"HE'S SWEETEST FRIEND, OR HARDEST FOE."
While Mr. O'Boyneville was parting with the dowager at the terminus,
Cecil walked with Hector Gordon on the terrace at Pevenshall.
The august afternoon was almost stifling in its sultry heat; and most
of the Pevenshall idlers had taken shelter in the drawing-room. A
group of young ladies were clustered under a great beech on the lawn
listening to the perusal of a new novel: and with the exception of this
party and the two promenaders on the terrace the gardens were deserted.
Cecil and Hector walked slowly up and down the terrace. For some time
they had been silent. It was one of those oppressive days which weigh
down the liveliest spirits; but on Cecil's face there was a profound
melancholy not to be accounted for by atmospheric influences. Nor was
the countenance of the Major much brighter of aspect. He seemed divided
between his own sombre thoughts and an anxious curiosity at to the
meditations of his companion.
"Tell me you are not unhappy, darling," he said at last; "for pity's
sake tell me that the idea of the step you have decided upon taking
does not make you unhappy."
"You do not think that I can feel very happy, do you, Hector?"
"If you love me as I----"
"Does the thought of our future make _you_ happy?" cried Cecil
passionately. "Oh Hector, you know as well as I do that henceforward
happiness must be impossible for you and me. It is agreed that we
cannot endure the miserable deception, the shameful degradation of our
lives any longer--that we must escape from this atmosphere of falsehood
at any sacrifice--at any cost to ourselves. We have discussed this so
often that there is no need of further discussion; and you have brought
me to see things as you see them. You have wrung a promise from me, and
I am prepared to keep it. But for mercy's sake do not talk to me of
happiness."
The soldier ventured no reply to this speech. The gloom deepened upon
his countenance as he watched the pale face of his companion. They came
to the end of the terrace presently, and paused under the statue of
Pomona, as they had done in the moonlight some weeks before. They stood
here side by side for some time, she looking straight before her at the
drowsy summer landscape, he keeping close watch upon her face.
She had promised to leave her husband with Hector Gordon. She had
promised to pass away with him into the outer darkness, beyond the
confines of the only world she knew. By what passionate pleading,
by what subtle argument, her lover had brought her to accept this
course as a fatal necessity, need not be set down here. When a man's
infatuation or a man's selfishness overrides his sense of truth and
honour, he can find arguments enough to serve him in such a cause. That
he loved her was beyond all question; that the penalty involved in his
dishonour was scarcely less than the sacrifice to be made by her was
also true;--but it was no less true that the passion which demanded so
cruel a sacrifice was a base and selfish one.
It is difficult to imagine how any woman can arrive at such a decision
as that made by Lady Cecil. The descent of Avernus is so gradual a
slope, that it is only when the traveller finds himself at the bottom
of the gulf that he perceives how terrible has been the rapidity of
his progress. Ample opportunity had been given Hector Gordon for
the pleading of his wicked cause. The Fates had conspired to assist
his evil work; and even when some short-lived pang of self-reproach
prompted him to abandon his relentless pursuit, some little
circumstance, too insignificant to be remembered, always occurred to
strangle the feeble resolution.
Little by little Cecil had learnt to believe that the tie between
herself and her husband must needs be broken. She had learnt to believe
that the daily and hourly deceptions of the last few weeks constituted
a more terrible sin than any open rupture with the man she had sworn to
love and honour. The seducer's fatal philosophy had done its work, and
she accepted the justice of his reasoning. It was surely better that
she should forfeit the place she had no right to hold in her husband's
confidence and esteem--better that he should know her for a false
wife, an outcast from him and from society, than that he should trust
her as a true one while her love and allegiance were really given to
another. This was the conviction which had taken possession of Cecil's
mind. She was prepared to leave her husband, and abandon her home and
station for the fatal protection of a lover; but she had no hope of
any future happiness to be won by this terrible sacrifice. She sought
only to escape from the daily falsehood that tortured and humiliated
her. It was within a very short period that this fatal conviction had
taken root in her heart. Before that time she had trusted in her own
honour--in Hector Gordon's forbearance--in her husband's power to save
her from herself. But her own sense of honour had been weak to sustain
her against a lover's subtle power of reasoning. Hector had shown no
forbearance; and her last hope in the protection of her husband had
been disappointed by reason of Laurence O'Boyneville's unsympathetic
joviality.
Looking at her this afternoon as they stood silently side by side,
Hector saw something like despair in the pale still face. It was not
a hopeful aspect of affairs for a lover who had sacrificed so much
in order to induce the woman he loved to break the bonds that bound
her to another man and plight her perjured faith to him. He had won
her promise to be his, but she had not promised to be happy; and a
chilling sense of terror thrilled through his heart as he fancied
that perhaps she had spoken the truth just now, and that henceforward
there could be no such thing as happiness for these two who loved each
other so dearly. He had not calculated upon this. Cecil might desire
only to escape from a miserable present, but Hector had believed in
a bright future. What could mar his happiness, if the woman he loved
was his companion, his own for ever and for ever? Loss of position,
tarnished honour, the memory of a great wrong done to an unsuspecting
man--what were these but trifles when weighed in the balance with an
all-absorbing love?
The ordeal through which he must needs drag the creature he loved so
dearly might indeed be a terrible one; but once passed, the future lay
bright and fair before them--a future in which they would be together.
But now all at once a new light dawned upon him. He might be happy--for
how could he be otherwise than happy with her?--but would she be
content? That calm despair in the pale face gave no promise of peace.
"Poor girl, poor girl! it is harder for her than for me," he thought
sadly.
And then presently some brief awakening of conscience impelled him to
speak.
"Cecil," he cried; "it is not too late! If you wish to retract--if you
repent your promise----"
"No, I will keep my promise. I never can go back to my husband any
more. If he loved me--if there were any sympathy between us, he might
have saved me from myself, Hector--and from you. Oh, I know how selfish
this must sound;--you have sacrificed so much for me--your career--your
future--I have learnt to understand the sacrifice since I have heard
people wonder why you took such a step. And it was for my sake. No,
Hector, I will not break my promise. I should be weak, dishonourable,
selfish beyond all measure, if I could break my promise after what it
has cost you to win it."
A woman has always more or less inclination for self-sacrifice. Let
her once be fully persuaded that it is her duty to throw herself away
for the welfare or the pleasure of some one she loves, and she is in
hot haste to take the fatal step that shall hurl her to destruction.
Cecil was not a woman who could entertain any hope of happiness from
such a course as that which she was about to take. If she could
make her lover happy, if she could atone to him in some manner for
the foolish sacrifice of his career, she would be content; but no
false glamour illumined her miserable pathway. She was going to her
destruction--blindly perhaps--but with a full knowledge that there was
darkness around her, and that no light could ever shine upon the way
she was treading.
Hector talked to her of their plans; and she listened quietly, and
acquiesced in all his arrangements. The details of their flight had
been settled before to-day. The Major was to leave Pevenshall in the
evening by the mail, on pretence of some sudden summons for which his
afternoon letters would furnish the excuse. Cecil was to leave the
next morning, in obedience to a letter from her husband. In the way
which they were going, there seemed to be nothing but falsehood and
deception; but Hector reminded his companion that this was only a brief
ordeal through which they must pass to perfect freedom.
"I know how painful it is for you, darling," the Major said tenderly;
"but in a few days we shall be far away from all this wretchedness,
in the dear little Brittany village I have told you of so often, with
the mountains behind us, and the sea before; and then we will go on to
Italy, and wander from place to place till you come some day to the
spot in which you would like to live. And there I will build you the
brightest home that a man ever made for his idol."
"But you, Hector--your career, your ambition----"
"My career is finished, and I have no ambition except to be with you."
He had said the same thing a hundred times, in a hundred different
fashions; but to-day the tender words could not bring the faintest
smile to Cecil's face. She knew that she was about to commit a terrible
sin; and she had none of the passionate recklessness which can alone
sustain the sinner. A stronger will than her own was carrying her along
the fatal pathway, and a perverted sense of honour kept her faithful to
the promise which had been extorted from her by her lover's despair.
She was like that unhappy knight whose
"Honour rooted in dishonour stood."
All the details of the flight had been planned by Hector before this
afternoon; but he had found some difficulty in explaining them to
Cecil. The paltry details seemed more detestable than the sin itself;
and the soldier's pride and delicacy alike revolted against the
necessities of his position. Yet in due course all had been arranged.
Cecil was to go straight to Brunswick Square, there to make hurried
preparations for her flight, and to write her farewell letter to her
husband, who would have started on his western journey before she left
the north. In Brunswick Square she was to see Hector, who would come
to her in the course of the day to assure himself of her safe arrival,
and on the following morning they were to meet at the station in time
to leave London by the Dover mail. Before Mr. O'Boyneville returned to
town they would be far away, and there would be little trace of them
left to mark the way by which they had gone.