"I am sorry—I am sorry. But your mother, Gordon, surely she pities you and forgives you. I know how stern and resolute she can be where she thinks her duty is concerned; but you, her only son, whom she loves so dearly—"

"She has disinherited and cast me off forever. It is all right, Lucia. I don't deny the justice of my sentence, only you see one looks rather for mercy than for justice from one's mother."

"But she does not mean it—she speaks in anger. She will repent and call you back."

He smiled—a slow, hard, inexorable smile.

"It is a little late for all that. What is done is done. I will never go back. She says truly, I have disgraced the name—the only atonement I can make is to renounce it. She has ordered me from her sight and her home forever—one does not wait to be told that twice."

"How could she—how could she!" his cousin murmured, the soft blue eyes filling and brimming over; "you, her only son—all she has left—whom she loved so dearly. Oh! how could she do it! Gordon, I, too, have a son, my little Eric, and I love him so devotedly, so entirely, that I feel, I know, no crime he could commit, though it were murder itself, could ever for one second change that love. Do what he might—yes, the very worst man can do, I would still love him and take him to my heart."

Her pale face glowed, her pale eyes lit, her voice arose. Her cousin looked at her tenderly.

"I can believe that," he said; "but you see, Lucia, there are mothers and mothers—and Viscountess Dynely and Mrs. Caryll are of two very different orders. I never did prefer the Spartan sort myself, ready to run the knife through their nearest and dearest at a moment's notice. Still, I repeat, my sentence has been deserved, and is just."

"Gordon, tell me all about it, will you? I know so little, I read the papers, of course, but still—"

"Is it worth while, Lucia? It is not a pleasant or profitable story. Do you really care to know?"

"Gordon!"

"Oh, I know all your affectionate interest in me and my concerns, fairest cousin, and I don't mind boring you with the details of a young fool's folly. Folly! good heaven above! What a fool I was! What a gullible, wooden-headed, imbecile idiot I must have been!"

"You—you loved her, Gordon?"

"Well, yes, I suppose it was love, that blind and besotted fever her beauty and her witcheries threw me into. She was a sorceress whose accursed spells sent every man she met under sixty straightway out of his senses. Why she threw the rest over for me (she had half the battalion at her feet) was clear enough. I was the youngest, the richest, and the greatest ass in Toronto. She turned scores of other heads, but not to that pitch of idiocy which proffers wedding rings. I had only seen her six times when I asked her to marry me—you may faintly guess the depth and breadth of my imbecility when I tell you that."

"She was handsome, Gordon?"

"She was more than handsome, Lucia. She had a beauté du diable whose like I have never seen—that no man could resist—a dark, richly-colored, Southern sort of beauty, of the earth earthy. She was small and slender, with a waist you could snap like a pipe-stem, two large black eyes, like a panther's, precisely, and a smile that sent you straight out of your senses. All the fellows in Toronto raved of her—she was the toast of the mess, the talk of the town. Only the women fought shy of her—they took her gauge by intuition, I suppose. Before she had been a week in Toronto, Major Lovell and his daughter were the topic, in ball-room, and boudoir, and barracks."

"She was a Miss Lovell?" Lady Dynely asked, in a constrained sort of tone. One hand still rested on his arm, and as they talked they walked slowly round and round the fish-pond. In the days that were gone she had been very fond of her dashing boy cousin and playmate—very fond—with sisterly fondness she told herself—nothing more.

"You will hear. I had been a year in Toronto before she came, a dull and dreary year enough, with nothing but the daily drill, the parade, the routine of military life, the provincial balls and dinner parties, the provincial flirtations with dark Canadian belles to break the monotony. All at once she came, and everything changed. Major Lovell brought his daughter among us—and it seemed to me my life began. He was a disreputable old duffer enough, this Lovell, a drunkard, a sharper at cards, a rooker at billiards, living on his half-pay and his whole wits. He was a widower, with a daughter out in Bermuda with her mother's friends, who declined to live with her rascally old father. He was in the habit of disappearing and reappearing in Toronto at odd times—this time, after a longer absence than usual, he reappeared with his daughter.

"He met me one bleak autumn night lounging aimlessly down one of the principal streets, dressed for a heavy sacrificial dinner party, yawning at the boredom in prospective, wishing all civilian dinner-givers at the deuce, and, willy-nilly, he linked his seedy old arm in mine.

"'En route for Rogers', dear boy?' he said, with a grin, 'and looking ennuied to death even at the thought of what is in store for you. Why make a martyr of yourself, Gordon, my lad—why sacrifice yourself on the altar of acquaintanceship? Throw over the bloated timber merchant, come to my lowly wigwam, and let's have a friendly game at écarté, I'll give you a deviled kidney, and a glass of sherry—you can drop in at Rogers' when the heavy feeding's over. Besides,'—after a pause, this, and with a sidelong glance—'I want to show you my little girl—bless her! She's come to keep house for her old dad at last.'

"I made some faint resistance—only faint, and yielded. I had a weakness for écarté; the major was past-master of the game, although he made his lessons rather expensive to youngsters like myself.

"'Neville and Dalton and two or three more of Yours are coming,' he said, as he inserted his latch key. 'Rosie will give you a bit of supper by and by, and sing you a song, if you like that sort of thing. Come in, Gordon—come in, my boy, and thrice welcome to the old man's modest mansion.'

"And then I was in, out of the cold, dark Canadian night, in a fire-lit, lamp-lit parlor, looking with dazzled eyes down upon the loveliest face, I thought, that firelight or sunlight ever shone on.

"She had sprung up at our entrance—she had been crouched in kittenish fashion on the hearth rug, and two big, wonderful eyes, of tawny blackness, were looking up at me. I thought of Balzac's 'Girl with the Golden Eyes'—these were black or yellow, just as the shifting firelight rose or fell. As I stood staring in a stupefied trance of wonder and admiration, the major's fat, unctuous old voice droned in my ear.

"'Rosamond, my child—my young friend, Mr. Caryll, of Caryllynne, Devon, England, and Her Majesty's—the Royal Rifles, Toronto, Canada. Gordon, my boy—my little daughter Rosie.'

"Then a little brown hand slipped out to me, the dark luminous eyes and the red dimpling lips smiled together.

"'I am very pleased to meet Mr. Gordon Caryll of—— what's all the rest, papa? Very pleased to meet anybody, I'm sure, in this cold, nasty, dreary Canada.'

"'You don't like Canada then, Miss Lovell?' I managed to stammer. 'I am sorry for that. We must try and change your opinion of it before long. What with skating and sleighing, it isn't half a bad place.'

"She pouted and laughed like a child. She was singularly childish in form and face, hardly looking sixteen.

"'Not half a bad place! Where you grill alive three summer months and shiver to death nine winter ones. Oh, my dear Bermuda! Where the hearts were as warm as the climate, and the faces as sunny as the skies. No fear of being lonely, or miserable, or neglected there. If papa would let file, I would go back to-morrow.'

"'But papa won't,' the major put in with a chuckle; 'papa can't spare his one ewe lamb yet. Mr. Caryll here, I am sure, will do his best to make time pass, little one. Hark! I hear a knocking in the south entry—the other fellows at last.'

"Then with much laughter, and stamping and noise, three or four military men came clattering in out of the cold and damp darkness, and were presented to 'My daughter, Rosamond.'

"I don't know how it was with them; I can answer for myself—from the first moment I looked on Rosamond Lovell's face I lost my head. You know me well enough. Lucia," the speaker broke off with a half laugh, "to know I never do that sort of thing by halves. But this was different from anything that had gone before. I looked on those wonderful dusky eyes only once, and said to myself, 'I will win Rosamond Lovell for my wife, if it be in the power of mortal man to win her.'

"I lost no time in setting about my wooing. No wonder the other fellows laughed. They admired old Lovell's daughter, too, no doubt—that was a matter of course—but not to the depth of lunacy. They left that for me. I declined écarté, I declined deviled kidney, declined the doubtful sherry—I was sufficiently intoxicated already. The peerless Rosamond smiled upon me but shyly; she was not accustomed to such sudden and overpowering devotion—timid angel! Still, she did smile, and let me accompany her to the distant corner where the piano stood, while the other men played for ponies in the distance, and the major with great impartiality fleeced all alike. She played for me on the jingly piano; she sang for me in a rich contralto.

"I can see her now as she sat there that first fatal night, in a pink dress, white roses in her belt and in her bosom, the lamplight streaming across her rich, dusk loveliness. Paugh! the smell of white roses will turn me sick all my life.

"It was late when we broke up, and Miss Lovell, shrinking pettishly from the other men, held out her hand with a soft good-night to me. I went out from the warm, bright room, into the black, rain-beaten midnight, with head and heart in a whirl. The others, not too pensive over their losses at first, chaffed me clumsily, but the hospitable major had bled them all so freely at écarté, that their deadly, lively jokes soon lapsed into moody silence. To-morrow evening, they were to go back for their revenge, and the friendly major had asked me too.

"'Though you did throw us over, Caryll, my boy,' he said in his big debonnaire voice, 'you'll keep little Rosie from moping herself to death. Yes, yes, come to-morrow and fetch her the new songs. She has a passion for music, my little one, and a voice that would make Lind look to her laurels if the poor old dad could afford to cultivate it.'

"I tossed feverishly through the dark morning hours. 'Rosamond! Rosamond!' I kept repeating; 'there is music in the very name, music in her voice when she speaks, music celestial in her tones when she sings. And to think that my little white "Rose of the World" should be daughter to such a confounded old cad as that. But I will marry her and take her home to Caryllynne and my mother,' I thought; and I could picture to myself my mother's whole heart going out in love and welcome, to her son's fair young bride. I didn't much fear a rejection—I was constitutionally sanguine, and she had been as kind as heart could desire. Unless—and I grew cold and hot at the mere fancy—unless she had left a lover behind in Bermuda.

"'At the very earliest possible hour next morning, I made an elaborate toilet and sallied forth for conquest. I purchased an armful of music, and presented myself at Major Lovell's dingy little cottage. The major was out—Miss Rosamond was in—that was what the grimy maid-of-all-work told me. I entered the parlor, and Rosamond was there to meet and welcome me, more fresh, and youthful, and lovely in the broad, bright sunshine, than even under the lamplight last night.

"'Oh, what quantities of music! Oh, how kind of me! All the songs she liked best. Oh, how could she ever thank me enough!'

"'By letting me come to—to see you every day. By—caring for me a little. By letting me say how happy it will make me to be welcomed here by you.'

"Stammering over this speech, blushing and floundering like any other hobbledehoy in the agonies of calf-love, I lifted her hand to my lips, à la Sir Charles Grandison, and kissed it.

"I can imagine now how she must have been laughing inwardly at the green young fool she had hooked. But private theatricals were in her line, her maidenly confusion and embarrassment were done to the life.

"I lingered for hours, while she tried over the songs, and dimly realized two facts: that her knowledge of piano-forte music was but meagre after all, and that she had really very little to say for herself. Only dimly; I was much too far gone to realize anything very clearly, except that she was the loveliest little creature the Canadian sun shone on.

"That evening I was back. Again Rosamond and I had our corner, our singing and our tête-à-tête; again that old wolf, Lovell, fleeced those big innocent military lambs—as a shearer his sheep. That was the story over and over for a week—at the end of that time, I walked up to Major Lovell one forenoon, and demanded the priceless boon of his daughter's hand. The old rascal's start of amazement and consternation was capital.

"'His daughter! his Rosie! his little girl! And only a week since we had met! The difference in our positions, too! What did I mean!' Here the major inflated himself like an enraged turkey-cock, and glared fiercely out of his fiery little eyes. 'Not to insult him, surely! A poor man he might be—alas! was, but always an officer and a gentleman.'

"Here he stopped sonorously to blow his nose. 'Very little of a gentleman,' I remember thinking, even then.

"'Have I taken a viper into the bosom of my family?' pursued the old humbug, melodramatically. 'You, Mr. Gordon Caryll, sir, are heir to a large estate and fortune—the last of an ancient and distinguished line; it is also true that I am but one remove from a pauper, still—'

"'Good Heaven, Lovell!' I cried out, impetuously cutting short this rhodomontade. 'What bosh are you talking? I mean what I say, I mean it more than I ever meant anything in my life. Insult—nonsense! I love your daughter, and I ask you to give her to me for my wife. We have known each other but a week, it is true. What of that? Love is not a plant of slow growth—it can spring up like the gourd of Jonas, fully grown in a night.'

"I think I must have read that somewhere. It struck me even at the time as sounding rather absurd, and I looked to see if the major was laughing. No doubt the old villain was, for he had turned away to the window, and was elaborately wiping his eyes.

"'And she—my Rosamond,' he said, at length, in a voice husky with emotion and much whiskey-punch—'my little one, who, only a year ago, it seems to me, played with her dolls, and—and marbles, and—er—that sort of thing, can it be that she is indeed a woman, and returns your—er—'pon my life, very flattering passion?'

"I smiled exultantly as I recalled a little scene of last night, in that musical nook of ours, the lamp turned low, the music at a stand-still, and 'I mark the king, and play,' 'Your deal, Deverell,' 'Five to one on Innes,' coming from the unromantic écarté players at the other end—a scene where I, holding Miss Rosamond Lovell's two hands in mine, had poured forth a rhapsodical story of consuming passion. And the hands had not been drawn away, and, as the exquisite face drooped in the dim light, she had whispered that which had made me the happiest man on earth.

"'Yes,' I told the major, 'that was all right; she had consented to be my wife—nothing was needed but his sanction. And I hoped he would agree to the marriage being at once. What need was there of delay? I was of age, and two months over—what need of waiting? I wanted to make sure of my prize.'

"It was the most out-and-out case of insanity on record. I was mad—sheer mad. I cannot account for my besotted folly in any other way. The old fox made a feint of not consenting at first. She was too young—our acquaintance was so scandalously short—what would Toronto say? What would my father and mother say? The thing was not to be thought of.

"But I would listen to nothing. What did it matter what Toronto said? Toronto might go hang! My father and mother had no thought but for my happiness; their ultimate consent was all right. For the rest, if he dreaded the world's tongue, let the marriage be private, just as private as he pleased, and in a month, or two months, or whenever I could get leave of absence, I and my wife would sail for England. When the thing was inevitable, talk would die out. Marry my darling I must; life without her was insupportable, etc., etc., etc.

"I grow sick at heart, Lucia, when I recall that time. And yet I was blindly, insanely happy—with that utter bliss that in the days of our first youth and grossest folly we can only know. We were married. Rosamond had but one female acquaintance, a young lady music-teacher—she, of course, was bridesmaid, and Singleton, of Ours, was best man. We were married in the cottage parlor, one dark autumnal morning, all on the quiet. Clergyman, groomsman, bridesmaid, all promised secrecy. Rosamond remained at the cottage with her father as before. I kept my rooms in the town. I did not write to announce my marriage—time enough for all that, I thought. I would get leave of absence and take Rosamond home—they would have to look in her face but once, to forget my rash haste, her poverty and obscurity, and take her to their hearts forever.

"But days and weeks and months slipped away—four passed; and leave had not yet been obtained. As might be expected, our secret had leaked out, and was our secret no longer. The story of my mad marriage was whispered throughout the town, and only my blindness was upon me still, I must have seen the looks of pity that met me at every turn—pity blended with amusement and contempt. But I saw nothing, suspected nothing, and when the blow came, it fell like a thunderbolt, indeed.

"I have said this girl I had married was a perfect actress—I say it again. Love itself she could counterfeit to the life; she fooled me to the top of my bent; she made me believe her whole heart was mine. Her face lighted when I came, saddened when I went, ay, after four months of matrimony she held her dupe as thoroughly duped as on the first day. Something preyed on her mind, that, at least, I saw. She looked at me at times as though she feared me; she looked at the major as though she feared him. The old fellow had taken to drinking harder than ever, had been at death's door with delirium tremens more than once since my marriage, and in his cups (I learned after) babbled of what he had done.

"'We hooked him, sir,' the tipsy major would hiccough, winking his bleary old eyes, and tottering on his rickety old legs, 'hooked him like the gonest coon! Oh, Lord! what fools young men are! a pretty girl can twist the biggest of you gallant plungers around her little finger. I've known regiments of fools in my lifetime, but that young ass, Caryll—oh, by Jupiter! he puts the topper on the lot.'

"It was the major himself who threw up his hand, and showed me the game he had played at last.

"He had caught cold after a horrible fit of D. T., and I suppose his devil's race was run—typhoid fever supervened, and the gallant major was going to die. Rosamond, with him still, nursed him faithfully and devotedly, and tried with all her power to keep me from seeing him at all.

"'You can do no good, Gordon,' she would plead; 'keep away—don't go in. You may catch the fever. He wants no one but me.'

"The bare thought of my entering the sick room seemed a perpetual terror to her. She would have no nurse, she would wait upon him herself, she almost tried by force to keep me from seeing him. Off and on he was delirious; as a rule he had his wits about him though, and would grin like a satyr to the last.

"'She's afraid I'll peach, Caryll,' he whispered to me one day, with a wink. 'Blessed if I won't, though. I never cared about her, and it would be a shame, a cursed shame, to go off hooks, you know, and not tell.'

"'Not tell what?' I asked, sternly.

"'Never you mind, Gordon, my boy, you'll hear it all fast enough. You ain't half a bad sort, hanged if you are, and I'm sorry—yes, I'm sorry I did it. It was a devilish unhandsome trick for one gentleman to play on another; but it was good fun at the time, that you'll be forced to admit yourself. Hush-h! here she comes, not a word to her. I'll tell you all by and by.'

"I was bewildered—half startled also; but I set it down to delirium. She came in, looking with quick, apprehensive eyes from his face to mine.

"'Has he been talking?' she asked.

"'Nothing you would care to hear, Rosie, my girl,' he cut in, with a feeble chuckle; 'not a word about you—ask him if you like.'

"I set it all down to delirium. 'Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.' My madness had lasted over four months—I was destined to become sane again.

"The major sank lower and lower. His last hour was near. Rosamond never left him when she could; she still strove with all her might to keep us apart. I sometimes wonder now she did not hasten his end. She was quite capable of it, I believe.

"One night I was to dine in the town. I had left the cottage and nearly reached my destination. It was a stormy February night, the streets white with drifting snow, a sleety wind blowing piercingly cold. Some unaccountable depression had weighed upon me all day; my wife was strangely changed of late; I could not understand her. The major was very low, almost at his last. What if he died while I was absent, Rosamond and the servant-maid all alone. I turned hastily back; I would share my dear girl's vigil, I thought—nay, I would compel her to go to bed and to sleep; she was utterly worn out, and I would watch alone.

"I returned to the house, and entered softly. The maid-servant was alone in the sick room. Miss Rosamond had fallen asleep at her post from sheer weariness, and had been persuaded to go to her own room and lie down.

"'You did quite right,' I said; 'I will share your watch. I don't think he will last out the night.'

"The sick man's eyes opened—a cunning leer in them to the last.

"'Don't you, Gordon, my boy—don't you think I'll last out the night? Then, by Jove! it's time to make a clean breast of it. Where's she? Your wife?'

"'Up-stairs in her own room, asleep.'

"'That's right. When the cat's away the mice can play. Send that woman back to the kitchen—I've a word or two for your private ear.'

"I obeyed. The woman went.

"'Now lock the door, like a good fellow, and come here. Sit close, for my wind's almost gone, and I can't jaw as I used. And I say! look here, Caryll! no violence, you know. I'm an old man, and I'm dying, and I'm sorry—yes, blessed if I ain't—that I ever fooled you as I did. All the reparation I can make, I will make—that's fair, surely. Now, listen, here, Caryll; this has been a put-up job from first to last. Rosamond's not my daughter!'

"'Not your—'

"I sat staring at him aghast.

"'Not my daughter—no, by George! My daughter, the one in Bermuda, you know, is in Bermuda still, and a deuced hard-featured young woman—takes after her mother, and wouldn't touch her disreputable old dad with a pair of tongs. No, Gordon, lad, the girl you've married isn't my daughter. I don't know who's daughter she is. She doesn't know herself. She's your wife—worse luck; but she's nothing to me.'

"I sat stunned, dumb, listening. If my life had depended on it, I could not have spoken a word.

"'I'll tell you how it was, Caryll,' the dying old reprobate went on. 'Give us a drop of that catlap in the tumbler first. Thanks. It was in New York I met her first—in New York, just a month before I brought her here. Strolling down the Bowery one night I went into a concert-room, or music-hall, of the lowest sort. Bowery roughs, with their hats on and cigars in their mouths, were lying about the benches yelling for "Rosamond" to come out and give them a song. Presently the wretched orchestra began, the green baize drew up, and, in a gaudy, spangled dress, a banjo in her hand, tawdry flowers in her hair, "Rosamond" came bounding forward, smiling and kissing hands to her vociferous audience. So I saw her for the first time—I swear it, Caryll—the girl you have made your wife!'

"'She sang song after song—you can imagine the highly-spiced sort of songs likely to suit such an audience. They applauded her to the echo, stamping, clapping, whistling, yelling with wild laughter and delight, and all the while I sat, and stared, and wondered at her beauty. For tawdry, and painted, and brazen as she was that night, her beauty, in all places and at all times, is a thing beyond dispute. It was then, sitting there and looking at her, that the plot came into my head, put there by her guardian angel, the devil, no doubt. This is what it was:

"'Take that girl off the stage, clothe her decently, drill her in her part for a week or two—she's a clever little baggage—take her back to Toronto, and pass her off as your daughter. She's got the beauty and grace of a duchess, and there's more than one soft-headed, soft-hearted fool among the fellows there, who will go mad over her black eyes, and be ready to marry her out of hand before she's a month among them. There's that young chap, Caryll, for instance—oh, yes. Gordon, my boy, I pitched upon you even then—he's the heir to one of the finest fortunes in the kingdom, and last man on earth likely to doubt or investigate. The thing's worth trying. Of course, when the fish is hooked I come in for the lion's share. Ecarté's not an unprofitable amusement, but there may be better things in this wicked world even than écarté.

"'It was a brilliant idea—even you must own that. I lost no time in carrying it out. I hunted up Rosamond behind the scenes. Good Ged! such scenes! and there and then had a long and fatherly talk with her. She gave me her history frankly enough; she had no parents, no friends to speak of, no relations. She never had had a father so far as she knew, and her drunken drab of a mother had died two years before. She was sixteen, and had made her debut a year before, under the friendly auspices of a negro minstrel gentleman, who had taught her to strum the banjo and play upon the piano.

"'I said nothing of my plan that night. I slept upon it, and found it rather strengthened than otherwise by that process. I hunted up Mlle. Rosamond (in private life they called her Sally) next morning, in her Bowery attic, and laid my plan before her. Gad, Caryll, how she jumped at it! Her eyes glittered at the mention of the fine dresses and gay jewelry—she had ambition beyond her sphere, had devoured a great deal of unwholesome light literature, and was equal to anything. I found her cleverer even than I had dared to hope—the girl had been more or less educated at a public school, and could actually talk well. The negro minstrel gentleman thrashed her when he got drunk; she was tired of her life and Bohemian associates, to call them by no fouler name, of this dirty Quartier Latin of New York, and eager and ready to go.

"'What need to waste words, Caryll—the thing was an accomplished fact in three weeks. The rest you know—"we came, we saw, we conquered," more's the pity—for you. The little Bowery actress played her part con amore—the pretty little yellow-eyed spider wove her web, and the big, foolish fly walked headlong in at first sight. You married her!'

"He paused a moment, and motioned me to give him his cordial. The clammy dew of death was upon his face already, his voice was husky and gasping, but he was game to the end and would finish. I held the drink to his lips in a stupid, dazed sort of way, far too stunned to realize what I heard as yet.

"'You married her, Gordon,' he went on, 'and—give the devil his due—I believe she's fond of you. That wasn't in the bond, but she is, and her efforts of late days to have me die and "make no sign" were worthy a better cause. But I ain't such an out-and-out bad 'un as that, Caryll—'pon my word I ain't; and then, money can't do a man any good when he's going to die. So I've made a clean breast of it, my boy, and you can do as you please. You're awfully spoony on her, I know, and if you like, why, say nothing about it; stick to her through thick and thin. Other men have married girls like Rosie—and she's fond of you, as I say, poor little beggar, and you can take her to England and no one will be the wiser. The fellows here won't peach; they know it, Caryll; the thing's leaked out somehow, and—'

"He stopped. I had risen to my feet. I don't know what he saw in my face, but he held up both hands with a shrill cry of horror, not to kill him. The next I remember, I was out in the black, storm-beaten street. It was close upon midnight. At that hour and in that storm there was no one abroad in Toronto. A wheel of fire seemed crashing through my brain, some nameless, awful horror had fallen upon me. In a stupefied way I was conscious of that—of no more. And then—all in an instant it seemed to me the night had passed and the morning had broken. I had spent hours in the freezing streets. With the morning light the mists of my brain seemed to clear, and the full horror of this most horrible thing came upon me—this unheard-of, shameless deed.

"The girl I had loved, had trusted, had married, was the vile thing he made her out—the offcast of the New York streets. And the man who had blindly loved her she had fooled and laughed at from first to last! A very demon of fury seemed to enter me then. I turned, and went home—with but one resolve—to have her life, and then end my own.

"She was not there. She had seen my first entrance; she had stolen down, listened, and heard all; she had gone back to her room, dressed herself for the street, taken all her money and jewels, and fled. They told me all this—three or four of our fellows were there, and a strange, gloomy hush lay over the house. Major Lovell was dead.

"After that, for a week or two, all is chaotic. I did not end my life—I hardly know how I was kept from that last coward's act—the fact remained. They buried Lovell; and in a quiet way, the story of old Lovell's plot, and old Lovell's daughter, was over the town.

"I made no attempt to follow her. The first paroxysm of fury passed, a sullen, dull reaction set in. I filed a suit for divorce. A mere separation would not do—every tie must be cut that bound me to her. I wrote home, telling my father and mother all—all—hiding nothing. Then my leave came, and I quitted Toronto forever. Months passed. I lived in hiding in Montreal; then the decree of divorce was granted—I was free!

"I was going home. Before quitting Canada to return no more, I went to Quebec to visit my mother's old friend and my godfather, General Forrester. My story had rung through Quebec, of course—was it not ringing over the length and breadth of the land? But the kind old general made no mention of it, and insisted upon my joining them the day of my arrival at mess.

"I agreed. I had lived a hermit life for five months—I longed to see familiar faces once more. At the mess dinner, while jokes and stories were being bandied round, some one jovially proposed the health of the 'Sleeping Beauty of the Enchanted Palace,' and it was drunk with laughing enthusiasm. I naturally made inquiry concerning this celebrated lady, and learned, that in the present instance, her mortal name was Mrs. Gordon, a youthful widow of fabulous beauty and wealth, who had come to Quebec five months before, and had shut herself up in a deserted old rookery, to weep in silence, no doubt, over the dear departed. Like a flash the truth came upon me.

"'Most thrilling indeed, Ercildoun,' I said; 'here's towards her? Which are we to drink—belle blonde, or jolie brunette?'

"'Brunette, brunette! a picture by Titian. Eyes like sloes, and hair like that what's-his-name's wing!' shouted Ercildoun.

"The toast was rapturously taken up. I was as hilarious as any of them. There are times when thought must be drowned, no matter how.

"Next day I deliberately hunted her down. Her servant was pointed out to me on the street; I followed her. And walking up and down by the river side, in the summer sunset, I came full upon the girl who had been my wife.

"I believe at first she imagined I had come to kill her. I speedily reassured her. What need, Lucia, to speak of that interview? It was brief, indeed. I have looked my last, I hope, on the woman who was for four months my wife. I hope—and yet, so surely as I stand here, I believe she will cross my path again. She vowed it, as we parted that night, and for good or for evil she is one to keep her word."

The story was told rapidly, at times almost incoherently, but told. He stood beside her in the moonlight, with colorless face and eyes full of passionate despair.

"The remainder you know," he said, after a pause; "the shame that broke my father's heart and sent him to his grave—that has parted my mother and me forever. For the rest, whatever fate befalls me in the time to come, it is a fate richly earned. I blame my mother in no way. Your son Eric, or General Forrester's baby daughter, will inherit Caryllynne in my stead. So let it be. I go from here to-night, in all likelihood forever. Before the week is out I shall have left England."

She had turned her face away from him, but he knew that her tears were falling.

"Where do you go?" she asked.

"To India. I have exchanged into a regiment ordered out at once. When one's life comes to an end at home, it is well to be of some service abroad. And so, Lucia, my best cousin, you at least will bid me good-by and good speed before I go."

He took both her hands, looking down into the fair, drooping face.

"And you," he went on, "are you happy, Lucia? You are pale and frail as a shadow. Tell me, does Dynely—," he paused. She drew her hands from his clasp, her face still turned away.

"I made a mercenary marriage," she answered, sudden coldness and hardness in her tone; "that you know. All the happiness such marriages bring, I have. While I possess my boy, my Eric, I can never be utterly miserable, Gordon!" She looked up suddenly, her fair face crimsoning. "You knew Lord Dynely before his marriage—you were with him one autumn in Ireland, were you not? Tell me—" she stopped.

"Well, Lucia? What?"

"It may be only fancy, but I have fancied there is some—some secret connected with that Irish summer. It is seven years ago—you were only a boy at the time. Still—" again she paused confusedly.

"Well?"

"There was no one, no girl, no peasant girl to whom Lord Dynely paid attention that summer in Galway? I have heard a rumor—" for the third time she broke off, afraid, it seemed, to go on.

Her cousin looked at her in some surprise.

"You know what Lord Dynely is—was, I mean, in his bachelor days," he said, quietly, "an admirer of every pretty girl he met, whether peeress or peasant. There were many handsome Spanish-looking women to be seen that long ago summer we spent fishing at the Claddagh, on the Galway coast. His lordship admired them all, I am bound to say; I am also bound to say, impartially, so far as I could see. Don't take fancies into your head, Lucia—facts are enough. And now I must go. By Jove! how the time has flown! I have kept you here an unconscionable time in the falling dew. Good-by, Lucia, keep a green place in your memory for the black sheep of the flock. Kiss little Eric for me. Once more, good-by."

Holding her hands in his, he bent down and touched her cheek. She broke suddenly into a passionate sob.

"Oh, Gordon, cousin, it breaks my heart to see you go!"

He smiled.

"It is best so," he said.

He dropped her hands, turned with the words, walked rapidly away, and disappeared.