Chapter 38
Suddenly raising his head, he looks at her, his whole heart in his expression, his eyes full of purpose. Instinctively she feels the warmth, the tenderness of his glance, and changes from a calm lily into an expectant rose. Her hand trembles within his, as though meditating flight, and then lies pa.s.sive as his clasp tightens firmly upon it.
Slowly, reluctantly, as though compelled by some hidden force, she turns her averted eyes to his.
"Cecilia," murmurs he, imploringly, and then--and then their lips meet, and they kiss each other solemnly, with a pa.s.sionate tenderness, knowing it is their betrothal they are sealing.
"I wish I had summoned courage to kiss you a week ago," he says, presently. He is inside the gate now, and seems to have lost in this shamefully short time all the hesitation and modesty that a few minutes ago were so becoming. His arm is around her; even as he makes this _risque_ remark, he stoops and embraces her again, without even having the grace to ask permission, while she (that I should live to say it of Cecilia!) never reproves him.
"Why?" she asks, smiling up at him.
"See how I have wasted seven good days," returns he, drinking in gladly all the beauty of her face and smile. "This day last week I might have been as happy as I am now,--whereas I was the most miserable wretch alive, the victim of suspense."
"You bore your misery admirably: had you not told me, I should never have guessed your wretchedness. Besides, how do you know I should have been so kind to you seven long days ago?"
"I know it,--because you love me."
"And how do you know that either?" asks she, with new-born coquetry that sits very sweetly upon her. "Cyril, when did you begin to love me?"
"The very moment I first saw you."
"No, no; I do not want compliments from _you_: I want the very honest truth. Tell me."
"I have told you. The honest truth is this. That morning after your arrival when I restored your terrier to you, I fell in love with you: you little thought then, when I gave your dog into your keeping, I was giving my heart also."
"No," in a low, soft voice, that somehow has a smile in it, "how could I? I am glad you loved me always,--that there was no time when I was indifferent to you. I think love at first sight must be the sweetest and truest of all."
"You have the best of it, then, have you not?" with a rather forced laugh. "Not only did I love you from the first moment I saw you, but you are the only woman I ever really cared for; while you," with some hesitation, and turning his eyes steadily away from hers, "you--of course--did love--once before."
"Never!"
The word comes with startling vehemence from between her lips, the new and brilliant gladness of her face dies from it. A little chill shudder runs through all her frame, turning her to stone; drawing herself with determination from his encircling arms, she stands somewhat away from him.
"It is time I told you my history," she says, in cold, changed tones, through which quivers a ring of pain, while her face grows suddenly as pale, as impenetrable as when they were yet quite strangers to each other. "Perhaps when you hear it you may regret your words of to-night."
There is a doubt, a weariness in her voice that almost angers him.
"Nonsense!" he says, roughly, the better to hide the emotion he feels; "don't be romantic; n.o.body commits murder, or petty larceny, or bigamy nowadays, without being found out; unpleasant mysteries, and skeletons in the closet have gone out of fas.h.i.+on. We put all our skeletons in the _Times_ now, no matter how we may have to blush for their nakedness. I don't want to hear anything about your life if it makes you unhappy to tell it."
"It doesn't make me unhappy."
"But it does. Your face has grown quite white, and your eyes are full of tears. Darling, I won't have you distress
"I have not committed any of the crimes you mention, or any other particular crime," returns she, with a very wan little smile. "I have only been miserable ever since I can remember. I have not spoken about myself to any one for years, except one friend; but now I should like to tell you everything."
"But not there!" holding out his hands to her reproachfully. "I don't believe I could hear you if you spoke from such a distance." There is exactly half a yard of sward between them. "If you are willfully bent on driving us both to the verge of melancholy, at least let us meet our fate together."
Here he steals his arm round her once more, and, thus supported, and with her head upon his shoulder, she commences her short story:
"Perhaps you know my father was a Major in the Scots Greys; your brother knew him: his name was Duncan."
Cyril starts involuntarily.
"Ah, you start. You, too, knew him?"
"Yes, slightly."
"Then," in a curiously hard voice, "you knew nothing good of him. Well,"
with a sigh, "no matter; afterward you can tell me what it was. When I was eighteen he brought me home from school, not that he wanted my society,--I was rather in his way than otherwise, and it wasn't a good way,--but because he had a purpose in view. One day, when I had been home three months, a visitor came to see us. He was introduced to me by my father. He was young, dark, not ugly, well-mannered," here she pauses as though to recover breath, and then breaks out with a pa.s.sion that shakes all her slight frame, "but hateful, vile, _loathsome_."
"My darling, don't go on; I don't want to hear about him," implores Cyril, anxiously.
"But I must tell you. He possessed that greatest of all virtues in my father's eyes,--wealth. He was rich. He admired me; I was very pretty then. He dared to say he loved me. He asked me to marry him, and--I refused him."
As though the words are forced from her, she utters them in short, unequal sentences; her lips have turned the color of death.
"I suppose he went then to my father, and they planned it all between them, because at this time he--that is, my father--began to tell me he was in debt, hopelessly, irretrievably in debt. Among others, he mentioned certain debts of (so-called) honor, which, if not paid within a given time, would leave him not only a beggar, but a disgraced one upon the face of the earth; and I believed him. He worked upon my feelings day by day, with pretended tears, with vows of amendment. I don't know," bitterly, "what his share of the bargain was to be, but I do know he toiled for it conscientiously. I was young, unusually so for my age, without companions, romantic, impressionable. It seemed to me a grand thing to sacrifice myself and thereby save my father; and if I would only consent to marry Mr. Arlington he had promised not only to avoid dice, but to give up his habits of intemperance. It is an old story, is it not? No doubt you know it by heart. Crafty age and foolish youth,--what chance had I? One day I gave in, I said I would marry Mr.
Arlington, and he sold me to him three weeks later. We were married."
Here her voice fails her again, and a little moan of agonized recollection escapes her. Cyril, clasping her still closer to him, presses a kiss upon her brow. At the sweet contact of his lips she sighs, and two large tears gathering in her eyes roll slowly down her cheeks.
"A week after my wretched marriage," she goes on, "I discovered accidentally that my father had lied to me and tricked me. His circ.u.mstances were not so bad as he had represented to me, and it was on the condition that he was to have a certain income from Mr. Arlington yearly that he had persuaded me to marry him. He did not long enjoy it.
He died," slowly, "two months afterward. Of my life with--my husband I shall not tell you; the recital would only revolt you. Only to think of it now makes me feel deadly ill; and often from my dreams, as I live it all over again, I start, cold with horror and disgust. It did not last long, which was merciful: six months after our marriage he eloped with an actress and went to Vienna."
"The blackguard! the scoundrel!" says Cyril, between his teeth, drawing his breath sharply.
"I never saw him again. In a little while I received tidings of his death: he had been stabbed in a brawl in some drinking-house, and only lived a few hours after it. And I was once more free."
She pauses, and involuntarily stretches forth both her hands into the twilight, as one might who long in darkness, being thrust into the full light of day, seeks to grasp and retain it.
"When I heard of his death," she says, turning to Cyril, and speaking in a clear intense tone, "I _laughed_! For the first time for many months, I laughed aloud! I declared my thankfulness in a distinct voice.
My heart beat with honest, undisguised delight when I knew I should never see him again, should never in all the years to come s.h.i.+ver and tremble in his hated presence. He was dead, and I was heartily glad of it."
She stops, in terrible agitation. An angry fire gleams in her large gray eyes. She seems for the moment to have utterly forgotten Cyril's nearness, as in memory she lives over again all the detested past. Cyril lays his hand lightly upon her shoulder, her eyes meet his, and then the anger dies from them. She sighs heavily, and then goes on:
"After that I don't know what happened for a long time, because I got brain-fever, and, but for one friend who all through had done his best for me, I should have died. He and his sister nursed me through it, and brought me back to life again; but," mournfully, "they could not restore to me my crushed youth, my ruined faith, my girlish hopes. A few months had changed me from a mere child into a cold, unloving woman."
"Don't say that," says Cyril, gently.
"Until now," returns she, looking at him with eyes full of the most intense affection; "now all is different."
"Beloved, how you have suffered!" he says, pressing her head down again upon his breast, and caressing with loving fingers her rich hair. "But it is all over, and if I can make you so, you shall be happy in the future. And your one friend? Who was he?"
She hesitates perceptibly, and a blush creeping up dyes her pale face crimson.
"Perhaps I know," says Cyril, an unaccountable misgiving at his heart.
"Was it Colonel Trant? Do not answer me if you do not wish it," very gently.
"Yes, it was he. There is no reason why I should not answer you."
"No?"