Mrs. Costello seemed to grow stronger from the moment of their landing.
Mr. Wynter decided without any hesitation that they should remain at
Havre, at least until the next day. In the evening, therefore, they were
sitting quietly together when the important question of a future
residence for the mother and daughter came to be discussed.
"I should like Lucia to see something of Paris," Mrs. Costello said,
"and to do that we should be obliged to stay a considerable time; for,
as you perceive, I am not strong enough to do much sight-seeing at
present."
"I see," Mr. Wynter answered, nodding gravely. "We might get you a nice
little apartment there, and settle you for the winter; that would be
the best plan. I suppose you don't mind cold?"
"That depends entirely on the sort of cold. Yes; I think we should
settle in Paris for a time, and then move into the country. Only I have
a great fancy not to be more than a day's journey from England."
"In which I sympathize with you. It will be very much more satisfactory
to me to know that you are within a reasonable distance of us."
Lucia sat and listened very contentedly to the talk of the elder people.
To her, whose only experience of relationship, beyond her mother, was
painful and mortifying, there was something she had not anticipated of
novelty and comfort in this new state of affairs. Her cousin's tone of
kinsmanship and friendliness was so genuine and unforced that she and
her mother both accepted it naturally, and forgot for the moment that,
to a little-minded man, such friendliness might have been difficult and
perhaps impossible.
They decided to start for Paris next morning, Mr. Wynter saying that he
had arranged for a week's absence from England, and therefore would have
plenty of time to see them fixed in their new residence before he left.
Then the conversation glided to other subjects, and Lucia losing her
interest in it, began to wonder where Percy was--whether they were again
on the same continent--whether he would hear, through the Bellairs, of
their movements--whether he thought of her. And from that point she went
off in some indescribable maze of dreams, recollections, and wishes,
through which there came, as if from a distance, the sound of voices
talking about England--about Chester--about her mother's old home and
old friends--and about her young cousins, the Wynters, and a visit they
were to make to France when spring should have set in.
In the midst of all, the sound of a great clock striking broke the
stillness of the snowy streets, and, just after, a party of men passed,
singing a clamorous French song, and stamping an accompaniment with
their heavy shoes. Lucia smiled as she listened, and then sighed. In
truth this was a new life, into which nothing of the old one could come
except love and memory.
Of course, they could not sleep that night. They missed the motion of
the ship, which had lately lulled them; they could not shake off the
impression of strangeness and feel sufficiently at home to forget
themselves; and to Lucia, used to the healthy sleep of eighteen, this
was a much more serious matter than to one who had kept as many vigils
as Mrs. Costello. They appeared, therefore, in the morning to have
changed characters; Lucia was pale and tired, Mrs. Costello seemed
bright and refreshed.
The rapid and uneventful journey to Paris ended, for the present, their
wanderings. When, on the following day, they started out in search of
apartments, Mrs. Costello looked round her in astonishment. More than
twenty years ago she had really known something of the city; now there
only seemed to be, here and there, an old landmark left to prove that it
was not altogether a new and strange place. Lucia was delighted with
everything. She no sooner saw the long line of the Champs Elysées than
she declared that there, and nowhere else, their rooms must be found.
"In the city, mamma," she said, "you could not breathe; and as for
sleeping, you know what it was last night; and if we went further out,
we should see nothing."
Mrs. Costello was too pleased to see her daughter looking and speaking
with something of her old liveliness to be inclined to oppose her
fancies, only she said with a smile,
"The Champs Elysées is expensive--remember that, Lucia--and I am going
to make you keeper of the purse."
"Very well, mamma, if it is too dear, of course there is no more to be
said; but you don't object to our trying to get something here, do you?"
"Decidedly not. Let us try by all means."
They found apartments readily enough; but to find any suited to their
means was, as Mrs. Costello anticipated, anything but an easy matter.
Lucia began, before the morning was over, to realize the fact that their
£400 a year, which had been a perfectly comfortable income in Canada,
would require very careful management to afford them at all a suitable
living in Paris.
"It is only for a little while, though," she consoled herself. "In
summer we shall be able to go into the country and find something much
cheaper."
So they continued their search, and at last found just what they wanted;
though to do so, they had to mount so many stairs that Lucia was afraid
her mother would be exhausted.
"I do not think this will do, mamma," she said. "I should never dare to
ask you to go out, because when you came in tired, you would have all
this fatigue."
But the rooms were comfortable and airy, and the difficulties of living
"au cinquième" were considered on the whole to be surmountable; so the
affair was settled. Then came the minor considerations of a new
housekeeping, and Margery was heartily regretted; though what the good
woman would have been able to do where she could neither understand nor
make herself understood, would not have been easy to say. Even Mrs.
Costello, who, in her youth, had had considerable practice in speaking
French, found herself now and then at a loss; and as for Lucia, having
only a sort of school-girl knowledge of the language, she instantly
found her comprehension swept away in the flood of words poured upon her
by every person she ventured to speak to. "Never mind, I shall soon
learn," she said in the most valiant manner; but, alas! for the present,
she was almost helpless, and Mrs. Costello had to arrange, bargain, and
interpret for both.
They wound up their day's business by a little shopping, which, like
everything else, was new to Lucia. The splendid shops, lighted up in
the early dusk of the winter afternoon, were as different as anything
could be from the stores at Cacouna. A sudden desire to be possessed of
a purse full of money, which she might empty in these enchanted palaces,
was the immediate and natural effect of the occasion on the mind of such
an unsophisticated visitor. She became, indeed, so completely lost in
admiration, that her mother made her small purchases without being able
to obtain anything but the vaguest and most unsatisfactory opinions on
such trifling affairs.
Mr. Wynter derived considerable amusement from watching his young cousin
and future ward. He told his wife afterwards that he had begun the day's
work entirely from a sense of duty towards poor Mary; but that for once
he had found that kind of thing almost as amusing as women seemed to do.
The young girl with her half-Indian nature, and wholly Canadian--ultra
Canadian--bringing up, was so bright, simple, and naïve, that she was
worth watching. Her wonderful beauty, and the unconscious grace of her
father's people, kept her from ever appearing countrified or awkward;
her simplicity was that of a lovely child, and was in no way discordant
with the higher nature she had shown in the bitter troubles and
perplexities of the past year. She felt safe now and hopeful,
inconceivably, absurdly hopeful--yet there was this difference between
the happiness of long ago and the happiness to-day, that then she
_could_ not believe in sorrow, and now she only _would_ not.
They went back to their hotel for another night. Next day they moved to
the apartment they had taken, and submitted themselves to the
ministrations of Claudine, their French version of Margery. Submitted is
exactly the right word for Lucia's behaviour, at any rate. Claudine
appeared to her to have an even greater than common facility of speech;
it only needed a single hesitating phrase to open the floodgates, and
let out a torrent. Accordingly, until her stock of available French
should increase, Lucia decided to take everything with the utmost
possible quietness. She would devote herself to her mother, and to
becoming a little acquainted with Paris, and give Claudine the fewest
possible occasions for eloquence.
Before the two days which Mr. Wynter spent with them in their new
dwelling were over, they had begun to feel tolerably settled. In fact,
Lucia's spirits, raised by excitement, were beginning to droop a
little, and her thoughts to make more and more frequent excursions in
search of the friends from whom she was so widely separated. She thought
most, it is true, of Percy, and her fancies about him were
rose-coloured; but she thought, also, a little sadly, of the dear old
home, and the Bellairs and Bella, and even Magdalen Scott, who had been
an old acquaintance, if never a very dear friend. She had many wondering
thoughts, too, about Maurice. Was he still in England? or was he in
Canada? was he at sea? would he come over to see them? would he even
know where to find them if he came? Of these last subjects she spoke
freely to her mother, only she kept utter silence as to Percy. So it
happened that Mrs. Costello, knowing her own estimate of her daughter's
lover, and strangely forgetting not only how different Lucia's had been,
but that in a nature essentially faithful, love increases instead of
dying, through time and absence, comforted herself, and believed that
all was now settled for the best. Neither Percy nor Maurice, it was
evident, would ever be Lucia's husband. Nothing could be more
satisfactory, therefore, than that she should have become indifferent
to the one, and have only a sisterly affection for the other. And yet,
with unconscious perversity, she was not satisfied. She allowed to
herself that Maurice's conduct had been reasonable enough. He had
accepted the common belief that Christian was the murderer of Dr.
Morton; and the conclusion which naturally followed, that Christian's
daughter, beautiful and good though she might be, was not a fit mistress
for Hunsdon; to have done otherwise, would have been Quixotic. Yet in
her heart she was bitterly disappointed. If he had but loved Lucia well
enough to dare to take her with all her inherited shame, how richly he
would have been rewarded when the cloud cleared away! Where would he
find another like her? And now, since Maurice could change, who might
ever be trusted?
No doubt these meditations were romantic. If Mrs. Costello had been the
mother of half-a-dozen children--a woman living in the midst of a busy,
lively household, where motherly cares and castle-buildings had to be
shared among three or four daughters--she would not have had time to
occupy herself so intensely with the affairs of any one. As it was,
however, this one girl was her life of life; she threw into her
interests the hopes of youth and the experience of middle age. As Lucia
grew up, she had watched with anxiety, with hope, and with fear, for the
coming of that inevitable time when, either for good or evil, she must
love. It had been her fancy that, if Lucia loved Maurice, all would be
well; if she loved any other, all would be ill. But time had passed on,
and brought change; not one thing had happened according to her
anticipations. And she tried to believe that she was glad that it was
so, while a shadow of dissatisfaction lay at the bottom of her heart.
When Mr. Wynter left Paris, he did so with the comfortable conviction
that his cousins were happily settled; and with the persuasion that, as
they both appeared to have a fair share of common sense, they would soon
forget their past troubles, and be just like other people.
"I don't like Mary's state of health at present," he said to his wife;
"and, if I am not mistaken, she thinks even worse of it than I do; but
still, rest of mind and body may do a great deal; and now she is really
a widow, and quite safe from any further annoyances, I dare say she will
come round."
"And her daughter?" asked Mrs. Wynter rather anxiously. "Do you think
she would get on with the girls?"
"I don't know, I'm sure, my dear. She is not much like them, certainly,
or, indeed, like any English girl. She is wonderfully pretty, but quite
Indian in looks."
"Poor child! what a pity!"
"I am not sure about that. She seems a good girl, and Mary says is the
greatest comfort to her, so I suppose she is English at heart; and as
for her black eyes, there is something very attractive about them."
Mrs. Wynter sighed again. Lucia's beauty, of which it cannot be said
that Mr. Wynter's account was overdrawn, lost all its advantages in her
eyes by being of an Indian type. She could never quite persuade herself
that her husband had not been walking about the streets of Paris with a
handsome young squaw in skins and porcupine quills.