"You have indeed," says Lady Chetwoode; and then she cries a little behind her handkerchief.
"How old is she?" with quivering lips.
"Twenty-two or twenty-three, I am not sure which," in a subdued tone.
"In manner is she quiet?"
"Very. Tranquil is the word that best expresses her. When you see her you will acknowledge I have not erred in taste."
Lady Chetwoode with a sigh lays down her arms, and when Cyril stoops his face to hers she does not refuse the kiss he silently demands, so that with a lightened conscience he leaves the room to hurry on the wings of love to Cecilia"s bower.
All the way there he seems to tread on air. His heart is beating, he is full of happiest exultation. The day is bright and joyous; already one begins to think of winter kindly as a thing of the past. All nature seems in unison with his exalted mood.
Reaching the garden he knows so well and loves so fondly, he walks with eager, longing steps toward a side path where usually she he seeks is to be found. Now standing still, he looks round anxiously for Cecilia.
But Cecilia is not there!
CHAPTER XXVIII.
"_Lys._--How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale?
How chance the roses there do fade so fast?
_Her._--Belike, for want of rain, which I could well Between them from the tempest of mine eyes."
--_Midsummer Night"s Dream._
Up in her chamber sits Cecilia, speechless, spell-bound, fighting with a misery too great for tears. Upon her knee lies an open letter from which an enclosure has slipped and fallen to the ground. And on this last her eyes, scorched and distended, are fixed hopelessly.
The letter itself is from Colonel Trant: it was posted yesterday, and received by her late last night, though were you now to tell her a whole year has elapsed since first she read its fatal contents, I do not think she would evince much doubt or surprise. It was evidently hastily penned, the characters being rough and uneven, and runs as follows:
"Austen Holm. Friday.
"MY DEAR GIRL,--The attempt to break bad news to any one has always seemed to me so vain, and so unsatisfactory a proceeding, and one so likely to render even heavier the blow it means to soften, that here I refrain from it altogether. Yet I would entreat you when reading what I now enclose not to quite believe in its truth until further proofs be procured. I shall remain at my present address for three days longer: if I do not by then hear from you, I shall come to The Cottage. Whatever happens, I know you will remember it is my only happiness to serve you, and that I am ever your faithful friend,
"GEORGE TRANT."
When Cecilia had read so far, she raised the enclosure, though without any very great misgivings, and, seeing it was from some unknown friend of Trant"s, at present in Russia, skimmed lightly through the earlier portion of it, until at length a paragraph chained her attention and killed at a stroke all life and joy and happy love within her.
"By the bye," ran this fatal page, "did you not know a man named Arlington?--tall, rather stout, and dark; you used to think him dead. He is not, however, as I fell against him yesterday by chance and learned his name and all about him. He didn"t seem half such a dissipated card as you described him, so I hope traveling has improved his morals. I asked him if he knew any one called Trant, and he said, "Yes, several."
I had only a minute or two to speak to him, and, as he never drew breath himself during that time, I had not much scope for questioning. He appears possessed of many advantages,--pretty wife at home, no end of money, nice place, unlimited swagger. Bad form all through, but genial.
You will see him shortly in the old land, as he is starting for England almost immediately."
And so on, and on, and on. But Cecilia, then or afterward, never read another line.
Her first thought was certainly not of Cyril. It was abject, cowering fear,--a horror of any return to the old loathed life,--a crushing dread lest any chance should fling her again into her husband"s power. Then she drew her breath a little hard, and thought of Trant, and then of Cyril; and _then_ she told herself, with a strange sense of relief, that at least one can die.
But this last thought pa.s.sed away as did the others, and she knew that death seldom comes to those who seek it; and to command it,--who should dare do that? Hope dies hard in some b.r.e.a.s.t.s! In Cecilia"s the little fond flame barely flickered, so quickly did it fade away and vanish altogether before the fierce blast that had a.s.sailed it. Not for one moment did she doubt the truth of the statement lying before her. She was too happy, too certain; she should have remembered that some are born to misfortune as the sparks fly upward. "She had lived, she had loved," and here was the end of it all!
All night long she had not slept. She had indeed lain upon her bed, her pillow had known the impress of her head, but through every minute of the lonely, silent awesome hours of gloom, her great eyes had been wide open, watching for the dawn.
At last it came. A glorious dawn; a very flush of happy youth; the sweeter that it bespoke a warm and early spring. At first it showed pale pink with expectation, then rosy with glad hope. From out the east faint rays of gold rushed tremulously, and, entering the cas.e.m.e.nt, cast around Cecilia"s head a tender halo.
When happiness lies within our grasp, when all that earth can give us (alas! how little!) is within our keeping, how good is the coming of another day,--a long, perfect day, in which to revel, and laugh, and sing, as though care were a thing unknown! But when trouble falls upon us, and this same terrible care is our only portion, with what horror, what heart-sinking, do we turn our faces from the light and wish with all the fervor of a vain wish that it were night!
The holy dawn brought but anguish to Cecilia. She did not turn with impatience from its smiling beauty, but heavy tears gathered slowly, and grew within her sorrowful gray eyes, until at length (large as was their home) they burst their bounds and ran quickly down her cheeks, as though glad to escape from what should never have been their resting-place.
Swiftly, silently, ran the little pearly drops, ashamed of having dimmed the l.u.s.tre of those lovely eyes that only yester morning were so glad with smiles.
Sitting now in her bedroom, forlorn and desolate, with the cruel words that have traveled all the way across a continent to slay her peace throbbing through her brain, she hears Cyril"s well-known step upon the gravel outside, and, springing to her feet as though stabbed, shrinks backward until the wall yields her a support. A second later, ashamed of her own weakness, she straightens herself, smooths back her ruffled hair from her forehead, and, with a heavy sigh and colorless face, walks down-stairs to him who from henceforth must be no more counted as a lover. Slowly, with lingering steps that betray a broken heart, she draws nigh to him.
Seeing her, he comes quickly forward to greet her, still glad with the joy that has been his during all his walk through the budding woods, a smile upon his lips. But the smile soon dies. The new blankness, the terrible change, he sees in the beloved face sobers him immediately. It is vivid enough even at a first glance to fill him with apprehension: hastening to her as though eager to succor her from any harm that may be threatening, he would have taken her in his arms, but she, with a little quick shudder, putting up her hands, prevents him.
"No," she says, in a low changed tone; "not again!"
"Something terrible has happened," Cyril says, with conviction, "or you would not so repulse me. Darling, what is it?"
"I don"t know how to tell you," replies she, her tone cold with the curious calmness of despair.
"It cannot be so very bad," nervously; "nothing can signify greatly, unless it separates you from me."
A mournful bitter laugh breaks from Cecilia, a laugh that ends swiftly, tunelessly, as it began.
"How nearly you have touched upon the truth!" she says, miserably; and then, in a clear, hard voice, "My husband is alive."
A dead silence. No sound to disturb the utter stillness, save the sighing of the early spring wind, the faint twitter of the birds among the budding branches as already they seek to tune their slender throats to the warblings of love, and the lowing of the brown-eyed oxen in the fields far, far below them.
Then Cyril says, with slow emphasis:
"I don"t believe it. It"s a lie! It is impossible!"
"It is true. I feel it so. Something told me my happiness was too great to last, and now it has come to an end. Alas! alas! how short a time it has continued with me! Oh, Cyril!"--smiting her hands together pa.s.sionately,--"what shall I do? what shall I do? If he finds me he will kill me, as he often threatened. How shall I escape?"
"It is untrue," repeats Cyril, doggedly, hardly noting her terror and despair. His determined disbelief restores her to calmness.
"Do you think I would believe except on certain grounds?" she says.
"Colonel Trant wrote me the evil tidings."
"Trant is interested; he might be glad to delay our marriage," he says, with a want of generosity unworthy of him.
"No, no, _no_. You wrong him. And how should he seek to delay a marriage that was yet far distant?"
"Not so very distant. I have yet to tell you"--with a strange smile--"my chief reason for being here to-day: to ask you to receive my mother to-morrow, who is coming to welcome you as a daughter. How well Fate planned this tragedy! to have our crowning misfortune fall straight into the lap of our newly-born content! Cecilia,"--vehemently,--"there must still be a grain of hope somewhere. Do not let us quite despair. I cannot so tamely accept the death to all life"s joys that must follow on belief."
"You shall see for yourself," replies she, handing to him the letter that all this time has lain crumbled beneath her nerveless fingers.