Chapter 15

AN ENIGMATICAL LETTER.

'Tis Spring, bright Spring, and bluebirds sing.

I was monarch supreme in my cloudland. I was master of fate in that proud land; I would not endure That a grief without cure, A love that could end, Or a false hearted friend, Should dwell for an instant in cloudland. --Mackay.

Nothing but rain, pouring rain, for the next few days, washing the walls of snow down the unmetaled streets, a very slough of despond to all beasts of burden. Once more the sight of green grass relieved the eye, weary of the one monotonous hue it had rested on for weeks, and still it rained as if determined not to stop till it had fulfilled its mission, and dissolved every sooty patch that in chilly spots still obstinately lingered.

At last the clouds parted, the sun came out, and Cecil, regardless of mud, and impatient of long confinement, started off for a gallop on "Wings."

On her way she met the Post-office orderly with letters, who stopped and gave her one. It isn't such a very easy thing to read your correspondence on horseback, with the wind catching the sheets, and the sun shining through the paper, mixing the writing on the other side with the one you are reading. Still less feasible is it in a crowded street; so, though Cecil at once recognised the handwriting of Du Meresq, it had to be consigned to the saddle-pocket till the traffic was threaded, and she had entered on a quiet corduroy road by the lake. Then she opened it with a flattering feeling of expectation, and was half-disappointed at its calm commencement.

Bertie, with his usual dependence on her sympathy, began by telling her that he had been able to make a temporary arrangement, which had squared things for the present. "But," he continued, "the evil day must be no longer deferred. I will try and find out every shilling I owe. It will be more than I expect, I dare say, yet my commission ought to cover it, and, altogether, I shall probably save enough out of the fire to be a small capitalist in Australia. Much as I hate it, I must cut the service, for if my debts were paid to-morrow I should have just as many in two years. Dearest Cecil, I know you do not exactly hate me; I wish I were more worthy of the affection of such a dear, true-hearted girl. Will you trust me, Cecil, and believe in me a little longer, even if I say no more at present? I don't think your father likes me; I wish now he did. Let me see your dear handwriting soon. I believe you have more head than any girl I know, and more heart, too; and no one can appreciate your sense and affection more than yours, ever devotedly,

"A. Du MERESQ."

Cecil rode thoughtfully on, as she turned the letter over in her mind, trying to penetrate Bertie's meaning.

"Why does he not speak out more plainly?" thought she. "He will never be any richer unless he marries me, so it is useless waiting for that. I will not, any how, be in too great a hurry to understand him this time. If his debts are paid, and he leaves the army soon, he must say more--or nothing." And at that chance Cecil turned rather pale, and giving Wings his head, who had been fretting some time, started off at a good refreshing galop. They were on the race course now, and, excited by the turf, he gave her quite enough to do to hold him.

"What fun station-life must be," thought she. "Always riding in a wild, strange country,--birds, animals, plants, scenery, and ideas, all different and unhackneyed. Canada is well enough, but it mimics England too much, and is fifty years behind it." Before she got home, she had composed a clear-headed and sympathetic, but not at all lover-like, letter to Bertie, who was disappointed at the tone of it; and--"as the nymph flies, the swain pursues"--he wrote a much more affectionate one back, and then Cecil suffered her thoughts to take a more decided shape, and they dwelt especially on a "lodge in some vast wilderness" of her colonial paradise,--picturesque, but not luxurious--an exquisite climate, and Bertie combining the life of a happy hunter and enterprising colonist, returning to sup on a kangaroo steak, and to wake up to another day of movement and adventure.

Cecil passed a great deal of her time in this ideal log-house, sometimes garrisoning and defending it, during Bertie's absence, against a war party of savages, for danger was by no means excluded from her scheme of felicity, except perhaps one, like St. Senaun's isle, her--

"Sacred sod, Should ne'er by Woman's feet be trod."

In such dreams and the companionship of Bluebell, who gave no further offence, now that she had learnt self-command and the necessity of keeping her feelings to herself, the spring advanced apace, and the first bluebird, alighting on the garden rails, was descried with a shriek of ecstacy by Lola.

The children, who unlike their elders, had had no gaieties, or sleighing and skating parties, to wile away the rigours of the snow king's reign, were emancipated from dulness by the approach of summer. Their lessons could be carried on in the garden; and, one day, Lola, who had shut her eyes while repeating to herself an irregular verb, saw, on opening them, a jewelled humming-bird balancing itself in the air on a level with her hat, and apparently inspecting that head-dress with wonder and curiosity, after which it flashed off and dived into a flower.

The garden was alive with fairy wonders; wild canaries came to it--pure saffron, except their black-flecked wings,--the soldier-bird, so bold and scarlet,--robins were a drug in the market, and only tolerated for their tameness and vocal powers. But none could weary of the bluebirds, whose azure took so vivid a hue in flight, from the sun shining through their wings.

Then there were excursions to the Humber woods in search of wild flowers, all new, rare, and delicate,--too much so to bear the pressure of eager hands, for they seldom survived the transit home. Often Cecil, Bluebell, Miss Prosody, and the children drove there in a waggonette, with a luncheon-basket, and spent the whole day in the golden woods, or rowing on the Humber river. Cecil's craze at this time was to paddle her own canoe; and occasionally Lilla Tremaine, who had become pretty intimate with her, joined the aquatic party.

The Colonel had rather demurred at first, thinking there was a _soupçon_ of fastness and independence in it. Visions of possible anglers and unchaperoned river flirtations disturbed his mind; but eventually he satisfied himself, by requiring Miss Prosody to be always of the party, who followed with the children and a boatman in a flat-bottomed tub.

On one of these occasions they had been pulling about the beautiful bends of the river. Cecil, paddling her canoe, with a trolling-line out at the end of it, and Bluebell rowing a boat, while Lilla fished with a very especial spoon-bait of her own devising. Despite, however, the seductions of the gaudy red cloth and tassel of long hair from a deer's tail, not a fish impaled itself on the circle of formidable hooks prepared for its reception, and the mid-day sun began to dart fiercely on them.

"All nature speaks of luncheon and repose," cried Lilla, beginning to wind up her line, after the frequent weed had repeatedly mocked her hopes with its dull, dead pull. "Let us moor the fleet under this overhanging fir-tree, Cecil; it makes quite a bower."

"It feels like thunder, the fish don't bite, and the mosquitoes do," assented Cecil. "We must signal for the Infantry, though, who are also the Commissariat."

Bluebell tied a silk handkerchief to her oar, and waved it wildly.

"I wonder if that old nuisance enjoys herself," speculated Miss Tremaine, as Miss Prosody's prim visage appeared in the stern of the other boat. "So like you English, always carrying your propriety about in the shape of a foil."

"Don't abuse our treasure," said Cecil, demurely. "Ask papa what he thinks of Miss Prosody."

"I should get a more impartial opinion from Estelle and Fleda, who are always being kept in and bullied."

"Well, I really think the other children are enough for to-day," said Cecil. "What a fuss Freddy made to get after Bluebell into that tituppy little boat of yours."

"Yes, and you would all have been beseeching him not to till now, if I had not taken him by the scruff of the neck and dropped him into the other!"

"Well, dear," said Cecil, languidly; "we don't all possess your strength of mind and biceps. What have you got there, Lola?" as the boatman deftly shot the other boat under the overhanging branches.

"Water-lily leaves for plates! See now stiff and shining they are, and washed up so clean."

"Then, I suppose we must not use these wooden ones, my fanciful fairy?"

"Don't be so foolish, Lola!" snapped in Miss Prosody. "You'll spoil your frock; throw them away!"

"We can put them over the platters," said Cecil. "Hand out the edibles, Bluebell. What have you got?"

"Here's a pie, a cake, a tart, croquettes; no knives, about a pound of salt, and some butter in the last stage of dissolution."

"No knives!" cried Miss Prosody. "There must be!" plunging desperately into the basket.

"That is more untidy than a lily-leaf plate," remarked Lilla.

"No, positively not," said the governess. "How very remiss of Bowers, particularly as I observe he has provided forks!"

The children looked disappointed. They had been reckoning on the phenomenon of Miss Prosody, subjugated by hunger, eating pie with her fingers.

"Here be a knife!" said the boatman, wiping on his trousers the blade of his clasp-knife.

"Let as put a polish on," said Lilla, laughing at Cecil's face; and, jumping on to the bank, thrust it several times into the earth. The children, tired of their cramped position in the boat, wished to dine on shore; but it was thickly wooded, and there was no clear space; so Freddy was wedged into a fork of the tree, and Lola swung on another bough, where they chattered like two pies, handing down a basket on a string when they required fresh supplies.

Cecil lay on the bear-skin in her canoe, with her hat over her face, declaring it too hot to eat, but consuming, under protest, a croquette occasionally tossed in for her sustenance. Miss Prosody, quite genial and urbane after luncheon, was deep in consultation with the boatman as to the locality of certain ferns she proposed spudding up for her pet rockery at "The Maples," where her lighter hours were diurnally spent in washing and tending her spoils.

"I suppose this is all very sylvan and jolly," said Lilla, handing the remnants of the refection to the boatman; "yet somehow, candidly, it's slow."

"Possibly," said Cecil, "it is the absence of the other sex that makes you find it so?"

"Perhaps," said Lilla, frankly, with furtive enjoyment of Miss Prosody's stiffening face. "Well, ladies, I should like my little smoke; can I offer anybody one? You will find them very mild,"--and she drew forth a neat case of Latakia cigarettes, selected one, and, striking a match on the heel of her boot, lit it.

"Of course, if you choose to be so unlady-like, we cannot prevent you," said the governess, icily.

"Dear me!" said Lilla, innocently, "I never dreamt of your objecting; for I have heard you tell Colonel Rolleston, when he has been smoking, how fond you were of it in the open air."

"Colonel Rolleston would most decidedly disapprove of _your_ doing it."

"He does, I believe, of most of my actions; but he is very kind to me all the same. Look at this wretch of a mosquito actually stinging through my glove. I'll just touch him up with the red ash of my cigar."

Miss Prosody knew of old that Lilla was incorrigible, and, having no hope of support from Cecil in any attempt to snub her, resolved to discountenance the proceeding by going away, and summoned the children from their tree, who were quite ready for a fresh start. The girls declared it was too hot to move. Lilla continued to puff away lazily, the zest rather gone now there was nobody to be shocked at it. Bluebell, mingling her voice with the birds, was singing the "Danube River," while Cecil, with shut eyes, lay in her canoe, and gave herself up to the dreamy music, till, aroused by its sudden cessation, she looked up, and saw a boat half checked in its speed, and Major Fane and Jack Vavasour doffing their billy-cock hats.

Cecil's return bow was freezing, and Major Fane, who had rested irresolutely a moment on his oars, shot the boat on with vigorous pulls. She felt half penitent as she saw his discomfited face, but her coldness arose from having become alive to a possible danger.

Colonel Rolleston had lately very frequently asked him to dinner, even when there was no one else, and he always fell to her share to entertain. Now Major Fane was a very good match in every way,--quite what parents and guardians would approve; so, thought Cecil,--"I can't have any mistakes about that, or it will only settle papa against Bertie."

"Did you summon those two from this vasty deep, Lilla?" cried she. "But, I forgot; I don't think either of them sail under your flag."

"My colours are too rakish and privateerish for Major Fane; and as for Jack, I am afraid he has the bad taste to prefer Bluebells to Lilies."

"If you think him worth your acceptance," said Bluebell "I will make you a present of him."

"He may be yours to keep, my dear, but not to give away. At present I am not 'on for matrimony,' and, to flirt with, I don't know any one better fun than Bertie Du Meresq."

The other girls were both too conscious to reply to this audacious remark, and after awhile they resumed fishing, Lilla's gaudy bait still unsuccessful, though Cecil had landed one or two pike. Bluebell grew tired of rowing steadily to keep her companion's line extended, and persuaded her to wind it up; then Lilla took the sculls, and they fell into conversation.

"Were you at that tobogganing party where Captain Du Meresq hurt his ankle?" asked Bluebell, diligently examining the corolla of a water-lily.

"Why?" was the counter inquiry.

"Because I never heard how it happened."

"How was that?" said Lilla, launching into narrative. At the close of it she said,--"Cecil pulled him through that time. I shouldn't have thought nursing much in her line; but she was very hard hit, you know, and I rather wondered Bertie didn't propose before he left so suddenly. Very likely he did though."

Bluebell's eyes opened in horror at this unpalatable suggestion. "What _are_ you dreaming of, Lilla?" gasped she. "Cecil! why she looks upon him as an uncle or something."

"Oh, Bluebell, you blind little bat, it would be as well if you looked upon him 'as an uncle or something.'"

But the other sat aghast and speechless. Lily glanced at her sympathetically.

"Well, perhaps he mayn't care for Cecil. He has been talking nonsense to you, too, I see, as he has to us all three, for that matter. I feel so angry about it, I have a great mind to tell you all he said to _me_."

"I don't want to hear," said her companion, coldly; "nor do I at all agree with you about Cecil"

"All right," returned the other. "Only remember he can't afford to marry, whatever he may have pretended to you--not but what that subject is about the last it ever occurs to him to enter upon."

Bluebell at first utterly refused to receive this intolerable suggestion into her mind. Lilla must be inventing--in love with him herself, and trying to make mischief. Nothing should induce her to believe it. How irritating she was, too, with that knowing, quizzing expression in her face!

So when Cecil, tired of solitude, proposed coming into their boat, Bluebell eagerly took possession of the canoe, and went off on an independent paddle, ostensibly to look for Miss Prosody.