PARTED IN SORROW.
In the dining-room at Lonewoodlee Mary was seated in the deep recess
of a window. She was sewing, and singing merrily the while. She
felt happy, light in heart, and high in spirit, unusually so for her;
but ever and anon she paused in her work and even in her song to
contemplate her new ring and recall the exact words of Cyril when he
placed it on her finger, the expression of his eyes, and the tone of
his voice.
The window was open, for the time was noon-tide, the day was warm and
sunny, and the spring freshness in the atmosphere was delightful.
The bleating of the sheep that browsed close by the Tower, the voices
of the birds that twittered in the old trees and shrubbery, with the
hum of insect life, all came pleasantly to the girl's ear, so, as we
have said, at times her song died away, and her needle paused as she
sank into happy thought, and abandoning herself to her day dreams,
repeated, "Wife of my heart; ah, he called me so; the wife of his
heart!"
So pre-occupied was Mary that she did not hear the hoofs of a horse
approach the Tower, nor the ringing of the door-bell announce a
visitor, till Alison Home, her face a little flushed with surprise
and importance, placed in her hand the card of
CYRIL WEDDERBURN,
_Royal Fusileers._
"Where is he--this gentleman?" asked Mary, starting from her seat.
"In his saddle at the door; but he asks if he can see you, Miss
Lennox."
"Show him in at once, Alison."
When their past mode of meeting and corresponding are considered, it
may easily be supposed that a visit from Cyril, openly, formally, and
at such an early hour as noon, filled Mary with anxiety, excitement,
and alarm! To visit thus had long ceased to be his use and wont,
after the quarrels ensued with his family; so what could it portend?
With true feminine instinct she glanced at a mirror--one of those
quaint, old-fashioned, carved plate glasses with bevelled borders,
set in an ebony frame--gave a final smooth to her rich brown hair,
and was not ill-pleased to find, that though she was scarcely dressed
in a style to receive visitors, she wore a morning robe of spotted
muslin that was very becoming, and from the frilled sleeves and neck
of which her taper arms and slender throat came forth to the best
advantage.
Save his ring, ornament she had none.
Cyril was ushered in with hat and whip in hand, and the moment their
eyes met, her heart became filled with dismay. He did not approach
her or take her hand, even the faint sickly smile that
conventionalism or good-breeding had spread over his face passed
away, and he stood looking at her irresolutely, and keeping the
dining-table between them.
Grieved and exasperated as he was by the ugly story he had heard so
recently, Cyril glanced sadly from Mary to the old faded portraits
that hung on the walls--older they were than some of the ancestry at
Willowdean--and much of sorrow and pity began to mingle with his
indignation. And there, too, were the arms and monogram of Oliver
Lennox, who had been a good man and true to his Queen in the stormy
times of the Reformation, carved above the antique fireplace, which
looked so quaint with its heavy Scoto-Italian mouldings of stone; but
in the old-fashioned basket-grate there burned a cheerful fire,
composed less of coal than of cuttings from the thicket without,
roots, fircones, and peat.
"Oh, Cyril," exclaimed Mary, piteously, "what has happened--what is
amiss? You have such a pale and tell-tale face! You neither take my
hand nor seat yourself."
"Nor shall I do either until you have heard me--if I even do so then,
Mary," said he, slowly, as if to gain time or arrange his perplexed
thoughts, and doubtful in what terms to break the purpose of his
unhappy visit, she looked so charming in that plain undress, so
gentle-eyed and dove-like. "Things were said of you last night by
Everard Home, my mother, and Lady Ernescleugh, that have rent my
heart asunder. Long, long will their words haunt me. Oh, Mary, I
shall not readily forget that dinner at Ernescleugh!"
Mary now knew all; the Master had recognised her on that fatal night,
when, in her innocence and helplessness, she fell into the species of
snare contrived, for her by Chesters and his roguish groom. Dropping
her needlework, she grasped the back of a chair for support, and
asked, with something of hauteur, nevertheless--
"And what did you say, Cyril, when those people dared to say hard
things of me?'
"Say, girl! what could I say? I sat and smiled, I suppose. I was in
good society, where people must hide every emotion, and had to smile
like the Spartan boy I spoke of; and to smile thus is too often the
hardest portion of the weary battle of life."
"To the point, Cyril--oh, of what do they accuse me?"
"On the night of the snow-storm, you visited the house of
Chesterhaugh; you were there for hours, and Everard Home saw you
leaving the gate, at midnight, in Chesters' waggonette, and seated by
his side. Home's groom saw this, too! Was such a visit, in such a
time of supposed grief, and to such a man, becoming in the girl whom
I loved, and who I thought loved me? Even though I was believed to
be dead, was it becoming in your father's daughter? He is, I know, a
ruined man; but ruin or improvidence cannot blot out the past, or
alter the fact that he is a gentleman descended from as good blood as
any in Scotland--not that most folks set much store on that nowadays,
but I do. Oh, that I had indeed been drowned--that I had perished on
that night of terror, rather than have lived to hear this said of
Mary Lennox, that she is no longer worthy of me!"
"Cruel, Cyril! Oh, how cruel is all this of you!" said Mary,
wringing her hands.
"Oh, Mary, Mary! God alone knows how I have loved you, and how I
love you still; but even were that story not true, that such should
be said of you--my future wife--tears up my heart by the roots."
"But it _is_ true," said Mary.
"What was your reason for such a visit and at such a time?"
"Oh, Cyril, the best," said Mary, with a bursting heart, while she
stretched her trembling hands towards him, for his somewhat imperious
manner chilled and scared her.
"Why were my informants of a circumstance so strange and improper
first the Master of Ernescleugh, and then Chesters himself? What was
your motive for concealment?"
"A good one. I felt assured that you might disapprove of it, and I
was powerless; I had no control over my stay there. I was in
Chesterhaugh certainly, but I did not go to visit Captain Chesters.
I was lured in; the snow fell: I could not get away; and--and--and,
oh, how can you speak to me thus, and think such things of me!"
Cyril bit his nether lip passionately, for the jesting words, the
sneer of Chesters, that "she was consoled in the end," seemed burnt
into his heart.
"I care not now for your motive, or even to inquire into it. Mary
Lennox, we cannot undo the past; what I have to think of is the
future."
"Oh, Cyril, bear with me, and hear a very simple explanation
connected with yourself."
But he would listen to nothing, and exclaimed, in a hollow tone--
"Oh, has God no pity for love lost, for trust misplaced, and a heart
wasted as mine has been on you!"
"I am innocent, Cyril, innocent of wrong, even of error," said Mary,
with simple dignity; and had he not been goaded by his own angry
thoughts and the galling words of others, he might have read the
assurance of what she said in the expression of her face, in her
clear earnest eyes, her parted lips, and her very attitude, as she
stood with outstretched hands. "I am guiltless of all blame, and a
day must come when God will clear me."
"The day may come--but too late," said he, hoarsely and gloomily.
"Never too late if we are both on this side of the grave, Cyril; yet,
thank Heaven, this life does not last for ever."
"And your father's?" said he, reproachfully.
"Oh, Cyril, your rebuke is just!" said Mary, in a flood of tears;
"but your anger is not so, and it makes me so miserable."
"You can have no explanation to give, and I seek nothing beyond the
admission of the fact," said Cyril, with a cold severity that
afterwards surprised himself; "and now I quit you. Thank fate, we
are on the eve of a war. A few days--ay, perhaps but a few
hours--and I shall leave you and all the folly of regret and love
behind me, to enter on a stirring and a glorious career. Adieu!
Never more shall we be as we have been; never more shall we meet
where we have met so often! All is at end between us, Mary; and from
this hour our paths in life must lie for ever apart!"
The door closed; she heard the clatter of his horse's hoofs die away
in the distance, and then she knew that Cyril was gone--gone, without
even asking, or learning the cause of her visit to Chesterhaugh.
She felt that he had treated her both harshly and unjustly, and the
sense of that bore her up for a time; but a time only. As one in a
dream, she still clutched the back of the chair to prevent herself
from falling. The bleating of the sheep in the meadow, the voices of
the birds in the trees and among the ivy that rustled on the old
Tower wall, and the hum of the insects, were all in her ears as
before. Her eyes wandered over the pastoral Lammermuir hills with
something of a hunted and despairing expression in them; of wild
anxiety, as though peace and rest lay somewhere far beyond, and the
whole interview seemed like a dream--an unreality.
Nothing was distinct; she felt as if struggling with a nightmare.
After a time, and as the day wore on, she began to perceive the
realities of her position, and to feel the imperative necessity for a
complete explanation with Cyril; but she was overwhelmed by the false
position in which she was placed, by shame, anger, and unmerited
mortification, that such a story should have gone abroad in the
fashion it had done, and she knew how it would be viewed by the
severe and censorious.
She knew that "woman is woman's worst foe;" and to be pointed at by
stern spinsters, with rigid religious and moral opinions--spinsters
who never missed sermon or communion, or omitted their names in such
lists as printed the names of the charitable, and who had in their
hearts only a pretended horror for the mammon of
unrighteousness--would be terrible and humiliating in the extreme.
From the dinner-table at Ernescleugh, she knew, or feared, the story
in many exaggerated forms would spread like wildfire among the
professing Christians and stern Church--we beg their
pardon--Kirk-goers, and nasal-singing Pharisees of Willowdean; and
that many hands and eyes would be uplifted in dismay at the
"shortcomings of the daughter of Lonewoodlee."
She knew, also, how utterly merciless such local gossips were; but to
be an object of speculation to the self-righteous on one hand, and to
be pitied and misjudged by those who had loved her on the other, was
a fear that proved bitter as the waters of Marah--yea, more bitter
than death could be--to the sensitive Mary Lennox. She felt humbled,
and seemed to have made acquaintance with degradation, she knew not
why.
Oh; how in her heart she hated that man Chesters, who had caused all
this misery!
But Cyril would come again to Lonewoodlee, to console and to comfort
her.
"After all the vows we have exchanged--after all our hours of
happiness together--Cyril, Cyril! how could you leave me thus cruelly
and coldly?" she would exclaim, almost aloud, while wringing her poor
hands in a paroxysm of grief.
Sometimes, when an emotion of anger at his determined injustice and
assumption of her guilt got the better of her sorrow, she drew the
betrothal ring _almost_ off her finger, and as often kissed and slid
it back again, loth, by removing it, entirely to break the spiritual
link or tie between herself and Cyril Wedderburn.
"He will come to me again!" she often whispered in her heart, fondly.
"Oh, yes: he must come to me once more."
But days went by, and Mary watched and wept, for the days became
weeks and months; yet Cyril Wedderburn came no more to Lonewoodlee.