Chapter XVI · A HAPPY WALK HOME.

"Cyril," exclaimed Mary, in a low but piercing voice, while she clung to her lover's arm; "in the name of mercy and for the love of blessed Heaven, explain all this terrible mystery!"

"Oh, my darling, my darling, how pale and wan you look!" he exclaimed, as he lifted her veil and kissed her tenderly.

"And you too, Cyril. But speak of yourself, not me," she added, dropping her head wearily on his breast, and giving way to a passionate fit of weeping. "What has happened to you, where have you been, and how have you returned in so sudden and unexpected a manner, from the grave—from the very grave, as it seems to me? I have wept and mourned for you as one who was numbered with the dead! Oh, the horror, the black, indescribable horror of those days and nights now past!"

"My tender, loving Mary!"

"Oh, Cyril, hold me up. I feel as if I could die just now—the shock of joy is so, so great to see you again; to hear your voice, for the sound of which I have longed in a species of silent, gasping yearning, that no words can describe, and which God alone knows!"

"So have I longed for you, Mary," said he, in a broken accent, for her words and the tone of her voice moved him deeply, as it had in it that wonderful tremolo which added so much to its power.

Oh, was it real, and not a dream?—each asked of their hearts—this clinging and gasping embrace in which they both indulged for a time, in a happy, happy silence, too deep for words.

After a pause, Cyril said—

"I telegraphed to my brother Robert that I should arrive by this train, and asked him or Horace Ramornie to meet me with the trap or carriage, and drive me home; but there must have been some mistake, for neither are here, which is lucky, as I shall have the unexpected joy of a walk home with you, my darling Mary, my wee wifie, who, strange to say, has been the first to greet me!"

So this must have been the telegram referred to by Trayner in his rapid communication to Chesters, who, in the true spirit of jealousy, fear, or malevolence, had ridden off, without mentioning it to her.

"Surely you would not have left me another night in grief and suspense?" said Mary, plaintively.

"Not another hour! I telegraphed to the family at Willowdean, first, of my safety; and again that I was to be home by the evening train. I meant to have gone to Lonewoodlee by the way, my excuse for doing so being this packet, which I should have left for you, with a sufficient message, if we had failed to meet.'"

"But the mystery, Cyril—the mystery of your story; tell me all!" she implored, with a heart full of love and natural curiosity.

In a few words he rapidly sketched all the adventures of the night on which he disappeared—adventures he would yet have to detail to many a listener, but to few that would listen so lovingly and breathlessly as poor Mary Lennox—horrors that were to come back in many a dream! He told of his dining at Chesterhaugh; of the night spent in rash gambling there; of his desire, but failure, to get possession of her father's bill; and then how his horse had proved first restive and afterwards mad, and completely ungovernable; of the fierce race by Buncle-edge and Falaknowe—a ride like that of the Wild Huntsman of German renown—till he was borne right into the sea; of the narrow escape he had from being dashed to pieces; but how, by the aid of kind Providence, he had reached the fragment of isolated rock, and sat there in cold and misery, with the moon waning, the night deepening, and the tide rising round him, while all hope of reaching the land by swimming was futile, as the cliffs rose sheer like a wall from the sea, which was rolling with a mighty force against them; and Mary heard all this, with hands clasped upon his arm, with exclamations of compassion and dismay, with her eyes full of tears, and her parted lips revealing her closely set little teeth.

He described, that around him there wheeled nights of the snow-white solan goose, the black guillemot, the grey gull, and other sea birds; and that once there came a seal—a seadog, as the Scottish fishermen name it—which swam in circles round the rock, with its bullet-shaped head, black glittering eyes, and two fore-paws alone visible, as it paddled about; and often the memory of that incident came back in dreams, for he had envied the animal its amphibious nature, while the rising tide flowed over his feet and legs; and often, in the same visions of night, came back the sounds he had heard when there—the gurgling, the hissing, and the surging of the sea, as the ridgy waves succeeded each other in unvarying rage, round the rock on which he sat and against the cliffs that beetled over him.

Mary shuddered and shed many a tear while she listened, though Cyril appeared to speak somewhat lightly of the affair, as "a devil of a spill—an awful mess—a narrow escape," and so forth.

The strange weird scream of his dying horse was ultimately the means of saving him. It had been heard to seaward on board of a small fishing smack, the skipper of which lay to, and sent his little boat in shore to discover whence that unearthly cry proceeded; and two men who rowed it, and whose superstitious fears inspired them with the utmost unwillingness for the duty, fortunately descried Cyril by the starlight, and were just in time to save him. He swam off towards them, and was taken on board the smack, speechless with cold and exhaustion.

The kind fishermen took every means in their limited power to restore him; they placed him in one of the only two berths they possessed, for the entire crew consisted but of five men, and of these three were always on duty; they drew off his wet clothes, covered him cosily up, and gave him the only medicine they knew of—a totfull of hot stiff grog—and then he fell into a deep slumber.

When morning came, the smack was out at sea, on her homeward voyage to the coast of Angus. Cyril awoke feverish and ill. The atmosphere of the little den in which he lay was redolent of tar, stale herrings, and coarse tobacco, and every way was not conducive to a speedy recovery. His head ached fearfully; his whole frame felt as if bruised and battered; his senses wandered, and it was not until the evening of the second day that his preservers learned who he was; whence came the singular cry they had heard; how he chanced to be on that isolated rock, and that they would be well rewarded for having saved him.

The smack was light; they had sold their cargo of herrings to the French at Dunbar, and were anxious now to haul up for their own homes, somewhere about Montrose; but a head wind drove them into the North Sea, and four days elapsed before they succeeded in landing him at Lunan Bay, where he lost no time in telegraphing home, and starting by the first train for the Merse; and this was the solution of all that recent sorrow and mystery.

"Had my left foot not been freed from the stirrup in my fall, or had my horse not uttered that remarkable cry which attracted the attention of the fishermen, I had been lying now a drowned corpse in yonder sea, Mary," said Cyril, in conclusion.

Mary still sobbed, as she was terribly excited by the whole narrative; but joy made her face seem radiantly beautiful; and in a burst of confidence that was perhaps not overwise, she told him of Chesters' love-declaration to herself, and of his having been en perdue in the thicket on the night they had last met. Cyril's eyes sparkled with indignation; he knit his brows, gave his moustache a fierce twirl, and said—

"I see it all, Mary. His jealousy made me the victim of some foul revengeful trickery, which I shall yet have unravelled and punished!"

Mary omitted to speak of her detention at Chesterhaugh; for now the annoyance to which Chesters had subjected her more than ever by his address; her repugnance of him; the mortification she had occasionally felt as a high-spirited girl for the secresy of her love affair with Cyril himself, and the plans and precautions they were compelled to observe, were all forgotten in the joyous conviction of his safety—the charm of his manner and presence.

What delight to lean again upon his arm; to feel her hand pressed caressingly to his side; to look into his face and hear his voice; and, ah! how different were his tone and bearing from those of Chesters, when with genuine interest he asked about the health of her father. Was this evening walk not all a dream, a sudden madness?

"Oh, Cyril, you do not know my papa!" she exclaimed, in answer to some remark.

"Save by sight, as mere neighbours, and not very friendly ones now; but I wish I did know him."

"He is altering fast, and looking so fearfully wizened and pale, even I, who see him hourly, can perceive that."

"Poor old man!"

At last they were close to Lonewoodlee, where the old Tower and its dense thicket stood sharply defined in purple shadow against the last flush of light that lingered in the amber tinted west.

Mary still clung to Cyril, loth to part from one so recently and so suddenly restored to her, till he whispered softly in her ear—

"You forget, Mary dearest, that I have a fond mother at Willowdean, longing to see me too."

"True. I am most selfish in detaining you so long from all at home, and I have to read or sing papa asleep; for he cannot read now, and his nights are so dull and lonely. Oh, Cyril, how I shall sing to-night!"

"Would that I were there to hear you. Good-night, my sweet Mary, until the usual hour to-morrow. Good-night."

Another moment and he was gone, and Mary lingered at the gate until his rapid footsteps died away.

"Where was all this to end!" thought Cyril, as he walked hastily homeward. He felt, as a gentleman and man of honour, that this secret love for Mary Lennox was unjust to her, and might peril her good name; it was trifling with her undoubted position and with his own, and he resolved that, come what might, he must ere long declare it to his family, despite the mohurs, rupees, and thousands of cousin Gwendoleyne, and the ambitious views of his father and mother, the latter especially.

Mary had as yet but one thought, as she rushed with a happy heart into her room and threw off her hat and sealskin jacket; that the first kiss after his return had been on her cheek, even before that of his mother.

Was this a little bit of the superstition or the selfishness which exists with all love? Perhaps so; but then she had barely a bowing acquaintance with Lady Wedderburn, and situated as she was with her son, the humiliation of that circumstance was somewhat galling to Mary's pride.

But how wild was the joy of the impulsive girl! How she sang and played that night for hours, lost in happy, happy dreams! He had been restored to her again, her lover, the hope of her future life; he who to her was "gallant and gay as the young Lochinvar;" and yet, who in reality, was only a very good specimen of a gentlemanly officer of the Line. She forgot all about the tenor and brevity of his leave of absence, and that he might be summoned away at a moment's notice; she forgot all but that he had been restored to the world and to her, and that he loved her, oh, so truly! Of all fears she was oblivious for a time, till other thoughts than joyous ones stole gradually into her mind; and then her white fingers strayed mechanically over the ivory keys of the piano, and her tremulous voice, like the last faint notes, died away.

Alas! there can be no human happiness without some alloy!

She now recalled some of Rooke Chesters' malevolent hints and speeches about the wealth and beauty of the expected cousin, and of Lady Wedderburn's evident views concerning her and Cyril; though from what precise source he drew those deductions was quite unknown, unless the ready invention of a mind inflamed by jealousy.

When this Indian heiress came, rich and lovely—for Chesters had assured Mary that she was lovely—would there be any change in their destiny? Oh, she must not think of that; Cyril could never change, never forget all they had been to each other.

"Alas!" thought she, "this man—this Rooke Chesters, for whom I care nothing—can come openly to see me, to talk, and even, if I permitted him, to walk with me; while Cyril—Cyril Wedderburn, who is to be my husband, whom I love so; love as Heaven alone knows—I see only by stealth! It is hard; very hard! But this is not a night on which I should repine," and she lifted up her hands and her soft eyes, while her heart was full of prayerful thoughts and gratitude, to Heaven.

"Forsaking may be human, but betraying is the vice of devils;" and Chesters only sought to betray, to lure, and destroy. Yet Mary knew not of that, though aware of his terrible character, for he had actually, but somewhat jocularly, spoken of marriage; and Mary shivered at the thought.

In her small turret-chamber that night—the same from the window of which she had heard the wild cry and seen the galloping horse—she shed happy tears, as she prayed beside her little couch; for the gloom that once enveloped her soul had departed, and all the bitter past seemed now a vanished dream!