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Flaming June

<h3>Chapter Twenty Five.</h3> The parental summons arrived ten days after the date of Elma’s formal engagement, and at the expiration of the seventh week of Cornelia’s sojourn in England. There it was for all the world to see;—short, authoritative, and to the point. Circumstances had altered Poppar’s plan. His visit to Europe must be postponed, he desired his daughter to return home by the first possible boat. Useless to exclaim, to argue, to condemn. The command had gone forth; implicit obedience must ensue. “Will you feel badly when I’m gone, Aunt Soph?” Cornelia asked after the news had been broken. She looked wistfully into the spinster’s face, and felt herself answered as she noted the involuntary momentary hesitation which preceded the reply. “It will naturally be a disappointment to me to miss seeing my brother, but I hope the pleasure is only deferred. I am glad to have had an opportunity of making your acquaintance, my dear, though the time is so curtailed.” “Yes, I guess we’ve fixed-up an acquaintance right enough!” said Cornelia, quietly. Seven weeks, or seven years—what did it matter? She and this woman could never become friends. Time counts for nothing in the intercourse of souls. An hour may reveal a kindred spirit; no years can bridge some gaps. Elma would remain a life-long friend, Guest a life-long memory, but her kinswoman, the nearest on earth with the one exception of her father, must for ever be a stranger. Cornelia was sad at heart that day, and Elma was sad, too; opening wide, startled eyes, and clasping her friend in jealous arms. “Cornelia, it isn’t true! It can’t be true! I can’t spare you, dear. Is it really impossible to stay on a little longer? Geoffrey and I counted on you for our wedding. It is fixed for October, and I wanted you for a bridesmaid. I wanted you to pay me a visit in my own house! You have been such a friend to us both, that we need you, Cornelia! I shall miss you badly!” “Shucks!” returned Cornelia, lightly. “You’ll forget there is such a creature in existence. I should, in your place, and I don’t mind if you do, for I know you’ll remember again another day. This is Geoffrey’s hour, and I won’t interfere. If I live, I’ll pay you that visit right enough, and maybe you’ll come over to see me. I’d give you a roaring time. Tell Geoffrey he is bound to bring you over to see America. I’ll think about you on your marriage-day, but I don’t know as I’m sorry to do the thinking at a distance. Wedding-days aren’t the liveliest occasions in the world for the looker-on. I guess I’d feel pretty ‘left,’ when you drove off from the gates, and I found myself all by my lonesome with the two old girls. ... I’ve wired to Liverpool about berths, and may have to start off at a day’s notice, so we’ve got to make the most of the time. Aunt Soph don’t care! She’s polite, of course, but right at the back of her mind I can see she’s planning to clean out my room, and thinking how good it will be to have the mats laid aside, and the shroudings over the tables! If it wasn’t for you, Moss Rose, I should feel I’d done a fool-trick coming over at all! When all’s said and done it amounts to nothing but disappointment and heart-break.” “You mean,” began Elma, “you mean—” and then suddenly paused. Why should Cornelia’s heart break? Disappointment and disillusion would be natural enough in one who had experienced both coldness and deception within the last few weeks, but heart-break was too strong a term. To Elma, with her mind full to overflowing of that beloved Geoffrey, it seemed as if nothing but love could count so seriously in life. Her thoughts flew to Guest, recalling all she had heard of his knight-errantry in London; of the long hours which the two had spent alone together; and later on, of the daily meetings in the Park, planned for her own benefit, but none the less opportunities for fuller knowledge. She fixed her blue eyes on Cornelia’s face, and asked a sudden question— “Does Captain Guest know that you are going?” “How should he?” returned Cornelia, lightly. Eyes and lips were unflinching, but all the will in the world could not keep the blood from her cheeks. “He’s visiting somewhere at the other end of the country, with old friends who belong to his own world, and feel the same way about the same things. Let him stay and be happy! I don’t want him to come worrying down here for the fun of saying good-bye. Guess he’s had trouble enough about my affairs. Mind now, Elma, you are not to tell him! This is my affair, and I won’t have you interfere.” Elma meekly disavowed any intention of communicating with Captain Guest, but like many other meek people she harboured a quiet reservation which annulled the promise. She would not write, but—Geoffrey could! Geoffrey should! That flame in Cornelia’s cheek satisfied her that the girl’s interest was deeper than she would admit, and if Guest returned the feeling, what joy, what rapture to have Cornelia settled in England; to look forward to a life of constant intercourse! Cornelia had helped her; according to her lights Elma was determined to help Cornelia also. With disconcerting swiftness a return telegram arrived from Liverpool stating that owing to illness a passenger had been suddenly obliged to resign a state-room on the boat sailing on the following Saturday, and that the accommodation would be reserved pending Miss Briskett’s confirmation. An immediate reply was requested. Cornelia gasped and hesitated. Four days! Only four days, and then farewell to England and English friends. She had not expected anything so speedy as this. During these summer months berths were engaged so long ahead that it was generally a most difficult thing to arrange for a speedy passage. She had been told of this over and over again; had known of her friends’ difficulties in such matters; in the background of her mind had counted on a similar delay in her own case. In a week or a fortnight much might happen, but in four days! She stood battling with temptation, while Mary watched her with anxious eyes. No one but herself knew the purport of the message; no one need know if the answer were a refusal. Two or three scribbled words would give her a reprieve. ... Poor Cornelia! She realised afresh how easy it was to be brave in anticipation, how bitterly hard in actual fact. She was silent so long that Mary summoned up courage to ask a question— “Is it bad news, miss?” Cornelia stared at her blankly for a moment, and valiantly forced a smile. “I guess there’s two sides to it, as there are to most things in this world. My Poppar’ll think it splendid, but you’ll hate it badly enough. I’m going pretty quick, Mury! You won’t have me but four days more!” The truth was out. She had burned her boats, and made retreat impossible. While Mary wept and lamented, Cornelia wrote the confirmatory wire, and sent it out to the waiting messenger. Then Mary returned to continue her lamentations. “I wish I could marry him, and be done with it! I can’t seem to face staying on here with no one but her in the house, nagging at us all the day. I’ll have to make another move!” she proclaimed dismally. In Mary’s converse the singular pronoun, when masculine, always applied to her friend; when feminine, to her mistress. Cornelia had grasped this fact, and had therefore no difficulty in understanding her meaning. She sat down in a chair by the window, and stared at the maid with serious eyes. “Do you love him, Mury? Enough to marry him, and live beside him every one day to the end of your life? You think you would not get—tired?” Mary hesitated, unwilling to commit herself. “I wouldn’t like to go so far as that,” she announced judicially. “He aggravates me at times something cruel, but I’d sooner be aggravated by him nor anyone else. They talk a lot of rubbish about love, Miss Cornelia, but that’s about the size of it when all’s said and done. Some people suit you and others don’t, and all the lovey-doveying in the world won’t make ’em—” “Why, Mury, you are a philosopher! It’s the dead truth, Mury, but I guess you needn’t rub it in.—If you’ve made up your mind, why need you wait?” “Furniture, miss! I’ve told him I won’t marry to go into rooms, not if it’s ever so. I’ll wait till I get a ’ome of me own. He’d put by a goodish bit, and so had I, but things have been agen us. He was out of work four months last winter, and mother’s legs are a awful drain—liniments, and bandages, and what-not. You can’t see your own mother suffer, and not pay out. We’ve got to wait till we save up again.” “How much money does it take to furnish a cottage over here, Mury?” “That depends on how it’s done. You can do it ’an’some for forty pounds. I lived with a girl who did hers for twenty, but I wouldn’t like to be as close as that. I reckon about thirty.” “Thirty pounds! One hundred and fifty dollars!” Cornelia gasped in astonishment at the smallness of the sum. “You can’t mean that that includes everything—chairs and tables, and carpets, and dishes, and beds, and bureaus, and brooms, and tins, and curtains, and fire-irons—and all the fixing to put ’em up! It isn’t possible you can get them all for a hundred and fifty dollars!” “You can, miss. There’s a shop in the Fore Street where they do you everything complete for three rooms for thirty pounds, with a velvet suite for the parlour. Lady’s chair, gent’s chair, sofa, and four uprights, with chiffonnier, and overmantel, and all. You couldn’t wish for anything better. The girl I lived with had only a few odd bits—I’d be ashamed to have such a poor sort of parlour.—In the kitchen they give you a dresser, and a flap-table, and linoleum on the floor. Jim and me went to the shop one day to have a look round. ... That was when he had a bit put by!” Mary sighed, and flicked away a tear. “And now you’re going next! I’m getting a bit sick of bad luck, I am!” Cornelia was bending forward in her seat, her chin supported in the palms of her hands. Her expression was very grave and wistful, but in her eyes shone the light of awakened interest. “Mury!—you’ve been real good and attentive to me. I guess I’ve given you quite a heap of trouble. I want to make you a present before I go. Would you like it if I fixed-up that house so’s you could get married right away? If you say so, you can go to that store and make your own bargains, and I’ll leave thirty pounds with Miss Ramsden to pay the bills. I’d like to feel I’d helped you to a home of your own, Mury!” Mary clutched the back of a chair near to which she was standing; her eyes protruded, her chin dropped, speech failed her in the excess of emotion. She could only stare, and gasp, and stare again. “Poor Mury!” said Cornelia, softly. “Are you so pleased? I want you should be pleased. If I ken make someone happy to-day—right-down, tearing happy, it’s going to help me more’n you know. ... Won’t you enjoy going shopping with your friend, Mury, bossing round in that store, choosing the things you want, and putting on airs as if you owned the bank? Mind you put on airs, Mury! Make ’em hop round, and get things to your taste. They’ll think the more of you, and it’s not every day one furnishes a house. ... I’ll send you my picture to stand on the mantelpiece in that parlour, and when you dust it in the mornings, you can send me a kind thought ’way over all those miles of ocean, and I’ll think of you sitting in the lady’s chair. ... For the land’s sake, girl, don’t have a fit! You don’t need to have a thing unless you say so!” “Oh, Miss Cornelia!” sobbed Mary, brokenly. “You’re too—I’m so—you’re an angel, Miss Cornelia, that’s what you are! ... Jim will go off his head when he hears this.—It’s a sort of thing you can’t seem to believe.—I loved to wait on you, miss; if you’d never given me a thing I’d have loved it all the same—you talked so kind, and took such an interest, and was always so lively and laughing. It wasn’t for what I could get—but the house! ... To have a house thrown at you, as you may say, at a moment’s notice—it—takes away my breath! I can’t seem to take it in.” “But you are happy, Mury? You feel happy to think of it?” “I should think I do just. Clean dazed with happiness!” “Poor Mury!” said Cornelia, again. She looked across the room at the flushed, ecstatic face of the prospective bride, and smiled with tender sympathy. “I’m real glad you’re pleased. To-night, just as soon as dinner’s over, you must go out and tell your friend. I’ll fix it up with Aunt Soph. You’ll have a fine time, won’t you? He won’t believe it’s true, but you’ll make him believe, and be as happy as grigs walking round and planning out that parlour. Come into my room when you get back and tell me what he says. I shan’t be asleep!” There seemed no time for sleep during the next few days. The mornings were devoted to packing, and to long confidential interviews with Elma; the afternoons to a succession of tea-parties, to which every old lady in Norton was bidden in turns, to say the same things, and breathe the same pious good wishes; the evenings to decorous cribbage matches with her aunt; the nights—the nights were Cornelia’s own secret, but they left a wan, heavy-eyed damsel to yawn at the breakfast-table each morning. When the last hour arrived, the very last, Cornelia’s friends assembled at the station to bid her good-bye; Miss Briskett, tall and angular in her new grey costume; Mrs Ramsden with the black feather fiercely erect in the front of her bonnet; lovely, blooming Elma attended by her swain, and in the background the faithful Mary, holding on to the dressing-bag, and sniffing dolorously. Cornelia had refused to be escorted farther on the journey, and now that the hour had arrived, her one longing was to say her farewells and be left to herself. She was eager to be off, yet, when the train steamed slowly out of the station, she was gripped by a strange, swift spasm of anguish. Not on her friends’ behalf. Aunt Soph had made no pretence of anything beyond polite regret. Elma and Mary shared a personal happiness so deep, that, for the time at least, the departure of a friend held no lasting sting. Cornelia could wave adieu to each, rejoicing in their joy, in the remembrance that she had had some small share in bringing it about; yet the torturing pain continued, the desolating ache of disappointment. What was it for which she had waited? What hope had lived persistent at the back of her mind, while she had pretended that she had no hope? She knew now that, hour by hour, she had lived in the expectation of Guest’s return; had felt an unreassuring conviction that he must come before she left! That she had done her utmost to prevent his coming had nothing to do with the case. Surely, when she had so sternly followed the dictates of reason, there was all the more need for some good fairy to weave a miracle which should upset her plans. Something must happen! Something! At sweet-and-twenty it is so difficult to believe in the irrevocable! The journey to London was alive with memories. In this corner she had sat watching Guest’s face, listening to his voice as he told the story of his life. At this landscape they had looked together, admiring, and comparing tastes and impressions. At Paddington, Mrs Moffatt had stood in waiting upon the platform. Cornelia was thankful to be safe inside the boat-mail, away from the pressing memories. Here the atmosphere was of home. Eye and ear caught on every side the familiar accent, the familiar phraseology; the familiar tilt of the hat, and squaring of shoulder. The passenger list included more than one well-known name, and once afloat she was sure of companionship. She settled down in her corner, with a sigh of relief, as of one who has reached a haven after struggling in deep waters. This was a foretaste of home! These people were her own kindred; their ways were her ways, their thoughts her thoughts. For the first time since her arrival on English soil she felt the rest of being in perfect accord with her surroundings. With Cornelia America was a passion; life away from her native land was only half a life. Aboard the great steamer the passengers were rushing to and fro, searching for their state-rooms, and, when found, depositing their impedimenta on the tops of the narrow white bunks. Cornelia walked to the quietest corner of the deck, dropped her bag on a seat, and leant idly over the rail. She was in no hurry to go below, and held instinctively aloof from the groups of fellow-passengers and their friends. She was alone, and her heart was sad. Someone walking quickly along the deck caught sight of the solitary figure in the trim, dark-blue dress, and recognised its outline before a turn of the head revealed the glorious, flaming hair. Someone with a grim face, pale beneath his tan, with haggard lines about the eyes and mouth; a man whose looks betrayed the fact that he had been awake all night, face to face with calamity. He walked straight to the girl’s side, and laid his hand upon her arm. “Cornelia!” Cornelia turned swiftly, and a light leapt into her eyes; a light of joy, so pure and involuntary that, at sight of it, the man’s face lost something of its grim tension. He turned his back so as to screen the girl from the passers-by, and his hand tightened on her arm. “Cornelia, are you running away from me?” She did not answer, but her silence gave assent—her silence, and a quiet bend of the head. “Why?” “I was—afraid!” breathed Cornelia, low. Beneath the close-fitting cap Guest could see her lips tremble. The little face looked white and tense. She twisted her fingers nervously. “Afraid of me, and my love? Afraid that I should come back to trouble you? Afraid of my selfishness, Cornelia?” The curling lips breathed a faint dissent. “Of what, then? We have only a few minutes left. You must tell me the truth now!” She raised her eyes to his; brave, pitiful eyes, mutely imploring for mercy. “Of myself! Of my own weakness! Afraid lest I might give way, and ruin two lives!” “You knew that I loved you; that I had gone away to prove my love, to see if it would stand the test of absence? It was a serious matter for us both, and I would not let myself act on the spur of an impulse. If I had, Cornelia, you know that I should have spoken long ago!—that night on the river. You knew it at the time. I saw it in your eyes.—I made you promise to let me know if you left Norton during my absence. It was not fair to run away.” “I never promised! I never did! You asked me, but I didn’t promise. I felt at the time that I must leave.” The words came in quick, gasping breaths, as a child might speak who tried to justify himself to his taskmaster. Guest’s face softened at the sound, and his grasp of the girl’s arm turned into a caress. “Darling, don’t you see what that means? You love me, or you would not be afraid. Geoffrey wrote to me giving me warning, but the letter only reached me late yesterday night. I have been travelling ever since. I just managed to be here in time. If I had missed the boat I should have come after you. Do you think a few thousand miles are going to keep us apart, Cornelia?” She shook her head sadly. “No!—no distance in space, just the distance between our two selves; the distance that can’t be bridged! We belong to different worlds, you and I; we could never be happy together. You love forms and ceremonies, and conventions; all the things that worry me most, and make me feel ugly. It’s the height of your ambition to settle down in your old home, and to keep things rolling along in the same old ruts that they’ve run in for centuries. I want change and excitement, and the newest there is. Your quiet English life would get on my nerves. Poppar and I have had lots of ups and downs, and I’ve never lost grit. I ken bear a good big blow, but to stodge along every day the same dull round would drive me crazed! We live quickly over with us, and you’re so slow. I don’t say that the advantage is all on our side. I used to laugh at English girls, but I don’t any longer, since I’ve known Elma Ramsden. If I were a man, Elma’s the sort I’d want for my wife. You’ll find another like her some day, and be thankful you are free. You love me now, but your love would not stand the strain of pulling separate ways all our lives—” Guest gazed at her with gloomy eyes. “You don’t love me, or you would not think of anything else. Whatever may be the differences between us, you are the one woman I have ever wanted for my wife. I can’t bear to let you go. ... Don’t trifle with me for the few minutes that are left. Tell me honestly how we stand. ... Do you love me, Cornelia?” “I—could!” answered Cornelia, slowly. Her cheeks flushed beneath his gaze, and the white lids drooped over the honest eyes. “It was just finding out how easy it would be, that sent me running home. The people at Norton think it was Poppar’s doing, but I’ll tell you straight that I asked him to send for me. ... Life’s a big chance. We’ve got to make the best we know out of it, for ourselves and other people. I don’t mean to spoil things for us both. ... You didn’t want to love me! Right at the back of your mind you’ve felt all the time that I was not your mate. You went away to think it out; perhaps, if the truth’s known, you were still undecided when the news of my sailing brought you up with a run. When I am gone and you have had time to cool down, you’ll be glad!” Guest repeated the word with bitter emphasis. “Glad! I shall be glad, shall I? At the present moment, in any case, I am the most miserable man on earth. Have you no pity, Cornelia? Will nothing move you? Think how happy we have been together! If we loved each other, surely we could outlive the differences? Can you bear to go away like this and leave me for ever? Is it nothing to you how I suffer? Don’t you care, Cornelia?” “Yes, I care,” she answered simply. “It hurts, but it’s going to hurt a lot more if I stay behind. If we lived together it would be like trying to piece together the bits of two different puzzles. We don’t fit!” The simple words expressed the truth with paralysing force. Even at that bitter moment Guest recognised their truth, and was dumb before it. He turned aside, his strong jaw working with emotion, powerless to fight any longer against the rock of Cornelia’s will. Behind him lay the grey city wrapped in its veil of smoke, the tall spire of the old church rising in picturesque isolation above the line of the surrounding buildings. It seemed at that moment to stand as a symbol of the life of the Mother Country, a life fenced in by convention, by forms and ceremonies sanctified to every Englishman by centuries of association; forms at which he may at times smile or scoff, but which he would no sooner demolish than he would tear away the clustering ivy which clothes his walls. Before him lay the broad river, its mouth widening to the sea: to that free, untrammelled waste of waters, which were a fit symbol of that land of the West, whose daughter could place her liberty even before her love! There came a sudden stir and movement. A second time the bell clanged its warning, and the visitors began to stream towards the gangway. Guest heard the sound of a strangled sob, and felt his own heart beat with suffocating quickness. “I—I can’t face it,” he cried desperately, “I won’t take this as an answer. If I had time I could make you listen to me. I could make you agree. I shall come after you to New York.” She turned aside, but not so quickly that he did not catch the sudden light in her eyes, the same involuntary gleam of joy which had greeted his coming a few minutes before. The sight of that tell-tale signal made his heart leap, but Cornelia shook her head, and her voice broke in a low-breathed “Ho! It would be a mistake. Wait here. Wait quietly! At first it will hurt, but after a while you’ll be glad. You’ll find that other things come first. You think now that you will come after me, but I know you better! You will never come. You’ll not want me any more.” Guest laughed a strained little laugh of excitement and exultation. Cornelia might preach prudence, and hold fast to her own ideas, but at least she had not forbidden his coming; had not said in so many words, “I will not see you!” For the moment, at least, he had triumphed; he was confident that the future also would be his own. “We will discuss that question on our next meeting,” he cried breathlessly. “I will wait as long as you like; undergo any test you like to decree, but I will come! Au revoir, Cornelia!” “Good-bye!” breathed Cornelia, low. She raised her eyes to his, but now there was no light in the golden depths, but only a deep and immeasurable sadness. Guest wrung her hand, and turned aside. There was no time left to reason further. The future alone could prove the depth and stability of his love. He made his way to the gangway, his heart wrung with the sense of loss, of wounded love and pride. By his side men and women sobbed and cried, while others laughed and exchanged merry banter with their friends on board. To some this meant a parting for life; to others a pleasure excursion across the ocean ferry. Among them all, was there one whose loss was as his own? A wild impulse seized him to push his way back and remain on the boat for the first stage of the journey, but the steady stream bore him onward, and, as in a dream, he found himself standing on the stage, and saw the gangway descend. He stood in the crowd and heard a woman sob by his side. She was waving her handkerchief to a sad-faced man, who stood on the spot which Cornelia had vacated but a minute before. Now she had disappeared. Guest’s eyes searched for her hungrily, but in vain. It was only as the vessel slowly moved from the stage that she came into sight; a small dark figure standing alone on the upper deck, with the sunlight shining on ruddy locks, and on a white face turned outwards towards the sea. <hr> </div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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