Chapter 22

AT LAST.

The breeze was dead, The leaf lay without whispering in the tree; We were together. How, where, what matter? Somewhere in a dream, Drifting, slow drifting down a wizard stream. --The Wanderer.

"It is just as well," said Du Meresq, laughing, "we have not got to take him back again. The experiment of three in that birchen bark is too expensive to repeat; and we could not throw him over as a Jonah, since he is the only one of us who can swim."

"I ought never to have come! And, now we can think of wordly things again, only fancy what a rage papa will be in about it all. It is a curious fact, Bertie, the very last time we were out together, an accident made us late--at the tobogganing party, you know."

They had entered the station, which appeared perfectly deserted. The last official had gone up with Lascelles' train. A fire, however, was still burning, and the coal-box only half empty.

Du Meresq threw the coals on the waning embers, which responded with a cheerful fizz to the needed aliment, and then began unlacing Cecil's wet boots as she sat before the fire.

These two had often been alone together without the slightest embarrassment, but now, perhaps from the reaction, and being a little unstrung, she felt a most distressing sensation of it, besides which the anti-climax of his occupation after her overwrought anticipations of their mutual fate, gave her an hysterical inclination to a peal of laughter.

He did not speak, and silence was too oppressive to be endured, so she cast about desperately for a topic of conversation. The _entourage_ was not particularly suggestive,--four white-washed walls and the chair she was sitting on comprised the furniture. Clearly she could not take in ideas with her eyes, which, indeed, were fixed with a magnetic persistence on the mathematically straight parting of Bertie's back hair, which would scarcely furnish subject for remark.

"There go a ruined pair of Balmorals," said he, placing them in the fender. "Your stockings are wet through, too; why don't you take them off?"

"I prefer them wet," said Cecil, rather scandalized.

"Shall I go and walk about outside while you dry them?" asked he, with a smile.

"Yes, do. Walk away altogether if you like."

"But you might drown yourself going home alone, and haunt my remaining days.

'They made her a grave too cold and damp For a soul so warm and true, And all night long, by a fire-fly lamp, She paddles her white canoe,'"--

quoted Bertie, jestingly.

Cecil disliked his manner, and felt irritated; but there she was, imprisoned, bootless, in her chair, while those appendages smoked damply in the fender.

"Dear me," she said, impatiently, "will that wind never drop! When shall we be able to start, I wonder?"

"Don't you think we are more comfortable here?" said he, lazily. "Remember what a row there'll be when we get home."

"Yes, you always get me into scrapes. Why did you bother me into this idiotic expedition?"

"Didn't you ask me to take you?" provokingly. "I am sure I understood you wished to come."

Cecil coloured angrily, and then burst out laughing.

"I can't afford to quarrel with you in this disgusting desolation, it would be like the two men in the lighthouse; but remember, sir, it goes down to your account when I am restored to my friends."

"The captive should not use threats. I am not intimidated. What should now forbid that I whirl you away on the next car to _Ne Yock_, and marry you right off? and then you would have to obey me ever afterwards."

"Bertie, you forget yourself," with great dignity and rising colour.

"I can't help my unselfish nature. I never do think of myself. Seriously, Cecil, would it not be a good plan?"

"I hardly understand how you would effect it in broad daylight against my will."

"Nothing more easy. I shouldn't put you into the train till it was just going, and I am sure you would have too much self-respect to make a disturbance. If you did, I would point to my forehead, and shake my head expressively. Then, probably, the guard would assist me. After we were married, I should shut you up for a time to reconcile you to the situation, and by degrees, if you pleased me, I would allow you more liberty."

"Suppose I ran away and never returned."

"Oh, you would always be watched, I should, perhaps, let you get a little distance to encourage you, and then bring you back again."

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 scrapes 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 flashing 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 asseveration, "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 worship 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 passed 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 shore 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 shell 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 shell 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 passed 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."