Part 68 (1/2)
”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 crus.h.i.+ng 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!