Lover or Friend Part 68

Mrs. Ross felt a quick sense of relief that almost amounted to joy. Was Audrey in love with him, after all? She had never heard a girl talk so strangely. What an unutterable blessing it would be to them all if she were not utterly crushed by her misfortune, and if any future healing would be possible; but she was careful not to express this to her daughter.

'My experience has been very different,' she answered quietly. 'My happiest moments were those in which your dear father spoke of our future home. I think I was quite as averse to a long engagement as he was.'

'I can believe it, mother dear, but our natures are not alike; but there is one thing on which we are agreed, that an engagement is almost as binding as marriage; that is,' correcting herself, 'as long as two persons love each other.'

'It ought not to be binding under such circ.u.mstances, Audrey.'

'Ought it not? Ah, there we differ! With all my want of enthusiasm, my absence of sentimentality, I shall hold fast to Cyril. I have never yet regarded myself as his wife; I did not wish to so regard myself. But now I shall give myself up in thought wholly to him, and I pray G.o.d that this knowledge will give him comfort.'

Mrs. Ross was silent. She felt that she hardly understood her daughter; it was as though she had entered on higher ground, where the wrappings of some sacred mist enveloped her. This was not the language of earthly pa.s.sion--this sublime womanly abnegation. It was not even the tender language of a Ruth, widowed in her affections, and cleaving with bounteous love and faith to the mother of her young Jewish husband, 'Whither thou goest I will go;' and yet the inward cry of her heart seemed to be like that of honest Tom O'Brien: 'The Lord do so unto me, and more also, if ought but death part me and thee.'

The one thought wholly possessed her that she might give him comfort.

'My poor, dear child, if I could only make you feel differently!'

Then Audrey laid her hand gently on her mother's lips. It was an old habit of hers when she was a child, and too much argument had proved wearisome.

'Hus.h.!.+ do not let us talk any more. I am so tired, so tired, mother, and I know you are, too.'

'Will you let me stay with you, darling?'

Then Audrey looked at her trim little bed, and then at her mother, and smiled.

'There is no room. What can you mean, mother dear? and I am not ill; I am never ill, am I?'

'Thank G.o.d at least for that; but you are worse than ill--you are unhappy, my dear. Will you let me help you to undress, and then sit by you until you feel you can sleep?'

But Audrey only shook her head with another smile.

'There is no need. Kiss me, mother, and bid me good-night. I shall like to be with my own self in the darkness. There, another kiss; now go, or we shall both be frozen;' and Audrey gently pushed her to the door.

'She would not let me stop with her, John!' exclaimed Mrs. Ross, as she entered her husband's dressing-room. 'She is very calm: unnaturally so, I thought; she hardly cried at all; she is thinking nothing of herself, only of him.'

'Do you know it is one o'clock, Emmie?' returned her husband rather shortly. He was tired and sore, poor man, and in no mood to hear of his daughter's sufferings. 'The deuce take the woman!' he said to himself fretfully, as Mrs. Ross meekly turned away without another word; but he was certainly not alluding to his wife when he spoke. 'From the days of Eve they have always been in some mischief or other'--from which it may be deduced that Mrs. Ross was not so far wrong when she thought her husband was threatened with gout, only his _malaise_ was more of the mind. He was thinking of the interview that awaited him on the morrow.

'I would as lief cut off my right hand as tell him that he must not have Audrey,' he said to himself, as he laid his head on the pillow.

Now, as Michael lay awake through the dark hours revolving many things in his uneasy brain, it occurred to him that he would send a note across to Cyril as soon as he heard the household stirring, and he carried out this resolution in spite of drowsiness and an aching head.

'MY DEAR BLAKE,' he wrote,

'Don't bother yourself about early school. I am on the spot, and can easily take your place. You will want to pull yourself together, and under the circ.u.mstances the boys would be an awful nuisance. I hope you have got some sleep.

'Yours,

'M. O. BURNETT.'

To this came the following reply, scrawled on a half-sheet of paper:

'Thanks awfully; will accept your offer. Please tell Dr. Ross that I will come across to him soon after ten.'

'Poor beggar! he is awake now, and pulling himself together with a vengeance. This looks well; now for the grind.'

And Michael went down to the schoolroom and gave Cyril's cla.s.s their divinity lesson with as much coolness and gravity as though his whole life had been spent in teaching boys.

Dr. Ross winced slightly as he gave him Cyril's message after breakfast, but he said, a moment afterwards: 'I intended sending for him; but I am glad he has saved me the trouble--only I wish it were over, Mike.'

Michael shrugged his shoulders with a look of sympathy. He had no time to say more; he must take Cyril's place in the schoolroom again, in spite of all Booty's s.h.i.+vering solicitations for a walk this fine morning. 'Booty, old fellow,' he observed, as he noticed the little animal's manifest disappointment, 'you and I are not sent into the world to please ourselves; there are "still lame dogs to help over stiles,"

and a few burdens to s.h.i.+ft on our own shoulders. If our head ache, what of that, Booty? It will be the same a hundred years hence. Now for Greek verbs and general discord, so right about face!' And if Booty did not understand this harangue, he certainly acted up to the spirit of it, for he pattered cheerfully after his master to the schoolroom, and curled himself up into a compact brown ball at his feet, to doze away the morning in doggish dreams.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ross made a feint of reading his letters; but he found as he laid them down that their contents were hopelessly involved. Was it Rawlinson, for example, whom an anxious mother was confiding to his care? 'He had the measles last holidays, and has been very delicate ever since, and now this severe cold----' Nonsense! It was not Rawlinson, it was Jackson minor, and he was all right and had eaten an excellent breakfast; but he thought Major Sowerby's letter ought to be answered at once. He never allowed parents to break his rules; it was such nonsense sending for Charlie home, just because an uncle had come from India. He must write and remonstrate; the boy must wait until the term was over--it would only be a fortnight. And then he read the letter again with growing displeasure, and found that Captain MacDonald was the name of the erring parent.

'I will settle all that,' he remarked, as he plunged his pen rather savagely into the inkstand; and then a tap at the door made him start, and a huge blot was the result. Of course it was Cyril, who was standing at the door looking at him.

'Are you disengaged, Dr. Ross?'

'Yes--yes. Come in, my dear fellow, and shut the door.'

And then Dr. Ross jumped up from his seat and grasped the young man's hand; but his first thought was, What would Audrey say when she saw him?

Could one night have effected such a change? There was a wanness, a heaviness of aspect, that made him look ten years older. Somehow Dr.

Ross found it necessary to take off his spectacles and wipe them before he commenced the conversation.

'My poor boy, what am I to say to you?'

'Say nothing, sir; it would be far better. I have come----' Here Cyril paused; the dryness of his lips seemed to impede his utterance. 'I have come to know your wishes.'

'My wishes!' repeated Dr. Ross in a pained voice; and then he put his hand on his shoulder: 'Cyril, do not misjudge me, do not think me hard if you can help it, but I cannot give you my daughter.'

He had expected that Cyril would have wrenched himself free from his detaining hand as he heard him, but to his surprise he remained absolutely motionless.

'I know it, Dr. Ross. There was no need to tell me that--nothing would induce me to marry her.'

Then the Doctor felt as though he could have embraced him.

'Why should you think so meanly of me,' went on Cyril in the same heavy, monotonous voice, as though he were repeating some lesson that he had carefully conned and got by heart, 'as to suppose that I should take advantage of her promise and yours? If you will let me see her, I will tell her so. Do you think I would drag her down to my level--mine?'

'You are acting n.o.bly.'

'I am acting as necessity compels me,' returned Cyril with uncontrollable bitterness. 'Do you think I would give her up, even at your command, Dr. Ross, if I dared to keep her? But I dare not--I dare not!'

'Cyril, for my peace of mind, tell me this one thing--have I ever been unjust to you in all our relations together?'

'No, Dr. Ross. I have never met with anything but kindness from you and yours.'

'When you came to me five months ago and told me you loved my daughter, did I repulse you?'

Then Cyril shook his head.

'But I was very frank with you. I told you even then that I had a right to look higher for my son-in-law, but that, as you seemed necessary to my girl's happiness, your poverty and lack of influence should not stand in your way. When I said this, Cyril, when I stretched out the right hand of fellows.h.i.+p to you, I meant every word that I said. I was teaching myself to regard you as a son; as far as any man could do such a thing, I intended to take your future under my care. In all this I did you no wrong.'