Lucia dared not call Margery to her assistance. The consciousness of
having something to conceal made her dread the smallest self-betrayal.
She hastened, therefore, to do alone all that she could do for her
mother's recovery; but it was so long before she succeeded that she grew
almost wild with terror. At last, however, the deathly look passed away,
and with the very first moment of returning animation, the habit of
self-control returned also. Mrs. Costello smiled at her daughter's
anxious face.
"I am afraid," she said, "that you will have to get used to these
attacks. Do not be frightened; you see they pass off again."
"But you never used to have them?"
"No; but youth and strength cannot last for ever."
"Mamma! you are not old; you are not much more than forty yet."
"Forty-two in years; but there are some years that might count for ten."
"It is this horrible pressure upon you; you are being tortured to
death!"
"Hush, my child. What I suffer is but the just and natural consequence
of what I did. Be patient, both for me and for yourself. By-and-by we
shall see that all is right."
Hard doctrine! and only to be learnt by long endurance. Lucia rebelled
against it, but she could not argue with her mother's pale face and
faintly spoken words to oppose her. She busied herself softly in such
little offices as her anxiety suggested, and they spoke no more that
night of the subjects nearest to their hearts.
But when Mrs. Costello was alone, she began to think of Maurice. She
felt, even before she began to think, that something which had been a
stay and prop to her hitherto had suddenly been snatched away, and she
had now to realize that this support was her confidence in him. For a
long time she had grown accustomed to rest upon the idea that a safe
and honourable future was secured for her child, and this had made
present trials and difficulties endurable. She had seen Percy's
courtship with bitter disappointment, although she had miscalculated its
issue, and through all her sympathy with Lucia, she had secretly
rejoiced at his dismissal; she had felt no scruples in hearing from
Maurice, at the very moment when his prospects had suddenly changed and
brightened, the assurance of his attachment, and she had received his
note that very day with a joy which almost resembled that which a girl
feels who hears from his own lips that her absent lover is faithful to
her. To this mother, cut off from every tie but that of motherhood, her
child was the one only absorbing interest; she had loved Maurice, but
she knew now that she had loved him chiefly as the representative of
Lucia's future safety and happiness. It had never occurred to her that
her own strange marriage, that the race or the character of her husband,
which had been recognized by both mother and daughter as insuperable
obstacles in Percy's case, would estrange the nobler and truer nature.
The whole miserable story would have to be told, she had thought, when
the time came, but she had neither feared its effect on Maurice nor felt
any compunction at the idea of his carrying into an honourable family a
wife whose parentage was her terror and disgrace.
But now that the disgrace had grown immeasurably darker, now that her
story might have to be told, not privately and with extenuation, but in
coarse hard words, and to the whole of the little world that knew her;
now that every one who would, might be able to point at her as the
daughter of a murderer,--how would it be?
With the feeling that at length she was indeed left alone and helpless,
Mrs. Costello put from her the last fragment of her dream. There was
still, it is true, the want of positive knowledge that Christian was the
criminal, but in her own heart she had already accepted the evidence
against him, and it seemed to her that all which remained to be done
with regard to Maurice was to write and tell him, not all the
truth--there was no need for that, and he might hear it soon enough from
other sources--but that the hopes they had both indulged in had deceived
them, and must be laid aside and forgotten.
And when her long meditation came to an end, she said softly to herself,
"Thank God, _she_ does not know. And I have been ready to complain of
the very unconsciousness which has saved her this!"
Mr. Leigh was surprised, as Lucia had expected, when she went next day,
just as usual, to pay him her morning visit. He was easily satisfied,
however, with the slight reasons she gave him for their delay, and glad
of anything that kept them still at the Cottage.
There was no need for her to ask any questions about the event of
yesterday. All that was known by every one had been told to Mr. Leigh
already by an early visitor, and he, full of horror and sympathy, was
able to tell the terrible story over again to a listener, whose deep and
agonizing interest in it he never suspected.
But to stay, after the certainty she sought for was obtained; to talk
indifferently of other matters; to regulate face and voice so as to show
enough, but not too much, of the tumult at her heart, was a task before
which Lucia's courage almost gave way. Yet it was done. No impatience
betrayed her, no sign of emotion beyond that of natural feeling for
others was allowed to escape her; only her hands, which lay quietly
clasped together in her lap, gradually tightened and contracted till the
pressure of her slight fingers was like that of iron.
At last she was released; and exhausted as if with hard physical
exertion, she came back to the Cottage with her news.
There was no need to tell it. The hopeless look which, when she dared be
natural, settled in her eyes, told plainly enough that there was no
mistake of identity. Only one hope remained, and that so feeble that
neither dared to acknowledge it in her heart, though she might speak of
it as existing--the hope that after all the prisoner might be innocent.
Mrs. Costello wrote that day to her faithful friend and counsellor, Mr.
Strafford.
"I am in a terrible strait," she said, "and it is to you only in this
world that I can look for aid. My whole life, as you know, has been
given to my daughter--for her I have thought and planned, and in her I
have had my daily consolation. But now I begin to remember that I am not
a mother only, but also a wife. Have I a right to forget it? Can
anything excuse a wife who does so? Tell me what I ought to do; for if
ever I am to think of my husband it must be now.
"Yet it seems to me that, for Lucia's sake, I must still, if possible,
keep my secret. I long to send her away from me, at this moment, but she
has no friends at a distance from Cacouna, and besides, our separation
would certainly excite notice. I might, indeed, send her to England; my
cousin, I believe, would receive her for a while; but there, you know, I
cannot follow her, and a long parting is more than I have courage to
think of. So I come back to the same point from which I started. I am
almost bewildered by this new wretchedness that has fallen upon us; and
I wait for your sympathy and counsel with most impatient eagerness."
She had not, however, to wait long. The country post, always irregular,
for once favoured her anxiety, and only two days afterwards came a
hurried note, bringing the best possible answer. Mr. Strafford wrote,
"The fact of one of my people being in such trouble would bring me to
Cacouna if I had no other reason for coming. I shall be with you,
therefore, the day after you receive this. No one, I should think,
need, for the present at least, know of any connection whatever between
your family affairs and my visit. My errand is to try what can be done
for the unhappy prisoner, and, as an old friend, I shall ask your
hospitality during my stay. Then I will give you what advice and help I
can; of my truest and warmest sympathy I know I need give you no
assurance."
To both mother and daughter this note brought comfort, though Lucia had
no knowledge whatever of the many thoughts regarding her father which
had begun to occupy her mother's mind. To her, strange and unnatural as
it may seem, he was simply an object of fear and abhorrence. She hated
him as the cause of her mother's sufferings, of their false and insecure
position, and of the self-loathing which possessed her when she thought
of their relationship. The idea of any wifely duty owing to him could
never have struck her, for what visions of married life she had,
belonged to a world totally unlike that of her parents' experience, and
she regarded what she knew of that as something beyond all reach of
ordinary rules or feelings.
Yet much as she would have wondered had she known it, her mother's
thoughts were coming to be hour by hour more occupied with that long
unseen and dreaded husband, who had indeed been her tyrant, but who was
still bound to her by ties of her own weaving, and who was the father of
her child. A strange mixture of feelings had taken the place of her old
fear and disgust; there was still horror, especially of the new guilt
which separated him more than ever from her purer world, but there was a
deep and yearning pity also. She felt sure, before Mr. Strafford
arrived, that he would tell her she was right; that Christian--even by
the very act which had put him out of the ranks of ordinary men, out of
the place, low and degraded as it was, which he had filled among his own
people--had recovered a claim upon her, and that she must not fail to
give him in his need what succour might be possible. She was right, and
Lucia heard with dismay that their secret was about to be betrayed to
the very person from whom most of all it had hitherto been kept.
Nothing, however, was to be done rashly. Mr. Strafford arrived late in
the evening, and next day he proposed to go to the jail to see
Christian, which he knew there would be no difficulty in doing, and to
bring back to Mrs. Costello such an account as would enable her to judge
how far her interference might or might not be useful. There was still a
chance that it might be useless, and to that hope Lucia clung with a
pertinacity which added to her mother's anxieties.
In the three days which had now passed since the murder, the minds even
of those most nearly concerned had had time to rally a little from the
first shock, and to begin to be conscious of the world around them going
on just as usual in spite of all. Doctor Morton had been to a singular
degree without relatives. An old and infirm uncle, living a long
distance from Cacouna, was almost the only person connected with him by
blood; it was to her own family alone, therefore, that Bella had to look
for the deepest sympathy. But the whole neighbourhood had known her from
a child; and in her great grief every one seemed ready to claim a share.
All the kindness and goodness of heart which in ordinary times was
hidden away under the crust of each different character, flowed out
towards the young widow, and as she sat in her desolate house, sorrow
seemed to invest her with its royalty, and to transform her old friends
into loyal subjects, eager to do her but the smallest service.
And in the midst of this universal impulse of sympathy, and of the
reverence which great suffering inspires, it was impossible for the
Costellos to remain apart. Their own share in the misery did not prevent
them from feeling for the others who knew nothing of their partnership;
and Lucia forgot to accuse herself of hypocrisy when she was admitted
into the darkened room, where her once gay companion sat and watched
with heavy eyes the passing of those first days of widowhood. No one
would have recognized Bella Latour now. She sat, wan and half-lifeless,
caring for nothing except now and then to draw round her more closely a
great shawl in which she was wrapped, as if the only sensation of which
she was still capable were that of cold. Hour after hour she neither
spoke nor moved, until her sister, alarmed, and anxious by any means to
arouse her from her stupor, implored Lucia to see her, to try to make
her speak or shed the tears which, since she had seen the body of her
husband, seemed to be frozen up.
Mrs. Bellairs had not been mistaken in hoping for some good result from
Lucia's visit. At the sight of her a flood of colour rushed to Bella's
deathlike face, and she half rose to meet her; but when she felt the
long tender kiss which had a whole world of tender pity in its silent
language, she turned suddenly away, and throwing herself upon a couch,
sobbed with the passionate vehemence of a child. From that moment she
was eager to keep Lucia with her. She did not care to speak, but the
sight of one so associated with her lost happiness seemed a consolation
to her; and thus, with her own heavy weight of uncertainty and distress,
the poor girl had to take up and bear patiently such share as she could
of her friend's. After the first, too, there came back such a horrible
sensation of being a kind of accessory to the crime which had been
committed, that the mere sight of Bella's face was torture to her.
In this way the day of Mr. Strafford's arrival and the next one, that of
his first visit to the jail, passed with Lucia. It was not until quite
evening that she could leave the closed-up house and its mistress; and
never had a road seemed so long to her as that from Cacouna to the
Cottage. Her mind, roused into feverish activity, recurred to the night
when she had met Percy on that very road; she saw again, in imagination,
the figure of the Indian--of her father, as she now believed--rising up
from the green bank. She saw Percy, and heard his words, and then
remembered with bitter shame and anger that the brutal creature from
whom he had saved her, had nevertheless had power to separate them for
ever. And to this creature her mother thought herself still bound! She
grew wild with impatience to know the result of Mr. Strafford's
mission.