One Christmas Morn by Fabian Bell - HTML preview

PART  lll.

 

'HAPPY  IS  THE  BRIDE  THE SUN  SHINES  ON.'

 

Chapter I

 

‘Cyril Horne has returned.'

The news created quite a furore, and furnished a more than nine day's wonder,  for many persons remembered his mysterious disappearance, and the wondering speculations and comments which it had excited. Where had he gone, and why? Making no farewell, and giving no reason. The men who might be supposed to know — his lawyers and his bankers — were plied with questions to which they maintained a discreet silence, as those who would say, 'we know but will not tell.' However, the end proved that they knew little which they could have revealed, so their silence was easily explained. His most intimate friends knew nothing more than the veriest strangers; they had expected to meet him at his usual haunts, to share his lavish hospitality and generous gifts, and were disappointed and amazed at his sudden departure. And he had been altogether too important a member of society for his absence to pass unchallenged, the unexplained mystery of it added greatly to the interest, and served to keep the matter alive in men's minds; and so it was that after nearly five years Cyril Horne was not forgotten, and his reappearance was not treated coolly as a matter of course, but roused considerable interest and comment.

‘Cyril Horne has returned. Where's he been all this time? Is he changed?'

The first question received a dozen answers. Not one of them correct. ‘He has been in Europe;' 'he has been in America;' 'exploring the North Pole with Nares;' 'through the Dark Continent with Stanley,' &c.

The second question received but one answer. He was changed; all men change in five years; he was stouter, he had grown a fine beard; there were indeed other and subtler changes which were not noticed at once, but which made themselves felt by degrees. He was less open-handed and open-hearted than he had once been, 'he had learned to take care of his money.' He was less honest and outspoken than of yore; he had acquired a curious habit of weighing his words, and hesitating before he answered any sudden question; his manners were less genial, less gentlemanly than of old. His habits too, were changed; he took no pleasure in the games of skill and chance that had once delighted him, and he had learnt to drink whisky like a Scotchman. These were a few of the changes noticed by one and another of his friends; but none of them doubted his identity for a moment, or deemed him other than he claimed to be. The changes were few and trifling; the points of resemblance many. Even the shrewd lawyers, Messrs H— and H—, received him unchallenged, and the manager of the Bank of New Zealand was delighted to place a large balance at his disposal. All went smoothly and pleasantly; nothing could have been more satisfactory.

It might have been expected that Nellie Francillon would be the first person called upon to welcome the returned wanderer; but such was not the case. She heard of him from strangers before she saw him, and then their meeting was accidental. It occurred in a crowded ball-room. At some distance Nellie saw him, his tall, fair head towering above most of his companions, and his handsome head thrown slightly back as he critically and quizzically surveyed the company. She knew him in a moment, and her heart beat thick and fast. But she had the advantage of him. He did not see or did not recognise her. Could it be that she was so much changed? Then his companion of the moment said,

‘There is Miss Francillon.'

He started, smiled, and bowed.

As their eyes met, Nellie experienced a strange, inexplicable sensation; a sudden chill seized her, as of a sudden icy blast in hot midsummer. The happy embarrassment passed completely away, and she bowed coldly and passed on.

Later in the evening he sought her out, and leaning over her chair, whispered,

‘Dear Nellie, you see I have returned according to promise: have you no welcome for me?'

‘You have been in no hurry to claim it. Still, like the rest of your friends, I am pleased to welcome you, Mr Horne.'

‘Mr Horne! Oh, Nellie! Why this coolness, this formality?’

‘Well, Cyril, if you like it better; but indeed you have been away so long, you seem quite a stranger.'

'Five years is not such a very long time. They have been very eventful years to me. I must tell you all my adventures some time.'

'Yes, some time.'

But the prospect appeared to carry with it no sense of pleasure; and when a fresh partner claimed her attention, she went with him willingly.

Cyril looked after her, and murmured below his breath,

‘She is beautiful — she must be mine.'

That night as Nellie stood in her own room removing her ornaments and brushing her hair, she questioned her heart closely. For five years, or nearly five years, she had watched and waited for Cyril; for five years, and many, many more she had loved him; for his sake her heart had been cold to other would-be lovers, and she had refused good men as well as rich men, whom she esteemed and respected, but could not love as she loved Cyril. Now the truant had returned, and her heart was as cold to him as to those others; his touch, his voice, his presence had not thrilled her as of old; she felt no wish to see him again, to nestle into his arms, to lay her head upon his breast — nay, the very thought revolted her. She could not understand herself, her own feeling, or want of feeling. Could it be that she was growing old; that her heart was already cold and dead! In vain she attempted to recall her past sensations of by gone years — the love that seemed strong enough to last for ever, the cruel pang of parting, the faithful waiting, which had been as Jacob's for Rachel when the years seemed as days, 'for the love she bore,’ All this she tried to realise, but could not. Then she flung herself on her bed and sobbed bitterly, for the hardness of her heart, which had become all at once so cold and dead, like lead in her breast. She was angry with herself. She despised herself. She called herself fickle, faithless, stonyhearted, and finally sobbed herself to sleep like a naughty child.

Then she had a dream, so clear and vivid, that when she woke from it she could scarcely believe that it had been only a dream.

In it she saw Cyril, wan and wasted; changed, and yet the same. He seemed weak and ill; but at the sight of him her heart bounded as in the old days, and lay no longer like ice in her breast. He strove to embrace her, but as their hands met they were thrust asunder by another figure, a ghostly image of Cyril's self, different, and yet the same; taller, stronger, more resolute. At his touch her heart grew cold again, and the voice of the real Cyril rang in her ear, uttering the one word 'Beware!'

With that she started and woke, and knew not what to think of the vision, only she knew that her heart was not altogether dead, for it had gone out to meet the dream Cyril with all the passionate fondness of old; and even then its hurried pulsations formed a strange commentary on the thoughts which had agitated her mind before she went to sleep.

She lay awake for some time and then fell asleep again, and dreamed the same dream. This happened three times, and naturally it made a great impression on her mind, and one which could not be lightly shaken off.

If Nellie felt but little affection for her returned lover, his feelings in no way echoed hers. From the moment when he met her at Mrs J—— 's party, a flame of love fiercer and more exacting than of yore seemed to consume him. He was never happy away from her, and constantly urged her to marry him. But she put him off, first with one protest, then with another. She had no valid excuse — she could no longer complain of his love of gambling, for it seemed to have died entirely away; yet she could not school or control her heart, and her affection for him seemed not only dead, but changed into positive aversion. She shrank from the thought of becoming his wife, and yet, as she was not of a fickle nature, and looked on her plighted word as a sacred thing, she felt that it was almost impossible to rupture for no adequate reason the tacit engagement which had so long bound her to Cyril Horne. How could she tell him that during his long absence she had learned to forget? That she was false and fickle — she who had always declared — that to be faithful was no virtue, merely a necessity, and that no woman worth the name could ever prove false? No; she could not tell him. She could not so condemn herself, and yet it seemed equally impossible to marry him. So she put him off from day to day, and he haunted her like her shadow. In their frequent meetings she noticed many little things that shocked and surprised her, and which she could not remember to have noticed in Cyril, before he went away. What struck her particularly was that he seemed to have lost his memory, so rarely could he recall his words and actions in the olden time, and so unconscious did he seem of the fact that his tastes and opinions had, on most points, undergone a thorough change, and not only so, but he seemed quite unaware that they had ever been different, and when she reminded him, he could only make some lame excuse. Once she asked him whether he had been ill, thinking that that might account for the defects of his memory.

He started at the question, and looked curiously at her,

'Yes, I was very ill at the diggings. I had rheumatic fever, or something of that sort. Once I was left for dead.'

‘Poor fellow! And who nursed you through all that terrible time?'

‘Oh, my mate; a chap called Smith — John Smith.’

‘He must be a very kind and good man to have nursed you so carefully. I hope you did something for him?'

'Oh, yes; I did a great deal for him.'

‘That's well; he deserves all our gratitude.'

'You think so?

'Yes, indeed.'

Then, he is well paid, "for he is well paid that is well satisfied," and he could not be otherwise than pleased at having secured your gratitude.'

'How strangely you talk; what does he know of me, or anyone here, except yourself?'

'Not very much, perhaps, and still a little.'

‘You speak in enigmas. By the way, Cyril, did you see anything of Maurice Grey at the diggings? His wife wrote to me a few weeks back; she has always kept up an occasional correspondence with me since they left, and told me that he had gone.'

‘Who the deuce — l beg your pardon — who is Maurice Grey?'

‘Why, don’t you know? Your memory is indeed, bad. I think sometimes you have lost it altogether. Why, he is the man whom you helped to ruin at cards, who embezzled his employers' money, and whom you begged off.'

‘Oh yes, of course! How stupid of me to forget; and he is in Queensland, you say?’

‘Yes, at the diggings. I forget the name of the place; but the very same that you were at; so you see you might have met him.'

‘I did not,' he said abruptly, and as he spoke his face grew strangely pale and troubled.

‘That's a pity; you might have helped him a little. She always speaks of you with such enthusiastic gratitude.'

‘More than I deserve. And now, Nellie, let us speak of ourselves. How much longer are you going to keep me waiting? I think it is almost time that I received this little hand.'

'There is no hurry.'

‘I think otherwise; after five years' waiting, there can be no excuse for further delay. I think you might as well "marry me out of hand," and get it over.'

'You do not forget your Tennyson, Cyril. You seem to have grown wonderfully fond of quotations.'

'One has plenty of time for reading and thinking in the bush. But, Nellie, dearest, you have not answered my question.'

'What question?'

'When will you marry me? Next week? Next month?’

‘No, no, that is too soon,' she answered desperately, 'wait till — till Christmas.'

‘What, two whole months, you are very hard on me.'

‘The five years will not be up until then, and I have a fancy for waiting the full time.'

He tried to shake this determination, but in vain; indeed she was more inclined to lengthen than shorten the time, and told him so plainly, adding desperately,

‘I want to learn to know you, Cyril; you have become quite a stranger to me. These five years have made a great change in you. You do not seem like the Cyril of old times, that I knew so well.'

‘What do you mean?’ he cried, suddenly starting up. 'Do you intend to insult me? I declare it is too bad. Here I have been wandering all over the face of the earth for five years, undergoing all sorts of trials and privations just to please you, and this is my welcome. You say I am changed. Was it not your wish that I should change?’

‘In some respects, yes— but—'

'Be satisfied then. I have changed, and in more respects than one, but in one thing at least l am not changed — in my love for you; I love you more fondly than ever, and I entreat you to be my wife without further delay. Still, if you insist upon waiting until Christmas, of course I must yield. We will fix our wedding, then, for Christmas morning, and not a day beyond. Do not disappoint me again, Nellie, or you will have much to answer for.'

‘I will not disappoint you,' she said, and as she gave the promise, her heart sank like lead in her breast, and she felt as one might feel who had just signed his own death warrant.

 

 

Chapter II

 

Time flew swiftly by and it was already Christmas Eve.

It is a trite saying that the hours pass swiftly with the happy, while they lag with the sad and sorrowful. Never, however, do they seem to pass so swiftly as when they bring us day by day more near to the dread moment from which every pulse and fibre of our being shrinks. It is thus that the guilty prisoner looks forward to the day of his trial, thus that the condemned one awaits the hour of his execution, and it is thus that the unwilling bride counts the few days and hours which elapse before she enters on a bondage more terrible than death itself, and from which only death can release her.

A dozen times during those two months, Nellie was on the point of breaking off her engagement. As often her own promise — the word never yet broken — prevented her.

'Too late!' she said to herself, 'too late!' And those saddest words in the whole vocabulary of language rang in her ears as she prepared her trousseau and ordered her wedding breakfast. Many women under such circumstances would have retracted their promise, and refused even at the altar to marry a man whom they no longer loved; but Nellie could not do this. She was restrained by her solemn word, on the faith of which she knew that Cyril had gone away five years before, and on the faith of which she believed him to have returned. She could not and would not prove false to him. Better to suffer a little than to show herself weak and fickle, and destroy, in her person, his faith in women. And after all, what was this strange change in her and in Cyril? Was it not the mere effect of time and absence? Had not her heart grown cold and dead, so that it would never love again? — for Cyril's self was his only rival — he who had wooed and won her years before — of him she had no disloyal thought, from him her allegiance had never wandered. But this new Cyril —this man who had returned to claim her — could never move her heart as in the olden time. But then, her heart was dead, and it would never, never wake again, tinder such circumstances it was surely as well that she should try to make his life happy whatever her own might be. Thus she reasoned, and made no effort to avert the fate which she dreaded.

Nellie Francillon was not the only person who found or fancied a change in Cyril Horne. In the years gone by he had been a general favourite, the friend of both sexes of every age. Those who were his equals had sought his society with pleasure; older men had loved to converse with him; little children's faces had brightened at his coming. Always gentle, always kind, always considerate, he seemed to have but one fault — his fatal inherited love of gambling. But Cyril Horne was changed. Men of his own age shirked instead of seeking his society, voting him — spite of his riches — conceited, self-sufficient, and purse-proud; his elders he avoided, styling them 'stupid old buffers;' while the children, after one shy look, knew better than to play hide-and-seek with him, or hunt for lollies in the pockets of his immaculately fitting coat. The change was in little things, too small almost to notice; yet in the aggregate these 'trifles light as air' formed a barrier strong as adamant between him and the friends of his youth.

And yet, strange to say, no man doubted the identity of this impostor, or hinted that he was not the real Cyril. The face, and voice, and carriage, and tricks of manner were all so much like those they remembered of old; he knew so many things 'that none but Cyril could know’ (and which had been gleaned from a careful study of Cyril's papers), that to doubt him would have appeared real heresy. And so they thought him changed, and not for the better.

 

 

                                              ~           ~           ~          ~          ~

 

It was Christmas Eve, and the mock Cyril breathed more freely.

‘In twenty-four hours she will be mine, fast tied and bound; then I can defy Fate. Even should I be discovered, or suspected, it will be of no consequence. With her money and what I have contrived to save we shall be very comfortable in another hemisphere. Yet what can be discovered or suspected? I am perfectly safe, even if his body should be found and recognised. I can grieve for the lost John Smith; but after all I was a fool not to see him safely underground. I have often felt that since it would have made "assurance doubly sure:'' for dead men tell no tales. But I'm safe enough; and this time to-morrow she will be mine. It is lucky she pleased me so well, otherwise I might have had a difficulty in shaking her off; but she's a pretty girl, and I'm really very fond of her. I like those quiet manners. Sometimes I fancy that she suspects; — but no, it is not possible. At any rate, when I am once her husband, whatever she may find out, she will never, betray me.'

 

                                              ~           ~           ~          ~          ~

 

It was Christmas Eve, and the bride was in her chamber. She could not refuse to please her young bridesmaids, and try on her wedding dress, and yet with how sad and heavy a heart she arrayed herself in the trailing folds of silk and satin, and bent her head to receive the graceful crown and veil.

'How pretty you look, Nellie,' said one of the merry girls, 'it is a pity one can't be married often. The dress is so becoming.'

‘But you can be married several times, Clara. Remember the lady who engraved on her wedding-ring —

"If I survive,

 I will have five,"

 

and there are lots of women in America who have been divorced from half-a-dozen husbands.'

‘Oh, I did not mean anything half so dreadful as that. I should not like to be a female Bluebeard. But the dress is pretty, is it not?’

Not only was the dress pretty, but the wearer too, and the unspoken pain gnawing at her heart imparted only an additional charm of tender gravity to her sweet face.

 

                                              ~           ~           ~          ~          ~

 

It was Christmas Eve on board the steamer Tararua, on her journey from Melbourne to Port Chalmers. She ought to have made port early that morning, but inconsequence of sundry trifling, but vexatious delays, she threatened to be fully twenty-four hours late, if not more. The passengers, according to their nature a, were making the best of their misfortune, and preparing for a jovial night at sea, or else walking the deck in impotent anger, be moaning their broken engagements, and assailing the captain whenever he appeared, with a hail of stormy questions.

One man, to whom the delay might be of vital importance, more serious than death itself, alone gave no words of his impatience, but stood at the break of the poop, with his dark eyes fixed earnestly on the grey outline of the misty coasts and as the officer of the watch passed him, he caught his sleeve and detained him for a moment.

'Do you think we shall be in to-night, Jones? It is a matter of great importance to me. I should have been in Dunedin weeks ago, but for an endless number of petty hindrances, and something warns me that to-morrow will prove a crisis in my fate. I dare say you laugh at such presentiment. But no, you are a sailor, and they are proverbially superstitious; and so tell me the truth like a good fellow. Shall we be in to-night?'

‘Not to-night, Mr Horne, but early in the morning; we ought to make the Heads about six o'clock.'

‘You are certain?’

'As certain as any man can be on this treacherous element. Of course, we might be delayed again for a few hours, but it is not likely.' The officer bowed and returned to his tramp, tramp, along the deck. Cyril was once more alone. Yes, it was Cyril, very much alive, on his way back to claim his own. He had a very shrewd suspicion of the impostor whom he would find masquerading in his place, but he had not the faintest idea of the extent to which his treachery had gone, and that Nellie herself had fallen a victim to his fell designs. Had he known it, how desperate would have been his anxiety, how impotent his anger, but all alike useless, for man cannot control the elements, and the strongest ship is a mere cockle-shell, tossed about by the winds and the waves.

 

 

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