FRIEND AND WIFE.
“So grew my own small life complete
As nature obtained her best of me.”
By the Fireside.
“To marry aright is to read the riddle of the world.”
CICELY was but half satisfied by Amiel’s assurance that she “was only teasing her,” and very much inclined to arrange shopping expeditions—a bait she had generally found irresistible—for some days to come, at the hour when their visitor was to be expected. But “for to-day, I need not ask her to alter her plans,” she said to herself. “He will certainly not call to-day.” So when Amiel said that she had letters to write and could not go out, Cicely made no objection, and the sisters spent the afternoon in the house.
It was growing dusk when Sir Herbert’s voice was heard coming upstairs. “I have brought you a visitor, Amy,” he exclaimed, as he opened the drawing-room door.
“How do you do, Mr. Guildford?” said Lady Forrester, calmly shaking hands with her guest. Then Cicely found herself calmly shaking hands with him too, and in another five minutes it seemed to her quite natural to see him sitting there among them, while Amiel poured out tea, and the room looked bright and homelike in the firelight.
He stayed about an hour, and when he left he had promised to dine with them the next day; and when Cicely woke the next morning, she fancied the sun was shining more brightly than was usual through London windows!
The evening passed pleasantly. Cicely liked to listen to Mr. Guildford and her brother-in-law; she liked to realise the high estimation in which each evidently held the other; she herself felt satisfied to sit in silence, without analysing her content.
“I wish Mrs. Crichton were here to sing to us,” she said towards the end of the evening to Bessie’s brother.
“Yes,” he answered, but somewhat absently. Then he went on hastily. “Miss Methvyn,” he said, “I want to ask you a favour. Will you copy out another manuscript for me. It is not a long one.”
“Certainly I will,” she replied cordially. “Send it to me whenever you like.”
“I have never got any professional copier to do them as well as you did that one at Hivèritz. And,” he continued, “I cannot manage them myself.”
He hesitated. Cicely looked up quickly. “Do you mean,” she said, “that your eyes are not any better?”
He bent his head. “Yes,” he replied, “that is what I meant to tell you. I wanted you to know.”
A little shiver ran through Cicely; she was sitting by the piano: they were out of hearing of Sir Herbert and Amiel, engrossed with cribbage, in the other drawing-room; for an instant she turned her head away; when she looked up again there were tears in her eyes,—was it the sight of them that lighted up with a strange new light the dark ones so earnestly regarding her?
“Do you mean,” she said tremulously, “that you are growing blind? Is that what you want me to know—did you mean to—to break it by asking me to copy the manuscript for you?”
He smiled—a smile so brightly happy, so full of sunshine that Cicely felt bewildered.
“Do you mean,” he whispered, “that if it were so, you would care so much? Do you—can you care so much for anything that might happen to me?”
One of Cicely’s hands was lying on the keys. Edmond covered it with his own. She did not withdraw it—but she did not speak; only, one of the tears’ dropped quietly on to the hand that held hers. It seemed to give him courage to say more.
“Cicely,” he said softly, “will you not answer me? Is it possible you care for me so?”
Cicely looked up. “I care so much—I care for you so much that—is it horribly selfish of me?—forgive me—I could hardly regret your being blind, if—if I might be eyes to you. Oh! you know what I mean,” she went on. “Life would be worth having to me if I could use it in helping you.”
He looked at her with a whole world of feeling beyond expression in his eyes. “I can hardly believe it,” he whispered, as if to himself. “What have I done to deserve it? Cicely, are you sure you are not mistaken? Is it love, not pity—are you sure?”
“I never really knew what love meant till I learnt to love you,” she said softly.
He kissed away the tears still trembling on her eyelids, he whispered the sweet, fond foolish words that will never seem worn-out or hackneyed while time and youth last in this old world of ours, though never will they express the hundredth part of a true man’s love for a noble woman. And then he told her what by this time he had almost forgotten all about, the worst to be feared for him was hardly so bad as she had imagined; his sight was by no means irrevocably doomed, it might be yet spared to him, with care and attention there was good reason for hoping it would be so. “For now,” he said, “I shall value it doubly.”
Sir Herbert had fallen asleep by the fire long ago. Amiel had disappeared; there was nothing to interrupt the many questions these two were now eager to ask and answer.
“Why were you so cold to me the other day, when we met in the picture-room?” he said.
“What was I to think?” she answered. “Why had you never come to see us?”
He tried to evade a reply, but she persisted. Then at last he confessed to his foolish jealousy of Mr. Hayle. “I had no reason to think you cared for me in the least, remember,” he said. “All that time at Hivèritz, your manner was more discouraging than any coldness. You were so dreadfully friendly and unconstrained.”
“Yet you were happy there?” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “but I was deceiving myself. I thought I was satisfied with what I believed to be all you could give me—your friendship. Then my eyes were opened, and since then—oh! what a dreary mockery everything has seemed all this time!”
“Yes,” she whispered, “I know. I thought it was only I that felt it so. I thought you had quite forgotten, or outgrown any other feeling—that you were glad to be able to keep to your theory of not letting love gain much hold of you, and I tried to think I was satisfied too.”
“Ah, yes! My theories,” he said, with a smile. “I thought I could keep Love in its place. It never struck me that Love may be a master, not in the sense of a tyrant, but of a teacher. But I shall be an apt pupil now. Cicely, I love you with heart and soul, and mind and conscience approve. It is the best of me that loves you, my darling—I understand now how such love can be called divine, and I feel that it must be immortal.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, as if thinking aloud. “Yes, I understand it now:
“‘Sole spark from God’s life at strife,
With death, so, sure of range above
The limits here.’
I never understood it before as I do now.”
And Cicely understood it too.
“Do you know,” he went on, do you know that it is just three years—three years this very evening—since I first saw you, Cicely?”
“The night little Charlie died,” she said softly.
THE END.
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