The next six weeks seem to me still like a vague dream: everything
happened so hastily and strangely. I got a note next day from Irene. It
was very short. "Dearest Harry,--Mamma and I think, under the
circumstances, it would be best for us to leave London for a few weeks.
I am not angry with you. With best love, ever yours affectionately,
Irene."
I was wild when I received it. I couldn't bear to part so with Irene. I
would find out where they were going and follow them immediately. I
would write a note and break off my mad engagement with Cesarine. I must
have been drunk or insane when I made it. I couldn't imagine what I
could have been doing.
On my way round to inquire at the Latham's, a carriage came suddenly
upon me at a sharp corner. A lady bowed to me from it. It was Cesarine
with her father. They pulled up and spoke to me. From that moment my
doom was sealed. The old fascination came back at once, and I followed
Cesarine blindly home to her house to luncheon, her accepted lover.
In six weeks more we were really married.
The first seven or eight months of our married life passed away happily
enough. As soon as I was actually married to Cesarine, that strange
feeling I had at first experienced about her slowly wore off in the
closer, commonplace, daily intercourse of married life. I almost smiled
at myself for ever having felt it. Cesarine was so beautiful and so
queenly a person, that when I took her down home to Devonshire, and
introduced her to the old manor, I really found myself immensely proud
of her. Everybody at Teignbury was delighted and struck with her; and,
what was a great deal more to the point, I began to discover that I was
positively in love with her myself, into the bargain. She softened and
melted immensely on nearer acquaintance; the Faustina air faded slowly
away, when one saw her in her own home among her own occupations; and I
came to look on her as a beautiful, simple, innocent girl, delighted
with all our country pleasures, fond of a breezy canter on the slopes of
Dartmoor, and taking an affectionate interest in the ducks and chickens,
which I could hardly ever have conceived even as possible when I first
saw her in Seymour Crescent. The imperious, mysterious, terrible
Cesarine disappeared entirely, and I found in her place, to my immense
relief, that I had married a graceful, gentle, tender-hearted English
girl, with just a pleasant occasional touch of southern fire and
impetuosity.
As winter came round again, however, Cesarine's cheeks began to look a
little thinner than usual, and she had such a constant, troublesome
cough, that I began to be a trifle alarmed at her strange symptoms.
Cesarine herself laughed off my fears. "It's nothing, Harry," she would
say; "nothing at all, I assure you, dear. A few good rides on the moor
will set me right again. It's all the result of that horrid London. I'm
a country-born girl, and I hate big towns. I never want to live in town
again, Harry."
I called in our best Exeter doctor, and he largely confirmed Cesarine's
own simple view of the situation. "There's nothing organically wrong
with Mrs. Tristram's constitution," he said confidently. "No weakness of
the lungs or heart in any way. She has merely run down--outlived her
strength a little. A winter in some warm, genial climate would set her
up again, I haven't the least hesitation in saying."
"Let us go to Algeria with the yacht, Reeney," I suggested, much
reassured.
"Why Algeria?" Cesarine replied, with brightening eyes. "Oh, Harry, why
not dear old Haiti? You said once you would go there with me--you
remember when, darling; why not keep your promise now, and go there? I
want to go there, Harry: I'm longing to go there." And she held out her
delicately moulded hand in front of her, as if beckoning me, and drawing
me on to Haiti after her.
"Ah, yes; why not the West Indies?" the Exeter doctor answered
meditatively. "I think I understood you that Mrs. Tristram is West
Indian born. Quite so. Quite so. Her native air. Depend upon it, that's
the best place for her. By all means, I should say, try Haiti."
I don't know why, but the notion for some reason displeased me
immensely. There was something about Cesarine's eyes, somehow, when she
beckoned with her hand in that strange fashion, which reminded me
exactly of the weird, uncanny, indescribable impression she had made
upon me when I first knew her. Still I was very fond of Cesarine, and if
she and the doctor were both agreed that Haiti would be the very best
place for her, it would be foolish and wrong for me to interfere with
their joint wisdom. Depend upon it, a woman often knows what is the
matter with her better than any man, even her husband, can possibly tell
her.
The end of it all was, that in less than a month from that day, we were
out in the yacht on the broad Atlantic, with the cliffs of Falmouth and
the Lizard Point fading slowly behind us in the distance, and the white
spray dashing in front of us, like fingers beckoning us on to Haiti.