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Title: Miss Cheyne of Essilmont, Volume I (of 3)
Author: James Grant
Release date: January 18, 2024 [eBook #72743]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, 1883
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISS CHEYNE OF ESSILMONT, VOLUME I (OF 3) ***
MISS CHEYNE OF ESSILMONT
BY
JAMES GRANT
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS,"
"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER,"
ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1883.
_All rights reserved._
Contents
Chap.
I. Out with the Royal Buckhounds
II. At Chilcote
III. Ellon's Ring
IV. Laura Trelawney
V. Alison's Luncheon Party
VI. 'The Old, Old Story'
VII. Jerry and the Widow
VIII. 'For Ever and for Ever'
IX. A Reprieve for a Time
X. Captain Dalton
XI. A Written Proposal
XII. In St. Clement's Lane
XIII. An Enigma
XIV. 'Something as About to Happen!'
XV. Evil Tidings
XVI. Cadbury's Plan or Plot
XVII. More Mystery
XVIII. Wilmothurst
XIX. Mr. Chevenix's Business
XX. The _Firefly_
MISS CHEYNE OF ESSILMONT.
CHAPTER I.
OUT WITH THE ROYAL BUCKHOUNDS.
'And your name is Alison,' said the young man, looking tenderly in
the girl's eyes of soft grey-blue, that long, dark lashes shaded.
'Yet I hear some of your friends call you Lisette.'
'It is, I believe, the same thing--an old Scoto-French name, long
peculiar to our family--the Cheynes of Essilmont--as papa would say
if he were here,' she added, with a soft smile. Then after a pause
she asked, 'How did you learn, Captain Goring, that it was Alison?'
'By looking in Debrett after I first had the pleasure' (he had
well-nigh said the joy) 'of meeting you at the General's garden-party
in Aldershot.'
This simple avowal of an interest in her (but it might only be
curiosity) caused the girl to colour a little and nervously re-adjust
her reins, though her horse, pretty well blown after a long run, was
now going at an easy walk, pace by pace, with the larger and stronger
bay hunter of her companion, and she glanced shyly at him as he rode
by her side, for Bevil Goring, in his perfect hunting costume--his
coat, buckskins, and boots, his splendid strength and engaging
debonair expression of face, his soldierly set up, born of infantry
service in India--was all that might please a woman's eye, however
critical; and he in his turn felt that every pulse in his frame would
long beat to the slight incidents of that day's glorious scamper
together on horseback.
Gathered into a tight coil under her smart riding hat and dark blue
veil, Alison Cheyne's hair was of that bright and rare tint when the
brown seems to blend with or melt into amber, and these into a warmer
tint still in the sunshine, and with which there is generally a pure
and dazzling complexion.
'It was so kind of you, Captain Goring,' said Miss Cheyne, after a
pause, 'to invite down papa to dine at your mess at Aldershot.'
'Not at all. Dalton, Jerry Wilmot, and all the other fellows were
most glad to see the old gentleman. I only fear that he thought us
rather a noisy lot.'
'It delighted him--we live but a dull life at Chilcote.'
'And you have had two brothers in the service, Mrs. Trelawney told
me?' resumed Goring, by no means anxious to let the conversation
drop, or his companion begin to think of friends who might be looking
for her.
'Yes--two, much older than I, however--poor Ranald and golden-haired
Ellon.'
'What a curious name!'
'It is a place in Aberdeenshire where much of papa's property once
lay. Ranald died of fever, and was buried in the lonely jungle near
the Jumna.'
'Illness there does its work quickly--four and twenty hours will see
the beginning and the end, and the green turf covering all. I have
seen much of it in my time, Miss Cheyne--often buried the dead with
my own hands, by Jove!'
'How sad to die as my poor brother did--so far away,' said the girl,
her soft voice breaking a little. 'We have a saying in Scotland,
"May you die among your kindred."'
'In the service one's comrades become one's kindred--we are all
brother soldiers.'
'Ellon was thrown from his horse near Lahore, and impaled on his own
sword, and so--and so--poor papa has now only me! I don't think he
has ever got fairly over Ellon's death, as it left the baronetcy
without an heir. But let me not think of these things.'
'I remember the unfortunate event of Ellon Cheyne's death,' exclaimed
Goring, the colour gathering in his bronzed cheek. 'It occurred just
close by the Cabul road, the day after we marched in from Umritsur;
and, strange to say, I commanded the firing party at the poor
fellow's funeral, on a day when the sky was like molten brass, and
the wind swept past us hot and stifling like the blast from an open
furnace.'
'You?' said Miss Cheyne, her eyes dilating as she spoke.
'Yes; my voice gave the orders for the three funeral volleys.'
'How strange--and now I meet you here!'
'The world is a small place now-a-days.'
Her eyes were full of a tender interest now, that made the heart of
her companion thrill; nor did hers do so the less that this event
caused a bond of sympathy--a subject in common between them.
A sad expression stole over the features of Alison Cheyne, and so
regular were these, that with the fine outline of her profile they
might have been deemed insipid, but for the variable expression of
her very lovely eyes and sensitive mouth; and now, when flushed with
the exercise of fast riding, the excitement of following the hounds
amid such a stirring concourse, and over such an open country, they
seemed absolutely beautiful.
Attracted by each other's society, she and the Captain were now
somewhat apart from all the field, and the brilliant hunt was waxing
to its close.
The day was a bright and clear one early in October, the regular
opening day of the regular season with the Royal Buckhounds. The
country wore the aspect of the month; swine were rooting in the
desolate cornfield, eliciting the malediction of many a huntsman as
he tore over the black and rotting stubble; geese were coming
draggled and dirty out of the muddy ponds and brooks; the hedges
looked naked and cold, and the blackened bean sheaves that had never
ripened were rotting in the ground. An earthy odour came from the
water-flags, and every hoof-print was speedily filled with the black
ooze of the saturated soil the moment it was made; but the sky was
clear, if not quite cloudless, and the sunshine bright as one could
wish.
The time-honoured meet had duly taken place at the old village of
Salthill, the scene of that tomfoolery called the Eton Montem, till
its suppression in 1848; and we need scarcely inform the reader that
a certain sum is devoted annually to maintain the stables, kennels,
and establishment of the Royal Buckhounds, and that with each change
of Ministry the post of their master is an object of keen competition
among sport-loving nobles; but the opening meet is said to be seldom
a favourite one with lovers of hard riding.
There is always a vast 'field,' and every one who 'by hook or crook'
can procure a mount is there. Salthill thus becomes an animated and
pleasant spectacle to the mere spectator, while it is a source of
unmixed excitement to all who go to hunt--perhaps some five hundred
horsemen or so, all anxious to be first in the chase, and jostling,
spurring, and struggling to be so.
All know what a scene Paddington Station presents a short time
previous to the meet, when the Metropolitan corps of huntsmen begin
to muster in strong force, and well-known faces are seen on every
hand--staunch followers of 'the Queen's'--going down by special
train, the present holder of the horn being the observed of all; and
the train, with a long line of dark horse-boxes starting with sixty
or seventy noble horses for Slough, whence, after an eighteen miles'
run, the long cavalcade of horsemen and people on foot pours on to
Salthill, huntsmen and whips bright in brilliant new costumes of
scarlet laced with gold, their horses with skins like satin, and the
hounds the perfection of their breed.
There may be seen young guardsmen from Windsor, cavalry men from
Aldershot, which is about twenty miles distant, in spotless black and
white, side by side with old fellows in tarnished pink with the old
jockey-cap, horse-dealers in corduroys and perhaps blucher boots;
city men, and apparently all manner of men, and here and there a lady
such as only may be seen in the Row, perfect in her mount, equipment,
and costume.
On the adjacent road a lady's pretty little victoria may be jammed
between a crowded four in hand and a still more crowded
costermonger's cart; and so the confusion goes on till some
well-known deer is quietly taken away to the front; and punctually to
time the master gives the order to advance, when the huntsmen and
hounds scurry into an open field, where the yeomen prickers in their
Lincoln green costumes have uncarted the quarry.
Anon the line is formed, and away over the open country stream the
hounds like a living tide, with red tongues out, and steam, issuing
from their quivering nostrils, and all follow at headlong speed.
Here it was that Alison Cheyne, Bevil Goring, and others of their
party lost some of their companions in the first wild rush across a
hedge with a wet ditch on the other side. Jerry Wilmot's
saddle-girth gave way, and he fell in a helpless but unhurt heap on
the furrows; Lord Cadbury--a peer of whom more anon--failed utterly
to clear the hedge; and Tony Dalton, of Goring's regiment, though a
keen sportsman, came to grief somehow in the ditch, and thus ere long
Alison Cheyne had as her sole squire the companion we have described,
and together, after charging with many more a gate beyond the hedge,
they had a splendid run over an open country.
Together they kept, Goring doing much in the way of guiding his fair
friend, who though somewhat timid, and not much practised as an
equestrienne, had now given her whole soul to the hunt, and became
almost fearless for the time.
In a pretty dense clump 'the field' went powdering along the path
through the village of Farnham, after which the deer headed off for
Burnham Beeches, the beautiful scenery of which has been so often
portrayed by artists and extolled by tourists; and then, like bright
'bits of colour' that would delight the former, the scarlet coats
could be seen glancing between the gnarled stems of the giant trees,
as the horsemen went pouring down the woody steeps.
'Take care here, for heaven's sake, Hiss Cheyne, and keep your horse
well in hand, with its head up,' cried Bevil Goring. 'The tree
stumps concealed here among the long grass are most treacherous
traps.'
'I fear more the boughs of the trees, they are so apt to tear one's
hair,' replied the flushed girl, breathlessly, as she flew, her dark
blue skirt and veil streaming behind her; and now and then a cry of
terror escaped her, as a horse and its rider went floundering into
some marshy pool, though generally with no worse result than a mud
bath.
At length the beeches are left behind, while the deer shoots on past
Wilton Park, anon over Chalfont Brook, till she reaches the stable in
a farmyard, and there is captured and made safe, and so ends the day,
after which there is nothing left for the breathless and blown, who
have followed her thus far, but to ride slowly back some fifteen
miles to Slough.
Less occupied by interest in the hunt than with each other, Bevil
Goring and Miss Cheyne had gradually dropped out of it, and at the
time of the conversation with which this chapter opens were riding
slowly along a narrow green lane that led--they had not yet begun to
consider in what precise direction.
CHAPTER II.
AT CHILCOTE.
'The hounds threw off at half-past eleven, and the afternoon is far
advanced,' said Miss Cheyne, with a little anxiety of manner. 'I
must take the nearest cut home.'
'Thither, of course, I shall do myself the honour of escorting you.'
'Thanks--so much.'
She could not say otherwise, as she could neither decline his escort
nor with propriety ride home alone; yet she gave a glance rather
helplessly around her, as all her immediate friends--and one more
especially, whose escort her father wished her to have had--were now
left miles behind, having 'come to grief' at the first fence, and
were now she knew not where.
But then she thought it was not her fault that they had dropped out
of the hunt, or out of their saddles perhaps.
'To reach the high-road, we must take this fence,' said Captain
Goring, finding that the narrow lane they had pursued, ended in a
species of _cul de sac_.
'Not a gap, not a gate is in sight.'
'And by Jove, Miss Cheyne, it is a rasper!' he exclaimed. 'Allow me
to go first, then follow, head up and hand low.'
He measured the distance, cleared the fence, and came safely down on
the hard road beyond.
With a little cry of half delight and half terror curiously mingled,
the girl rushed her horse at the fence, but barely cleared it, as its
hoofs touched the summit.
'What a nasty buck jump,' said Goring. 'Is that an Irish horse, used
to double fences, I wonder?'
'And all my back-hair has come down.'
'Glorious hair it is, below your waist and more.'
'And all my own,' said the girl laughing, as she placed her switch
between her pearly teeth, and with her gauntleted hands proceeded to
knot the coils deftly up; 'all my own, by production, and not by
purchase. And now for home,' she added, as they broke into an easy
trot. 'Such a hard mouth this animal has!' she exclaimed, after a
pause; 'my poor wrists are quite weary.'
'Why do you ride him?'
'I have not much choice.'
'How?'
'I owe my mount to the kindness of a friend of papa's, to Lord
Cadbury,' she replied, colouring slightly, but with an air of
annoyance.
'Indeed,' said Goring, briefly, and then after a pause, he added,
'you have ridden with these hounds before.'
'Yes, once when the meet was at Iver's Heath, and again when it was
at Wokingham, and the deer was caught in a pond near Wilton Park.'
'And did Lord Cadbury on each occasion give you a mount?' he added,
in a casual manner.
'Yes, we have no horses at Chilcote; but how curious you are,' she
replied, colouring again, and with a sense of annoyance that he did
not suspect, though the mention of the peer's name by her lips
irritated Bevil Goring, and made him seek to repress the love that
was growing in his heart.
Yet he knew not that he had impressed Alison Cheyne by his voice and
manner beyond anyone whom she had hitherto met, but she was conscious
that her heart beat quicker when he addressed her, and that the very
sunshine seemed to grow brighter in his presence; but to what end was
all this, she thought, unless--if he loved her--he was rich enough to
suit her father's standard of wealth.
As they drew near Chilcote they tacitly, it seemed, reduced the pace
of their horses to a walk.
'If it does not grieve you now to recur to the fate of your brother
Ellon,' said Goring, in his softest tone, 'I may mention that I have
a little souvenir of him, of which I would beg your acceptance.'
'A souvenir of Ellon!'
'Yes.'
'How came you to possess it?'
'When his effects were sold at Lahore, before his regiment marched
again.'
'And this relic----'
'Is a ring with a girl's hair in it.'
'Thank you so much,' said she, with a quivering lip; 'but to deprive
you----'
'Nay, nay, do not begin to speak thus. To whom should it belong but
to you? And how strange is the chance that gives me an opportunity
of presenting it!'
'I cannot decline it; but the girl--who can she have been? Poor
Ellon, some secret is buried in his grave.'
'Soldiers' graves, I doubt not, hide many, and many a sad romance. I
have generally worn it, curious to say, as my stock of jewellery is
not very extensive.'
'Have you it with you now?'
'No, I never wear rings when riding, the stones are apt to get
knocked out. I meant to do myself the pleasure of calling on you
after the hunt; and shall, if you will permit me. To-morrow I am for
guard.'
'For guard over what?'
'Nothing,' he said, laughing. 'There is nothing to see or to guard,
but it is all the same to John Bull.'
'The day after, then?'
'The day after.'
They were close to the house now, and, lifting his hat, he bowed low
and turned his horse just as a groom, who had been waiting in the
porch, took hers by the bridle, and, waving the handle of her switch
to him in farewell, Miss Cheyne gathered up her riding skirt and
entered the house.
Bevil Goring lingered at the further end of the avenue that led to
Chilcote, which was in a lovely locality, especially in summer, one
of those sunny places within thirty miles of St. Paul's, and one
secluded and woody--a place like Burnham Beeches, where the tree
trunks are of amazing size, and the path that led to the house went
down a deep dell, emblossomed in a wilderness leafy at all times but
in winter.
The ash, the birch, and contorted beeches overhung the slopes on each
side, and there seemed an entire absence of human care about them;
and there in summer the sheep wandered among the tender grass, as if
they were the only owners of the domain; but Bevil Goring had but one
thought as he looked around him, and then turned lingeringly away.
'How delicious to ramble among these leafy glades with her! How
deuced glad I am that I have that poor fellow's ring, and can gratify
her--perhaps myself too. Bother the guard of to-morrow; but I must
get it over as best I may.'
He lighted a cigar, and at a trot took the road to Aldershot, but so
sunk in thoughts that were new and delicious that he forgot all about
his 'soothing weed' till it scorched his thick dark moustache.
Meanwhile let us follow Alison Cheyne into her somewhat sequestered
home.
She had blushed with annoyance when resigning the reins of her horse
to Gaskins, Lord Cadbury's groom, while thinking that there was
neither groom nor stable at Chilcote, though, as her father had told
her many a time and oft, there were stalls for four and twenty nags
at Essilmont, where others stabled their horses now; and sooth to
tell, for causes yet to be told, she was provoked at being under any
obligation to old Lord Cadbury, especially in the now reduced state
of their fortunes.
She was received with a bright smile of welcome in the entrance hall
by their sole male attendant, old Archie Auchindoir, Sir Ranald's
man-of-all-work, who looked resentfully after the unconscious groom
while taking away the horse, which he would gladly have retained for
his young mistress by force if he could, for Archie thought
regretfully of the once ample _ménage_ at far away Essilmont, where,
like his father before him, he had grown to manhood and age in the
family of the Cheynes.
He was true as steel to his old master, to whom, however, he
sometimes ventured to say sharp things in the way of advice; and to
the 'pock-puddings,' as he called the denizens of the present
locality, he fearlessly said sharper and very cutting things with a
smirk on his mouth and a glitter in his keen grey eyes, and with
perfect impunity, as they were addressed in a language to the hearers
unknown; but it gratified Archie none the less to utter them, as he
often did in the guise of proverbs.
'Papa at home?' asked Alison.
'Yes, Miss,' said he, receiving her gloves and switch. 'And waiting
anxiously for you, though ower proud to show it even to me; but, my
certie, it's the life o' an auld hat to be weel cockit.'
Their household was so small now that Alison had no maid to attend
upon her, and quickly changing her costume she sought at once the
presence of her father, smoothing her hair with her white hands as
she hurried to receive his kiss; for, so far as he was concerned,
Alison, in her twentieth year, was as much a child as when in her
little frocks.
He was seated in a little room called his study, though there were
few books there; but there were a writing table usually littered with
letters, and invariably with an unpleasant mass of accounts to amount
'rendered;' an easy chair, deep, high-backed, and cosy, in which he
passed most of his time, and which was so placed that from it he had
a full view of the long, woody, and neglected avenue. There he spent
hours reading the _Field_ and turning over books on farming,
veterinary surgery, and so forth, by mere force of habit, though he
had not an acre of land or a dog or a horse to look after now; and
these studies were varied by the perusal of prints of a conservative
tendency, and an occasional dip into the pages of Burke.
He courteously threw into the fire the end of the cigar he had been
smoking as his daughter entered, and twining her soft arm round him
said, while nestling her face in his neck--
'Oh, papa, I have never had so delightful a day with the hounds as
this!'
The master of a broken fortune and impoverished household, Sir Ranald
Cheyne, baronet of Essilmont and that ilk, as he duly figured in that
year's volume of Burke and Debrett, with a pedigree going far beyond
the first baronet of his house, who had been patented in 1625, and
duly infeft at the Castle-gate of Edinburgh with a vast patrimony in
Nova Scotia, and 'power of pit and gallows' over his vassals there,
was a proud and querulous man, stately in manner and somewhat cold
and selfish to all men, save his daughter Alison, who was the apple
of his eye, the pride of his old heart, on whose beauty, as the means
of winning another fortune, all his hopes in life were based, and
with whom he was now living in semi-obscurity at Chilcote, a small,
venerable, and secluded mansion in Hampshire.
Sir Ranald had a pale and worn face that in youth had been eminently
handsome; his silver hair, or rather what remained of it, was brushed
back behind his wax-like ears, and a smile of great tenderness for
his daughter, the last of his old, old race and the hope of his age,
lighted up his aristocratic features.
A gold-rimmed _pince-nez_ was balanced on the thin ridge of his
rather aquiline nose, and though his bright blue eyes were smiling,
as we say, their normal expression may be described as usually one of
'worry.'
His voice was in unison with his face--it was worn too, if we may use
the expression, yet soft and not unmusical.
'You had an escort to the gate, I saw?' said he, interrogatively.
'Lord Cadbury, of course; why did he not come in?'
'Oh, no; I missed him in the field somewhere.'
'And your escort?'
'Was Captain Goring--you know him--from Aldershot,' she replied, a
little nervously.
'Again?' said Sir Ranald, with just the slightest shade of
displeasure flitting over his face. 'You were safely driven to the
meet by Mrs. Trelawney?'
'Yes; and, when I last saw her and dear little Netty, their victoria
was wedged between a drag and a tax-cart. I do hope they escaped
without harm.'
'I hope so, too, for she is a very charming woman. And you found
Cadbury duly waiting at Salthill with his horses?'
'Yes; and Gaskins came here to get mine.'
'I hope you duly thanked Cadbury.'
'Of course, papa.'
'But why did he not make an effort to escort you home?' asked Sir
Ranald, whom this point interested.
'I missed him in the running, as I said, papa,' replied Alison,
colouring now. 'He is so slow at his fences.'
'Slow; he has the reputation of generally riding faster than his
horse,' said Sir Ranald, who was unable to repress a joke at the
_parvenu_ peer, whom he was not without quiet hopes of having for a
son-in-law. 'Then, I suppose, Captain Goring was your escort for
most of the day?'
'Yes,' replied Alison, frankly.
'In fact, I may presume that you and he were always neck-and-neck;
taking your fences together, and all that sort of thing?'
'Oh, no, papa; certainly not,' replied Alison, thinking it was unwise
to admit too much, though her father's surmises were very near the
truth.
'I am astonished that Cadbury did not make an effort to join you.'
'I never saw him after the hounds threw off,' said Alison, a little
wearily, as she knew how her father's secret thoughts were tending.
'Did you look for him?'
'No.'
'So--so--this is exactly what happened before.'
'Can I help it, papa, if his wont is to fail at the first fence?'
'You can help Captain Goring so opportunely taking his place.'
'I do not quite see what his place is; but oh, papa, what do you
think? Capt. Goring heard of poor Ellon in India--he actually laid
him in his grave, if one may say so!'
'How?'
'He commanded the soldiers who fired over it.'
'Indeed!' said Sir Ranald, with some interest now.
She was about to mention the proffered ring, which she deemed a
precious relic, when her father said with a tone of some gravity, and
even crustily--
'I don't much like your following the hounds, and think you must give
it up.'
'Oh, it is delightful; and if I had a horse of my own----'
'There you go!' exclaimed her father, with a petty gush of
irritation; 'I don't like it! Think how a girl looks in an October
morning at a cover-side, her eyes watering, perhaps her nose red, and
her cheeks blue, and after a while, perhaps, with her hat smashed,
her habit torn, her hair hanging down her back, and some fellow
fagging by her side drearily when he wishes her at the devil; or
think of her learning to talk of curbs and spavins, hocks, stifle,
and thoroughpin, like the gentleman jockey of a dragoon corps.'
'Oh, you dear old thing!' exclaimed Alison, caressing him and
laughing, though she knew that his irritation was caused only by her
having permitted Bevil Goring to take the place of her elderly and
titled admirer. 'I have so little amusement here at Chilcote, papa,
that I did not think you would grudge me----'
'A run with the hounds on Cadbury's horses?' he interrupted, with a
slight quiver, 'but I dislike the risks you run, and the chance
medley acquaintances you may meet; but pardon my petulance, darling;
and now to dress for dinner, such as it is.'
Too well did Alison know that one of the acquaintances referred to
was her late handsome escort; but she only said--
'I do love horses, and you remember, papa, how grieved you were when
I had to relinquish, as a little girl, my dear old Shetland pony,
Pepper, and you called me your "poor bankrupt child;" and I did so
miss Pepper with his barrel-shaped body, his shaggy mane, and velvet
nose that he used to rub against my neck till I gave him a carrot or
an apple.'
'Hence, I am the more grateful to Cadbury for so kindly putting his
horses at your disposal; but for him,' added Sir Ranald, forgetting
his recent remark, 'you could not have been in your proper place with
the buckhounds, or shared in the pleasures of the day. Of course you
wince when I mention Cadbury,' said Sir Ranald, observing a cloudy
expression flit over her face.
'Well, papa, he bores me.'
'Bores you? This is scarcely grateful after all the pleasure he puts
at your disposal--his horses, his box at the opera, and the bouquets,
music, and so forth he so frequently sends you.'
But Alison only shrugged her shoulders, while her father retired to
change his costume; for either by force of old habit, or out of
respect for himself, he always assumed evening dress (faded though it
was) for dinner; albeit that the latter might consist of a little
better than hashed mutton or scrag of mutton _à la Russe_, in which
the housekeeper, Mrs. Rebecca Prune, excelled.
'I wish he would not talk to me so much of Lord Cadbury,' thought
Alison; 'if his kindness is to be received in this fashion, I shall
never accept a mount from him again, nor a piece of music either!'
In the few joyous hours she had spent--hours which the presence of
Bevil Goring had, undoubtedly, served to brighten--Alison Cheyne had
forgotten for a space the petty annoyances of her home life; its
shifts and shams that often made her weary and sick at heart; her
father's pride and frequent petulance; his constant repining at the
present, and futile regret over the past; his loss of position, or
rather of luxury and splendour, which the loss of fortune entailed.
CHAPTER III.
ELLON'S RING.
For a man of acknowledged and undoubtedly good family, Sir Ranald had
rather eccentric ideas of ancestry and the value thereof. He did not
certainly, like the Duke d'Aremberg or Sir Thomas Urquhart of
Cromartie, claim kindred with the antediluvians, nor even carry his
genealogy back to the dim days of Gadifer, King of Scotland, of whom
it is recorded in that most veracious record _Le Grand Chronique de
Bretagne_, that with Perceforest, King of Brittany, he sailed in
company from the mouth of the Ganges, and was wrecked on the coast of
Armorica; after which they were subsequently and severally raised to
the thrones of Britain and Caledonia by their mutual friend Alexander
le Gentil, in the time of Julius Cæsar; but he could solidly trace
his descent from that Ranald Cheyne of Essilmont, Cairnhill, Craig
and Inverugie, who was one of the barons that signed the _Litera
Communitatis Scotiœ_ to Edward I. of England, about the marriage
of their queen, the little Maid of Norway.
Thus he had among his ancestors men who figured greatly in the
troubles and wars of the olden time, who fenced with steel the throne
of Robert I., who were ambassadors to England and France for David
II. and the early James's, who shed their blood at Flodden Field and
Pinkie Cleugh, at Sark and Ancrum Moor, and whose swords were ever
ready when their country was in peril; and so, when he thought of
these things, his proud spirit was apt to chafe, and at such times
especially he was inclined to view with some contempt his friend
Cadbury as a mushroom, being only a peer of yesterday, the second of
his race, and for whom not even the ingenuity of the united College
of Heralds could 'fudge' out a pedigree; but, for all that, the ample
wealth of the latter was not without its due and solid weight in his
estimation.
Like more than one old northern family, the Cheynes of Essilmont were
supposed--nay, were confidently alleged--to have a mysterious warning
of death or approaching woe, such as the spectre drummer whose beat
at Cortachy announces when fate is nigh the 'bonnie House of Airlie,'
like the bell of Coull that tolls of itself when a Dorward dies, the
hairy-handed Meg Moulach of the Grants, the headless horseman of
Maclean, or the solitary swan that floats on a certain lake at times
fatal to another race; and so the Cheynes of Essilmont were supposed
to be haunted by a spectral black hound, in the appearance of which
Sir Ranald strove to disbelieve in spite of himself, though its
solemn baying had been heard when Ellon died in India and his mother
in London; and as for old Archy Auchindoir, the family factotum, he
believed in it as he did in his own existence.
'Original sin,' _i.e._, the accumulated debts of a generation or two
past, with his own mad extravagance in youth, had so completely
impaired Sir Ranald's exchequer that, on a few hundreds per annum,
the wreck of all his fortune, he was compelled, though not content,
to live, 'vegetate' he deemed it, quietly in an old house in
Hampshire; and times there were when in the great weariness of his
heart--especially after the death of his two sons--he often thought,
could he but see Alison provided for as he wished, he had no other
desire than to be laid where many of his ancestors lay, a right which
none could deny him, in the ancient chapel of Essilmont, where often
he had with envy regarded the stiff and prostrate mailed effigies on
their altar tombs, lying there with sword and shield, their faces
expressive of stern serenity, and their hands folded in eternal
prayer.
Chilcote, his present abode, was buried deep in woods that must have
been a portion of the New Forest or the relics thereof, and had been
built somewhere about the time of Queen Anne. Thus a great amount of
solid oak formed a portion of its structure; and in the principal
rooms the mantel-pieces ascended in carved work nearly to the
ceilings, while the jambs were of massive stone, with caryatides,
like the god Terminus, wreathed to the waist in leaves, supporting
the entablatures.
The walls were divided into compartments by moulded panelling,
painted with imaginary landscapes and ruins; the armorial bearings of
the Chilcotes of other days; and beneath the surbase (or chairbelt,
as it used to be called) were smaller panels, all painted with fruit
and flowers.
The windows were deeply embayed, with cushioned seats. One of these
was, in the summer evenings, the favourite niche in which Alison was
wont to perch herself with one of Mudie's latest novels.
The furniture was all old, faded, 'shabby,' Alison truly deemed it;
but in tone it seemed much in unison with the rooms, on the walls of
which her father had hung a few family pictures, the pride of his
heart, gentlemen in ruffs and cloaks, dames in stomachers and
capuchins, and two there were in whom he loved to trace a fancied
resemblance to his dead sons, Ranald and Ellon, for they were
brothers, and bore the same names--Ranald Cheyne, who fell at the
head of the Scots Life Guards at Worcester, and Ellon Cheyne, who had
died previously at the storming of Newcastle; both men portrayed in
the gorgeous costume of their time, and both looked to the life,
'blue-blooded Scottish cavaliers, pale, smooth-skinned, with
moustache and love lock, haughty and imperious,' and each with an
expression of face that seemed to say they would have thought as
little of spitting a crop-eared roundhead as a lark, with their long
Toledoes.
On the day after the hunt Lord Cadbury's groom, Gaskins, came riding
to Chilcote with a magnificent bouquet from the conservatories for
Alison, and his master's anxious inquiries as to how she had enjoyed
the sport of the previous day, and a hope that she had not suffered
from fatigue; and Alison, as she buried her pretty pink nostrils
among the cool and fragrant roses, smiled covertly and mischievously
as she heard from Gaskins how his master had 'got such a precious
spill by funking at a bull-finch, when the hounds were thrown off,
that he would be confined to the house for some days.'
Thus for a time she would be free from the annoyance of his presence.
Archie, the white-haired man-of-all-work, gave Mr. Gaskins a tankard
of beer after he had leaped into his saddle, where he took what
Archie called a 'standing drink, like the coo o' Forfar.' Lord
Cadbury's powdered servants, in elaborate liveries, were always a
source of supreme contempt (mingled, perhaps, with envy) to Sir
Ranald's staunch henchman, and now he felt inclined to sneer if he
could at the well-appointed groom, in his dark grey surtout,
waistbelt, cockade, and top-boots.
'Braw leathers, thae o' yours,' said he, regarding the latter with
some interest.
'Yaas,' drawled Gaskins. 'I flatter myself that few gents appear
with better boot tops than Cadbury and myself. I clean them with a
preparation--quite a conserve, Mr. Hackendore, peculiarly my own.'
'And what may that be?' asked Archie.
'Champagne and apricot jam,' replied Gaskins, twirling his moustache
and eyeing the old man with intense superciliousness.
'Set ye up, indeed, wi' your buits and belts!' snapped Archie. 'Ye
think yoursel' made for the siller; but a bawbee cat may look at a
king.'
'I don't understand the sense of your remark,' drawled Gaskins,
shortening his reins.
'Like enough--like enough; mony complain o' want o' siller, but few
complain o' want o' sense; and a gowk at Yule will ne'er be bricht at
Beltane.'
'What the devil is he talking about?' thought the bewildered groom,
as he put spurs to his horse and trotted away.
'Wi' a' his bravery,' said Archie, with a grimace, 'he's a loon that
will loup the dyke where it's laighest.'
Alison divided the bouquet into portions for various vases to
ornament her drawing-room, and on the following day, after a more
than usually careful toilette, while her father was occupied in worry
and perplexity over letters and accounts, seated herself in the deep
bay of a window that overlooked the avenue, her heart beating quicker
as the noon wore on.
She had a novel in her hand, but we doubt if she knew even the title
of it. Pleasure, doubt, and anxiety were mingling in the girl's
mind--pleasure, as she thought, 'I shall see him again for a time,
however brief!'--doubt of what might ensue if she saw him under the
keen watchful eyes of her father, who could detect every expression
of her face, and a great anxiety lest she might be requested to avoid
all intimacy, even acquaintanceship, with Bevil Goring in future; but
little could she foresee the turn matters were to take, or the events
of the next few days.
Luncheon was long past, and the afternoon was drawing on, when Goring
rode down the avenue and gave the bridle of his horse to Archie
Auchindoir, who, with a considerable appearance of being flustered,
had--on the approach of a visitor--hurried from the garden, where he
had been at work, to don an old black claw-hammer coat, the reversion
of Sir Ranald's wardrobe.
He ran the bridle rein deftly through an iron ring in the ivy-covered
porch, and preceded the young officer, whose card he placed on a
silver tray with as much formality as if the little mansion of
Chilcote had been a residence like Buckingham Palace.
Sir Ranald bade him welcome with finished courtesy and old-fashioned
grace, while Alison, her cheek mantling with ill-concealed
pleasure--for what young girl but feels her pulses quicken in the
presence of a handsome and welcome admirer--continued to keep her
back to the windows; thus, during the usual exchange of commonplaces
and inquiries, Sir Ranald, who watched both, failed to detect
anything in the manner of either that could lead to the inference
that they had more interest in each other than ordinary
acquaintances, and began to feel rather grateful to the young officer
who had come to do them a kindness.
'So glad to see you again, Captain Goring, and to thank you for your
care of Miss Cheyne when with the hounds,' he said, motioning their
visitor to a seat. 'The cavalier to whom I entrusted her, Lord
Cadbury, seems to have come to grief at his first fence,' added the
old gentleman, laughing over the mishap of his friend, to whom Goring
would rather that no reference had been made.
'I promised to call, Sir Ranald, and inquire for Miss Cheyne, after
our pretty rough run, especially by Burnham Beeches, where the pack
hunted their game pretty hard,' said Goring, 'and also to beg her
acceptance of a relic of your son Ellon, of the Hussars, of which I
became possessed by the merest chance in India.'
'A thousand thanks. Most kind of you, Captain Goring,' said Sir
Ranald, his usually pale cheek reddening for a moment.
'I learned incidentally from Miss Cheyne, as we rode towards
Chilcote, that the poor lad who was killed at Lahore was her younger
brother, and that the ring I possess had been his. It is here,' he
added, opening a tiny morocco box, in which he had placed the ring.
It was a richly chased trinket, having two clam-shells of gold, with
a diamond in the centre of each.
'Ellon's ring it is, indeed,' exclaimed Sir Ranald, in a changed
voice, while the moisture clouded the glasses of his _pince-nez_.
'My farewell gift to him on the morning he marched from
Maidstone--you remember, papa,' exclaimed Alison, with tears in her
voice.
'I am not likely to forget, God help me, that both my boys are gone,
and now I have----'
'Only me, papa.'
'It is a source of supreme satisfaction that I am the means of
restoring this to his family,' Goring added, judiciously, as he was
on the point of saying 'sister,' and he placed it in her hand; but
that hand seemed so slim and white and beautiful that he was tempted
to do more, for he slipped the ring rather playfully and rather
nervously on one of her fingers, saying, 'It is a world too wide.'
'Of course,' said Sir Ranald, 'it is a man's ring.
'But, see!' exclaimed Alison, as she pressed a spring, of the
existence of which Goring had been until that moment ignorant, and
the two clamshells unclosing showed a minutely and beautifully
coloured little photo, no larger than a shilling, of her own charming
face.
'Good heavens!' said Goring, with genuine surprise and pleasure, 'I
was all unaware of this secret, though I have worn the ring for two
years and more.'
'And all that time you have been wearing _my_ ring, _my_ hair, _my_
likeness,' muttered Alison, in a low voice, while Sir Ranald was
ringing the bell.
'Delicious fatality,' thought Goring, as he looked on the sweet
flushed face that was upturned to his, and their eyes met in a mutual
glance that expressed more than their lips dared tell already, and
which neither ever forgot. Luckily at that moment the baronet, on
hospitable thoughts intent, was ordering Archie to bring wine,
mentioning a rare brand from the small store which yet remained of
the wreck of better days--a store kept for visitors alone.
'My brothers died within a month of each other in India, Captain
Goring,' said Alison. 'Poor mamma never got over the double shock,
and--and--we have never been at Essilmont since.'
'Could not your presence, your existence, console her?' asked Goring.
'No; her soul was centred in her boys.'
'I shall never forget your kindness, Captain Goring, in bringing us
this little relic of Ellon,' said Sir Ranald; 'and now after your
ride from the camp try a glass of this white _Clos Vougeot_. But
perhaps you would prefer red. We have both, I think, Archie?'
Though the last bottle of the red sparkling Burgundy had long since
vanished, Archie vowed there was a binful, and fortunately for his
veracity Goring announced a decided preference for the white; and
while Alison played dreamily with her brother's ring, and thought
again and again how strange it was that her hair and her likeness
should have been worn with it for so long in far and distant lands by
Bevil Goring, the conversation turned to general subjects between the
latter and her father, who came secretly to the conclusion that he
'was a very fine young fellow.'
He had seen the last on earth of Ellon, had stood by his grave, had
seen the smoke of the death volleys curling over it, and seen it
covered up; thus Alison thought he was more to her than any mere
stranger could ever be, and already, in her heart, she had begun to
deem him more indeed.
And after he had taken his departure, when she offered the ring to
Sir Ranald, to her joy, he begged her to retain it, and, much to her
surprise, answered that he meant to have a little dinner party.
'You quite take my heart away, papa--a dinner party!' exclaimed
Alison.
'Yes, we shall have this young fellow Goring (he asked me to dine at
his mess, you know), and his brother officers Dalton and Wilmot,
Cadbury of course, and you can have Mrs. Trelawney, who is always
charming company, to keep you in countenance--a nice little party.'
'Oh, papa,' exclaimed Alison, in genuine dismay, 'think of our poor
_ménage_.'
'Tut--consult Mrs. Prune on the subject.'
'I thought you wished to have a rest from dinner parties.'
'I have been at so many, that some return----'
'Yes--but--but, papa----'
'What next, child?'
'Our last quarter's bills were so large,' urged Alison.
'Large for our exchequer, I have no doubt.'
'Let us call it luncheon, papa, and I think I shall arrange it
nicely,' she pleaded, her heart quickening at the chance of meeting
Bevil (she already thought of him as 'Bevil') again. So that was
decided on, and the invitation notes were quickly despatched.
Alison had watched from a window the shadow of their visitor, as that
of man and horse lengthened out on the sunlighted road, until shadow
and form passed away; but Goring, as he rode homeward, was little
aware that he had not seen the _last_ of Ellon Cheyne's ring.
CHAPTER IV.
LAURA TRELAWNEY.
The invited guests all responded, and accepted almost by return of
post, and a sigh of relief escaped Sir Ranald when he found no
missives came with them, as he was generally well pleased when he saw
the village postman pass the avenue gate.
'Captain Goring, I see, uses sealing wax--good custom--good old
style,' said he, returning that officer's note to Alison, who prized
it rather more than he knew; 'uses a shield too--the chevron and
annulets of the Gorings of Sussex--not a crest; every trumpery fellow
sticks one on his notepaper now--the crest that never shone on a
helmet.'
So, from this circumstance, Bevil Goring rose in the estimation of
the baronet, who knew all Burke's Armory by rote.
The luncheon lay heavy on poor Alison's heart; she thought of their
_cuisine_, as it too often was--refined and dainty though her
father's tastes were--meat roasted dubiously, then made up into stews
and lumpy minces, with rice puddings, and she shivered with dismay,
and had long and deep consultations with old Mrs. Rebecca Prune and
her daughter Daisy; but when the day came her fears were ended, and
she began 'to see her way,' as she said, and contemplated the table
with some complacency.
In her blue morning robe, trimmed with white, which suited so well
her complexion and the character of her beauty, she was cutting and
placing in crystal vases the monthly roses and few meagre flowers
with fern leaves from her tiny conservatory at the sunny end of the
house to decorate the table.
'Don't they look pretty, papa?' she exclaimed, almost gleefully.
'Yes, but you, pet Alison, are the sweetest flower of them all,' said
Sir Ranald, kissing the close white division of her rich brown hair.
'"Dawted dochters mak' daidling wives," they say,' muttered old
Archie, who was busy polishing a salver; 'but our dear doo, Miss
Alison, will never be ane o' them, Sir Ranald.'
For the honour of the house, Archie had been most anxious to furnish
his quota to the feast, and said--
'Miss Alison, I am sure I would catch ye some troots in the burn owre
by, though the weeds ha'e grown sae in the water, if you would like
them.'
'Thanks, Archie, you old dear,' replied Alison, laughing, 'but we
won't require them.'
The cold salmon and fowls, the salads, some game, the grapes, and
other etceteras of a well-appointed repast, to which delicate cutlets
were to be added, with some of Sir Ranald's irreproachable
wines--almost the last remnants of a once well-stocked cellar--made
the table complete, and Alison content; nor must we forget the dainty
china and crested silver dishes, heirlooms for generations back,
which were brought from their repositories, and were the pride of old
Auchindoir's heart and of his master's too.
The chief of these was a relic of considerable antiquity, being
nothing less than a maizer, or goblet of silver, bequeathed by
Elizabeth, Queen Consort of Scotland, to her master of the household,
the Laird of Essilmont, who, with Douglas, pursued Edward of England
from Bannockburn to the gates of Dunbar, and which had emblazoned (in
faded colours) and graven on it the Cheyne arms, chequy or and azure,
a fess gules, fretty of the first, and crested with a buck's head,
erased.
Mrs. Trelawney and her little daughter were the first to arrive. She
swept up to Alison, kissed her on both cheeks, with more genuine
affection than effusiveness, and apologised for the presence of her
little companion.
'I knew you would pardon me bringing the poor child. She has no one
to love but me, and mopes so much when left alone.'
'Netty, I hope, loves me too,' exclaimed Alison, taking the girl--a
bright little thing of some eight years or so, with a shower of
clustering curls--in her arms and kissing her fondly. 'I don't think
papa would consider his little entertainment complete without Netty
to prattle to him.'
Mrs. Trelawney, a brilliant blonde of seven and twenty, though a
widow, looked almost girlish for her years; her figure was tall and
eminently handsome; her white-lidded and long-lashed hazel eyes were
full of brilliant expression; her manner was vivacious, and every
action of her hands and head graceful in the extreme. She formed an
attractive and leading feature in every circle, and usually was the
centre of a group of gentlemen everywhere, and yet, singular to say,
she rather avoided than courted both notice and society.
When she talked she seemed the art of pleasing personified; her
words, her gestures, her bright eyes, and beautiful lips were all
prepossessing.
She would invest petty trifles with interest; her accents were those
of grace, and she could polish the point of an epigram, or say even a
bold thing, better certainly than any other woman Alison had ever
met. Her vivacity was said to approach folly; but even in her
moments of folly, she was always interesting.
On the other hand she had times of depression almost amounting to
gloom, most singular even to those who knew her best, and it was
averred that, though not very rich, she had refused many eligible
offers, and preferred the perfect freedom of widowhood.
'And now, dear,' she said, as she took an accustomed seat in the
drawing-room, 'tell me all who are coming.'
'Well, there is Lord Cadbury.'
'Of course.'
'And Captain Goring.'
'Of course,' said the pretty widow, fanning herself, though a crystal
screen was between her and the fire.
'Why of course?' asked Alison, colouring; 'and there is Jerry
Wilmot--your devoted--and Captain Dalton, who will be sure to fall in
love with you.'
At Dalton's name Mrs. Trelawney changed colour; indeed she grew so
perceptibly pale, while her lips quivered, that Alison remarked it.
'Dearest, what agitates you so? Do you know him?' asked the girl.
'No--not at all!'
'What then----'
'I knew one of the same name who did me--let me rather say--my
family--a great wrong.'
'But he cannot be the same person.'
'Oh, no. Besides, this Captain Dalton has just come from India with
his regiment. And so you think he will be sure to fall in love with
me?' added Mrs. Trelawney, recovering her colour and her smiles; 'and
I with him perhaps.'
'That does not follow; but he seems just the kind of man I think a
widow might fall in love with--handsome and manly, grave, earnest,
and sympathetic.'
'But he may share in the aversion of Mr. Weller, senior, and have his
tendency to beware of widows. I feel certain, Alison dear, that your
Captain Dalton will never suit me.'
'You have seen him, then?'
'Yes--with the buckhounds the other day.'
'Wilmot, who admires you so much, will one day be very rich, they
say.'
'Don't talk thus, Alison, or I shall begin to deem you what I know
you are not--mercenary; but Jerry Wilmot has little just now; he has,
however, a knowledge of horseflesh and a great capability for
spending money, and thinks a pack of hounds in a hunting country is
necessary to existence. He is a detrimental of the first water, and
the special _bête-noire_ of Belgravian and Tyburnian mammas.'
'It is a pity you should ever seclude yourself as you sometimes do,
Laura,' said Alison, looking at her beautiful friend with genuine
admiration; 'all men admire you so much, and you have but to hold up
your little finger to make them kneel at your feet.'
'How you flatter me! But I never will hold up my little finger, nor
would I marry again for the mines of Potosi and Peru. It is as well
that little Netty is so busy with that photographic album, or she
might marvel at your anxiety to provide her with a papa.'
'It is not wealth you wait for?'
'No.'
'What then, Laura?'
'Nothing.'
'How I shall laugh if the handsome Captain Dalton stirs that now
unimpressionable heart of yours.'
'I shall be very glad to meet him,' said Mrs. Trelawney, with a
curious hardness in her voice.
'Why?'
'Because I may compel him to love me, Alison,' and as Mrs. Trelawney
spoke her eyes flashed with a triumphant glow such as Alison had
never seen in them before.
'Compel him?'
'Yes.'
'It would be easy to make him love you; but would you marry him?'
'How your little head runs on love and marriage! No, Alison, I shall
never marry--_again_!'
'Poor soul,' thought Alison, admiringly, 'how much she must have
loved her first husband!'
And simultaneously with the entrance of Sir Ranald, the three brother
officers--Bevil Goring, Jerry Wilmot, and Captain Dalton--were
announced, and all these were men of the best style, in accurate
morning costume, all more than usually good-looking, set up by drill,
easy in bearing, and looking ruddy with their ride from the camp in a
chill October day.
'I missed you early in the hunt, Miss Cheyne,' said Jerry, after the
introductions were over. 'How you and Goring flew over that first
fence!'
'I love to gallop over everything,' replied Alison, 'but I must
confess that my sympathies in the field are always with the flying
stag, or the poor little panting hare--a miserable, tiny creature,
with a horde of men, horses, and dogs after it, and making the welkin
ring when in at the death!'
'Yes, though by the way I never know precisely what the said welkin
is, unless it be the regions of the air.'
All unaware that his name had been so recently and so curiously on
her lovely lips, Captain, or Tony Dalton, as his comrades called him,
was saying some commonplaces to Mrs. Trelawney, over whose chair he
was stooping.
He was not much her senior perhaps in years, but he had seen much of
service in India. Tall and dark, with closely-shorn brown hair, he
had an air and face that were commanding; but with a simple grace of
bearing that belied any appearance of self-assertion.
After India, where he had been long on a station up country; where
all the Europeans were males, and not a lady within three hundred
miles; where a wet towel and half a water-melon formed the morning
head-dress, and visits of the water-carrier incessant; where books
were scarce, serials scarcer, flies and heat plentiful; and where the
little tawny women, with their nose-rings and orange-coloured cheeks,
were all alike hideous, to see such a woman as Mrs. Trelawny, with
her snowy skin, her shell-like ears, and marvellous hands, was
something indeed.
She was dressed in rich dark silk--not mourning; she wore no widow's
cap, but had her fine hair simply braided in a heavy and beautiful
coil at the back of her handsome head, and she looked as fair and
lovely as she must have done on her marriage morning.
Bevil Goring had begun to address Alison, whose sweet eyes were shyly
upturned to his as she placed in the bosom of her dress a rosebud he
had taken from the lapel of his coat, when the deep Doric voice of
Archie Auchindoir was heard announcing the _bête-noire_ of both.
'Lord Cawdbury.'
CHAPTER V.
ALISON'S LUNCHEON PARTY.
A man, between fifty and sixty years of age, having a short, paunchy,
and ungainly figure, grizzled hair, ferret-like eyes with a cunning
unscrupulous expression, and a long heavy moustache which was almost
white, entered with a smiling face and an easy and well-assured air
that was born, not of innate good breeding, but of the supreme
confidence given by position and a well-stocked purse.
Coarse and large hands and ears, with an over-display of jewellery,
especially two or three gold-digger-like rings, showed that, though
the second peer of his family, Lord Cadbury was of very humble origin
indeed.
His face wore its brightest smile as he greeted his hostess, Alison,
and under his white moustache showed the remainder of a set of teeth
that, as Jerry Wilmot said afterwards, were like the remnants of the
old Guard, 'few in number and very much the worse for wear.'
He shook the slender hand of Sir Ranald with considerable cordiality,
yet not without an air of patronage, bowed over Mrs. Trelawney's
gloved fingers, nodded slightly to the three officers (Cadbury did
not like military men), and, seating himself by Alison's side,
banteringly accused her of running away at Salthill and leaving him
behind (he did not say in the ditch), which was precisely what she
did do; nor did she attempt to excuse herself, but simply rose and
took his arm when Archie announced the luncheon was ready, and, the
moment he seated himself, the peer began to expatiate upon the
improvements he was making at Cadbury Court, for behoof of the table
generally, though his remarks were made especially to her; but she
heard with indifference a description of the vineries, pineries, and
so forth, which he was erecting at a vast cost.
Not so her father, who, with the _pince-nez_ balanced on his
aristocratic nose, heard of these things with a face which wore a
curiously mingled expression of satisfaction and contempt; for he
failed not to recognize a tone of vulgar ostentation that seemed so
well to suit, he thought, 'the tradesman's coronet of yesterday,' and
endeavoured to turn the conversation to hunting, though his days for
it were passed.
'The world changes, and has changed in many things, Captain Dalton,'
said he; 'but true to his old instincts man will always be a huntsman
and a soldier.'
'But to uncart a tame deer, or let a hare out of a bag, and then
pursue it with horse and dog as if one's life depended upon the
recapture, scarcely seems a sane proceeding,' said Lord Cadbury, who
still felt the effects of his 'spill' in the field, 'and all unsuited
to this age of refinement.'
'I believe only in the refinement that is produced by the education
of generations,' said Sir Ranald, a little irrelevantly, as he tugged
his white moustache and felt himself unable to repress a covert sneer
at the very man for whom he had destined Alison, with whom the peer
was too much occupied to hear what was said.
With all her regard and esteem for old Archie Auchindoir, Alison was
rather bored by the bewilderment of Goring and others, on whom he was
in attendance, at his quaintness, oddity, and unintelligible dialect;
and sooth to say, all undeterred by rank and wealth, he was very
inattentive and curt to Lord Cadbury, of whose views he was no more
ignorant than most servants usually are of their superior's affairs.
Thus many a grimace stole over his wrinkled and saturnine visage as
he watched the pair, and muttered, as he carved game at the
sideboard--
'It is a braw thing to be lo'ed, nae doubt, but wha wad mool wi' an
auld moudiewart like that? No our Miss Alison, certes.'
On the strength of his wealth and rank, of many a pretty present
forced upon her unwillingly, yet with her father's consent, and
curiously enough upon his great seniority to her in years, which
enabled him 'to do the paternal,' as Mrs. Trelawney once said, Lord
Cadbury assumed a kind of right of proprietary in Alison Cheyne that
was very galling to the latter before her guests, and under the sense
of which Bevil Goring chafed in secret as he drank his wine in
silence and gnawed his moustache in sheer anger, for Alison was fast
becoming to him more than he might ever dare acknowledge to herself.
'You must have married when very young, Mrs. Trelawney,' said Dalton,
who was plying her daughter with grapes and crystallised fruits.
'Yes--I was just seventeen.'
'It is so romantic to marry young.'
'Too romantic perhaps to be either a sensible or a practical
proceeding,' said Mrs. Trelawney, her slender fingers contrasting in
their whiteness with the deep crimson of her claret glass; 'but there
is only one thing else better than marrying young.'
'And that is----'
'To die young, Captain Dalton!' she said, laughingly, yet with a
curious flash in her soft hazel eyes.
'Like those whom the gods love?'
'Yes.'
Dalton knew not what to make of these strange speeches, but after a
time he began to see that she was rather given to indulging in wild
and even bitter ones, yet all said laughingly; and he rapidly began
to regard her as a species of beautiful enigma.
To Alison it became apparent that a sudden change had come over her
friend Laura at the first sight of Captain Dalton; she had grown pale
and silent, and even _distrait_--so much so that Alison had whispered
to her,
'Does he remind you of anyone?'
'Yes,' she had replied.
'Of whom?'
'Pardon me.'
'She is thinking of her dead husband, no doubt. Dear me, if this
should prove a case!' thought the little match-maker, who saw that as
the luncheon proceeded Mrs. Trelawney was all gaiety, smiles, and
brilliance, and too evidently leaving nothing undone by sallies of
wit to fascinate Dalton; and Alison felt grateful to her that by her
gaiety she had made the little luncheon quite a success, as she felt
it to have been when all returned to the drawing-room to have some
music.
'Now, Laura dear,' said she, 'we all look to you first,' and Dalton
led the widow to the piano, and she began to play readily with great
brilliancy, force, and execution some very rare and difficult pieces
of music, while he stood by and turned over the leaves; and when
pressed to sing she began at once a little ballad the words of which
were curious, and went to a singularly slow, sad, and wailing air:--
'Think not of me in summer's blush,
When flowers around thee spring,
And warbling birds on every bush
Their sweetest music sing.
Think not of me, when winter stern,
His icy throne uprears,
And long lost friends with joy return,
To tell of other years.
'But when the sighing breezes own
Sad autumn's blighting sway,
And withered flowers and leaves are strewn,
In silence o'er thy way;
Then think of me! for withered lies
The dearest hope I nursed;
And I have seen, with bitter sighs,
My brightest dream dispersed.'
Other verses--of which these are a sample--followed, and her voice,
tender, plaintive, half passionate, and somewhat piteous, gave a
powerful effect to the words, to which Tony Dalton seemed to listen
like a man in a dream as he hung over her.
'Oh, Laura,' exclaimed Alison, hurrying to her side, with a merry
little laugh, 'that melodramatic ditty is most unlike you. Where, in
the name of goodness, did you pick it up?'
'I have heard that song long, long ago, Mrs. Trelawney,' said Captain
Dalton, trying to pull himself together.
'When?' asked the singer, turning her eyes upon him with one of their
most effective glances under lashes long and dark.
'I cannot say,' replied the officer; 'but I have heard these verses
sung by a voice so like yours that I am bewildered.'
'Was it in a dream?' she asked, softly.
'Perhaps.'
'I found them in an old album, in which they were written by a friend
years ago.'
'What friend?' asked Dalton, almost mechanically.
'That matters little now, nor could it interest you.'
'It does--it does, because I knew that song well years ago, as you
say.'
Her eyelashes quivered, even her hands trembled with some real or
perhaps pretended emotion, and she cut short the subject by dashing
at once into a piece of Verdi's music, and by her brilliancy and
sparkle she seemed to be absorbing Dalton entirely now, greatly to
the dismay of Jerry, who was one of her bondsmen.
Mrs. Trelawney, who had undoubtedly been studying the former, saw
that he was in many ways an interesting man, whose face and bearing
indicated that he had seen much of the world, much of human life, and
done all that a soldier might do in it--that there was at times
something of restlessness and impatience in his eyes and on his lips,
as of a man who had a secret, the clue to which she was curious to
find.
When Alison took her place at the piano, where Goring posted himself
on duty to turn the leaves (old Lord Cadbury knew not a note of music
luckily), Mrs. Trelawney drew her daughter towards her, and said--
'This is my little girl, Captain Dalton. Give your hand, child.'
The latter, a very little girl, indeed--quite a small lady--gave her
tiny hand to Dalton, who looked into her shy eyes earnestly, and then
said, with a bright smile--
'How singular that she is not like you!'
'No--she is dark-complexioned,'
'And you are almost blonde, though your eyes are hazel. I presume
she resembles her father?'
'She does in many points--in others I hope she never will,' added
Mrs. Trelawney, in her heart.
'Is it long since she lost him?' asked Dalton, softly.
'She never knew him.'
'How?'
'Fate took him from me before she was born.'
'Poor child!' said Dalton, caressing the girl's soft and silky hair,
while her tiny fingers toyed with a ring he wore; 'she is quite a
little beauty, but she could not fail to be so.'
'You are pleased to be complimentary, Captain Dalton,' said Mrs.
Trelawney, who seemed more pleased with his admiration of the child
than of herself, and a little sigh escaped her.
There was now, as when she sang, a great tenderness in her voice, a
kind of plaintive ring in it that stirred Dalton's heart curiously,
and when she asked him question upon question, with a considerable
depth of interest, as to the places he had seen, the adventures that
had befallen him, the battles in which he had shared, and so forth,
he found himself gradually unfolding to her all his past interests,
his present plans, his future hopes--if, indeed, he had any; while
she listened with her inquiring eyes, half veiled by their drooping
lids, fixed on his, her bosom heaving, and a white hand swaying her
feather fan mechanically to and fro.
'And now tell me, Captain Dalton,' said she suddenly, as he paused;
'but you will think me very curious--in all these years of military
wandering, how you never thought of marriage?'
'A strange question!' said he.
'And a leading one, you may think,' she resumed, laughing merrily;
'but we widows are privileged people--well?'
'Never!' said he, in a low, husky voice, and, through the bronze the
Indian sun had cast upon his cheek, she could see the scarlet blush
that mantled there, and, rather shrinking from the turn their
conversation had taken, he drew back, and his place was instantly
assumed by Jerry Wilmot, who plunged at once into a conversation,
which he conducted in a low and confidential tone, while playing with
her fan, of which he had possessed himself.
Jerry Wilmot was eminently a handsome fellow. From his well set-up
soldierly head to his slender well-moulded feet no fault could be
found with him; but though his manner and conversation were full of
that subtle flattery and earnestness which, if it does not make its
way to a woman's heart, at least appeals to her vanity, he made no
progress apparently with Mrs. Trelawney, who on this occasion
listened to him with less patience than usual, and without even her
generally amused smile.
'Are all men precisely alike to you?' whispered Jerry.
'In the main they are.'
'This evening too?'
'Yes--decidedly so,' she replied, with a side glance. 'Now please
give me my fan, Jerry, and don't break it, as you so often do.'
CHAPTER VI.
'THE OLD, OLD STORY.'
On this afternoon Alison felt, with pleasant confidence, that she was
'looking her best,' dressed to perfection, and had been equal to the
occasion. She wore a closely-fitting costume of lustreless black
silk, edged everywhere with rare old white lace that had been her
mother's; her hair appeared more golden than brown in the sunshine,
while seeming to retain the latter in its silky coils.
Round her slender neck was a collarette of soft, filmy white lace,
and in it was a Provence rose, which Lord Cadbury had not been slow
to detect as one from his own bouquet, and gathered some hope
therefrom, as Bevil Goring did from her wearing his rosebud.
As she stood in the deep bay of one of the old windows, with the full
flood of the ruddy afternoon sun streaming upon her, she made a
charming picture, and there Goring joined her, while the rest were
all engaged in general conversation. He was already feeling that to
be near her was happiness, and that to see her, even across a table,
was a thousand degrees better than not seeing her at all.
And she--brief though their acquaintance was--had become conscious of
a quicker beating of her pulse, an undefinable sense of pleasure
pervading her whole form, a mantling of colour in her cheek when he
approached or spoke to her. Little had as yet passed between them;
but the tell-tale eyes had told much.
'What a wonderful vista of old beech-trees!' said Goring, referring
to the view from the windows.
'And the distant village spire closes it so prettily,' she replied;
'but you cannot see it properly from this point--but from that little
terrace.'
'May we step out?'
'Oh, yes.'
She tried to open the window, a French one, which opened to the floor
within and to a couple of stone steps without.
'Allow me,' murmured Goring, and as he drew back the latch his
fingers closed for a moment over hers.
They were only friends--he was only a visitor--why should she not
show him the view, or anything else that interested him? She took a
Shetland shawl from a chair close by, threw it over her head, and,
gathering the soft folds under her pretty chin in a hand that was
white as a rosebud, passed out with him upon the little terrace hat
overlooked her garden.
'And so that is Chilcote Church?'
'Yes, Captain Goring--an old edifice--old, they say, as the time of
Edward the Elder. It is covered with ivy, and is a capital subject
to sketch.'
'And is this building here, with the eaves, your stable?'
'Oh, no--we have no stables; but it is the scene of my peculiar
care,' replied Alison, laughing.
'Indeed!'
'My hen-house.'
And, with all his growing admiration of her, the fashionable young
officer almost laughed when his charming companion showed him her
hen-houses--her beautiful Hamburgs, Dorkings, and their chutches of
Cochin-China chickens.
'Do you like bees?' she asked.
'No--they sting, you know; but I don't object to the honey.'
So she showed him her hives, as if Goring had never seen such things
before; and so on by the duck-pond, and round the old-fashioned
house, with its heavy eaves, dormer windows, and masses of ivy, and
he could only think what a picturesque background it made to the
central figure of his lovely companion, who, sooth to say, in the
pleasure of his society, forgot all about her other guests; or, if
she did think, she knew that Mrs. Trelawney could amuse them all.
To Bevil Goring Alison was quite unlike any other girl he had met,
she seemed so highly bred, and yet withal so natural. There seemed
to be an originality about her that piqued his fancy, while her
freshness of heart was charming; and she often showed a depth of
thought and consideration--born perhaps of her family troubles and
surroundings--that surprised and interested him. More than all did
her grace and beauty bewilder him; and after this, amid the routine
of duty at Aldershot, and during many a dusty day of drill in the
Long Valley, he could only think of her image, her soft laughter, and
the sweet, varying expression of her grey-blue eyes.
'With what pathos Mrs. Trelawney sang!' said Goring, as after their
little promenade they drew near the French window again.
'Yes; one might have thought she was singing that queer song of
herself. There seemed somehow a kind of wail in it, as if it came
from the heart. But we must go in now.'
'One moment yet,' said he, pausing and almost touching her hand; 'I
am so happy to be alone with you that I grudge every opportunity you
give to others.'
'It is very good of you to say so,' replied Alison to this rather
confused remark, as their eyes met with a mutual glance neither could
mistake nor ever forget; 'but the evening has become very chilly.'
And with this commonplace remark, while her heart was beating wildly
with new, delicious, and hitherto unknown emotions that made her
cheek glow and then grow very pale, Alison entered the room as Bevil
Goring opened and reclosed the French window.
From that moment she knew that Bevil loved her; his eyes had told her
so, and young as she was, Alison was able to read his confession in
them.
Now Sir Ranald had missed the pair from the drawing-room during the
few minutes they had been absent, and drew his own conclusions
therefrom, but not so Lord Cadbury, who had as yet no jealousy; nor
could he dream that any commoner or poorer person could enter into a
competition with him for anything, assured as he was, in an absurd
degree, of the overwhelming influence of his own rank and his own
money, which hitherto had always procured him whatever he had a fancy
for.
When Mrs. Trelawney's carriage was announced by Archie, and that lady
was being shawled previous to her departure, she made Alison grow
pale with annoyance by whispering as she kissed her--
'I hope, darling, you have not been making a fool of yourself?'
'How?'
'Young as you are, you are certainly old enough to know what officers
are!'
'I do not understand you, Laura--what are they?'
'The greatest flirts in the world.'
'Have you found them so?'
'I have had more experience of them than I ever care to have again,'
said she, bitterly. 'Good-bye, Captain Dalton,' she exclaimed,
presenting her hand to the tall, dark officer who had been regarding
her attentively.
'Rather let us say _au revoir_,' said he bowing. 'I have with me at
the camp a necklace of Champac beads which I brought from India, and
I have just promised them to your daughter; if you will permit me to
send--or to call----'
'We shall be so happy to see you--but you are too kind, and are you
not depriving some other little, or fairer friend----'
'No, Mrs. Trelawney; I have scarcely a lady friend in the world now,'
said he, laughing, though his speech seemed a grave one.
A few minutes after and the little party had separated; Lord Cadbury
remained behind, to the intense annoyance of Goring, who, with his
two companions, went back to the camp at a canter to be in time for
mess; and while Sir Ranald--Cadbury's senior by some fifteen
years--dozed and slept after dinner in his easy chair, Alison, till
she was weary and well-nigh desperate, had to undergo the prolonged
visit, the society, and the unconcealed tenderness, or would-be
love-making, of her odious old admirer.
When Alison retired that night, Bevil's rosebud was carefully placed
in a flower glass upon her toilette table, while Cadbury's Provence
rose was left to repose in the coal-scuttle; and Bevil Goring, in his
hut in the infantry lines--a hut in which he chummed with Jerry
Wilmot--lay awake far into the hours of the morning, till the cannon
announcing dawn boomed from Gun Hill over the sleeping camp, thinking
again and again of the little promenade round the old house at
Chilcote, the eyes that had looked so sweetly into his; of the little
he had hinted--still more of the vast amount he had left unsaid, and
marvelling when again he should see Alison Cheyne.
The fact is that Bevil Goring was very much in love--certainly more
than he had ever been in his life before, and frankly confessed to
himself that he had been 'hit at last, and hit very hard indeed.'
Thus it may be imagined how much he felt stung when next day at
breakfast, while the trio were talking of the day before, Dalton
said, quite unwittingly--
'Mrs. Trelawney assured me that it is almost completely arranged that
Miss Cheyne is to become the wife of Lord Cadbury, who can make a
princely settlement upon her; while her father is, we all know, so
poor.'
'What selfishness--what sacrilege!' exclaimed Jerry, slashing the top
off an egg, 'to sacrifice her to that old duffer!'
'For her father's sake I have little doubt the girl will comply--she
seems of a most affectionate nature.'
Bevil Goring sat silent; but these remarks sank deeply into his heart.
'Does Mrs. Trelawney approve of these arrangements?' asked Jerry,
after a pause.
'I cannot say--but I should rather think not.'
'To me she seems to have been singularly unhappy in her short married
life.'
'What makes you think so?'
'I scarcely know--but feel certain that I am right.'
'Now wouldn't you like very much to console her, Jerry?'
'You are the last man, Tony, in whom I would confide concerning the
fair widow,' said Jerry, angrily; 'but there goes the bugle for
parade, and, by Jove, our fellows are falling in!'
'When her hair is grey--if it ever becomes grey--and all her youth is
gone, that woman will still be beautiful,' exclaimed Dalton, with
enthusiasm.
Mrs. Trelawney was wont to drive over every other day when the
weather was fine and take Alison--she knew the lonely life the girl
led--away with her to afternoon tea, to lawn tennis at the Vicarage
or elsewhere, or drive by Farnborough and Aldershot Camp. And, with
reference to future points in our story, we may add that this
sprightly lady resided at Chilcote Grange, a pretty modern villa
about a mile distant from the mansion of Sir Ranald, whither she had
recently come after a long sojourn abroad, or in the Channel Islands,
as some said, for no one knew precisely about her antecedents.
Notwithstanding all her real, or pretended, aversion to matrimony,
and love of that freedom which the demise of 'the late lamented
Trelawney' seemed to have given her, the handsome widow, by more than
one mutual invitation to her 'afternoon teas,' &c., unknown to Sir
Ranald and Lord Cadbury, gave Bevil Goring an opportunity of meeting
Alison Cheyne which he might not have otherwise enjoyed.
Alison had read of love and thought of it (as what young girl does
not?), and Bevil Goring seemed to her the beau-ideal of all she had
pictured in her imagination a lover or a husband ought to be. True
it is, this idea might be born of his undoubted fancy for herself,
and the impulsive nature of Alison forbade her to love or do anything
else by halves.
Already she thought of him and spoke of him to herself as 'Bevil,'
and then paused and blushed at the conviction that she did so. But
then was not the name a quaint and strange one?
Dalton had called at Chilcote Grange and left his card; the widow was
from home, and, as he did not leave the gift he had promised her
little daughter, she smiled, as she well knew that he meant to call
again.
'Laura,' said Alison, as she saw the card, 'I am certain that Captain
Dalton admires you--Nay, loves you, from what Bevil, I mean Captain
Goring, tells me. He talks of you incessantly.'
'Yet he has only seen me once or twice.'
'Quite enough to achieve that end.'
'How, child?'
'You are so very beautiful,' said Alison, patting the widow's cheek
playfully.
'How strange that you should say so!'
'Why strange?'
'I mean that one woman should so much admire another. Had you been a
man it might be natural enough, and understandable too.'
'But why not a woman?' persisted Alison.
'Women are often too petty--too jealous generally of each other; but
you are a dear pet, Alison, and admire those whom you love. As for
Dalton, he has seen so little of me--here at least.'
'What! has he met you _elsewhere_?' asked Alison, quickly.
'No; I have not said so,' replied Mrs. Trelawney, colouring deeply
for a moment.
'But your words seemed to imply this, Laura.'
'They implied nothing--I scarcely know what I said; but as for
praising me, Alison,' said Mrs. Trelawney, to turn the conversation
apparently, 'you can well afford to do so; but if I were to be
denuded of my borrowed plumes, my gay dresses, and general make-up, I
might cut a sorry figure perhaps, while you in the bloom of your
girlhood--'
'Require all that bloom, Laura; if my good looks, and the impression
they may make, depended on all the finery poor papa can give me, I
should cut but a sorry figure too.'
Then both laughed as they turned to the mirror above the mantelpiece,
that reflected two faces, which, though different in style, contour,
and colour, were both lovely indeed, and the owners thereof felt that
they were so.
From thenceforward no solicitation could prevail upon Alison Cheyne
to ride one of Lord Cadbury's horses again, passionately as she loved
equestrian exercise; and her persistent refusal greatly puzzled the
amorous peer, and annoyed Sir Ranald.
Two longings grew strong in the girl's heart--one to be rich and
independent of all monetary considerations, as her family once was;
the other, that her father would moderate his ambition to their
present circumstances, and cease repining; but pride made him revolt
against them, as not being the inevitable, while she had--as he
thought--a well-gilded coronet lying at her feet.
As to any secret fancies Alison might have, or her 'chance-medley'
friend Captain Goring either, he barely gave them a minute's
consideration, as being too preposterous, if indeed he considered
them at all.
Goring had no one to consult or regard--father, nor mother, nor
brother; he was alone in the world now, and the entire master of his
own means, if somewhat slender, and he longed now indeed for some one
to love, and love him in return.
He brooded over the past, and it was a strange coincidence that he
should have worn for so long a time, in that far away land of the
sun, Ellon's ring with her hair and her likeness in it, all unknown
to himself; and of that circumstance he was never weary pondering,
and drawing therefrom much romantic and lover-like comfort.
It seemed to establish a link--a tie--between them!
But Bevil remembered what he had seen of Cadbury at Chilcote; this
latter's presents incidentally referred to; his proffered mounts,
and, more than all, the observations of Mrs. Trelawney and others;
hence his tongue was tied and his heart seemed to die within him.
What had he compared with Cadbury to offer worthy the consideration
of a man like Sir Ranald Cheyne?
He had not been slow to divine, to detect, the footing on which the
former stood with the latter--a proud, impoverished, and embittered
man, and a lover's active imagination, full of fears and doubts and
jealousies, did the rest.
He actually avoided Chilcote, for he knew that any intercourse there
would be restricted and restrained.
'To meet her again and again is only playing with fire,' he thought.
'For her own sake and mine it is a perilous game.'
But the moth would go to the candle, and while avoiding Chilcote he
often rode over to the Grange, where, however, he never had yet an
opportunity of seeing Alison quite alone, for, if no one else was
present, she had always little Netty Trelawney hovering about her or
hanging on to her skirts.
When he did fail, as sometimes happened, to see Alison, he was almost
glad and yet sorry, for her pale and thoughtful face haunted him and
filled his heart with a great longing to comfort her, for somehow he
thought she wanted comfort, and to tell her of his love, though the
matter should end there, and she tell him to go--go--and never
address her again, as he too surely feared that the story of his love
was one she dared not, must not, listen to.
One day--he never forgot it--he was leaving the Grange, walking
slowly, with the bridle of his horse over his arm, when he came
suddenly upon her of whom his thoughts were full, about to enter the
gate from the roadway.
'Alison!'
The name, all softly uttered, and with infinite tenderness, seemed to
escape him unconsciously as he lifted his hat.
'Captain Goring,' said Alison, looking up, her pleasure blending with
alarm in her face, 'you must not call me thus. What would people
think?'
'Pardon me,' said he, as he took her hand, while colouring nearly as
deep as herself. To resist improving the unexpected opportunity,
however, was impossible, so after a little pause, he said--
'It seems an age since I saw you last.'
'Don't exaggerate, Captain Goring. We met at Laura's only four days
ago.'
'Four centuries they have seemed to me. I suppose you walk often in
these beautiful woods of Chilcote?'
'Oh, yes, in summer especially; but the leaves are nearly gone now.'
'And in autumn--where?'
'In the woods too; but in the broad walk that leads towards the
church.'
'The walk with the stately old beeches?'
'Yes.'
It was the vista she had shown him from the little terrace.
'And _when_ do you generally go there?' he asked, in lower voice,
while his hand closed over hers.
'A little before noon,' she replied, in a whispered voice.
'To-morrow, then,' said he, seeking for the eyes that now avoided
his, and with a heart beating lightly he galloped along the road
towards the camp.
Next day Alison sought her usual walk with a strange palpitation in
her bosom, as if something was about to happen; and she had a timid
fear of being seen--of being watched like one who was about to commit
a crime--a great error perhaps; and yet for the life of her she could
not fail to keep the appointment, for such her poor little heart told
her it was.
The day was wonderfully bright and beautiful for the season;
streaming through the giant beeches the rays of the sunshine quivered
on the green grass and brown fern; there was a hum of insect life
still, and the twitter of sparrows, while an occasional rabbit shot
to and fro.
The time passed slowly, till Alison thought she could hear the
beating of her heart; for it seemed as if she and the rabbits, the
sparrows and the insects, were to have all the glade to themselves;
when suddenly she heard the gallop of a horse, and in another moment
Bevil Goring had sprung from his saddle and taken her hand.
'My darling, my darling, I knew you would come,' he exclaimed, with
tenderness in his tone and passion in his eyes, 'may I call you
Alison now?'
She did not reply audibly, but the quick rose-leaf tint--one of her
greatest beauties--swept over her soft cheek and delicate neck,
rising even to her little ears while he repeated--
'May I call you Alison now--my own Alison--when I tell you that I
love you?'
He kissed her tenderly on the forehead, the eyes, and lips again and
again; and, then suddenly drawing a little way from him, she covered
her face with her white hands and began to sob heavily.
'You love me, don't you?' he asked, imploringly.
'Yes, Bevil,' she replied, in a broken voice; and he, transported to
hear his Christian name for the first time on her lips, pressed her
to his breast, while she submitted unresistingly, but added, 'I must
come here no more now--no more!'
'Why, my love?'
'It is wrong to papa.'
'Surely you will see me again, darling--surely you will not accept my
love and give me up at the same moment? I shall speak to Sir Ranald,
if you will permit me.'
'Useless--useless; you would but precipitate my fate.'
'Your fate--what is that?'
'I don't know--I don't know,' moaned the girl, in sore bewilderment,
while the thin aristocratic face of her father, with his keen, blue,
inquiring eyes, gold _pince-nez_ and all, seemed to rise before her.
'I am not rich I know, Alison darling.'
'And I have been used to the want of riches nearly all my life, and
now--now--I must go.'
'Already! You will be here to-morrow?'
'Oh, no; not to-morrow.'
'When?'
'I cannot, dare not say.'
'You are cruel to me, Alison,' he exclaimed, and with one long,
clinging kiss they separated--she to run down the wooded pathway like
a hunted hare, and he to ride slowly off in the opposite direction.
He came to that trysting-place the next day, however, and the next
too, but no Alison was there, and he could only surmise wildly, and
perhaps wide of the truth, what detained her.
Had she been watched? Had their meetings been overseen, overheard?
He knew not precisely how it was with Alison, whom he regarded with a
species of adoration, but deep in his heart sank the delightful
consciousness that his love pleased her, and that when they did meet
again it should have some firmer basis than that brief and stolen
meeting had given it. He now understood much of the shyness and
timidity her manner had of late exhibited. He hoped now that he also
understood the half veiled light that had filled her grey-blue eyes
at his approach, and the sweet roseate flush that crossed her cheek,
to leave it paler than before.
She would soon learn to love him fully and confidently, and he would
be content to wait for the coming joy of a regular engagement. But
how about Sir Ranald Cheyne's views; how about Cadbury's too probable
offers; how about 'the Fate' which, with a broken voice, she said the
knowledge of his love for her would but anticipate?
CHAPTER VII.
JERRY AND THE WIDOW.
Alison's tears, agitation, and fears, together with her admission
that he was far from indifferent to her--the memory of their mutual
kisses, and all that had passed so briefly, sank deeply into the
heart of Bevil Goring, who thought the secret terms on which they now
were, if they were to meet again, as he could not doubt, were
ridiculous to himself and derogatory to her.
His natural impulses of honour led him to think he should at once
address Sir Ranald on the subject; but the girl's dread of his doing
so made him pause. He thought he would consult Dalton or Wilmot on
the subject; but the former was on duty, and the latter was full of
his own affairs; for Jerry, in fact, had made up his mind to
propose--to Mrs. Trelawney!
Jerry made a more than usually careful toilette that forenoon, and
was more than ever irreproachable in the matters of boots, gloves,
studs, and collar, even to the waxen flower at his button-hole--all
with the aid of his soldier valet, Larry O'Farrel, whom he had just
found deep in the columns of the _Aldershot Military Gazette_.
'Any news, O'Farrel?' asked Jerry, as he rasped his thick hair with a
pair of ivory-handled brushes to adjust the parting of his back hair.
'Only that the Sultan of Turkey is dead, sir.'
'The deuce he is--died of want of breath, I suppose?'
'Yes, sir; strangled or something of that kind, sir.'
'Well, O'Farrel, would you like to be Sultan of Turkey? The berth
would suit you, for, like the Bradies,
"You'd make a most iligant Turk,
Being fond of tobacco and ladies."'
'Shouldn't mind, sir, if the pay and allowances was good.'
'Well,' said Jerry, who was in excellent spirits with himself and the
world at large, 'send in your application in proper form through me
as the captain of your company, and in time I have not the slightest
doubt you will be O'Farrel the First.'
Jerry said all this so gravely and impressively that, though used to
his jokes, not a smile spread over the face of Larry, who raised his
right hand in salute while standing erect as a pike.
He had heard about the Champac necklace and the proposed second visit
of Tony Dalton, so he resolved to anticipate his brother officer, to
'turn his flank,' if possible, for Jerry was never more in love in
his life, or thought himself so.
He had been dazzled by the notice the brilliant widow had taken of
himself ever since the last Divisional Steeple Chase meeting, at
which he first met her, and had lost 'no end' of gloves to her in
bets on the 'Infantry Hunt;' her coquettish familiarity, the rapidity
with which she adopted him as it were, and slid into making him do
errands for her, calling him by his Christian name or the
abbreviation thereof, 'Jerry' (which sounded so sweetly on her
charming scarlet lips), her _œillades_ and tricks with her fan
when she tapped his arm or cheek therewith, were all things to think
pleasantly of, and served to encourage him.
'Hang it all,' thought Jerry; 'why shouldn't I open the trenches and
make my innings now?'
So he got into his mail-phaeton, and drove leisurely through the
North Camp. Dalton was on guard that day, and saw Jerry, of whose
mission he had not then the least idea, fortunately, as his own mind
was full of Mrs. Trelawney; he gave Jerry a cigar from his case,
exchanged a word or two, and saw him turn away into Aldershot--intent
on his own destruction, as some of the mess might have said.
'I am awfully spooney,' thought Jerry, as he tooled along the level
highway, flicking his high-stepper's ears with the lash of his whip.
'She is certainly a lovely woman, and would make a creditable wife to
me, and be quite a feature at all the garrison balls and cricket
matches; but what the deuce will the mess think of Netty--of me
having a daughter nearly half as old as myself! There's the rub!
She is a pretty little thing just now, but will be awfully in the way
ten years hence, when all my aim in life may be to marry her to some
coal or iron man, or any fellow that will have her.'
And Jerry was laughing softly to himself at this idea as he drew up
at the door of Chilcote Grange, and threw the reins to his tiny
top-booted tiger.
Mrs. Trelawney was 'at home,' and in a few minutes Jerry found
himself face to face with her, in all her bloom and radiance, seated
on a sofa in her charming little drawing-room, the appurtenances of
which were all in excellent taste, so far as couches, pretty chairs,
fragile tables, curtains, lace, and statuettes could make it, and
pretty landscapes hung on the walls with blue ribbons in lieu of
cords; and then Mrs. Trelawney's tightly-fighting costume of dark
blue, which showed the exquisite outline of her bust and shoulders,
was perfect, from the ruche of soft tulle round her delicate neck to
the dainty slippers which encased her handsome feet.
The brightness of her smile encouraged Jerry, who, after a few
well-turned expressions of pleasure at seeing her looking so well,
lost no time in 'opening the trenches,' for he was, though a young
fellow, a remarkably cool hand.
The widow's bright hazel eyes dilated with surprise for a moment, and
then their white lids and long silky lashes drooped, as if to veil
the amusement that sparkled in them, as she withdrew her hand, of
which Jerry had possessed himself, and said--
'Oh, Mr. Wilmot, are you in earnest?'
'Could I dare to be anything else in addressing you thus?
Earnest--can you ask me!--always when with you, and you know how much
I love you. Will you marry me?'
'My dear Jerry, don't be foolish! You are but a boy compared with
me, in my experience as a woman of the world especially. It is too
absurd!'
'If you are older than me at all, it can only be by a year or two,'
said Jerry, who thought it was not such a difficult matter to propose
as he had first deemed it; 'and so, dearest Laura----'
'You must not address me thus.'
'But don't you call me Jerry?'
'There is a difference, and I may never do so again.'
'Don't say so; besides you cannot help me thinking of you as "Laura"?'
'Thought is free, but speech is not.'
'You will ever be Laura in my thoughts and in my heart, whatever you
may be on my lips.'
Jerry said this with so much emotion that Mrs. Trelawney ceased to
laugh at him, and gave her hand, saying,
'Jerry, let us be friends; be assured we can be nothing more, and,
indeed, nothing better.'
Jerry retained her soft hand lovingly, and, taking heart of grace
therefrom, said,
'I shall speak of this matter again, Laura. I see that I quite
deserve your refusal.'
'Why?'
'Because I spoke too soon--too abruptly.'
'Believe me, dear Jerry, my answer is a final one. I could never
bestow on you the love a wife should feel for her husband.'
'That would come in time--after marriage, Laura.'
'No, it cannot be; leave me and forget me.'
'That is impossible. I shall never, while life lasts, forget you.'
Mrs. Trelawney felt an inclination to laugh again. She controlled
her lips, but her half-closed eyes were sparkling with a smile.
'I am unworthy the regard I have won. Thrust me from your thoughts,
Jerry, and forget me, I pray you, forget me,' said she, emphatically,
as she again withdrew her hand.
'I have been a fool!' exclaimed Jerry, bitterly, as he twisted his
dark moustache and betrayed considerable emotion, at least for him.
'Oh, no,' said Mrs. Trelawney, patting his shoulder with her fan.
'You are no worse than other men. You could not help it, if I was
silly enough to be--shall I say it?--amused, perhaps pleased, by all
your tender speeches, though I could not believe in them.'
Jerry stared at her in doubt whether to be indignant or not, but
again her beauty and _espieglerie_ of manner triumphed.
'Oh, Laura, once again,' he was resuming, when she interrupted him--
'I know all you would say, but please not to renew this subject, or I
shall lose all faith in you, Captain Wilmot.'
'Say "Jerry,"' he urged.
'Well, then, Jerry, I like you very much,' she said, coquettishly,
and with an infinite sweetness of tone; 'but I shall be sorry if your
persistence makes me view you differently.'
'If you like me so very much, why cannot you marry me? You would
like me ever so much more afterwards.'
'It is impossible,' said Mrs. Trelawney, smiling openly now.
'Why are you so hard-hearted?'
'I am not hard-hearted. I am indifferent, that is all--what I have
been made by others.'
'What others?'
'That is my secret. But, here come visitors,' said she, rising and
presenting her hand. 'And let us part, Jerry, as I hope we shall
meet again--good friends.'
In a few minutes Jerry was tooling back to the camp again.
'Her manner is deuced mysterious,' thought he, in great perplexity.
'What can she mean? She spoke of herself as "unworthy," too. Has
she a husband somewhere, after all? Oh, the devil! That can't be.'
'Where have you been, Jerry?' asked Dalton, who was again loitering
in front of the guard-hut at the camp gate, with a cigar between his
lips, and saw his friend coming slowly along, with the reins dropped
on his horse's neck.
'I have been at Chilcote Grange,' said Jerry, almost sulkily.
'The deuce you have,' said Dalton, with surprise.
'There is nothing new in that.'
'Calling, were you?'
'Yes, and proposing to the widow _la belle_ Trelawney.'
'Nonsense!' exclaimed Dalton.
'A fact though.'
'And with what success?' asked Dalton, his colour changing
perceptibly.
'None at all, old fellow; bowled out; thrown over--I may trust to
your silence, I know--fairly laughed at me, and won't have me at any
price, by Jove.'
'Proposed, and was refused,' said Dalton, as if speaking to himself.
'Proposed right off the reel, whatever that may mean, and was
refused. But I don't mean to break my heart over it,' added Jerry,
twirling and untwirling the long lash of his whip.
'And what do you mean to do?'
'Make love to some one else--get tight at the mess to-night--tight as
a drum. So you may go in and win at a canter, if you choose.'
'Thanks, Jerry; but I don't mean to propose to the widow,' said
Dalton, laughing. 'She has some history of her own, I think.'
'So do I,' said Jerry, angrily; 'and it is bad form for women to have
histories or mysteries either.'
'Sour grapes, Jerry,' said Dalton, still laughing.
'I thought you were hit a little in that quarter yourself, Tony; but
I am much mistaken if there is not more in her life than you know, or
any of us is ever likely to know.'
Dalton, though secretly pleased that Jerry had not met with success,
was also secretly provoked at what he deemed the young fellow's
over-confidence. He had felt himself--he knew not why--curiously
affected when in the presence of Laura Trelawney; there was a subtle
influence in her voice and smile that wakened old memories and
strangely bewildered him; and especially when she sang, these stole
over him and seemed to take tangible form.
'And now, I suppose,' said Jerry, as he manipulated a cigar, 'I must
just do as she probably did when the "late lamented" took himself
off.'
'What is that?'
'"Drop some natural tears and wipe them soon," as Milton has it.'
'I'll give you another quotation, Jerry--what does Abou Adhem say?'
'Don't know--never heard of the fellow.'
'"Your lost love is neither the beginning nor ending of life.
Several things remain to you. She is false, and you are the victim.
Very good. Nature is not going into bankruptcy; the sun will rise
and set just the same; corn will grow, birds sing, and the rain fall
just as before. My experience is, that it's a toss up that you are
not the better without her, and she not better without _you_."'
'Likely enough, Tony; but, as "Cœlebs in search of a wife," I need
not go there any more,' half grumbled Jerry, as he whipped up his
high-stepper and bowled away through the long street of huts to his
quarters; while to Dalton's graver mind there seemed to be something
intensely comical in the equanimity with which he took his repulse.
CHAPTER VIII.
'FOR EVER AND FOR EVER.'
Of a very different nature in its depth and passion was a love-scene
which was taking place not very far distant from the Grange at about
the same time.
Alison Cheyne, we have said, had ceased to take her walk beside the
beeches, though her heart yearned for it, and she knew well who was
too probably loitering and watching there; so Bevil Goring, at all
risks, wrote her a passionate and imploring letter to meet him once
again at the same place and hour, with an alternation of days in case
of engagements or interruption; and this missive came to her when
Alison, who loved him with all her woman's heart, was wondering
hourly how she could get through day after day without him.
'At last! at last!' was the exclamation of each as the tryst was
kept, and they met again.
Their hearts were beating fast, and in unison, but in silence, and,
if the meeting was a secret and a stealthy one, it was all the more
thrilling to both. They were silent for a time, we say, but the
silence was not without its eloquence, if the paradox may be used.
There was the mystic communion of souls--the touch of hand that
closed on hand, of lip that clung to lip--lips that knew not how to
utter all that hovered there unsaid.
'You got my letter, darling?' said Bevil, after a time.
'I could not have been here else; but, for heaven's sake, do not
write to me again,' said Alison, imploringly.
'Why?'
'For fear of papa; my correspondents are so few, his suspicions might
be excited.'
'How hard is this!--surely we might write to each other
occasionally,' urged Bevil, caressing her.
'No, my dearest; I dislike the idea of a correspondence that is
clandestine, however romantic it may be; and if papa discovered it he
would deem it so dishonourable in me--so dishonourable to himself.'
'But you will meet me?'
'I shall try, Bevil--I shall try; oh, I cannot help coming to meet
you now.'
'Allow me, darling, till I can place another there!' exclaimed Bevil,
as he slipped a ring on her engagement finger.
'Oh, Bevil,'--but whatever she was about to say he stopped in a very
effectual manner.
'You will wear this for my sake,' he whispered.
'I will, darling.'
'Say always.'
'Always, Bevil--for ever and for ever--and--and,' she added, smiling
shyly through her tears that mingled love, joy, and something of
terror caused to well up in her beautiful eyes, 'you will take this
from me (I brought it on purpose), poor Ellon's ring--the ring you
wore so long without knowing whose face and hair were hidden in it.'
'It was an omen of what was to come, love Alison--an omen that we
were to meet, and that you should be mine--mine only!' he replied,
embracing her with ardour.
They had now become a little more composed and a little more coherent.
'I have expectations, of course--every fellow has,' said Bevil
Goring, as they wandered on slowly hand in hand; 'but mine are
perhaps too remote to suit the views, and may be opposed to the
ambition, of Sir Ranald; yet I love you so dearly, so desperately,
darling, that if you will wait for me only a year--I ask no more--I
shall hope to claim you publicly or set you free. A captain with
only a hundred or two besides his pay could scarcely hope to wed your
father's daughter, Alison. Let our engagement be a secret one, as
you dread an open one. It is not honourable in me to tie you thus,
but what can I do? Separation now would be a kind of death to me;
and oh, Alison, I love you so!'
'And I you, Bevil;' then she added, in a broken voice, 'We have had
great sorrow, great trouble, we Cheynes, and they have made papa what
he is; but I can remember when things were very different, when we
were not so poor as we are now, and when he--poor old darling!--had
much more of life and spirit in him.'
And so, while replying to Bevil's downward glances of love and
tenderness, she pressed closely to his side, with her fingers
interlaced upon his arm, in the assured confidence of their mutual
relations to each other, as they sauntered towards a more sequestered
part of the coppice.
Let the dark future hold what it might of severance, tears, and
futile longings, for that fleeting time Bevil was hers and she was
his--his own!
And so they parted an engaged pair, he not at all foreseeing, and she
only fearing, the gathering cloud that overhung them both. Her
elderly admirer was in London then. Parliament was sitting, and she,
freed from his visits, abandoned herself to the full enjoyment of the
present.
She now wore a new ring, a handsome diamond hoop with a guard, upon
the third finger of her left hand; but this was unnoticed by Sir
Ranald, though it did not escape the sharper eyes of Mrs. Trelawney,
who more than once caught her young friend toying with the
trinket--turning it to and fro round her slender finger, while
regarding it with a sweet, loving, and dreamy expression of face
which told its own tale.
But, if Mrs. Trelawney was reticent on the subject of her suspicion,
Alison was still more so, and locked her secret in her own breast.
With all the joy of the new position, however, there was more than
one element in it from which her sensitive nature shrank.
First, a secret understanding had been established between her and a
gentleman friend--as yet deemed only a visitor at Chilcote--unknown
to her father and to others. Second, it had not been discovered as
yet, but might not always remain so, and thus eventually cause an
_esclandre_; and to her it seemed that to make and keep successive
appointments--sweet and delicious though they were--that must be kept
secret was in itself something wrong and unlady-like; but she was the
victim circumstances had made her.
At times it seemed very 'bad form,' as the phrase went--a want
perhaps of self-respect; and yet Bevil Goring was so tender, so
loving, so unlike, she thought, every other man in the world that she
must risk it all, he was so dear to her.
And then she would dream of the happiness it would be if he were
openly accepted by Sir Ranald as her _fiancé_--the joy of seeing him
freely come and freely go a welcome guest at Chilcote, the future
member of her own family, the future prop of her father's declining
years, taking the place of Ranald and of Ellon; but would such
ever--ever be?
On the other hand, Bevil Goring, who was not without a moderate show
of proper pride, was not without some similar thoughts, and rather
resented the position in which they were placed, giving their solemn
engagement the aspect of a rustic flirtation with its furtive
meetings; and, after all he had seen of the world, he thought it
absurd for him and perilous for the girl he loved so tenderly.
He called at studied or stated intervals at Chilcote, but for Sir
Ranald ostensibly; and when in the presence of the latter he and
Alison had to act a part and talk the merest commonplaces, with the
memory in their hearts and on their lips of passionate and burning
kisses exchanged but an hour perhaps before.
They seemed thus to lead two lives--one to the world and another to
themselves; but a time was rapidly approaching when a rough end would
be put to all their little secrets.
'Captain Goring seems to send you bouquets and music pretty often, I
think?' said Sir Ranald, rather suspiciously, one day.
'Yes, papa,' said she, feeling herself grow pale under the glance he
gave through his inevitable _pince-nez_; 'our garden yields so little
in the way of flowers, at this season especially. I can't afford,
you know, to buy much music, cheap as it is, and--and----'
'There you go! reminding me of our poverty again,' said he, in a
snappish tone; 'but flowers and music have both meanings--at least,
they had in my time,' he added, turning away and thinking, 'I cannot
permit her, for a mere girl's fancy--if a fancy she has--to throw
away Cadbury Court and thirty thousand a year--egad, no!'
Of the City man's coronet he thought little--the Cheynes of Essilmont
required no coronets to enhance their old heraldic glories; but the
City man's bank-book and acquired acres were a very different matter
for consideration now!
CHAPTER IX.
A REPRIEVE FOR A TIME.
'We dine with Cadbury at the Court to-morrow--no party, just
ourselves--sharp six--an early dinner,' said Sir Ranald to Alison,
just as she returned from a meeting with Bevil Goring at the beeches.
'Very well, papa,' replied the girl, though she felt herself shiver
with anticipation of the annoyance to which she might be subjected;
'has he returned so soon?'
'He--who?'
'Lord Cadbury.'
'Yes; Parliament has been suddenly prorogued.'
In her heart she was sorry to hear it. 'The carriage will come for
us punctually,' he added, regarding her earnestly, as he thought
regretfully--when did he ever cease to do so?--of his own family
carriage, with its hammercloth and heraldic insignia, and his dismay
when Lady Cheyne--Alison's ailing mother--was first compelled to walk
afoot or take a common cab.
And old Archie Auchindoir groaned at the recollection thereof too,
when he came to announce, with a snort, that 'the Cawdburry machine
was at the porch.'
Alison sighed as she entered it; an invitation to dinner was a small
affair, but she felt as if the links of a chain were beginning to
close around her while the easily-hung carriage rolled on between the
hedgerows in the starlight.
'If his lordship makes any proposition to you to-night, I trust that
for my sake, if not for your own, you will not, at least, insult
him,' said Sir Ranald, breaking the silence suddenly.
'Papa--insult him!' exclaimed Alison, in a breathless voice, knowing
but too well that the term 'proposition' meant a proposal, and her
heart seemed to die within her as she pressed to her lips, in the
dark, Bevil's engagement ring.
'For your sake and mine consider well and favourably his lordship's
views,' said her father again.
She remained silent, fearing that the note her father had received
must have contained something more than the mere invitation to dinner.
'I shall lose the half of my life, Alison, when I lose you, but I
must make up my mind for it one of these days.'
Still she made no response, for her heart was away in a most
unromantic-looking hut in the infantry lines at Aldershot, where, in
fancy, she saw a handsome young fellow, his dark hair cropped close,
his skin almost olive in tint, and smooth as a girl's, dark eyes and
straight black eyebrows with thick lashes, a heavy moustache, and
altogether with a dark manly beauty about him that would have become
the costume of Titian or Velasquez, like the cavalier brothers in the
portraits at Chilcote.
Through the large square entrance-hall of Cadbury Court, which was
panelled with oak, and hung round above the panelling with the old
family portraits of former proprietors, and had tall jars of
curiously painted china standing in the deep old window bays, with a
great lantern of stained glass shining overhead, they were ushered
into the magnificent drawing-room, where Lord Cadbury, in evening
costume, hobbled from an easy chair to receive them with no small
_empressement_, for, though his age of ardour was past, he had not
survived that of covetousness; and among other things now coveted was
Alison, whom vanity prompted him to seek that he might exhibit her to
society as a conquest.
Alison's drapery seemed to have a soft sweep in it; she held her fair
head high; a scornful curl hovered on her lip, and yet she seemed a
fragile thing to have so haughty a spirit.
She wore again--for, poor girl, her wardrobe was most limited--the
lustreless silk with its rare old lace, and, though harassed, she
looked charming in her pale beauty, while almost destitute of
ornaments, save a few silver bangles on her slender wrists, for the
family jewels--especially the Essilmont diamonds--were all things of
the past, and had long since found their way to shop windows in Bond
Street; but she wore at her neck a little circular brooch of
snow-white pearls from the Ythan, near Ellon.
The grandeur and luxury which surrounded the _parvenu_ lord at times
irritated Sir Ranald curiously, though from sheer desperation and
selfishness he longed for the hour when his daughter should share
them; thus he was sometimes prompted to say sharp--almost
sneering--things to his prospective son-in-law.
'My old and infernal foe--(pardon me, Miss Cheyne)--is with me
again,' said Cadbury, as he hobbled back to his seat.
'Who--what?' asked Sir Ranald.
'The gout--they say it comes with ease and money.'
'With years too, Cadbury--one can't have everything as they would
wish it,' replied Sir Ranald, with a gush of ill-humour; 'all men, we
are told, "are on the road which begins with the cradle and ends with
the grave; and, in some instances, the world would be better were the
distance between the two shorter."'
'Pon my soul, Cheyne, you are unpleasant,' replied the peer, not
precisely knowing what to make of this aphorism; 'but there goes the
gong for dinner,' and, drawing Alison's hand over his arm, he led the
way to the dining-room; 'and so you have quite declined all my offers
of a mount, Miss Cheyne?' said he, in a voice of would-be reproachful
tenderness, 'though I have put my entire stables at your disposal.'
'Yes--a thousand thanks.'
'Your taste has changed; or are you weary of the spins round
Twesildon Hill and Aldershot way! Some of them are pretty stiff, I
believe.'
Alison coloured at the, perhaps chance, reference to Aldershot, but
seated herself on her host's right hand, and made no reply.
The slow elaboration of the dinner, with its many _entrées_ and
courses, though it was perfect from the maraschino to the coffee; the
two tall solemn servants in resplendant liveries (like theatrical
properties) in attendance upon them, and the silent butler in the
background, all oppressed Alison.
'Fine old place this of yours, Cadbury--dates from Charles II., I
believe,' said Sir Ranald, looking approvingly round the stately
dining-room, and then glancing at his silent daughter's face; 'it
exhibits all the chastened grandeur that only comes by long
inheritance, and was not built in a day like the palace of Aladdin.'
'It matters little when built,' replied Cadbury, bluntly, who felt a
taunt in the remark, and knew precisely how Sir Ranald viewed his
recent title. 'It comes to me out of Cornhill and Threadneedle
Street; and I believe that Miss Cheyne will agree with me that it is
better to have industrious than expensive forefathers--hewers of wood
and drawers of water, though some may deem them. Bosh! Sir
Ranald--all men come from Adam,' added Cadbury, who, though a peer,
was somewhat of a Radical in his proclivities.
'In these points you and I differ,' said Sir Ranald, stiffly, as he
sipped his glass of dry Moselle.
'In this age of the world, a fellow with a pedigree is exactly like a
potato,' said Lord Cadbury, laughing.
'How do you mean?'
'That the best part of the plant is underground.'
Sir Ranald coloured with annoyance up to his pale temples, and said--
'I am astonished that you should indulge in such bad form as
proverbs; and, as for pedigrees, I never knew any man undervalue them
if he ever had one--real or pretended----'
Alison, fearing the conversation was taking an unpleasant turn,
looked at her father imploringly, and said, with her brightest smile,
'You know, papa, that in this work-a-day age, merit is better than
birth.'
'And what is the best test of merit?' asked their host.
'Success,' said Alison.
'Precisely.'
'Not always,' said Sir Ranald; 'sometimes a defeat may be as glorious
as a victory. Was it not said of the clans at Culloden that in great
attempts it is glorious even to fail?'
And now, as dinner proceeded, Alison, surprised by the peevish pride
of her father, after his warnings in the carriage--notwithstanding
the fears with which these warnings had inspired her--with all a
woman's tact, exerted herself to turn the conversation to other
subjects, and addressed herself so much to her old host that he
gathered hope and courage, and his face beamed with smiles; though
his supposed love for Alison was not much more than a strong fancy
crossed, which enhanced her value and gave a piquancy to his pursuit
of her--a fancy that ere long was to be curiously combined with
irritation and revenge.
Over the sideboard, which was loaded with massive plate, hung a great
portrait of Sir Timothy Titcomb, the City Knight and first peer, in
all his bravery of robe and chain, and aldermanic obeseness of habit;
and Alison, as she looked at it, thought of some of the stately
portraits at Chilcote of the Cheynes of other days, and of the manly
beauty of the two Cavalier brothers who fell in battle for the
king--pale, proud, and scornful, with their lovelocks and plumed
beavers, and the moment dessert was over, she stole away to the
solitude of the drawing-room.
She had felt rather lonely during the protracted meal. There was no
other lady present. 'Why?' she asked herself; did not ladies affect
the society of the wealthy and titled bachelor? It almost seemed so.
During the meal and dessert, Alison, though her sweet face wore
forced smiles, had a bitter and humiliating sense of how her father,
when his peevishness subsided under the influence of good wines,
changed in manner, and, with all his inborn and inordinate pride of
race and utter contempt for _parvenus_ and _nouveaux riches_, seemed
to make himself subservient to Lord Cadbury, assenting in the end to
his views on everything.
She seated herself at the piano, but did not play, lest, though she
had begun a melody of Schumann's, the 'Nachtstück,' Lord Cadbury
might deem the sound a hint that she wished him by her side, and,
giving way to thought, she sank into reverie.
As she looked on the splendour and luxury with which she was then
surrounded, it was impossible for the young and impulsive girl not to
think how pleasant it would be to see no more of duns, and debts, and
genteel poverty; to be the mistress of Cadbury Court; to own such a
glorious double drawing-room wherein to receive her visitors; to wear
wonderful toilettes; to be always surrounded by so many curious and
beautiful pictures, cabinets, and statuettes; to have an assured
position beyond her own--the position that money alone can give; to
be the mistress of these magnificent park lands, preserves, and
pastures; the hot-houses and stable-court; the terraces, with their
peacocks and rosaries, all whilom part of the heritage of a proud old
race that, like the Cheynes of Essilmont, had come down in the world;
to shine in society, and have always a full purse to buy whatever she
fancied; but to have all these with Lord Cadbury--not Bevil Goring,
as her husband!
No--no! she shivered, and thrust aside the thoughts a momentary
emotion of selfishness was suggesting, as treason to him whose ring
was on her finger, and exclaimed, as she pressed it to her lips:
'Oh, that but a tithe of these things were my poor Bevil's!'
She had been too deeply sunk in thought to hear the opening and
closing of the drawing-room door, when Lord Cadbury entered alone,
having left Sir Ranald dropping into his after-dinner doze in the
smoking-room.
There was a listless droop--an unconscious pathos in the attitude of
the girl that struck even Lord Cadbury, and though a kind of child,
as he deemed her, she was a stately one--a stately girl, indeed, when
she chose.
The proposal he had come to make was hovering on his lips; but a
consciousness of his years on one hand, and the girl's youth on the
other, rendered him suddenly diffident.
'It is coming now, I suppose--coming at last--this odious, absurd,
and insulting proposal! Of course papa and he have arranged all that
over their wine and nuts!' thought Alison, with annoyance and anger
at her host, and no small dread of her father, who, finding her
silent during the first courses of dinner, had rallied her on her
abstraction.
Whatever he had come to say, something in the expression of her
half-averted face crushed all the hope that wine had raised in
Cadbury's heart, and, seating himself by her side, he could only make
some little apology for leaving her so long alone, and regret that he
had not time to invite some other lady friend.
He then drew a little nearer her, and, noting that she had a couple
of tea rosebuds in her collarette, said insinuatingly--
'I saw that your papa is wearing one of your favourite flowers at his
button-hole--may I have one also?'
'You are not papa,' she replied, curtly, to her half-century Romeo;
'such little decorations seem suitable only for young folks,' she
added, 'but I shall give you a bud with pleasure.'
And quickly her little hands put a rosebud into the peer's lapel, but
in a mechanical and task-work manner, while there was an expression
on her lips--and full, delicate, and emotional lips they were--and in
her small, pale face, with its decided little chin, that prevented
him from greatly appreciating the gift as a younger man would have
done; so the attempt even at flirtation fell flat.
'Papa does so love tea-roses; we used to have such lovely ones at
Essilmont,' said Alison.
'Your poor papa!' said Cadbury, softly, 'when you marry, how lonely
he will be!'
Alison shrank back uneasily, as she thought of Bevil Goring, and
replied--
'I don't mean ever to marry.'
'Indeed! why so cruel to some one in particular? and why in any
sense?'
'I could never leave dear old papa in our--our changed circumstances;
we are so much to each other.'
'But, in marrying, you need not lose him.'
'I don't think he would care to share me with another.'
'How absurd, Miss Cheyne!'
'I mean to devote myself to him always. He is the only _old_ man I
shall ever care for; the only old man worth giving up my life to.
Well,' added Alison, mentally, 'that is pretty pointed surely; if he
does not take that hint, he will never take any.'
'But your papa cannot live for ever,' said Cadbury, not unwilling to
inflict a thrust in return.
'How cruel of you to remind me of that!' exclaimed the girl, her fine
eyes suffusing for a moment. 'I know that he is some years older
than yourself; but I hope he may live to the age of Old Parr!'
References to his years, even when he drew them on himself, always
stung her elderly adorer, who felt his own inborn coarseness too, as
compared with her serene air of distinction; for Alison Cheyne, even
when provoked to say that which for her was a sharp thing, always
looked _pur sang_ from her bright brown hair to her tiny feet.
The absence of even one lady to meet her had surprised the girl; but
she knew not, and neither did Sir Ranald, owing to the isolated life
he led at Chilcote, that, though fair ones from London were not
unfrequent visitors at Cadbury Court, they were of a style that the
ladies of the county declined to meet on any terms, which may give
our readers a new insight to the general character of this hereditary
legislator.
Quiet though his tone and bearing, in his past life the man had
been--nay, was still--secretly a coarse libertine and a _roué_, who
indulged in all the vicious propensities which his ample wealth
enabled him to do.
Alison Cheyne was his last fancy, and he was determined, by fair
means or foul, by marriage or trepan, that his she should be. Her
father's poverty and pride, his age and growing infirmities, could
all be utilised to this end, and nothing now gave him doubts of easy
success but his own years, his grey hairs, and perhaps--her love for
another.
'You do not wear many rings, Miss Cheyne; but such a hand as yours
requires no ornament.'
He took her little white hand in his as he spoke--it was her left
one--and regarded it admiringly; and Alison, though trembling for
what might now ensue, did not withdraw it. She thought, was not the
man quite old enough to be her father?
'I believe greatly in pretty hands,' said he, caressing and patting
with his right hand the little white one that lay in his left.
'So does papa. It is a hobby of his that they indicate race or
culture,' replied Alison, smiling now.
Certainly the short, thick digits of Lord Cadbury showed neither,
and, poor man, he thought so, for he winced at the girl's reply, it
was so like one of Sir Ranald's remarks; and the gentle Alison
blushed that she had made it. To do so was altogether unlike
herself, but she was irritated by the whole situation.
'That is a charming ring!' said her host, touching Bevil Goring's
gift--the gift she prized beyond her own life.
She drew her hand away now.
'I have in that casket a diamond hoop with opals alternately--one of
remarkable size and value--and if you would permit me to offer it----'
'Oh, no, never--thanks!' she exclaimed, growing quite pale.
'Why?' he asked, with annoyance and surprise.
'Opals are unlucky.'
'Unlucky? This is some Scotch superstition, I suppose?'
'It is Oriental, I believe. Moreover, I have no wish for more rings,
and never accept gifts of that kind,' she added, with some hauteur of
manner.
'I think I startled you by my entrance,' said he, trying to recapture
her hand again; but she kept them both resolutely folded before her.
'I was in a reverie, certainly.'
'And, posed as you were, made a most fairy-like picture,' said he,
with his head on one side, his long white moustache almost touching
her, and more decided tenderness in his tone than he had ever before
adopted.
'A fairy--would I were one!' said Alison, a little impatiently, with
a flash in her dark blue eyes, for she was in great dread of what
might follow now.
'And what would you do if you were one in reality?' said he, passing
a hand caressingly round her soft arm.
'Do? As Robin Goodfellow, "the knavish sprite," did.'
'How?'
'By one wave of my wand I should punish you for disturbing me.'
'In what way?' He had interlaced his pudgy fingers on her arm now.
'By garnishing you, as he did, with Bottom's ears,' she replied, with
something between a laugh and an angry sigh, 'though I should decline
to take the part of either Titania or Peasblossom.'
Cadbury released her arm and drew back; he knew not precisely what
she meant, but tugged his white moustache and thought--
'What the deuce does she mean by Bottom's ears?'
It sounded like a rebuff, anyway, and as such he accepted it--or
rather resented it.
'Do compliments displease you?' said he, becoming insinuating again;
'they are but a form of kindness.'
'I take them from you as I would from papa; they pass thus, although
a younger man might offend.'
Cadbury, whose head was stooped towards her, erected it, lest her
glance might be falling on the little bald patch which he was so
terribly conscious of being apparent now, and he shivered with
annoyance, and felt wrathful at the girl he was so desirous of
pleasing.
'Will you sing for me?' said he, after a pause, 'I am so fond of
music.'
'What shall I sing?' asked Alison, seating herself at the piano, and
glad to change the tenor of a conversation in which she felt herself
ungracious.
'One of your Scottish--one of your national songs.'
'"Auld Robin Gray?"' she asked, mischievously.
'No, anything but _that_. I am sick of it.'
She thought for a moment, and then dashed into another, of which one
verse will suffice, and which was quite as objectionable to his
lordship, though he did not understand it all.
'There's auld Robin Morris that dwells in yonder glen,
He's the king o' a' guid fellows and choice o' auld men,
He has gold in his coffers, he has oxen and kine,
And one bonnie lassie--his darling and mine.'
'It is a man's song,' said Alison, when she had concluded the five
verses, and continued to idle over the keys.
'And I suppose auld Robin Morris might be twin brother to the other
Robin,' said Cadbury, with ill-concealed annoyance, as he conceived
there was more in the song than his ear detected.
'It only tells the old story, my lord--the hopeless love of a
handsome young fellow for a rich and lovely girl--an old man's pride
and avarice standing in the way--' said Alison, with a soft smile
playing about her lips, and thankful that her father's entrance put
an end to a most obnoxious _tête-à-tête_.
A few minutes later and Lord Cadbury's carriage was conveying them
home, but even then Alison's annoyances did not cease.
'Did Cadbury say anything particular to you, Alison dear, when I was
having a nap to-night?' asked Sir Ranald, suddenly breaking a silence
that was rather oppressive.
'No, papa.'
'No! Nothing?'
'Nothing of consequence.'
'Did he not propose?'
'Papa, how can you think of such a thing? He is a veritable
Grandfather Whitehead.'
'Think of happiness,' said her father, sharply.
'Has wealth aught to do with that?'
'A good deal--if not all. Think of living in a house like that we
have just left! Think of presentation days, collar days, at
Buckingham Palace, the Park, the Row, the Four-in-Hand Club by the
Serpentine--luncheons at Muswell Hill, and so forth!'
Alison was silent, but full of sad and bitter thoughts.
Around her--or within her reach--she knew were gaieties in which she
could have no part--the opera, the Row, the Queen's drawing-room, to
which, notwithstanding her real social position, she could no more
have access (without the aid of a most trustful milliner), than the
daughter of a clown. But she did not repine, as her father did, that
she should be debarred from all these sights and circles, so she
replied,
'Papa, as I have often said, one can live without these accessories
and surroundings. I have before urged you to quit even Chilcote, and
let us go home--home to Essilmont--or what remains of it,' she added,
in a broken voice, as she thought of Bevil Goring, and how a new
light, bright as summer sunshine, had fallen on her life at Chilcote
now.
'Home!' exclaimed her father, bitterly, 'home to the crumbling
mansion amid the bleak braes where the Ythan flows, to be a source of
local marvel and pity in our impoverished state. No--no! better our
obscurity in Hampshire; who cares about us here, or thinks about us
at all, unless it's Cadbury, who--who----'
'What, papa?' asked the girl, passionately.
'Would gladly make you his wife, my darling, and render my old age
easy, with some of the luxuries we possessed in other times.'
Alison shuddered at the suggestion, and again pressed her engagement
ring to her lips, as if its presence were a charm, an amulet, a
protection to her.
'It is his dearest hope that you may yet journey together through
life,' urged Sir Ranald.
Alison thought that a good part of the peer's journey had been
performed already.
But no more passed. They had reached home, and, slipping his last
crown piece into the palm of the servant who opened the carriage door
and threw down the steps, Sir Ranald led his daughter into their
home, which looked strangely small and gloomy after the mansion they
had just quitted.
Alison felt that she had achieved a species of escape or reprieve,
but it was only for a time. She felt certain that from first to last
the dinner had been a concerted scheme, and that somehow, thanks
perhaps to her own _brusquerie_, her elderly adorer, natheless his
rank and wealth, had lost courage for the time.
CHAPTER X.
CAPTAIN DALTON.
We have said that Tony Dalton--tall, dark, and handsome Tony, the
pattern officer of his corps--had promised little Netty Trelawney an
Indian necklet. He had duly called with it, and clasped round the
neck of the slender girl a gold Champac necklace from Delhi, and it
is difficult for those even acquainted with the _chef-d'œuvres_ of
the first European jewellers, to imagine the beautiful nature of
these necklaces, so called from the flowers whose petals they
resemble.
'I know not how to thank you, Captain Dalton, for your kindness to
Netty,' said the beautiful widow, with her brightest smile, 'it is
much too valuable a present for a child.'
'She will not always be a child, and in the years to come----'
'The years to come; she is barely nine, and at twenty it is difficult
to think of what life may be at thirty--still more at fifty,' said
she, with a curious emphasis, as her eyelids drooped.
'But, like myself, you are not yet thirty,' said Dalton, 'hence we
are both a long way off fifty.'
After this he rode over occasionally from the camp--it was rather an
idle time with him then, before the spring drills of the next year
commenced--and he seemed rapidly to establish himself at the Grange
as a friend, and on a better basis than the younger man, poor Jerry
Wilmot, had done, for the latter name was off even the lady's
visitors' list now.
In life and history passages seem to repeat themselves; thus, just as
Dalton arrived one evening, he heard, through the open window, the
voice of Laura Trelawney singing the old song before referred to, and
with the strain there came many a memory he had been striving to
forget.
'Strange!' he muttered; 'that song again!'
Sweet, clear, and sad, as if it was meant for him, and him alone, her
voice seemed to come floating to him in liquid melody, in pain and
pathos.
Then he heard some merry voice, with which he was familiar; and as he
was ushered into the pretty drawing-room, wherein Jerry met his doom,
for a man who was evidently fast conceiving a _tendresse_ for the
brilliant Mrs. Trelawney, it was curious that he should feel a kind
of relief--a kind of protection for himself, or from committing
himself too far--in the casual presence of Alison Cheyne and Bevil
Goring.
The former smiled brightly, and gave Bevil a glance of intelligence
as Dalton was ushered in. It was evidently, both thought, becoming a
case, and Alison was already beginning to see herself a prospective
bridesmaid and Bevil groomsman.
'How curious you should all three visit me just at the same time,'
said Mrs. Trelawney.
'I was visiting my poor,' said Alison.
'And came to comfort the widow and orphan on the way.'
'Have you many recipients of your bounty, Miss Cheyne?' said Dalton,
for lack of something else to say.
'I have little in my power; but they are all so grateful and so good.'
'Ah!' said Mrs. Trelawney, 'I don't take so charitable a view of
human nature as you do, child; if the poor are generally virtuous, it
is because they have not the guineas to be wicked with.'
'One of your wild speeches, Mrs. Trelawney, I hope,' said Goring; 'my
guineas are few--thus I have a fellow-feeling.'
And, leaving the last visitor and their hostess to discuss the point
_tête-à-tête_, the lovers strolled into the now somewhat desolate
garden, where the fallen leaves lay thick; but their own emotions
seemed to brighten it with all the flowers that ever grew in Eden,
and with the walks they were pretty familiar with now.
'And so you were dining _en famille_ at old Cadbury's place?' said
Goring, as he drew her hand over his arm and retained it there. 'Was
it a slow affair, darling?'
'Utterly slow,' said Alison, with a sigh, while looking into his face
with smiling eyes.
'Tell me all about it?'
'There is nothing to tell,' replied Alison, feeling the while
terribly conscious that there was far too much if inferences were to
be drawn; but she shrank from giving pain to her lover by relating
her father's desires and bluntly-expressed wishes, though she feared
that Bevil was quite sharp enough to suspect more than he or she
admitted, else whence his questions.
And now, lover-like, their conversation, interesting only to
themselves, drifted rapidly into the never-ending topic of their own
passionate regard for each other, their future hopes, and certainly
most vague plans, while dusk was closing round them--the soft
semi-darkness of an autumnal night; yet it was full of distant
sounds, and not a few sweet scents that mingled with the heavy odour
of the fallen leaves.
Alison had tied a little laced handkerchief over her hair, and her
eyes were beaming upward, sweetly and coquettishly, as they met the
glances of her lover, who thought she looked like the sweetest
picture ever painted, especially when her long lashes rested on the
paleness of her cheek when she cast them down.
'May I see you home when the time comes?' he asked.
'Not for worlds, Bevil darling.'
'It is so dark.'
'But Daisy Prune is to call for me, and we know all the roads and
lanes hereabout as well as if we had made them.'
They were very, very happy just then, these two--happy in the
security of each other's love, and could little foresee the turmoil
and misery a little time was to bring forth for both.
By the light of a softly-shaded lamp the other pair were
_tête-à-tête_ in the drawing-room, maintaining a curious and
disjointed conversation, as if some unuttered or unutterable secret
loaded the tongue of each; and, truth to tell, the officer, who had
led his men to the storming of more than one hill-fort on the vast
slopes of the Hindoo Koosh--who had been wont to pot his tiger and
stick his furious pig in the jungle--who had been all over India,
from the Sand Heads of the Hooghly to the gates of Cabul--if he had
now come on a love-making errand, was the less self-possessed of the
two.
Mrs. Trelawney possessed the rare art of dressing in such dainty
perfection as never woman did before, he thought; and all her
toilettes seemed to harmonise so much with the time and place in
which he saw them, and with his own taste.
As they conversed on indifferent subjects, a strange and subtle
magnetism drew their eyes to meet from time to time in a manner that
expressed or admitted much, and yet no particular word of
regard--still less of love--escaped Dalton; but little Netty by her
remarks sometimes made both feel very awkward, and wish that she was
relegated to the region of the nursery.
The child, encouraged by his tender manner to herself--more than all,
her beautiful necklet--often hung with confidence and familiarity
about him, and with pretty pertinacity questioned him about his past
adventures, where he had been and what he had seen, if he ever had a
wife, and much more to the same effect, as if his past life were of
interest to her, as it was no doubt beginning to be to her mamma; and
on this occasion, by a simple remark, she made both feel quite
uncomfortable.
Resting her elbows on his knee, and planting her little face between
her hands, she looked up in his eyes and said,
'Captain Dalton, do you come to see me or mamma?'
'I come to see both,' replied Dalton, smiling as he stroked her
bright hair.
'But you talk so much more to mamma than to me.'
'You are a little girl, Netty; well?'
'That I think--I think----'
'What? A penny for your thoughts.'
'That you are in love with mamma. Is it so?'
Strange to say, at this remark Dalton grew very pale, while Mrs.
Trelawney, though she coloured considerably, laughed excessively at
the situation thus created, but was rather surprised that Dalton
failed to take advantage of it, even to pay her, as he could easily
have done, a well-turned compliment.
'Netty seems to have quite a matrimonial interest in you, Captain
Dalton,' said she, still laughing.
'Yes; she has more than once asked me if I ever had a wife.'
Mrs. Trelawney, while her own bright eyes were partly hidden by the
shade on the globe of the lamp, was keenly scrutinizing the
half-averted face of her admirer.
'You have not been always a woman-hater?' she asked.
'I never was--far from it--the reverse,' said he, hastily.
'And yet in all those years you have never fallen in love?'
'I never thought of it till I came back to England. One does not
think of marriage up country in the land of brown squaws.'
'And so you never thought of it?'
'Never.'
Dalton was colouring deeply now, and she extracted his answers from
him 'as if she had been extracting his teeth,' as she afterwards told
Alison.
'Now, however, under better auspices, and at home, I may wish to
change,' he began.
'Change what?' interrupted Mrs. Trelawney, with a curious sharpness
of tone; 'to reform? I have read that we often hear of a woman
marrying a man to reform him, but that no one ever heard of a man
marrying a woman to reform _her_.'
Dalton felt that his love-making, if love-making it was, took a
strange turn now, and that she was infusing banter or rebuke into the
conversation.
'I cannot comprehend, Mrs. Trelawney, how it is that when I am with
you,' said Dalton, gravely, with a soft and half-broken voice, 'there
comes back upon me much of my past life, or rather a portion of it,
that I would fain forget.'
'How is this?'
'Because you have some strange and magnetic influence over me, to
which I have not as yet the key. I have sought to bury, to forget
that past I refer to--to live it down----'
'I have no wish to pry into your secrets, Captain Dalton, nor to act
the part of a Father Confessor, so pray don't confide in me,' said
Mrs. Trelawney, with a--for her--curious hardness in her usually
sweet voice. 'I have read somewhere that life itself, from the
cradle to the grave, is but a kind of gloaming hour, wherein mortals
grope dimly after happiness, and find it not.'
'I would that the happiness of my future life lay in your hands, Mrs.
Trelawney,' said Dalton, with an expression of eye and tone of voice
there was no mistaking.
Mrs. Trelawney did not reply, but she smiled with a curiously mingled
expression of triumph, pleasure, and, strange to say, disdain,
rippling over her bright face--emotions to which we shall ere long
have the key.
Her cheeks flushed, her lips curved with her smile, and for a moment
her whole mien was that of a young girl delighted with flattery.
Dalton was about to say something more, when the sudden disdain that
replaced the first expression prevented him, and she said, laughingly,
'I can give the ladies a capital addition to the creed, Captain
Dalton.'
'What is it?'
'Never to love any man, but make all men love you; as the song has
it, "Love not--the thing you love may change;" but here come Miss
Cheyne and Captain Goring.'
'A strange woman--an enigma, indeed,' thought Dalton, who had an
unpleasant suspicion that she was secretly deriding the avowal he
had, perhaps, been on the point of making.
'Oh, Alison,' she said, suddenly, 'you remember Bella Chevenix, the
handsome, dashing girl, who always wears rich dresses, but of green
or grey tints, a muslin fichu, with a yellow rose in it, and so
forth. You have heard what has happened, I suppose?'
'That she was engaged, or nearly so, to Colonel Graves?'
'Yes--but he has behaved disgracefully.'
'How?'
'What do you think her family found out?' she asked, addressing
Dalton, to his surprise.
'That he was no colonel at all, perhaps,' said he.
'Oh, worse than that.'
'Worse!--what could be worse?'
'I do not care to think, Mrs. Trelawney--not knowing the
parties--that he was a criminal, perhaps.'
'Worse still.'
'Good heavens, Laura!' exclaimed Alison.
'And he proposed for her?'
'Yes; was it not horrible, Captain Dalton?'
'Don't appeal to me,' he replied, abruptly.
'Bella was at a ball in Willis's Rooms, dancing with Wilmot, of
Captain Dalton's regiment, while the colonel was there _vis-à-vis_
with some one else, and Jerry, in the most casual way, asked her if
she knew Mrs. Graves. Bella thought he was talking nonsense, but it
turned out to be truth, as there is a Mrs. Graves; but, as Bella is a
professional beauty, luckily, her affections were not too deeply
engaged. However, such affairs are a warning to us all in society.
Don't you think so, Captain Dalton?'
But for the shaded lamp, the sudden paleness that overspread the
handsome face of Dalton would have been apparent to all at this
anecdote of Mrs. Trelawney, who saw that his eyes drooped, and that
not even his heavy moustache concealed the quiver of his lip as he
took his hat and prepared to retire.
'How strange Captain Dalton looks!' whispered Alison to Goring, as
they were parting.
'Yes; poor Tony has become a changed man, moody and irritable, since
he has known your friend, Mrs. Trelawney. He is no longer the quiet,
gentle, and easy-going fellow he used to be. And now, once again,
good-bye, my darling.'
And with a pressure of the hand, a kiss snatched, all the sweeter for
being so, they parted, knowing when and where they were to meet again.
Whatever was the secret, unrevealed yet, that hung on Dalton's heart,
he left the house of Mrs. Trelawney with a heaviness of soul and
gloom of manner that were but too apparent to Bevil Goring. There
was a baffled and dismayed expression in his face that made him all
unlike his old soldierly self, and on his lips there was an unuttered
vow that he would go near Chilcote Grange no more--a vow, however,
that he found himself unable to keep.
CHAPTER XI.
A WRITTEN PROPOSAL.
'Devilled kidneys, actually,' said Sir Ranald, in high good-humour,
next morning at breakfast. 'I thought the anatomy of our butcher's
shop seemed never to include kidneys.'
Alison was officiating at the tea-board in her plain but pretty
morning-dress, and was thinking smilingly of the _tête-à-tête_ in the
twilighted garden the evening before, when Archie laid some letters
before her father, who glanced at them nervously. All that were in
blue envelopes he knew instinctively to be duns, and thrust aside
unopened. One in a square cover, that had thereon the initial C.
surmounted by a coronet, he knew to be from Lord Cadbury, and opened,
and read more than once, with a pleased, yet perplexed face, his
brows knitted, yet his lips and eyes smiling.
'From Lord Cadbury, is it, papa?' asked Alison, after a pause.
'Yes, and concerns you.'
'Me?'
'Intimately.'
'In what way--how?' she asked, with a heart that sank with
apprehension.
'By making a formal proposal through me.'
'For what?'
'Can you ask, child? Your hand.'
'Oh, papa, nonsense?' exclaimed Alison, growing very pale
nevertheless, but in the desperation of her heart resolved to treat
the matter with a certain degree of levity, as if too ridiculous for
consideration.
The truth was that, with all the confidence given him by his wealth
and position, and all the coolness acquired by many past but coarse
intrigues, he had not the courage to propose personally to a girl
like Alison Cheyne, but did so thus, through her father, whose
selfishness and impecuniosity made him, as he was well aware, an ally.
'He writes very humbly and modestly for a man of such wealth and
weight in the country,' said Sir Ranald. 'Do you wish to see his
letter?'
'No, papa, I have no interest in the matter,' replied Alison, faintly.
'"She has always permitted me to take the place of a friend--better
than I merited," he writes, "but that has been from the innate
goodness of her heart, on which I know that I have no right to found
the expectations that have drawn forth this letter." Very well
expressed indeed,' added Sir Ranald, eyeing the missive through his
_pince-nez_, 'and he winds up so nicely about your beauty and the
wealth he can lay at your feet, and so forth.'
'And so, papa, I am to deem my face my fortune?' said Alison, still
endeavouring to make light of the matter.
'Not alone.'
'What more is there, then?'
'You are a Cheyne of Essilmont.'
'How ridiculous of this man, who is old enough to be my father! And
so, papa, this is my first proposal?'
'Your first, how many do you expect--you a penniless lass?'
'With a long pedigree.'
'Yes,' replied her father, with growing irritation, 'how many do you
expect of any kind, as society goes now-a-days? Consider this
well--or why consider at all?--but accept his offer for your own sake
and mine.'
'But without love, papa?' said the girl, softly.
'You can't live on that, like the æsthetic bride in Punch, on her
teapot,' exclaimed Sir Ranald. 'In asking you to marry him, I rather
ask you to marry his house in Belgravia, his place here in Hampshire,
his equipages, and family jewels, as I suppose he calls them.'
'Oh, papa,' said Alison, proudly and reproachfully, 'is it you,
Cheyne of Essilmont, who suggest this to me?'
'Yes--I, Cheyne of Essilmont and that ilk--the bankrupt and the
beggar,' he replied, with a burst of impressible bitterness.
'Papa, how can you, so proud of race, go in for vulgar mammon worship
so unblushingly?'
'My poverty, but not my will, consents.'
'I thought daughters were sold only in Circassia.'
'Not at all, they sell too in Tyburnia and Belgravia to the highest
bidder, and surely with all he can give you, all that he can surround
us with, you might be able to tolerate him as a husband.'
But Alison could only think of Bevil Goring, and interlaced her
fingers tightly beneath the tablecloth.
'There is nothing in this world like riches,' exclaimed Sir Ranald,
glancing at the unopened blue envelopes, and tightening the silk
cords of his sorely frayed dressing-gown. 'What riches give us let
us first inquire.'
'Meat, fire, and clothes. What more? Meat, clothes, and fire,' said
Alison, with a sickly smile.
'Alison--Miss Cheyne,' said her father, with increasing asperity.
'This offer of marriage is a serious matter, and not to be dismissed
thus, by a quip or apt quotation.'
'You admit that it is apt?'
'I admit nothing--save that Cadbury has talked this matter over with
me before.'
'I suspected as much,' said Alison, bitterly.
'Thus, if you marry him, I know that besides making noble settlements
upon you he will--by a scrape of his pen--clear off nearly all the
fatal encumbrances on our Scottish property; and I shall die, in old
age--as I lived till ruin overtook me--Cheyne of Essilmont and that
ilk.'
'And when you die, papa--' Alison began, in a broken voice.
'The estate becomes yours and his--it is all one.'
('And I have promised to wait for Bevil!' thought the girl in her
heart.)
'In the hope that you might yet learn to love him--indeed upon the
faith that you would do so yet'--said Sir Ranald, after a pause, 'he
has made me, kindly and generously, heavy advances, which I have lost
unwisely, and am totally unable to repay. How then am I to act? I
can but look to you to listen to him patiently and, with some
consideration for me, if he speaks of his love to you again, Alison.'
To the latter it seemed that it was always himself, not her, that he
considered in this proposed matrimonial bargain.
The old man was very white; his thin lips were tremulous with
earnestness; his china-blue eyes lowered beneath the glance of his
daughter, and his naturally proud heart was wrung with pain at the
admissions he was making.
She remained silent.
'You can have no previous--no secret attachment, Alison?' said Sir
Ranald, after another pause.
The existence of one dearer to her than her own life was ignored in
this question.
What was she to reply? but reply she must, as he was eyeing her
keenly, and even suspiciously.
'Do not be angry with me, dearest papa, but Lord Cadbury I never,
never could learn to love,' she urged.
'And what about this fellow Goring?' he exclaimed, sternly, as he
thought suddenly of many presents of flowers and music, with
_Punch's_ and _Graphics_, &c.
'Goring,' she repeated, growing deadly pale, even to the lips.
'It cannot be that you are capable of such infernal folly and
tomfoolery as to be wasting a thought on _him_?'
'He is different indeed,' said Alison, almost with anger, but added,
'believe me, papa, the man I love most in the world is yourself;' and
she nestled her sweet face in his neck as she spoke.
'I have had my suspicions of Captain Goring for some time past; an
empty-headed military dandy--handsome, I admit, but too handsome to
have much in him,' resumed Sir Ranald, angrily--'a dangler, a
detrimental, who, I have no doubt, in weak recommendation of himself
could say, like the man in the play, "I have not much money, but what
I have I spend upon myself."'
'Oh, papa!' exclaimed Alison, who was blushing deeply now.
'Pardon me if I wrong you, child,' said Sir Ranald; 'but in this most
serious matter of your whole future life I cannot, and must not, be
crossed.'
Alison felt her heart sinking, for, after this pointed and sharp
allusion to Bevil Goring, it was pretty plain that his visits to
Chilcote, though supposed to be casual ones at stated intervals,
would have to cease.
Sir Ranald had waited for change of fortune, for something to turn
up, year after year, as old Indian officers used to wait for the
Deccan prize money, as a means of liquidating accumulated debt--means
that never came; and now Cadbury's offer had come to hand like a
trump card in the game with Fortune!
'I cannot live for ever, Alison, think of that,' said he, after a
long silence.
Alison had thought of it, and loving, yea, adoring her father as she
did, the fear that she should one day surely lose him made her heart
shrink up and seem to die within her.
She would be alone--most terribly alone in this bleak world--when
that event came to pass; and she recalled the cruel words of Lord
Cadburv, that 'he could not live for ever,' with peculiar bitterness
now. To whom, then, could she cling if not to Bevil Goring?
'Shall I write to Cadbury that you say "Yes," Alison?'
There were great, hopeless tears standing in her dark blue eyes, her
quivering lips were tightly pressed together, and her slender white
fingers were tightly interlaced, as she replied--
'Papa, I would rather die first!'
'And this is your irrevocable answer?'
'It is.'
Two days passed now--days of unspeakable misery to Alison, before
whom her father again and again set all his monetary troubles, his
present misery, and too probable future ruin, till her heart was
wrung and her soul tortured within her by a conviction of her own
selfishness in not making a sacrifice of herself and Bevil Goring;
but her love of the latter on the one hand, and her horror and
repugnance of Lord Cadbury on the other, prevailed, and Sir Ranald
found that he could neither lure nor bend her to their purpose.
After this he wrote a letter to Cadbury full of expressions of
gratitude for the honour done himself and his daughter (he snorted
when he wrote the word 'honour'), and with hopes that the latter
would yet see the folly of delay--(it was, he felt assured, only a
little delay, she would no doubt give her acceptance). He felt
himself too deeply in Cadbury's debt even to hint that she had
refused to consider his proposal of marriage in any way but one--with
dismay and aversion.
Lord Cadbury, however, saw precisely how the matter stood, for
rumours of the meetings at the beeches had reached him, and he
viciously tugged his long, white, horse-shoe-like mustaches.
Then he tore Sir Ranald's letter into minute fragments, and with an
expression of anger--even of malignancy---in his cunning eyes,
prepared to take the first train to town, muttering the while--
'We shall see, my pretty Alison--we shall see!'
CHAPTER XII.
IN ST. CLEMENT'S LANE.
It was the early dusk of a dull November day--a day in which there
had not been even twilight in London--such days as are only to be
seen there and in Archangel--when one of those awful black fogs
prevail, when gas is lighted everywhere, when all wheel traffic is
suspended, when cabs, 'buses, and drays cease to run, and sounds
become curiously deadened or muffled.
Lord Cadbury, from narrow Lombard Street, turned into that narrower
alley which lies between it and King William Street called St.
Clement's Lane, from the ancient church dedicated to that saint some
time prior to 1309, and for the rebuilding of which, after the great
fire, the parish bestowed upon Sir Christopher Wren the curious fee
of 'one-third of a hogshead of wine.'
Here now are the close, narrow, and in many instances mean and
sordid-looking offices of merchants, insurance agents, bill-brokers,
and others, who, however, turn over vast sums of money in their
humble-looking premises.
To this curious quarter of the City Lord Cadbury had come, with his
thoughts intent--strange to say--upon Alison Cheyne!
The girl's great loveliness and purity had fired his passion--pure
love it was not, nor could it be--and a sentiment of jealousy, pique,
and more than either--something of revenge--made him resolve, through
her father's means, to bend, to bow, to crush her to the end he
wished!
At his years he was more than ever exasperated by the thought of
having a young and handsome rival like Bevil Goring to contend with;
and much jealousy had thus made the elderly lover mad with spite and
reckless of consequences; and as he knew that poverty and shame made
Sir Ranald desperate he resolved to take his measures accordingly.
The longing to break her pride and to triumph over Goring made
Cadbury meanly revengeful, and thus it was that on the day in
question he went groping towards the office of Mr. Solomon Slagg, a
bill discounter in this gloomy locality.
A narrow passage, closed by a green baize-covered swing door, led to
a room, or rather den, in which a couple of clerks sat all day long,
and often far into the night, perched on two high stools, writing in
the same dreary ledgers by gaslight, for the blessed rays of the sun
never found entrance there all the year round; and in a smaller den
beyond, usually lighted, but dimly, by a curious arrangement of
reflectors, sat Mr. Solomon Slagg, writing by the light of a single
gas jet, minus shade or glass, but encircled by a wire guard.
The dingy room--the walls, ceiling, and bare floor were all of the
same neutral kind of grey tint--had a little fire-place, wherein
stood a meagre gas-stove. Above it on shelves were numerous
mysterious-looking bottles containing samples of wine, and against
the wall were numerous oil-paintings, placed there, not for ornament,
but with reference to Mr. Slagg's multifarious modes of doing
business and 'doing' the public.
His rather rotund but misshapen figure was wedged deep in a black
leathern easychair at an ink-spotted desk, whereon lay piles of
battered and greasy-looking ledgers and day-books. His bald head was
sunk between his heavily-rounded shoulders; he had large, coarse
ears, a nose like an inverted pear, pendulous cheeks, to which
straggling grey whiskers were attached, and he had cunning little
eyes that twinkled in deep and cavernous sockets.
Altogether Mr. Solomon Slagg was not a pleasant person to look upon,
but his face, such as it was, lighted up when he saw his visitor, to
whom he bowed low, without rising, and to whom he indicated a chair
by a wave of his pen, with which he made a mark or sum total on a
page, and, closing a small ledger, turned to Lord Cadbury.
'Stifling den this of yours,' grumbled the latter, as he lighted a
cigar; 'no objections to smoking, I suppose?'
'None, my lord.'
'A vile day of fog--utter black fog. Had the devil's own trouble in
making you out on foot from Moorgate Street Station; but, you got my
letter, of course?'
'Yes, my lord.'
'And acted upon it?'
'Yes, my lord,' said Slagg, slowly, 'I was just about to write----'
'That you had got up all Cheyne's blue paper.'
'Yes, in obedience to your directions, I took up all the acceptances
I could trace, and, as he has been more than once in the Black List,
I wonder that he has been able to draw bills without some one to back
them. There is some of his paper,' added Slagg, pointing to some
very crumpled-looking slips.
'Renewed more than once apparently.'
'Oh! yes--again and again, in some instances.'
'Poor old devil!' said my Lord Cadbury, with reference to his
prospective father-in-law; 'what is the "demmed total," as Mr.
Mantilini would say?'
'About a couple of thousand.'
Cadbury smiled--the sum was a trifle to him; but its demand meant
utter ruin to the impecunious Sir Ranald, who could no more meet his
acceptances than fly.
'My pretty Alison will find that at Chilcote she has been living in a
kind of fool's paradise,' thought he, as he tugged his long white
moustache with very great complacency.
'You will put all the pressure you can upon Sir Ranald when these
bills fall due--no more renewals at any risk; at the same time it
must all appear as your affair, not mine--my name must not appear in
the matter.'
'Of course not, my lord; if it did----'
'Don't even think of it, for in that case it would prove my ruin in a
quarter where I wish to be well thought of.'
'Sir Ranald Cheyne seems to have been anticipating his income.'
'Till, I suppose, there is nothing more to anticipate.'
'Exactly.'
'Good--good!' exclaimed Cadbury, as he struck his gloved hands
together; 'then you'll put the screw on him the moment you can do so.'
'Before this week is out, my lord. There is one acceptance there for
£300 on which the three days of grace are yet to run, and then I
shall act upon the whole. Your lordship gave me _carte blanche_ to
acquire all these documents, and, having done so, your money must be
repaid to you through me.'
'Precisely so.'
The two shook hands, and again Cadbury dived into the choking fog, to
make his way westward to his club as best he might, feeling assured
that an unexpected pressure would now be put upon the luckless
Alison, by means of her father's mental misery and inordinate pride.
He knew how intense was the girl's devotion to the old man; he knew
also that the latter, with all his love for his daughter, was not
without a considerable spice of gross selfishness in his nature; that
he loved the good things of this life very much, all the more that
many were gone, and more might go, utterly beyond his reach, unless
some one interposed to save him; and so Cadbury chuckled as he
thought of the fatal ball he had set in motion with the aid of Mr.
Solomon Slagg.
And that evening, when in the brilliantly lighted dining-room of his
magnificent and luxurious club in Pall Mall, after a sybarite repast,
with many curious and elaborate _entrées_, he drank his Clicquot
Veuve and Schloss Johannisberg, not an atom of compunction occurred
to him for the misery he was working the poor but proud old baronet,
and the sweet girl, whom, _bon gré mal gré_, he had resolved to make
his wife.
CHAPTER XIII.
AN ENIGMA.
Despite the silent vow he had made, Captain Dalton could not keep
away from Laura Trelawney, the only woman the world seemed to hold
for him, and yet whom he had no hope of winning.
His was no lovesick boy's fancy, yet it made him sallow, pale, and
worn-looking, restless in solitude, and taciturn in society, always
seeking for action, not for any tangible result that action gave, but
as a means of present distraction.
The baffled Jerry Wilmot was not slow, at mess and elsewhere, to note
the change in the generally quiet and even tenor of his brother
officer's general mood, and drew his own conclusions therefrom, and
these were that he was not progressing favourably in his suit with
the brilliant young widow.
'If a widow she really is,' said Jerry one day after evening parade,
when Dalton's groom brought his horse round to the mess hut, and he
was about to ride over to Chilcote Grange.
'How--what the devil do you mean, Jerry?' asked Dalton, greatly
ruffled.
'Only that a rumour is abroad that has in it a deuced unpleasant
sound.'
'To what effect?'
'That her husband is not dead--that she is not a widow at all--that
he ran away from her, or something of that kind. Have you not
remarked how she sneers at matrimony? Egad, I hope she is not
_divorcée_!'
'Nonsense, Jerry; how dare you let your tongue run on thus!'
'Little birds sing strange songs sometimes.'
'Sour grapes, Jerry, that is all,' replied Dalton, laughing, but only
from the teeth outwards, as he rode off to what Wilmot said was 'his
doom.'
The rumour--real or alleged--so casually mentioned by Jerry, rankled
deeply in Dalton's mind for a time, but it passed away when he found
himself in the presence of Mrs. Trelawney, and he saw again her soft
hazel eyes, so delicately lidded, their long lashes and eyebrows
darker than her rich chestnut hair; her dress that hung in clinging
folds around her and showed her beautiful form, grandly outlined as
that of a classical statue; and when Antoinette--or Netty, as he
called her now--stole her hand, white as a snowflake and tiny as a
fairy's, into his, and, looking at him with eyes blue as
forget-me-nots, said, 'I love you!' he stroked the shower of golden
tresses that were held back from the child's brow by a blue silk
riband, and replied, while he kissed her.
'And I love you, Netty, so much!'
Her tiny mouth was all a-tremble with fun and pleasure as she asked--
'And don't you love mamma too?'
He made no answer, but Mrs. Trelawney, whose eyes had been suffused
with tender pleasure at his kind manner with Netty, now laughed and
said--
'What do you mean, you _enfant terrible_?'
'I heard you and Alison Cheyne talking of Captain Dalton the other
day and I thought I should so like him for a papa.'
'Why?' asked Mrs. Trelawney.
'Because I never had one.'
'Never had one?' she repeated, laughing.
'No; I am the only little girl that never had.'
'You don't remember him then?' said Dalton, recalling the remarks of
Jerry.
'How can one remember what one never, never had?' said little Netty,
sententiously.
'Go to your nurse, Netty,' said her mamma, 'I hear her calling for
you.'
So Netty was summarily dismissed, and not a moment too soon, as both
her listeners thought, and an awkward pause was about to ensue, when
Mrs. Trelawney said, suddenly,
'Your friend Goring seems desperately smitten with my sweet little
friend Alison Cheyne.'
'If so, I wish him all success,' replied Dalton. 'Goring is the king
of good fellows, and the girl is quite beautiful.'
'The French have a curious saying that it is not necessary to be
beautiful in order to be a beauty; but Alison Cheyne is indeed
lovely, and has, in a high degree, a lady-like dignity about her;
and, with it, is so charmingly simple and _piquante_. I hope Goring
is rich; her father, I am pretty sure, looks forward to a wealthy
alliance for her.'
'Then, in that case, I fear poor Bevil will be out of the running,'
said Dalton; 'he has some expectations, I know, but they are very
remote, I fear. We cannot, however, control our hearts, nor, when in
love, do we care about calculating eventualities,' he added, very
pointedly, while taking Mrs. Trelawney's delicate and shapely little
hand between his two, but she withdrew it, and, while discharging a
whole volley of expression by one flashing _œillade_ of her hazel
eyes, she exclaimed, laughingly,
'Take care, Captain Dalton, or I shall be led to infer that you are
falling in love with me.'
'You know that I have done so--that I have loved you since the first
moment we met.'
She was laughing excessively now, and Dalton felt that a lover
laughed at had little hope of success, so he said, gravely,
'I hope you are not playing fast and loose with me and my friend
Wilmot.'
'Have you no better opinion of me, Captain Dalton?'
'He gave me to understand that you declined his addresses.'
'Whatever they may be--yes,' replied the smiling widow, 'but I would
not have mentioned the matter, as he seems to have done--poor Jerry!'
'Why mock my earnestness?' asked Dalton, in a pointed tone of voice.
'Because you cannot love me as I would wish to be loved.'
'You do not know me, Mrs. Trelawney.'
'I know you better than you know yourself!' she exclaimed, looking
him full in the face with a peculiar expression that puzzled him,
while her smiles vanished.
'Perhaps you do,' said he, 'but I think that, if you once loved a
man, that love would end only with your life.'
She regarded him for a moment with an almost disdainful smile, and
said,
'And you, Captain Dalton--if you loved a woman, how long would your
love last? Only while it suited your fancy or convenience.'
'You are very severe with me,' he observed, with some surprise at her
taunting manner.
'Not more than you know you deserve.'
At these words Dalton visibly changed colour, and became confused.
To what secret of his past life was she referring, he thought; to
what long-buried thoughts was she finding a clue?
'You have become very silent,' said she.
He sighed deeply, and rose as if to depart.
'Pardon me, if my words pain you, Captain Dalton,' said she, all her
spirit of raillery gone; 'but you have grown pale, as if the shadow
of death were on you.'
'It is not that,' said he, with a sickly smile.
'What then?'
'The shadow of a life rather.'
'Whose?' she asked, lightly touching his hand.
'My own!'
'He _has_ a secret that shall one day be mine!' thought Mrs.
Trelawney, while at the same moment Dalton was thinking of the rumour
mentioned by Jerry Wilmot, and marvelled if her occasional
peculiarity of manner arose from that rumour being founded on truth!
But Dalton felt his heart too much involved, and himself too deeply
committed to let the matter end here.
'Your treatment of me is most strange, Mrs. Trelawney, even cruel, I
think, Laura--permit me to call you so--even for once,' he said. 'My
society has always seemed to give you pleasure, and you have always
seemed glad when I caressed your little daughter and gave her little
presents; and, truth to tell, dearest Laura, my heart has somehow
gone out to that child as if she were my own.'
'Your own--yours!' exclaimed Mrs. Trelawney, as she pressed a hand
upon her heart, and lowered her eyelids, as if to hide the expression
of joy, exultation, and, odd to say, irritation that mingled in her
face.
He trembled violently, as if struggling with his love of her, and
something mental seemed for a minute to load or fetter his tongue
till he said, in a low voice,
'If I can prove that I have the right to ask you, will you marry
me--will you be my wife, Laura?'
'Do not ask me,' she replied, trembling in turn.
'Why--why?' he asked, impetuously.
'Are you aware how strangely you prelude your proposal by referring
to some eventuality, Captain Dalton?' said she, with some hauteur;
'but be assured that I can never be more to you than I am now, were I
to live a hundred years.'
'And so you are but a cruel coquette after all,' said Dalton,
recovering himself; 'one who has fooled me--a man of the world, as I
deemed myself--to the top of my bent, only to throw me over at last.
Well, perhaps I am rightly served,' he added, bitterly.
'You _are_ rightly served, Captain Dalton,' said she, laughing once
more.
'What do you know--what do you mean?'
'What your own heart tells you; but here is a visitor, Bella
Chevenix; let us at least part friends.'
'Mere friends we can never be,' said he, sadly.
'As you please, Captain Dalton; but be assured we have not seen the
last of each other yet,' she replied, with one of her most brilliant
and coquettish smiles, as he bowed himself out; and so ended an
interview which both felt had included the most singular bit of
love-making they had ever been involved in.
'By Jove, she is an enigma,' muttered Dalton; but she had no such
thought of _him_.
CHAPTER XIV.
'SOMETHING IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN!'
'Captain Goring, let it be distinctly understood that from this day
forward your visits to Chilcote cease, and let all this be
forgotten,' were the words with which Sir Ranald accosted Goring one
forenoon.
'Forgotten!' exclaimed the latter, rising from his seat, hat in hand.
Sir Ranald had suddenly come in and found him seated with Alison,
paying one of his usual visits, as Goring wished them to be thought,
and the old man was greatly ruffled, even exasperated.
'As for my daughter, sir, I forbid her to speak to you again, to
recognise you anywhere, to mention your name, or even think of you!'
he continued, with increasing vehemence, lashing himself to fresh
anger with the sound of his own words. 'D--n it, sir, in my younger
days the pistol would have put an effectual stop to your uncalled-for
interloping.'
'Or yours, and your coldness of heart,' replied Goring, who was so
confounded by this sudden outburst of wrath as scarcely to know what
he said.
He was naturally a proud-spirited young fellow, and rather prompt to
ire. He blushed scarlet to the temples at these most affronting
speeches; but they gave him double pain when he saw the wan,
blanched, and imploring face of poor Alison, whose heart was wrung by
the words and bearing of her father--a bearing all so unlike his own
usually cold, stately, and aristocratic self.
At that moment she felt a sort of sickening conviction that all was
over between her and Bevil, as if she was being torn from him for
ever; and, indeed, separation now was nearer than either of them
suspected, for cruel events were fated to follow each other fast.
Goring bowed to father and daughter, just touching the hand of the
latter as he withdrew. Sir Ranald turned his back upon him and
looked through a window; thus Alison had an opportunity to whisper,
'The beeches at eight this evening,' and Bevil left Chilcote with his
heart swelling with anger, and smarting under a keen sense of insult
and regret.
'Oh, papa, can you forget that he saw Ellon laid in his grave?' she
was on the point of saying, while choked with tears, when she
suddenly remembered that Ellon's ring was now on Goring's finger, and
that the latter's engagement ring was on the third finger of her left
hand, where her father, in his abstraction, selfishness, and
pre-occupation with monetary affairs, had never even once detected it.
And now, truth to tell, though desperate with poverty, the struggle
to keep up appearances, and anger to find his purposes crossed, the
old man blushed for himself in having so far forgot what was due to a
visitor, a guest, and one gentleman to another, but that emotion was
not unmixed with one of satisfaction that 'the affair,' as he thought
it, 'between Alison and that fellow was over now and for ever.'
On this day Alison could not dissemble; she cared not to hide her
emotion from him, and let the tears of shame and sorrow pour hotly
and bitterly down her cheeks, while he looked grimly on, thinking it
would 'be all right by-and-by.'
If she were to see Bevil no more, was the girl's constant
thought--what would become of her?
The hours in which he had no part lagged fearfully with Alison, and
to Bevil, when they met, the minutes seemed to be literally winged.
Her whole life had lately been divided into two portions, one when
she was briefly with Bevil, and the other when she was _not_. Their
meetings had become necessary, as it would seem, to their very
existence, and, were these ended, both would find their 'occupation
gone.'
They knew not how they got through their days before they loved each
other, and had those delicious stolen meetings to look forward to and
look back to, as something sweet, new, and beloved, to con and dream
over.
Till the advent of Bevil Goring, how drearily dull her life seemed to
have been at Chilcote! It was all very well to cull and arrange
bouquets with all an artist's eye to colour and form, to warble the
old songs her mother had taught in brighter days at Essilmont and
elsewhere, with all that sweetness which she inherited from her, and
vary these occupations by attendance on her fowls and other pets,
hunting with old Archie for the eggs when the hens had taken to
laying under the hedges; turning dresses, cleaning her own gloves,
and, while longing for the purse of Fortunatus, striving to make
sixpence go as far as a shilling, feeling that darning and mending
were her purgatory, and economy the bane of her existence; but into
that existence, with the love of Bevil Goring, there had come a ray
of brightest sunshine, with a new and hitherto unknown sense of
happiness. But, alas! it would seem they were now to be followed by
sorrow, and the gloom of a hopeless night which would have no end.
As the afternoon and evening stole on, Alison's heart beat wildly and
anxiously for the time of her meeting--too probably the last
one--with Bevil, and after a frugal dinner of cold mutton and boiled
rice (a menu at which her father made more than one grimace), with
old Archie Auchindoir in attendance, solemnly and respectfully, as if
it had been some banquet suited to Lucullus, when Sir Ranald began to
doze over his bottle of carefully-aired St. Peray 'Hermitage'--most
probably the last he possessed--Alison rose softly from the table and
stole into the entrance hall, where the hands on the clock dial
indicated that the hour was nearly eight.
She assumed the hat and shawl she usually wore when in the garden,
and passing though the latter, in her resolution to meet Bevil,
almost heedless if her father missed her, she was about to open the
gate that led to the beech avenue, when she was startled--rooted to
the spot for a moment--by seeing, or fancying she saw, before her,
amid the dark and uncertain shadows of the November evening, the
blacker outline of a dog--of a hound before her.
At this conviction a gasping cry escaped her, and a sense of
suffocation came into her slender throat; inspired by a courage
beyond what she deemed she possessed, she darted forward, but the
outline seemed to melt away before her or elude her eyes. No dog was
there, nor could there have been, for no dog of mortal mould could
have cleared that lofty wall, and no sound followed the disappearance.
All was still save the drip of the dew as it fell from the overladen
leaf of an evergreen.
Alison felt her heart beating painfully, while a deadly chill seemed
to settle upon it. Had the family boding of evil been before her?
Oh, no, no--impossible. And yet it was said that when Ellon and her
mother died---- She tried to thrust the thought away.
It must have been, she said to herself, some peculiar arrangement of
light and shadow--some shadow formed in the starlight and thrown on
the grass; for often as she heard of that Dog of Doom--the Spectre
Hound of Essilmont--she always shrank from believing in its
existence, but her heart was filled with vague and undefinable
apprehension nevertheless.
There was a step on the gravel, a figure appeared in the shade of the
star-lighted avenue, and in another moment she was sobbing heavily in
Bevil's arms.
Her excessive agitation he attributed, naturally, to the very
unpleasant scene of the forenoon, especially when she said,
'Oh! Bevil, how, or in what terms, am I to apologise to you for the
mode in which papa treated you to-day?'
'Poor old gentleman, I can pardon all his petulance, but it fills me
with a fear that he designs you to be the wife of another. Curse
upon this poverty of mine, which mars as yet the life of us both,
Alison. I have done wrong in loving you and winning you without your
father's permission; but he never would have accorded it.'
'Oh!' moaned Alison, with her cheek on his breast; 'something is
about to happen--something terrible about to befall us!'
'Something, darling--what?'
'Death, or a calamity little short of it, perhaps.'
'I do not understand you,' said Bevil, caressing her with great
tenderness, and becoming very anxious on finding how faint her voice
was, and how excessively she was trembling. 'Dearest Alison, the
night air is chill, I am selfish and barbarous in keeping you here.'
'Don't say so, my love,' murmured the girl, as she nestled close to
him, 'for something is about to happen, and heaven knows only when I
may meet you again.'
'What fills you so with apprehension?'
And now, with pale and trembling lips, while reclining in Goring's
arms, she told him the family legend, at which he--a man of the
period--a young officer within a mile or so of his lines at
Aldershot, felt inclined to laugh very heartily, but for Alison's
intense dejection, and the doubts and fears incident to their mutual
position.
'Dearest Alison,' said he, smiling, 'you have one _bête noire_
assuredly--old Cadbury--don't, for heaven's sake, manufacture and
adopt another.'
'Bevil, don't jest with me,' she said, imploringly.
'I do not jest with you, sweet one; but tell me all about this
devilish hound--for such it must be, of course.'
It would seem that it first appeared on the night of a dreadful
storm, centuries ago--a night when the wind howled and roared round
Essilmont, and the Ythan, white and foaming, tore in full flood
through the dreary heather glens towards the sea, and when the
thunder peals seemed to rend heaven; yet amid all this elemental din
the gate-ward at Essilmont heard the baying of a dog at the gate,
and, opening it, a large black hound came in, and was permitted to
crouch by the hall fire, and when the embers of the latter began to
sink and fade away, it was remarked by those who were there that the
eyes of the great shaggy hound, as it lay with its long sharp nose
resting on its outstretched paws, had in them a strangely diabolical
and malicious glitter as they roved from face to face.
'I dislike the aspect of this brute,' said the Laird to the Lady of
Essilmont, and as he spoke the hound began to lash the floor with his
tail. 'Let him be driven forth.'
'I pray you not,' said she. 'The poor animal may have lost its
master.'
On this the hound, as if grateful to her, licked her white hand with
his red tongue, and she stroked him tenderly. She was Annot Udney, a
daughter of the Laird of Auchterellon, and reputed as a witch, and
the possessor of a remarkable magic crystal ball, with which she
could work good or evil, but the latter most frequently.
'Annot, its aspect chills me,' said the laird again.
'Chills you, Ranald?' exclaimed the lady. 'You whose spear was
foremost in the fray last week at the Red Harlaw.'
'Yes--I shudder, and know not why,' he replied, and signed himself
with the cross, on which the hound instantly snarled, and showed all
his white glistening teeth, while his eyes glared like red and fiery
carbuncles.
No more was wanting now to prove to Ranald Cheyne that the animal was
a thing of evil, so snatching up a halbert he was about to cleave his
head when the lady interposed with outstretched arms and a cry of
dismay. She was a woman of rare beauty and great sweetness of
manner, notwithstanding her evil repute; so she stayed her husband's
arm, and said,
'Let me put forth the hound.'
'You, Annot?'
'Yes--I,' she replied; and patting the dog's rough head it rose and
followed her to the outer gate, and now the wild storm which shook
the walls some time before was over; it seemed to have spent its fury
and passed away.
A little time elapsed; Annot Cheyne did not return: the laird became
anxious and impatient, and as all the household were now abed he
followed her.
The sky was cloudless now, and the white moonlight fell aslant in
silvery sheets over the barbican wall, and in the flood of it that
streamed through the outer archway he saw his wife caressing the
gigantic hound.
'Annot!' cried he, impatiently. She made no answer, but stooped and
again caressed the dog.
At that moment a dark cloud passed suddenly and quickly over the face
of the moon, involving the archway in blackness and obscurity; and
the baying of the hound was heard, but, as it seemed, at a vast
distance.
When, a minute after, the moon emerged from its shadow, the radiance
streamed through the archway as before; but there was no one
visible--the lady and the hound had disappeared!
'She was never seen again,' said Alison in conclusion; 'but as for
the hound, that came and went with the tempest, it has appeared, or
has been said to have done so, when--when evil was near the Cheynes
of Essilmont; and, whether the story of its appearance was fable or
fancy, the evil certainly came in some fashion or other.'
'It is the offspring of vulgar superstition or fevered fancy. How
can you think of old-world Scotch nonsense in this age, Alison?' said
Bevil Goring.
'If a boding of evil it is, I hope it menaces me, and not poor papa,'
said Alison, down whose cheeks the unseen tears were streaming in the
dark, 'and as for Lord Cadbury----'
'Don't speak about him--don't think about him!' interrupted Bevil,
impatiently. 'And yet,' he added, 'if this old fellow loves you, I
do not wonder at it.'
'Why?'
'Because all men who know you must love you, though I hope it is to
be your destiny, your strength, to love but one. Yet, Alison, what
agony it must be to love you as I do, and only to lose you after all.'
This unfortunate speech, though meant to be a loving compliment by
Goring, seemed but the echo of the forebodings that were in the heart
of Alison, and she wept heavily while he strained her to his breast
and kissed her, not once but many times, and she hung or lay passive
in his embrace like a dead weight, while the hearts of both were full
of a kind of passionate despair--their future seemed so much without
hope--their present menaced by so much turmoil and opposition.
'My darling, my darling,' exclaimed Goring, when at last he released
her, 'whatever happens I shall never, never give you up.'
So they parted at last, to meet at their trysting place on the second
day ensuing, and Alison, as she hurried homeward, and passed amid the
dark shadows of the star-lighted garden, looked fearfully round her
with dilated eyes, while her spirit quailed in dread of seeing
defined through the gloom what she saw, or thought she saw, before,
and hastened into the house, closing the door softly, yet swiftly
behind her, as if pursued by something unseen.
Duty detained Goring at the camp during the intervening day, but on
the following, full of more lover-like anxiety than ever, with a
hundred things to say, to ask, and to hear, hopes to suggest, and
comforting speeches to make, he sought the beeches, and waited there
till all hope died out.
Alison did not come; the day was cold; the wind bleak and keen as the
very last of the damp brown leaves were swept away with it, and at
last he turned aside with a heavy heart.
The next day and the next brought the same result. She failed to
meet him, and dismay filled his heart lest she might be ill. She was
delicate and fragile, and the last night they met she was terribly
shaken and excited by the untoward episode of the morning and her
superstitious terror of the evening.
From the moment Bevil Goring met and knew Alison Cheyne, his heart
had gone out of his own keeping, and never returned to it again. His
love for her had become deep and intense, but, strange to say, did
not seem a hopeful one, unless fortune changed suddenly with him. It
was useless to expect it would do so with her family now.
His position was good; his family name unimpeachable. He bore a high
reputation in his regiment as a brave and well-trained officer, and
one well used to command; but his means were certainly not what he
should ask a wife of Alison's culture to share, nor in any way were
they equal to the ambition and dire necessities of the bankrupt
baronet of Essilmont.
After some more days of agonising delay and anxiety, Goring resolved
to proceed to Chilcote House, and endeavour to discover if aught
ailed Alison, or how it was that she had ceased to come to their
meeting-place as usual.
From the clustered and ivy-clad chimneys no smoke ascended against
the grey November sky. Every window was shuttered and closed. There
was an absence of all stir--an oppressive silence everywhere in and
around the house--even from the little court where the clucking of
Alison's hens was wont to be heard. A spade yet remained stuck in a
plot of the garden, as if old silver-haired Archie Auchindoir had
suddenly quitted his work there and returned no more.
Either by the result of mischief, or recent neglect, a large mass of
the ivy and clematis that overhung the pretty little oaken porch had
fallen down, and, if further evidence of total desertion were
necessary, a large white ticket on a pole announced in black letters
that the 'commodious villa of Chilcote was to let, furnished or
unfurnished. Communications to be made in writing to Mr. Solomon
Slagg, St. Clement's Lane, City.'
On taking in all these details of a sudden, hasty, and perhaps
disastrous departure, the heart of Bevil seemed to stand still for
some seconds.
Where had the little household gone, and why? And why did not Alison
write to him of her movements? though he could not have replied
without compromising her. Was Sir Ranald dead? Was she? Oh, no!
no! He must have heard it--friends in camp must have heard through
the public prints of any catastrophe.
She was gone--carried off; he could not doubt it--but whither and to
what end he could not even surmise; his bower of roses--his fool's
paradise, was levelled in the dust at last, and he could but linger,
and look hopelessly and questioningly at the ticket of Mr. Solomon
Slagg, and at the darkened windows through which Alison must often
have looked, perhaps watching for his own approach.
He wrote to Mr. Slagg for information and Sir Ranald's address, but
received no answer (doubtless Mr. Slagg was acting under the orders
of Lord Cadbury), save printed circulars, from which it appeared that
Mr. Slagg was ready to advance 'money confidentially to young
officers and others on easy terms, borrowers' own security,
repayments at convenience, &c., &c.'
It was terrible for Bevil Goring to surrender those hopes he had been
cherishing in the depths of his heart--hopes that, though of recent
growth, were strong, and dear, and precious, and the realisation of
which had become his daily prayer.
A darkness as sudden seemed to have fallen upon him!
He remembered now all the poor girl's painful forebodings on that
last eventful night that _something was about to happen_--the surely
absurd story about the spectre dog, which he had so affectionately
derided; but now 'something' certainly _had_ come to pass! And what
was it?
CHAPTER XV.
EVIL TIDINGS.
'I'm glad to see you back, Miss Cheyne,' said Archie, as she met him
in the passage or entrance-hall; 'Sir Ranald has missed you sairly.'
'Missed me? I left him asleep, Archie,' exclaimed Alison.
'Something wakened him wi' a start, just as ye gaed into the garden.'
'Something--what?'
'A sound, I watna what,' replied Archie, unwillingly, smoothing his
silver hair with his hand, and looking round him stealthily.
'What sound? I heard nothing in the garden.'
'Weel, something like the baying o' a hound.'
'A _hound_!' said Alison, faintly.
'I dinna quite say sae; but say naething to Sir Ranald aboot it.
Gang to him at aince; he's got some unco news, I fear, by the evening
post.'
Walking like an automaton, though very pale, and tremulous in heart
and limb, Alison entered the dining-room, where she found her father
walking up and down its entire length, with a letter crushed and
crumpled in his thin white hand, which was nervously clenched upon
it. His face was very pale; his lips were twitching, and drops of
perspiration stood upon his brow.
'Papa!' exclaimed Alison, winding her soft arms round him; 'what is
the matter with you?'
'It has come at last, child.'
'What has come?'
'The long-impending and utter ruin, unless--unless----'
'What?'
'You will save me; end my sorrows, and your own, by accepting
Cadbury. You can lift from my heart and our family the shadow that
has darkened them so long--the cold shadow of grinding poverty.'
Her lips became white and parched--so parched that she had to moisten
them with her tongue, and even then she could not speak for a time.
Bevil Goring's kisses were fresh upon them, and now she had to listen
to a death sentence like this!
Her first dread had been a reference to her absence at such a time,
but, by the business in question, it was evident her ramble in the
dusk was forgotten, or a very subordinate matter indeed.
'A man named Slagg has written me,' said Sir Ranald, in a low and
faint voice, while leaning with one hand on the table and the other
pressed on the region of the heart, 'written me to the effect that
all my recent and too often renewed acceptances and promissory notes
have come--how, I know not--into his possession, and that if I do not
liquidate them forthwith everything we have--even to the chairs we
sit on--will be seized, and myself too probably arrested, while you,
Alison--you, my loved Ailie,' he continued, with sudden pathos in his
voice--'will have neither house nor home!'
He was a proud man, Sir Ranald Cheyne, and apart from the selfishness
peculiar to many of his class--especially in Scotland--an honourable
man. Thus it is but fair to infer that had he known or been aware in
the least degree of the game Lord Cadbury was playing, and that the
letter of Solomon Slagg was his trump card, he would rather have
faced ruin and beggary than urged this odious marriage on his
daughter.
The latter clasped her hands in silence and looked and felt like a
hunted creature. Prior to this she had often thought over the means
of escape, of working for her bread--a mode of work of which she had
very vague ideas indeed--but now she felt stunned and stupefied.
After all--after the dawn and noon of the sweet day that had stolen
upon her--could she do nothing, if she was to serve her father, but
to marry this vulgar lord?
'I have refused Lord Cadbury's written proposal, papa,' said she, in
a voice so low that it sounded like a whisper.
'He will renew it, and it is a brilliant offer, Alison. He will be
kind to you--so kind, Alison--and you--you will not be so mad as to
refuse him now. Think of his proffered settlements and of what
we--what I owe him.'
'Think of every one, of all--all but myself and my future!' said
Alison, with her slender fingers interlaced above her head and her
eyes cast despairingly upward.
'She is yielding,' thought Sir Ranald; 'but I see how it is--this
fellow Goring is in our way.'
Then he put his arm round her caressingly and said,
'The sooner you become sensible, Alison, and forget your
foolish--your most unwise fancy for that young fellow at Aldershot,
the better for yourself and for--me.'
He never forgot _himself_ with all his love for his daughter.
'But, papa,' she said, with pallid lips, 'I love--Bevil.'
'It has come to this--an engagement?'
'Yes, papa, I cannot deceive you.'
'An engagement--a secret one--without my knowledge; how dared you?'
'I promised to wait for a year--he asked me only a year--and he loves
me so much!'
'No doubt,' snarled Sir Ranald, through his set teeth. 'People
cannot live on love, however, and your friend "Bevil," as you call
him, cannot pay my debts.'
'Oh, would that he could do so!'
'Till recently you have always been accustomed to luxury and ease.
These Cadbury lays at your feet, offering you--who by position and
education are unfit to be a poor man's wife--absolute splendour.'
'But Bevil is not so poor as you think, and, moreover, may be richer
in time,' urged Alison, piteously; 'he has prospects,
expectations----'
'Of course--what sharper is without them?--and for the realization of
these visions you would be waiting to the sacrifice of your youth,
your beauty, and your poor old father's few remaining years.'
She wrung her white hands. She had often thought before of the
tradesmen's unpaid bills--of her dresses made to do duty for a second
season she had never thought at all; but now the letter of Slagg had
filled her with vague and undefinable terror.
She could not, poor girl, understand the tenor of it altogether, but
she knew it meant ruin, for she could read that in her father's
anxious face; yet why should fate compel her to marry Lord
Cadbury?--she could work--work or die!
'Loving Bevil as I do, papa, it would be very base of me to accept
Lord Cadbury without even an atom of respect or gratitude,' said she,
gathering courage from her very despair, while her eyes streamed with
tears.
'I do not see that love has much to do with marriage, but know that
money has a great deal,' said her father, smoothing out the letter of
Solomon Slagg for re-perusal. 'Love is a luxury the poor can't
afford, and it is better to marry on a little of it, and find that
little increase by residence together and force of habit, than marry
on much, and find that much dwindling away into mutual toleration and
cold indifference.'
Sir Ranald had not an atom of sympathy with or toleration for this
love fancy, so he deemed it, of his daughter. His own lover-days and
his marriage seemed to have come to pass so long ago as to have
belonged to some state of pre-existence. He could scarcely realise
them now; yet he knew they must have been; Burke and Debrett told him
so; and Alison was there as a living proof of both; but his love--if
love it was--had been a well-ordered arrangement with a lady of good
position and ample means, not with an obscure nobody.
'Papa,' said Alison, after a silence that had been broken only by her
sighs and his own, 'when urging me to do what you wish, have you no
thought of the long line of the Cheynes of Essilmont, who lived there
for so many centuries--who so often lost their lives in battle, but
never honour, who never stained their name by any base or ignoble
transaction, who lived and died so spotlessly?'
This little outburst was something precisely after his own heart; he
patted Alison's head of rich brown hair, and said, with a kindling in
his eyes,
'It is precisely because I do think of them that I wish to see you
wealthy and ennobled, raised out of this now sordid life of ours.'
'Ennobled by wedding the son of Timothy Titcomb, of Threadneedle
Street!'
'If you will not save me by doing so, we have nothing left for it now
but a disgraceful flight.'
'Flight?'
'Yes; I must quit this place ere I am arrested.'
'For where?'
'God alone knows.'
Alison interlaced her fingers again in mute misery.
'You look worn and weary, Alison,' said Sir Ranald, observing the
pinched expression of her little white face.
'I am both, indeed!'
'Then go to bed, child; think over all I have urged, think of what is
before us, think well, and give me a final answer in the morning.'
She kissed him with lips that were cold and quivering, and retired to
her room, while he threw open his bureau, drew the lamp towards him,
spread a sheet of paper with a vague idea that he was about to make
some monetary calculations, and mechanically dipped a pen in the
ink-bottle.
Then he threw it down, and, resting his aching head upon his delicate
and wrinkled hands, sank into a kind of stupor of thought.
From this he was roused by a hand being laid gently on his shoulder,
and by the voice of old Archie Auchindoir saying, while he shook his
white head,
'Puir Sir Ranald--oh! my dear maister; eild and poortith are sair
burdens for ae back.'
'What do you want, Archie?' he asked, peevishly.
'Sir Ranald, sir, I've a sma' matter o' three hunder pound and mair
saved up in your service, and at your service it is now, every bodle
o'd--tak' it and welcome; it may help ye at this pinch--tak' it, for
God's sake, if it will tak' the tears frae Miss Alison's een.'
'Poor Archie, I thank you,' said Sir Ranald, shaking the hand of this
faithful old man, whose eyes were inflamed with the tears he was,
perhaps, too aged to shed; 'it is very generous of you, this offer,
but is--pardon me saying so--simply absurd!'
Again and again Archie pressed the little man in vain upon the
acceptance of his master, till the pride of the latter turned his
gratitude into something of his usual hauteur, on which Archie
withdrew sorrowfully, muttering under his breath,
'Troth, he's weel boden there ben, that will neither borrow nor lend.'
Meaning that Sir Ranald must surely be well enough off, if he could
afford to dispense with all assistance.
With her gorgeous brown hair unrolled and floating over her
shoulders, Alison, with her hands lying listlessly in her lap, sat
lost in her own terrible thoughts, with her tear-inflamed eyes gazing
into her bed-room fire, which had just attained that clear, red
light, without flickering flame, in which one may fancy strange
scenes without end--deep valleys, caverns, rocks, castles perched on
cliffs, faces, and profiles; and therein had she seen, more than
once, Essilmont with its Scoto-French turrets with their conical
roofs and vanes, its crow-stepped gables and massive chimneys, that
she now might never see in reality again!
A victim on the double altar of gold and filial piety.
How often had she read in novels and romances, and how often had she
seen on the stage, the story of a heroine--a wretched girl placed in
precisely the cruel predicament in which she now found herself, and
deemed that such dramatic and doleful situations could only exist in
the fancies of the author or of the playwright!
Without, the cold and wintry wind had torn away the last leaves from
every tree long since; the last flowers were also long dead; the
chill night rain pattered, with sleet and hail, upon the windows;
and, like the heart of Alison, all nature seemed desolate and sad.
She shuddered when she heard the moaning of the wind, and thought of
the Spectre Hound.
Could it be that she had indeed seen it?
CHAPTER XVI.
CADBURY'S PLAN OR PLOT.
And now to relate what more came to pass at Chilcote, and where
Alison had vanished to.
The morning came to her after a sleepless night, and she was
incapable of giving the answer to which Sir Ranald had hopefully
looked forward. She was in a species of mental fever. So passed the
day--the day she knew that she could not meet Bevil--and the short
winter evening was passing into another night, when the ringing of
the door bell gave her a kind of electric shock, so thoroughly was
her whole nervous system shaken.
The hour was a dark and gloomy one; snow flakes were falling athwart
the dreary landscape of leafless trees, and the north wind moaned
sadly round old Chilcote and its giant beeches, with a wail that
seemed consonant with disasters impending there, when Lord Cadbury
arrived, by chance as it seemed, but in reality to see the effect of
the bomb he had fired from the office of Mr. Solomon Slagg, in St.
Clement's Lane.
The curtains had been drawn over the windows by the tiny little hands
of Daisy Prune; a coal fire blazed pleasantly in the grate, and threw
a ruddy glow over all the panelled room and the family portraits,
particularly on those of the two Cavalier brothers, looking so proud
and defiant in their gorgeous costume, that ere long would be finding
their way to the brokers in Wardour Street or elsewhere.
Sir Ranald and Alison sat alone--alone in their misery--when the peer
came jauntily in, and took in the whole situation at a glance--the
poor girl, with all her rare beauty, looking utterly disconsolate;
the bankrupt father, with all his pride, looking utterly desperate!
Alison was seated, or rather crouching, on a black bearskin rug by
Sir Ranald's side--one arm caressingly thrown over his knees, and she
was in the act of touching his wrinkled hand with hers with a
fondness pretty to see, and then he stooped to take her face between
them both and looked into her blue-grey eyes wistfully.
They formed a lovely picture, but it touched not the heart of my Lord
Cadbury of Cadbury Court.
The bezique cards lay on the table close by, where old Archie had
placed them as usual; but they were unnoticed now. Father and
daughter were quite past playing their quiet game together.
Alison, as if the visitor's presence was to her insupportable, arose,
and muttering some excuse, she knew not what, withdrew to her own
room.
In Sir Ranald's eyes there was a passionate and despairing expression
of pain that wrung the very soul of Alison; but still, she thought,
why should the love of her youth, and why should _her_ whole future
life be sacrificed for one who had enjoyed his long life to the full,
and all because her grandfather had been, like her father, a
spendthrift!
Cadbury took in the whole situation; all that he anticipated had come
to pass; the result was exactly what he had foreseen, and he now
hoped that he would be able to triumph over Alison, whose repugnance
for him piqued his pride and excited his revenge.
'What is the matter, Cheyne--you look seriously unwell?' said he,
with well-feigned interest.
'You find me a sorely broken man,' replied Sir Ranald, in a hollow
voice, as he took the hand of his visitor and begged him to be
seated. 'Ruin has overtaken me at last, Cadbury.'
'I think I can guess,' said the latter, tugging at his long white
moustaches; 'but tell me in what form.'
In a few words, but with intense shame and mortification of spirit,
Sir Ranald told of Slagg's threatening letter, and of all that his
listener had been aware of days before.
'And these acceptances must be met?'
'But how, Cadbury--how? I might as well attempt to make a river run
up a hill.'
'What is before you?' asked the peer, a cunning smile twinkling in
his eyes, unseen by his visitor.
'Death or disgrace!'
'Disgrace in what fashion?'
'Arrest or flight.'
Cadbury continued to pull each of his moustaches in a kind of nervous
way, and after a minute's silence he said, with a kind of laugh,
'I think I can help you.'
'I am not a man who has been used to seek help from others,' said Sir
Ranald, with a little of his old pride of bearing.
Lord Cadbury coughed and smiled as he thought of more than one cheque
given to the speaker, and by the latter apparently forgotten.
'Under this terrible pressure, have you spoken of my proposal to--to
Miss Cheyne?' he asked, bluntly.
'Yes.'
'And with what result--for she knows what I can do, if I choose?'
'None--none!'
'Even to save you, she will not marry me?'
'No.'
'No!'
'At least, I have totally failed to extract an answer from her.'
Lord Cadbury's ferret-like eyes flashed; he actually ground his teeth
and clenched his coarse, vulgar hands.
'Look here, Cheyne--if I take up your paper and pay Slagg, could you
not force her--I say, force----'
'Hush--she might fall ill and die, as her mother died, of a decline,'
groaned Sir Ranald.
'Oh! not a bit, not a bit,' said Cadbury; 'but change of air will do
her good. Let us get her out of this place, anyway.'
'The fact is, she has a fancy for that infantry fellow, Bevil Goring,
at Aldershot,' said Sir Ranald, who carefully omitted to state that
Alison had admitted her engagement.
'The devil--but I don't need to be told that,' exclaimed Cadbury,
angrily; 'yet we must eradicate that fancy, and sharply too.'
'But how?'
'Take her over to the Continent. Let us get her on board my yacht,
with you as her protector, and all will come right in the end, and
I'll leave _you_ ashore somewhere when you least suspect it,' was
Cadbury's concluding thought.
'But these bills that Slagg holds----'
'Are not in his possession now.'
'In whose, then?' asked Sir Ranald, with fresh alarm.
'In mine.'
'Yours?'
'Yes--look here.'
Cadbury opened his pocket-book and laid before the startled eyes of
Sir Ranald eight or nine bills and promissory notes, all of which he
knew but too well.
'How comes this pass?' he asked, with a bewildered air, as he passed
a hand across his forehead.
'I know Solomon Slagg. I knew him to my cost ere I came to the
title. You mentioned that he had acceptances of yours. I got them
all up, and trust that in quietude Alison will end this nonsense and
become Lady Cadbury.'
Sir Ranald shook his head and sank back in his chair.
'If I put these papers in the fire, will you stick to my plan of
getting her on board my yacht, and leaving the rest to time and to
me?' asked Cadbury, in a voice that intensity rendered husky.
'Yes,' replied Sir Ranald, in a faint voice, while eyeing the fatal
documents as if they had serpent-like fascination for him.
'Your hand upon it.'
Sir Ranald put his cold, thin hand in the peer's rough and pudgy one,
and in another moment the documents were vanishing in the fire.
Sir Ranald seemed as one in a dream; he could scarcely believe his
senses, and that he was thus freed from those encumbrances, the
sudden destruction of which had not been a part of Cadbury's plan on
the day he visited Slagg, but was an afterthought to produce a
species of dramatic situation, and win, perhaps, through fear or
gratitude, what Alison would never accord him from love.
He had now, he thought--for he well knew his man--secured the
livelong gratitude and trust of her father; and through her filial
love of the latter, and the peril which she would still be led to
suppose was menacing him, he would attain the means of getting her
away and controlling her movements.
It is an old aphorism which says with truth that a man is usually
more inclined to feel kindly towards one on whom he has conferred
favours than to one from whom he has received them; thus, barely had
Sir Ranald seen the last of his blue paper shrivel up in the flames,
and thus felt a load lifted off his mind, when his natural sense of
gratitude jarred with his equally natural constitutional pride, which
revolted at the idea of being favoured or protected by any man.
However, they mutually resolved, after Sir Ranald had poured forth
his expressions of gratitude, with promises to refund whenever it was
in his power to do so, that Alison should be kept in ignorance of
what had been done with the bills till they had her on board the
yacht, when they both hoped to count upon her gratitude; and now,
when the pressure of the present danger had passed away, Sir Ranald
felt more than ever annoyance, even rage, at his daughter's folly and
obstinacy--folly in permitting herself to be swayed by a regard for
Goring, and obstinacy in declining the proposal of Cadbury.
'And now that is arranged,' said the latter, 'I'll telegraph to Tom
Llanyard to get the _Firefly_ into Southampton Water. We can take
the train at Basingstoke and be off to-morrow, bag and baggage.
Pension off or pay off that old Scotch fellow, Auchindoir--he is not
worth his salt, and would only be in the way on board the _Firefly_;
ditto with old Prune your housekeeper. We'll take Daisy with us,
however, as Alison must have a maid; and, until we are at sea, watch
well that she has no means of posting letters.'
Now that the keen and aching sense of immediate danger had passed
away, or been replaced by gratitude and thankfulness, Sir Ranald's
spirit, in addition to his annoyance with Alison, writhed under the
part he found himself compelled to act, in silently permitting Lord
Cadbury to direct his daughter's movements and to arrange their
household matters.
But now the packing and preparations for departure began that very
night, and were resumed with fresh energy on the following day,
Alison toiling with a will in the selection of her father's wardrobe
and her own. Alas! there was but little in either to make the
selection difficult, sorrow for the sudden separation from Goring on
one hand being tempered on the other by a belief that immediate
departure alone could save Sir Ranald from the peril that menaced him
but yesterday; and so closely was she watched, and so much were her
movements hampered, that she was totally without an opportunity for
writing or dispatching even the smallest note to Aldershot.
'And sae you're gaun awa', and without me?' said Archie, rather
reproachfully, to Sir Ranald.
'Yes; from here, certainly.'
'Where to?'
'God knows where to,' was the absent response.
'Back to Essilmont, maybe?'
'In time, perhaps, Archie; in time, but not now,' said Sir Ranald,
with a bitter sigh.
'Tak' tent, Sir Ranald; for gudesake gang hooly. Dinna wade if ye
canna see the bottom,' resumed Archie, in a low and confidential
voice; 'and beware ye o' that Lord Cadbury. I ken a spune frae a
stot's horn as weel as maist men, and I distrust him sairly.'
'That I do not. He has just been a good friend to me, Archie; and
now a word in your ear--when I want advice from you concerning my
friends or my affairs, I shall condescend to ask it.'
The old servitor looked abashed and crushed. He bowed very low, and
withdrew in silence.
At last the hour of departure came, and Lord Cadbury's carriage and a
light luggage-van were at the door; and, ere Alison was assisted into
the former, she shook old Archie's hand, and then with a sudden
impulse kissed his cheek, for she had known Archie from her infancy.
Thus he seemed to her as a part and parcel of Essilmont; and, when
the carriage rolled away with her in it, the old man lifted up his
hands and voice and wept as only the aged and the hopeless weep.
'Poor girl!' thought Cadbury, with a grimace, when after a time there
came a distant view of Aldershot, with its camp of huts, its church
spire, and Twesildown Hill, 'she'll hold, I suppose, for a time, to
her little rag of fidelity--her promise to that fellow Goring in the
infantry lines; but, _faute de mieux_, we shall cure her of that. We
shall see what we shall see, when an hour on board the _Firefly_.'
Well did Alison know where Aldershot lay, but, conscious that her
tormentor's keen eyes were upon her, she turned hers away and gazed
steadily in the opposite direction.
'I thought I had bidden good-bye to the world, Cadbury,' said Sir
Ranald, with the nearest approach to a smile Alison had seen on his
thin, worn face for some time past; 'and here I am about to see it
again in your yacht. Alison will require some additions to her
wardrobe, I fear, but we have no time for that; and though she has
Daisy for her attendant, I should like her also to have the society
of some lady friend--do you know of one?'
Cadbury looked perplexed.
'What need of a lady friend or chaperon when you, her own father, are
with her? Besides, we are close run for time, and Llanyard awaits us
at Southampton,' he replied, almost with irritation.
'I have been engaged in many little affairs,' he grumbled in thought,
as he recalled the burned bills and the enormous cost, 'but never in
a "love chase" so expensive as this! I am in for it now, however,
and may as well go through with it; and what will the clubs say when
they hear that I am off to see the Continent with old Cheyne's pretty
daughter?'
The veteran lover chuckled in his vanity at this, and, ideas of
marriage apart, he actually began to scheme how he might 'drop' Sir
Ranald somewhere on the Continent, compromise the girl in some way,
and thus revenge himself on her and Goring too.
He had scarcely made up his mind yet in what direction to sail at
that inclement season, but, wherever it was, another route would be
announced in the papers, to throw adventurous lovers off the scent.
CHAPTER XVII.
MORE MYSTERY.
Bevil Goring was greatly perplexed and bewildered by the sudden
disappearance of the household at Chilcote, and in quest of
information rode over to Mrs. Trelawney at the Grange, and she
expressed herself as much surprised as himself at their abrupt
departure, but she knew only a little more on the subject than he did.
The baronet and his daughter had left England in Lord Cadbury's yacht
the _Firefly_ several days ago.
'Gone! sailed thus suddenly without a letter of explanation, of
farewell, or the time of her return being even hinted to me,' were
Goring's natural thoughts.
'And what about Lord Cadbury?' he asked.
'Oh! he has gone too; the Court is shut up,' replied Mrs. Trelawney,
with a faint approach to a smile.
'Gone too!' replied Goring, more mystified than ever.
Was she yielding to the pressure put upon her by Sir Ranald--yielding
after all?
'And for where has the party sailed?' he asked.
'There is no party, on board, I understand, but only Lord Cadbury,
Alison, and her father; and whither they have gone no one knows--they
decamped so hurriedly. But you, at least, will certainly hear in
time,' said Mrs. Trelawney, with a soft smile, as she knew well how
deep was the interest Goring and Miss Cheyne had in each other.
'I am indeed surprised that--that Alison did not write about the
whole affair to me.'
'Perhaps she did not know in time, or her letter may not have
been--may have from some cause miscarried. So whether they are
seeking the fiords of Norway or the source of the Nile we cannot
know.'
'And who was your informant so far, Mrs. Trelawney?'
'Old Mrs. Rebecca Prune, who came with a farewell message from Alison
to me--a circumstance which I thought strange, as courtesy required
that she should have called, or at least written.'
'And there was none for me?'
'None. I assure you, Captain Goring, I miss Alison very much, and so
does my child here, little Netty.'
'Ah--little Netty, whose "flower-like beauty," as he calls it, Dalton
is never weary praising.'
Mrs. Trelawney's colour heightened for a moment, her long lashes
flickered, but she merely said,
'How is Captain Dalton? I have not seen him for some time.'
'Very well--but low-spirited apparently,' replied Goring, who thought
that 'she seemed interested in poor Tony after all.'
After a pause--
'Dalton is my dearest friend, Mrs. Trelawney, and, as the confidant
of his secrets, he has not concealed from me his deep admiration and
love of yourself.'
Mrs. Trelawney's bright hazel eyes sparkled, and her bosom heaved,
while an undoubtedly joyous expression spread over all her animated
face.
'You will pardon me for saying this, when I know that you are the
friend of Alison Cheyne, whom I love with my whole life, and shall
follow over the world if I can trace her!' said Goring, whose voice
trembled with emotion that sprang from love and anger.
'I do love sweet Alison very dearly.'
'And poor Dalton,' said Goring, anxious to plead his friend's cause;
'can you not love him as he deserves to be?'
'I have not said so,' replied Mrs. Trelawney, now laughing
excessively, and added, 'what an odd question for a gentleman
visitor!'
'Do pardon me; but will you give him time to hope--through me?'
'Please not to suggest this, Captain Goring.'
'Why?
'There is--I know--a secret in his life--he knows it too--a secret
that in some measure fetters alike his words and his actions.'
'Good heavens! and this secret?'
'Is mine also--I have the key to it.'
'Yours!'
'Yes--you look perplexed--even distressed; nevertheless it is so,'
she rejoined, tapping the floor, as if impatient, with a slim and
pretty foot.
'Will it ever be unravelled?'
'Yes--very soon now, perhaps.'
'But when?'
'When the proper time comes. Till then, Captain Goring, I shall
trust to your friendship for myself and Captain Dalton not to attempt
to probe it, or act the umpire or match-maker between us.'
She said this emphatically, and with one of her sweetest smiles,
while her soft white hand was placed confidently in that of Goring.
'I shall be silent as the grave,' said he. 'I have suspected
something of this kind. At times a great gloom comes over poor Tony;
there has been some mystery about his early life; what, I cannot
divine; but it drove him into the ranks, and made him for years
loathe England and English society, which he avoided as much as
possible. He seems to have got over that whim now, and to you I look
forward as the means of effecting a perfect cure.'
She gave Goring one of her soft and inexplicable smiles, and then,
drooping her eyelids said, with a sigh, but apparently one of
pleasure,
'You expect too much from me, Captain Goring.'
Mrs. Trelawney promised him, the moment she could obtain, through any
source, some tidings of Alison's whereabouts, to let him know, and he
bade her adieu with his mind full of doubt and anxiety--not doubt of
Alison's faith, but of their mutual future; and anxiety for the
annoyances to which she might be subjected, and the pressure that
might in many ways be put upon her.
That Cadbury was in her society was an irritating circumstance; but a
peer of the realm was some one of consequence, and his movements
would ere long most probably be a clue to hers.
Mrs. Trelawney's mysterious hints about her knowledge of Dalton's
past life gave Goring some food for reflection, and he knew not what
to think of them.
'So--she seems to have refused Tony, as she did Jerry Wilmot; by
Jove, she must be difficult to please!' thought he, as he turned his
horse in the direction of Aldershot, often giving a long, earnest,
and hopeless farewell glance at the old trysting-place beside the
beeches.
But Jerry by this time had quite got over his fancy for Mrs.
Trelawney, and found a new divinity in the person of her friend, Miss
Bella Chevenix, whom he had known from her girlhood, but who now
became invested with new and sudden interest to him.
Days passed slowly in succession now, but to Goring there came no
tidings of the absent one. Thus life in the winter camp at Aldershot
became an intolerable bore to him, and he longed for action of any
kind; but now rumours went abroad that troubles were in store at the
Cape, and the regiment would be one of the first dispatched to Africa.
CHAPTER XVIII.
WILMOTHURST.
His changed mood of mind did not escape the attention of his friend
Jerry Wilmot, who said to him one day,
'My people at Wilmothurst are getting up a spread, or a dinner, or
both, in honour of my august appearance in this world some
five-and-twenty years ago. Get leave with me from the Colonel, and
we'll start by train from Farnborough. Tell your man to throw your
things together; O'Farrel is packing mine, and I am just going to the
orderly-room about it.'
Goring agreed to this. The colonel readily granted a few weeks'
leave to both, as the spring drills were a long way off, or the
alternate mud and dust of the Long Valley were not sufficiently deep
for military manœuvres; and they started for Wilmothurst, which
was situated in one of the prettiest and most wooded parts of
Hampshire, Goring being glad of anything that drew him from his own
thoughts and aided him to kill the harassing time.
Jerry's man secured their seats and saw their luggage duly placed in
the van.
'Now, O'Farrel,' said he, as the latter saluted and retired, 'don't
get drunk at the "Tumble-down-Dick," or you'll never be the Sultan of
Turkey.'
Farnborough Station was soon left far behind; Fleet, with its pond
and moorlands; Winchfield, Basingstoke, with its market and
town-hall. The carriage from Wilmothurst met them at a station some
miles eastward of Salisbury, and the short winter evening saw them
deposited at the _porte-cochère_ of the stately modern mansion, which
occupied the site of an ancient one, and of which Jerry was the lord
and owner.
'A fine place this, Jerry,' exclaimed Goring as they alighted; 'the
grounds are beautiful.'
'Yes, but the devil of it is that the lands are mortgaged, I believe,
to an awful extent; my father was a man of expensive habits and
tastes. The old lady _ma mère_ hopes, nay, never doubts, that I
shall, with my handsome figure and rare accomplishments, pick up an
heiress, as if such prizes were to be found like pips on every hedge;
but I have my own fancy to consult in the matter of marriage.'
And Jerry laughed softly as he looked at his watch and added,
'Now to dress for dinner, and then I shall introduce you to the
ladies in the drawing-room.'
Jerry had, during the last few weeks, especially since his fancy for
Mrs. Trelawney had been cooled by her laughing repulse of his suit,
gone much after Bella Chevenix, a former flame, wherever he had met
her--a young lady of whom we shall have much to tell anon--but, as
yet, he had given no token of his actual feelings towards her, save a
rather marked attention, which she--knowing the views, the
necessities, and, more than all, the general bearing of Lady Julia
Wilmot towards herself--had never in any way encouraged.
Goring followed up the stately, richly-carpeted, and warmly-lighted
staircase the valet, who conducted him to his room, where he found
his clothes already unpacked, his evening costume placed on a
clothes-rail before a blazing fire, and, as he turned to the great
mirror and magnificent toilette table, he thought, with a repining
sigh, if something like these luxurious surroundings of which Jerry
made so light were his, how different might be the fate or fortune of
his engagement with Alison Cheyne.
With soldier-like rapidity he and Jerry made the necessary changes in
their costume; the latter tapped at his door, and together they
descended to the spacious drawing-room, before the blazing fire in
which, at the end of a long vista, apparently of pictures, pilasters,
and window-draperies, two ladies were seated.
Lady Julia Wilmot (she was an Earl's daughter) received them with a
stately grace peculiar to herself, but she was too well-bred to
display the least warmth of manner; and Jerry kissed her cheek, then
her firm, white hand, and, after introducing 'Goring of Ours,'
saluted his pretty cousin.
Lady Julia was a fine-looking woman past her fortieth year, but still
very handsome, her complexion brilliantly pure, her face and forehead
without a line, for thought and care had been alike unknown to her
since she left her cradle. Her delicately pencilled black eyebrows
and general outline of features were decidedly what are deemed
aristocratic, and she gave her hand to Goring, while receiving
somewhat frigidly Jerry's kiss upon her white cheek.
She was not emotional evidently, and deemed that any exhibition of
pleasure on seeing her only son after an absence of a few months
would be 'bad form.'
Emily Wilmot was decidedly a pretty girl, with blond hair, light blue
eyes, a rather _retroussé_ nose, a cherub-like mouth and dazzling
skin.
'My cousin Emily,' said Jerry, 'Goring of Ours. I hope you will be
great friends, but be careful, Emmy. Bevil is our regimental
lady-killer--has passed the Guards' School of Instruction in the
science of flirtation.'
'Absurd as ever, Jerry,' said his pretty cousin, tapping his hand
with her feather fan, but beginning a conversation at once with
Goring.
Aware that Jerry would arrive that day about dinner time, Cousin
Emily had made her toilette with unusual care. She wore a rich black
silk trimmed with amber satin; ruffles of rich old lace fell around
her tapered arms that were white as a lily, and made the delicate
lace seem quite yellow. Bracelets of topazes clasped her slender
wrists. The colours chosen became the blond character of her
beauty--for she was more than pretty--and yet the whole costume,
though rather extreme, was not too much for a family dinner.
During the progress of the latter, which was protracted by an
infinity of _entrées_ and courses, yet was perfect in all its
details, the quartette, on whom the butler and two tall valets were
in attendance, found plenty to talk of. The expected departure of
the regiment and other troops to the scene of a coming war in Africa;
the last run with the Royal Buckhounds; the county news; the coming
ball; who were invited and who were not, as ineligible; and some of
the conversation on this mooted point reminded Bevil Goring of the
proclivities of Sir Ranald Cheyne, as also did the amount of heraldry
displayed on plate, the china, and everything, from the great silver
epergne to the fruit knives, but it was precisely the same with my
Lord Cadbury, the man of yesterday.
Here, however, it was, 'the genuine article;' on a _fesse_ three
eagles' heads and as many escalop shells, gules, crested with the
eagle's head of Wilmot, given to the first of the name, Wyliamot,
who, according to Dugdale, was settled antecedent to the Conquest in
Nottinghamshire, though, unfortunately for Dugdale's veracity, the
science of heraldry was unknown in England till long after that event.
'Mr. Chevenix wishes to see you on some important business to-morrow,
Jerry,' said Lady Wilmot, when the dessert was over and the servants
had withdrawn.
'All right, mater; I'll ride over to-morrow probably--nay, certainly.
Try the burgundy, Goring; there are Romanée, Conti, and Chablis
before you.'
'The latter--thanks, Jerry.'
'Miss Chevenix is at home just now,' observed Lady Wilmot, with a
furtive glance at her son.
'I know; she returned, or was to return, yesterday.'
'You seem well aware of her movements; but of what interest are they
to you, Jerry?'
'Every pretty girl's movements are of interest to me,' replied Jerry,
laughing.
There was a mischievous pout on Cousin Emily's pouting lips, that
were like two rose-buds; but his mother's curled slightly with
disdain.
'She is handsome, certainly,' said Jerry, emphatically; 'appeal to
Goring that she is.'
'And rather good style, considering her origin,' added Lady Wilmot.
'Well, it is better surely to be all that than plain.'
'_Cela dépend_,' laughed Cousin Emily; 'it makes no difference to me.'
But Jerry knew that it did make a difference; however, he said--
'You, Emily, may well afford to hear any woman praised.'
'But what can Mr. Chevenix want with you, Jerry?' asked Lady Julia.
'Can't say, mater dear--business or some such bother, of course.'
'People of his class should wait till they are sent for.'
'His class?'
'Well; he is only a village attorney.'
'A very fine old man, who has had many business transactions with the
governor before my time.'
'Slang again, Jerry! Does he pick up all that kind of thing in
barracks, Captain Goring?'
'Very probably; it is the style of the day,' replied Goring, laughing.
'It is a very bad style, Jerry dear,' said Emily, gently.
'Yes, I repeat,' said the hostess, haughtily, 'that persons like
Chevenix should not send for their superiors, but wait till they are
sent for.'
'Like Chevenix; how you run on, mother. One would think that the old
days of sitting below the salt had come again!' exclaimed Jerry, with
a somewhat ruffled air. 'As the world goes now, how long do you
think this vast distinction of class and class will last? Why,
nobility itself will one day pass away--nay, respect for it is nearly
a thing of the past already.'
'Nobility pass away!' exclaimed Lady Julia, the descendant of twenty
earls and more, her pale face growing paler at such unheard-of
opinion. 'Where have you picked up such horrid Radical and
Communistic ideas, Jerry? Not in the army surely!'
'I pick them up from the public prints, yet don't endorse them. But
to me it seems that all will go in time, and quietly now, as no one
will care to make a row about it. Don't you see the terrible
tendency of the times? I call them terrible from your point of view,
mother. Even the dignity of the Crown is slighted in almost every
debate in the Lower House now by some fellow or other; and to me all
this seems to foreshadow the coming time when the Crown itself may
fall into the dust without defenders, for there will be no Cavaliers
in England to send their plate to the melting pot and mount their
serving men, and no loyal clans in the North to descend again under a
Montrose or Dundee.'
'And all this is to come to pass because I don't approve of old Mr.
Chevenix,' said Lady Julia, rather scornfully, as she fanned herself;
and, then bowing to Goring, she nodded to Miss Wilmot, and both
rising sailed away to the drawing-room.
Goring read a peculiar expression in the fine face of the elder lady
as she withdrew, and it gave him a clue to some of Jerry's movements
lately; but he made no reference to it, nor would it have been
courteous to do so, familiar as he and Jerry were.
Jerry twirled his moustaches with a momentary air of annoyance. It
was evident that there existed some secret bone of contention between
mother and son--a skeleton in the cupboard at Wilmothurst; but who
could have supposed that this ghastly personage was in reality the
brilliant and blooming Bella Chevenix!
And when, after having a few glasses of wine together, and a cigar in
the smoking-room, they rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room, the
obnoxious subject was again resumed by Jerry and his mother, somewhat
apart from Bevil Goring, who drew a seat near the piano, over the
keys of which Miss Wilmot was gracefully idling, or affecting an
_andante_ of Beethoven.
'The invitations for the ball in your honour, my dear boy, are all
issued,' said Lady Julia; 'and every one has accepted--only think of
that! Every one, and here is the list.'
He scanned it, and saw many familiar names that stood high in the
county, and said, with a twirl of his moustache,
'I don't see the name of Chevenix here.'
'Chevenix again!' said his mother, with a cloudy eye and curling lip;
'the lawyer man?'
'Who else, mother dear? Now, don't be absurd. There is no other
Chevenix in all Hampshire. They must be asked--he and his daughter.'
'The girl is said to look well in a drawing-room.'
'She looks lovely!' exclaimed Jerry, incautiously.
'She was a mere hobbledehoy when you and she used to play at
battledore and croquet together.'
'She is, I repeat, a very lovely woman now, mother,' continued Jerry,
with enthusiasm.
'You have seen her lately?' asked the elderly lady, in a casual tone.
'Yes; often at a hop in Willis's Rooms, at the camp balls, with the
buckhounds, and at Mrs. Trelawney's.'
'Who is Mrs. Trelawney?' asked Lady Julia, languidly, while elevating
her delicately pencilled eyebrows.
'A widow who lives near Aldershot, at a place called Chilcote Grange.'
'Ah!'
Jerry laughed softly, as he thought how familiar his lady-mother
might have been with the fair widow's name had she not rejected his
attention, and laughed him off cavalierly as he thought at the time.
'There is every reason in the world why we must have Miss Chevenix,
mother,' persisted Jerry, colouring with vexation as he returned to
the charge; 'she is highly accomplished, and sings well.'
'Taught well, no doubt--people of that kind send their children to
the best schools now.
'I should like you to hear her voice.'
'Thanks--not here, at all events,' said Lady Julia, shrugging her
shoulders, 'the girl must be forward enough--rides with the
buckhounds, you say?'
'Every one does.'
'The reason, perhaps, she goes there.'
'I can assure you, mother, that Bel--Miss Chevenix--is a very proud
girl.'
'Likely enough--many vulgarians are; but, if she is so proud as you
say, we must teach her what her real position is--the daughter of a
village attorney--of our local agent--the granddaughter of a farmer.'
'One of the oldest families on the estate.'
'Enough--she will make the hundred and fourth person invited.'
'If she accepts,' said Jerry.
'_If_ she accepts!' repeated his mother, with elevated brows, as she
added the girl's name to her list, and tossed the golden pen from her
white jewelled fingers.
'At the last meet at Salthill, she came with Miss Cheyne of
Essilmont,' said Jerry.
'I have heard of that girl--the daughter of a broken-down Scottish
baronet. But all kinds of horrid people go, with the highest in
rank, to these rough gatherings.'
'Glad Goring did not hear you,' said Jerry, glancing nervously
towards the pair at the piano.
'Why?'
'He is rather spooney in that quarter.'
'Don't use camp slang, Jerry--which quarter--the Chevenix girl?'
'No, Miss Cheyne,' replied her son, in a low voice.
'Emily,' said Lady Julia, 'I have added that girl's name to our
list--you will see that an invitation is sent to her and her father
to-morrow.'
'Yes, aunt,' replied Emily, with a slight shade of annoyance on her
naturally sweet face. 'Was it not she who behaved so shockingly to
Colonel Graves, of the Artillery?'
'It was Graves--the utter cad--who behaved shockingly to her, poor
girl,' exclaimed Jerry, with warmth.
'Really, Jerry, you must keep your temper. See how you have made
Emily blush.'
'Mother!'
'You are quite pugnacious in defence of this young woman; but please
now let us drop the subject.'
'My dear mother,' said Jerry, good-humouredly, and kissing her cheek,
as he had now gained his point, 'the male public generally, and
particularly that portion of it who wear the red rag, are rather
subject to the blandishments of the fair sex, and are not all able to
resist them, like St. Anthony the Abbot in his wood at Coma.'
'You make a jest of everything, Jerry,' said Lady Julia; 'but,' she
added, under cover of Emily's musical performance, 'it has been said
that no one knows how people pick up "a knowledge of others'
antecedents from their own careless talk;" thus, my dear boy, I am
glad you did not become entangled by that dreadful Trelawney woman.'
Jerry, the rogue, thought so now himself, but he coloured deeply at
this abrupt remark, as it showed him that his mother knew much more
of his movements than he in the least suspected.
His pretty cousin Emily, the orphan daughter of his father's younger
brother, evidently had a _penchant_ for him; her jealousy of any
rival was easily excited; and thus she shared to the full all his
mother's overstrained prejudices against Bella Chevenix, and, finding
that he was still somewhat indifferent to her charms, she might
doubtless have had no objection to get up a little affair with Bevil
Goring. But the latter was too preoccupied to relish her vivacity or
respond to it, and, though companionable enough, she found him full
of his own thoughts, and at times indifferent to a provoking degree.
When the ladies retired for the night, and Jerry joined Goring in the
smoking-room to have a last whiff, with some seltzer and brandy, he
found the latter deep in studying the geography of the Mediterranean,
a map of which he had pulled out from a stand of maps on rollers.
'What is up, old fellow?' said Jerry; 'going in for cramming again?
Thought you were surely done with that beastly work.'
'Thank heaven, yes; but look here!'
Goring had first seen the papers that had come by the evening post,
and been cut and laid out by the butler. He had, as usual, turned to
the shipping and fashionable intelligence, and to all the paragraphed
news, in search of tidings of the lost one, and had alighted at last
on an announcement in the _Times_ that Lord Cadbury's yacht, the
_Firefly_, 'with Sir Ranald Cheyne and a small but select party on
board,' had sailed for the Mediterranean.
Now this was not the case, as the notice had been inserted by Slagg,
in obedience to the peer, as a blind to Goring in particular, while
the 'small and select party' consisted only of poor Alison herself.
'The Mediterranean,' said Jerry, as he lit a Havanna; 'that is a wide
word--you can't make much of that in the hope of overhauling the
yacht.'
Bevil acquiesced in the fact, and that it would be almost impossible
as yet to trace its route or whereabouts. He had but one comfort,
though somewhat a negative one, that her father was with her; yet he
knew not the real character of Lord Cadbury, nor the plans he was
capable of contriving, encouraged by his own great wealth on the one
hand, and the poverty and age of Sir Ranald on the other, with the
girl's utter helplessness if she were, by any means, deprived of the
latter's protection, now that the stings of jealousy and revenge
against himself, Goring, were added to Alison's rejection of his
hand, with all the brilliant settlements attached to it.
Then there would come into Bevil's heart fears that without his love
to support her, and his occasional presence to sway her gentle
spirit, it might be gradually bent, if not broken, under the united
influence of Cadbury with his wealth, and her father with his pride
and poverty; and he drew many a harrowing picture of promises being
perhaps wrung from her, by which she might eventually be lost to him
for ever.
As it seemed now, she had been spirited away, taken out of his life
suddenly--had passed, as it were, out of the scheme of his existence.
They had been parted roughly, without their hearts resting on the joy
of that future which lovers alone look forward to.
Day and night he thought of her, his lost Alison.
Gathering--hoarding, as it were, in his inner heart, 'as a miser
hoards his gold--memories of passion-laden eyes seeking his, and then
often long looks of fondness turned aside' lest others saw their
glories, and of stolen kisses, stolen from lips that quivered and
trembled for their own temerity and ardour.
He could but think again, alas for the time that has been!
'But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.'
CHAPTER XIX.
MR. CHEVENIX'S BUSINESS.
With all his erratic habits and general thoughtlessness, Jerry Wilmot
was not without a capacity for business; thus on the evening after
his return home he rode over to the village of Wilmothurst to visit
Mr. Chevenix ostensibly as to matters connected with the estate, and
with the decided desire, no doubt, of seeing the brilliant Bella.
The village consisted of a few houses, an ancient church of Norman
times, with a squat square tower, covered with ivy, a spacious green,
overlooked by an old thatched inn with a swinging signboard; and
opposite stood the comfortable, two-storeyed mansion of Mr. Chevenix,
who acted as legal adviser in small matters, as factor, and land
agent for the Wilmots and other county families.
A kindly-mannered and benign-looking old man, he received Jerry in
his cosy dining-room with considerable warmth, and the handsome Bella
fairly blushed with pleasure on seeing her acknowledged admirer; and
Jerry, when he saw the rare beauty of the girl, thought how thankful
he should be that the widow had not accepted him!
At Wilmothurst Bella enjoyed the reputation of being the best
organiser of pleasant picnics in the sunny summer-time, the great
designer of games and charades at Christmastide, the most tasteful
decorator of the village church for festivals, a kind friend to the
poor and all the little ones of the hamlet.
Yet none shone brighter or better at the balls in Brighton or
elsewhere out of her narrow home circle; she was a dashing horsewoman
in the field; but seemed always most in her element when seated over
some piece of feminine work by her old father's side, as Jerry now
found her, in the flower-scented and lamp-lit little dining-room
surrounded by all the home influences her presence caused.
Jerry knew now precisely how Bella was viewed by his mother and
cousin, and this repressed--if not his ardour--the scope of his
attentions.
The haughty Bella also knew from a thousand petty instances how Lady
Julia Wilmot viewed her position in society, and resented it
accordingly, for she was one of the many in and about Wilmothurst who
had felt the sting of that lady's 'snub,' and were against her in
consequence. Thus her first thought had been to decline the
invitation to the ball, which had reached her that forenoon. Then on
consideration came the knowledge that to do so would cause much local
speculation, that many might infer she had not been invited at all,
and that by her absence she would lose the society of Jerry for a
whole night; and the girl's natural desire to outshine--as she knew
she would do--so many there, if not all who would be present, led her
to write an acceptance.
She had done so, and at once began the serious consideration of her
costume--serious only as to the variety to select from, for her
father was a rich man--richer than Lady Julia Wilmot had the least
idea of.
'You are coming to our ball, of course, Miss Chevenix?' said Jerry.
'The invitation just reached me to-day, and I have not yet posted an
acceptance.'
'But you will come, of course,' urged Jerry, looking admiringly into
her bright laughing eyes.
'I am not quite certain,' faltered Bella, and paused.
'Oh, nonsense, she will be there readily enough,' said her father;
adding--'I think I may be pardoned for saying it, Mr. Wilmot, but my
Bella will be the belle of the ball. However, leave us just now,
dear. Mr. Wilmot has come to see me on business, I doubt not, and
that won't be interesting to you.'
She at once took up her work-basket, and withdrew, with a bow and a
smile, and Jerry, as his gaze followed her, and he saw what a perfect
creature she was, so slim and graceful with the pure complexion that
comes of health and country air, soft and sparkling brown eyes and
rich hair coiled round a shapely head, thought how unworthy it was of
his mother to view the girl as she did, and to treat her as she had
hitherto done.
He knew exactly from what her indecision about the ball sprang.
Never before had she or her father been invited to the Manor House
when other guests were there, at dinner or garden parties, and when
they had dined with her and Miss Wilmot, in solitary state, she
always resented bitterly the airs of patronage which Lady Julia
adopted.
'She's going to the ball, never fear, Mr. Jerry, and there is her
reply on the mantel-piece,' said her father.
'Permit me to be the bearer of it,' said Jerry, transferring it at
once to his pocket.
'And, now through the medium of some brandy and water, we shall turn
to business matters.'
'Glad to hear you say so,' replied Jerry; 'I have wished much to see
you, Chevenix, about money matters.'
Mr. Chevenix smiled faintly, and coughed slightly behind his hand.
'How has it been that of late so little has been paid into my bank
account,' said Jerry, 'and that I have had such difficulty in
squaring matters at Aldershot; even in meeting my losses on the last
Divisional Steeplechase, and in many other things; that in fact both
the mater and myself are often short of the "ready"?'
'The estate, you are aware, was heavily mortgaged by your late worthy
father.'
'I have heard that a hundred times, and know it to my cost,' replied
Jerry, impatiently.
'And since you joined the army you must also be aware that, to meet
the many requirements of yourself and Lady Julia, I have had to
effect other mortgages, for instance, on Langley Park (which my
forefathers farmed under yours for more than two centuries), on the
forty acres of Upton Stoke, and on Hazelwood; that, in short, all
these may never be yours again, as I see no way of your removing
these encumbrances, save by a wealthy marriage; and that the good
lady, your mother, has not the slightest idea of the extent of the
evil and all your liabilities.'
'The devil!' exclaimed Jerry, 'these are pleasant things to listen
to.'
There was a silence between them for a time, and Jerry took a long
sip at his brandy and seltzer. With all his admiration and certainly
growing love for the handsome Bella, she seemed to be receding from
him in the distance now.
'I am deeply sorry to tell you these things, Mr. Wilmot,' said
Chevenix, who had genuine respect and love for the listener, and
really had the well-being of the old family at heart; 'it is a
serious thing for a young man like you, the inheritor of a good old
name, bred with expensive tastes and so forth, to find yourself
hampered and trammelled thus at your very outset of life, but so it
is.'
'We live and learn, Mr. Chevenix,' said Jerry, with unusual
bitterness for him.
'True,' added his old agent,
'We live and learn, but not the _wiser_ grow, says John Pomfret.'
'And who the devil is he?' asked Jerry, testily.
'A poet and divine of the seventeenth century.'
Jerry sat staring into the fire as if bewildered by the sudden
revelation--this new state of things.
'And who holds all the infernal mortgages?' asked Jerry, abruptly.
'I do--they are in the iron safe on yonder shelf.'
'You; and who advanced all this money to my father, and to myself
latterly?'
'I did--every shilling to the old squire and to you, Mr. Jerry; but
do not be alarmed--do not be alarmed--I have no intention of
foreclosing.'
Jerry was more thunderstruck than ever. Here was another startling
revelation. He found that more than half of his paternal estate was
in the hands of the very man whose daughter he had been learning to
love in secret, and whom his proud mother so heartily disliked and
publicly slighted.
He had hinted, as related, of mortgages on the evening of his arrival
with Bevil Goring, but this state of matters he was altogether
unprepared for. In short, it would seem as if but a moiety of his
property remained to him, and that the heiress of it all was Bella
Chevenix!
Bella, the daughter of the village attorney, 'the lawyer man,' as
Lady Julia called him, whose forefathers did yeoman service to his,
and farmed old Langley Park.
'Take courage--you have yet time to look about you, and money, if it
can be procured from some other source, may repair these evils,' said
Mr. Chevenix, kindly; but he knew not what was then in Jerry's mind.
That in reality a love for Bella had been fast becoming the ruling
thought of his life; that on learning she had returned to Wilmothurst
he had arranged to return home also, and had made up his mind,
despite his mother's pride and opposition, to propose for the girl;
but dared he do so now?
Their positions were completely reversed, and were he to do so she
would never believe in his love or view him as other than a
pretender, who offered it in barter for the mortgages her father held
on his estate.
The latter was eyeing Jerry, and, having no idea of what his secret
thoughts were, failed to see why, if even a half of his estate
remained, he should seem so suddenly overcome, for he had grown very
pale, and he respired like one in pain.
To thrust all love for Bella out of his heart was now the bitter task
to which he must set himself, and perhaps to replace her image by one
of the many heiresses to whom his mother so often drew his attention;
but that could not be. Jolly, good-hearted Jerry would never
condescend to be mercenary; he felt that he would rather a thousand
times share poverty with a loving little girl like Bella than wealth
with another. Matters had not yet come to poverty--far from it; but
now, and after all that had transpired, and he had learned who the
holder of these fatal mortgages was, how could he speak to her or her
father of love or marriage without being most cruelly and degradingly
misunderstood, and having his object utterly misconstrued?
'And the interest on the mortgages?' he asked, in a hard, dry tone.
'Has been unpaid for several years.'
'Making matters worse and worse. It was six per cent. on Langley
Park, Mr. Chevenix, and that is stiff interest as things go.'
'Yes, it _was_.'
'You speak of it in the past tense.'
'Yes.'
'Worse and worse,' assented Mr. Chevenix, shaking his white head.
'But bear up, my dear boy. I may call you so?' added the old man,
kindly patting Jerry's shoulder. 'Money will pull you through. A
handsome young fellow like you, with your family prestige, will
easily find a rich wife, and an officer has a hundred chances of
success when other fellows have none.'
Jerry had not the heart to ask what the total sum of his liabilities
amounted to, and rose to depart.
'Bid Miss Chevenix good-bye for me,' said he, as he departed in
haste, having just then no desire to add to the intense mortification
that crushed him by looking again on the bright face of the
unconscious Bella--for unconscious she was of what their mutual
monetary relations were till her father some time after informed her,
when the news came to her perhaps too late.
Sunk in thoughts too bitter for words, Jerry rode slowly home through
the dusk of the gloomy winter evening. The barriers raised by evil
fortune, and added to by a sense of honour and propriety, enhanced in
his eyes the value of the girl he felt that he had lost, and rendered
dearer to him the hopes he had been cherishing of late, and which had
become so precious to him.
He longed for the society and advice of Goring over a 'quiet weed' to
talk about these things ere he confided the state of matters to his
mother, who, with all her great love of him, he feared could not be
brought to see how matters stood with regard to the estate and the
encumbrances thereon.
When he joined her in the drawing-room before dinner, the careworn
expression of his face--an expression all unusual to him--certainly
struck her, but for a time only.
'You have been with Mr. Chevenix?' she asked.
'Yes, mother.'
'And he has worried you with business.'
'Yes; his daughter is coming to the ball. Here is her reply; I
brought it with me,' said he, with an irrepressible sigh.
'Of course she will come; who ever doubted it?' responded Lady Julia,
as she somewhat contemptuously tossed Bella's unopened note into the
fire; and Jerry turned away to join Goring and his cousin Emily, who
were looking over a portfolio of prints upon a stand of gilded wood.
To Jerry at this precise time the familiar yet gorgeous drawing-room,
with all its inlaid cabinets and brackets, bearing treasures of art
and _bric-a-brac_, as seen under the soft light of wax candles in
sconces and the glittering crystal chandelier, gave a sense of worry
by its apparent incongruity, as did the very attire of his mother and
cousin by the richness of its materials, the laces, the jewelry; and
he absolutely shivered when he thought of the coming birthday ball,
with its hundred and four guests on one hand, and the mortgages of
Chevenix with their unpaid interest on the other.
To Jerry it seemed that ere long his mother might have to betake
herself to Bruges or Boulogne to retrench, while he might have to
exchange for India if the route came not speedily for Africa.
Bevil Goring, when they were alone, heard with genuine concern the
state of affairs as Jerry set them before him, and agreed with him
that to continue his attentions to Miss Chevenix would lead to an
entire misconstruction on the part of herself and her father as to
the true state of his heart, and lead them to infer that he was only
a fortune-hunter; and honest Jerry blushed scarlet at the name, and
twirled and gnawed his moustache with intense irritation.
Though she failed to take in the whole situation--which Jerry knew
would be the case--Lady Julia heard his tidings with considerable
alarm, and felt her wrath increased against Mr. Chevenix, which was
utterly unreasonable.
'The state of our--or rather your--affairs, as this man has set them
before you, Jerry,' said Lady Julia, 'now renders it absolutely
necessary that you should marry for money, and that at once.'
'Or cut the service and emigrate,' groaned Jerry.
'Emigrate!'
'Invest in a pickaxe and spade, and try Ballarat or the Diamond
Fields.'
'How can you jest thus?' said his mother, loftily.
'To me the nearest heiress seems to be Bella Chevenix,' said Jerry,
not unwilling to revenge her for the slighting remarks his mother
daily made.
'She has a fortune certainly--a fortune won by advances made upon our
lands--but of what use can it be to her, brought up, as she has been,
ignorant of the habits, the tastes, and requirements of our class?'
'She is ignorant of none, and enjoys them all,' replied Jerry, with
some asperity.
'You inherited the estate encumbered, and have, in no small degree,
added to its burdens, and, if you do not make a rich marriage, may
be--my poor, dear Jerry--a ruined man.'
'We are going to fight King Koffee, they say. I'll get taken
prisoner, and marry his youngest daughter!' cried Jerry, with a gleam
of his old recklessness.
For some days now he did not go near Bella Chevenix, who began to
feel a little wroth at him in consequence, as she had no key as yet
to what influenced Jerry.
'Their ball!' exclaimed the proud girl, petulantly; 'I am not sure
that I should go, papa, to be patronised and slighted perhaps.'
'Patronised or slighted--who dare do either to you?' asked her
father, with surprise.
'I shall be bored to death, I fear.'
But the desire to appear where she knew she would shine prevailed
over all her doubts, and she devoted all her energies to have a
costume that should be second to none.
Meanwhile Jerry found the impossibility of abstaining entirely from
visiting the house of Mr. Chevenix, and so days of meetings in
various ways passed--meetings in which their lives seemed to be
mutually merged in that sweet occupation which was not quite
love-making, but yet was far, far in advance of that perilous
frivolity that so often leads to it called--flirtation.
Yet Jerry was further now from disclosing himself than ever, and
Bella seemed in no hurry for him to do so, for she was young
enough--even after all she had seen of society--to shrink from a
declaration, for to a girl there is something so seductive, so sweet
in hovering on the brink, when she, as Bella did in her secret heart,
loves the man.
Cousin Emily was not slow in discovering the direction in which Jerry
so often turned his horse's head, and hinted thereof to Lady Julia.
'But for the dangers my poor boy will have to encounter,' said the
latter, 'I would hail with pleasure his departure to the coast of
Africa, as a useful means of separating him from this most artful
creature.'
Meanwhile an influx of visitors and guests preluded the ball, as many
came from a considerable distance. Like Goring, Jerry was in no mood
for all this gaiety just then, and the latter resented that his
duties as host enforced his presence at Wilmothurst, and consequent
absence from Bella Chevenix.
CHAPTER XX.
THE FIREFLY.
The red sun of a clear winter day was shining on the two chalky
eminences at the embouchure of the Arques, or Bethune, and on the low
tongue of land between them, whereon is situated the seaport of
Dieppe in Normandy, from the church of which the coast of England can
be distinctly seen, when the _Firefly_, which really was a beautiful
yacht, crept slowly along on a wind under the lee of the shore, from
which she was rather more than a mile distant.
She was a taut-rigged craft of about two hundred tons, and whether
one regarded the crew, the fitting of the rigging, or the cut of the
sails, it was evident that in skilful hands she could do anything.
For a Cowes yacht she was curiously rigged, being a
hermaphrodite--brig forward and schooner aft. Her foremast, like her
bowsprit, was strong and heavy, her mainmast long and tapering. Her
upper spars were slender and light, with topmast, topgallant mast,
and royal mast, all like slender wands, yet capable of carrying a
great amount of canvas. Her flush deck was white as the driven snow,
and she had eight six pounders, all brass, and polished like
gold--bright as the copper with which she was sheathed to the bends.
Such was the craft on board of which Alison Cheyne found herself a
species of prisoner, and compelled to take a part in an erratic and
apparently a purposeless cruise. To sail for Madeira had been the
first intention of Lord Cadbury, when Slagg, by his direction,
inserted in the newspapers a paragraph to the effect that he had gone
to the Mediterranean--a paragraph expressly designed to mislead Bevil
Goring; but heavy head-winds had prevailed, and after hanging about
in 'the Chops of the Channel' for a week and more, the _Firefly_ was
standing northward along the coast of France.
Tom Llanyard, Cadbury's captain, a bluff-looking, curly-haired man,
about forty years of age, had been for a brief space a warrant
officer in the Royal Navy. He was a good-hearted fellow--not very
polished, but a thorough seaman. He had a secret contempt for the
character of his employer, who did not care much for yachting, but
thought it sounded well to have such an appendage as the _Firefly_ at
Cowes. Tom found the pay good; the lodging ditto; and the duty was
easy. Tom was a sailor or nothing; and thus being compelled to work,
'the yacht service,' as he used to say, 'suited him to a hair.'
He certainly thought the season a strange one for a cruise; and as
for Mr. Gaskins, Cadbury's groom and chief valet, he utterly loathed
the whole expedition, and, connecting it shrewdly in some way with
Miss Cheyne, he hated her with a most unholy hatred.
To Tom Llanyard she was a new experience; she was so totally unlike
any other of her sex he had seen on board the _Firefly_; and he
had--we are sorry to say--seen many that were rather remarkable.
The weather had been rough, and the poor girl, who had suffered much
from sea sickness, of a necessity remained below; while her luckless
attendant, Daisy Prune, was utterly prostrated by the same ailment,
and the order of things was now reversed, for Alison had to attend
upon her. The presence of Daisy, however, was a source of protection
to the former, as it saved her from much of the attention of Cadbury,
who had hoped that great events might be developed or achieved by the
sea voyage.
Alison's freshness was delightful to the coarse, jaded man of the
world, who, tired at last of extravagant and congenial dissipation
(that would have horrified his worthy father the Alderman of
Threadneedle Street), thought now of trying domestic felicity, _pour
se désennuyer_; and truly Alison was so unlike most of the other
women he had known, or whose acquaintance he had chosen to cultivate,
that the present opportunity gave him great expectations of the
future.
He actually reckoned upon a safe conquest, now that he had her all to
himself; and so far as Sir Ranald was concerned, while piling
kindnesses upon him, and pressing upon him also the best wines that
the cellar of Cadbury Court offered, he would not have been sorry had
a gale of wind blown the pompous old baronet overboard, and left
Alison alone in the world--alone, and at his mercy!
Leaving Sir Ranald busy with a telescope on deck scanning the
churches of St. Jacques and St. Remy, with Le Follet and the fisher
town of Dieppe, Cadbury descended to the luxurious and beautiful
little cabin of the yacht, the gilded and mahogany fittings of which
were exquisite, and there found Alison--alone, as he expected.
How sad and fair, young and pure, she looked in all the brightness of
her beauty, as her head rested against the crimson back of the
cushioned locker or sofa on which she was seated in an attitude
expressive of utter weariness of heart.
'Alison,' said he, attempting to take her hand.
Her eyes flashed now, and her proud little lip curled, as she said,
'Lord Cadbury, when did I give you permission to call me--as papa
does--by my Christian name?'
'Why do you _Lord_ me?' he asked; 'I would you called me--Timothy,'
he added, rather faintly; and at this absurd name a little smile
flickered on Alison's pale face, and a gesture of impatience escaped
her, as she knew that she was about to be subjected to some more of
his odious and weary love-making.
'My passion for you made me so modest and diffident,' said he (though
in reality it was his years), 'that I addressed myself first to your
father, though you were well aware of the sweet hopes I fostered in
my heart, Alison.'
'It is impossible for me to listen to more of this sort of thing,
Lord Cadbury.'
'I can scarcely believe that your decision is final--that you are in
earnest with me.'
'Earnest! Do you imagine, sir, that I would jest in this matter,
and--and with you?' she exclaimed, becoming--with all her native
gentleness--tremulous with suppressed passion.
'When once I ventured to hint of a deeper interest in you than mere
friendship, you did not discourage me,' urged Cadbury, who by use and
wont could make love in his own way pretty fluently now.
'Perhaps I misunderstood you,--or deemed it--deemed it----'
'What, Alison?'
'A fatherly interest.'
Cadbury winced a little at this remark.
'In anything beyond that,' continued Alison, 'you perhaps do me
honour, but in any instance I can never love where I do not respect
and esteem.'
'And have I forfeited your esteem?'
'Yes.'
'In what way?'
'By trepanning me on board this yacht--away from home and my friends!'
'Friends at Aldershot,' thought Cadbury, as he laughed to himself and
said,
'But why so severe a term as trepanning?'
'You led me to believe when we quitted Chilcote in such hot haste
that instant flight alone in this vessel would save papa from arrest
through certain bills which he says he saw you destroy. So you and
he--_he_,' she added, with a heavy sob--'have both deceived me, and
now I believe neither of you. It was a vile trick on the part of you
both to separate me from Captain Goring.'
Cadbury had reckoned at least upon her gratitude for taking up the
bills of Slagg, as he had to some extent won that of her father; but
even this plan failed to serve him, and so far as Alison was
concerned he might as well have thrown his money into the sea. The
name of his rival on her lips infuriated him, and he tugged at his
long, white horse-shoe moustache viciously, as he thought that he had
played what he deemed his trump card, and yet lost after all!
He gave her a glance of a rather mingled nature and retreated to the
deck, where his discomposure of face and manner was so apparent to
Sir Ranald that, after a few words of explanation, the latter sought
the cabin to remonstrate with the unfortunate and weary Alison.
As was before hinted, Sir Ranald's emotions were of a curiously
mingled nature. He felt that he certainly owed a debt of gratitude
to Lord Cadbury for relieving him of terrible monetary pressure, and
he was anxious, for various reasons, that Alison should accept him.
He had no romance in his nature--never had any, and did not believe
that disparity of years and tastes--still less a secret or previous
fancy--were to be valued or consulted at all!
He felt that he acted wisely to his daughter in leaguing with the
wealthy peer against her; yet, over and above all, he loved her
dearly and tenderly; and amid all this was an undying hostility to
Bevil Goring, whom he deemed the real cause of all this opposition to
their wishes, and consequently the present trouble, turmoil, and
unnecessary voyaging in rough and wintry weather.
Though it was a relief, without doubt, to be away now beyond the
reach or ken of the hook-nosed or vulture-eyed money-lenders, who,
like Slagg, had long possessed, among their ofttimes
hopelessly-regarded assets, his bills and acceptances.
He saw she looked pale, very pale indeed; but that, of course, he
attributed to the _mal de mer_; but as for love, no one, he believed,
ever sickened or died of that. A long separation was the surest and
best cure.
'Foolish girl!' he began at once; 'still mooning, and actually
talking, as Cadbury told me, of that utterly ineligible and most
detrimental fellow at Aldershot; I am certain you could forget him if
you tried, Alison. In these days of ours, ninety-nine girls out of a
hundred would leap with exultation at such offers as those of Lord
Cadbury.'
'Then, I suppose, I must be the hundredth girl, papa,' said Alison,
steadily and gravely; for a consciousness that her father, whom she
had deemed the mirror of honour, had leagued with this _parvenu_ to
deceive her, had caused a change in her manner towards him.
'And I repeat that in these days of ours,' he continued, 'it is, or
ought to be, the object of both men and women to marry well.'
'That is, to marry for money,' said Alison.
'Yes; if a girl has beauty and birth, but not money, she should look
for some one who has that more than necessary element towards our
very existence. If she has money with both these attributes, she
should look for something more.'
'More, papa?'
'Yes, she should look for that which a poor girl seldom or never has
offered her.'
'And what is that?'
'A title.'
'In fact, in any way or every way to sell herself to the highest
bidder. Oh, what a selfish code!' exclaimed the girl, with great
bitterness of heart. 'Did the Cheynes of Essilmont always do this?'
'They of old were not as we are now.'
'What?'
'Beggars!' replied her father, with equal bitterness of heart, for
his was naturally a proud one; 'but, as Lever says, "the world makes
us many things we never meant to be."'
'Do you forget, papa, that marriage is a sacrament, and that without
a full and perfect consent it is in reality no marriage at all, and
should not be binding, even though the blessing were given by the
Archbishop of Canterbury.'
'What do you mean, Alison?' asked her father, surprised alike by her
tone and this theory.
'Simply what I say.'
'How dare you, a mere girl, talk thus?'
'Take care, papa. If driven desperate, there is no knowing what I
may--not say--but do!'
Sir Ranald became silent. He had never seen her in this mood before;
and he, of course, ascribed it to 'the fatal influence that fellow
Goring had obtained over her mind.'
So this conversation ended; but the interview with her father and
that with Cadbury are but examples of many with which she was
tormented daily _ad nauseam_.
Alison ere long had fresh food for sorrow given to her, when a pilot
boat brought off to the _Firefly_ some London papers, and in these
she was informed--as if by chance--there were rumours of the fast
approaching war in Africa, and she saw the glances, most meaning
glances, of satisfaction that were exchanged by her father and Lord
Cadbury, on its being announced that among the troops detailed for
service in the field under Sir Garnet Wolseley was the regiment of
Bevil Goring; and so a double and more terrible separation--perhaps a
final and fatal one--was before them, and the heart of the poor girl
seemed to fill with tears as she read and re-read the startling
paragraph.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.
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