Читать книгу A Mad Marriage - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 17

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he brilliant noontide of a brilliant May day was passed—all London looked bustling and bright under a sky as cloudless as that of Italy. In Trafalgar Square there was a mighty gathering of carriages, an army of coachmen and footmen in liveries, of all sorts and colors, for it was the opening day of the Royal Academy.

The rooms were full—full to repletion, filled with a jostling crowd of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, but then "a mob is a mob though composed of bishops." Languid, dilettante-looking swells, with eye-glasses; painters with long hair, and picturesque faces; art critics, book and pencil in hand; academicians, receiving congratulations; picture dealers, marking the quarry on which they meant presently to swoop; stately dowagers, sweeping their silken trains over the crimson drugget; slim, young English girls, with milk-and-rose complexions and gilded hair.

The clock of St. Martin's-in-the-fields was striking four as there entered two ladies and a gentleman, who moved slowly through the swaying throng, and who, even there, attracted considerable attention. One of the ladies was approaching middle age, a fair, pale, pensive, passée looking woman, with a stamp of high rank on every faded feature, in every careless gesture. She was not the attraction. The escort was a very tall, very broad-shouldered, very powerful-looking young man, muscular Christianity personified, with a certain military air, that bespoke his calling, a thick, reddish beard and mustache, reddish, close-cropped hair, and two light, good-humored eyes. He was not the attraction. Terry Dennison's face was as well known about town as Landseer's couchant lions around Nelson's pillar, in the square beyond. It was the third of the trio, a girl, tall and slender, and very graceful, with a figure that was rarely perfect, and a way of carrying herself that was altogether imperial. A dark beauty, with a warm, creamy, colorless skin, two vivid, hazel eyes, a profusion of hazel hair, arranged à la mode, a handsome, decided, square-cut mouth, and a general air of imperious command that said to all

"Incedo Regina!

I move a queen."

She was dressed en passant, as it were, with a careless simplicity that was the perfection of high art. An Indian muslin robe, a scarf of black lace, caught up on one shoulder with a knot of yellow roses—on her head a touch of point-lace, with just one yellow rose over the ear, and in her pearl-kidded hand a bunch of the same scented yellow roses.

A covey of idle, elegant dandies of the Foreign Office, and guardsmen, lounging in one of the door-ways, put up their glasses and turned to look again, roused for the moment almost to interest.

"Something new in Vanity Fair," one said, "and the best thing I've seen this season. Know who she is, any one?"

No one knew.

"Altogether new, as you say, Danby. Jove! what a regal air! There is nothing on the walls—not a nymph or goddess of them all, with a lovelier face. Who is she?"

"Her companion is Lady Dynely," remarked a third.

"And her escort is Terry Dennison. He has placed them before the picture of the year, that thing by Locksley, and has left them. Here he comes. I say, Dennison! who is she?"

"Who is who?" asked Mr. Dennison, the sandy-haired and whiskered young man, approaching. "'Who is she?' isn't that the question the cynical old French party always asked, when any fellow he knew came to grief?"

"Don't be analytical, Terry, it isn't your métier?. Who is that lady you accompany? Handsomest thing out."

"That," answered Terry, thoughtfully stroking his beard, "is my Lady Dynely; and where have you kept your eyes all these years not to know it—"

"That will do. We don't want chaff. Who is that girl?"

"All yellow roses and black lace, like a picture by Titian," another murmured.

"Who is she, Terry?" chorus all.

"Oh!" said Terry, opening his light blue eyes with an innocent air, "that's what you mean, is it? That girl is France Forrester."

"France? Named after the dominion of his Imperial Majesty, Nap the Third?"

"Her name is France—Frances, if you like it better," answered calmly Mr. Dennison.

"But who is she? Who is she, Terry? She's new to all of us, and the handsomest debutante of the season. Open the mysteries a little, old man; and end our agonizing suspense."

"There's nothing mysterious about it," responded Terry Dennison with a suppressed yawn; "she is France Forrester, as I say, only child and heiress of the late General Forrester, distant connection of Lady Dynely, and adopted daughter and heiress of Mrs. Caryll, of Caryllynne. 'To her that hath shall be given.' I have spoken!"

"Like an oracle. Go on—tell us more."

"There's no more. Her mother a French Canadian, from whom mademoiselle inherits her gypsy skin and beaux yeux, died when she was six. Her father placed her in a Montreal convent, and there she lived until she was fifteen. Then he died, left her a fortune, and made Mrs. Caryll her guardian. That was three years ago; and if your limited knowledge of arithmetic will permit you to add three to fifteen you will come at Miss Forrester's age. Mrs. Caryll, then and at present in Rome, had her ward conveyed to the Eternal City. Until two months ago she moved and had her being there—now she has come over, to come out under the auspices of Lady Dynely. I wish you fellows wouldn't make me talk so much," says Terry, with a sudden sense of injury, "the thermometer is high, and I ain't used to it."

Then Mr. Dennison strolls away, and the four men from the F. O. stand and gaze with languid interest at the Canadian-Roman beauty and heiress.

"Safe to make a hit," one said; "haven't seen anything so thoroughbred for three seasons. What with mademoiselle's beauty and grace, and that poise of the head, and two fortunes tacked to her train, and her twenty quarterings (they're an awfully old family, the Forresters), she ought to make a brilliant match before the season ends."

"Ah! I don't know," another responded, "it doesn't always follow. The favorite doesn't always win the Derby. Mrs. Caryll's heiress—him-m! I say, Castlemain! You ought to know—wasn't there a son in that family once?"

"Gordon Caryll—very fine fellow—knew him at Oxford," Castlemain answered, "commission in the Rifles—old story that—sixteen years ago—all over and forgotten for centuries."

"Dead?"

"Don't know—all the same—extinct. Made a horrible mesalliance out there in Canada—scandal—divorce—exchanged—went to India—never heard of more. Sic transit—fate of all of us by and by. Deuced slow this," struggling with a yawn; "I say—let's hook it."

The quartette move on, others take their place, and the men, one and all, turn for a second look at the fair, proud-looking beauty. With Lady Dynely, she still stands where Mr. Dennison has left them, gazing at the picture that has made the hit of the year. It is by an artist unknown to fame and Trafalgar Square—it is marked in the catalogue "No. 556—How The Night Fell."

It is not an English scene. Tall, dark hills in the background lift pine-crowned heads to the sky, clumps of cedar, and tamarac, and spruce, painted with pre-Raphaelite fidelity, dot these dark hill-sides. A broad river, with the last red light of dying day glinting along the water, and over hillside and tree-top and flowing river, the gray darkness of coming night shutting down. On the riverside two figures stand, a man and a woman. One red gleam from the western sky falls full upon the woman's face, a face darkly beautiful, but all white and drawn with woman's utmost woe. Passionate despair looks out of her wild eyes at the man who stands before her. Her hands are outstretched in agonized appeal. For the man, he stands and looks at her, one hand slightly upraised as if waving her off. His face is partly averted, but you can guess the hatred that face shows. You see that her doom is sealed beyond redemption. Over all, the creeping night is darkening land, and river, and sky.

The two ladies gaze in silence for a time—Lady Dynely looking weary and rather bored—Miss Forrester's fine eyes bright with admiration. She is new to general society as yet, and when eye, or ear, or heart are delighted, the expressive face shows it.

"It is beautiful," she says in a low voice; "there is nothing like it in the rooms. Look at that wonderful effect of light on the woman's face, and slanting along the river, and the gray darkness that you can almost feel there beyond. Those trees are tamarac—can it be a Canadian scene. 'How The Night Fell,'" she reads from her catalogue. "Lady Dynely, I must know the painter of that picture."

"My dear France!"

"'G. Locksley.' H-m-m—a new candidate, probably. Certainly I must know him. In Rome, we—Mrs. Caryll and I—made a point of taking up every young artist who appeared. She was known as the patroness of art. Our rooms on our art-reception nights used to be crowded. The man who painted that is a genius."

"Mrs. Caryll was the patroness of struggling artists for this reason, I fancy—her son was a devotee of art once himself, and studied for a year in Rome before entering the army."

"Her son," Miss Forrester repeated dreamily, "Gordon Caryll. Perhaps so, she very seldom spoke of him, poor fellow. What a very striking scene it is!" looking again at the picture through her closed hand; "there is a fascination for me in the anguish and despair of that woman's face. A beautiful face, too. I wonder if the artist painted his picture from life?"

"My dear France, no. They are all imaginary, are they not—suggested by books, or something of that kind?"

"Ah, I don't know. Artists, and poets, and novelists, all turn their sorrows to account in these latter days," says Miss Forrester cynically; "they paint their woes in oil and water colors, write them in hexameters, and make money of them. Like Lord Byron, if they weep in private, they certainly wipe their eyes on the public."

"My dear child," says Lady Dynely, looking shocked, "where have you learned your cynicisms so young?"

Miss Forrester laughed.

"I am but a debutante," she answered gayly, "not come out yet before the footlights; but I have seen a deal of life, I assure you, behind the scenes. Here comes Terry." She glances over her shoulder. "If the artist of 'How the Night Fell,' be present, Terry shall fetch him up and introduce him."

"But, France—"

Miss Forrester laughs again—a very sweet, low laugh. She is unlike most English girls—in fact, she is not an English girl. She has her French mother's blood and vivacity, as well as her dark complexion, and dark eyes, with something of the frank-spirited independence of an American girl. With these and her late Roman experiences, she is a bundle of contradictions, and a bewilderingly charming whole.

"But, Lady Dynely," she repeats, "I warned you fairly in Rome what you might expect when you consented to become a martyr, and bring me out. I have had my own way ever since I was born, and always mean to—if I can. I have lived in a perpetual atmosphere of artists for the past three years—the long-haired Brotherhood of the Brush have been 'the playmates of my youth—the friends of my bosom.'" Here, catching sight of Lady Dynely's horrified face, Miss Forrester breaks off and laughs again, the sweetest, frankest, merriest laugh, that ever came from rosy lips.

"What's the joke?" asks Mr. Dennison, sauntering up; "I don't see anything in that black, glowering man, and that woman of the woeful countenance to excite your ill-timed merriment, Miss Forrester."

"Terry," says Miss Forrester, "do you know the artist?"

"Miss Forrester, it is the proud boast of my life that I know every one. Locksley? Yes, I know him—he's in the rooms now, by the same token. Look yonder—talking to Sir Hugh Lankraik, the great academician—very tall, very fair man. Crops his hair, and doesn't look like an artist—more of the heavy-dragoon cut than anything else. See him?"

"Yes," the young lady answered. She saw, as Terry Dennison said, a very tall, very fair man, with blonde hair and beard, a complexion fair once, tanned to golden brown, two grave, gray eyes, and a thoughtful, rather worn, face—a man looking every day of his seven-and-thirty years. Not a particularly handsome face, perhaps, but a face most women liked. Whether Miss Forrester liked it or not, who was to tell?

"Not bad looking?" commented Terry interrogatively. Mr. Dennison belonged to that large nil admirari class to whom the acme of all praise of mortal beauty is "not bad looking."

"Women admire him, I believe," pursues Dennison, "but he rather cuts the sex. I give you my word, he might be the pet of the petticoats all this season after that picture, but he won't. Lives for his art—capital fellow, you know, but doesn't care for women."

"Interesting misogynist! Bring him up here, Terry, and introduce him."

"France!"

"Is your hearing deficient, Mr. Dennison? I said, bring him up here and introduce him."

"Now, France, what has that poor fellow ever done to you? He cuts the fair sex, and is a happy and successful man! Do let him be. I know the havoc you made among those painting fellows in Rome, but you can't expect to do in London as the Romans do. She made it a point—I give you my word, Lady Dynely—of breaking the heart of every young artist in the Eternal City, and now she wants to add poor Locksley, as harmless a fellow as ever breathed, to her 'noble army of martyrs!'"

"Little Terry Dennison! will you hold your tongue and fetch Mr. Locksley here?"

Miss Forrester lifts her gold-mounted eye-glass and looks at him. Miss Forrester's brilliant, hazel eyes are not, in the slightest degree, short-sighted; she merely wears this eye-glass as a warrior his sword. When she particularly wishes to annihilate any one, she lifts it, stares speechlessly for five seconds, and the deed is done. Mr. Dennison knows the gesture of old, and shows the white feather at once.

"Mr. Locksley's picture pleases me. I wish to know Mr. Locksley."

"Yes'm, please'm," says Terry, meekly; "hanything else?"

"Mr. Locksley has ceased talking to Sir Hugh. Lady Dynely admires 'How The Night Fell,' and does him the honor of permitting him to be presented. You understand, little Terry?"

Terry Dennison, from the altitude of his six feet, looks down upon his dashing little superior officer, with a comical light in his blue eyes, laughs under his orange beard, and turns to obey.

"As the queen wills," he says; "but, alas! poor Yorick! He never did me any harm—Locksley, I mean, not Yorick. It is rather hard I should be chosen, as the enemy to lead him to his doom." He makes his way to where the painter of the popular picture stands, and taps him on the shoulder. "If you are not done to death with congratulations already, Mr. Locksley, permit me to add mine. There is nothing else on the walls half-a-quarter so good. Lady Dynely is positively entranced, has been standing there for the last half hour. Will you do her the pleasure of coming and being presented?"

"Lady Dynely!" The artist paused for a moment with an irresolute look, and glanced doubtfully to where her ladyship stood.

"My dear fellow," Terry cut in in some alarm, "don't refuse. I know you give 'em all the cold shoulder, but you will really be conferring a favor in this instance. She—Lady Dynely I mean of course—is quite wild on the subject of art and artists. Never heard her so exercised as on the subject of that picture of yours."

"Lady Dynely does me too much honor," said the artist smiling gravely, and Dennison linked his arm in his own, and bore him off in triumph.

"Lady Dynely, permit me—the artist whose picture you so greatly admire, Mr. Locksley. Mr. Locksley—Miss Forrester."

Both ladies bowed graciously. Lady Dynely addressed him.

"It is the gem of the collection—but Mr. Locksley must be weary of hearing that," she said.

"An artist never wearies of such pleasant flattery," Mr. Locksley smilingly answered; "and whether false or true, the flattery is equally sweet."

"And like all sweets unwholesome," said Miss Forrester with her frank laugh, "so we will spare you. But it is wonderful—wonderful—that woman's face. Where did you find your model, Mr. Locksley?"

"The face—the whole picture—is painted from memory," was his answer, very gravely made.

The moment he had spoken first, Lady Dynely had turned, and looked him full in the face. What was there in his voice and face so oddly familiar? That face, bronzed and bearded, was not like any face she knew, yet still—. He stood talking to France Forrester, while she thoughtfully gazed, striving in vain to place him.

"How goes the enemy?" Terry cried, pulling out his watch; "ten minutes of five. Lady Dynely, there was talk of a Keswick flower show—"

"And we are overdue—we must go instantly, France. Mr. Locksley, let me congratulate you once more on your success—I am sure it is but the forerunner of even greater things. I have some examples of the old Italian school, which I shall be very happy to show you, if you care to see them. I am at home every Thursday evening to receive my friends." She gave him her card, and took Mr. Dennison's arm. Miss Forrester murmured some last, gracious words, bowed with easy grace, and moved away with her friends.

"How your ladyship stared," was her remark, as they entered the barouche and were whirled away; "have you ever met this Mr. Locksley before?"

"I have never met Mr. Locksley before, I am quite sure," her ladyship answered; "it is not a face to be easily forgotten. It is a striking face."

"A very striking face," Miss Forrester agrees decidedly. "He reminds you of some one, possibly?"

She hesitates a moment—then answers:

"Of one who must have died, in exile, years ago. When he spoke first, it was the very voice of Gordon Caryll."