CHAPTER VI.
WEDDING CARDS.
Returning from the Fountains one day after a pleasant morning spent half in the garden, half in Mr. Crawford's painting-room, Cecil found the dowager in one of her worst humours.
"Has any thing annoyed you while I have been away, auntie?" she asked, gently.
"Has any thing annoyed me, indeed, auntie!" echoed Mrs. MacClaverhouse, with unusual acrimony. "I begin to think that I was only sent into the world for the purpose of being annoyed. Do you know that the mail from Marseilles comes in to-day, Lady Cecil?"
Cecil's downcast face grew first crimson and then pale. The Indian letters? The very mention of the post that brought them set her heart beating fast and passionately; and she had no right to be interested in their coming: she had no right to be glad or sorry for any tidings that the Indian mail could bring.
"You have heard from Captain Gordon, I suppose, auntie?" she said, falteringly.
"Yes, I have heard from him," answered the dowager in her most snappish manner.
"I hope he is well?"
"Oh yes, he is well enough, or as well as a man can be who is such a fool as to become the victim of any designing minx who chooses to set her cap at him. What do you think of that enclosure, Lady Cecil?"
The dowager tossed an envelope across the table towards the spot where her niece was standing, downcast and sad. Cecil knew what the enclosure was; yes, a little shiver went through her as she took up the envelope, for she knew only too well what it contained.
A glazed envelope with a crest emblazoned in silver was within the outer covering, and inside the flap of the glazed envelope was inscribed the name of Mary Chesham. Two limp, slippery cards dropped from Cecil's hand as she read the name of her rival; the name which was hers no longer, for on the larger card appeared the more dignified title of the matron, "Mrs. Hector Gordon." She put the cards back into the envelope and laid it gently on the table.
"God grant they may be happy!" she murmured softly.
"Yes," answered the dowager; "and we are to live in Dorset Square all our lives, I suppose. Upon my word, Cecil, you are enough to provoke the patience of a saint. You might have married Hector Gordon if you had liked. Yes, child, you might. I watched the man. I've known him since he eat his first top-and-bottom, and I can see him eating it, in my mind's eye, at this very moment; so I think I ought to know his ways. He was over head and ears in love with you; and if it hadn't been for some highflown nonsense of yours he never would have gone back to India to marry that designing minx. He was engaged, forsooth! and if he was, I suppose he could have disengaged himself! He was in love with you Cecil, and you know that you might have married him as well as I do. What was he whimpering about that night, I should like to know, when you sang him your doleful songs, if he wasn't in love! No man in his proper senses would moon about all day with two women, reading poetry and listening to doleful songs, unless he was in love. However, I've no doubt some nonsensical scruples of yours sent him back to Calcutta to become the prey of a minx called Chesham. Who are the Cheshams, I should like to know? It sounds a decent name enough; but I don't know any Cheshams. Give me the first volume of Burke's Landed Gentry, Cecil, and let me see if there are any respectable Cheshams."
Lady Cecil went into an inner room to look for the volume her aunt required. She found herself standing before the bookshelves, looking dreamily at the backs of the books, and wondering what it was she had come to seek. For some few moments she was quite unable to collect her thoughts. Was she sorry that Hector Gordon had fulfilled his engagement? Ah, no! ah, no, no! To have wished his promise broken would have been to wish him something less than he was.
"Oh, I am proud to think him good, and honourable, and true," she murmured, in a kind of rapture; "I am proud and glad to think that he has kept his promise."
Ah, reader, can you not imagine that the pale girl in Mr. Millais' picture was in the depths of her soul almost glad that her Huguenot lover refused to have the white scarf tied about his arm? His refusal would cost him his life, perhaps, but oh, how proud she must have been of him in that moment of supreme agony!
Lady Cecil carried the volume of Burke to her aunt, and Mrs. MacClaverhouse set herself to discover the antecedents of Mrs. Hector Gordon, nèe Chesham.
"There's a letter from Mrs. Lochiel on the table there," she said, without looking up from her book, "with an account of this fine wedding. You can read it if you like."
The dowager was an inveterate gossip, and kept up a correspondence with a dozen or two other dowagers, who took a benign interest in all the births, marriages, and deaths that came to pass within their circle. Perhaps if Mrs. MacClaverhouse had not been soured by the bitter disappointment and mortification which had befallen the pleasant castle she had built in Hyde Park Gardens at her nephew's expense, she might have been a little more merciful to poor Cecil's wounded heart. But it must be remembered that she did not know how deeply the girl's heart was wounded.
Cecil read Mrs. Lochiel's letter. Is it necessary to say that she read every word of that gossiping epistle more than once, though the reading of it gave her exquisite pain? There are poisoned arrows for which some women bare their breast—there are tortures which some women will suffer unbidden. There never was a woman yet, in Lady Cecil's position, who was not eager to be told what finery her rival wore, and how she looked in the wedding splendour.
Mrs. Lochiel was very discursive on the subject of millinery.
"Dear Mary Chesham looked very sweet," she wrote. "She is not pretty, but remarkably interesting, fair, with soft blue eyes, and a very winning expression. I know you will be pleased with her when Captain Gordon brings her to England, and they do say that his regiment will be ordered home next year. I am sure you ought to be proud of such a nephew, for he is one of the most popular young men in Calcutta, and one meets him at all the best houses. Every one says that Mary Chesham has made a wonderful match, and of course there are some people who insinuate that her brother manœuvred very cleverly to bring about the marriage. But I have met Mr. Chesham, who seems a very superior young man, and not at all the sort of person to manœuvre.
"The wedding was one of the gayest affairs we have had in Calcutta this season. Mary had six bridesmaids, some of the nicest girls in the city; and of course the military and civil service mustered in full force. The bride wore white glacé, made with a high body and short sleeves, and trimmed with bouillonnées of tulle illusion, and a large tulle veil, which covered her like a cloud. The dress was very simple, and certainly inexpensive, but quite Parisian in style. Mary has a very lovely arm,—those pale, insipid girls, with fair hair, generally have lovely arms,—and she wore a very superb pearl bracelet, given her by her uncle, Colonel Cudderley, who is, I believe, expected to leave her money. So you see your nephew has not done so very badly after all, though people here say he might have made a much better match. However, I am told that he is quite devoted to Mary, and I'm sure his manner when I have seen them together, has been most attentive."
Lady Cecil laid down the letter. Was this jealousy, this cruel pang which seemed to rend her heart asunder, as she read of her rival's bliss? Oh, surely not jealousy! Had she not with her own lips bidden him to fulfil his promise? and was she grieved and wounded now to find that he had kept the spirit as well as the letter of that promise? Had she expected that he would marry the girl who loved him, and yet by his cold indifference bear witness that he loved another? Surely she could never have thought he could be base enough to do that.
"What did I want?" she thought; "what did I expect? I told him to go back to her; and yet my heart aches with a new pain when I hear that he is happy by her side. Could I wish it to be otherwise? Could I wish him any thing but what he is—good, and true, and noble—a royal lover—a tender husband?"
Alone in her own room, in Dorset Square, Cecil Chudleigh knelt long and late that night, praying for resignation and peace of mind. But even amidst her prayers the face of Hector Gordon, looking down upon her with melancholy tenderness, came between her and her pious aspirations.
"Oh, I wish that I had never seen him," she cried passionately; "what a happy thing it would have been for me if I had never seen him!"
The day came when Lady Cecil had need to utter this cry with a wilder meaning; the day came when she had reason to think that she would have been a blessed creature if she had died before Hector Gordon came to Fortinbras.