Tales and Novels Volume X Part 66

And as his eyes looked that hope, Helen caught it, and yet she doubted, and sighed, but still she had hope. Cecilia had none; she was sitting behind her mother; she looked up at Helen, and shook her head; she had seen more of her mother's danger, she had been with her in nights of fearful struggle. She had been with her just after she had written to Lord Davenant what she must have felt to be a farewell letter--letter, too, which contained the whole history of Cecilia's deception and Helen's difficulties, subjects so agitating that the writing of them had left her mother in such a state of exhaustion that Cecilia could think only with terror for her, yet she exerted all her power over herself to hide her anguish, not only for her mother's but for Helen's sake.

The preparations for the wedding went on, pressed forward by Lady Davenant as urgently as the general could desire. The bridesmaids were to be Lady Emily Greville's younger sister, Lady Susan, and, at Helen's particular request, Miss Clarendon. Full of joy, wonder, and sympathy, in wedding haste Miss Clarendon and Mrs. Pennant arrived both delighted that it was all happily settled for Helen: which most, it was scarcely possible to say; but which most curious as to the means by which it had been settled, it was very possible to see. When Miss Clarendon had secured a private moment with Helen, she began.

"Now tell me--tell me everything about yourself."

Helen could only repeat what the general had already written to her sister--that he was now convinced that the reports concerning Miss Stanley were false, his esteem restored, his public approbation to be given, Beauclerc satisfied, and her rejection honourably retracted.

"I will ask you no more, Helen, by word or look," said Esther; "I understand it all, my brother and Lady Cecilia are separated for life. And now let us go to aunt Pennant: she will not annoy you by her curiosity, but how she will be able to manage her sympathy amongst you with these crossing demands I know not; Lady Cecilia's wretchedness will almost spoil my aunt's joy for you--it cannot be pure joy."

Pure joy! how far from it Helen's sigh told; and Miss Clarendon had scarcely patience enough with Lady Cecilia to look at her again; had scarcely seconded, at least with good grace, a suggestion of Mrs.

Pennant's that they should prevail on Lady Cecilia to take a turn in the park with them, she looked so much in want of fresh air.

"We can go now, my dear Esther, you know, before it is time for that picture sale, at which you are to be before two o'clock." Lady Davenant desired Cecilia to go. "Helen will be with me, do, my dear Cecilia, go."

She went, and before the awkwardness of Miss Clarendon's silence ceased, and before Mrs. Pennant had settled which gla.s.s or which blind was best up or down, Lady Cecilia burst into tears, thanked aunt Pennant for her sympathy, and now, above the fear of Miss Clarendon--above all fear but that of doing further wrong by concealment, she at once told the whole truth, that they might, as well as the general, do full justice to Helen, and that they might never, never blame Clarendon for the separation which was to be.

That he should have mentioned nothing of her conduct even to his sister, was not surprising. "I know his generous nature," said Cecilia.

"But I never knew yours till this moment, Cecilia," cried Miss Clarendon, embracing her; "my sister, now,--separation or not."

"But there need be no separation," said kind aunt Pennant. Cecilia sighed, and Miss Clarendon repeated, "You will find in me a sister at all events."

She now saw Cecilia as she really was--faults and virtues. Perhaps indeed in this moment of revulsion of feeling, in the surprise of gratified confidence, she overvalued Lady Cecilia's virtues, and was inclined to do her more than justice, in her eagerness to make generous reparation for unjust suspicion.

CHAPTER XV.

After setting down Lady Cecilia at her mother's, the aunt and niece proceeded to the picture sale which Miss Clarendon was eager to attend, as she was in search of a pendant to a famous Berghem she possessed; and while she was considering the picture, she had the advantage of hearing a story, which seemed, indeed, to be told for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the whole room, by a party of fashionables who were standing near her:--a wonderful story of a locket, which was going about; it was variously told, but all agreed in one point--that a young married lady of high rank had never dared to appear in the World since her husband had seen this locket in her hands--it had brought out something--something which had occurred before marriage;--and here mysterious nods were interchanged.

Another version stated that the story had not yet been fully explained to the husband, that he had found the locket on the table in a room that he had suddenly entered, where he discovered her kneeling to the person in question,--"the person in question" being sometimes a woman and sometimes a man.

Then leaned forward, stretching her scraggy neck, one who had good reason to believe that the husband would soon speak out--the public would soon hear of a separation: and everybody must be satisfied that there could not be a separation without good grounds.

Miss Clarendon inquired from a gentleman near them, who the lady was with the outstretched scraggy neck--Lady Katrine Hawksby. Miss Clarendon knew her only by reputation. She did not know Miss Clarendon either by reputation or by sight; and she went on to say, she would "venture any wager that the separation would take place within a month. In short, there could be no doubt that before marriage,"--and she ended with a look which gave a death-blow to the reputation.

Exceedingly shocked, Miss Clarendon, not only from a sense of justice to Lady Cecilia, but from feeling for her brother's honour, longed to reply in defence; but she constrained herself for once, and having been a.s.sured by Lady Cecilia that all had been confessed to her mother, she thought that Lady Davenant must be the best person to decide what should be done. She went to her house immediately, sent in word that she begged to see Lady Davenant for two or three minutes alone, was admitted; Cecilia immediately vacated the chair beside her mother's bed, and left the room. Miss Clarendon felt some difficulty in beginning, but she forced herself to repeat all she had heard. Then Lady Davenant started up in her bed, and the colour of life spread over her face--

"Thank you, thank you, Miss Clarendon! a second time I have to thank you for an inestimable service. It is well for Cecilia that she made the whole truth known to us both--made you her friend; now we _can_ act for her. I will have that locket from Madame de St. Cymon before the sun goes down."

Now Lady Davenant had Madame de St. Cymon completely in her power, from her acquaintance with a disgraceful transaction which had come to her knowledge at Florence. The locket was surrendered, returned with humble a.s.surances that Madame de St. Cymon now perfectly understood the thing in its true light, and was quite convinced it had been stolen, not given. Lady Davenant glanced over her note with scorn, and was going to throw it from her into the fire, but did not. When Miss Clarendon called upon her again that evening as she had appointed, she showed it to her, and desired that she would, when her brother arrived next day, tell him what she had heard, what Lady Davenant had done, and how the locket was now in her possession.

Some people who pretend to know, maintain that the pa.s.sion of love is of such an all-engrossing nature that it swallows up every other feeling; but we who judge more justly of our kind, hold differently, and rather believe that love in generous natures imparts a strengthening power, a magnetic touch, to every good feeling. Helen was incapable of being perfectly happy while her friend was miserable; and even Beauclerc, in spite of all the suffering she had caused, could not help pitying Lady Cecilia, and he heartily wished the general could be reconciled to her; yet it was a matter in which he could not properly interfere; he did not attempt it.

Lady Davenant determined to give a breakfast to all the bridal party after the marriage. In her state of health, Helen and Cecilia remonstrated, but Lady Davenant had resolved upon it, and at last they agreed it would be better than parting at the church-door--better that she should at her own house take leave of Helen and Beauclerc, who would set out immediately after the breakfast for Thorndale.

And now equipages were finished, and wedding paraphernalia sent home--the second time that wedding-dresses had been furnished for Miss Stanley;--and never once were these looked at by the bride elect, nor even by Cecilia, but to see that all was as it should be--that seen, she sighed, and pa.s.sed on.

Felicie's ecstasies were no more to be heard: we forgot to mention that she had, before Helen's return from Llansillen, departed, dismissed in disgrace; and happy was it for Lady Cecilia and Helen to be relieved from her jabbering, and not exposed to her spying and reporting.

Nevertheless, the gloom that hung over the world above could not but be observed by the world below; it was, however, naturally accounted for by Lady Davenant's state of health, and by the anxiety which Lady Cecilia must feel for the general, who, as it had been officially announced by Mr. c.o.c.kburn, was to set out on foreign service the day after the marriage.

Lady Cecilia, notwithstanding the bright hopefulness of her temper, and her habits of sanguine belief that all would end well in which she and her good fortune had any concern, seemed now, in this respect, to have changed her nature; and ever since her husband's denunciations, had continued quite resigned to misery, and submissive to the fate which she thought she had deserved. She was much employed in attendance upon her mother, and thankful that she was so permitted to be. She never mentioned her husband's name, and if she alluded to him, or to what had been decreed by him, it was with an emotion that scarcely dared to touch the point. She spoke most of her child, and seemed to look to the care of him as her only consolation. The boy had been brought from Kensington for Lady Davenant to see, and was now at her house. Cecilia once said she thought he was very like his father, and hoped that he would at least take leave of his boy at the last. To that last hour--that hour when she was to see her husband once more, when they were to meet but to part, to meet first at the wedding ceremony, and at a breakfast in a public company,--altogether painful as it must be, yet she looked forward to it with a sort of longing ardent impatience. "True, it will be dreadful, yet still--still I shall see him again, see him once again, and he cannot part with his once so dear Cecilia without some word--some look, different from his last."

The evening before the day on which the wedding was to be, Lady Cecilia was in Lady Davenant's room, sitting beside the bed while her mother slept. Suddenly she was startled from her still and ever the same recurring train of melancholy thoughts, by a sound which had often made her heart beat with joy--her husband's knock; she ran to the window, opened it, and was out on the balcony in an instant. His horse was at the door, he had alighted, and was going up the steps; she leaned over the rails of the balcony, and as she leaned, a flower she wore broke off--it fell at the general's feet: he looked up, and their eyes met.

There he stood, waiting on those steps, some minutes, for an answer to his inquiry how Lady Davenant was: and when the answer was brought out by Elliott, whom, as it seemed, he had desired to see, he remounted his horse, and rode away without ever again looking up to the balcony.

Lady Davenant had awakened, and when Cecilia returned on hearing her voice, her mother, as the light from the half-open shutters shone upon her face, saw that she was in tears; she kneeled down by the side of the bed, and wept bitterly; she made her mother understand how it had been.

"Not that I hoped more, but still--still to feel it so! Oh! mother, I am bitterly punished."

Then Lady Davenant seizing those clasped hands, and raising herself in her bed, fixed her eyes earnestly upon Cecilia, and asked,--"Would you, Cecilia--tell me, would you if it were now, this moment, in your power--would you retract your confession?"

"Retract! impossible!"

"Do you repent--regret having made it, Cecilia?"

"Repent--regret having made it. No, mother, no!" replied Cecilia firmly.

"I only regret that it was not sooner made. Retract!--impossible I could wish to retract the only right thing I have done, the only thing that redeems me in my inmost soul from uttermost contempt. No! rather would I be as I am, and lose that n.o.ble heart, than hold it as I did, unworthily. There is, mother, as you said--as I feel, a sustaining--a redeeming power in truth."

Her mother threw her arms round her.

"Come to my heart, my child, close--close to my heart Heaven bless you!

You have my blessing--my thanks, Cecilia. Yes, my thanks,--for now I know--I feel, my dear daughter, that my neglect of you in childhood has been repaired. You make me forgive myself, you make me happy, you have my thanks--my blessing--my warmest blessing!"

A smile of delight was on her pale face, and tears ran down as Cecilia answered--"Oh, mother, mother! blind that I have been. Why did not I sooner know this tenderness of your heart?"

"And why, my child, did I not sooner know you? The fault was mine, the suffering has been yours,--not yours alone, though."

"Suffer no more for me, mother, for now, after this, come what may, I can bear it. I can be happy, even if----" There she paused, and then eagerly looking into her mother's eyes she asked,--

"What do you say, mother, about him? do you think I may hope?"

"I dare not bid you hope," replied her mother.

"Do you bid me despair?"

"No, despair in this world is only for those who have lost their own esteem, who have no confidence in themselves, for those who cannot repent, reform, and trust. My child, you must not despair. Now leave me to myself," continued she "Open a little more of the shutter, and put that book within my reach."

As soon as Miss Clarendon heard that her brother had arrived in town she hastened to him, and, as Lady Davenant had desired, told him of all the reports that were in circulation, and of all that Lady Cecilia had spontaneously confided to her. Esther watched his countenance as she spoke, and observed that he listened with eager attention to the proofs of exactness in Cecilia; but he said nothing, and whatever his feelings were, his determination, she could not doubt, was still unshaken; even she did not dare to press his confidence.

Miss Clarendon reported to Lady Davenant that she had obeyed her command, and she described as nearly as she could all that she thought her brother's countenance expressed. Lady Davenant seemed satisfied, and this night she slept, as she told Cecilia in the morning, better than she had done since she returned to England. And this was the day of trial----

The hour came, and Lady Davenant was in the church with her daughter.

This marriage was to be, as described in olden times, "celebrated with all the l.u.s.tre and pomp imaginable;" and so it was, for Helen's sake, Helen, the pale bride---

"Beautiful!" the whispers ran as she appeared, "but too pale." Leaning on General Clarendon's arm she was led up the aisle to the altar. He felt the tremor of her arm on his, but she looked composed and almost firm. She saw no one individual of the a.s.sembled numbers, not even Cecilia or Lady Davenant. She knelt at the altar beside him to whom she was to give her faith, and General Clarendon, in the face of all the world, proudly gave her to his ward, and she, without fear, low and distinctly p.r.o.nounced the sacred vow. And as Helen rose from her knees, the sun shone out, and a ray of light was on her face, and it was lovely. Every heart said so--every heart but Lady Katrine Hawksby's--And why do we think of her at such a moment? and why does Lady Davenant think of her at such a moment? Yet she did; she looked to see if she were present, and she bade her to the breakfast.