'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 butthat. 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 obnoxioustête-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 ownbrusquerie, her elderly adorer, natheless his rank and wealth, had lost courage for the time.
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 thechef-d'œuvresof 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 atendressefor 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 pointtête-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 diningen familleat 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 weretête-à-têtein 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 reformher.'
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 therevis-à-viswith 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.
'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 thetête-à-têtein 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 hispince-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, withPunch'sandGraphics, &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 onhim?'
'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!'
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 mecarte blancheto 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 elaborateentrées, 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.
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 notdivorcée!'
'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, youenfant 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 andpiquante. 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 flashingœilladeof 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!'
'Hehasa 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.
'Youarerightly 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 ofhim.
'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 wasnot. 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 onebête noireassuredly—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.