Bluebell Part 24

How unfeeling women are! Cecil forgot her remorse at Fane's disappointment in exultation at having so successfully removed a serious obstacle from her path, and her eye sparkled with wicked amus.e.m.e.nt as she noticed the marked coldness of Mrs. Rolleston's manner, due to her supposed flirtation with the Major.

The Colonel, too, who returned shortly afterwards, glanced round and inquired for Fane.

"Gone, I think," said Cecil, innocently; and he also threw upon her a look of gloom and reproach. No engaged young lady could be gayer than Cecil the rest of the evening. She became the life of the party, would keep everybody as late as possible: and certainly more than one shared the opinion of Mrs. Rolleston, whom her daughter mischievously tried to confirm in it, that the arbour had been the scene of a proposal and acceptance.

As the elder lady was slowly undressing that night, Cecil, still with the same provoking brightness on her face, peeped in.

"Are you sleepy, mamma?"

There was something in her manner that brought Mrs. Rolleston's annoyance to the culminating point. She thought the faithless damsel had come to announce her engagement, and demand sympathy and congratulations.

So, with a view to arrest any aggressive gush, she said, with some asperity,--"I am glad you have come, for I wanted to tell you, Cecil, how bad it looked your walking off in that way with Major Fane."

"I suppose it was rather strong," said the girl coolly; "but I like him so much. I had no idea he was so nice."

Mrs. Rolleston took refuge in the ill-a.s.sumed dignity of rising anger.

"I suppose, mamma, he is very well off? Papa often wonders that he goes soldiering on."

"Really, Cecil, whatever your speculations may be, it was not a delicate act, sitting apart with him for half-an-hour in a dark arbour."

"I thought he might propose,"--Mrs. Rolleston's face expressed, "Are you mad?"--"or give me a chance somehow of saying what I wanted to. And what's more," she continued, "I am not certain whether he meant to, or not. To be sure, I didn't give him much time."

"Did _you_, propose, then? Cecil, if you don't wish me to disbelieve my own senses, tell me at once what you were about in the summer-house."

"Refusing eight thousand a year," was the short reply.

A puzzled, not unpleased expression, was dawning. "I thought you said he did not propose?"

"Well, no; honestly, he didn't. We had a little conversation, and the upshot was, he has promised to go to England for six months."

Mrs. Rolleston was not a proud woman, and the relief was so great, that she folded Cecil in a silent embrace.

"Perhaps, mamma," continued the girl, demurely, "you won't think it necessary to mention this to papa. It wouldn't be fair to betray Major Fane!"

Mrs. Rolleston was only too convinced, and replied, "that she should consider it Cecil's secret, and say nothing about it." Whereupon the damsel ran merrily off, humming the air, "I told them they needn't come wooing to me." But, arrived in her own room, her evanescent high spirits vanished, and a bitter and clear-sighted mood succeeded. "Bertie," she thought, "your evil influence is over us all. Mamma, till now the truest of step-mothers, is only thinking of ensuring you my fortune. I disoblige papa, send away a true love, hate Bluebell for her too attractive soft eyes, am hara.s.sed by doubts even of you--is it worth it? I might yet recall Lucian Fane; he is very calm, and would not expect too much. What folly! No, if I am to be miserable, it must be my own way, with the only man who interests me heart and soul. I suppose, if we marry, I may reckon on one year of happiness, though hardly any one who knew Bertie would expect him to be constant even for that time. But by then I should have got immense influence, for, though I am not clever and attractive like him, I have far more will, and, in the long run, it is character more than talent that shapes our life. If Bluebell would only go to England!"

Then she detached from the wall and began to pack up a little possession that always travelled with her. It was only an old print of a cavalier, and no one but Cecil had observed that a twin soul to Bertie's looked out of its dreaming eyes.

CHAPTER XVIII.

LYNDON'S LANDING.

All the fairy crowds Of islands that together lie As quietly as spots of sky Among the evening clouds.

--Unknown.

Bluebell had begun to feel herself in a false position. Freddy's lessons were, of course, a farce; and Cecil now seemed never to care to practise with her. Miss Prosody, with every hour of the day marked out for herself and pupils, made sarcastic reflections on her want of occupation; but, unhappy though she was, she could not make up her mind to leave the Rollestons, and thus dissever the chief link with Bertie. Besides, she had heard (a piece of information derived from Fleda) that he was shortly expected to join them at Rice Lake. Therefore, when Mrs. Rolleston unfolded the project of sending her to England to cultivate the musical predilections of Evelyn Leighton, Bluebell showed such repugnance to the scheme, that Mrs. Rolleston did not press it further; and, though surprised, being personally indifferent, soon dismissed it from her thoughts, with an inward comment that girls never knew their own minds a month together.

Cecil, however, marvelled at her mother's want of penetration and could not refrain from increased coolness to Bluebell.

White horses were curling the broad waters of Ontario, as the huge river-steamer "St. Michael" was getting up the steam for its run to Quebec; and, from the crowd on the wharf waiting to embark, it might be surmised that even the sofas in the saloon would be at a premium for sleeping berths. The Rollestons were surrounded with acquaintances, either going themselves or seeing others off, till the bell rang, when there was a rush to the tug, and the big paddle-wheels got in motion.

The children ran up and down the long, narrow saloon on to the decks at each end, while Miss Prosody was vainly trying to wrest the key of a sleeping-berth from the purser, who, the supply not being equal to the demand, was having rather a hot time of it.

"Two double cabins," cried Colonel Rolleston, presently; "the rest must have berths in the ladies' cabin, and trouble enough to secure that.

However, here are the keys. How shall we divide?"

"Shall Estelle and Lola sleep in the wide lower berth of one cabin, and I in the upper?" said Cecil.

"And we must take Freddy, I suppose?" said Mrs. Rolleston; "and Miss Prosody, Bluebell, and Fleda, go to the ladies' cabin."

"Oh, Cecil!" cried Lola, as they unlocked their domicile off the saloon, "what a little--little bed! If you turn, you'll tumble into ours; and how will you get up? Won't I catch your foot!"

"No bath!" exclaimed Estelle; "only two small basins! And what a looking-gla.s.s! it makes one squint!"

"It is better than the ladies' cabin," said Fleda, dolefully, "with the stewardess sitting there, and two or three sick-looking people, and the berths all open like the shelves of a bookcase."

"It is only for one night," said Cecil. "We land at Cobourg to-morrow afternoon. Look! the waiters are laying the long tables for luncheon, or dinner I suppose it is. Come out on the deck till it is ready. Oh, dear!

there is not a patch of shade left for us. How they over-crowd these boats!"

"There's a gentleman holding his umbrella over Bluebell," said Lola.

Cecil's eyes opened in some amazement. She would have thought it rather impertinent in a stranger offering such familiar accommodation, but Bluebell availed herself of it with the frankest _nonchalance_, and, in the conversation that ensued, lost her place in the first rush of diners, who, at the ringing of the bell, instantly occupied every vacant chair.

"They seem to be having a very good time," observed Fleda, who had picked up some Americanisms.

Somewhat aghast at his daughter's precocity, the Colonel stepped out on the deck, and, with grave dignity, offered Bluebell his arm to conduct her to his seat, which, quite unconscious of his disapprobation, she accepted with civil indifference.

And the young subaltern lit a cigar to console himself for the withdrawal of the clear blue eyes that looked so deep under the shadow of the umbrella, and tried to find as much piquancy in the "funny book" he had recently purchased at the St. Michael's book-stall, while the good s.h.i.+p went ploughing on, past wooden villages, brown houses picked out with white, and perhaps here and there a little orange-frocked child giving a characteristic dash of colour.

Then, as the sun sank lower, the most gorgeous hues came into the sky.

But, while every one was on deck gazing on its almost tropical vividness, a film stole between, a s.h.i.+vering dampness pervaded the air, and soon a dense fog drove the chagrined pa.s.sengers back into the saloon.

The captain went to his bridge, and the tea-bell rang soon after. People were beginning to talk sociably to their neighbours, and a mild hilarity reigned, when a violent concussion, followed by a sudden cessation of the paddles, caused a general rush from the table.

Bluebell, in the act of receiving the second supply of coffee, was aroused from her immediate bewilderment by a scalding _douche_ down her neck--the waiter, a young German with heart disease painted on his livid lips and pasty complexion, having held the coffee-pot suspended topsy-turvy for an instant, and then fallen in a fit on the floor.

All the men had crowded on deck, and it soon became known that they had run into a log raft, which, though no lives were lost had been nearly swamped, and much injured by the collision. The "St. Michael," too, had received a bulge, which rendered a little tinkering at the first port desirable.

The first alarm of the pa.s.sengers being lulled, and the panic having subsided into the excitement of a danger pa.s.sed, public interest became concentrated on the young waiter, who still lay in a death like swoon, till, eventually resuscitated by means of one of the numerous little brandy-flasks that popped out from sympathetic female bags, he was borne off by his napkin flapping fraternity to their crystal cave of tumblers.

Little sleep did Cecil get on her narrow perch that night, for her sisters, in their dreams, were ever in a sinking s.h.i.+p, or struggling in the foam-driven rapids. Even her heart beat quicker when the paddle-wheels suddenly ceased, and ominous voices, indistinctly heard, appeared in agonized consultation. A familiar sound of knocking and hammering, however, suggested that they must have put into port for the repairs determined on; and, grasping her scanty complement of bed-clothes that were slipping to the floor, Cecil conveyed the re-a.s.suring intelligence to her sisters, and they composed themselves to sleep at last.

Another day's progress down the beautiful river,--narrow enough at intervals to see both sh.o.r.es, the Stars and Stripes in American villages, as well as the Union Jack in those of the "Dominion," as it is now called,--and then they entered among the thousand islands of the great St. Lawrence.

Everybody was on deck watching their changing shapes, some apparently all rock, and others a bower of greenery, and admiring the skilful steering of the large vessel among them. Soon after noon the first rapid was shot, a bubbling, seething whirlpool, with clouds of white foam beaten up by the jagged teeth of the sunken rocks.