Читать книгу A Mad Marriage - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 14
ОглавлениеHOW LORD VISCOUNT DYNELY DIED.
alf an hour had passed away, and still Lady Dynely paced slowly where her cousin had left her, heedless of falling dew, her thin dinner-dress damp and heavy already in the night. In the days that were gone she had been very fond of her boy cousin, three years her junior in actual years, twenty in worldly wisdom and judgment. There had never been any thought of love or love-making, marrying or giving in marriage, between these two; she had given Viscount Dynely her hand of her own free will, and yet, the sharpest, keenest pang of actual jealousy she had ever felt, she had felt when she first heard of Gordon Caryll's marriage. Not a very fierce pang, though, after all—it might have been said of her as of Lady Jane, in the poem:
"Her pulse is calm, milk-white her skin;
She has not blood enough to sin."
It had been considered a very brilliant match, the match of the season indeed, when Lucia Paget won Alexis, Viscount Dynely and twentieth Baron Camperdown. She had been taken up to London at eighteen, and presented by her kinswoman, the Countess of Haldane. She was tall, slim and white, fair and fragile as a lily, "a penniless lass wi' a lang pedigree"—a trifle insipid to some tastes, but she suited Lord Dynely. He came home from a yachting cruise around Norway and the Hebrides, presented himself suddenly in Vanity Fair, the most desirable prize of the mall, with mansions and estates in four counties, a villa at Ryde, a shooting-box in the Highlands, and an income that flowed in like a perennial golden river. He was a prize that had long been angled for (his noble lordship was in his five-and-fortieth year), maids and matrons had put on their war paint, and set their wigwams in order, long and many a day ago, for him. But in vain; his scalp-lock hung at no belt. He admired all, ballerinas, as a rule, more than baronesses, actresses more than duchesses. But his day came at last; he saw Lucia Paget, by no means the beauty of the season, and after his own impetuous fashion, where his own gratification was concerned, threw up the sponge to Fate at once, and surrendered at discretion. He proposed, was accepted, and the wedding-day named, before Vanity Fair could recover its breath. It was the wonder of the day—that pale, insipid nonentity—that blasé, fastidious, worn-out roué—What did he see in her?
"There were maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
Who would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar."
But he had passed them all by, and thrown the handkerchief at the indifferent feet of this pale-haired lass. Before the end of the season they were married.
He was very much enamored of his bride, there was no denying that. Fickle, in his fancies, to a proverb, he was yet loyal here. He took her over the Continent for a year, then returned to England, with them "little Eric;" and Lord Viscount Dynely was the fondest of fathers as well as the most devoted of husbands. But from the birth of his son a change came over him. He took a habit of falling into moody, darksome reveries, he dropped mysterious and unpleasant hints of some wrongdoing in the past, he spoke gloomily of his infant heir and some sin, sinned against him. Lady Dynely grew pale as she listened—it was no common wrongdoing of a man of the world of which he hinted—it was something that might influence the future of his son, of herself—some crime against them both. He spoke a woman's name in his disturbed, remorse-haunted slumbers—"Maureen"—his wife could catch. What did it mean? She had never loved her husband, she had always been a little afraid of him—she grew more and more afraid of him as the years went on. Years did go on. Eric was five; the secret, whatever it might be, was Lord Dynely's secret still. Only once he had said to her:
"Lucia, if I die before you, I have something to tell you that you won't like to hear. People always make death-bed confessions, don't they? On the principle, I suppose, that come what may, they are past hurting. I wonder if they sleep any easier in their six feet of clay, for owning up? I'll write it down, and leave it sealed with my will, and then if I'm cut off in a hurry (and it is an interesting trait in the Dynely succession that we always are cut off in a hurry), it will come to light all the same. There's one consolation," he said with a short, reckless laugh, "you never cared over and above for me—it was the title you married and the settlements, and you'll have them, you know, to the end of the chapter, so you won't break your heart."
He had whistled to his dogs and walked moodily off, saying no more; and his wife, listening with pale cheeks and dilated eyes, asked no questions. She was not strong, either mentally, morally, or physically; she shrank from pain of all sorts, with almost cowardly fear. If Lord Dynely had wicked secrets, she wanted to hear none of them—she desired no confessions—it was cruel of him to talk of making them. As he had kept his dreadful masculine secrets in life, let him keep them in death.
She stood vaguely thinking this where Gordon Caryll had left her, looking like some spirit of the moonlight in her white robes, her light, floating hair, and colorless face. And even while she thought it, the messenger was drawing near to summon her to hear that secret told.
The stable clock chiming loudly eleven awoke her from her thoughtful trance. She started. How late it was, how chilly it had grown! She shrank with the first sensation she had felt of cold and damp, and turned to go. But she stopped, for the sylvan silence of the summer night was loudly broken by the ringing clatter of horses' hoofs dashing up the avenue. Was it Gordon coming back? Little things disturbed her—her heart fluttered as she listened. Horse and rider came in view; the man espied her and vaulted off. No, this small, middle-aged man, was not her tall cousin, but Mr. Squills, the village apothecary.
"My lady!"
He took off his hat and stood bowing before her. In the moonlight my lady could see the frightened look the man's face wore.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Oh, my lady—I don't want to alarm you, I'm sure—they told me to break it to you, but it's so hard to break things. There's been an accident, my lady. The 9.50 express from Plymouth, and don't let me frighten you, my lady—his lordship was in it, and——"
She laid her hand over her heart, turning for a moment sick and faint. Then she rallied.
"Lord Dynely was on that train? There was an accident, you say. Was he——"
"Oh, my lady, prepare yourself. It—it's a dreadful thing to break things to——"
"Was Lord Dynely hurt?" she asked.
"Yes, my lady, very badly hurt, I'm sorry to say."
"Dangerously?"
"We're afraid so, my lady. Mr. Glauber is with him, and they've telegraphed to London for Doctor—"
"He is alive?" she interrupted, her voice sharp with horror and pain.
"Alive, my lady, but—it is best you should know the truth—he won't be alive by morning. The clergyman is with him, but he calls, my lady, continually for you."
"Where is he?"
"At the inn, in the village—the 'Kiddle-a-wink.' And, my lady, there is not a moment to lose."
She turned from him and ran to the house. On the way she met one of the grooms, and ordered the carriage at once. She fled up to her room, threw a dark mantle over her white evening-dress, put on her bonnet with trembling fingers, and turned to depart. A sudden thought came to her—she turned into an adjoining room—the nursery, where her boy lay asleep.
The night-light burns low; he lies in his downy, lace draped bed, a lovely baby-vision of health and beauty. Flushed, dimpled, his golden curls falling over the pillow, a smile on the rosy lips—he is a sight to make any mother's heart leap. She stoops and kisses him with passionate love. "Oh, my baby, my angel!" she whispers, "you are all I have on earth. While I live, no harm, that I can avert, will ever come to you."
Then she flits out of the room—out of the house. The carriage is waiting, and in a moment more she is rapidly whirling through the still, white midnight to the village inn where her husband lies dying.
They lead her to the room. Physician and priest fall back, and give way to the wife. The wounded man lies propped by pillows, his head bandaged, his face awfully bloodless and ghastly in the wan light. She has heard no details of the accident, she has asked none. He is dying—all is said in that.
His eyes light as they turn on her, but his brow is frowning.
"Send them all away," are his first words.
She motions them out of the room. She sinks on her knees by the bedside. Her dark drapery slips off; her white dress, her soft laces, her fair, floating hair, seem strangely to contradict the idea of death. She is trembling from head to foot—her teeth chatter with nervous horror, her eyes fix themselves, all wild and dilated, upon his face. She never speaks a word.
He lies and looks at her—a long, steadfast, frowning gaze.
"I am dying," he says; "you know it. You never cared for me—no, never—not even in your wedding hour. You never cared for me—why should I care for you? Why should I hesitate to tell you the truth?"
It has been the thorn in his rose-crowned life—this fact, that the portionless girl he married, never gave him her heart.
"Tell me now," he says, still with that dull, frowning gaze, "I was too great a coward ever to ask you before—tell me now—you married the rank and the rent-roll, not the man?"
"I did wrong," she says, huskily, "but I have tried to do my duty as your wife. Forgive me, Alexis."
"Ah!" he answers bitterly, "we have both something to forgive—it makes us quits. I have been a coward, a coward to you, a coward to her. It is hard to say which has been wronged most. But you shall hear the truth now, and you shall do as you see fit after. Draw near."
She bends closer above him. He takes her hand in his cold fingers, and whispers, hoarsely and brokenly, his death-bed confession.
Half an hour passes, an hour, another, and still from that closed room there is no sound. It is very strange. Mr. Glauber, the doctor, and Mr. Texton, the rector, think uneasily, looking at their watches, outside. It is quite impossible Lord Dynely, in his fast-sinking state, can be talking all this time—impossible, also, that he can have fallen asleep. Presently Mr. Texton takes heart of grace, and taps at the door. There is no reply. He taps again. Still silence. He opens the door and goes in. Lord Dynely has fallen back among his pillows, dead, that frown forever frozen on his face; my lady still kneels by the bedside—as rigid, as upright, as white, as cold, as though turned to stone.
"My lady!" She does not speak or stir. "My dear Lady Dynely," the rector says, in an unutterably shocked tone.
She moves for the first time, and lifts two sightless eyes to his face. He holds out his arms, for she sways unsteadily, and catches her, as without word or sound she slips heavily back, and faints away.
