Volume Ii Part 1 (2/2)

”Do tell me, darling; you must tell me, Lucy. Something is preying on your mind; trust me, do trust me, pet.”

Not then did Lucy Warrender tell her trouble to her cousin. But that night, unwillingly and ungraciously enough, she told her grief. Pale as a ghost, her fingers intertwined in a convulsive grip, she knelt by her cousin's bed and told her shameful story. She made her pitiful appeal.

With dilated eyes, Georgina listened in terror to Lucy's confidence. It was the old tale. Lucy was about to become a mother; this was all she told. Was it not enough? She looked imploringly up at her cousin as she whispered:

”You can save me, Georgie, if you will--if you love me, as I know you do; and if you won't, there is nothing left for me but the lake, the cold, cruel lake.” Here she laughed hysterically, and nestled to her cousin's breast.

The elder girl was struck dumb. The shame of it, the bitter shame of this accursed thing.

There was a silence, only broken by the monotonous ticking of the carved Swiss clock and the deep sobs of the kneeling girl. There was a sudden whiz of spinning wheels--”Cuckoo! cuckoo!” screamed the little painted bird derisively, as he appeared for an instant from his tiny box to mark the hour. Both girls started at the inauspicious interruption.

”I save you, my darling! How can I save you? And father, poor father.

Oh, Lucy! how could you--how could you so deceive us all? But _he_ must be sent for--who is the man? He must marry you--he will marry you, of course, at once, _this gentleman_!”

But Lucy only sobbed the more.

”He will never marry me, Georgie. You can save me, you alone!”

She never named the man.

They talked on far into the night; and as they wept and whispered, the painted wooden demon ever and again sprang from his box and startled them with his discordant cry,

”Cuckoo! cuckoo!”

How could she refuse? Much against her will at last she yielded; she agreed to deceive the absent husband who trusted her--that heartless husband whom she idolized. From that day forward the sound of a cuckoo clock--the voice of the bird himself, as she heard him in the woods--sounded in her ear as the cry of a mocking devil. Little did she dream that, in weakly yielding to her cousin's piteous entreaty, she was sowing the seed of which she and hers should reap the bitter harvest.

What could she do, poor girl? She felt it was her duty. Who can tell if she erred? If so, it was on mercy's side. Next morning Lucy was herself again; she was once more the buoyant, merry girl, who smiled and chattered, and sang her little sc.r.a.ps of French songs, making the suns.h.i.+ne of the house. The _roles_ were changed. Never again shall the light of perfect happiness beam in Georgie Haggard's once honest eyes--those eyes now red with weeping, full of the secret sorrow of her cousin's bitter confidence. It is always painful to an honourable mind to play the part of a conspirator, and that thankless _role_ was now forced upon poor Georgie--w.i.l.l.y-nilly she had to do it. Lucy's fertile brain teemed with plan, with plot, with stratagem; certain of ultimately conquering the scruples of her gentle and loving cousin, she had evidently thought the matter out.

”We ought to trust n.o.body, you know,” said the younger girl, who had suddenly a.s.sumed the management of everything. Startled and horrified, Georgie had become in regard to her cousin, that born intriguer, but as clay in the hands of the potter. ”No, we ought not to, but we must. If ever a girl in this world could keep her tongue between her teeth, it's that pale Hephzibah of ours, and trust her we must, there's nothing else for it.”

Lucy's tongue, once loosed, never seemed to tire. Her despondency and melancholy, her load of carking care, were all transferred as by the wave of a magician's wand to her cousin's shoulders. Alas! that cousin, that patient, loving cousin is perhaps destined to carry to her grave the fardel of another's weakness, the punishment of a worthless woman's fault.

Georgie, from that hour, was a changed girl. No more the once happy, loving eyes gazed on the younger girl with more than a mother's pride.

From that day Georgie feared her cousin, and Lucy soon detected the new sentiment which she had unexpectedly inspired. The younger dictated, the elder acquiesced.

”Georgie,” she once suddenly said, when they were alone together on the little platform which hung over the blue waters of the lake, ”swear to me that you will never betray my secret.” She clutched her cousin's hand with fierce insistance and stamped her little foot; ”swear to me,” she said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, ”that never by word or letter you will reveal my secret--_our_ secret,” she added with a smile. If ever a pretty woman's smile was devilish, Lucy Warrender's was, as she insisted on this partners.h.i.+p in her guilt.

”Have I ever deceived you, Lucy, that you should want me to swear?”

”But you shall swear, Georgie,” she reiterated almost savagely. ”I have gone too far to hesitate at trifles now, and if you don't, you will never see me more,” she added menacingly, as she pointed to the lake.

Her little figure seemed to increase in height, so sternly determined was her aspect.

Georgie cowered in mingled anxiety and horror.

”Swear to me,” she said, and she emphasized the command, for it was no longer an entreaty, by a fierce clutch at her cousin's wrist, ”never to a soul till the day of your death will you breathe a word of it.

Swear.”

”I do swear it, Lucy,” replied the dominated victim, and she buried her face in her hands.

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