Bluebell Part 30

Cecil would not vouchsafe a retort. She thought Bertie's behaviour in the very worst taste, and had never known him so little agreeable. But there they were incarcerated, and the wind still howled. "How was it they were so little in tune," she wondered, "wasting time with this tactless badinage?" Bertie, too, whose greatest charm was his lightning perception of all her thoughts and feelings, could he possibly think--and here a hot glow mounted to her cheeks, which were not cooled by feeling her hand suddenly captured by Du Meresq, as he whispered in her ear,--

"As we always get into sc.r.a.pes together, don't you think, Cecil, for the future we had better only be responsible to each other?"

"I think," said she, flaming up at last, and her bright eyes flas.h.i.+ng indignantly upon him, "that your conduct is idiotic and ungentlemanly: What right have you to make me the subject of your silly jokes?"

"I have made you look at me at last," cried he, "though I am almost 'blasted with excess of light.' Dearest Cecil, you must know what I have come to Rice Lake for, and that you can make me the happiest or most miserable fellow breathing."

Bertie's eyes were glowing with earnestness, and his whole manner was as eager as it had before been inert. Cecil was dumb from contending emotions, love, pride, and doubt, all at war; yet a small voice in her heart kept repeating "At last!"

"You must have known my wishes ever since we parted at Montreal," pleaded Bertie. ("I was by no means so certain," thought Cecil.) "I could not speak then; your father will, perhaps, think I oughtn't to now. Yet, at least I can say honestly, will you marry me, my dearest little Cecil?"

At the a.s.severation, "I can say honestly," a sudden illumination came over her face, as if every cloud had been instantaneously swept away.

Persons conversant with such subjects maintain that the plain words, "I will," are generally first used by the bride in church, when she promises to wors.h.i.+p M. or N. with her body. No doubt, Bertie was answered somehow; but as there are no reporters in Paradise, so happiness requires no chronicler, and we drop the curtain while Cecil becomes engaged to her ideal and only love--a fate sufficiently uncommon in this world of contradictions.

The wind was lulled to a whisper, and a golden sunset was reddening the lake, ere our lovers remembered, with a start, that they had to get home.

"Now comes the rude awakening," cried Du Meresq. "Dinner spoiled, and a very stern expression of paternal opinion to you, my poor Cecil. Very grumpy to me. By Jove, I won't tell him to-night! Here's your half-baked boots. We shall never get them on. Shall I carry you to the boat, and roll your feet in the bear-skin?"

"I feel as if a hundred years had pa.s.sed since we were last in the canoe," said Cecil, evading this obliging proposal. "But how the lake has calmed itself down; it seems sleeping, and the sh.o.r.e and the islands cast long shadows on it."

"'Tis one of those ambrosial eves A day of storm so often leaves,"

began Bertie, with his incurable propensity for quoting. "What made you so shy at the station, Cecil? I was obliged to put you in a rage to get you natural again."

"After the pleasing picture you draw of our domestic felicity, I can't think how I ever accepted you."

"I was just going to begin when I was unlacing your boots, but the idea struck me that to propose holding a lady's foot instead of her hand, would be too ludicrous a variation from all precedent. What a sensitive girl you are, Cecil! I am sure you knew what was coming, for I felt you drawing into a sh.e.l.l of consciousness, that would have made me nervous too, if I had not been impertinent instead"

Cecil was not far from a relapse, for dreamily happy as she was, she had already begun to torment herself. She had accepted Du Meresq so readily,--good Heavens! she might almost say thankfully,--and, disguise it as he might, he must know it. Could a thing be really valued that was so easy of attainment? When Cecil was shy she was usually dumb, it never revealed itself by hasty, foolish speech, or an artificial laugh. Her countenance, however, was not so silent; and Bertie, as he watched her changing hues and varying expression, thought how much more he admired that mobile, sensitive face, than the pink and white of a soul-less beauty.

"Where is your hand, Cecil?" stretching out a long arm to feel for it. "I am sure a dragon of propriety might trust a loving pair in this wabbly little craft, which an attempt at osculation would upset."

There was just breeze enough to fill the little sail, which bore them swiftly and gently along. A pale star came out in the sky. Though dusk, it was far from dark, night in a Canadian summer being of very abbreviated duration. The lovers had relapsed into dreamy reverie, but, as they began to approach more familiar objects, stern reality resumed its sway. Cecil was the first to give evidence of it, by saying, in rather a subdued voice,--

"Don't you think, Bertie, as you must go away to-morrow, you had better get _it_ over to night?"

"Heaven forbid!" cried he, rousing up, "let us have this evening in peace. You see, my dearest little Cecil, _he_ will hate it anyhow, and to-night will be awfully put out at my bringing you home so late; so this would be the very worst opportunity to choose. To-morrow, after dinner, I'll try what I can do with him. I am a shocking bad match for you, Cecil, and that's the fact. But when I went back to Montreal, thinking of nothing but you, I considered and pondered over every possibility of putting my prospects in a fair light to your father. To the amazement of my creditors, I _asked_ for their accounts. Then I made a little arrangement with Green, the senior lieutenant. He is the son of a money-lender, and very sick of being a subaltern; so he paid the over-regulation down on account for my troop, and will sh.e.l.l out the rest, with an extra thousand, directly my papers are in. The over-regulation money, with a little stretching, covered my debts. To be sure, Green had to part pretty freely, but his pater will get it out of some one else. Now, my idea is to realize what remains of my slender fortune, and try my luck in Australia. You see, my darling, you are all right, for all your money will be settled on yourself; so that if I smash up there, the worst that can happen will be your having to maintain me till I can 'strike ile,' or bring out a patent horse-medicine, or become riding-master to young ladies."

"I put my veto on the last," laughed Cecil. "But really, Bertie, I can hardly believe such good news as your being actually cleared up at last; indeed, I almost feel a sentimental attachment to your debts, for it was about them you first got confidential that Spring you stayed with us in England."

"That visit did my business for life," said Bertie, with a wooer's usual disregard of veracity. "But you are far more beautiful now, Cecil, than you were then."

Not even Du Meresq could persuade Cecil that she had any claims to boast of on that score; indeed, she had once overheard him say that he hardly ever admired dark women, so she pa.s.sed it by with a half smile of incredulity, as she observed,--

"I really begin to have some faint hope of papa consenting. Your being out of debt will weigh tremendously with him."

"And I am sure you will like Australia," cried he, enthusiastically. "It is the most charming climate, and the life delightful. I will send you up a lot of books on the subject."

Cecil was ashamed to confess how many she had read already. "You _must_ go by that boat to-morrow night, I suppose?" said she, meditatively.

"Yes; no help for it. But as I shall send my papers in at once, most probably I can get leave till I am gazetted out."

"Oh! I wish that _mauvais quart-d'heure_ with papa were over," sighed Cecil. "All to-morrow in suspense!"

"Cecil," said Du Meresq, in his most persuasive tones, "it is better to be prepared for the worst. I know you are true as steel, and far firmer than most girls. Promise that you _will_ marry me,--with his consent, if possible; if not, without."

They had landed just before, and were walking up to the house. What presentiment checked the unqualified pledge he would have imposed on her?

"I promise," she cried, "to marry no one else while you are alive."

CHAPTER XXIII.

LOLA'S BIRTHDAY.

She is not fair to outward view, As many maidens be; Her loveliness I never knew Until she smiled on me.

Oh! then I saw her eye was bright, A well of love--a spring of light --Hartley Coleridge.

Mrs. Rolleston had pa.s.sed a terrible day of anxiety. The sudden rising of the wind so soon after their departure first aroused her alarm, which, as the utmost limit of the time they were to be away pa.s.sed, became augmented tenfold. The absence of the Colonel, who had gone inland, at first a relief, now increased her desperation, for there was no one to make an effort for their preservation or to ascertain their fate. She and Bluebell, who suffered scarcely less, could only rush to the boatmen for either consolation or a.s.sistance. They got little of the former, for with the usual propensity of the lower cla.s.ses to make the worst of everything, they expressed a decided opinion that the canoe so overladen could not have weathered the squall.

"But they might have put in somewhere," cried Bluebell, seeing Mrs.

Rolleston speechless with consternation.

"How far would they be got, ma'am?"

"They must have been gone nearly an hour before the wind began to howl."

"Then they'd be nigh the black rocks, and no place to land closer than c.o.o.nwood, unless they turned back and got on to Sheep Island."

"Oh! go and see!" cried Mrs. Rolleston, beside herself with terror, palling out her purse in answer to the mute unwillingness on the man's face.

"It won't be no manner of use; but if it will be a satisfaction to you, ma'am," looking expressively at the purse, "and my mate will come with me, I'll go out for them. They ought to come down 'ansome," he muttered, "if I finds the bodies."

The two ladies waited to see him off, fretting inwardly at the delay of repairing a plank in the boat and fetching his mate. It was a good substantial old tub, very different from the fairy canoe freighted with those precious human lives. Then they returned to their weary watch in Cecil's bird's-nest of a room, which commanded the most extensive view of the lake. Bluebell's young eyes were the first to discern the tiny white bunting, and hope battled with suspense till they could be sure it was the sail they sought. With the field gla.s.s they made out two forms.

"Cecil is safe!" cried Mrs. Rolleston, recognising her large, shady hat.

"But still," she thought, "Bertie might be drowned, and Captain Lascelles bringing her home. Oh, Bluebell! can you recognise him?" for the girl had the gla.s.ses. They were very strong ones, and her vision keen. A spasm pa.s.sed over her face.

"Captain Du Meresq is quite safe," said she, bitterly. She had looked at the moment when Bertie stretched out his arm for Cecil's hand, and was carrying it to his lips.

Mrs. Rolleston's raptures were too oppressive just then. Bluebell felt thankful to hear a slight disturbance, which betokened that the Colonel had returned. His wife, quite unnerved by the transition from despair to joy, could conceal nothing, and, rus.h.i.+ng down, poured into his ear all the dread and relief of the past hours. The Colonel hearing it thus abruptly, and unsoftened by previous anxiety, only felt intense anger at Cecil's having gone alone with these two men; and the danger and exposure to the storm that she had undergone aggravated the offence considerably.

He felt too strongly to say much to his wife, who, indeed, had suffered quite enough already; and the sting of it all--his growing fear of Du Meresq's influence over Cecil--he was not disposed to confide to her.

"I have been too careless," he reflected, "and I cannot trust Bella, who will never see a fault in her brother. However, he will be gone to-morrow, and I will take care they never meet again till Cecil is married."