THE BROKEN CIRCLE.
Sybil who was clever with her pencil, made up quite a collection of
sketches from her portfolio, a pleasant labour of love, for Denzil to
take with him, as a souvenir of herself and their beloved Cornwall,
and skilfully the girl's able hand and artistic eye had reproduced
the wondrous stone avenues of Dartmoor and Merivale, the Stone Pillar
of St. Colomb, the Cliff Castles of Treryn, Tintagel and elsewhere,
with many a pretty and peaceful cottage scene.
Preparations for her husband's journey, and more than all, the Indian
outfit of Denzil, luckily occupied the attention of Constance for a
time; thus her hands and those of Sybil were fully employed, and the
minds of both had no leisure to brood over the coming separation.
Weary of the monotony of life at the villa, great was the delight of
old weather-beaten Dick Braddon, to "be off" as he said, "to see the
world once more with the master," whom he loved only second perhaps
to Denzil, whose free frank bearing charmed the veteran, who averred
that he was exactly like what his father was, when he joined the
Cornish Light Infantry, a cherry-cheeked ensign, long ago in America.
But the hour of separation drew near, when both father and son were
to leave Porthellick, and depart each upon their long watery
journey;--the former to America, and the latter to what seemed the
other end of the world--India; and the heart of Constance began to
sink in spite of herself.
"Oh, Richard," she whispered once, with her soft face nestling in her
husband's neck, while his protecting arm went kindly round her; "the
greatest joy on earth is to possess a child--the greatest woe to lose
it! The loss of our parents we may, and must, in the course of time
anticipate; but the loss of our children--never!"
"But Denzil will return, Conny--you would not have the boy tied to
your apron-strings, like Sybil?" urged Richard, laughing to cheer and
rouse her; but, nevertheless, the rank, title and fair fortune now
before them all, the mother's anxious heart foreboded sorrow in the
future; and now came the last night her boy was to sleep under his
father's roof, ere he was to go forth into the world--forth like a
branch torn from its parent stem.
When all were in slumber that night, poor Constance stole in to watch
her Denzil as he slept. The feeble rays of the night-lamp played on
the features of her boy, and on the glitter of a laced scarlet-coat
and gold epaulettes that hung on the pier glass. With the vanity
natural to youth, he had been contemplating himself in his Regimental
finery ere he went to repose, and his bullock-trunk and overland,
lettered for "India," were among the first things that caught her
eye, bringing more home to her heart the fact of his departure.
He was still hers!
To-morrow he should be far away from her, out on the great and
stirring highway of life--her petted boy no longer; and smiles, like
ripples upon shining water, seemed to spread over the smooth face of
the sleeping lad, even as the tears gathered in the eyes, and prayer
in the heart of the mother who watched him for a time, with her hands
clasped, and stole away with many a backward glance, thinking how
lonely she should be when that hour on the morrow came.
And this tall and handsome lad--this young soldier going forth to
carry the Queen's colours in the distant East, was once her "baby
boy," the child she had borne, nursed and nurtured. She had a sweet
and sad, yet proud and joyous consciousness in this. Had he been
weakly, deformed or crippled, she should have loved him all the same;
but then, thank God! her Denzil was so handsome.
Often in far-away lands, on weary marches, in comfortless tents and
rickety bungalows, on the banks of the Sutlej, or amid hostile Sikhs
and Afghans, would he dream of the soft and loving face that had been
bent in silence over his--the face he never more might see, save in
those kind visions that God sends in sleep, to soothe--it may be, to
sadden and to warn us.
"No child can ever know how dearly its parents love it--how they
suffer in its illness, loss or departure," whispered Constance to
herself; "still," she thought upbraidingly, "I left my poor father to
sorrow in his humble home at Montreal--but then it was with a
husband, so dear and true!"
The child that is ill or absent, is always valued the most; so poor
Sybil was almost forgotten by her mother for the time. A few hours
more, and both husband and son had left her in tears, to separate in
London, each to pursue his own journey.
Of Richard's ultimate intentions, Denzil and Sybil were to be left in
ignorance, and also of the object and purport of his absence. So
Constance was left with her daughter only by her side.
The poor mother's heart felt as if thrust back upon herself now, for
she was the mistress of a great family secret, which, as yet, she
could not share even with Sybil.
So the long dreaded "to-morrow," had come, and other morrows
followed, and Constance began to feel herself most sadly alone.
Often she stole into the well-known room to kiss the pillow on which
her Denzil's cheek had rested; to weep over the bed as if a death had
been there, and not the departure of a gallant boy full of hope and
life; and on each occasion as she lingered there, she strove to
pourtray in fancy his face, as she last saw him, sleeping all
unconscious that she hovered near; and with a wild but loving
presentiment and hope that he would again occupy it some day, she
kept his room intact, exactly as he had left it; his books, his
fencing foils on those particular shelves, his old hat stuck round
with fishing flies, on that particular peg where he was wont to hang
it; his rods and guns, in yonder corner; though every detail, such as
these, reminded her of him more vividly, fed her grief and roused the
intense longing for his presence and return to her arms again.
"India--India?" she would say half aloud when communing with herself;
"it may be ten years of separation. Ten years! Oh--no, never,
surely! With my Richard's great influence as a peer of the realm,
that must never be permitted. In ten years what changes must
inevitably happen; who may be alive then, and who dead? Sybil should
then be seven-and-twenty--married perhaps--and to whom?--with
children it may be--my poor innocent Sybil! Oh no; three years at
the utmost, and Denzil shall be again by his mamma's side!"
So the lonely Constance pondered, hoped and lovingly spun out like a
web, her desires or mental view of the future, striving to gather
happiness therefrom; while Sybil sought in vain to cheer her with
music, to lure her out for a walk in the willowed dell, or a drive
along the coast road, in their pretty pony phaeton.
The month was October now. With a sullen wail the autumnal blasts
swept from the wooded hollows of Moorwinstow to the cavernous
headland of Tintagel, cresting before their breath the waves of the
Bristol Channel. There came gusts of rain too, that beat dolefully
on the window panes, with an angry and impatient patter, adding to
the dreariness of heart experienced by those in the Villa of
Porthellick. The season was bleak, and nowhere could it seem more so
than among the barren moors, the sea-beat bluffs, and resounding
caverns, the wind swept pasture lands and promontories of Cornwall.
The woods were almost bare; the few remaining leaves, fluttered brown
and crisp on the bared twigs; the stackyards were full, and the
produce of the potato fields was consigned to long brown pits of
fresh earth and straw, for the coming winter; the uplands were
covered with decaying stubble, or being ploughed, while, gorged with
worms, the great crows sat sleepily in the shining furrows. Thick as
gnats in summer, the dingy coloured sparrows twittered in the
hedgerows, which were being lopped and trimmed; and the axes of the
woodmen were heard in thicket and copse; while the smoke of the
steam-engine that worked and drained the adjacent copper-mine, hung
low in the frowsy air, adding at times to the gloom of the landscape.
Richard Trevelyan had sailed, and Denzil too; and Constance was aware
that each of them had to traverse a wintry sea, the former before he
returned and the latter before he reached his destination.
The public prints had duly announced that "the Right Hon. Lord
Lamorna and suite (_i.e._ old Derrick Braddon) had gone for a tour in
America;" and Denzil if his eyes ever saw the announcement--which is
doubtful--could little have dreamed how nearly it concerned him, and
the mother on whom he doted, and whom he still knew only as "Mrs.
Devereaux."
The latter had to make many an excuse, even to Sybil, to account for
her husband's protracted absence from the villa; and Downie
Trevelyan, when he read the above announcement in the "Morning Post,"
wiped his gold eye-glass and read it again with much perplexity and
secret annoyance, while surmising "what the deuce could take Richard
so suddenly to America at this season of the year!"
The new task and anxiety of watching the shipping intelligence next
occupied the attention of Constance. The steamer in which Richard
sailed, had been seen, signalled and spoken with in sundry Atlantic
latitudes and longitudes; and some seventeen days or so saw her
safely at the end of her voyage; but the transport, a great Indiaman
with Denzil on board, was seldom heard of, some at long dates; and at
longer dates too, came his hastily written letters from St. Helena,
and from Ascension, or by homeward-bound ships; few men, even of the
most wealthy, thought then of proceeding to India by the scarcely
developed overland route; and how fondly those letters were read over
and over again, the last thing at night, and the first in the
morning, the mother, situated as Constance was then, may imagine; for
the loving little family circle was broken now.