Chapter VIII: After Seven Years

Out of the convent came the maid.
ROBERT BROWNING.

We have lingered so long over the lovely childhood of little Glo’ that we have no time to give to her school days.

In entering her at the “Sacret Heart,” Miss Agrippina had enrolled her as the “Countess Maria da Gloria de la Vera,” and had provided her with as rich and costly an outfit as the rigid rules of the academy would permit. She had also furnished her with a plenty of pocket-money.

All this had given the simple-hearted, humble-minded little Glo’ a grand rank among her untitled and less wealthy school-mates, who did all they possibly could do to transform her from a meek and lovely child to a proud and supercilious young lady.

Poor David Lindsay did not realize the loss of little Glo’ until she had really gone. Then he “sorrowed without hope.” It is true that he believed she would return at Christmas; but that was four long months off.

From the fourth day of her departure he began to watch for the return of old Laban from his Tuesday’s and Friday’s trips to St. Inigoes’ Post-office, and on his appearance would call out:

“Any letters, Uncle Laban?”

The answers were always:

“Yes.”

Then, after the decent delay of an hour, the poor boy would go up to the house and bashfully ask for the colonel, and when admitted to his presence stand respectfully, cap in hand, and inquire:

“If you please, sir, have you heard from——”

“Miss de la Vera?”

“Yes, sir, please.”

“I have. She is well, and sends her kind remembrance to you,” would Colonel de Crespigney reply.

(Now this was not at all what little Glo’ sent. She sent her “love to dear David Lindsay.” But Colonel de Crespigney exercised the guardian’s prudence and privilege in translating the message sent through him.)

On hearing this, the boy would twist his little torn hat in his hand and say, timidly, hesitatingly:

“If you please, sir, when you write—would you please to say I thank her very much for thinking of me, and I send her my——”

“Respects.”

“Yes, sir, please.” (Now this was not at all what the poor boy meant to say; for he really wished to send his “best love to her.”)

The parted children had no true interpreter, so no wonder a gulf opened and widened between them. But Marcel meant well; and David Lindsay was destined to have his turn, when, driven by the very outrage and stress of fate, the lovely heiress should lay her hand and fortune at the feet of the poor fisherman and implore him to take them up.

She did not come home for the happy Christmas holidays. Miss Agrippina represented to her brother that to bring the “Countess Maria” back to the promontory would be to have all the trouble of parting to go through again; that therefore she had best be left to spend her holidays at the school where she was receiving her education.

The gentle colonel, through indolence and good nature, had fallen more and more under the dominion of his maiden aunt, and therefore consented to all her plans.

So little Glo’ did not come home for her Christmas holidays. But her young uncle, who had not ceased to mourn in secret the absence of his pet, aroused himself from his lethargy, and went to the city, and took his niece from her prison, and spent the Christmas holidays with her at a fashionable hotel, taking her every evening to some place of refined amusement, and so devoting himself to her pleasure that the little rustic had reason to believe that, after all said, the city was the true Arcadia, and life, as “dee-ar Marcel” made it for her, a lovely fairy tale.

But in all the delights of her new vista of life, she did not yet forget her childhood’s playmate, and amid her many questions about “them all at home,” she did not fail to inquire about “dee-ar David Lindsay.”

Her guardian replied that the boy was well and doing well, but had not come to borrow any books yet, and, perhaps, was not so much interested in improving his mind as she had supposed. Boys of his class were not likely to be so.

“But, Marcel, you must interest yourself in him, and not let his interest in his books flag. That was not what I expected of you, Marcel!” said his little monitress, reproachfully.

“I will do better when I return, my darling,” replied her penitent.

“Mind you do, Marcel! He has no father, no guardian even, and who will look after my David Lindsay now I am away, if you do not?”

On the Monday after Twelfth Day he replaced the little student in her school and returned to his own dreary home and musty books.

He corresponded with her regularly through the winter and spring and the early summer; and noted the great improvement she was making.

There was one thing, however, that very much annoyed him in her letters. She always sent her “love to dear David Lindsay.” But he took care to translate this into “kind remembrance,” and to send back David’s “respects.” So the gulf widened and widened between the hearts of the children.

But David’s time was yet to come.

Then, on the first of July, when the midsummer holidays were about to commence, he went to the city again, took his child out from her prison and carried her off to the Greenbriar White Sulphur Springs to give her a glimpse of the glorious mountain scenery, and an insight into the great world of society. Here the handsome young widower, the heroic young officer, with the laurels won in Mexico yet green in the memories of all, might have become the hero of the season; but nothing could win him away from his “child.” He rode and drove with her through the wild and beautiful forest and mountain scenery. He read with her, sang duets with her, played ten-pins with her, and generally “made a fool of himself about her,” as more than one aggravated matron with marriageable daughters declared. In September he took his child back to her school just a year older, and several years more experienced than she had been when she first entered the institution.

And now he had reason to congratulate himself on one thing. His ward’s interest in the poor fisher-boy was evidently dying out, as he had first said it would. It was well enough that they should have played together as little children, and he had not therefore interfered to prevent them. He was too tender-hearted indeed to have given them so much pain. But now, at last, it was all ended, as it should be.

The first year was a type of all that followed while she remained at the “Sacred Heart.” Every Christmas her young uncle would go and take her from the school and spend the holidays with her at a hotel, taking her to places of amusement suitable to her age; and at the end of the holidays replacing her at school and returning to his own home.

Every June he would go and take her for the midsummer vacation, and travel with her to some delightful summer resort among the mountains, or on the lake shores, returning her to her convent early in September, and then repairing to his own estate.

Sometimes his mother would write and ask him to bring his young ward and join her circle at Newport, or Niagara, or wherever they might have decided to spend their summer season.

But Colonel de Crespigney always found some good excuse for politely declining the invitation.

The very truth was that Marcel preferred to have his little Glo’ all to himself during these long midsummer vacations.

Her vivid and deep delight in all the sublime and beautiful in nature and in art, rekindled his own smouldering enthusiasm and revived his fading youth.

Thus, through her, he enjoyed life anew. Now his time was divided like the Arctic year—into long darkness and long light. The time spent in his gloomy “penitentiary” on the promontory, was his Arctic night; the time passed in wandering and sight-seeing with his brilliant and ardent little traveling companion, was his Arctic day.

David Lindsay, chilled by the cold “remembrances,” that grew cold only in the refrigerator of Marcel’s translations, gradually ceased to inquire after Miss de la Vera, or send his “respects” to her.

And so the great gulf between the young souls seemed impassable, until one desperate leap in the dark cleared it.

Meanwhile the years rolled rapidly onward; his child was growing up, and he himself was growing—middle-aged.

The last time he took her out to spend her midsummer vacation in traveling with him through a succession of beautiful summer resorts, he was thirty-five years old, with perhaps a dozen silver threads scattered over his fine head, but glistening with terrible conspicuousness amid the jetty blackness of his hair. She was just fifteen, tall and well-developed for her years, a radiant blonde, with a delicate Grecian profile, fair, clear transparent complexion, large, soft, dark blue eyes, veiled by dark eyelashes, and arched by dark eyebrows, and with an aureole of lightly flowing, pale, golden-hued hair.

Marcel had not seen her since the preceding Christmas holidays, a period of nearly seven months, during which she had bloomed from the bud to the half-opened rose of womanhood.

He looked at her with surprised and delighted admiration. He said nothing on the subject, expressed no opinion, paid no compliment—only he refused more emphatically than ever his mother’s invitation to bring his niece and join her party at Cacouna, Canada; and he resolved, more firmly than ever, to keep his lovely ward to himself.

Indeed, little Gloria desired nothing better. She loved her young uncle with all the devotion of a grateful, loyal, fervent heart, and was perfectly satisfied with his companionship, and only his, in all their summer wanderings and sojournings. She had no one else to love, poor child; her Aunt Agrippina she had only feared; and her childhood’s playmate, David Lindsay, she only remembered tenderly, like one lost long ago, or like the dead. Marcel was all in all to her.

On this last occasion of which I speak, when Colonel de Crespigney, first seeing his young ward after a seven months’ absence, was startled into surprise and admiration at the discovery that the pretty child had bloomed into the beautiful girl, he resolved that this should be her last year at school; that whether she should graduate or not graduate at the next annual commencement, he should withdraw her from the Sacred Heart Academy and bring her home “for good.”

And then?

Marcel kept his future plans to himself.