Chapter XX: Abroad

"Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee;
All things are passing,
God never changeth,
Patient endurance
Attaineth to all things."
LONGFELLOW.

"SEND her a telegram, and tell her a letter will follow."

"I could not do it."

"What do you propose, then?"

Captain Vaughan and Heather were speaking, and they were out on the lawn after breakfast the next morning. Ena was there, too, in her chair, superintending a little gardening done by Dick. Captain Vaughan was going to his farm, but stayed to discuss Heather's intended trip abroad.

"It would not be right to throw her over at the last minute," said Heather, looking at Captain Vaughan rather pleadingly.

He had a little frown between his eyes, for he was strongly averse to her keeping to her engagement, and Heather still felt strangely shy of him. She turned to Ena.

"Oh, Ena, help me; you know I could not do it. What would she say, when all her preparations are made, and she is relying upon me to join her to-morrow at Victoria Station?"

"I don't know what to say," said Ena, with a smile. The future of the two she loved best in the world looked so bright to her that nothing else seemed to matter. "I am sure," she went on, "we shall not consent to your being abroad with her till next spring. But I confess it is very late now for you to refuse to go to her."

"Well," said Captain Vaughan, with a shrug of his shoulders, "you must talk it over together, and settle it your own way, as you will not have my advice. My proposal is that she should be written to at once. She could very soon find another companion; it would only delay her trip for a week or two."

He walked off. Heather looked after him for a minute, then with light steps rejoined him before he reached the garden gate.

"You won't be vexed with me if I go?" she asked.

He stopped, and laid his hand on her shoulder. His tone was grave, but his eyes had that kindly humour in them that was one of his attractions to women.

"You won't take care of yourself," he said, "and now I consider I have the right to take care of you."

"You would not like me to do anything dishonourable?"

Heather was smiling now, but she watched his face a little anxiously.

"I don't think you could," was the reply; "but settle it as you will with Ena."

"I think the best way for me to act is to go with Mrs. Macintyre, and stay with her until she finds some one else to take my place. I will tell her what you wish. And a month abroad will not hurt me. Please say you approve of this."

"I don't approve, but I will try and be content with it."

He went off, and Heather returned to Ena, feeling lighter hearted at his consent.

Both he and his sister wished to prolong her stay with them, but Heather never flinched where she saw her duty lay.

Accordingly, the next day found her making her departure, but not with the sad heart-sinkings that she had anticipated a short time before.

As she looked round the old Priory, and gazed at it lying still and peaceful in the autumn sunshine, as she mounted the trap and let her eyes rest on the old stone porch with its quaint inscription, now almost hidden under the flaming creepers surrounding it, and waved a misty farewell to Ena in her wheeled chair, and her important attendant standing by her side, her heart was throbbing with bright hope and gladness.

"I shall come back to it again, and it will be my home."

And if a little shadow lay on her path, if a little doubt of the strong figure by her side seemed to rise in her heart, she stifled and stilled it instantly.

"He is a good, a noble man; an unselfish son and brother; and he will be as good to me as he has been to every one else."

Captain Vaughan was very silent during the drive, and Heather was quite content to follow his example. He looked after her comforts, and when the train was just moving off gave her a warm hand-grip.

"God bless and keep you! Write to us soon. And remember that we expect you back before Christmas."

Heather leant back in her seat, and wondered if any girl had such an undemonstrative lover as she. Yet she assured herself that she would rather have one such hand-grip from him than dozens of flattering protestations of admiration and love from any one else, and for the rest of her journey she lived in a dream.

She met Mrs. Macintyre, as arranged, at Victoria Station, and then, indeed, she had her hands full. An exacting, nervous, and irritable companion on a long railway journey is always a trial. It was doubly so to Heather in her present position, and before three or four days had elapsed, she felt nearly worn out.

Yet her patience and good nature never flagged, and even Mrs. Macintyre owned after a fortnight's time that she suited her very well.

But Heather could not leave her long in ignorance of her own plans, and when, as gently as possible, she told her that her circumstances had changed, and that her friends wished her to return to them as soon as she could be spared, there was trouble at once. Mrs. Macintyre was a woman who had never controlled her temper or restrained her tongue, and she was furious at this change of purpose.

"You have deliberately deceived me; I engaged you for the winter, and you are trying to leave me stranded in a foreign place amongst strangers. But I will not have it. You are bound to me, and stay with me you shall, for the time we agreed upon! Have I not given way to your nasty narrow cranks? When you told me you never played for money on principle, did I not generously concede to your request that you should be allowed to read to me instead? Have I not denied myself the pleasure of my usual recreation in order to gratify your Pharisaical nature? It is only the pious people like yourself who can stoop to such mean actions, and you are with the wrong person, let me tell you, Miss Fotheringay, if you think you can act so! There would have been hundreds only too glad and thankful to step into your shoes!"

"I would not leave you, Mrs. Macintyre, until you have some one to take my place. I think you will not find it difficult, as you say, to find some one else. I am truly sorry. It would have been better not to come with you at all, but I could not bear to put you off at the last minute!"

"I will not hear a word more from you," and Mrs. Macintyre literally stamped her foot. "I forbid you to mention the subject again. You dare not break your agreement with me, for I should simply take it into the law courts rather than give way. Pack our trunks to-night for Monte Carlo, and not another word!"

So to Monte Carlo they went, and the old lady solaced herself for the want of a congenial companion, by frequenting the gaming tables day by day. It was a time of unspeakable wretchedness to Heather, for though she never took part, she was dragged there against her will; and the very atmosphere seemed degrading.

But the end came in an unexpected way.

Ena received a letter a fortnight after, which made her cheeks blanch. She handed it to her brother without a word.

And he sat for a moment after reading, as if considering his course of action.

"DEAREST ENA,—I write to you because I feel I can give you fuller details than Captain Vaughan. I have gone through such a dreadful time this last twenty-four hours that I hardly know how to describe it. I told you how infatuated poor Mrs. Macintyre has been over these dreadful tables. She first won a great deal, but this last week has been losing steadily every day. The night before last she came to my room and implored me to lend her some money. She told me she had lost everything she possessed, and must win it back. I did not know whether to believe her or not, but we had a dreadful scene. I steadily refused to lend her one franc, and then—I could not help it—I think she wrought upon my feelings so that I felt I must speak plainly. And I spoke straight to her about her soul and the life she was leading.

"I am thankful I did now, but I shall never forget her look of astonishment when I first began. Of course, she was very angry, but I begged her to listen to me. I told her I knew I was only a young girl, with not a quarter of her experience of the world, but that I had seen a little of it, and compared with my present life it was as chaff to wheat. And at last she grew calmer, and finally, to my perplexity and distress, she burst into tears, and said that there was no one in the wide world who cared for her. She was a ruined woman, and would die in the workhouse, and life was a tangle and hideous disappointment from beginning to end. She let me talk to her for over an hour. I felt utterly inexperienced and helpless, and yet when I got my Bible, and she let me give her a verse or two, I felt quite at rest about it. She said no one had ever spoken to her about such things before. I think she was utterly crushed by her losings, and so was more ready to listen. Then I begged her to come away from Monte Carlo, and when she said she had no ready money, I told her I would willingly lend her some for that purpose.

"So the next morning we left, and came straight on to Nice. We were nearly there, when there was the most awful shock I have ever felt in my life. I shall never forget the horror of it. It was a collision. You will perhaps see it in the papers before this reaches you. I remember nothing after the first shock. When I came to myself, I found myself with a number of others on the railway bank, doctors and officials rushing frantically about, and gesticulating and chattering as only Frenchmen can. I felt dreadfully queer and shaken, but found I was not injured in any way, and my first thought was for Mrs. Macintyre. I can't tell you what a shock it was to come across her poor body. She had been killed instantaneously, the doctors said, her skull fractured.

"I cannot tell you all I have been through. They seem abroad as if their one idea is to bury their dead instantaneously, and they hardly gave me time to telegraph to her lawyer before they were making arrangements for the burial. I am staying at this quiet hotel, and have just received a telegram from her lawyer saying he and a cousin of hers will be with me to-night. I feel almost as if it were my doing that we were in the accident. If I had not hurried her away from Monte Carlo she might have been alive and well now; and yet, would you not have acted in the same way if you had been in my place? I can't believe she is really gone, it seems so awful. Pray for me, won't you? I am quite unnerved. Your loving—

"HEATHER."

"I shall go out to her and fetch her back at once," he said briefly.

"She may have started home before you can reach her."

"I shall wire."

"Poor dear child. What an awful experience! How little we thought by what means she would be brought back to us!"

Captain Vaughan sent his telegram, but received one before he could start.

"Cyril here. Am returning with him."

And so, a few days after, Heather found herself with her sister in her London house. Bluebell received her affectionately. She was pleased with her engagement, and begged Captain Vaughan to come up and stay with them for a short time. This he was unable to do, and Heather almost felt it a relief when she heard he was not coming.

She had suffered more than she at first thought in the collision, and for days she did not leave her room. The doctor said it had been a great shock to her nerves, and she must be kept very quiet.

Poor Heather felt that in such a gay house, and with the roar and bustle of the London streets so close to her, this was a difficult prescription to follow. But Bluebell was not very well herself, and determined to spend a quiet Christmas in the country, so in a few weeks' time, they went to their country house, and Heather's health and spirits began to improve at once.

It was in the middle of February that Bluebell became the happy mother of a little son, and her joy and pride in her baby was intense.

"Oh, Heather," she said one evening, as they were in the nursery seeing him put into his little cot, "I never thought I should be so foolish over a child. I think he will be my idol now. If anything could wean me from society and the gay life you condemn, he will. I believe I could be happy in a cottage with him in my arms."

"He has been sent to you in love," responded Heather, gravely; "let him draw you to the One who has given him to you."

"Yes. I really mean to be a good mother. He is such a charge to train. I should never like him to grow up and find anything in his mother to condemn. I mean to be everything that is good and noble now that I am a mother."

She spoke in the full joy and confidence of her mother's love, and for a time was very softened. Yet when her vigorous health and spirits returned to her, she plunged afresh into gaiety, and laughed at her sister's pleadings.

Her love for her child seemed almost a passion, and Cyril shared in the adoration. But, like many others, Bluebell cast all serious thoughts away from her, and refused to recognize that the gift was from God, and that she might be called upon to relinquish it.

About this time Captain Vaughan came to pay his long-promised visit.

Heather met him with mingled feelings of shyness and delight. She had not seen him since she had been abroad, and her correspondence with him was rather constrained. She still had the feeling that she did not know him, and that his heart was not hers.

She was alone in her sister's sunny drawing-room when he arrived. He came in with his kindly smile and cheery voice, and, for the first time since they had been engaged, stooped and kissed her. It brought the blood with a rush to her cheeks, and almost overpowered her, but asking after Ena and hearing the Priory news soon put her at ease.

"And when are you coming back to us for good?" he asked presently. "There is no need to wait much longer, is there?"

Heather looked at him with startled eyes, and he did not press the question.

But before many days passed Bluebell asked Heather the same question.

"Do you want to get rid of me?" Heather asked with a smile.

"I want you to be happy in a home of your own like I am. Why should you wait? I always think long engagements are a mistake. When you have once made up your mind to marry a man, the sooner it is done the better. I suppose your mind is made up?"

"Of course it is. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, sometimes I think you are a queer couple, so dreadfully matter-of-fact and undemonstrative! And then there is the sister. I wish you were not going to be saddled with her. An invalid sister-in-law is rather trying. I think she ought to live elsewhere."

"If Ena were not there, I wouldn't marry at all," said Heather, with some heat.

Bluebell leant back in her chair and looked at her sister, half amused, half perplexed.

"It is the sister you are going to marry, then, not him? I thought so."

"Oh, Bluebell, don't tease so. You know I wouldn't marry a man if I did not care for him."

And Heather walked away, with her head a little bit uplifted, whilst Bluebell called after her mischievously—

"He ought to take you to a desert island for your honeymoon, to find out whether it is he or his sister who has won your affections."