A Canadian Heroine. Mrs. Harry Coghill
she had been indulging in a little cry all alone, and did not care that her red eyelids should betray her; but she might have spared the trouble. No word or look of hers was likely to pass unnoticed in that last precious few minutes, though they all sat down together, and tried to talk of indifferent matters as if there had been the least possibility, just then, of any other thought than that of parting.
After a short time, Maurice rose.
"I must give my father the last hour," he said, "and the boat is due at six."
"But it does not ever leave before seven," Lucia answered, "and it is still a quarter to five."
"I have to meet it when it comes in. Mr. Bellairs is coming home by it, and I have various affairs to settle with him."
He looked at her as he said "Mr. Bellairs is coming," but there was no tell-tale change in her face; she had for the moment utterly forgotten Mr. Percy.
"If he had not been coming, you would have had to wait for him, I suppose?" she asked. "I wish he would stay away."
"There are, unfortunately, such things as posts and telegraphs even further west than Cacouna. I sent a telegram to meet him yesterday morning."
"Ah, yes, I suppose where there's a will there's a way."
She spoke pettishly, and he only answered by coming across and holding out his hand to say good-bye. She rose and put out both hers, intending to say, as she often did when she had been cross, "Don't be angry, Maurice, I did not mean it," but the words would not come. Her courage suddenly gave way, and she cried with all her heart.
At that moment Maurice felt that she was really his; he longed unspeakably to claim her once and for ever; but his old generous self-repression was too strong for the temptation, and he shrunk from taking advantage of her grief and her sisterly affection. But a brother has some privileges, and those he had a right to. Her face was hidden, but he bent down, and drawing away her hands for a moment, kissed her with something more than a brother's warmth, pressed Mrs. Costello's hand, and hurried away.
Lucia listened intently as the sound of his footsteps, and of the gate as he passed through it, died away. Then she raised her head, and pushing back her hair, came and sat down at her mother's feet, hiding her flushed face and laughing a little half hysterical laugh.
But the laugh was a complete failure, and broke down into a sob, which was followed by a great many others, enough to have satisfied Maurice himself. At last she checked herself. "What a baby I am!" she said.
Mrs. Costello stroked back gently the soft black locks which were falling loose over her lap.
"You are a child, Lucia. I have never been in any haste for you to be otherwise."
"But I am not such a child, really, mamma. Sixteen and a half! I ought to be very nearly a woman."
Mrs. Costello sighed.
"You will be a woman soon enough, my darling, be content as to that."
"All the sooner now I have nobody but you to keep me in order. Mamma, how shall we do without Maurice at Bella's wedding?"
When the 'Queen of the West' passed down the river that evening with Maurice on board, he could plainly distinguish two figures standing on the verandah of the Cottage, and recognize Mrs. Costello's black dress, and Lucia's softly flowing muslin, framed in the green branches of the vine and climbing roses. One of those roses went with him on his journey to remind him, if anything were needed to remind him, of the place to which, even more than to his father's house, his heart turned as home.
For a whole day Lucia had scarcely once remembered Mr. Percy; and that same day she had scarcely been a moment absent from his thoughts. Not that this had been at all the case during the whole of his absence from Cacouna. On the contrary, he had, in spite of his ill-humour at starting, found so many agreeable distractions in the course of his journey that, at the end of a week, he congratulated himself on being entirely cured of a very foolish and troublesome fancy. No sooner, however, had they begun their return—taking, it is true; a different route, and continuing to visit new places—than it appeared that the cure was not yet entirely complete; still he paid little attention to the returning symptoms, and suffered them to increase unchecked till, at the commencement of their last day's journey, the magnet had resumed all its former power, and he became positively impatient to find himself again at the Cottage.
Mr. Percy was not by any means so much in love as to be blind to the extreme inconvenience and impolicy of anything like a serious love affair with a little Canadian girl such as Lucia Costello; but in the meantime she attracted him delightfully, and he always trusted to good luck for some means of extrication, if matters should go a step further than he intended. As for the possibility of her suffering, that did not enter into his calculations; there would, of course, be some tears, and she would look prettier than ever through them; but women always shed tears and always wipe them away again, and forget them. So he came back quite prepared to enjoy the two or three weeks which still remained to him, by spending as many hours daily, as possible, in pursuit of what he knew at the bottom of his heart he neither expected nor wished to retain, when it was once gained.
The pleasure of rivalling and mortifying Maurice had been, at first, one of Percy's strongest incentives in his attentions to Lucia; and as he found that, do what he could, it was impossible to force "that young Leigh" to show either jealousy or mortification, he began to hate him. He had enough sense and tact not to betray this feeling either to Mrs. Costello or Lucia, but it only grew stronger for being repressed. Mr. Bellairs, for some reason, said nothing to his cousin of the telegram he received from Maurice at the town where they spent the last night of their tour; it was, therefore, without any idea of what had really happened that he perceived the father and son standing together on the wharf as the boat drew towards it. But as soon as he understood the cause of their being there, it occurred to him that this chance interview would be useful to him at the Cottage; he knew enough of women to guess that the smallest scrap of information about the traveller, even to be able to say, "I saw him on board the boat," would make him additionally welcome to them. Accordingly, he spoke to Maurice with more civility than usual, inquired to what part of England he was going, and gave him, in his usual lazy fashion, some information about railways and hotels which was likely to be useful to a stranger in the country. Having thus not only done himself good, but as he felt, displayed a most courteous and charitable spirit, he left Mr. Bellairs with the Leighs and walked up to the house, where Bella's bridal preparations had been going on vigorously during his absence.
These preparations were nearly finished, for only three days remained before that fixed for the wedding; and all had gone on smoothly, until the sudden news of Maurice's summons to England deranged the bridal party, and threw the bride into a fit of ill-humour from which Doctor Morton was the greatest sufferer. She would not be satisfied with any substitute either he or her sister could propose, and was the more unreasonable because she knew that when her brother-in-law (of whom she had really some little awe) should arrive, she would have to lay aside her whims, and consent to accept whoever could be found to take the office of groomsman at so short a notice. When he came, accordingly, she was quite silent and submissive—a short consultation ended in what she had expected; and Mr. Percy took Maurice's place in the programme. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Bellairs were altogether pleased that it should be so, but they comforted themselves with the idea that he would very shortly be leaving Canada, and that as he and Lucia would necessarily see much of each other while he did remain at Cacouna, their being associated together on that one day could not be of any great consequence.
The next morning, therefore, when Mr. Percy made his appearance at the Cottage, he had much to tell. But Lucia was still thinking more of Maurice than of him; she was unusually quiet, and more inclined to talk of England and to learn all she could of the voyage thither and of the journey from Liverpool to Norfolk, than to occupy herself either with the wedding or with the incidents of his tour on the Lakes. For the first time Mr. Percy was alarmed; he began to think it possible that during his absence, Maurice had so well used his time as to deprive him of the influence which he had before acquired over Lucia's mind; and this idea caused him suddenly to fancy that it was absolutely necessary to his happiness that he should displace Maurice altogether