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 thatsomething was about to happen—the surely absurd story about the spectre dog, which he had so affectionately derided; but now 'something' certainlyhadcome to pass! And what was it?
'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.'
'Ahound!' 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 forgothimselfwith 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?
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 shouldherwhole 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 leaveyouashore 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 theFireflyinto 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 theFirefly; 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 theFirefly.'
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.
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 theFireflyseveral 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.
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 theporte-cochèreof 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 ladyma mèrehopes, 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 ratherretroussénose, 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 ofentréesand 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 afessethree 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 anandanteof 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.
'Ifshe 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 apenchantfor 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 theTimesthat Lord Cadbury's yacht, theFirefly, '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 deadWill never come back to me.'
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 thewisergrow, 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, itwas.'
'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.