Mrs. Harry Coghill

“ Costello, exhausted and pale as death, lay trying to gather strength for thought and endurance, longing, yet dreading, to share with her daughter the miserable burden which was pressing out her very life. Lucia, half hidden by the curtain, sat pondering uselessly over the letter she had read; feeling a vague fear and a livelier curiosity. But a heart so ignorant of sadness in itself, and so filled at the moment with all that is least in accord with the prosaic troubles of middle life, could not remain long fixed upon a doubtful and uncomprehended misfortune. ”

“ Afterwards when she remembered this time, she wondered at herself; she could not comprehend the absence of sensation with which she had left the dear home and all the familiar objects of her whole life, the incapability of feeling either keen sorrow at the parting, or hope in the unknown future. The days they spent in hurrying hour by hour further away from Canada, always remained in her recollection little more than a blank, and she scarcely seemed to recover herself until Mr. Strafford touched her gently on the shoulder, late in the evening and said,
"New York at last, Lucia." ”

“ Costello stooped down and kissed her child's forehead.
"I thought you might have had a brighter fate than that, darling. Perhaps I thought more of seeing you a happy woman than a good one; but if you are never to have the home I wished for you, you will find, at any rate, that a single woman's life may be full of usefulness and honour."
Ah! that brighter fate! Mrs. Costello thought of Maurice, and sighed for the loss to two lives. Lucia's heart still turned loyally to the one lover who had claimed it, but both knew that the "brighter fate" was no longer a possibility now. ”

“ I thought yesterday that I was not very far beneath you in birth, and that there could be no greater difficulties in our way than patience might overcome; but that was because I did not know. I am not your equal. I am no one's equal in the world—no one's that I could marry. I shall be always alone, and apart from other people in my heart, however they may see no difference; and if I cared for you a thousand times more than I do, I should only have a thousand more reasons for telling you to go away, and never think of me again."
"You dismiss me, then? Of your own free will, Lucia?" ”

“ When this pleasant life had lasted about ten days, Maurice came in one morning and said,
"What do you say to a visitor to-day, Lucia?"
Lucia looked up eagerly with clasped hands,
"Who?" she cried. "Not your cousin?"
"Why not?"
"Oh, Maurice! I am afraid of her—I am indeed. I am sure she is a grande dame, and will annihilate me."
"Silly child! She is a tiny woman, with a fair little face and not a bit of grandeur about her. You yourself will look like a queen beside her." ”

“ Their own share in the misery did not prevent them from feeling for the others who knew nothing of their partnership; and Lucia forgot to accuse herself of hypocrisy when she was admitted into the darkened room, where her once gay companion sat and watched with heavy eyes the passing of those first days of widowhood. No one would have recognized Bella Latour now. She sat, wan and half-lifeless, caring for nothing except now and then to draw round her more closely a great shawl in which she was wrapped, as if the only sensation of which she was still capable were that of cold. ”

“ Wonderful alchemy of the imagination, which can draw from a nature ignoble, and altogether earthly, nourishment for dreams so sweet and so sunny! Lucia's fancy had made for her a picture, such as most girls make for themselves once in their lives, and the portrait was as unfaithful as the original himself could have desired. Mr. Percy had become almost a daily visitor at the Cottage. Attracted by Lucia's beauty, he came, as he would have said, had he spoken frankly, to amuse himself during a dull visit, with no thought but that of entertaining himself and her for the moment. ”

“ After that she dropped asleep, and Lucia watched till early morning. It was the first of such watches she had ever kept, and the awful stillness made her tremble. Often she got up from her seat to see if her mother's breathing still really went on; it seemed difficult to believe that there was any stir whatever of life in the room. In those long hours, too, she had time to revert to the doings of the past day—to remember both Maurice's words and her mother's, and to separate, to some degree, the truth from all exaggeration. ”

“ Costello looked at her child for a moment in silence. Even she did not yet fully understand the force of that quality which Lucia herself had once ascribed to her Indian blood, but which, in truth, had little affinity with common fortitude, for it was simply a conquest of self, gained without thought or conscious effort, by the greater power of love. But such contests cannot last long. This was fierce and cruel, but it ended as love willed. The poor child dragged herself up again to her mother's knee, and drew the pale, fair face down to her own flushed and burning one ”

“ Suddenly a canoe appeared, and in it a hideous old squaw, who approached the shore, and stretching out a long bony hand drew her away from her mother's side, and in spite of her terror made her step into the frail boat, which instantly flew down the stream into the darkest and wildest of the storm. She stretched out her arms for help—Percy stood still upon the bank, as if anxious but unable to give it—Maurice waved his hand to her, and turned away. She seemed to know that he was deserting her for ever, and in an agony of fear and sorrow she gathered all her strength to call him back. ”

“ Costello was both puzzled and annoyed; Maurice, worn out in mind and body, and only resolute to shield Lucia at his own expense; Lucia herself more thoroughly uncomfortable than she had ever been in her life. She partly understood Maurice's conduct, but doubted its motives. Sometimes she thought he was influenced by his old dislike to Percy, and that even his kindness to herself was mixed with disapproval or contempt. Sometimes a suspicion of the truth, so faint and so unreasonable in her own eyes, that she would not acknowledge it for a moment, flashed across her mind ”

“ The fainting fits which had twice alarmed Lucia, and which she spoke of as trifling and temporary indispositions, she herself knew perfectly well to be only one of the symptoms of a firmly-rooted and increasing disease. She had taken pains to satisfy herself of the truth; she knew that she might live for years; and that, under ordinary circumstances, there was very little fear of the immediate approach of death; but she knew, also, that every hour of agitation or excitement hastened its steps; and how could she hope to avoid either? ”

“ Costello had her work-table placed at the end nearest the river, and her rocking-chair beside it. Some knitting was in her hands, but she could not knit, for her ball of wool was being idly wound and unwound round her daughter's fingers.
Sitting on a footstool, leaning back against her mother's knee, was this daughter—a child loved (it could almost be seen at a glance) with an absorbing, passionate love. A girl of seventeen, just between child and woman, who seemed to have been a baby but yesterday, and who still, in the midst of her new womanly grace, kept her caressing baby ways. ”

“ Lucia knelt down, and put her arms softly round her mother's waist.
"Dear mother," she said slowly, "I wish you would go back to England."
Mrs. Costello started. "To England?" she said, "you know quite well that it is impossible."
"You would be glad to go, mamma."
"Child, you do not know how glad I should be. To die and be buried among my own people!"
"To go and live among them rather, mamma; Maurice put it into my head that you might." ”

“ We are not what you have always known us; we are only the wife and daughter of an Indian."
"Don't—don't speak so. What difference can it make to me? Only, how could you bear all you must have borne? It is wonderful. I can scarcely believe it yet."
"Do not suppose that Lucia has been deceiving you all these years; she only knew the truth a few months ago."
"But there is no deceit. You had a right to keep such a secret if you chose." Mrs. Bellairs rose. She stepped to Lucia's side and kissed her pale cheeks. "You must have had Indian courage," she said, "to be so brave and steady at your age." ”

“ She is growing perfectly lovely. But, then, dear Mrs. Costello, the very idea of calling our tiny backwood's society, 'the world;' and as for Lucia, if you will not come with her, I promise, at any rate, to take the same care of her as I will of my Flo when she is big enough to face our great world."
She spoke laughing, but with some earnestness under the sparkle of her bright eyes; and immediately afterwards rose, saying, "I suppose Bella cannot leave Bob, and Lucia will not leave Bella, so I must go to them; and if Lucia pleases, she may come to-morrow?" ”

“ Lucia went and sat down on a footstool at her mother's feet to tell her the news. Mrs. Costello laid her hand on her child's head and sighed softly.
"You will have to give up this fashion of yours, darling," she said, "you must learn to be a woman now."
Lucia laughed.
"I don't believe I ever shall," she answered. "At least, not with you or with Maurice."
"Would you like to go to Dighton?"
She considered for a minute.
"Yes, mamma, I think I should. You know how things are in those great houses; but I have never seen anything but Canada, and even there, just the country. ”

“ An hour later, the dray, now more carefully arranged and covered, brought its load to the door of the house which had been so lately prepared for the bride's coming home. For convenience' sake they carried the body into a lower room, and laid it there until its burial, while Bella sat in her chamber above, silent and tearless, not understanding yet what had befallen her, but through her stunned and dreary stupor listening from habit for the footsteps which should have returned at that hour—the footsteps which death had already silenced for ever. ”

“ This morning, after a night of the most painful anxiety and foreboding, her mind naturally caught at the idea that all could not go wrong with her; that she must have exaggerated the change in Lucia, and that, at least, some of the trouble she had anticipated for her child was a mere chimera.
She came out to them, therefore, pale and weary from her vigil, but cheerful and composed.
"How is your father, Maurice?" she asked; "can you stay with us to breakfast?"
"Thank you, no; my father is so much alone. He seemed better last night. Your visit did him good." ”

“ If he had but loved Lucia well enough to dare to take her with all her inherited shame, how richly he would have been rewarded when the cloud cleared away! Where would he find another like her? And now, since Maurice could change, who might ever be trusted?
No doubt these meditations were romantic. If Mrs. Costello had been the mother of half-a-dozen children—a woman living in the midst of a busy, lively household, where motherly cares and castle-buildings had to be shared among three or four daughters—she would not have had time to occupy herself so intensely with the affairs of any one. ”

“ I can go better, for I shall not suffer as you will, and I can bring you home a faithful account of what I hear."
"Darling, all this is new to you. I have had to serve a long apprenticeship to learn self-restraint."
Lucia laughed bitterly. "See the advantage of my Indian blood," she said. "Trust me, mother, I will be as steady as those ancestors of mine who bore torture without flinching."
Mrs. Costello bent down and kissed her child's forehead.
"Yours is a better heroism, Lucia; for mental pain is harder to bear than physical, and you would suffer to save me." ”

“ Spanish it was said to be, but the child was Canadian by birth, and her mother English; it was clear that whatever race had bestowed Lucia's dower of beauty, it had come to her through her father.
Mother and daughter often sat as now, silent and idle both; Lucia dreaming after her girlish fashion, and Mrs. Costello content to wait and let her life be absorbed in her child's. But to-night Lucia was dreaming of England, the far-away "home" which she had never seen, but of which almost all her elder friends spoke, and where her mother's childhood and girlhood had been passed. ”

“ Maurice left Lucia at the door, and went back to the hotel where he had promised Lady Dighton to lunch with her. She was waiting for him, looking more than usually fair and pretty in the mourning she wore for her grandfather. He could not help thinking, as he came in, how rich and handsome everything about her seemed, in contrast to the bare simplicity of his poorer friends—yet certainly nature had intended Lucia for a much more stately and magnificent person than this little lady. ”

“ Bitter hours came still—came especially with the silence and darkness of night, when her thoughts would go back to the sweet days of the past summer and linger over them, till some word, or look, or trifling incident coming to her memory more distinctly, would bring with it the sudden recollection of the barren, dreary present,—of the irreparable loss. [Pg 4]
In all her thoughts of Percy there was comfort. He had loved her honestly and sincerely, and if his nature was really lower than her own, she was not likely to guess it. ”

“ Bella and [Pg 99] Doctor Morton, utterly unromantic pair of lovers as they were, must have had some touch of the ordinary softness of human nature; they looked content with all the world. Lucia, leaning back with her crochet lying on her lap, and her eyes half hidden by their black lashes, had yielded herself up entirely to the indolent enjoyment of perfect stillness, forgetting even to be conscious of the pair of handsome blue eyes which rested on her, taking in luxuriously the charm of her beauty. ”

“ The last hours, full of excitement and impatience as the voyage drew to a close, were not unpleasant ones. Very early one morning a great commotion and a babel of unusual sounds on deck awoke the travellers, and the stewardess going from room to room brought the welcome news,
"We are at Havre."
Lucia was up in a moment. The stillness of the vessel, after its perpetual motion, gave her an odd sensation, not unlike what she had felt when it first began to move; but she was quickly dressed and on deck. ”

“ All that was known by every one had been told to Mr. Leigh already by an early visitor, and he, full of horror and sympathy, was able to tell the terrible story over again to a listener, whose deep and agonizing interest in it he never suspected.
But to stay, after the certainty she sought for was obtained; to talk indifferently of other matters; to regulate face and voice so as to show enough, but not too much, of the tumult at her heart, was a task before which Lucia's courage almost gave way. ”

“ Meanwhile, Margery had fastened doors and windows at the cottage, and soon all was silent and dark, except the glimmer of Mrs. Costello's lamp which often burned far into the night. Lucia had been long asleep when her mother stole into her room for that last look which it was her habit to take before she lay down. It was a little white chamber which had been fitted up twelve years before for a child's use; but the child had grown almost into a woman, and there were traces of her tastes and occupations all about. ”

“ Had Maurice really sent to him a note for Mrs. Costello which by any carelessness of his had been lost? Had the change he remembered in her manner been connected with the loss? Had Lucia cared for Maurice? Had either mother or daughter thought so ill of Maurice as he, his own father, had done? The poor old man tormented himself, much as a woman might have done, with these speculations, but he dared not breathe a word of them. ”

“ Lucia dared not call Margery to her assistance. The consciousness of having something to conceal made her dread the smallest self-betrayal. She hastened, therefore, to do alone all that she could do for her mother's recovery; but it was so long before she succeeded that she grew almost wild with terror. At last, however, the deathly look passed away, and with the very first moment of returning animation, the habit of self-control returned also. Mrs. Costello smiled at her daughter's anxious face. ”

“ After all, Lucia, you don't know how little I have to offer you."
"What does that matter?" she asked simply. "Mamma will not care—nor I."
"You will not, of course. You would be content to live like a bird, on next to nothing; but then you know nothing of the world."
"No, indeed. I am nothing better than a baby."
"You are a million times better than any other woman, and will make the best and dearest of wives—if you had only a luckier fellow for a husband." ”

“ The long low point of land beside which they lay; the town in front, with a flood of cold sunlight resting on its low round tower, and the white sugar-loaf shaped monument, which was once the sailor's landmark—the lofty chapel piously dedicated to Notre Dame de Bons Secours now superseding it—the broad mouth of the Seine and the Norman shore, bending away to the right—all these photographed themselves on Lucia's memory as the first-seen features of that new world where her life was henceforth to be passed. ”

“ Costello was going away. She and Lucia both spoke of it lightly, as an ordinary occurrence enough; but it was so unlike their usual habits, that each person who heard the news instantly set himself or herself to guess a reason, and, connecting it with the loss of Lucia's gay spirits, most persons came naturally to one conclusion.
It did not matter whether they said, "Poor Lucia!" with the half-contemptuous pity people give to what they call "a disappointment," or "What else could she expect?" ”

“ I had rather not inquire too closely; but I will say that it is rather hard to find that the people who ought to know one best, cannot trust one for six months."
Mrs. Costello listened attentively while Maurice made his explanation with no little warmth and indignation.
"Do you mean to say that you did not perceive how foolish and wrong it had become for you to think of marrying Lucia?"
"How in the world could it be either foolish or wrong for me to wish to marry the girl I have loved all my life? Unless, indeed, she preferred somebody else." ”

“ Lucia laughed heartily at the idea, and Mr. Percy laughed too, though his sentence had begun seriously enough. They were now at the gate, he bade her good-bye, and springing on his horse, went away at a pace which was meant to carry off a considerable amount of irritation against himself. "I had nearly made a pretty fool of myself," he soliloquised. "It is quite time I went away from here. But what a sweet little piece of innocence she is, and so lovely! I do not believe anything more perfect ever was created. ”

“ On the contrary, no reasonable doubt could exist that the real murderer was the Indian who had been found among the bushes. The men who knew him spoke of him as passionate, brutal, more than half-savage—there was perfect fitness between his appearance and character, and the barbarous manner of his crime. And yet while everybody spoke of him as undoubtedly guilty, almost everybody had a thought of Clarkson haunting his mind, and an uneasy desire to find out the truth, entirely incompatible with the clearness of the circumstantial evidence. ”

“ Costello suddenly roused herself from a fit of thought.
"We must go somewhere," she said. "That is certain, whatever else is. As soon as Maurice comes we ought to be prepared to start. Do go, Lucia, and see if there is any packing you can do—without attracting attention, you know."
"But, mamma," Lucia objected, "Maurice cannot be here to-day, nor even, I believe, to-morrow, at the very soonest, and I will soon do what there is to do."
"There is a great deal. And I can't help you, my poor child. And there ought not to be a moment's unnecessary delay." ”