Chapter XIII · GRIEF.

In his exciting conversation with Mary, worthy Squills, the village doctor, had not over-rated the grief and consternation which the great catastrophe excited among the bereaved family at Willowdean. "There are days in some lives which are so full of pain that no term of after years, no joy or peace of after-granting, can enable us to think of them without a shudder, even to the last hour of existence." So was it with Lady Wedderburn then, on that black fatal day, and for many a day after, when memory went back to the terrible shock her nervous system had received.

Accustomed from her infancy to all the perfect repose and care that wealth, position, and prosperity so frequently inspire, this calamity seemed beyond all her power of realization as a fact!

The absence of Cyril from the formal morning prayer read by Sir John (the Wedderburns were rather High Church), and from breakfast, excited no great surprise; and when it was reported from the stable-yard that neither he nor his horse, the famous bay, had come home last night, the natural conclusion of the family circle was that he had been pressed to remain at Chesterhaugh, and would doubtless ride home in time for the family luncheon; but Sir John, who disliked some of Rooke Chesters' proclivities, particularly his proneness to gamble, was surprised that his son (usually so careful and fastidious in his acquaintanceships) should so far tax that person's hospitality.

When Lady Wedderburn, in her gay little dressing-room, was in deep consultation with Miss Flora M'Caw about her style of mourning for Uncle William, of Madras, and the proper sets of jewellery, jet, silver, or gold, to be worn therewith, and also when the season for second mourning arrived, the startling tidings came, in the form of a vague rumour at first, that her son Cyril had left Chesterhaugh about midnight, and had now been absent, unaccounted for, none knew where or how, for twelve hours!

For one so extremely regular in all his habits and so temperate in conduct, this seemed incomprehensible, and every hopeful, vague, and wild surmise was indulged in only to culminate at last in the fear of some terrible accident or outrage, and yet the people of the district were peaceful and orderly.

Then, as the Doctor had related to Mary, Horace Ramornie, and all the household, assisted by friends and neighbours, set forth to search the country. His hat was found at Buncle-edge, and his whip at Falaknowe, five miles nearer the sea; but Lady Juliana Ernescleugh sent her son, the Master, with the darkest tidings of all, that Cyril's well-known bay hunter had been discovered drowned, and fearfully bruised and battered, among the rocks eastward of Fast Castle, and then the conviction that a dreadful calamity, the details of which were incomprehensible, had taken place.

The Coastguard were set to work, the shore was searched, and, save where the rocks were impassable or inaccessible, every creek and cranny were examined between Broxmouth and the Redheugh shore; a fleet of fisherboats dragged all the water in the vicinity, but all their seeking was vain.

No further trace was found of Cyril.

The telegraphs were at work, with descriptions of his person and clothing, and rewards were offered for information, with no better success, and thus four days of agonizing suspense and horror were passed by the family at Willowdean.

All the servants sorrowed for Cyril, the feminine portion especially; he was so handsome, and always so smiling and suave; and old Gervase Asloane, on whose back he had ridden many a time when a boy, wept for him, and Miss Flora M'Caw wept too. Solitary, and of a necessity selfish though her life had been, she felt genuine grief for the loss of so fine a young man, and recalled the secret hopes and tender passion in which she had once ventured to indulge when the heir of Willowdean was in his mere boyhood, in the time that seemed so long past now.

Messages and cards of condolence poured in from friends and neighbours; and among others came a black-edged note, per Mr. Bill Trayner, from Rooke Chesters, expressing profound sorrow for the untoward event, and enclosing Cyril's IOU for three hundred pounds, which "he hoped Sir John Wedderburn would find it convenient to liquidate, as he was just about to travel."

"Oh, detestable taste!" exclaimed Horace Ramornie, with a flush of anger and contempt on his handsome face; but Sir John, though his brown, manly hand trembled the while, signed a cheque for the amount, and enclosed it to Chesters without a word of comment.

He then looked sadly at the IOU, the last words, no doubt, his son's hand had traced, and with a sigh threw it into the fire.

When the second and third day passed, Lady Wedderburn was too ill to leave her bed, and it required all the skill of Doctor Squills, and all the solace of Miss M'Caw, with the aid of camphor, sal-volatile, and Rimmel's vinegar, to save her from a succession of fainting fits.

Cyril was gone—gone for ever!

These words seemed ever in her heart and on her lips, and to be written, as it were in letters of fire upon the wall, and this feeling seemed to fill the air around her. The stunning sense of her bereavement was most keen in the wakeful hours of the night and of the early morning. Then it seemed to rush like a flood upon her. Never more would her slender fingers run caressingly through his rich dark hair; never more would his soft and beautiful, yet manly eyes, turn affectionately to hers: never again would his voice, always so sweetly modulated when addressing her, fall upon her listening ear.

A lonely girl at Lonewoodlee was full of exactly similar thoughts, sorrows, and memories; yet those of the bereaved mother were perhaps the deepest—the most keen and the hardest to bear. Cyril was her firstborn—the apple of her eye. To her he was beautiful as Absalom was to David, and as she thought of that, she repeated in her heart—

Had Lady Wedderburn seen Mary Lennox then, and known the common cause of their grief, she might have forgiven and even loved her; but she had never yet connected the idea of Mary with her son.

When Cyril was absent with his regiment—the Fusileers—the sight of his empty chair, his vacant place at table, always inspired her with sadness; but she knew that he was no longer a boy, and could not be kept for ever by her side. Now his place would ever more be vacant, or filled by a terrible shadow—an unseen presence only. Even his grave she would never look upon; and every relic of Cyril—the portrait painted of him, as a cherry-cheeked boy ensign, in his first red coat and epaulettes, with pipe-clayed belt and black bearskin; the lock of his hair which had never left her bosom since he joined his regiment, then warring on the banks of the Sutledge; his unused books, his bed, the soft cambric pillow-case his cheek had touched, his favourite meerschaum pipe, lying where he had last left it—all became as something sacred in her eyes, and inspired her with bursts of the most passionate grief.

The schemes she had been so fondly forming for his aggrandizement, by marriage with his rich cousin who was coming home, were all forgotten now; and in the bewilderment of her grief she almost forgot to pray. Poor Lady Wedderburn was stupefied; and the snow of that sudden storm which imprisoned Mary Lennox at Chesterhaugh added, while it lasted on hill and moor, double desolation to her heart, for the gloom of the weather adds keenly to the grief of the imaginative and impressionable.

Where was now the future she had pictured, with Cyril's children crowing and nestling upon her knee? Robert, her younger son—the future Baronet—yet was left to her; but at present all her sorrow, tears, and regrets were for the lost one.