CHAPTER XXX.
"HE'S SWEETEST FRIEND, OR HARDEST FOE."
While Mr. O'Boyneville was parting with the dowager at the terminus, Cecil walked with Hector Gordon on the terrace at Pevenshall.
The august afternoon was almost stifling in its sultry heat; and most of the Pevenshall idlers had taken shelter in the drawing-room. A group of young ladies were clustered under a great beech on the lawn listening to the perusal of a new novel: and with the exception of this party and the two promenaders on the terrace the gardens were deserted.
Cecil and Hector walked slowly up and down the terrace. For some time they had been silent. It was one of those oppressive days which weigh down the liveliest spirits; but on Cecil's face there was a profound melancholy not to be accounted for by atmospheric influences. Nor was the countenance of the Major much brighter of aspect. He seemed divided between his own sombre thoughts and an anxious curiosity at to the meditations of his companion.
"Tell me you are not unhappy, darling," he said at last; "for pity's sake tell me that the idea of the step you have decided upon taking does not make you unhappy."
"You do not think that I can feel very happy, do you, Hector?"
"If you love me as I——"
"Does the thought of our future make you happy?" cried Cecil passionately. "Oh Hector, you know as well as I do that henceforward happiness must be impossible for you and me. It is agreed that we cannot endure the miserable deception, the shameful degradation of our lives any longer—that we must escape from this atmosphere of falsehood at any sacrifice—at any cost to ourselves. We have discussed this so often that there is no need of further discussion; and you have brought me to see things as you see them. You have wrung a promise from me, and I am prepared to keep it. But for mercy's sake do not talk to me of happiness."
The soldier ventured no reply to this speech. The gloom deepened upon his countenance as he watched the pale face of his companion. They came to the end of the terrace presently, and paused under the statue of Pomona, as they had done in the moonlight some weeks before. They stood here side by side for some time, she looking straight before her at the drowsy summer landscape, he keeping close watch upon her face.
She had promised to leave her husband with Hector Gordon. She had promised to pass away with him into the outer darkness, beyond the confines of the only world she knew. By what passionate pleading, by what subtle argument, her lover had brought her to accept this course as a fatal necessity, need not be set down here. When a man's infatuation or a man's selfishness overrides his sense of truth and honour, he can find arguments enough to serve him in such a cause. That he loved her was beyond all question; that the penalty involved in his dishonour was scarcely less than the sacrifice to be made by her was also true;—but it was no less true that the passion which demanded so cruel a sacrifice was a base and selfish one.
It is difficult to imagine how any woman can arrive at such a decision as that made by Lady Cecil. The descent of Avernus is so gradual a slope, that it is only when the traveller finds himself at the bottom of the gulf that he perceives how terrible has been the rapidity of his progress. Ample opportunity had been given Hector Gordon for the pleading of his wicked cause. The Fates had conspired to assist his evil work; and even when some short-lived pang of self-reproach prompted him to abandon his relentless pursuit, some little circumstance, too insignificant to be remembered, always occurred to strangle the feeble resolution.
Little by little Cecil had learnt to believe that the tie between herself and her husband must needs be broken. She had learnt to believe that the daily and hourly deceptions of the last few weeks constituted a more terrible sin than any open rupture with the man she had sworn to love and honour. The seducer's fatal philosophy had done its work, and she accepted the justice of his reasoning. It was surely better that she should forfeit the place she had no right to hold in her husband's confidence and esteem—better that he should know her for a false wife, an outcast from him and from society, than that he should trust her as a true one while her love and allegiance were really given to another. This was the conviction which had taken possession of Cecil's mind. She was prepared to leave her husband, and abandon her home and station for the fatal protection of a lover; but she had no hope of any future happiness to be won by this terrible sacrifice. She sought only to escape from the daily falsehood that tortured and humiliated her. It was within a very short period that this fatal conviction had taken root in her heart. Before that time she had trusted in her own honour—in Hector Gordon's forbearance—in her husband's power to save her from herself. But her own sense of honour had been weak to sustain her against a lover's subtle power of reasoning. Hector had shown no forbearance; and her last hope in the protection of her husband had been disappointed by reason of Laurence O'Boyneville's unsympathetic joviality.
Looking at her this afternoon as they stood silently side by side, Hector saw something like despair in the pale still face. It was not a hopeful aspect of affairs for a lover who had sacrificed so much in order to induce the woman he loved to break the bonds that bound her to another man and plight her perjured faith to him. He had won her promise to be his, but she had not promised to be happy; and a chilling sense of terror thrilled through his heart as he fancied that perhaps she had spoken the truth just now, and that henceforward there could be no such thing as happiness for these two who loved each other so dearly. He had not calculated upon this. Cecil might desire only to escape from a miserable present, but Hector had believed in a bright future. What could mar his happiness, if the woman he loved was his companion, his own for ever and for ever? Loss of position, tarnished honour, the memory of a great wrong done to an unsuspecting man—what were these but trifles when weighed in the balance with an all-absorbing love?
The ordeal through which he must needs drag the creature he loved so dearly might indeed be a terrible one; but once passed, the future lay bright and fair before them—a future in which they would be together. But now all at once a new light dawned upon him. He might be happy—for how could he be otherwise than happy with her?—but would she be content? That calm despair in the pale face gave no promise of peace.
"Poor girl, poor girl! it is harder for her than for me," he thought sadly.
And then presently some brief awakening of conscience impelled him to speak.
"Cecil," he cried; "it is not too late! If you wish to retract—if you repent your promise——"
"No, I will keep my promise. I never can go back to my husband any more. If he loved me—if there were any sympathy between us, he might have saved me from myself, Hector—and from you. Oh, I know how selfish this must sound;—you have sacrificed so much for me—your career—your future—I have learnt to understand the sacrifice since I have heard people wonder why you took such a step. And it was for my sake. No, Hector, I will not break my promise. I should be weak, dishonourable, selfish beyond all measure, if I could break my promise after what it has cost you to win it."
A woman has always more or less inclination for self-sacrifice. Let her once be fully persuaded that it is her duty to throw herself away for the welfare or the pleasure of some one she loves, and she is in hot haste to take the fatal step that shall hurl her to destruction. Cecil was not a woman who could entertain any hope of happiness from such a course as that which she was about to take. If she could make her lover happy, if she could atone to him in some manner for the foolish sacrifice of his career, she would be content; but no false glamour illumined her miserable pathway. She was going to her destruction—blindly perhaps—but with a full knowledge that there was darkness around her, and that no light could ever shine upon the way she was treading.
Hector talked to her of their plans; and she listened quietly, and acquiesced in all his arrangements. The details of their flight had been settled before to-day. The Major was to leave Pevenshall in the evening by the mail, on pretence of some sudden summons for which his afternoon letters would furnish the excuse. Cecil was to leave the next morning, in obedience to a letter from her husband. In the way which they were going, there seemed to be nothing but falsehood and deception; but Hector reminded his companion that this was only a brief ordeal through which they must pass to perfect freedom.
"I know how painful it is for you, darling," the Major said tenderly; "but in a few days we shall be far away from all this wretchedness, in the dear little Brittany village I have told you of so often, with the mountains behind us, and the sea before; and then we will go on to Italy, and wander from place to place till you come some day to the spot in which you would like to live. And there I will build you the brightest home that a man ever made for his idol."
"But you, Hector—your career, your ambition——"
"My career is finished, and I have no ambition except to be with you."
He had said the same thing a hundred times, in a hundred different fashions; but to-day the tender words could not bring the faintest smile to Cecil's face. She knew that she was about to commit a terrible sin; and she had none of the passionate recklessness which can alone sustain the sinner. A stronger will than her own was carrying her along the fatal pathway, and a perverted sense of honour kept her faithful to the promise which had been extorted from her by her lover's despair. She was like that unhappy knight whose
All the details of the flight had been planned by Hector before this afternoon; but he had found some difficulty in explaining them to Cecil. The paltry details seemed more detestable than the sin itself; and the soldier's pride and delicacy alike revolted against the necessities of his position. Yet in due course all had been arranged. Cecil was to go straight to Brunswick Square, there to make hurried preparations for her flight, and to write her farewell letter to her husband, who would have started on his western journey before she left the north. In Brunswick Square she was to see Hector, who would come to her in the course of the day to assure himself of her safe arrival, and on the following morning they were to meet at the station in time to leave London by the Dover mail. Before Mr. O'Boyneville returned to town they would be far away, and there would be little trace of them left to mark the way by which they had gone.