Book: A Canadian Heroine

M >> Mrs. Harry Coghill >> A Canadian Heroine




Maurice spoke first.

"I came to say good-bye," he said. "I am obliged to go home."

His words sounded curt and dry, just because he had such difficulty in
making them steady at all, and she looked at him in her surprise, for
the first time.

"Not to-day? Is anything the matter?"

"Nothing is the matter there. I told you I had business in Paris. Well,
it is finished."

"And you are going to-day?"

"I start this evening."

"We shall miss you."

She felt a strange constraint creeping over her. She could not even
express naturally her sorrow and disappointment at his going. She began
again to have the feeling of being guilty, and accused, and being eager
to defend herself without knowing how.

"I shall not be far off, and you will know where to find me. When you
want me, for whatever reason, you have only to write and I will come."

"But I always want you," she answered half pettishly. "You said you
would stay at least till Lady Dighton went away."

Maurice got up and walked to the window.

"I miscalculated," he said, coming back. "We all do sometimes, I
suppose."

He stood in a favourite attitude, leaning with one arm on the
mantelpiece, and watching Lucia with a mixture of love and bitterness.
His last words seemed to her a taunt, and tears of anger filled her
eyes. She remained silent, and he had to speak again.

"Do you care to know," he asked her, "what my business in Paris was?"

"If you wish to tell me!"

"Lucia! do not I wish to tell you everything? Could I have kept a secret
which was always in my thoughts from you, do you suppose?"

Lucia half rose. "That is not generous," she said. "You have no right to
speak so. Yesterday you were kinder."

"Yesterday I only thought of you. To-day I have had time to think a
little of myself."

"No doubt you are right. Only you ought not to have come to Paris--at
least not to us. It would have been better if everything that belonged
to our old life had been lost together."

"Which means that you are quite willing to lose me?"

"Willing? No. But I can understand that it is better."

"Can you? You talk of losses--listen to what I have lost. You know what
my life in Canada used to be--plenty of work, and not much money--but
still reasonable hope of prosperity by-and-by. I used to make plans
then, of having a home of my own, and I was not content that it should
be just like other people's. I thought it would be the brightest,
warmest, happiest home in the world. I _knew_ it would be if I only got
what I wanted. A man can't have a home without a wife. I knew where my
wife was to be found if ever I had one at all; and she was so sweet and
good, and let me see so frankly that she liked and trusted me, that
I--it was all vanity, Lucia--I never much doubted that in time I should
make her love me."

He stopped. Lucia was looking at him eagerly. Even yet she did not quite
understand. "Go on," she said.

"There was my mistake," he continued. "I might have won her then
perhaps. But there came a visitor to the neighbourhood. He was
handsome--at least women said so--and could make himself agreeable. He
knew all about what people call the world--he had plenty of talk about
all sorts of small topics. He was a very fine gentleman in fact, and you
know what I was. Well, naturally enough, he wanted amusement. He looked
about for it, I suppose, and was attracted by what had attracted
me--no--I do not believe even that, for I loved her goodness, and he
must have been caught by her beauty. At any rate, I had to go away and
leave him near her; and I heard after a while that he was gone. That was
late in autumn. Very early this year, I heard of his marriage; and I
thought she had been unharmed.

"My grandfather died, and I was rich enough to make that home I dreamed
of, fit for its mistress. I went to find her. I found her, as I thought,
lovelier and sweeter than ever. She seemed to feel more than ever that I
was of some use and value to her--she made me believe that, next to her
mother, she loved me best in the world. I delayed asking her to be my
wife, only because our days were so happy, that I feared to disturb
them--but I thought she was certainly mine.

"Then, all at once, this man, this Percy, who had left her in her
trouble--who was married--made his appearance, and I knew that she had
loved him all the while--that she had never cared for me!"

Long ago, Lucia had clasped her hands before her face. She sat trembling
and cowering before this accuser. Involuntarily she said in her heart,
"This is the true love. I have been blind--blind!"--but her words were
frozen up--she bent forward as if under a blow--but made no sound.

Maurice himself remained silent for a few minutes. He had spoken under a
strong impulse of excitement, he hardly knew how. He, too, leaned his
head upon his hand, but from under it he still watched the trembling
girlish figure, which was the dearest thing in the world to him.
Presently he saw a tear steal out from between her small fingers and
fall glittering upon the black dress she wore. He moved uneasily--he had
been surely very harsh. Another tear fell--tear of bitter humiliation,
good for her to shed--then a third. He could not endure it. She might
not love him, but that was no reason why he should turn her sisterly
affection into hate. So he went to her, and laid his hand softly on one
of hers, trying to draw it away. She let him do so after a moment, but
her face remained just as much hidden.

"Lucia!" he said, full of distress, "Lucia! speak to me."

She could not--all her efforts were needed to keep down the painful
swelling in her throat. She was fighting for power to say humbly, "Try
to forgive me," but he did not give her time.

"If you would only say good-bye--only one word;" and he almost knelt
beside her, raising her cold hand half-unconsciously to his lips.

She drew it away suddenly. His tenderness was the worst reproach of all.
Her sobs burst out without control. She rose. "No; rather forgive me,"
she tried to say, but her voice was choked and hardly audible; and she
fled from the room, hurrying into her own, and fell down on the floor at
the bedside.

Maurice waited for awhile, thinking she might come back. He sat down
near where her chair stood, and leaning both elbows on the table, tried
to calm himself after the terrible excitement. Lucia's tears and her
silence had utterly disarmed him--he called himself a brute for having
distressed her. But as time went on, and she did not return, he
remembered that he could not just then meet Mrs. Costello, and he got up
and began to walk about the room uneasily. Still, time went on, and
there was no sign of Lucia. He wished to knock at her door, but dared
not. He must go then without one good-bye!

"That is my own fault at any rate," he said, and went away softly,
without even seeing Claudine.

But, as it happened, Mrs. Costello was long coming back. Lady Dighton
had confided to her Maurice's wish to see Lucia alone, and the two
ladies, very happy and confidential over their schemes, both supposing
that nothing but good could come of a long talk between the young
people--prolonged their absence till more than two hours after Maurice
had returned to the hotel. So that his preparations for leaving Paris
were almost completed by the time that Lucia, hearing her mother's
entrance, came out of the solitude where she had hidden her tears and
her repentance.




CHAPTER XVII.


Lucia tried to hide the traces of her tears, but the attempt was not
particularly successful. Mrs. Costello saw at once that something was
wrong; she asked whether Maurice had been there, and was told briefly
yes, but she delayed any other questions for two reasons. One was, that
merely saying that "Yes" had brought a quiver over Lucia's face, and the
other, that she herself was tired and had got into a habit of dreading
any kind of excitement. She felt a presentiment that there was nothing
pleasant to hear, and at the same time was quite sure that whatever
there was, her daughter would be unable to keep long from her.

She allowed Lucia to carry away her bonnet and shawl, and arrange her
comfortably on the sofa for a rest. Then she began to describe her
drive, and the shops at which Lady Dighton had been making various
purchases. Lucia listened, and tried to be interested, and to lose the
sense of shame and mortification mixed with real compunction, which was
making her wretched. But her heart ached, and besides, she had cried,
sitting all alone on her bedroom floor, till she was exhausted and half
blind. All the while her mother talked, she kept thinking of
Maurice--she neither called him "Poor Maurice," in her thoughts, nor
"Dear Maurice"--but only "Maurice, Maurice," over and over again--her
friend who was gone from her, whom she had justly lost.

But when she was growing more and more absorbed in her own regrets, and
her mother's voice was beginning to sound to her like one in a dream,
there came a sudden sharp ring at the door-bell. Could it be Maurice?
She grew red as fire while she listened--but the door opened and shut,
and there were no steps but Claudine's in the hall.

The maid came in. "A letter for madame, and a packet for
mademoiselle,"--both directed by Maurice.

Lucia took hers to the window. She scarcely dared to open it, but she
feared to appear to hesitate. Slowly she broke the seals, and found a
tiny morocco case and a note. She hardly looked at the case, the note
would be Maurice's farewell, and she did not know whether it would bring
reproach or forgiveness with it. It was not long--even with her dazzled
eyes, she was not more than a minute reading it.



"My dear old playfellow and pupil"--it began--"I cannot leave Paris
without saying 'Good-bye,' and asking you to forgive me, not for what I
said this morning, but for the way in which I said it. If you cannot
love me (and I understand now that you cannot) it is not your fault; and
I ought to have remembered that, even when it seemed hardest. I cannot
stay here now; but you will recollect that if ever you _want_ me--as a
friend or brother, you know--a single line will be enough to bring me to
your help. Finally, I beg of you, for the sake of old times, to wear the
ring I send. I bought it for you--you ought to have no scruple in
accepting a keepsake from your oldest friend, MAURICE LEIGH."



In the little box was the ring bought so long ago in Liverpool. It
flashed, as if with the light of living eyes, as Lucia opened the lid.
She regarded it for a moment almost with fear, then took it out and
placed it on her finger--the third finger of her left hand. It fitted
perfectly, and seemed to her like the embodiment of a watchful guardian
who would keep her from wrong and from evil. She fancied this, though
just then two or three drops fell heavily from her eyes, and one rested
for a moment on the very diamonds themselves.

Mrs. Costello's note was longer than Lucia's, and she read it twice
over, before she was sure that she comprehended it. Then she called
sharply "Lucia!"

"Come here," she said, as the girl turned her face reluctantly; and
there was nothing to do but to obey. Lucia came to the side of the sofa,
where her mother had raised herself up against the cushions, but she
trembled so, that to steady herself she dropped down on her knees on a
footstool. Her right arm rested on the table, but the other hand, where
the ring was, lay hidden in the folds of her dress.

"What does this mean, Lucia?" Mrs. Costello asked in a tone which she
had never in her life used to her daughter before. "Are you out of your
senses?"

Lucia was silent. She could almost have said yes.

"You know of course that Maurice is gone?"

"Yes I know it," she answered just audibly.

"Gone, and not likely to return?"

"He tells me so."

"What have you said to him?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing! That is absurd. Why did he wish to see you alone to-day?"

"To tell _me_ something," Lucia said with a little flash of opposition
awakened by her mother's anger.

"Yes--I thought so. To tell you something which, to any girl in the
world who was not inconceivably blind or inconceivably vain, would have
been the best news she ever heard in her life. And you said _nothing_?"

"Mamma, it is over. I can't help it."

"So he says--he, who is not much in the habit of talking nonsense, says
this to me. Just listen. 'We have both made the mistake of reasoning
about a thing with which reason has nothing to do. I see the error now
too late for myself, but not, I hope, too late to leave her in peace.
Pray do not speak to her about it at all.' But it is my duty to speak."

"Mamma, Maurice is right. It is too late."

"It is not too late for him to get some little justice; and it is not
too late for you to know what you have lost."

"Oh! I do know," she cried out. "But even if there had been no other
reason, how could I have been different? He never told me till to-day."
And she clasped her two hands together on the edge of the table and hid
her face on them.

Mrs. Costello leaned a little more forward, and touched her daughter's
arm.

"I must speak to you about this, Lucia," she said. "I do not want to be
harsh, but you ought to know what you have done. And, good heavens! for
what? A stranger, a mere coxcomb comes in your way, and you listen to
his fine words, and straight begin to be able to see nothing but him,
though the most faithful, generous heart a girl ever had offered to her
is in your very hand! _I_ was bad enough--but I had no such love as
Maurice's to leave behind me."

Again Lucia moved, without speaking. As she did so, the ring on her hand
flashed.

"What is that on your finger?" Mrs. Costello asked.

"Maurice's ring. _He_ was not so hard on me."

"Hard?" Mrs. Costello was pressing her hand more and more tightly to her
side. "Child, it is you that have been hard with your unconscious ways."

But Lucia had found power to speak at last.

"After all," she said obstinately, "I neither see why I should be
supposed to have done wrong, nor why anybody else should be spoken of
so. It is no harm, and no shame," she went on, raising her head, and
showing her burning cheeks, "for a girl to like somebody who cares very
much for her; and I think she would be a poor creature if she did not go
on caring for him as long as she believed he was true to her."

The little spark of pride died out with the last words, and there was a
faint quiver in her voice.

"Maurice would say so himself," she ended, triumphantly.

"Of course he would. But I don't see that Maurice would be a fair judge
of the case. The question is, what does a girl deserve who has to choose
between Maurice and Percy, and chooses Percy?"

Lucia recoiled. She could hardly yet bear to hear the name she had been
dreaming over so long spoken in so harsh a way, and still less to hear
it coupled in this way with Maurice's.

"Maurice will soon find somebody else," she said. "He is not a poor man,
mamma, that he should mind so much."

Mrs. Costello half rose from the sofa. Pain and anger together
overpowered her. She stood up for a moment, trying to speak, and then
suddenly fell back, fainting.

Lucia sprang from her knees. Was her mother dead? It was possible, she
knew. Had they parted for ever in anger? But the idea, from its very
horror, did not affect her as a lighter fear might have done. She
brought remedies, and called Claudine to help her, in a kind of calm.
They tried all they could think of, and at last there came some feeble
return of life. But the agitation and fatigue of the day had been too
much for such strength as hers to rally from. One fainting fit
succeeded another, with scarcely a moment's interval.

All evening it was the same. A doctor came, and stayed till the attacks
ceased; but when he went away, his patient lay, white and almost
unconscious even of Lucia's presence. It was terrible sitting there by
the bedside, and watching for every slight movement--for the hope of a
word or a smile. It was consolation unspeakable when, late at night,
Mrs. Costello opened her eyes, free from the bewildered look of
suffering, and, seeing her child's pale face beside her, put out her
hand, and said softly, "My poor Lucia!"

After that she dropped asleep, and Lucia watched till early morning. It
was the first of such watches she had ever kept, and the awful stillness
made her tremble. Often she got up from her seat to see if her mother's
breathing still really went on; it seemed difficult to believe that
there was any stir whatever of life in the room. In those long hours,
too, she had time to revert to the doings of the past day--to remember
both Maurice's words and her mother's, and to separate, to some degree,
the truth from all exaggeration. Her mind seemed to go back also, with
singular clearness, to the time of Percy's coming to Cacouna, and even
earlier. She began to comprehend the significance of trifles, which had
seemed insignificant at the time, and to believe in the truth of what
Maurice had told her, that even then he was building all his hopes on
the possibility of her loving him. She wondered at herself now, as
others had wondered at her; but she still justified herself: "He was my
brother--my dearest friend. _He_," and this time she did not mean
Maurice, "was the first person who ever put any other ideas into my
head. And I have lost them both." But already the true love had so far
gained its rights, that it was Maurice, far more than Percy, of whose
loss she thought. Once that night, when she had sat quite without moving
for a long time, and when her meditations had grown more and more
dreary, she suddenly raised her hand, and her ring flashed out in the
gloom. By some instinct she put it to her lips; it seemed to her a
symbol of regard and protecting care, which comforted her strangely.

When the night was past, and Claudine came early in the morning to take
Lucia's place, Mrs. Costello still slept; and the poor child, quite worn
out--pale and shivering in the cold dawn--was glad to creep away to
bed, and to her heavy but troubled slumber.

All that day the house was kept silent and shut up. Mrs. Costello had
been much tried, the doctor thought, and needed a complete calm in which
to recover herself. With her old habit of self-command she understood
this, and remained still, almost without speaking, till some degree of
strength should return. Lucia tended her with the most anxious care, and
kept her troubled thoughts wholly to herself.

About two o'clock Lady Dighton came. Hearing that Mrs. Costello was ill,
she begged to see Lucia, who came to her, looking weary and worn, but
longing to hear of Maurice.

It seemed, however, as if she were not to be gratified. Lady Dighton was
full of concern and kind offers of assistance, but she said nothing of
her cousin until just as she went away. Then she did say, "You know that
Maurice left us yesterday evening? I miss him dreadfully; but I dare say
he thinks much more of whether other people miss him."

She went, and they were alone again. So alone, as they had never been
while Maurice was in Paris, when he might come in at any moment and
bring a cheerful breath from the outer world into their narrow and
feminine life,--as he would never come again! 'Oh,' Lucia thought, 'why
could not he be our friend always--just our own Maurice as he used to
be--and not have these miserable fancies? We might have been so happy!'

Towards night Mrs. Costello had greatly revived. She was able to sit up
a little, and to talk much as usual. She did not allude at all to her
last conversation with her daughter, and Lucia herself dared not renew
so exciting a subject. But all anger seemed to have entirely passed away
from between them. They were completely restored to their old natural
confidence and tenderness; and that was a comfort which Lucia's terror
of last night made exquisitely sweet to her.




CHAPTER XVIII.


Two or three days passed before its former tranquillity was restored to
the apartment in the Champs Elysees. Its "_former_ tranquillity,"
indeed, did not seem to come back at all. There were new elements of
discomfort and disturbance at work, even more than in the days before
Maurice came, and when Mrs. Costello both feared and hoped for his
coming. He was never mentioned now, except during Lady Dighton's daily
visit. She, much mystified, and not sure whether Lucia was to be pitied
or blamed, was too kind-hearted not to sympathize with her anxiety for
her mother, and she therefore came constantly--first to inquire for, and
then to sit with Mrs. Costello, insisting that Lucia should take that
opportunity of going out in her carriage.

These drives gave the poor child not only fresh air, but also a short
interval each day in which she could be natural, and permit herself the
indulgence of the depression which had taken possession of her. She felt
certain that her mother, though she treated her with her usual
tenderness, still felt surprised and disappointed by her conduct.
Maurice also, who had been always so patient, so indulgent, had gone
away in trouble through her; he had reproached her, perhaps justly, and
had given up for ever their old intimacy. She was growing more and more
miserable. If ever, for a moment, she forgot her burden, some little
incident was sure to occur which brought naturally to her lips the
words, 'I wish Maurice were here;' and she would turn sick with the
thought, 'He never will be here again, and it is my fault.'

So the days went on till the Dightons left Paris. They did so without
any clear understanding having reached Lady Dighton's mind of the state
of affairs between Maurice and Lucia. All she actually knew was that
Maurice had been obliged to go home unexpectedly, and that ever since he
went Lucia had looked like a ghost. And as this conjunction of
circumstances did not appear unfavourable to her cousin's wishes, and as
she had no hint of those wishes having been given up, she was quite
disposed to continue to regard Lucia as the future mistress of Hunsdon.

However, she was not sorry to leave Paris. Her visit there, with regard
to its principal object, had been rather unsatisfactory; at all events
it had had no visible results, and she liked results. She wanted to go
home and see how Maurice reigned at Hunsdon, and tell her particular
friends about the beautiful girl she hoped some day to have the pleasure
of patronizing.

Mrs. Costello had regained nearly her usual health. One day, shortly
after the Dightons left, she asked Lucia to bring her desk, saying that
she must write to Mr. Wynter, and that it was time they should make some
different arrangement, since, as they had long ago agreed, Paris was too
expensive for them to stay there all the year.

Lucia remembered what Maurice had said to her about her mother returning
to England, but the consciousness of what had really been in his mind at
the moment stopped her just as she was about to speak. She brought the
desk, and said only,

"Have you thought of any place, mamma?"

"I have thought of two or three, but none please me," Mrs. Costello
answered. "We want a cheap place--one within easy reach of England, and
one not too much visited by tourists. It is not very easy to find a
place with all the requisites."

"No, indeed. But you are not able to travel yet."

"Yes I am. Indeed, it is necessary we should go soon, if not
immediately."

Lucia sighed. She would be sorry to leave Paris. Meantime her mother had
opened the desk, but before beginning to write she took out a small
packet of letters, and handed them to Lucia. "I will give these to you,"
she said, "for you have the greatest concern with them, though they were
not meant for your eyes."

Lucia looked at the packet and recognized Maurice's hand.

"Ought I to read them, then?" she said.

"Certainly. Nay, I desire that you will read them carefully. Yes,
Lucia," she went on in a softer tone, "I wish you to know all that has
been hidden from you. Take those notes and keep them. When you are an
old woman you may be glad to remember that they were ever written."

Lucia could not answer. She carried the packet away to her own chair,
and sitting down, opened it and began to read. It was only Maurice's
notes, written to Mrs. Costello from England, and they were many of them
very hasty, impetuous, and not particularly well-expressed missives. But
if they had been eloquence itself, they could not have stirred the
reader's heart as they did. It was the simple bare fact of a great
love--so much greater than she could ever have deserved, and yet passed
by, disregarded, unperceived in her arrogant ignorance; this was what
she seemed to see in them, and it wrung her heart with vain repentance
and regret. And, as she bent over them there suddenly arose in her mind
a doubt--a question which seemed to have very little to do with those
letters, yet which they certainly helped to raise--had she ever loved
Percy? Lucia was romantic. Like other romantic girls, she would formerly
have said--indeed, she had said to herself many times--"I shall love him
all my life--even if he forgets me I shall still love him." And yet now
she was conscious--dimly, unwillingly conscious, that she thought very
little of him, and that even that little was not at all in the strain
she would have felt to be proper in a deserted heroine of fiction. She
was not the least likely to die of a broken heart for him; she was much
more inclined to die for grief and shame at what had befallen Maurice.
So that question, which was in itself a mortifying one, rose
rebelliously in her mind--had she ever loved Percy? or had she been
wasting her thoughts on a mere lay-figure, dressed up by her own fancy
in attributes not at all belonging to it? Poor child! had she known how
many women--and perhaps men also--do the very same, the idea might not
have seemed quite so horrible to her.

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