“It is not for what he would be to me now,If he still were here, that I mourn him so:It is for the thought of a broken vow,And for what he was to me long ago.”
Lord Houghton.
LASTdays are generally sad, sometimes terrible things. Sad enough were these last days at Greystone: Cicely felt thankful when they were over, though once gone, she would have given years of life to recall them. It was a relief to both her mother and herself when Geneviève left them, and they were free to take farewell of the places they had loved so dearly, without the painful associations of her presence, gentle and subdued as she remained to the end. It was a relief to them, and they were conscious too that it could not but be a relief to her.
“I shall tell my motherall,” she had said to Cicely, and Cicely was glad to hear of her intention.
“You are right to tell her, Geneviève,” she said, “though no one else would ever have done so.”
But Geneviève’s confession was deferred. She did not, after all, return to Hivèritz as proposed, for there came news from Madame Casalis of a fever having broken out in the household, which threatened to be of a serious kind and without doubt infectious; one of the boys and little Eudoxie were already prostrated by it; the latter, it was feared, likely to have it badly. Under these circumstances, therefore, it was proposed by Geneviève’s parents that she should only go as far as Paris and stay there under the care of an old school friend of Madame Casalis, who was by no means averse to receiving as a visitor the ‘promise’ of a wealthy young ‘milord.’ Geneviève shed tears over her mother’s letter, expressed herselfdésoléeat the thought of the anxiety in her family, but ended by deciding that her persisting in returning home to the modest little house in the Rue de la Croix blanche, would only add to her mother’s trouble and distress.
“It is best I should go to Madame Du plessis,” she said resignedly. “As mamma wishes it, it is best I should not ask still to go home.”
And her satisfaction with her own decision was not a little increased when, the night before she was to leave, her aunt gave her, to expend upon hertrousseau,a sum of money which was now to Mrs. Methvyn by no means the trifle it would have been a few weeks before.
“She is my relation, however she has behaved,” said Cicely’s mother. “It would never do for her to enter the Fawcetts’ family without a proper outfit.”
“And I can geteverythingin Paris,” thought Geneviève delightedly. And her expressions of gratitude were so evidently sincere that even Mrs. Methvyn’s heart was a little softened to her, and she bade her good-bye with more kindliness of manner than might have been expected.
It ended in Geneviève’s remaining in Paris till her marriage—her father and mother joining her there only a few days before it took place. How much or how little, therefore, of the true history of her daughter’s love affairs was confided to Madame Casalis, Cicely did not till long afterwards know, though from the tone of her letters to Mrs. Methvyn it was evident that “poor Caroline’s” satisfaction in Geneviève’s brilliant prospects was not unalloyed.
“I would not conceal from you, my dear and kind Helen,” she wrote, “that I am glad for my child to be well settled in life. But my grief and sorrow for you prevent my being able to rejoice as I might otherwise have done. And though you tell me, and it is no doubt the case that the breaking off of your Cicely’s engagement was by her own desire, I cannot rid myself of the feeling that it is unnatural and strange that Geneviève should so quickly have succeeded her in Mr. Fawcett’s regard. I trust neither he nor my daughter may regret what seems to have been done hastily. She tells me she will explain all when we meet; she says your goodness and that of the dear Cicely is beyond words. I trust, when I understand more, I may not learn that my child has not been deserving of it.”
“She is so simple and unworldly!” said Mrs. Methvyn. “Poor Caroline—how can her daughter have become so different!”
But after reading this letter, she did not again repeat her wish that Cicely had allowed her to tell Geneviève’s mother the whole truth.
When they first left the Abbey, it was the intention of Mrs. Methvyn and her daughter at once to make a new home for themselves at Leobury, a quaintly pretty, quiet little town, far away from Greystone and its associations. It was at Leobury that Mrs. Methvyn’s former widowhood had been spent, and it was there too that after a separation of ten years she had again met her first love—Philip Methvyn. Leobury was endeared to her for this reason, and Cicely was only too glad to find her mother able to express interest on the subject of their home, not to consent readily to what she proposed. But their plans were not at once carried out. There was no suitable house to be had at Leobury at the time they left Greystone. So for nearly a year after Colonel Methvyn’s death, his widow and daughter were without a settled home.
Summer was again on the wane—it had seemed a short summer to Cicely compared with that of the previous year—when they at last found themselves in possession of a pretty little house in the place where, more than a quarter of a century before, young Mrs. Bruce had come to live with her two years old Amiel. She had been poor then; poorer far than now, but in those old days poverty had seemed a smaller matter. She was young, and she had then never known what it was to be rich; the husband she had lost had caused her far sorer griefs than that of his death—she had suffered enough in her short married life to realise even loneliness as a relief. Now, how different everything was! For twenty-two years she had been happier than it falls to the lot of many women to be; hardly a wish of hers had remained ungratified; till Colonel Methvyn’s accident she had not known a care—when suddenly the whole had collapsed—for the second time she found herself a widow, and in comparatively speaking straitened circumstances, her companion this time a daughter even dearer to her than little Amiel—a daughter who, young as she was, had known sorrow and disappointment neither slight nor passing, troubles enough to have soured a less healthy nature, which her mother was powerless to soften or heal. It is hardly to be wondered at that, weakened in strength and nerve, Mrs. Methvyn sometimes found it difficult to look on the bright side of things.
But what she could not do, time and nature had not neglected. Already Cicely was recovering from the crushing effects of the blow that had fallen upon her so unexpectedly. She could look back now without flinching upon all that had happened, could feel that she was still young and strong and hopeful, and that the light had not all died out of her life. To her their loss of riches had been by no means an unmitigated evil; for though they were not so reduced as to come into unlovely proximity with poverty, the change in their circumstances had necessitated the exertion of energy and forethought in their arrangements, which had been for Cicely a healthy and invigorating discipline. She felt that she was of use; that, without her, life would have been a terrible blank to her enfeebled mother; and the consciousness gave her, as nothing else could have done, strength and cheerfulness. One thought only she could not face—what would life be to her now, how would it be possible to endure it were her one interest removed, her mother taken from her?
“I am risking my all in a frail bark,” she would sometimes say to herself with a shudder, “but surely if mamma were to die I should die too. No one could live in such utter desolation.” Yet even as she said so, a misgiving would suggest itself that such things had been and might be again; that life, the awful yet priceless gift, though bestowed unasked, is not therefore so easily to be laid down as at times we would fain imagine. The “sharp malady” must run its course; the “appointed bounds” cannot be passed; the “few days and full of trouble” are to some lonely men and women lengthened into the many, before there comes the longed-for order of release, the permission to depart for the unseen land which, wherever and whatever it may be, is to them more real than any other, since thither have journeyed before them all whose presence made this earth a home—the “faces loved and lost awhile;”—yes, there are some strangely solitary beings in this crowded world of ours.
The first two or three Sundays at Leobury, Cicely was not able to go to church. Her mother was not very well and shrank from being left alone. But, at last, by the end of September, there came a Sunday when there was nothing to prevent Cicely’s at tending the morning service in the fine old church, but a stone’s throw from her mother’s house.
It was a beautiful day, soft and balmy; yet already, through the trees and in the breezes, there came the first far-off notes of the dying year’s lament—the subdued hush of autumn was perceptible.
“The swallows have gone, I feel sure,” thought Cicely, as she walked slowly up the quiet village street (for after all Leobury was hardly deserving of the name of town). “I can alwaysfeelthat they are gone.”
She gazed up into the sky, the blue was mellowed and yet paled by the golden haze of harvest-time. “The summer has gone again,” she murmured as she passed into the church by an old porch-way with stone seats at each side, which reminded her of the entrance to Greystone Abbey—“the old porch at home”—and it was in a sort of dream that she made her way to a seat in a quiet corner. She hardly noticed when the service began; she stood up mechanically with those about her, but her thoughts were far away. Suddenly, without knowing what had suggested it, she found herself thinking of that Sunday morning, more than a year ago now, in Lingthurst church—the first Sunday after Geneviève’s arrival. She remembered how the sunshine bad streamed into the ugly little building, brightening into brilliant pink the old woman’s brick dust cloaks, making also more conspicuous the mildew stains and patches on the plastered walls. She recalled her feelings of commiseration for the new clergyman on this his first introduction to his church. What had put all this into her mind just now? There was nothing in the place to recall Lingthurst—Leobury church was as picturesque and impressive as Lingthurst was commonplace; the one was perfect of its kind, the other glaringly bare and unattractive—the familiar words of the service had been listened to by Cicely in many churches during the last few months without recalling any special association. Suddenly the riddle was solved Two clergymen were officiating; the one, an old white-headed man with a feeble quavering voice, which contrasted curiously with the firm clear tones of his assistant priest. From where Cicely sat, the younger man was not visible, but by moving a little she obtained a view of him, and understood the trick which the “quaint witch” had been playing her—she saw before her the grave, boyish face of Mr. Hayle!
How had he come there? How strange it seemed! A little shiver passed through her as she recalled the last time she had seen him—it had been on the night of the Lingthurst ball, the night so full of misery for her. She had never seen him since then, for though he had called at the Abbey after her father’s death, she had shrunk from meeting him again, though far from ungrateful for his kindness and consideration. And now here he was at Leobury!
“I shall not mind seeing him again now,” thought Cicely, “I think I am rather glad he is here. Mother liked him. I don’t think she will have any painful feeling tohim,poor little man!”
But the rest of the service passed like a dream. Cicely’s thoughts were away in the past—wandering in the land of long ago.” She recalled her happy childhood, her girl hood so full of love and promise—the sunny days when trouble and sorrow seemed such remote, all but impossible, possibilities! How Trevor seemed associated with it all—there was not a walk she had ever taken, not a summer ramble or winter skating expedition in which his figure did not seem prominent.
“I wish he had been my brother, really,” sighed Cicely, “then no one and nothing could ever have separated us!”
It was a torn out page—a page which it would ever be painful to miss. But she was beginning to realise that the book held others—others which hereafter she would not shrink from looking back to and lingering over with loving tenderness of remembrance.
When the service was over, Cicely walked slowly homewards. She was near her mother’s house, when the sound of her own name made her look round. Mr. Hayle was behind her.
“Miss Methvyn,” he exclaimed eagerly, his face flushed with pleasure and the quick rate at which he had been walking, “I thought it was you. I was sure I could not be mistaken.”
“Did you see me in church?” said Cicely, shaking hands with him as she spoke. She was pleased to see him, but again, at this first moment of meeting, there rushed over her the remembrance of the last time she had spoken to him, and unconsciously a slight constraint showed itself in her manner.
“Yes,” said Mr. Hayle. “But I was on the look-out for you. I heard yesterday evening quite accidentally that a lady of your name had taken a house here, and I began to hope it might be you. I trust Mrs. Methvyn is well. I—I hope I may come to see her?”
His tone had sobered down to its usual slightly formal gravity, and his last words sounded somewhat ill-assured and hesitating. Cicely felt vexed with herself for chilling him.
“I am sure mamma will be pleased to see you,” she said, “when I tell her of your being here. I was so surprised to see you,” she continued, “we did not know you had left Lingthurst.” She uttered the word firmly and distinctly. Mr. Hayle looked more guilty than she.
“I left some months ago,” he said. “I am only here temporarily however—staying with my uncle who is the rector of Leobury. He is old and infirm, and I do what I can to help him.”
“Then have you no plans for the future? Why did you leave Lingthurst? Was it not very sudden?” questioned Cicely.
“I got discouraged there,” he replied. “No one—after you left—took any interest in things. There was very little I, alone and unassisted, could do, and that little a less strong man—perhaps I may say a less energetic man—could do quite as well or better. So I gave it up. I have plans, but—”
“Did my cousin—Mr. Fawcett, I mean—did he take no interest in things?” interrupted Cicely. She looked up in Mr. Hayle’s face without flinching. He could see that she wanted an answer.
“No,” he said hesitatingly. “He is not much there now, and—and when they are there Lingthurst is generally full of company. Mrs. Fawcett is fond of amusement.”
“Yes,” said Cicely, “she is young—it is natural she should be. But Trevor used to speak so much, after you came, about doing something really to improve Notcotts and all that neglected part; I am disappointed.”
“He may do so in time. He has had plenty of other things to think of this last year,” said Mr. Hayle. Then he grew scarlet with fear that Miss Methvyn should think he was alluding to the past. But fortunately by this time they had reached Cicely’s home, and it was easy for her to affect not to notice his discomposure.
“Will you come in?” she said, with her hand on the gate. “I think mamma will be downstairs—it is half-past twelve—she is generally dressed by this time.
“Is Mrs. Methvyn not as well as she used to be, then?” inquired Mr. Hayle, recalling the early hours and active habits of Greystone.
“Oh! dear, yes; she is very well—perfectly well,” said Cicely quickly. “She says she has grown lazy, that is all. Won’t you come in and see her for yourself?”
“Not just now, thank you,” he replied. “If I may call to-morrow, I should like very much to see Mrs. Methvyn.”
“Come to-morrow then, by all means,” said Cicely brightly. She smiled as she spoke—she was so anxious to convince him of her cheerfulness and well-being.
“Thank you,” he said simply, with something in his expression which she did not understand. Then he shook hands again and went away.
“What energy and powers of endurance she has,” he said to himself. “Such a woman has it in her to do great things.”
Mrs. Methvyn was not in the drawing room when Cicely went in. The girl ran upstairs.
“Mamma,” she called out, tapping at her mother’s door.
“Come in,” replied Mrs. Methvyn’s voice, and Cicely entered. Her mother was dressed, sitting in an arm-chair near the fire.
“You are very lazy this morning, mother,” she said laughingly. “I was very nearly bringing an old friend in to see you. Whom do you think I met at church?”
“An old friend,” repeated Mrs. Methvyn. “Was it could it have been Mr. Guildford?”
She spoke so eagerly that Cicely looked at her in surprise; and now for the first time she observed that her mother was exceedingly pale.
“Mother dear, I am afraid I have startled you,” she said penitently. “No, it wasn’t Mr. Guildford. It was Mr. Hayle. Shall you dislike his coming to see you to-morrow.”
“Oh! no. I shall be very glad to see him,” replied Mrs. Methvyn. But the interest had died out of her voice. She leaned back in her chair as if exhausted. “Will you see if Parker has come in, Cicely?” she said. “I sent her out on a message a few minutes ago. I shall come downstairs in a little while, and then you can tell me about Mr. Hayle. I did not know he had left—Lingthurst.”
By her the word was pronounced with an evident effort. Just then Parker came in. “I think this is the same as the last you had, ma’am,” she said, “but it is not often different chemists prepare things quite alike.”
She had a small phial in her hand, she did not observe Cicely standing by.
“What have you been getting mamma medicine for, Parker?” she said. “She’s not ill.”
Parker started. “It is only the same tonic that Dr. Farmer gave me long ago,” said Mrs. Methvyn. “Go and take off your things, dear. I shall be down directly.”
Cicely was not satisfied, but she left the room. Later in the afternoon when she and her mother were alone together, she recurred to what had been said. “Mamma,” she began, “what made you think of Mr. Guildford to-day when I told you I had met an old friend?”
“I think I should have been glad if it had been he,” said Mrs. Methvyn. “I had great confidence in him. I think him very clever.”
“But what about it? You are not ill; you don’t want a doctor,” said Cicely.
“I don’t know, dear. I don’t think I am very well,” replied Mrs. Methvyn tremulously. “Long ago—years ago I used to have now and then a sudden sort of attack, a kind of spasm, which some doctors thought had to do with my heart. Then for some time these attacks almost ceased, and I thought it must have been a mistake—but lately they have returned much more frequently and violently than before. And—Cicely dear—when I went up to town with Parker that day from Brighton—I would not let you come, you know—it was to see Dr.——, the great authority on that class of disease.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said that there was nothing to be done. It was true what I had been told. He said that—that I might not get worse for a long time, but that—it is notcertainthat I shall not.”
“Mamma,” cried Cicely gazing up in her mother’s face with wildly agonised eyes, “mamma, you are going to die and leave me. That is what you mean. Why didn’t you tell me before? oh! why didn’t you?”
“My child, my darling, Icouldnot,” said her mother, the tears coursing down her thin pale cheeks. “How could I break your heart again? And it is only quite lately that I have begun to be afraid about myself—only quite lately. It may pass off again—I may be with you for many years yet.”
“No,” said Cicely, “no. I feel it coming. Mother, oh! mother, what shall I do? How can God be so cruel? May not I die too? Oh, mamma, mamma!”
She burst into an anguish of wild weeping, and for some moments Mrs. Methvyn did not check her. Then at last she whispered, “Cicely dearest, will you not try to be calm? For my sake—I cannot bear to see you go.”
The words recalled Cicely to herself. Yes, she must be calm. The pain of witnessing such stormy grief would assuredly weaken her mother’s already feeble hold on life. With a violent effort she checked her sobs, and fought for self-control. Then she listened to all her mother had to say; listened, and pretended to believe that her fears had exaggerated the danger; but in her heart of hearts she knew the truth—the last drop of bitter sorrow had been poured into the cup of which, for one so young, she had already drunk deeply.
When Mr. Hayle called the next day, he was shown into the drawing-room and there found Mrs. Methvyn alone. He stayed with her a considerable time, but he did not see Cicely at all. When he came away from the house, his face looked sad and careworn, and he sighed deeply: “Poor things, poor things!” he murmured to himself. Yet he was well used to sorrow and suffering! “I will call again in a day or two if you will allow me,” he said to Mrs. Methvyn at parting. And she thanked him warmly and begged him to come. “Cicely will be better again before long,” she said, “and she will like to see you. It is the first shock that has, as it were, overwhelmed her,” she added, with a sort of gentle apology of manner that touched Mr. Hayle greatly. “I will come again soon,” he repeated.
And the next time he came, he found Cicely in the drawing-room with her mother. They were sitting quietly working and talking, these two all but broken-hearted women, as if no terrible tragedy hung over them, as if they found life the easy, even, pleasant thing it looks to some, till their time of trouble comes too, as in due course it must.
At first they talked about commonplace things—the weather and Leobury and some of the people they had come to know there. Then Mr. Hayle told the two ladies something of his own plans; how he was likely to get a living in the east end of London, where there would certainly be no lack of work for mind and body. At another time Cicely would have listened with the greatest interest—even to-day her sorrowful absorption of thought could not altogether enchain her.
“And you will throw yourself altogether utterly—into your work, I suppose,” she said to Mr. Hayle. “I wish I were you. I suppose with so intense an interest, no personal sorrow would be unendurable. If you were without a friend on earth, you could still find happiness in a life so spent.”
“I hope so—I believe so,” replied he, his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. “Or if nothappiness,something better—better at least than what we commonly understand by happiness—blessedness.”
“It is the old martyr spirit in another form, I suppose,” murmured Cicely in a low voice. “I wish I could catch it.”
There fell a little pause. Then with a little hesitation the girl turned to the young clergyman again.
“Mr. Hayle,” she said, “you remember Mr. Guildford, the Sothernbay doctor who was so good to my father. You liked him, did you not? I wonder if by any chance you have kept up correspondence with him. I should so like to know where he is.”
“I can tell you where he is,” said Mr. Hayle. “I did hear from him once after he left Sothernshire. Yes I liked him very much indeed. He is no longer a doctor. He gave up practising when he left Sothernbay, and accepted some sort of professorship—I forget what exactly; he had to lecture on scientific subjects, that is about all I know. And he writes a good deal too; he is becoming very well known—too well known I fear; for I have heard it said that he is overworking himself dreadfully. But he is not in England now; he is, I think, in India, travelling with a party sent out by one of those learned societies, so I fear my information isn’t of much use.”
“In India,” Cicely repeated sadly, but she said no more.
Soon after, Mr. Hayle left. But he went away, again promising to call in a day or two.
“Has it tired you, mother?” said Cicely anxiously when he had gone.
“No, dear. I like him; he is gentle and kind, and I like to see some one who knew us at home,” she sighed a little. “At one time I shrank from reviving any of the associations with our old life, but I am losing that feeling.”
Cicely looked at her with wistful, anguished eyes. “Mother dearest,” she said, “I don’t think I knew how much you loved Greystone. Should I have kept it for you? Would you not have got ill then? I might have hidden it all from you; Trevor would have been glad to do so, and you need have never known there was any trouble between us. Was I selfish and hasty—did I sacrifice you to my pride? Have I done wrong, and is this my punishment?”
“My darling, no—a thousand times no,” replied her mother. “Youcouldnot have married Trevor after—after his disappointing you so terribly. You could not love where you did not respect. And you must try to be more hopeful about me, dear, or I shall regret having told you. I have felt better to-day than for some time past.”
Cicely tried to smile. “I think youdolook a little better,” she said. “Oh! I do so wish Mr. Guildford could have seen you.”
“He could not have done anything more. He said just the same as Dr.——” replied Mrs. Methvyn. “My wishing to see him was more a matter of feeling. He was so good to your father, I had learnt to trust him; for your sake too, I wish he had been able to see me. He would have understood it all so well.”
“Yes,” said Cicely. “I think he would.”
“He must be becoming quite a great man,” she went on after a pause; “did you hear what Mr. Hayle said about him?”—“I dare say,” she added to herself, “I dare say he has forgotten all about that fancy of his. Men are better off than women;theycan always bury trouble in work.”
“Is Death as sad as Life?Soon we shall know.It does not seem to meThey find it soWho die, and going from usSmile as they go.”
Trefoil.
FORsome weeks Mrs. Methvyn seemed to gain ground, and gradually, very gradually, Cicely’s fears abated. She began to think it possible, or more than possible, that her mother had unconsciously exaggerated her own danger; and that after all, many years of life and, comparatively speaking, health, might be before her. And to this opinion her mother’s greatly improved spirits seemed to lend a strong colour of probability. The truth was, that Mrs. Methvyn felt infinitely happier now that Cicely knew the worst; for it had been the terror of breaking to her child these fresh tidings of impending woe, far more than any personal shrinking from death, that had weighed down the poor mother’s spirit so heavily. But of this explanation of the favourable change, Cicely was happily ignorant.
“Mamma must be feeling much better,” she said to herself. “I know her so well; she could not hide from me if she felt worse.”
About this time, too, there came good news from the far-away sister in India; news which cheered Mrs. Methvyn greatly. Amiel wrote that there was a prospect of her husband’s returning home much sooner than had at first been expected.
“In two years from now, we may have her back again mother,” said Cicely brightly. “Two years!—that is a short time compared to five.”
Mrs. Methvyn smiled and agreed with her, and in her heart prayed that she might live to see the end of the two years. “For then,” she thought, “my darling would not be left alone in the world. Amiel and she would be together.”
But Cicely knew nothing of that unspoken prayer, and her mother’s evident rejoicing at Lady Forrester’s news, seemed to her a distinct confirmation of her increasing hopes.
“Mamma would not be so delighted at the thought of Amy’s coming home sooner, if she did not feel stronger,” she thought.
So it came to pass that the terrible cloud cleared off a little, and over Cicely’s quiet, somewhat monotonous life, a faint tremulous sunlight began again softly to shine.
To Mr. Hayle, whom she knew to be fully in her mother’s confidence, she allowed herself to express something of her returning hopefulness.
“Do you not think mamma wonderfully better?” she said to him one day when he had called to see his old friends. “Don’t you think she looks ever so much stronger than when we first came here?”
“She was certainly not looking well then,” said Mr. Hayle evasively.
“Of course not,” said Cicely, “I said so. What I am saying is that she is looking so much betternow;don’tyouthink so?”
Mr. Hayle hesitated. There came before him a vision of Cicely’s mother as he had seen her, little more than a year ago, at Greystone—the contrast between that picture and the gentle faded invalid lying on the sofa in the little Leobury drawing-room was sharp. “I don’t know,” he said at last, for he was not good at dissembling his real feelings.
Cicely’s face fell. She was half inclined to be angry with him. “You need not grudge me a little gleam of hope,” she said.
Mr. Hayle looked distressed.
“I cannot say what I do not think,” he replied. “And even if I could, I don’t think I would do so. It would be very hard upon you to begin to feel confident and hopeful again, and then—”
Cicely understood him. A few days after this conversation, Dr.— came down from town to see Mrs. Methvyn. He thought her on the whole better than when he had last seen her, and left Cicely somewhat comforted, though warning her that the best to be hoped for was not much. So the winter drew on—slowly this year. Christmas, the second Christmas since they left the Abbey, came and went, and still the mother and daughter spoke cheerfully of the future, made plans for Amiel’s return, and smiled in each other’s faces with smiles of resolute cheerfulness—the smiles that are oftentimes more pathetic than tears.
And when the blow fell, it came, as in such cases it often does, from an unexpected direction. The winter was over and gone, the time for the singing of birds was at hand; it was early March, and Cicely was beginning to breathe more freely. “It is a great thing to have got mamma so nicely through the winter,” she said one morning to Parker. And the old servant agreed with her, and had not the heart to add that had the winter been coming instead of going, she would have trembled for her mistress. For tohereyes Mrs. Methvyn’s slow but steady decay of strength was only too plainly perceptible. “It is nearly two months since she had an attack,” Cicely went on, “she cannot but be gaining strength. If only the fine weather will come quickly this year, and we can get her out a little, Parker, I shall feel quite happy about her.”
The fine weather did come quickly, and what was of more consequence, lasted when it came. But Mrs. Methvyn was not able to enjoy it. She never went out again. In some inexplicable way, just as the summer flowers were beginning to spring, and the grass to look bright in the sunshine again, she caught cold, and soon to all eyes but those of the daughter whowouldnot see, it was evident that the last stage of her journey had been entered upon. Under the pressure of the new acute symptoms, those of her chronic malady disappeared or were cast into the shade; so for long Cicely hoped, and defended her hope with some show of plausibility. But at last her mother entered into a region of suffering so painful to witness, so apparently agonising to endure, that the unselfishness of true devotion forbade the child to hope, or towishto hope for anything but her release.
“I must not ask to keep her,” murmured Cicely in her anguish. “I only pray that she may be spared any more suffering.”
And at the end, the very end, there fell upon the dying woman a great calm—a few hours of perfect peace, and to Cicely there was given strength to ease her mother’s heart of its one great burden.
“Mother dear, I can bear it,” she whispered, “I think it is better for you to go. It cannot be forverylong that we shall be separated. I think I shall feel happier when I know that you cannot suffer any more. Amiel will come home to me soon, and then I shall not be alone. Mother dear, don’t be afraid for me.”
And with a smile of gratitude to her child for the unselfish words, a smile of relief, and hope, and love beyond expression, Cicely’s mother died.
Then came the real agony of sorrow. She was gone. There wasnothingmore to do for her; no motive to be strong and cheerful any more. There was her empty room; there stood the sofa on which so lately, so incredibly short time ago, she had lain and smiled at Cicely as she moved about the room, and answered her when she spoke to her; there was the book she had been reading, the desk at which she had been writing, the clothes she had worn—everything in its accustomed place, all the inanimate objects associated with her, among which she had lived,there,present, tangible—and she? Gone, dead; her sweet face blotted out of existence; her loving, gentle voice hushed for ever. “For even if it be all true,” cried Cicely in her agony, “even if it be true that I shall meet her again, will she ever be the very same mother? I cannot believe it. If God loved and pitied us, He would not torture us so. Life is no gift to be grateful for, since it is made up of such anguish. Better far, never to have been born.”
And for a time, through a crisis of intense suffering, the girl’s spirit sank within her, her very heart failed her. Faith and hope alike deserted her, “the cloud was thick and the storm great,” and it seemed to her that the very foundations of her being were shaken to their centre.
But after the strong wind and the earth quake and the fire, there comes to those who will hear it the sound of the still, small voice—the voice of eternal love and compassion, of patient tenderness and all wise consolation—and Cicely, exhausted by suffering, listened and was comforted. She remembered the smile on her mother’s dying face, and her faith revived. She bowed her head, and the rebellion died out of her heart. “Bitter as it is, if it is God’s will it must be best,” she said at last, unmurmuringly. Then she looked her life in the face, and realised that it was yet hers to use, if possible even, yet to enjoy. How to employ it, how to save herself from drifting out into lonely aimlessness and indifference, she could not yet see. But she began to trust that sooner or later, there would come a gleam of light.
What was she to do, where was she to go? Before long these questions pressed upon her, and she knew not how to answer them. She was to all intents and purposes alone in the world, for excepting her sister Amiel, she had no near relations.
“If I were a man like you,” she said one day to Mr. Hayle, when he had called to see her, a few weeks after her mother’s death, “I could be at no loss. I could find, if not happiness, at least peace, in spending my life for others as you are going to do. And what little money I have might do some good. But being a woman, it is quite different. I am hedged in on every side, unless I joined one of those sisterhoods you tell me of. I cannot devote myself to charitable work of that kind. I should do more harm than good trying to do anything of the kind by myself. And Icouldnot join any of those sisterhoods.”
“If you have the real love of such work in your heart, some way will open to you,” replied Mr. Hayle, with a shade of professional formality in his tone.
“But I don’t by any means think that I have,” said Cicely bluntly and yet piteously. “I don’t like going among very poor and miserable people. I think it is dreadful. I have no missionary spirit. You think better of me than I deserve. I would do it, or try to do it, if I saw my way to it, but not from love of the thing. My motive would be simply and purely the wish to do something, to be of use in some way.”
“There could not be a better motive,” said the young clergyman, more naturally. “The love of it would come.”
He was silent for a few moments, then he spoke again, somewhat inconsequently it seemed to Cicely. “Did you not say that you had heard again from Lady Forrester?” he inquired. “Is she not likely to return home even sooner than you expected?”
“Yes,” said Cicely. “She—they, I should say—will probably be in England next summer. But that does not help me. They are only coming home for a few months; not to stay altogether as I hoped.”
“But while they are here, your home will be with them.”
“Oh, yes! for the time, of course, it will be. But when Amiel has to leave me again—” she gave a little shiver. “And for the next few months I am quite at a loss what to do,” she went on in a more practical tone. “Miss Winter cannot stay with me after September; you know she has to look after her sister’s children now? That is why she left Lady Frederica. I don’t know what to do. I must make some plans I suppose. How I envy you, Mr. Hayle! When are you going away; next week did you say?”
“Yes, I think so,” he replied absently.
“I shall miss you so much,” she went on. “I can never tell you how thankful I have felt that you were here. Mamma told me that I must try to tell you how much your kindness had comforted her, and I wish I could thank you sufficiently, but I cannot.”
Mr. Hayle’s face flushed. “You cannot make me happier than by saying I have been of any—of the slightest use to you,” he said. “I only wish I could help you now.”
“It is very difficult to know what to do,” pursued Cicely sadly. “Perhaps it would have been better for me if I had been leftquitepoor, then there would have been no doubt about it; I should have had to work for my daily bread.”
“Don’t say that,” interrupted Mr. Hayle.
“Why not?”
“You do not know as well as I do what working for your daily bread means.”
“Perhaps not,” she replied, “but at least it would have been something to do. As it is, no occupation is forced upon me and I have no energy to seek any. You don’t know how difficult it is for me even to wish to live.”
She leant back in her chair in an attitude of listless despondency. Mr. Hayle did not speak for a minute or two; he seemed to be thinking deeply.
“Miss Methvyn,” he said suddenly, “there is one way open to you in which I believe you might be of the greatest use. You underrate your own powers, I think. I believe you are capable of doing immense good among the poor and wretched. It is confidence in yourself that you want. This you would acquire if—if you were with any one who would always be ready to encourage you and sympathise with you.”
“Perhaps I might,” said Cicely. “It is loneliness that appals me as much as anything. I am strong I know—perhaps I might get over my shrinking from the sight of misery in time, if, as you say, I could look for direction to some one wiser. But I couldnevermake up my mind to join one of your sisterhoods, Mr. Hayle. You are not thinking of that again, are you?”
She looked up with a very slight sparkle of her old playful manner, but the clergy man’s face grew graver.
“No,” he said, “I was not thinking of that.”
“Of what then?” asked Cicely wonderingly.
“I was thinking,” he began, then hesitated and stopped short. “I don’t think you will misunderstand me,” he resumed, as if encouraging himself with the idea. “I was thinking if possibly life would look less bare and empty to you if you were to make up your mind to join me in my work.”
He raised his eyes as he spoke and looked at her with calm inquiry.
“To joinyou,” Cicely repeated, “howdoyou mean?”
“By marrying me, by becoming my wife,” he replied deliberately.
Then Cicely in turn looked at him. How, small and fair and boyish he seemed—how innocent and almost childlike! The idea of regarding him as a husband, a protector, and guide, struck Cicely with a sense of the strangest incongruity. For half a second there came over her a foolish, half-nervous inclination to laugh, but another glance at him, at the serious matter-of-fact earnestness of his expression, checked the impulse and restored her to composure.
“You are very kind and good,” she began. “I know you are thinking most unselfishly of my happiness, for I have often heard you say you would never marry, but—”
“Stay a moment,” he interrupted, and in spite of the strong effort he was evidently making for calmness, his colour deepened and his voice trembled a little, “you must not give me credit for what I do not deserve. It is true I never intended to marry—such a prospect has never come into the life I had sketched out for myself. But if—if, as I think possible, marriage would be a help not a hindrance to me—and a marriage withyouwould, it seems to me, be so—I should not feel that I was departing from my principles or, on the other hand, that I deserved credit for unselfishness in proposing it,” he stopped again. “You can imagine that a friend—a wife—always at hand to sympathise with me in my work would make life a very different thing to me,” he added.
“But I am afraid I could not be the sort of friend—of wife—you imagine,” said Cicely gently. “I am not devoted and unworldly as you are. You think better of me than I deserve.”
“No, I do not. I am not afraid of your fitness for the work,” he replied.
Cicely was silent.
“I wish,” she said in a tone of distress, “I wish you had not thought of it.”
“You mean that you cannot entertain the idea of it—you dislike me personally?” he said.
“Dislike,” she repeated; “no, oh! no, but—”
“But you don’tlikeme,” he suggested with a faint smile. “It is much better to be honest, Miss Methvyn. Not that I expected, at the best,much.I know something of your past sufferings—I know youhaveknown feelings in comparison with which the best I could hope for must be poor and small. Forgive me for alluding to it,” he added hastily. “You will believe me it was unintentionally I did so.” For he fancied that a look of pain had crept over her face as he spoke. He was mistaken.
“I don’t mind your alluding to it at all,” she said frankly. “No one could have been kinder and more considerate to me than you were then. It is all completely, utterly, past and gone. Lately, quite lately, I have come to feel perfectly satisfied of its having been best for me as it was. It is no remembrance of that kind, it is nothing that has to do with my old feeling for my cousin that makes it”—“impossible” she added after an instant’s hesitation, “for me to do anything but thank you for what you have said just now.”
“Impossible?” he repeated.
“Yes, I fear so,” said Cicely. “I wish I could feel it were not so. I own to you I wish I dared think it could be otherwise, but I cannot. I am very, very lonely. Your friendship is a temptation to me. But it would not satisfy me. I know myself better than I once did; if I consented now to what you propose, I should only be storing up misery for both you and me. As it is, I do not think I need be afraid of paining you by my decision, for I am sure you have thought more of me than of yourself in the matter. Your life will be more consistent and harmonious without me. Will it not?”
“Possibly it may be so,” he replied. But as he said the words he grew very pale.
“You will let me thank you,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
“No,” he said abruptly. “I don’t deserve it. I have deceived myself. I believed it was my work I was thinking of—the assistance you would be to it—I was mistaken. It was gross presumption. It wasyouI was thinking of. I did not know it was in me to care for any woman as I care for you, and now I know it.”
He turned away sharply, and almost before Cicely saw what he was doing, had left the room. A moment after, she heard the front door shut.
“He has gone away,” she thought sorrow fully. “Almost the only friend I have, and in trouble caused by me.”
But late that evening a note was brought to her. “There was no answer,” the servant told Cicely as she opened it. It was a short note.
“Dear Miss Methvyn,” it said, “I am leaving Leobury at once. The sooner I get to my new work the better. I have made a mistake, and but for your gentleness and goodness my eyes might have been more harshly opened. I know you will have forgiven my presumption. I only write to say good-bye and to beg you to let me know if at any time I can be of use to you. When your plans are settled, I shall be very grateful if you will let me know what they are. I enclose my address. Yours very truly,
“CHRISTOPHERHAYLE.”
And a few weeks later when her plans were settled, Cicely wrote to him as he asked.
It was a letter which reached her by the very next post which helped her to come to a decision. There were two letters for her that morning. One in a handwriting which she had not seen for many months, familiar as it used to be—that of Trevor Fawcett. He wrote in his own name and that of his wife to entreat her to consider the possibility of going to them at least for a time. The tone of the letter touched Cicely.
“I hardly know how to put in words the extreme gratification it would give us to receive you for as long as it would suit you to stay,” wrote Trevor. “We are at Barnstay now; indeed, we spend most of our time here. Geneviève would write herself, but I have asked her to let me do so instead, fancying I might be able to say something which might induce you to come. I cannot tell you what it would be to me to see you again.”
“Poor Trevor!” thought Cicely.WouldGeneviève have written herself? She doubted it. “Poor Trevor,” she repeated. “I wish, what long ago I used to fancy I wished—I wish it far more now—that he had been really my brother. There could have been no mistakes or troubles then. I do hope he is happy.”
But of going to them as Mr. Fawcett proposed, of making her home even temporarily with the two people who had so cruelly deceived her—of this, Cicely felt that there could be no question.
“I have forgiven all that I had to forgive,” she said to herself. “I see where I myself was to blame, and for myself I do not regret the results. But I could never feel at home with them again.”
And in the gentlest but firmest words she wrote to her cousin declining his invitation.
She sent another letter by the same post, a letter in reply to the one which had reached her at the same time as Trevor’s, and which had also contained an invitation—an invitation which after some consideration she had decided to accept.
“I think it is a very nice plan, my dear Miss Methvyn, a very nice plan indeed,” said Miss Winter when Cicely told her of her intention. “I hope the change will do you a great deal of good, and the sooner you arrange for it the better, sorry though I shall be to leave you. If you had been intending to keep house for yourself and I had been free, I should have asked nothing better than to have remained with you. I have been so happy with you, dear Miss Methvyn. But duty calls me elsewhere; and of course even if I were free, it would hardly do for me to take another situation without first inquiring if dear Lady Frederica wanted me—considering all her kindness.”
Poor Miss Winter! A long course of genteel dependence had taught her the expediency of seeing most things “couleur de rose,” but as Cicely looked at her faded pink cheeks and listened to her nervously amiable platitudes, she came to agree with Mr. Hayle, she felt thankful that she wasnotcalled upon to join the ranks of the vast army of decayed gentlewomen who have to earn for themselves their daily bread.