He found Mrs. Mason elated. She had never seen a more marked change for the better.
“She’s as weak as a newborn infant, poor dear,” she said of her patient, “but it’s just as if life was coming gently and slowly back, like the tide coming in over the sands when it has ebbed as low as ever it can ebb.”
The improvement continued steadily from that hour. The brain, so long clouded, awakened as from sleep. Zaïre recovered her strength, her senses, her beauty, her insolence and audacity. Before September she was the old “Chicot,” the woman whose portrait had flaunted on all the walls of London. Mr. Smolendo was in raptures. The broken leg was as sound as ever it had been. La Chicot would be able to dance early in November. A paragraph announcing this fact had already gone the round of the papers. Another paragraph, more familiar in tone, informed the town that Madame Chicot’s beauty had gained new lustre during the enforced retirement of her long illness. Mr. Smolendo knew his public.
IX
“And Art Thou Come! and Art Thou True!”
It was late in November, and the trees were bare in the grounds of Hazlehurst Manor. The grand old mansion wore its air of grave dignity, under the dull, grey skies of late autumn, but the charms and graces of summer had gone, and there was a shade of melancholy in the stillness of the house and garden, and that pleasant enclosure, too big for a meadow, and too small for a park, over which the rooks swept like a black cloud at evensong, going screaming home to their nests in the tall elms behind the house.
In this dreary season of the year, Laura Malcolm was living quite alone at the Manor House. Celia Clare had been invited to spend a month with a well-to-do aunt at Brighton, and Brighton in the winter season represented the highest form of terrestrial bliss that had ever come within Celia’s experience. She had vague dreams of Paris, as of a city that must far surpass even Brighton in blissfulness; but she had no hope of seeing Paris, unless, indeed, she were to get married, when she would insist on her husband taking her there for the honeymoon.
“Of course, the poor creature would do anything I told him then,” said Celia, “It would be different afterwards. I dare say when we had been married a year he would try to trample on me.”
“I can’t imagine anyone trampling upon you, Celia,” said Laura, laughing.
“Well, I think I should make it rather difficult for him. But all men are tyrants. Look at papa, for instance; the best of men, with a heart of gold; but let the cook make a failure, and he goes on all dinnertime like the veriest heathen. Oh, they are altogether an inferior breed, believe me, There is your young man, Laura—very handsome, very gentlemanlike, but as weak as water.”
“Whom do you mean by my young man?” asked Laura.
“You know, or you would not blush so violently. Of course I mean John Treverton, your future husband. And, by the by you are to be married within a year after old Mr. Treverton’s death. I hope you have begun to order your trousseau.”
“I wish you would not talk such nonsense, Celia. You know very well that I am not engaged to Mr. Treverton. I may never be engaged to him.”
“Then what were you two talking about that night under the chestnuts, when you lingered so far behind us?”
“We are not engaged. That is quite enough for you to know.”
“Then, if you are not engaged you ought to be. That is all I can say. It is ridiculous to leave things to the last moment, if you are ever so sure of each other. Old Mr. Treverton died early in January, and it is now late in November. I feel quite uncomfortable about going away, and leaving your affairs in such an unsatisfactory state.”
Celia, who was the most frivolous of beings, affected a talent for business, and assumed an elder-sister air towards Laura Malcolm that was pleasant in its absurdity.
“You need not be uneasy, Celia. I can manage my own affairs.”
“I don’t believe you can. You are awfully clever, and have read more books than I have ever seen the outside of in the whole course of my life. But you are not the least little bit practical or businesslike. You run the risk of losing this dear old house, and the estate that belongs to it, as coolly as if it were the veriest trifle. I begin to be afraid that you have a sneaking kindness for that worthless brother of mine.”
“You need have no such fear. I feel kindly towards your brother for auld lang syne, and because I think he likes me—”
“As well as he can afford to like anybody, taking into account the small residue of affection that remains over and above his great regard for himself,” interjected Celia, contemptuously.
“But I have no feeling for him warmer than a commonplace friendship. I never shall have.”
“Poor Ted! I am sorry for his sake, but I am very glad for yours.”
Celia went off to Brighton radiant with three trunks and two bonnet boxes, and the Manor House sank suddenly into silence and gloom. Celia’s small frivolities were often troublesome, but her perennial gaiety of temper had pleasantly enlivened the spacious unpeopled house. Her fun was a mere schoolgirl’s fun, perhaps, at best, but it was genuine, the spontaneous outcome of animal spirits and a happy disposition. Celia would have chatted as merrily over a cup of tea and a herring in a garret at five shillings a week, as amidst the fleshpots of Hazlehurst Manor. She was a joyous, improvident, idle creature, with the unreasoning love of life for its own sake which makes a Neapolitan beggar happy in the sunshine, and an
