“HOW LITTLE YOU UNDERSTAND.”
“What thing is Love which nought can countervail? Nought save
itself, ev’n such a thing is Love. All worldly wealth in worth as
far doth fail, As lowest earth doth yield to Heaven above, Divine is
love and scorneth worldly pelf, And can be bought with nothing but
itself.”
WHEN Mr. Fawcett called the next day he found, as he expected, Cicely
alone in the library waiting for him. She was pale, and her mourning
gown made her appear very thin; but still it did not strike Trevor
that she was looking ill. The black dress showed to advantage her
pretty fair hair, and her blue eyes were clear and calm, as she came
quietly forward to meet her cousin. He hastened eagerly up to her.
“Oh! Cicely,” he exclaimed reproachfully before she had time to
speak, “you have made me so very unhappy.”
Cicely had not expected this; for an instant she felt taken by
surprise.
“Made you unhappy,” she repeated, gently withdrawing from his
clasp the hand he still held. “How?”
In his turn Mr. Fawcett was set at a disadvantage. “You know
how,” he said, “by refusing to see me, of course. Who should be
as near you as I, in trouble?”
“I told you in the note I sent you yesterday why I did not ask you
to come sooner,” said Cicely.
“No, you didn’t. At least you gave no proper reason,” answered
Trevor. “I didn’t understand what you meant in the least, and I
don’t want to understand it. You have got some fancy in your head
that has no foundation whatever, and I don’t want to hear anything
about it.”
“But you must,” said Cicely very gravely. “Trevor, did you not
understand what I meant? Do you not know now that I meant that—that
everything must be over between us?”
“Cicely!” exclaimed Trevor, “Cicely! You cannot mean what you
say.”
There was a ring of pain in his voice, and his face grew pale. Cicely
began to find her task harder than she had anticipated.
“Yes,” she said sadly, “I do mean it. I must mean it.”
Her way of expressing herself seemed to Mr. Fawcett to savour of
relenting.
“No, you don’t; you mustn’t,” he persisted. “I did not
think you attached so much importance to mere outward
circumstances—accidents, in fact. You cannot mean that on account
of what has happened lately you are going to throw me over? Such a
reason is unworthy of you, Cicely?”
Cicely looked perplexed. “What do you mean?” she asked. “What
do you think is my reason?”
Trevor hesitated. “You force me to speak plainly,” he said. “I
mean that you are too proud to marry me now because—because you are
no longer rich.”
“Because I am no longer rich. Ah, it is that you are thinking of!
Ah! yes—I understand you now. But oh, how little you understand
me!” She looked up in his face with a strange light in her eyes.
“Do you think that that would ever have parted us? Do you think I
should not have loved to owe everything I had to you? Do you think my
pride so paltry a thing as to be weighed against money?”
“No,” said Trevor gloomily. “I found it difficult to believe
it. But what else was I to think? How could I explain your change to
me? How am I to explain what you tell me now?”
“Trevor,” said Cicely solemnly, “you know my reason.”
“I do not,” he answered doggedly.
“Do you not know,” she went on, “that I am only doing what you
meant to do? Why you have changed in your intention I cannot tell,
unless, yes unless, it was out of pity for me. Was it out of pity for
me, Trevor?”
Her voice quivered, there were tears in her eyes now.
“Cicely, you will drive me mad unless you will tell me what you
mean,” exclaimed Trevor. “Speak plainly, I entreat you.”
He was braving it out, but Cicely could perceive his increasing
nervousness and uneasiness.
“I will speak plainly,” she said calmly. “What you intended to
do was to break off our engagement because you had found out that you
cared for—for some one else more than for me. I don’t know if you
deserve blame for its being so; I cannot judge. But for one thing you
deserve blame, and that is for having deceived me, Trevor—for
having allowed me to go on thinking of myself as belonging to you,
when—when you loved her and not me. Oh, that part of it is
horrible!”
She turned away her head. In that moment she went afresh through
suffering as acute as on the evening of the ball,—the agony of
humiliation, the misery of outraged trust, which, to a nature like
hers, were by far the sorest parts of her trial.
“Who told you all this?” said Trevor hoarsely.
“Yourself,” replied Cicely, but still without looking at him.
“I was in the fernery at Lingthurst the night of the ball, when you
and Geneviève passed through. She was crying, and I heard what you
said—what you promised her. I was hidden behind some large plants.
I could not, of course, have let you know in time that I was there,
but it was better that I heard what I did. I suppose you would have
acted as you said but for what happened so soon—and then you shrank
from adding to my sorrow; was it not so, Trevor?”
“No, not altogether. I did not mean what I said. I mean I did not
wish it. I said it impulsively because—oh, because she cried and
threw herself upon my pity! But even if I had wished to break with
you, Cicely, I could not. I could not have done so when I learnt the
change that had taken place in your position. Do you think I have no
feeling of honour?”
“‘Honour’ has come to mean many things,” said Cicely sadly.
“Has it nothing to tell you of what you owe to her?”
Trevor muttered something under his breath, which Cicely did not
catch the sense of. “Besides,” she went on, “it is true, it
must be true, that you care for her?”
“Not as I do for you, Cicely,” he ex claimed vehemently. “Will
you not believe me—what can I say—good heavens! what can I say to
make you believe me? I see it all now so plainly—what I fancied my
love for her was a mere soulless infatuation, a thing that could not
have lasted. I was no sooner out of her presence than I repented what
I had said. I was mad I think—but at that time I had been worked
upon to believe that it would cost you nothing to break with me. I
did believe it, and I was reckless.”
“Trevor,” said Cicely, “it is frightful to me to hear you talk
like this. I cannot believe it. Let me think as well of you as I can;
do not try to deprive yourself of your only excuse—that you do love
her.”
“I suppose I fancied I did—after a fashion,” he allowed. “But
it was not the sort of love that should be taken up so seriously as
you are doing. Would you take it up so if you cared for me, Cicely?
It seems to me you are eager to catch at an excuse for throwing me
off.”
“How can you, how dare you say so?” exclaimed Cicely, her eyes
flashing. “Have you forgotten your own words? Nothing else would
have made me doubt you, but can you deny your own words?”
“I was mad, I tell you,” said Trevor.
Cecily looked at him with a species of sad contempt. “Oh!
Trevor,” she said; then she burst into tears.
Mr. Fawcett was beside her in an instant. He thought he had
prevailed. “You do care for me still. I know you do,” he cried
triumphantly.
But the girl quickly disengaged herself from his embrace.
“Listen to me,” she said firmly. “I do not care for you now; I
have ceased to love you as I must have loved the man I married. But
it is not true that I did not love you. I cannot remember the time
when it did not seem to me natural to think of myself as belonging to
you. You were a great part of my life. But I see now that you did not
understand my love for you. You doubted it, because it was calm and
deep and had grown up gradually. So perhaps, perhaps, it is best as
it is; best, if it was not the kind of love that would have satisfied
you, that it should have died.”
“You don’t know what you are saying,” he persisted. “It
cannot have died. You are not the kind of woman to change so
suddenly, nor could that sort of love die so quickly.”
“It did not die—you killed it,” she replied. “You killed it
when you killed my faith in you. Trevor, it is useless to blind
yourself to the truth. I can only tell you the fact. I do not know if
it is unwomanly. I do not know if there are nobler natures than mine
who would feel differently; I can only tell you what I feel. If
Geneviève were not in existence, if she were away for ever, married
to some one else perhaps, it would make no difference. Knowing you as
I do now I could never marry you; I could never love you again.”
He was convinced at last; he felt that, as she said, she was only
stating a fact over which she had no longer any control. He leant his
arms upon the table and hid his face in them and said no more.
“I did not think you would care so much,” said Cicely simply,
while the tears ran down her cheeks.
“Care,” he repeated bitterly. “I wonder after all if you do
know what caring means, Cicely.” Then he was silent.
Cicely grew indignant again. “How little you understand!” she
exclaimed. “Supposing I were different from what I am—supposing I
could still have cared for you in the old way—what would that have
mattered? I would not have married you; do you think I would or could
have married a man who came to me with another woman’s broken heart
in his hand?”
Mr. Fawcett laughed. “It is hardly a case of a broken heart,” he
said sneeringly.
“How can you tell? Oh! Trevor, don’t make me lose respect for you
altogether!” exclaimed Cicely passionately. “I know Geneviève
better than you do; I know her faults and weaknesses. But I will not
let you speak against her. She loves you, she is all but broken
hearted already. I tremble to think what she might have been driven
to. You don’t know what she has suffered these last days; you have
not seen her lately.”
“Yes I have,” he replied. “I saw her yesterday morning.”
And unconsciously his tone softened as he recalled the blank misery
of the pretty face, the anguish in the brown eyes, when, as gently as
he knew how, he had broken to her the inevitable change in his
intentions, the necessity under which he was placed by her cousin’s
altered circumstances of fulfilling his engagement.
“Yesterday morning,” repeated Cicely. “You met her I suppose.
Yes, I understand now what made her look as she did when she came
in.”
“She has never understood you. She sincerely believed you did not
care for me. There is that to be said for her, at least,” said
Trevor.
“And she is so young, so ignorant,” added Cicely generously.
“And she loves you, Trevor. There is this one thing for you to do,
to retain, to increase my sisterly regard for you. You must be very
good to her always.”
But Trevor only groaned.
“Will you promise me this, Trevor?” said Cicely.
“I suppose so,” he said. “I must do whatever you tell me.” He
lifted his head and gazed absently out of the window. Before his eyes
lay Cicely’s little rose-garden. The roses were nearly over now;
the gardeners were at work removing the bright coloured bedding-out
plants—the geraniums and calceolarias and lobelias which had made
it so gay a few weeks ago. A new thought struck Trevor.
“Cicely,” he said wistfully, “my father meant to have bought
Greystone privately. No one need have known the particulars of your
affairs.”
“I know,” said Cicely. Her lip quivered, and she turned her head
away.
“Cicely,” he said again, this time even more timidly, “have you
thought of your mother?”
“Yes,” replied Cicely, “I have thought of everything.”
She faced him as she spoke. Her tone was firm and resolute, though
her face was white and set. Then Trevor gave in at last, and knew
that his fate was decided. And he knew, too, that it was his own
doing.
Geneviève’s letter requesting her parents’ permission to return
home at once, was not only never sent—it was never written.
That same afternoon the girl was sitting in lonely misery in her room
when Cicely knocked at the door, and asked leave to come in.
“Have you written home yet, Geneviève?” she inquired, for her
cousin was again seated by the writing-table with paper and pens
before her.
“No,” she replied; “I thought you would be angry if I did.”
“What were you going to write then?” said Cicely, glancing at the
table.
“I don’t know. I thought, perhaps, I would write a letter to
mamma, and then show it to you to see if you liked it.”
“About going home?”
“Yes.”
Cicely was silent for a moment or two. And then she said quietly and
very gravely,
“Geneviève, though perhaps you don’t like me very much, you
trust me, don’t you? Don’t you believe that I have wished to be
kind to you, and that I would like you to be happy?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Geneviève half reluctantly. With
Cicely’s eyes fixed upon her, it would have been difficult to speak
other than truthfully, and her nature was neither brave nor enduring.
She was already prostrated by trouble. All defiance was fast dying
out. She was willing to do whatever Cicely advised. “I think I
trust you,” she repeated; “but, oh! Cicely, you do not quite
understand. I do not think, perhaps, you could understand—you are
wiser and better—how I am miserable.”
She looked up in her cousin’s face with great tears in her lovely
brown eyes. When Geneviève allowed herself to be perfectly simple
and straightforward, she could be marvellously winning. Even at this
moment her cousin recognised this. “I hardly wonder at him,” she
said to herself. “There is little fear that he will not love her
enough.”
“Poor Geneviève,” she said aloud, “I am very sorry for you. I
wish you had let yourself trust me before. I might have saved you
some of this unhappiness. I am not much older than you, but I might
have warned you, for you were so inexperienced. I would have
prevented things going so far. You know the first wrong thing was
your getting into the habit of seeing my cousin so much alone—of
meeting him and going walks with him.”
“I know now,” said Geneviève meekly, “but I did not at
first—truly, I did not. I thought—oh! I cannot say to you what I
thought.” She hid her face in her hands. “I had heard,” she
went on, “that in England young girls were left free to arrange,
tout cela for themselves. I knew not it was not convenable what I
did. But Cicely,” she exclaimed in affright, “how do you know all
that you say—what am I telling you?”
“You can tell me nothing I do not know,” said Cicely. “My
cousin has told me everything.”
“He—Mr. Fawcett—Trevor! He has told you!” cried Geneviève in
bewildered amazement. “How can that be? He has told you, and
you—you have forgiven him? It remains but for me to go home and be
forgotten. But, oh! that I had never come here.”
“I have forgiven him,” said Cicely, ignoring the last sentences;
“but, Geneviève, I did not find it easy. I blame him far—far
more than you.”
Geneviève looked up again with a sparkle of hope in her eyes.
“Cicely,” she whispered, and her face grew crimson, “Cicely,
you must remember that when I—when I first began to care so much
for him, I knew not that he was more to you than a cousin.”
“I know that. I have not forgotten it,” said Cicely, while a
quick look of pain contracted her fair forehead. “I know that, it
was my own fault,” she added in a low voice as if thinking aloud.
“But as if I could ever have thought of Trevor—! I have not
forgotten that, Geneviève,” she repeated. “At first, too, he
thought you knew, he thought you looked upon him as a sort of a
brother.”
“And so you have forgiven him?” said Geneviève again.
“What do you mean by ‘forgiving’? I have forgiven him, but—of
course, knowing what I do now, it is impossible that things can be as
they were.”
“You will not marry him! Do you mean that, Cicely? Ah! then it is
as I said—you do not, you cannot care for him!” exclaimed
Geneviève excitedly.
Hitherto Cicely had completely preserved her self-control. Now, for
the first time, it threatened to desert her. A rush of sudden
indignation made her eyes sparkle and her cheeks glow.
“How dare you say so?” she exclaimed. “Is it not enough—what
I have to bear—without my being taunted with indifference,
Geneviève?” She went on more calmly. “You must not speak to me
in that way. I do not ask to be thought about at all. What I have to
do, I will go through with, but at least you need not speak about me
at all, whatever you think.”
Geneviève was sobbing. “If you do love him,” she said, “why do
you not marry him? I ask only to go away home. I will never trouble
you again!”
“Do you understand me so little?” asked Cicely. “Do you think I
could marry a man who I believed cared more for another woman than
for me?”
“Do you think so?” said Geneviève, with thoughtlessly selfish
eagerness.
“Yes,” said Cicely deliberately, after a moment’s silence. “I
do think so. He may not think so himself, just now,” she added in
thought, “but I believe it is so.”
Then Geneviève said no more. Her head was in a whirl of feelings
which she dared not express. She could scarcely credit her own
happiness, she did not know if it were wicked of her to feel happy.
She was afraid of seeming to pity Cicely, or even of expressing
anything of the admiration and gratitude she could not but be
conscious that her cousin deserved. So she sat beside her in silence,
crying quietly, till after a time a new idea struck her.
“Cicely,” she said, “what will they all say? Sir Thomas and
Lady Frederica, and my aunt. Will they not be very angry?”
“There is no need for Sir Thomas and Lady Frederica to be told much
at present,” replied Cicely. “I have talked it over with my
cousin. Of course, they must be told it is all at an end with—with
me. But they will not be altogether surprised, and things are
different now. I am no longer rich.”
She spoke quite simply, but her words stung Geneviève to the quick.
“I had forgotten that,” she exclaimed. “Ah! believe me, I had
forgotten it. These last days I have been so unhappy I have forgotten
all—since I saw Mr. Fawcett yesterday morning I have had but one
thought. Oh! believe me, Cicely, if I had remembered that, I should
have gone away without asking—I would indeed!”
Cicely looked at her with a little smile.
“Don’t make yourself unhappy about me on that account,” she
said. “I only meant that it would naturally make Trevor’s
relations look upon it all somewhat differently. And they are fond of
you already.”
“But my aunt?” said Geneviève.
Cicely’s face grew graver.“I will do the best I can,” she said.
“For every sake I will do that. But I cannot promise you that my
mother will ever feel again towards you as she has done. I think it
will be best for you soon to go away—to Hivèritz, I
suppose—till—till you are married.”
“And when I am married, will you not come to see me? Will you not
forgive quite? Will you not love me, Cicely?”
She looked up beseechingly with the tears still shining in her dark
eyes, her whole face quivering with agitation.
“You have not cared much for my love hitherto, Geneviève,” said
Cicely sadly. “In the future I hope you will need it even less.”
But still she kissed the girl’s sweet face, and for one instant she
allowed Geneviève to throw her arms round her. Then she disengaged
herself gently and went away.
She did her best as she had promised.
But try as she might to soften matters, the blow fell very heavily on
her mother. Even had she thought it right to do so, it would have
been impossible to deceive Mrs. Methvyn as to the true state of the
case, and Cicely’s generous endeavours to palliate Geneviève’s
conduct, by reminding her mother of the girl’s childishness and
inexperience, by blaming herself for having kept her in ignorance of
Mr. Fawcett’s true position in the household—all seemed at first
only to add fuel to the flame of Mrs. Methvyn’s indignation against
her cousin’s child.
“No inexperience is an excuse for double dealing and deceit,” she
exclaimed. “Even had it not been Trevor, I should have looked upon
such behaviour as disgraceful in the extreme. No, Cicely, you can say
nothing to soften it. French or English, however she had been brought
up, she must have known she was doing wrong. I cannot believe in her
childishness and ignorance. She cannot be so very childish if she has
succeeded in achieving her purpose in this way. And as for Trevor,
she must have utterly bewitched him. I can pity him if he marries
her, for of course it is utterly impossible he can care for her as he
does for you.”
“I hope not. I hope it is not impossible, I mean, that he should
care for her far more than he has ever done for me,” said Cicely.
“Sometimes, mother, I have thought that my coldness and
undemonstrativeness have been trying to Trevor. And he is naturally
indolent. A wife who will cling to him and look to him for direction
in everything may draw out his character and energy—a more gentle,
docile wife than I would have been perhaps.”
She tried to smile, but the effort was a failure. Her mother looked
at her with an expression of anguish. In her first outburst of angry
indignation, she had almost forgotten what her child must be
suffering.
“My darling,” she exclaimed, “my own darling, who could be more
gentle and docile than you have always been? How can I tell you what
I feel for you? And you have known it all these miserable days and
never told me! No, Cicely, I cannot forgive them.”
“You will in time, mother dear,” said Cicely soothingly. “At
least, you, and I too, will learn to believe it must have been for
the best. I feel that I shall be able to bear it if I have still you.
Only,” she added timidly,“please don’t speak against them. It
seems to stab me somehow, to revive the first horrible pain,” she
gave an involuntary shudder. “For my sake, mother dear, you will
try to forgive.”
“For your sake I would try to do anything,” replied her mother.
“And,” whispered Cicely, “we can feel that it is only we two
who suffer. My father has been spared all this.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Methvyn, “we may be thankful for that.”
“And after a while,” continued Cicely, “you and I will go away
together to some new place where there be nothing to recall all this,
and we shall be very happy and peaceful in our own way, mother dear,
after all, shall we not?”
Mrs. Methvyn tried to answer cheerfully, but she could not manage it.
She only shook her head sorrowfully, while the tears ran down her
thin cheeks. Cicely kissed them away.
“I don’t know, dear,” the mother whispered. “I would not feel
it so if I could look forward to being able to do anything to make
you happy again. But I am getting old, my darling, trouble ages one,
and I feel as if half my life had gone with your father.”
“But after a while you will not feel it so bitterly,” persisted
Cicely, and Mrs. Methvyn tried to believe it would be so.
As far as was possible Cicely spared her mother all the painful
details of the utter change in their prospects. It was arranged that
Geneviève should return home to Hivèritz at the same time that the
Methvyns left the Abbey; and though before then it became necessary
to tell Mr. Fawcett’s parents of his engagement to Miss Casalis,
the fact was not made public. And fortunately for herself,
Geneviève’s spirits continued in a subdued state during the short
remainder of her stay.
“She looks so frightened and miserable, mother,” said Cicely one
day when Geneviève had rushed out of the room suddenly, to avoid
meeting her aunt, who came in unexpectedly. “Can you not forgive
her?”
“I have forgiven her,” said Mrs. Methvyn coldly. “I promised
you I would. I confess I have not yet come to pitying her, as you
seem to do, Cicely. I know her now better than you do. More than half
of that misery is affectation. She will not have a thought of
self-reproach when it comes to buying her trousseau and being
congratulated. Oh! I do wish that you had let my first letter go, the
one in which I told Caroline the truth.”
“But you did tell her the truth in the one that went,” said
Cicely. “You told her that my engagement had been broken off
entirely by my own wish, and that Mr. Fawcett had fallen in love with
Geneviève, and that his parents approved of it.”
“That was not the whole truth,” said Mrs. Methvyn. “Do not take
up my words in that way, Cicely.”
“Well, mother, there would have been no good in telling more,”
replied Cicely gravely. “What Geneviève may choose to tell her
mother herself is a different matter, and does not concern us. In the
same way I very much prefer that Trevor’s parents should be told
nothing by us, though I fear poor Sir Thomas suspects something. How
kind he has been!”
She sighed as she recalled her old friend’s endeavours to shake her
determination. Lady Frederica had cried over it till the thought of
the admiration that would certainly attend the débút in fashionable
society of so lovely a daughter-in-law as Geneviève, had suggested
itself as consolation. But long before there was any talk of his
son’s “new love,” Sir Thomas had come over to see Cicely in
hopes of getting to the bottom of the mysterious misunderstanding
between her and Trevor. He had gone away sorrowful, convinced at last
that the girl’s decision was unalterable, but none the more
reconciled to it on that account.
“I trust, my dear, that, as you assure me, false pride has nothing
to say to it,” were the parting words of the honest-hearted old
man. “Trevor told me it was no use my coming, but I—well, I
fancied old heads were cooler than young ones sometimes, even in a
case of this kind. I can’t blame you, Cicely—I think too highly
of you for that, even if my boy had not assured me most solemnly that
what you have done has only doubled his respect and admiration for
you. If I thought he was to blame” a hard look came over Sir
Thomas’s comfortable face.
“Don’t think any one is to blame,” Cicely entreated, “in the
end we may all come to see that it has been for the best.”
“And you knew about my thinking of buying Greystone?” he said
regretfully.
“Yes,” she replied. “It was a most kind thought. But I have
understood since that it would not be considered a profitable
purchase for you—you don’t want more land about here?”
“No, I don’t care about it. And I don’t care about another
house either. I have Barnstay up in the north, you know—the lease
is nearly run out; in case Trevor ever marries, he may live there if
he likes. No, I don’t want Greystone; but if you would still like
the idea of my having it, if there were the ghost of a chance of
things ever coming straight again between you and Trevor—”
“There is not the ghost of a chance, dear Sir Thomas,” replied
Cicely. “Do not let any thought of us influence you in the matter.
Greystone will be dead to me from the day we leave it.”
“That means you will never come back eh?” said Sir Thomas. Cicely
did not contradict him. “Ah! well, then, I think I’ll give up the
idea. It was different when I thought of keeping it together for poor
Philip’s grandchildren.”
He kissed Cicely when he left her, and there were tears in his eyes,
but the subjects they had discussed were never alluded to again. Some
weeks later when his consent to Trevor’s marriage was asked; he
gave it without difficulty. But he thought his own thoughts,
nevertheless; and it came to be generally noticed that the old
gentleman never “favoured” his pretty daughter-in-law as much as
might have been expected. “Not like it would have been with our
Miss Cicely,” the people about used to say.
But time went on. Greystone Abbey was sold to strangers, and the
desolate widow and daughter of its last owner left it for ever.