The evening passed in constraint and embarrassment. Mrs. Costello was
both puzzled and annoyed; Maurice, worn out in mind and body, and only
resolute to shield Lucia at his own expense; Lucia herself more
thoroughly uncomfortable than she had ever been in her life. She partly
understood Maurice's conduct, but doubted its motives. Sometimes she
thought he was influenced by his old dislike to Percy, and that even his
kindness to herself was mixed with disapproval or contempt. Sometimes a
suspicion of the truth, so faint and so unreasonable in her own eyes,
that she would not acknowledge it for a moment, flashed across her mind;
and this suspicion had its keenly humiliating as well as its comforting
side. Besides the confusion of thoughts regarding these things, her mind
was burdened with an entirely new trouble--the sense that she was
concealing something from her mother; and this alone would have been
quite sufficient to disturb and distress her.
So the three who had been so happy for the last few weeks sat together,
with all their content destroyed. Maurice thought bitterly of the old
Canadian days, which had been happy, too, and to which Percy's coming
had brought trouble.
"It is the same thing over again," he said to himself; "but why such a
fellow as that should be allowed to do so much mischief is a problem _I_
can't solve. A tall idiot, who could not even care for her like a man!"
But he would not allow himself any hard thoughts of Lucia. Perhaps he
had had some during his solitary day, but he had no real cause for them,
and he was too loyal to find any consolation in blaming her. And it
never would have come into his head to solace himself with the "having
known _me_." He valued his own honest, unaltering love at a reasonable
but not an excessive, price--himself at a very low one; and as Lucia
understood nothing of the one, he did not wonder that she should slight
the other. And yet he was very miserable.
Ten o'clock came at last, and he went away. After he was gone, Lucia
came to her mother's knee, and sat down, resting her aching head against
the arm of the chair. The old attitude, and the soft clinging touch,
completely thawed the slight displeasure in Mrs. Costello's heart.
"Something is wrong, darling," she said. "If you do not want to tell me,
or think you ought not, remember I do not ask any questions; but you
have never had a secret from me."
Lucia raised her mother's hand, and laid it on her forehead.
"I ought to tell you, mamma," she said, "and I want to; but yet I don't
like."
"Why?"
"You will be so angry; no, not that, perhaps, but you will be shocked,
and yet I could not help it."
"Help what? Do you know, Lucia, that you are really trying me now?"
"Oh, mamma, no! I am not worth caring so much about."
"Have you and Maurice quarrelled?"
"Maurice! No, indeed. He is the best friend anybody ever had."
"What is it, then?"
"Mamma, do you remember what happened that first night at Cacouna?"
"What first night?" Mrs. Costello pressed her hand upon her heart, which
began to beat painfully.
"The night when you told me about my father."
"Yes; I remember. Go on."
"And the next day?"
"Yes. Don't tell me that you still regret it."
"Mamma, I have seen him again."
"To-day?"
"To-day. At the chapel of St. Ferdinand."
"Did he know you? Did you speak to him?"
"No. He did not see us. He was thinking nothing of me."
"He ought not to think of you."
"Nor I of him. He is married."
"I knew that he either was, or was about to be."
"You have heard of him, then, since?" Lucia raised her head sharply, and
looked at her mother.
"Mrs. Bellairs told me. They had heard it indirectly."
"If you had only told me!" Her head sank lower than before.
"My darling, I may have been mistaken. I have been so, many times; but I
wished to avoid mentioning him to you. I hoped you were forgetting."
"Never; never for an hour," she said, half to herself. "No, mamma, for I
thought he had not forgotten."
"But you sent him away yourself, my child. Remember, you would not even
let me see him. He could not have supposed that you meant your answer to
be anything but decisive."
"I did mean it to be decisive; but he refused to take it so. He said,
'Perhaps in a year;' and it is not a year yet."
Mrs. Costello listened in utter surprise. Lucia had much to say now.
Broken words and sentences, which showed, by degrees, how her mind, as
it recovered from the shock of other troubles, had gone back to dwell
upon the hope of Percy's return, and which explained more fully why she
had been so utterly blind to the schemes which were formed around her.
In one point only she failed. She did not, with all her own faith in it,
convey to her mother the impression of Percy's real earnestness in their
last interview. That he had really loved her, she still believed; but
she did not at all understand his shallow and easily-influenced
character. Mrs. Costello, on the other hand, was predisposed to take the
worst view, and to congratulate herself upon it, since it had helped to
leave Lucia free. But not believing that the poor girl had been the
object of a genuine, though transient passion, she for once was ready to
judge her hardly, and to accuse her of having been wilfully and
foolishly deceived.
There was a bitter pang to the mother's heart in thinking this; but the
recollections of her own youth made the idea the less improbable to her,
and made her also the gentler, even in her injustice. She said not a
word of blame, but coaxed from her child the story of the meeting that
morning, that she might find out how much Maurice had seen or heard of
the truth. He understood _all_. Lucia said so frankly, though she
blushed at the confession; he had not needed to be told, and he had been
so good!
Mrs. Costello could have groaned aloud. It needed an effort to keep
still, and not express the anger and impatience she felt. Maurice!
Maurice, who was worth fifty Percys! Maurice, who was devoted heart and
soul to this girl; who had been content to love her and wait for her,
through good and evil fortune, through change and absence and silence,
and, after all, she had no feeling for him but this heartless kind of
gratitude! Because at the very last, when he had thought her certainly
his own, he had endured, out of his great love, to see all his hopes
swept away, and her grieving for his rival; therefore he had just so
much claim upon her--"He was so good!"
There was little more said. When once Lucia had told her story, and when
Mrs. Costello had discovered that Maurice understood all, neither of
them cared to talk on the subject. They went to bed with a cloud between
them, after all. Mrs. Costello kept her secret still, and pondered over
the question whether there might yet possibly be hope, since Maurice had
said he had only deferred his wishes, not relinquished them. Lucia was
aware that her trouble was still her own exclusively--not shared by any
one, even her mother. She thought of Percy--she longed to know how long
he had thought of her--how, and why he had changed; and deep down in her
heart there was a little disturbed wondering at Maurice's
tenderness--that very tenderness which Mrs. Costello marvelled she did
not see.
Maurice did not see his cousin that night. He went straight to his room,
and without thinking, locked the door, put out the candles except one,
and sat down in the gloom. His eyes and head ached--he felt weary and
utterly dispirited. He had rushed away that morning after leaving Lucia
at home, and found himself by the merest chance at St. Denis. He had got
out there because his fellow-passengers did so, though at the railway
station he had taken a ticket for a place much further on along the
line. He had looked about the little town, and seen, in a blind
blundering kind of way, the Cathedral. He had come out, with about
half-a-dozen more visitors, and seeing an omnibus starting for Paris,
had got into it, because it would take longer than the train--then after
a while had got out again, because he could not bear the slow motion and
perpetual babble of talk inside. But through all, and still more in his
solitary walk, he had been thinking--thinking perpetually; and, after
all, his thinking seemed yet to do. He would go back to England--that
was necessary and right, whatever else might be. He was wanted there, as
the pile of letters on his writing-table could testify. His father, too,
was solitary at Hunsdon--and his business in Paris was over. But the
Dightons would not go for some days, and he could not very well leave
them after they had come over for his sake. He would have to stay,
therefore, till they went; he would have to go on seeing the Costellos.
He tried to fancy he was sorry for this, but the attempt was a very poor
one. For a few days he would have to go on just as usual, and after that
he would go home, and do what? That was just the question.
Ought he to go on hoping now? Had not he done all he could do? Was it
probable that a girl who had loved another man--and that man,
Percy--faithfully for a whole year on the mere possibility that he might
have remained faithful to her, and who had been throughout blind and
insensible to a regard deeper and purer than his had ever been, would be
able to transfer her heart whole and undivided as he must have it if he
had it at all? He dared not think it. "No, I have lost her at last!" he
said to himself, "and she is the one only woman in the world."
Then he remembered, as if the reminder had been whispered in his ear, a
promise he had made. It was one day during Mr. Beresford's illness, when
his mind was a little clearer than usual. He had been trying feebly to
return to his old interests, and speaking in his weak broken tones,
about the future. He grew very tired after awhile, and Maurice persuaded
him to try to sleep, but there was yet another thing to be said.
"You must marry soon, Maurice."
"I am young, sir, there is no hurry."
"No--only let it be soon."
"I must first find the lady."
"I thought I could have helped you--but it is too late." Maurice was
silent.
"You _will_ marry?" and the old man tried to raise himself in his
earnestness.
"I hope to do so."
"Don't talk of hoping--it is a duty, positive duty."
"I mean to do so, then, grandfather."
"Say 'I will'--promise me."
"If I both hope and intend it, sir, is that not enough?"
"No, no. Promise."
"Well then, I promise."
The invalid was satisfied, and in a few minutes dropped asleep, and the
conversation almost passed from his grandson's mind.
Now, however, he remembered it, as having bound him to something which
might be a lifelong misery. He was young still; as he had said, there
was time enough. But would any time make Lucia other than the first with
him?
At last he got up and began to pace up and down the room, pushing first
one, and then another article of furniture aside to make room for his
walk.
"There is at least no further reason why she should not know all" he
meditated. "Since my chance is gone, I cannot make matters worse by
speaking, and it will be a relief to tell her." He paused, dwelling on
the idea of his speaking and her listening--how differently from what he
had thought of before--and then went on--"To-morrow is as good as any
other time. To-morrow I will ask her to go out with me again--our last
walk together."
He stopped again. At last he grew tired even of his own thoughts. He
lighted his candles again, and sat down to write letters. First to his
father, to say that he was coming home, to give him all the news, to
speak just as usual of the Costellos--even specially of Lucia; then to
his agent, and to other people, till the streets began to grow noisy and
the candles to burn dim in the dawn.
Then he lay down, and fell into a deep, heavy sleep.