Addie's Husband; or, Through clouds to sunshine
your wild oats, and I am a respectable British matron; we--we couldn't
flirt now even if we tried, could we? But we could be friends and
comforting neighbors, and sometimes, in the long winter evenings ahead,
if you should feel the sanctity of your fireside a little overpowering,
if the flannel petticoats, the soup-societies, the cardinal virtues,
should prove a little oppressive, why, you could steal up to me and
distend your lungs with the breath of frivolity, freedom, and--"
"Lady Saunderson," he says huskily, struggling to resist the spell she
is weaving about him, "I--I do not understand what you mean."
"No? Then come up to the Park and dine with me to-night, and I'll tell
you. We--we can't flirt, you know; but we can sit and watch the young
moon rise from behind Broom Hill while we talk over the giddy days of
our youth. My husband will be so glad to see you; he is most anxious
that we should be friends, and would even go the length of offering you
an apology for past unpleasantness, only he does not know how you would
receive it. Come, Jack--come!"
They are just outside the Rectory gates, from which a party are issuing
for a late practice--Cicely, with a roll of music, two or three of
her sisters, and a tall curate carrying a lantern, which he suddenly
lifts, hearing the horses hoofs, thus revealing to the astonished group
Everard's disturbed face within a foot of Lady Saunderson's, cool and
undaunted, her hand still resting familiarly on the pommel of his
saddle. The curate looks away hastily from the evil tableau, but Cicely
bows gravely, and then moves on up the winding hill at the top of which
her father's church is picturesquely situated.
Everard reins in, and looks after them with frowning brow; his
companion also turns round in her saddle, laughing tantalizingly.
"Which is it to be, Jack? The broad smooth road that leads to
destruction and the Park, or the narrow briery path--"
"I'll follow the light. Good-night, Lady Saunderson," he says quickly,
wheeling his horse round.
"The light!"--her voice comes back to him mockingly through the gloom.
"Take care, _mon cher_; the curate is swinging it rather knowingly
to-night."
* * * * *
On the following morning, when Everard appears at the Rectory, he finds
the household in a state of anxious commotion. The bishop is coming the
next day, and Lady Emily has been called upon to provide an elaborate
breakfast for thirty guests at desperately short notice.
Jack is in every one's way, of course--in the way of the rector,
receiving a deputation of church-wardens in his study, in the way
of the servants' brooms and dusters, in the way of his hostess,
sorting out her best glass and china, superintending _soufflés_, and
_mayonnaises_.
"You are not hunting to-day, are you, Jack?" she says, with a sigh
of irritation which she cannot repress, when a handsome cut-glass
decanter slips from his meddlesome fingers to the floor. "What a pity!
The day is perfect, is it not?"
"I dare say you wish I were, Lady Emily," he answers, with an awkward
laugh; "but, unfortunately for you, it's a blind day. I wonder where
Cicely is; I have been looking for her everywhere. She asked me to get
her some ferns a few days ago; and I don't know if they're the right
sort."
"Cicely?"--briskly. "I think she's gone down to the church to practice
the new _Te Deum_. I have not seen her for some time; you'll surely
find her there, or up at the school-house."
"No; I've tried both unsuccessfully. Old Crofts said she had returned
home. I can't imagine where she has hidden herself."
However, some five minutes later he runs her to earth in the old
day-nursery, where she has taken refuge from the prevailing bustle to
copy some music.
"May I come in?" he asks wistfully. "Shall I be as much in the way here
as I seem to be everywhere else, Cicely?"
"Not it you sit quite still and do not expect to be entertained," she
answers composedly. "I have to make out five copies of this wretched
_Te Deum_ before afternoon practice. Oh, dear, I do wish amateur
organists would be content with Mozart, Haydn, and Co., and not force
their compositions on the public! It is weary work."
"How neatly you do it! What clever fingers you have, Miss Deane!" he
says, throwing himself into a chair, and leaning his arms on the table.
She puts a slim finger to her lips in warning reply.
Twenty minutes pass by in profound silence. Everard takes up a pen, for
which he finds swift employment. To his horror, the young man becomes
aware that he has been illustrating the margin of one of Miss Deane's
finished copies with skeleton hunting-sketches, adding arms and legs to
the crotchets and quavers, giving features to the open notes.
"What are you trying to do, Jack?" she asks, leaning across the table
to reach a book, and steadying herself with the help of his bent
shoulder.
"Trying to do?" he repeats, one hand quickly veiling the work of
desecration, the other imprisoning his companion's. "I am trying to
make love to you, Cicely. Is it any good?"
For an instant she remains motionless; then she snatches her hand from
his shoulder as if it had been stung, crimsons to the roots of her
hair, and says, her voice quivering with pain and anger--
"Jack Everard, how--how dare you make me an answer like that? You know
how I dislike flippant speeches of the kind."
"Flippant!" he answers hotly. "I did not mean it to be so. Nobody as
much in earnest as I am could be flippant. I love you, Cicely Deane,
and, though I know I am not worthy of you, I ask you to be my wife on
my knees, if you like. Do you think I am in earnest now?"
"Yes," she says, panting a little, and raising her eyes, gleaming,
wrathful, defiant, to his eager face. "I believe you are in earnest;
and I wish you to understand that I am in earnest too, thoroughly in
earnest, when I beg of you, Jack Everard, if you value my esteem, my
friendship, never to speak to me on such a subject or in that tone.
It--it is eminently painful and distasteful to me."
"Thank you, Miss Deane; you--you speak to the point. I will not incur
the risk of losing your esteem and friendship ever again, you may be
sure. Good-morning."
He walks from the room without another word, down the stairs and out
of the house, forgetting to take his hat and stick from the hall. He
stands for a moment leaning against the garden gate, his blue eyes
moist, his lips quivering with pain and cruel disappointment, a heavy
shower falling on his uncovered head.
At that moment Lady Saunderson's brougham flashes past. She looks out
and gives him a brilliant smile, half questioning, half pitying, a
smile that goads him to a feeling of impotent desperation.
"I am a lucky fellow--by the powers I am!" he mutters fiercely, with
clinched fists.
"Jack, Jack, where are you going? Where's your hat? What's the matter?"
Little Emily Deane's astonished voice recalls him to his senses. He
puts up his hand to his sleek dripping head and retraces his steps
mechanically, Emily trotting by his side.
"Is there anything the matter with you, Jack? You look so hot and
funny! Have you been fighting with Cissy?--for she looks so funny too.
Her face is like fire, she would scarcely speak to me, and, when I
leaned over her, I saw she was crying like anything."
"Crying?" he says quickly. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. She didn't want me to notice, and pushed me away quite crossly;
but I saw great fat tears splashing down on the music she was copying,
and swelling out the notes. Did you say anything to annoy her? Cissy
never cries, you know--not even when she had two big teeth pulled out,
or when she was reading the death of Little Nell. Bill says she's the
dryest girl he ever met."
Everard stands for a moment hesitating, hat in hand; then he walks back
quickly and stealthily to the room where Cicely sits, her face hidden
on her outstretched arms, shedding the bitterest, most shamefaced tears
of her life. The poor child does not doubt but that she betrayed her
secret to him from whom she would have guarded it at the cost of her
life, and that he, actuated by a sense of pitiful kindness, resolved to
assure her happiness at the expense of his own.
She feels sore, wounded, insulted, all the sunshine gone from her sky.
She knows that she can never again look with anything but shame and
pain into the bright face she loves so well, never again listen in
peace to the only voice that can ever reach her heart. She knows she
has lost her lover, her friend, her self-respect, at one blow; and the
cross she is called upon thus suddenly to bear seems too heavy for her
slight shoulders.
At this crisis Everard steals in softly, closing the door, drops upon
his knees by her side, put his arms round her neck, his face close
to hers, and whispers eagerly, before she can repulse him--
"Don't cry, don't cry, Cissy darling! I was a fool, a presumptuous
fool, to think you could ever learn to--to care for me. What woman
could love me, I should like to know? Forget my presumption, dear,
and, when I am gone, remember me only as the friend of your childhood,
the boy whom you loved as a brother--nothing more."
"You are--are going--where?" she asks, weakly trying to free herself
from his clasp.
"I do not know yet--anywhere--anywhere far away from you. Will you
give me a kiss, Cissy, to let me know you bear me no ill-will--a
farewell kiss, dear? 'It may be for years, and it may be forever,' _et
cætera_--you can not grudge me that."
He gently lifts the shielding arm and puts his lips to her shrinking
face. She shivers slightly, and raises her heavy eyes with a sort of
piteous protest to his. He kisses away the tears from her eyelashes,
whispering mournfully the single word--
"Farewell."
They remain for a few moments locked in each other's arms.
"Love," he says, at last, "won't you say farewell?"
Her lips part, her breath comes quickly, she tries to speak, but all
sound dies in her throat.
"Cissy, Cissy, can't you speak? I am waiting. Is it so hard to say the
word 'Farewell,' little friend?"
"Yes, yes," she stammers, "it is hard. Let me go, Jack--let me go! I--I
will say it presently--presently--presently."
"I am in no great hurry to hear it, dear; it is such a wailing sort of
word--it has the ring of death. Yet I can not go until you say it."
"You are stifling me!" she says passionately. "Let me go, let me go; I
can not breathe!"
"Say 'Farewell!'"
He waits, waits on patiently; but she never says it.
* * * * *
"Six for me--all Christmas-cards--hurrah, hurrah! Three for you, Aunt
Jo; two for you, Robert; none for you, Mr. Armstrong; none for you,
Hal."
It is Christmas-time, nearly two years since the Lefroys have left
Nutsgrove. The boys are spending the festive season at Leamington.
Mr. Armstrong has also reluctantly accepted Miles Darcy's pressing
invitation, for these meetings are painful to him. Although his lost
wife's name is never mentioned, yet there is always a suggestion of
her existence in the old lady's depressed flurried manner, and in her
anxiety to propitiate him and seem at ease in his presence; moreover,
Lottie, who has cast aside all her delicacy and is growing up a plump
rosy-cheeked lass, at times is so like her unfortunate sister that he
turns away his eyes from her with a sense of sore repugnance.
"Two letters for me, Goggles? Then hand them over at once."
"Here they are, Bob. One of them is a bill, and the other is from
foreign parts. What a lot of postmarks it has, to be sure! Whom is it
from, Bob?"
He takes up the letter carelessly, then drops it with a quick
exclamation.
Miss Darcy, who is seated beside him at the breakfast-table, turns