FRIEND AND WIFE.
“So grew my own small life complete As nature obtained her best of
me.”
By the Fireside.
“To marry aright is to read the riddle of the world.”
CICELY was but half satisfied by Amiel’s assurance that she “was
only teasing her,” and very much inclined to arrange shopping
expeditions—a bait she had generally found irresistible—for some
days to come, at the hour when their visitor was to be expected. But
“for to-day, I need not ask her to alter her plans,” she said to
herself. “He will certainly not call to-day.” So when Amiel said
that she had letters to write and could not go out, Cicely made no
objection, and the sisters spent the afternoon in the house.
It was growing dusk when Sir Herbert’s voice was heard coming
upstairs. “I have brought you a visitor, Amy,” he exclaimed, as
he opened the drawing-room door.
“How do you do, Mr. Guildford?” said Lady Forrester, calmly
shaking hands with her guest. Then Cicely found herself calmly
shaking hands with him too, and in another five minutes it seemed to
her quite natural to see him sitting there among them, while Amiel
poured out tea, and the room looked bright and homelike in the
firelight.
He stayed about an hour, and when he left he had promised to dine
with them the next day; and when Cicely woke the next morning, she
fancied the sun was shining more brightly than was usual through
London windows!
The evening passed pleasantly. Cicely liked to listen to Mr.
Guildford and her brother-in-law; she liked to realise the high
estimation in which each evidently held the other; she herself felt
satisfied to sit in silence, without analysing her content.
“I wish Mrs. Crichton were here to sing to us,” she said towards
the end of the evening to Bessie’s brother.
“Yes,” he answered, but somewhat absently. Then he went on
hastily. “Miss Methvyn,” he said, “I want to ask you a favour.
Will you copy out another manuscript for me. It is not a long one.”
“Certainly I will,” she replied cordially. “Send it to me
whenever you like.”
“I have never got any professional copier to do them as well as you
did that one at Hivèritz. And,” he continued, “I cannot manage
them myself.”
He hesitated. Cicely looked up quickly. “Do you mean,” she said,
“that your eyes are not any better?”
He bent his head. “Yes,” he replied, “that is what I meant to
tell you. I wanted you to know.”
A little shiver ran through Cicely; she was sitting by the piano:
they were out of hearing of Sir Herbert and Amiel, engrossed with
cribbage, in the other drawing-room; for an instant she turned her
head away; when she looked up again there were tears in her
eyes,—was it the sight of them that lighted up with a strange new
light the dark ones so earnestly regarding her?
“Do you mean,” she said tremulously, “that you are growing
blind? Is that what you want me to know—did you mean to—to break
it by asking me to copy the manuscript for you?”
He smiled—a smile so brightly happy, so full of sunshine that
Cicely felt bewildered.
“Do you mean,” he whispered, “that if it were so, you would
care so much? Do you—can you care so much for anything that might
happen to me?”
One of Cicely’s hands was lying on the keys. Edmond covered it with
his own. She did not withdraw it—but she did not speak; only, one
of the tears’ dropped quietly on to the hand that held hers. It
seemed to give him courage to say more.
“Cicely,” he said softly, “will you not answer me? Is it
possible you care for me so?”
Cicely looked up. “I care so much—I care for you so much
that—is it horribly selfish of me?—forgive me—I could hardly
regret your being blind, if—if I might be eyes to you. Oh! you know
what I mean,” she went on. “Life would be worth having to me if I
could use it in helping you.”
He looked at her with a whole world of feeling beyond expression in
his eyes. “I can hardly believe it,” he whispered, as if to
himself. “What have I done to deserve it? Cicely, are you sure you
are not mistaken? Is it love, not pity—are you sure?”
“I never really knew what love meant till I learnt to love you,”
she said softly.
He kissed away the tears still trembling on her eyelids, he whispered
the sweet, fond foolish words that will never seem worn-out or
hackneyed while time and youth last in this old world of ours, though
never will they express the hundredth part of a true man’s love for
a noble woman. And then he told her what by this time he had almost
forgotten all about, the worst to be feared for him was hardly so bad
as she had imagined; his sight was by no means irrevocably doomed, it
might be yet spared to him, with care and attention there was good
reason for hoping it would be so. “For now,” he said, “I shall
value it doubly.”
Sir Herbert had fallen asleep by the fire long ago. Amiel had
disappeared; there was nothing to interrupt the many questions these
two were now eager to ask and answer.
“Why were you so cold to me the other day, when we met in the
picture-room?” he said.
“What was I to think?” she answered. “Why had you never come to
see us?”
He tried to evade a reply, but she persisted. Then at last he
confessed to his foolish jealousy of Mr. Hayle. “I had no reason to
think you cared for me in the least, remember,” he said. “All
that time at Hivèritz, your manner was more discouraging than any
coldness. You were so dreadfully friendly and unconstrained.”
“Yet you were happy there?” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “but I was deceiving myself. I thought I was
satisfied with what I believed to be all you could give me—your
friendship. Then my eyes were opened, and since then—oh! what a
dreary mockery everything has seemed all this time!”
“Yes,” she whispered, “I know. I thought it was only I that
felt it so. I thought you had quite forgotten, or outgrown any other
feeling—that you were glad to be able to keep to your theory of not
letting love gain much hold of you, and I tried to think I was
satisfied too.”
“Ah, yes! My theories,” he said, with a smile. “I thought I
could keep Love in its place. It never struck me that Love may be a
master, not in the sense of a tyrant, but of a teacher. But I shall
be an apt pupil now. Cicely, I love you with heart and soul, and mind
and conscience approve. It is the best of me that loves you, my
darling—I understand now how such love can be called divine, and I
feel that it must be immortal.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, as if thinking aloud.
“Yes, I understand it now:
“‘Sole spark from God’s life at strife, With death, so, sure
of range above The limits here.’
I never understood it before as I do now.”
And Cicely understood it too.
“Do you know,” he went on, do you know that it is just three
years—three years this very evening—since I first saw you,
Cicely?”
“The night little Charlie died,” she said softly.
THE END.