CHAPTER VIII.

THE BROKEN CIRCLE.

Sybil who was clever with her pencil, made up quite a collection of sketches from her portfolio, a pleasant labour of love, for Denzil to take with him, as a souvenir of herself and their beloved Cornwall, and skilfully the girl's able hand and artistic eye had reproduced the wondrous stone avenues of Dartmoor and Merivale, the Stone Pillar of St. Colomb, the Cliff Castles of Treryn, Tintagel and elsewhere, with many a pretty and peaceful cottage scene.

Preparations for her husband's journey, and more than all, the Indian outfit of Denzil, luckily occupied the attention of Constance for a time; thus her hands and those of Sybil were fully employed, and the minds of both had no leisure to brood over the coming separation.

Weary of the monotony of life at the villa, great was the delight of old weather-beaten Dick Braddon, to "be off" as he said, "to see the world once more with the master," whom he loved only second perhaps to Denzil, whose free frank bearing charmed the veteran, who averred that he was exactly like what his father was, when he joined the Cornish Light Infantry, a cherry-cheeked ensign, long ago in America.

But the hour of separation drew near, when both father and son were to leave Porthellick, and depart each upon their long watery journey;--the former to America, and the latter to what seemed the other end of the world--India; and the heart of Constance began to sink in spite of herself.

"Oh, Richard," she whispered once, with her soft face nestling in her husband's neck, while his protecting arm went kindly round her; "the greatest joy on earth is to possess a child--the greatest woe to lose it! The loss of our parents we may, and must, in the course of time anticipate; but the loss of our children--never!"

"But Denzil will return, Conny--you would not have the boy tied to your apron-strings, like Sybil?" urged Richard, laughing to cheer and rouse her; but, nevertheless, the rank, title and fair fortune now before them all, the mother's anxious heart foreboded sorrow in the future; and now came the last night her boy was to sleep under his father's roof, ere he was to go forth into the world--forth like a branch torn from its parent stem.

When all were in slumber that night, poor Constance stole in to watch her Denzil as he slept. The feeble rays of the night-lamp played on the features of her boy, and on the glitter of a laced scarlet-coat and gold epaulettes that hung on the pier glass. With the vanity natural to youth, he had been contemplating himself in his Regimental finery ere he went to repose, and his bullock-trunk and overland, lettered for "India," were among the first things that caught her eye, bringing more home to her heart the fact of his departure.

He was still hers!

To-morrow he should be far away from her, out on the great and stirring highway of life--her petted boy no longer; and smiles, like ripples upon shining water, seemed to spread over the smooth face of the sleeping lad, even as the tears gathered in the eyes, and prayer in the heart of the mother who watched him for a time, with her hands clasped, and stole away with many a backward glance, thinking how lonely she should be when that hour on the morrow came.

And this tall and handsome lad--this young soldier going forth to carry the Queen's colours in the distant East, was once her "baby boy," the child she had borne, nursed and nurtured. She had a sweet and sad, yet proud and joyous consciousness in this. Had he been weakly, deformed or crippled, she should have loved him all the same; but then, thank God! her Denzil was so handsome.

Often in far-away lands, on weary marches, in comfortless tents and rickety bungalows, on the banks of the Sutlej, or amid hostile Sikhs and Afghans, would he dream of the soft and loving face that had been bent in silence over his--the face he never more might see, save in those kind visions that God sends in sleep, to soothe--it may be, to sadden and to warn us.

"No child can ever know how dearly its parents love it--how they suffer in its illness, loss or departure," whispered Constance to herself; "still," she thought upbraidingly, "I left my poor father to sorrow in his humble home at Montreal--but then it was with a husband, so dear and true!"

The child that is ill or absent, is always valued the most; so poor Sybil was almost forgotten by her mother for the time. A few hours more, and both husband and son had left her in tears, to separate in London, each to pursue his own journey.

Of Richard's ultimate intentions, Denzil and Sybil were to be left in ignorance, and also of the object and purport of his absence. So Constance was left with her daughter only by her side.

The poor mother's heart felt as if thrust back upon herself now, for she was the mistress of a great family secret, which, as yet, she could not share even with Sybil.

So the long dreaded "to-morrow," had come, and other morrows followed, and Constance began to feel herself most sadly alone. Often she stole into the well-known room to kiss the pillow on which her Denzil's cheek had rested; to weep over the bed as if a death had been there, and not the departure of a gallant boy full of hope and life; and on each occasion as she lingered there, she strove to pourtray in fancy his face, as she last saw him, sleeping all unconscious that she hovered near; and with a wild but loving presentiment and hope that he would again occupy it some day, she kept his room intact, exactly as he had left it; his books, his fencing foils on those particular shelves, his old hat stuck round with fishing flies, on that particular peg where he was wont to hang it; his rods and guns, in yonder corner; though every detail, such as these, reminded her of him more vividly, fed her grief and roused the intense longing for his presence and return to her arms again.

"India--India?" she would say half aloud when communing with herself; "it may be ten years of separation. Ten years! Oh--no, never, surely! With my Richard's great influence as a peer of the realm, that must never be permitted. In ten years what changes must inevitably happen; who may be alive then, and who dead? Sybil should then be seven-and-twenty--married perhaps--and to whom?--with children it may be--my poor innocent Sybil! Oh no; three years at the utmost, and Denzil shall be again by his mamma's side!"

So the lonely Constance pondered, hoped and lovingly spun out like a web, her desires or mental view of the future, striving to gather happiness therefrom; while Sybil sought in vain to cheer her with music, to lure her out for a walk in the willowed dell, or a drive along the coast road, in their pretty pony phaeton.

The month was October now. With a sullen wail the autumnal blasts swept from the wooded hollows of Moorwinstow to the cavernous headland of Tintagel, cresting before their breath the waves of the Bristol Channel. There came gusts of rain too, that beat dolefully on the window panes, with an angry and impatient patter, adding to the dreariness of heart experienced by those in the Villa of Porthellick. The season was bleak, and nowhere could it seem more so than among the barren moors, the sea-beat bluffs, and resounding caverns, the wind swept pasture lands and promontories of Cornwall.

The woods were almost bare; the few remaining leaves, fluttered brown and crisp on the bared twigs; the stackyards were full, and the produce of the potato fields was consigned to long brown pits of fresh earth and straw, for the coming winter; the uplands were covered with decaying stubble, or being ploughed, while, gorged with worms, the great crows sat sleepily in the shining furrows. Thick as gnats in summer, the dingy coloured sparrows twittered in the hedgerows, which were being lopped and trimmed; and the axes of the woodmen were heard in thicket and copse; while the smoke of the steam-engine that worked and drained the adjacent copper-mine, hung low in the frowsy air, adding at times to the gloom of the landscape.

Richard Trevelyan had sailed, and Denzil too; and Constance was aware that each of them had to traverse a wintry sea, the former before he returned and the latter before he reached his destination.

The public prints had duly announced that "the Right Hon. Lord Lamorna and suite (_i.e._ old Derrick Braddon) had gone for a tour in America;" and Denzil if his eyes ever saw the announcement--which is doubtful--could little have dreamed how nearly it concerned him, and the mother on whom he doted, and whom he still knew only as "Mrs. Devereaux."

The latter had to make many an excuse, even to Sybil, to account for her husband's protracted absence from the villa; and Downie Trevelyan, when he read the above announcement in the "Morning Post," wiped his gold eye-glass and read it again with much perplexity and secret annoyance, while surmising "what the deuce could take Richard so suddenly to America at this season of the year!"

The new task and anxiety of watching the shipping intelligence next occupied the attention of Constance. The steamer in which Richard sailed, had been seen, signalled and spoken with in sundry Atlantic latitudes and longitudes; and some seventeen days or so saw her safely at the end of her voyage; but the transport, a great Indiaman with Denzil on board, was seldom heard of, some at long dates; and at longer dates too, came his hastily written letters from St. Helena, and from Ascension, or by homeward-bound ships; few men, even of the most wealthy, thought then of proceeding to India by the scarcely developed overland route; and how fondly those letters were read over and over again, the last thing at night, and the first in the morning, the mother, situated as Constance was then, may imagine; for the loving little family circle was broken now.