DESOLATION
At the front-parlour window at Eastsea, sat Ellen Adair--looking for one who did not come. Whatever troubles, trials, mysteries might be passing elsewhere, Eastsea was going through its usual monotonous routine. How monotonous, Ellen Adair could have told: and yet, even here, something like mystery seemed to be looming in the air.
"Come what may, Ellen, I shall be down again within a few hours," had been Arthur Bohun's parting words to her. But the hours and the days passed on, and he came not.
To have one's marriage suddenly interrupted, and the bridegroom borne off from, as may be said, the very church-door, was not more agreeable to Ellen Adair than it would be to any other young lady. She watched him away in the fly, whilst his kisses were yet warm upon her lips. All that remained, was to make the best of the situation. She took off her bonnet and dress, and locked up the ring and licence he had begged her to take care of. Until the morrow she supposed; only until the morrow. Mrs. Cumberland sent out a message to her own flyman to the effect that, finding herself unable to get up, she could not take her drive, but he was to bring the fly at the same hour on the morrow. Mrs. Cumberland also wrote a line to the clergyman.
The morrow came; and went. Ellen scarcely stirred from the window, which commanded a view of the road from the station; but she did not see Captain Bohun. "Sir Nash's son must be worse, and he cannot leave," she said to herself, striving to account for the delay, whilst at the same time a vague undercurrent of uneasiness lay within her, which she did her best not to recognize or listen to. "There will be a letter tomorrow morning--or he himself will come."
But on the morrow there was no letter. Ellen watched the postman pass the house, and she turned sick and white. Mrs. Cumberland--who was better and had risen early, expecting Captain Bohun, and that the marriage would certainly take place that day--took the absence of letters with philosophy.
"He might as well have written a line, of course, Ellen; but it only shows that he is coming in by the first train. That will be due in twenty minutes."
Ellen stood at the window, watching: her spirit faint, her heart beating. That vague undercurrent of uneasiness had grown into a recognized fear now--but a fear she knew not of what. She made no pretence to eating any breakfast; she could not have swallowed a morsel had it been to save her life: Mrs. Cumberland said nothing, except that she must take some after Captain Bohun had arrived.
"There's the train, Ellen. I hear the whistle."
Ellen sat behind the Venetian blind at the window, glancing through it. Three or four straggling passengers were at length perceived, making their way down the street. But not one of them was Captain Bohun. The disappointment was turning her heart to sickness, when a station fly came careering gaily up the street.