When Lucia awoke next morning, her first thought was of Maurice--what
should she do without him? She rose and dressed hastily, fancying that
at any moment he might come in, and anxious to lengthen, by every means,
the time of their nearness to each other.
Maurice, however, though he looked wishfully at the Cottage as he went
about his preparations, had too many things to think of and arrange, to
steal a moment for the indulgence of his inclinations until afternoon,
and she was obliged to wait with such patience as she could for his
coming. He had told Mrs. Costello that it would be needful for him to
spend two or three hours in Cacouna, and asked her to see his father in
the meantime. Thus, in the afternoon, Lucia was for a considerable time
quite alone.
Mrs. Costello, meanwhile, with more than friendly sympathy, heard from
Mr. Leigh his reasons for urging upon Maurice this hasty departure, and
cheered him with anticipations of his speedy return. They consulted
over, and completed together, some last preparations for his voyage; and
while they felt almost equally the trial of parting with him, the grief
of each was a kind of solace to the other. For, in fact, whatever they
might say, neither regarded this journey as an ordinary one, or thought
that the return they spoke of would be what they tried to imagine it.
Mr. Leigh, believing that his strength was really failing more and more,
hastened his son's departure, that the voyage might be made before his
increasing weakness should set it aside; his parting from Maurice,
therefore, he dreaded as a final one. Mrs. Costello had vaguer, but
equally oppressive forebodings. She saw that in all probability a few
weeks longer would find her peaceful home deserted, and herself and
Lucia fugitives. Even if Maurice, transported into a new world with new
interests and incalculably brighter prospects, should still retain his
affection for them--and _that_ she scarcely doubted--how could he ever
again be to them what he had been? far less, what she had hoped he might
be?
When Maurice returned, earlier than they expected, from the town, he
found them still together. Mrs. Costello soon rose to return home,
having seen to the last possible arrangement for the traveller's
comfort. He proposed to accompany her, and say good-bye to Lucia, and
they left the house together.
"I want to ask you to do me another kindness yet," he said, as soon as
they had left the house. "My father, I am sure, will not tell me the
truth about himself; he will be terribly lonely, and I am afraid of his
health suffering more than it has done. He thinks it a duty to my
mother, that I should go to England now; but it will certainly be my
duty to him to come back, at all risks, if he feels my being away as
much as I fear he will."
"You may at least depend upon one thing," she answered, "we will do all
we can to take care of him."
"Thank you, that I know. But, Mrs. Costello, I should be so glad if you
would write to me, and so give me the comfort of knowing exactly how he
is."
"Certainly I will. You shall have a regular bulletin every mail if you
like."
"Indeed, I should like it. And you will send me news also of yourself?"
Mrs. Costello sighed.
"I am forgetting," she said, "and making promises I may not be able to
keep. I do not know how long I may be here, or where I may be three
months hence."
Maurice looked at her in surprise. That she, who for twelve years had
never quitted her home for a single night, should speak thus of leaving
it without visible cause or preparation, seemed almost incredible.
She answered his look.
"Yes, I am serious. A dreadful trouble is threatening me, and to save
myself and Lucia, I may have to go away. No one knows anything of it.
Now that you are leaving us, I dare say so much to you."
"This, then, is why you have changed so, lately? Could not you have
trusted me before?"
"It would have been useless; no one can help me."
Her voice seemed changed and broken, and she had grown ashy pale in
alluding to the dreadful subject. Maurice could not bear to leave her in
this uncertainty.
"Dear Mrs. Costello," he said, "if you had a son you would let him share
your anxieties. I have so long been used to think of you almost as a
mother, that I feel as if I had a kind of right to your confidence; and
I cannot imagine any trouble in which you would be better without
friends than with them."
"Sometimes," she answered, "it is part of our penalty to suffer alone.
Hitherto I have done so. No, Maurice, though you could scarcely be
dearer to me if you were my son, I cannot tell even you, at present,
what I fear."
"At present? But you will, later?"
"Later, perhaps. Certainly, if ever we meet again."
"Which we shall do. You do not mean that you would not let me know where
you go?"
"Perhaps I ought to mean it."
"It would be useless. Whenever you go I shall find you. You know--I am
almost sure you know--that whether right or wrong, it is leaving you
that troubles me now, even more than leaving my father."
Mrs. Costello smiled faintly.
"You do me justice," she said, "but I will alter your sentence a little
for you, and say that you leave as much of your heart in my house as in
your father's. I believe that; I am almost sorry now to believe it."
"Why should you be sorry? Do you think that there is no chance that in
time things may be more hopeful for me than they are at present?"
"More hopeful for both our wishes, you might say; but, Maurice, my
day-dreams of many years past may have to be given up with my dear
little home."
"Do not say so, if, indeed, your wishes are the same as mine. I have
faith in time and patience."
"Do not let us say more on the subject--it is too tempting. I, too, must
try to have faith in time."
"And you will write to me regularly?"
"As long as I am here."
"And remember that I am not to be shaken off. I belong to you; and you
are never to trust anybody else to do a thing for you which I could have
done. You will promise me that, won't you?"
"My dear boy, don't make me regret your going more than I should do. In
any case, I shall miss you daily."
They had reached the Cottage, and Lucia came out to meet them.
"How slowly you came!" she cried. "I thought you never meant to arrive.
Mamma, you look dreadfully tired. What have you been doing to her,
Maurice?"
She was talking fast, to keep, if possible, their attention from
herself; for, to confess the truth, she had been indulging in a little
cry all alone, and did not care that her red eyelids should betray her;
but she might have spared the trouble. No word or look of hers was
likely to pass unnoticed in that last precious few minutes, though they
all sat down together, and tried to talk of indifferent matters as if
there had been the least possibility, just then, of any other thought
than that of parting.
After a short time, Maurice rose.
"I must give my father the last hour," he said, "and the boat is due at
six."
"But it does not ever leave before seven," Lucia answered, "and it is
still a quarter to five."
"I have to meet it when it comes in. Mr. Bellairs is coming home by it,
and I have various affairs to settle with him."
He looked at her as he said "Mr. Bellairs is coming," but there was no
tell-tale change in her face; she had for the moment utterly forgotten
Mr. Percy.
"If he had not been coming, you would have had to wait for him, I
suppose?" she asked. "I wish he would stay away."
"There are, unfortunately, such things as posts and telegraphs even
further west than Cacouna. I sent a telegram to meet him yesterday
morning."
"Ah, yes, I suppose where there's a will there's a way."
She spoke pettishly, and he only answered by coming across and holding
out his hand to say good-bye. She rose and put out both hers, intending
to say, as she often did when she had been cross, "Don't be angry,
Maurice, I did not mean it," but the words would not come. Her courage
suddenly gave way, and she cried with all her heart.
At that moment Maurice felt that she was really his; he longed
unspeakably to claim her once and for ever; but his old generous
self-repression was too strong for the temptation, and he shrunk from
taking advantage of her grief and her sisterly affection. But a brother
has some privileges, and those he had a right to. Her face was hidden,
but he bent down, and drawing away her hands for a moment, kissed her
with something more than a brother's warmth, pressed Mrs. Costello's
hand, and hurried away.
Lucia listened intently as the sound of his footsteps, and of the gate
as he passed through it, died away. Then she raised her head, and
pushing back her hair, came and sat down at her mother's feet, hiding
her flushed face and laughing a little half hysterical laugh.
But the laugh was a complete failure, and broke down into a sob, which
was followed by a great many others, enough to have satisfied Maurice
himself. At last she checked herself. "What a baby I am!" she said.
Mrs. Costello stroked back gently the soft black locks which were
falling loose over her lap.
"You are a child, Lucia. I have never been in any haste for you to be
otherwise."
"But I am not such a child, really, mamma. Sixteen and a half! I ought
to be very nearly a woman."
Mrs. Costello sighed.
"You will be a woman soon enough, my darling, be content as to that."
"All the sooner now I have nobody but you to keep me in order. Mamma,
how _shall_ we do without Maurice at Bella's wedding?"
When the 'Queen of the West' passed down the river that evening with
Maurice on board, he could plainly distinguish two figures standing on
the verandah of the Cottage, and recognize Mrs. Costello's black dress,
and Lucia's softly flowing muslin, framed in the green branches of the
vine and climbing roses. One of those roses went with him on his journey
to remind him, if anything were needed to remind him, of the place to
which, even more than to his father's house, his heart turned as home.
For a whole day Lucia had scarcely once remembered Mr. Percy; and that
same day she had scarcely been a moment absent from his thoughts. Not
that this had been at all the case during the whole of his absence from
Cacouna. On the contrary, he had, in spite of his ill-humour at
starting, found so many agreeable distractions in the course of his
journey that, at the end of a week, he congratulated himself on being
entirely cured of a very foolish and troublesome fancy. No sooner,
however, had they begun their return--taking, it is true; a different
route, and continuing to visit new places--than it appeared that the
cure was not yet entirely complete; still he paid little attention to
the returning symptoms, and suffered them to increase unchecked till, at
the commencement of their last day's journey, the magnet had resumed all
its former power, and he became positively impatient to find himself
again at the Cottage.
Mr. Percy was not by any means so much in love as to be blind to the
extreme inconvenience and impolicy of anything like a serious love
affair with a little Canadian girl such as Lucia Costello; but in the
meantime she attracted him delightfully, and he always trusted to good
luck for some means of extrication, if matters should go a step further
than he intended. As for the possibility of her suffering, that did not
enter into his calculations; there would, of course, be some tears, and
she would look prettier than ever through them; but women always shed
tears and always wipe them away again, and forget them. So he came back
quite prepared to enjoy the two or three weeks which still remained to
him, by spending as many hours daily, as possible, in pursuit of what he
knew at the bottom of his heart he neither expected nor wished to
retain, when it was once gained.
The pleasure of rivalling and mortifying Maurice had been, at first, one
of Percy's strongest incentives in his attentions to Lucia; and as he
found that, do what he could, it was impossible to force "that young
Leigh" to _show_ either jealousy or mortification, he began to hate him.
He had enough sense and tact not to betray this feeling either to Mrs.
Costello or Lucia, but it only grew stronger for being repressed. Mr.
Bellairs, for some reason, said nothing to his cousin of the telegram he
received from Maurice at the town where they spent the last night of
their tour; it was, therefore, without any idea of what had really
happened that he perceived the father and son standing together on the
wharf as the boat drew towards it. But as soon as he understood the
cause of their being there, it occurred to him that this chance
interview would be useful to him at the Cottage; he knew enough of women
to guess that the smallest scrap of information about the traveller,
even to be able to say, "I saw him on board the boat," would make him
additionally welcome to them. Accordingly, he spoke to Maurice with more
civility than usual, inquired to what part of England he was going, and
gave him, in his usual lazy fashion, some information about railways and
hotels which was likely to be useful to a stranger in the country.
Having thus not only done himself good, but as he felt, displayed a most
courteous and charitable spirit, he left Mr. Bellairs with the Leighs
and walked up to the house, where Bella's bridal preparations had been
going on vigorously during his absence.
These preparations were nearly finished, for only three days remained
before that fixed for the wedding; and all had gone on smoothly, until
the sudden news of Maurice's summons to England deranged the bridal
party, and threw the bride into a fit of ill-humour from which Doctor
Morton was the greatest sufferer. She would not be satisfied with any
substitute either he or her sister could propose, and was the more
unreasonable because she knew that when her brother-in-law (of whom she
had really some little awe) should arrive, she would have to lay aside
her whims, and consent to accept whoever could be found to take the
office of groomsman at so short a notice. When he came, accordingly,
she was quite silent and submissive--a short consultation ended in what
she had expected; and Mr. Percy took Maurice's place in the programme.
Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Bellairs were altogether pleased that it should be
so, but they comforted themselves with the idea that he would very
shortly be leaving Canada, and that as he and Lucia would necessarily
see much of each other while he did remain at Cacouna, their being
associated together on that one day could not be of any great
consequence.
The next morning, therefore, when Mr. Percy made his appearance at the
Cottage, he had much to tell. But Lucia was still thinking more of
Maurice than of him; she was unusually quiet, and more inclined to talk
of England and to learn all she could of the voyage thither and of the
journey from Liverpool to Norfolk, than to occupy herself either with
the wedding or with the incidents of his tour on the Lakes. For the
first time Mr. Percy was alarmed; he began to think it possible that
during his absence, Maurice had so well used his time as to deprive him
of the influence which he had before acquired over Lucia's mind; and
this idea caused him suddenly to fancy that it was absolutely necessary
to his happiness that he should displace Maurice altogether from her
thoughts, even if, to do so, he should have to devote himself to her in
the most serious earnest.
So Mr. Bellairs' stratagem failed. Before the two days, with their
constant comings and goings, were over, Mrs. Costello saw, with dismay,
that not only was Mr. Percy so far awakened from his usual state of
boredom as to be one of the most dangerous flatterers imaginable to a
girl of sixteen, but that Lucia appeared to have yielded completely to
an attraction which had now no counterpoise, since Maurice had left
them.
Each day Lucia spent as long a time as she could with Mr. Leigh, and
strangely enough, the old man seemed to feel less depression after
Maurice was actually gone, than he had done in anticipating the
separation. In the hours which Lucia passed with him, he took delight in
talking to her of his wife, and her early home, describing it with that
wonderful recollection of trifles which seems to return to old people
when they speak of the incidents and scenes of their youth. And Lucia
loved to listen, and to picture to herself Maurice making acquaintance
with all these things which his father spoke of; and becoming necessary
to the proud, childless possessor of such wealth and so fair a home,
just as he had been necessary to them all, far away in the west. After
all, these hours were the happiest of Lucia's life at that time. They
brought her the consciousness of doing right--of doing what would please
Maurice, whose approbation had, all her life, been one of her dearest
rewards for "being good;" and she had also the actual enjoyment of these
quiet conversations, coming in, as they did, between the more vivid and
more troubled delights of feeling herself engrossed by a spell, to whose
power she submitted with joy indeed, but also with trembling. Every time
she now saw Bella, it appeared to her more entirely incomprehensible
that any one could act as she was doing; the mere idea of a marriage
where convenience, suitableness, common sense were the best words that
could be used to account for it, began to seem revolting. She could not
have explained why, yet she felt, at times, a positive repugnance to
take any part in the celebration of so worldly, so loveless a contract.
It was in this humour that she came back from Cacouna the evening before
the wedding. Bella had been more flippant than usual, until even Mrs.
Bellairs had completely lost patience with her, and the incorrigible
girl had only been stopped by the fear of her guardian's displeasure
from insisting on driving Lucia home, while Doctor Morton, who had been
all day absorbed by his patients, waited for her decision about some
arrangements for their journey. Lucia could not help giving her what
Bella called a lecture, but when she reached home and was seated in her
usual place at her mother's feet, she was still puzzling over the
subject, and over what Mrs. Costello had said when she first heard of
the engagement.
"Mamma," she said, at last, "do you remember saying you thought Bella's
might be a very happy marriage? I wonder if you think so still?"
"Why should not I? What is changed?"
"I don't know that anything is; but you know how tiresome she is. I
cannot imagine how Doctor Morton bears it."
"Probably, he bears it because he thinks her tiresomeness will soon be
over. When she is married and in her own house, she will have other
things to think of besides teasing him."
"But, mamma, do you think she _loves_ him?"
Mrs. Costello laughed. "Indeed, my dear, I can't tell. If she does not
now, I suppose she intends to."
"But that can't be right. Mamma, I am certain you do not think that kind
of marriage right."
"Not for all people, certainly. But for any one who is dear to me I
would far rather have a marriage of 'that kind' than one founded on the
hasty, utterly unreasonable fancy which girls often call love."
Lucia blushed crimson, but would not give up her point. "I am sure if I
married a man I did not love, I should hate him in three months," she
said.
"I do not think you and Bella are much alike," Mrs. Costello answered;
"and as for her, perhaps it may comfort you to know that I have
speculated a little on this subject, and I have some suspicion that
there may be more sentiment in the affair then she allows."
Lucia started up. "Really, mamma, I am so glad," she cried. "Only, why
should she be so stupid?"
"I don't think even you, Lucia, would be pleased to see Bella and Doctor
Morton enacting the same _rôle_ as Magdalen and Harry Scott."
"I am sure I should not. It would be too ridiculous. But just look at
Mr. and Mrs. Bellairs, _they_ seem perfectly happy; and Mr. and Mrs.
Leigh must have been so, in spite of everything. Maurice told me he
believed his mother had never regretted her marriage; and that was
certainly a love match."
"Mine was a 'love match,' Lucia, and brought me misery unimaginable.
Hush, say no more at present."