CHAPTER IV.
LOVE AND DUTY.
The Captain did not appear at the breakfast table next morning, and it was some time after breakfast when he came into the drawing-room where Cecil sat alone writing letters. He entered through one of the open windows.
"I have been exploring our favourite hills, Lady Cecil," he said; "I hope you did not wait breakfast for me?"
"No; auntie never waits for any one. Shall I order fresh tea or coffee to be made for you?"
"No, thanks; I have no appetite for breakfast this morning."
Cecil went on writing.
"I hope you are better to-day," she said presently, the rapid pen still gliding over the paper, the graceful head still bending over the desk. There is nothing so charming as the air of indifference with which a woman inquires about the health of the man she loves; but the indifference is generally a little overdone.
"I was not ill yesterday," answered Hector. "There are some things more painful to endure than illness. Lady Cecil, will you do me a favour? I want your advice about a friend of mine, who finds himself in one of the most cruel positions that ever a man was placed in. Are those letters very important?"
"Not at all important."
"In that case I may ask you to put on your hat and come with me for a stroll—you have no idea how lovely the sea looks this morning—and you can give me your advice about my friend."
"I don't think I have had enough experience of life to be a good adviser."
"But you are a lady, and you have a lady's subtile instincts where honour is at stake; and this is a case in which experience of life is not wanted."
Cecil put aside her writing materials and took her hat from the sofa, where it had been lying. They went out together silently, and walked silently towards the water's edge. The wavelets curled crisply in the fresh autumn breeze, and the sunlit sea rippled as gaily as if the blue waters had bounded beneath the dancing tread of invisible sea-nymphs.
"I shall think of this cool, fresh English sea-shore very often when I am in Bengal," Hector said.
"You will go back to Bengal—soon?"
"Yes, I think very soon. My leave does not expire for some months: but as I came home on a doctor's certificate, and as the sea-air I got between Calcutta and Suez set me up before I reached home, I have no excuse for remaining away from my regiment much longer. I shall be glad to see all the dear old fellows again;—and—and—a man is always happiest when he is doing his duty."
"You speak as if you knew what it was to be unhappy," said Cecil; "and yet you must remember telling us, one day when you first came here, that you had never known any serious sorrow in your life."
"Did I say so? Ah! but then that was so long ago."
"So long ago! about five weeks, I believe."
"Five æons! a lifetime at the very least. I have been reading Tennyson on the hills this morning. What a wonderful poet he is! and how much more wonderful as a philosopher! I scarcely regret my forgotten Greek as I read him. To my mind he is the greatest teacher and preacher of our age,—stern and harsh, bitter and cruel sometimes, but always striking home to the very root of truth with an unerring aim. I grow better, and braver, and stronger as I read him. He is not an eloquent wailer of his own woes, like Byron—ah, don't think that I underrate Byron because he is out of fashion; for amidst all the birds that ever sang in the bushes of Parnassus, there is no note so sweet as his to my ear;—and yet Alfred Tennyson has set the stamp of his own suffering on every page of his poetry. Don't talk to me about inner consciousness—or mental imitation. A man must have suffered before he could write 'Locksley Hall;' a man must have been tempted and must have triumphed before he could write 'Love and Duty.' Do you know the poem, Lady Cecil? It is only two or three pages of blank verse; but I have read it half a dozen times this morning, and it seems to me as true as if it had been written with the heart's blood of a brave man. Shall I read it to you?"
"If you please."
Upon that solitary coast they had no fear of interruption. On one side of them lay stubble-fields and low flat meadows, where the cattle stood to watch them as they passed; on the other, the cool grey sea. The autumn sunshine had faded a little, and there were clouds gathering on the horizon—clouds that Hector and Cecil were too preoccupied to observe. The faint hum of the village died away behind them as they strolled slowly onward. In a desert they could scarcely have been less restrained by any fear of interruption.
Hector Gordon read the poem—in a low, earnest voice—in tones whose deep feeling was entirely free from exaggeration. He read very slowly when he came to the last paragraph of the fragment:
He closed the book abruptly with these words, and for some minutes walked on in silence. This time it was Cecil who was ungracious, since she did not thank her companion for reading the poem.
"And now, Lady Cecil, I will tell you my friend's story," said Captain Gordon presently. "It is a common story enough, perhaps; for I suppose there are few lives in which there does not arise the necessity for some great sacrifice."
He paused once more, and then began again with an evident effort:
"As my life for the last few years has been spent in India among my brother officers, I need scarcely tell you that the man of whom I speak is an officer. He is, like myself, the son of a rich man; and his military career has been unusually successful. When he joined his regiment he was one of the most thoughtless and impulsive fellows in the universe. He had been spoiled by indulgent friends, and had never in his life had occasion to think for himself. You may bring up a lad in a garden of roses to be a very well-mannered, agreeable fellow, I dare say; but I doubt if the rose-garden education will ever make a great or a wise man. That sort of animal must be reared upon the moorlands, amidst the free winds of heaven. As my friend was thoughtless and impulsive, it was scarcely strange that, when he found himself so idle as to want amusement, he should join in the first tiger-hunt that took place in his neighbourhood, nor was it strange that he should contrive to get seriously wounded by the animal. The wonder was that he escaped alive. He owed the life which his own reckless folly had hazarded to the cool daring of a friend and comrade; and when he woke from the swoon into which he had fallen immediately after feeling the tiger's claws planted in his thigh, he found himself in the coolest and shadiest room of his friend's house in Calcutta. He still felt the tiger's claws; but it was pleasant to know that the sensation was only imaginary, and that the animal had been shot through the head by the brave young civilian—for his friend was a civilian, and a resident in Calcutta. He had just enough sense to murmur some inarticulate expression of gratitude—just enough strength to grasp his preserver's honest hand; and then he grew delirious from the pain of his wounds, and then he had fever, and altogether a very hard time of it.
"I think you can guess what is coming now, Lady Cecil. In all the history of the world there never surely was the record of man's sorrow or sickness that was not linked with a story of woman's devotion. When my friend was well enough to know what tender nursing was, he knew that the hands which had administered his medicine and smoothed his pillow from the first hour of his delirium belonged to the civilian's sister; a girl whom he had known only as the best waltzer in Calcutta, but whom he had reason to know now as an angel of pity and tenderness.
"Her attendance upon him was as quiet and unobtrusive as it was watchful and untiring; and on the day on which his medical attendants pronounced him out of danger, she left his room, after a few half-tearful words of congratulation, never to enter it again. But she had watched by him long enough to give him ample time for watching her, and he fancied that he had reason to believe he was beloved for the first time in his life.
"When he was well enough to leave his room he found that she had left Calcutta for a visit to some friends at Simlah. She wanted change of air, her brother said, and it might be some months before she would return. My friend's impulsive nature would not suffer him to wait so long. How base a scoundrel he must have been if his heart had not overflowed with gratitude to the friend who had saved his life, the tender-hearted girl who had watched him in his danger! You will not wonder when I tell you that his first impulse was to ask his friend to become his brother, his gentle nurse to take the sacred name of wife. What return could he offer for so much devotion, except the devotion of his own life? And his heart was so free, Lady Cecil, that he offered it as freely as if it had been a handful of gold which he had no need of. The civilian acted nobly, declining to accept any pledge in his sister's name. I say nobly, because the soldier was a richer man by twenty times than his friend, and had been the first prize in the Anglo-Indian matrimonial market. The soldier waited only till he was strong enough to bear the jolting of a palanquin before he went to Simlah. He found his nurse looking pale and anxious: little improved by change of air or scene. He came upon her unexpectedly; and the one look which he saw in her face, as she recognised him, assured him that he had not made the senseless blunder of a coxcomb when he had fancied himself beloved. He stayed in the hill country for a fortnight, and he went back to his regiment the promised husband of as pure and true-hearted a woman as ever lived. I bear tribute to her goodness, Lady Cecil, standing by your side, here upon this English shore, so many hundred miles away. God bless her!"
He lifted his hat as he pronounced the blessing; and looking at him with sad, earnest eyes, Cecil saw that his were dim with tears.
"Oh, Cecil, Cecil!" he said, "I haven't finished my story yet. Can you guess what happened when the soldier came home, and chance threw him into intimate association with another woman? Unhappily, it is such an old story. Ah! then, and then only, his heart throbbed into sudden life. Ah! then only he found how wide a difference there is between a grateful impulse of the mind and an absorbing passion of the heart. Careless and inconsiderate in all things, he abandoned himself to the charm of an association whose peril he never calculated; and he awoke one day, like a man who had been dreaming pleasant dreams upon the edge of a precipice, to discover his danger. I cannot tell you how bitter that awakening was. There is an old Greek fancy—too foolish for me to tell you—which explains a perfect love as the reunion of two beings who at first were one, but who, separated by an angry deity, have wandered blindly through the universe in search of one another. But sometimes it happens, Lady Cecil, that the half-soul finds its other half too late!
"I have told you my friend's story. How dearly he loves the lady it was his sorrow to know and love too late, I can find no words to tell you. He is a soldier, and he calls himself a man of honour; but he is so weak and helpless in his misery that he has need of counsel from a mind less troubled than his own. He is willing to do his duty, if he can be told wherein his duty lies. Should he write to his betrothed, and confess the truth, trusting in her generosity to set him free?—I am sure she would do so."
There was a brief pause before Cecil said,—
"I am sure of it too, though I do not know her. But do you think she would ever be happy again?"
"I cannot answer for that. Ah, Lady Cecil, I know what you think my friend's duty is."
"There can be no question about it. He must keep his promise," she answered firmly.
"Even if in so doing he forfeits the happiness of his future life; if in so doing he ties himself for ever and ever to the dull wheel of duty; even if he dares to think that his love is not altogether unreturned by her he loves so truly and so hopelessly? Oh, Cecil, be merciful! Remember it is the fate of a lifetime you are deciding."
"I cannot advise your friend to be false to his word," replied Cecil. "I am sorry for his sorrow. But it is a noble thing to do one's duty. I think he will be happier in the end if he keeps his promise."
She looked up at him with a bright, brave glance as she spoke. Their eyes met, and her face changed, in spite of the heroic effort she made to preserve its exalted tranquillity. They stood alone on the narrow sands, with a mournful wind moaning past them, a drizzling rain drifting in their faces, as unconscious of any change in the weather as they were unconscious of all things in the universe—except each other.
"I am going back to London by the mail to-night, Lady Cecil. We shall be together for the rest of the day, I hope,—my last day; but we are not likely to be alone again, and I should like to say good-bye to you here."
He lifted his hat, and the wind and rain drifted his hair away from his face.
"Cecil, I am going back to India, to do my duty, with God's help. Say, God bless you, Hector, and goodbye."
"God bless you, Hector, and——"
She looked up at the perfect face, the dark blue eyes, so dim with tears, and could not finish the sentence. She turned from her companion with a passionate gesture, ashamed of her own weakness, and walked homewards rapidly, with Hector walking silently by her side.
They did not speak until they came to the idle boats, lying keel upwards on the beach, which marked the beginning of the village, and then Captain Gordon broke the silence by a remark which proved that he had only that moment discovered the change in the weather.
"If you'll stop under shelter of that yacht, Lady Cecil," he said, "I'll run on and get a shawl and umbrella."
"Thank you—no—on no account. I don't mind the rain—and we are so near home," answered Cecil, whose flimsy muslin garments were dripping wet.