CHAPTER XXXV.
CINTHIA’S BETROTHAL.
Arthur Varian was roused at midnight by the reception of a startling telegram from his mother:
“Everard Dawn fatally injured in a railway accident here. Come at once, and bring Cinthia.”
He staggered to a chair, groaning aloud!
“So this is the sorrowful end!”
Conquering an onrushing flood of painful emotion, he sought Frederick Foster, and imparted the sad news.
“Heavens, how shocking! And I had only a few hours ago written to ask him for his daughter’s hand!” exclaimed the young man.
“Then Cinthia has accepted you!” Arthur cried, with emotion.
“Yes, only yesterday, and I intended to tell you to-morrow. Can you wish me joy, old fellow?” inquired Fred Foster, anxiously, for his cousin had made him acquainted with all his sad past story, and he felt the keenest sympathy with his unhappiness.
Arthur held out a cordial hand.
“It is good news to me—under the circumstances. May you both be very happy!” he exclaimed, generously.
“Thank you, Arthur. I will do my part toward it,” returned the young man, in a hopeful tone, adding: “We had better go at once to Lodge Delight for Cinthia. I will go with you to Virginia, and no doubt Madame Ray will give us the comfort of her company.”
“I shall beg her to do so,” said Arthur. “I am sure she will not refuse, for my mother would be perhaps but a poor consoler in the hour of grief. Indeed, I am puzzled to know how she and Mr. Dawn ever happened to be together at Charlottesville, for they have always avoided each other. But the mystery can not be solved until we reach her side.”
Making the most hasty preparations possible for leaving, they set out for Lodge Delight, having first sent a telegram to Mrs. Varian at Charlottesville, assuring her that they would start at once.
So expeditious were their movements, that before daylight the four were on the train speeding to Virginia, Madame Ray having gladly acceded to their request for her company.
“Of course I would not permit Cinthia to go alone to so sad a scene as her father’s death-bed, poor dear!” she said, with warm sympathy.
Cinthia was shocked and grieved at the news of Everard Dawn’s accident and impending death, but her grief lacked the depth of a filial bereavement. Owing to her strong resentment at his own coldness, the girl had never felt the sentiment of love for him. If Madame Ray had died she would have been inconsolable, but in the case of her father she felt quite differently.
She was shocked and pained, but she would have felt almost as deeply over any well-known friend who had met with such an accident. His death would not mean any serious affliction to her. Indeed, when the first shock was over, she remembered that perhaps now she would never have to leave dear Madame Ray for another home. True, in a moment of madness and resentment at Arthur’s coldness, she had rashly consented to marry his cousin, but she was not at all certain that she would keep her promise.
She had told him frankly that she admired and esteemed him, but had no love to give. If he was willing to wait, to give her time to cultivate a warmer feeling, she would try her best to learn, and on these terms he based their betrothal. To Cinthia herself it seemed as if she must surely grow fond of him in time, he was so handsome, so splendid, so devoted. She argued to herself that in time her love for Arthur must surely be overcome by her contempt for his weakness and cowardice that had brought sorrow into both their lives.
Yet, as she watched his pale and sorrowful face while the train sped on its way, she felt a rush of painful tenderness flooding her heart, while she wondered why he was taking so much to heart the trouble that had fallen on herself. Everard Dawn was nothing to him—nothing except a man he had cause to dislike, because he had prevented his marriage to his daughter—yet his pallor, his sadness, his preoccupation were effects that might have been produced by the death of a near relative.
Cinthia, drooping in her seat, with a thick veil drawn over her pallid face, could not keep her eyes from her old lover, could not repress the rush of tenderness that made her heart ache.
She would have liked—she, the promised bride of Frederick Foster—to have thrown her arms about Arthur Varian’s neck, pressed her pale cheek to his, and whispered in the passion of her womanly love:
“Why are you so pale, so sad, my best beloved? Is it for me? Has Frederick told you that I have promised to marry him, and are you grieved? Perhaps the old love is not dead yet in your heart, perhaps it cries for me in the dead of night as my heart for you. Oh, is it too late to go back, to thrust aside everything but the imperious demands of our love, and be happy yet?”
A sudden wild thought yet came to her and made her heart leap:
“Only let me find my father yet alive, and he shall explain the mystery of his opposition to my marriage with Arthur. She, too, is there, Arthur’s mother, who for the sake of her hatred of my father and mother was willing to wreck our happiness forever. Who knows but that when both are dead, both my mother and father, her cruel revenge may be satiated so that she may be willing to let love have its way.”
It would have startled Frederick Foster, who hovered near her with eager attentions, to find how little part he had in her thoughts and dreams, for a faint trembling hope had come to her heart that perhaps the death of her father might have some effect on her relations with Arthur, might possibly restore them to happiness.
Arthur, meanwhile, knowing the futility of all hope in Cinthia’s direction, gave himself up to unrestrained melancholy, in which blended considerable curiosity as to how it happened that his mother and Mr. Dawn had been together at Charlottesville.
Everard Dawn, who had an aversion to letter-writing, corresponded but infrequently with his daughter, hence had left her in ignorance of the date of his return from California.
Mrs. Varian, on the other hand, had not apprised her son of her suddenly decided upon journey to Florida.
So he could only nurse his wonder and melancholy together while looking back in a painful retrospection over the tangled web of what had been and what might have been, those “saddest of all sad words.”
There was a silent prayer in his heart, too, that Everard Dawn might survive till he reached his bedside, so that some last words might be said between them, some news be told, and perhaps some death-bed revelations be made to Cinthia.