CHAPTER XVII
CECILIA PAYS HER DEBTS
CECILIA rose to meet a new day, each moment of which the coming years failed to obliterate from her memory. In the first light hours she had taken her happiness in her two hands and killed it, deliberately, for the sake of the woman she loved. She had decided to part with Gilbert Speid.
She hid nothing from herself and made no concealment. She did not pretend that she could offer herself up willingly, or with any glow of the emotional flame of renunciation, for she had not that temperament which can make the sacrificial altar a bed of inverted luxury. She neither fell on her knees, nor prayed, nor called upon Heaven to witness her deed, because there was only one thing which she cared it should witness, and that was Lady Eliza’s peace of mind. Nor, while purchasing this, did she omit to count the cost. The price was a higher one than she could afford, for, when it was paid, there would be nothing left.
The thing which had culminated but yesterday had been growing for many months, and only those who wait for an official stamp to be put upon events before admitting their existence will suppose that Cecilia was parting with what she had scarcely had time to find necessary. She was parting with everything, and she knew it. The piteousness of her aunt’s unquestionably real suffering was such that she determined it must end. That someone should suffer was inevitable, and the great gallantry in her rose up and told her that she could bear more than could Lady Eliza.
What she could scarcely endure to contemplate was Gilbert’s trouble, and his almost certain disbelief in the genuineness of her love. In the eyes of the ordinary person her position was correct enough. Her engagement had been disapproved of by her natural guardian, and she had, in consequence, broken it. This did not affect her in any way, for she was one to whom more than the exterior of things was necessary. What did affect her was that, without so much as the excuse of being forbidden to marry her lover, she was giving him his heart’s desire and then snatching it away. But, as either he or Lady Eliza had to be sacrificed, she determined that it should be Speid, though she never hesitated to admit that she loved him infinitely the better of the two. He was young, and could mend his life again, whereas, for her aunt, there was no future which could pay her for any present loss. And she had had so little. She understood that there was more wrapped up in Lady Eliza’s misery than she could fathom, and that, whatever the cause of the enigma might be, it was something vital to her peace.
The hours of the day dragged on. She did not know whether to dread their striking or to long for the sound, for she had told her aunt that she wished to see her lover, and tell him the truth with her own lips, and a message had been sent to Whanland to summon him to Morphie in the afternoon. There had been a curious interview between the two women, and Lady Eliza had struggled between her love for her niece and her hatred of the marriage she contemplated. She, also, had chastened her soul in the night-season, and told herself that she would let no antipathy of her own stand in the way of her happiness; but her resolution had been half-hearted, and, unable to school her features or her words, she had but presented a more vivid picture of distress. She had not deceived Cecilia, nor, to tell the truth, had Cecilia entirely succeeded in deceiving her; but her own feelings had made the temptation to shut her eyes too great for her complete honesty of purpose.
Cecilia had given her reasons for her change of intention very simply, saying merely, that, since their discussion of yesterday, she had seen the inadvisability of the marriage. To all questions she held as brave a front as she could, only demanding that she should see Gilbert alone, and tell him her decision with no intervention on the part of Lady Eliza. To be in a position to demand anything was an unusual case for a girl of those days, but the conditions of life at Morphie were unusual, both outwardly and inwardly, and the two women had been for years as nearly equals as any two can be, where, though both are rich in character, one is complicated in temperament and the other primitive. It was on Cecilia’s side that the real balance of power dipped, however unconsciously to herself the scale went down.
The task before her almost took her courage away, for she had, first, to combat Speid, when her whole heart was on his side, and then to part from him—not perhaps, finally, in body, for she was likely to meet him at any time, but in soul and in heart. One part of her work she would try, Heaven helping her, to do, but the other was beyond her. Though she would never again feel the clasp of his arm, nor hear from his lips the words that had made yesterday the crown of her life, she would be his till her pulses ceased to beat. Much and terribly as she longed to see him, dread of their parting was almost stronger than the desire; but fear lest he should suppose her decision rested on anything about his parentage which Lady Eliza had told her kept her strong. Never should he think that. Whatever reasons she had given her aunt, he should not go without understanding her completely, and knowing the truth down to the very bed-rock. She shed no tears. There would be plenty of time for tears afterwards, she knew, when there would be nothing for her to do, no crisis to meet, and nothing to be faced but daily life.
Gilbert started for Morphie carrying the note she had sent him in his pocket. He had read and re-read it many times since its arrival that morning had filled his whole being with gloom. The idea of his presenting himself, full of hope, to meet the decree which awaited him was so dreadful that she had added to her summons a few sentences telling him that he must be prepared for bad news. She had written no word of love, for she felt that, until she had explained her position to him, such words could only be a mockery.
He stood waiting in the room into which he had been ushered, listening for her step. He suspected that he had been summoned to meet Lady Eliza, but he did not mean to leave Morphie without an endeavour to see Cecilia herself. When she entered he was standing quietly by the mantelpiece. She looked like a ghost in her white dress, and under her eyes the fingers of sleeplessness had traced dark marks. He sprang forward, and drew her towards him.
‘No, no!’ she cried, throwing out her hands in front of her.
Then, as she saw his look, she faltered and dropped them, letting his arms encircle her. The intoxication of his nearness was over her, and the very touch of his coat against her face was rest, after the struggle of the hours since she had seen him.
She drew herself away at last.
‘What does that message mean?’ he asked, as he let her go.
She had thought of so many things to say to him, she had meant to tell him gently, to choose her words; but, now he was beside her, she found that everything took flight, and only the voice of her own sorrow remained.
‘Oh, Gilbert—Gilbert!’ she sighed, ‘there are stronger things than you or I! Yesterday we were so happy, but it is over, and we must not think of each other any more!’
‘Cecilia!’ he cried, aghast.
‘It is true.’
‘What are you saying?’ he exclaimed, almost roughly. ‘What did you promise me? You said that nothing should change you, and I believed it!’
‘Nothing has—nothing can—but, for all that, you must give me up. It is for my aunt’s sake, Gilbert. If you only saw her you would understand what I have gone through. It is no choice of mine. How can you think it is anything to me but despair?’
Speid’s heart sank, and the thing whose shadow had risen as he locked up the jewels and looked at his mother’s face on the wall loomed large again. He guessed the undercurrent of her words.
‘She has not forbidden me to marry you,’ continued Cecilia, ‘but she has told me it will break her heart if I do, and I believe it is true. What is the use of hiding anything from you? There is something in the background that I did not know; but if you imagine that it can make any difference to me, you are not the man I love, not the man I thought. You believe me? You understand?’
‘I understand—I believe,’ he said, turning away his head. ‘Ah, my God!’
‘But you do not doubt me—myself?’ she cried, her heart wrung with fear.
He turned and looked at her. Reproach, suffering, pain unutterable were in his eyes; but there was absolute faith too.
‘But must it be, Cecilia? I am no passive boy to let my life slip between my fingers without an effort. Let me see Lady Eliza. Let me make her understand what she is doing in dividing you and me. I tell you I will see her!’
‘She will not forbid it, for she has told me to act for myself and leave her out of my thoughts; but she is broken-hearted. It is piteous to see her face. There is something more than I know at the root of this trouble—about you—and it concerns her. I have asked her, and though she admitted I was right, she forbade me to speak of it. You would have pitied her if you had seen her. I cannot make her suffer—I cannot, even for you.’
‘And have you no pity for me?’ he broke out.
The tears she had repressed all day rushed to her eyes. She sat down and hid her face. There was a silence as she drew out her handkerchief, pressing it against her wet eyelashes.
‘Think of what I owe her,’ she continued, forcing her voice into its natural tone—‘think what she has done for me! Everything in my life that has been good has come from her, and I am the only creature she has. How can I injure her? I thought that, at Whanland, we should hardly have been divided, but it seems that we could never meet if I were there. She has told me that.’
He struck the back of the chair by which he stood with his clenched fist.
‘And so it is all over, and I am to go?’ he cried. ‘I cannot, Cecilia—I will not accept it! I will not give you up! You may push me away now, but I will wait for ever, for you are mine, and I shall get you in the end!’
She smiled sadly.
‘You may waste your life in thinking of that,’ she answered. ‘To make it afresh is the wisest thing for you to do, and you can do it. There is the difference between you and my aunt. It is nearly over for her, and she has had nothing; but you are young—you can remake it in time, if you will.’
‘I will not. I will wait.’
He gazed at her, seeing into her heart and finding only truth there.
‘You will learn to forget me,’ says the flirt and jilt, raising chaste eyes to heaven, and laying a sisterly hand on the shoulder of the man she is torturing, while she listens, with satisfaction, to his hot and miserable denial.
The only comfort in such cases is that he generally does so. But with Cecilia there was no false sentiment, nor angling for words to minister to her vanity. He knew that well. Thoroughly did he understand the worth of what he was losing. He thought of the plans he had made only last night, of the flowers to be planted, of the rooms to be transformed, of the horse to be bought, of the jewels he had chosen for her from the iron box. One was lying now in a drawer of his writing-table, ready to be brought to her, and last night he had dreamed that he was fastening it round her neck. That visionary act would have to suffice him.
He came across the room and sat down by her, putting his arm about her. They were silent for a few moments, looking together into the gulf of separation before them. Life had played both of them an evil trick, but there was one thing she had been unable to do, and that was to shake their faith in each other. Cecilia had told her lover that he should make his own afresh, and had spoken in all honesty, knowing that, could she prevent his acting on her words by the holding up of her finger, she would not raise it an inch; but for all that, she did not believe he would obey her. Something in herself, which also had its counterpart in him, could foretell that.
To struggle against her decision was, as Speid knew, hopeless, for it was based upon what it would lower him in her eyes to oppose. To a certain extent he saw its force, but he would not have been the man he was, nor, indeed, a man of any kind, had he not felt hostile to Lady Eliza. He paid small attention to the assurance that, behind her obvious objection to his own history, there lurked a hidden personal complication, for the details of such an all-pervading ill as the ruin she had made for him were, to him, indifferent. He would wait determinedly. Crauford Fordyce ran through his mind, for, though his trust in Cecilia was complete, it had annoyed him to hear that he was in Kaims. Evidently the young man was of a persevering nature, and, however little worldly advantages might impress her, he knew that these things had an almost absolute power over parents and guardians.
‘You told me to remake my life,’ he said, ‘and I have answered that I will not. Oh, Cecilia! I cannot tell you to do that! Do you know, it makes me wretched to think that Fordyce is here again. Forgive me for saying it. Tell me that you can never care for him. I do not ask to know anything more. Darling, do not be angry.’
He raised her face and looked into it. There was no anger, but a little wan ray of amusement played round her mouth.
‘You need not be afraid; there is nothing in him to care for. His only merits are his prospects, and Heaven knows they do not attract me,’ she replied.
The clock on the mantelpiece struck, and the two looked up. Outside on the grass the shadows of the grazing sheep were long. His arm tightened round her.
‘I cannot go yet,’ he said. ‘A little longer, Cecilia—a few minutes—and then the sooner it is over the better.’
The room grew very still, and, through the open window, came the long fluting of a blackbird straying in the dew. All her life the sound carried Cecilia back to that hour. There seemed nothing more to be spoken but that last word that both were dreading.
‘This is only torment,’ she said at last—‘go now.’
An overpowering longing rushed through her to break the web that circumstances had woven between them, to take what she had renounced, to bid him stay, to trust to chance that time would make all well. How could she let him go when it lay in her hands to stave off the moment that was coming? She had reached the turning-point, the last piece of her road at which she could touch hands with happiness.
He was holding her fast.
‘I am going,’ he said, in a voice like the voice of a stranger—someone a long way off.
She could not speak. There were a thousand things which, when he was gone, she knew that she must blame herself for not saying, but they would not stay with her till her lips could frame them.
‘Perhaps we shall sometimes see each other,’ he whispered, ‘but God knows if I could bear it.’
They clung together in a maze of kisses and incoherent words. When they separated, she stood trembling in the middle of the room. He looked back at her from the threshold, and turned again.
‘Gilbert! Gilbert!’ she cried, throwing her arms round his neck.
Then they tore themselves apart, and the door closed between them and upon everything that each had come to value in life.
When the sound of his horse’s feet had died, she stayed on where he had left her. One who is gone is never quite gone while we retain the fresh impression of his presence. She knew that, and she was loth to leave a place which seemed still to hold his personality. She sat on, unconscious of time, until a servant came into shut the windows, and then she went downstairs and stood outside the front-door upon the flags. The blackbird was still on the grass whistling, but at the sudden appearance of her figure in the doorway, he flew, shrieking in rich gutturals, into cover.