Bluebell Part 20

Bertie, who had been speaking without motive, was taken by surprise as the sense of her impulsive words flashed on his brain.

"My darling Cecil!"

Cecil, the colour of a carnation, and expiring with embarra.s.sment, raised her eyes, and encountered his fixed on her with a fond, sad, but _not_ responsive expression. If shame could kill, she had received her _coup de grace_ that moment. He had understood, and yet said nothing.

The most rapturous grat.i.tude on his part would hardly have reconciled her to herself; not to be met half-way was ignominious rejection.

It had all been the work of one moment, and relief came in the next with the entrance of Colonel Rolleston. Cecil, feeling as if delivered from a spell, got out of the room, and entrenched herself in her own, where her thoughts became almost unendurable.

In horror at what she had done, her first wish was never to see Bertie again. Every particle of pleasure in his society must now be over since that one mad, unguarded sentence.

"I might have known," thought she, bitterly, "that that false, caressing manner of his never meant anything. I have seen it with a dozen girls--even Bluebell,"--here she winced; "and yet in the face of all probability I must needs believe myself more to him than any one, because it suits him to make me the receptacle of his worries. Well, he is disinterested, at any rate, since all my money has no more attractions for him than myself."

A stormy hour did poor Cecil pa.s.s with her wounded pride, when she was interrupted by Lola, the Mercury of the establishment, who came to tell her that "dinner would be an hour earlier, because Bertie was going away."

Cecil received the intelligence very shortly, and nipped in the bud her evident intention of lingering by declaring herself "busy," which that astute young person, seeing no signs of employment, interpreted as "cross."

"I must face it," thought she, as the last peal of the gong jarred on her nerves. She descended just in time to see Colonel and Mrs. Rolleston disappear into the dining-room. Du Meresq, who had waited, eagerly placed her hand under his arm, and drew her back a moment.

"Cecil, where have you been hiding all this afternoon?"

I suppose he had the key to the answer, for the changing hues of her complexion, in which pride struggled with confusion, was the only one he got.

"You utter little goose!" said Bertie, emphatically, crushing the hand under his arm as they entered the dining-room. Curious to relate, Cecil scarcely felt so ashamed as she had an hour ago. Not a chance would she give him, though, of speaking a syllable in private; and very soon after dinner he departed, taking leave of Cecil before all the rest, with no more distinguishing mark of affection than a long hand-clasp, which seemed as if it would never unlock.

"Only his odious flirting manner!" said Cecil to herself; but she did not think so, and felt a good deal less self-contempt than she had before.

Next day, when Mrs. Rolleston announced Bluebell's expected return, Cecil felt quite in charity with her, and resolved to make things pleasanter than they had been, though this relenting mood was nearly dissipated by her unconscious rival presuming to look miserable at the tidings of Du Meresq's departure.

CHAPTER XV.

AN ENIGMATICAL LETTER.

'Tis Spring, bright Spring, and bluebirds sing.

I was monarch supreme in my cloudland.

I was master of fate in that proud land; I would not endure That a grief without cure, A love that could end, Or a false hearted friend, Should dwell for an instant in cloudland.

--Mackay.

Nothing but rain, pouring rain, for the next few days, washing the walls of snow down the unmetaled streets, a very slough of despond to all beasts of burden. Once more the sight of green gra.s.s relieved the eye, weary of the one monotonous hue it had rested on for weeks, and still it rained as if determined not to stop till it had fulfilled its mission, and dissolved every sooty patch that in chilly spots still obstinately lingered.

At last the clouds parted, the sun came out, and Cecil, regardless of mud, and impatient of long confinement, started off for a gallop on "Wings."

On her way she met the Post-office orderly with letters, who stopped and gave her one. It isn't such a very easy thing to read your correspondence on horseback, with the wind catching the sheets, and the sun shining through the paper, mixing the writing on the other side with the one you are reading. Still less feasible is it in a crowded street; so, though Cecil at once recognised the handwriting of Du Meresq, it had to be consigned to the saddle-pocket till the traffic was threaded, and she had entered on a quiet corduroy road by the lake. Then she opened it with a flattering feeling of expectation, and was half-disappointed at its calm commencement.

Bertie, with his usual dependence on her sympathy, began by telling her that he had been able to make a temporary arrangement, which had squared things for the present. "But," he continued, "the evil day must be no longer deferred. I will try and find out every shilling I owe. It will be more than I expect, I dare say, yet my commission ought to cover it, and, altogether, I shall probably save enough out of the fire to be a small capitalist in Australia. Much as I hate it, I must cut the service, for if my debts were paid to-morrow I should have just as many in two years.

Dearest Cecil, I know you do not exactly hate me; I wish I were more worthy of the affection of such a dear, true-hearted girl. Will you trust me, Cecil, and believe in me a little longer, even if I say no more at present? I don't think your father likes me; I wish now he did. Let me see your dear handwriting soon. I believe you have more head than any girl I know, and more heart, too; and no one can appreciate your sense and affection more than yours, ever devotedly,

"A. Du MERESQ."

Cecil rode thoughtfully on, as she turned the letter over in her mind, trying to penetrate Bertie's meaning.

"Why does he not speak out more plainly?" thought she. "He will never be any richer unless he marries me, so it is useless waiting for that. I will not, any how, be in too great a hurry to understand him this time.

If his debts are paid, and he leaves the army soon, he must say more--or nothing." And at that chance Cecil turned rather pale, and giving Wings his head, who had been fretting some time, started off at a good refreshing galop. They were on the race course now, and, excited by the turf, he gave her quite enough to do to hold him.

"What fun station-life must be," thought she. "Always riding in a wild, strange country,--birds, animals, plants, scenery, and ideas, all different and unhackneyed. Canada is well enough, but it mimics England too much, and is fifty years behind it." Before she got home, she had composed a clear-headed and sympathetic, but not at all lover-like, letter to Bertie, who was disappointed at the tone of it; and--"as the nymph flies, the swain pursues"--he wrote a much more affectionate one back, and then Cecil suffered her thoughts to take a more decided shape, and they dwelt especially on a "lodge in some vast wilderness" of her colonial paradise,--picturesque, but not luxurious--an exquisite climate, and Bertie combining the life of a happy hunter and enterprising colonist, returning to sup on a kangaroo steak, and to wake up to another day of movement and adventure.

Cecil pa.s.sed a great deal of her time in this ideal log-house, sometimes garrisoning and defending it, during Bertie's absence, against a war party of savages, for danger was by no means excluded from her scheme of felicity, except perhaps one, like St. Senaun's isle, her--

"Sacred sod, Should ne'er by Woman's feet be trod."

In such dreams and the companionship of Bluebell, who gave no further offence, now that she had learnt self-command and the necessity of keeping her feelings to herself, the spring advanced apace, and the first bluebird, alighting on the garden rails, was descried with a shriek of ecstacy by Lola.

The children, who unlike their elders, had had no gaieties, or sleighing and skating parties, to wile away the rigours of the snow king's reign, were emanc.i.p.ated from dulness by the approach of summer. Their lessons could be carried on in the garden; and, one day, Lola, who had shut her eyes while repeating to herself an irregular verb, saw, on opening them, a jewelled humming-bird balancing itself in the air on a level with her hat, and apparently inspecting that head-dress with wonder and curiosity, after which it flashed off and dived into a flower.

The garden was alive with fairy wonders; wild canaries came to it--pure saffron, except their black-flecked wings,--the soldier-bird, so bold and scarlet,--robins were a drug in the market, and only tolerated for their tameness and vocal powers. But none could weary of the bluebirds, whose azure took so vivid a hue in flight, from the sun shining through their wings.

Then there were excursions to the Humber woods in search of wild flowers, all new, rare, and delicate,--too much so to bear the pressure of eager hands, for they seldom survived the transit home. Often Cecil, Bluebell, Miss Prosody, and the children drove there in a waggonette, with a luncheon-basket, and spent the whole day in the golden woods, or rowing on the Humber river. Cecil's craze at this time was to paddle her own canoe; and occasionally Lilla Tremaine, who had become pretty intimate with her, joined the aquatic party.

The Colonel had rather demurred at first, thinking there was a _soupcon_ of fastness and independence in it. Visions of possible anglers and unchaperoned river flirtations disturbed his mind; but eventually he satisfied himself, by requiring Miss Prosody to be always of the party, who followed with the children and a boatman in a flat-bottomed tub.

On one of these occasions they had been pulling about the beautiful bends of the river. Cecil, paddling her canoe, with a trolling-line out at the end of it, and Bluebell rowing a boat, while Lilla fished with a very especial spoon-bait of her own devising. Despite, however, the seductions of the gaudy red cloth and ta.s.sel of long hair from a deer's tail, not a fish impaled itself on the circle of formidable hooks prepared for its reception, and the mid-day sun began to dart fiercely on them.

"All nature speaks of luncheon and repose," cried Lilla, beginning to wind up her line, after the frequent weed had repeatedly mocked her hopes with its dull, dead pull. "Let us moor the fleet under this overhanging fir-tree, Cecil; it makes quite a bower."

"It feels like thunder, the fish don't bite, and the mosquitoes do,"

a.s.sented Cecil. "We must signal for the Infantry, though, who are also the Commissariat."

Bluebell tied a silk handkerchief to her oar, and waved it wildly.

"I wonder if that old nuisance enjoys herself," speculated Miss Tremaine, as Miss Prosody's prim visage appeared in the stern of the other boat.

"So like you English, always carrying your propriety about in the shape of a foil."

"Don't abuse our treasure," said Cecil, demurely. "Ask papa what he thinks of Miss Prosody."

"I should get a more impartial opinion from Estelle and Fleda, who are always being kept in and bullied."

"Well, I really think the other children are enough for to-day," said Cecil. "What a fuss Freddy made to get after Bluebell into that t.i.tuppy little boat of yours."

"Yes, and you would all have been beseeching him not to till now, if I had not taken him by the scruff of the neck and dropped him into the other!"

"Well, dear," said Cecil, languidly; "we don't all possess your strength of mind and biceps. What have you got there, Lola?" as the boatman deftly shot the other boat under the overhanging branches.

"Water-lily leaves for plates! See now stiff and shining they are, and washed up so clean."