'Oh, thank you so much, Archie.'
'I would like to see you married to him, missie,' said the old man, patting her shoulder.
'Ah, we are too poor yet, Archie,' said Alison, but the next remark, while it made her laugh, brought a hot blush to her cheek.
'Owre puir! Hoot, fye! Think o' a Cheyne o' Essilmont saying that—Essilmont where mony a time a hundred o' your name and mair have had their horses in stall—ilk man boden in effeir o' war?' exclaimed Archie, his old grey eyes flashing as he spoke. 'No—it is feeding little mouths ye think o'; but, odds sake, Miss Alison, they'd bring mair gowd in their yellow curls than they'd ever tak' frae ye in bannocks and shoon. God never sends a little mouth into this world without food for it; and, if it is a certain care, it is a sure joy.'
So Archie soon discovered that Bevil Goring was not at Aldershot, and, to Alison's joy, that he had not gone to Africa; that the spring drills had not yet commenced, that the battalion was returning home, and that Captain Goring was in London, where, she concluded, he must be idling in ignorance of her movements, and that she was again at Chilcote.
The year of their mutual promise was already passing away. But what did that matter? Never would they love each other the less!
How she longed once again to see Laura Dalton, whose new name and strange story had reached her through the vicar, and amazed her greatly, for she had a sorrowful sense of isolation and helplessness, and this darkened more around her, while heavy illness once more fell upon Sir Ranald, and again the terror came over her that his life would slowly ebb away.
The scathing bitterness of his tongue when he spoke of Goring often made her heart wince, but could provoke no response from her lips, though they often quivered with indignation at his querulous spite. Though Alison was a woman in energy of purpose and power of endeavour, in many ways she was still like the veriest child—especially in so far as a spirit of reasonable obedience to Sir Ranald went; and after all, as a writer has it, even in these our days 'such monsters as parents indefinitely relentless will sometimes outrage dramatic proprieties;' so Alison pondered much upon her future, but failed to see a clue to it.
In her present small world she had but one little pleasure—her letters from her namesake, Sister Lisette, the Beguine, full of prayerful wishes, loving expressions, and pretty messages, and often containing little religious pictures, with gracefully worded mementoes in Latin and French.
And thus the days stole away at Chilcote.
Unabashed by Alison's steady rejection of his suit, encouraged by the countenance given him by Sir Ranald, who had narrated to him in a letter written in his now feeble and scrawly hand all that had occurred subsequently to his missing Alison in Antwerp, and more than ever encouraged by the latter's missive with reference to the mysterious birthday gift, Lord Cadbury had the bad taste to resume his old footing of more than visitor, and attended by Gaskins, who had now completely recovered, he rode over almost daily from the Court to Chilcote, and was wont to linger long, to the great annoyance of Alison, though Sir Ranald, more ailing and querulous than ever, lay frequently a-bed till nearly noon.
Aware of the trick it could be proved he had, in a spirit of malevolence rather than to serve his master, played Bevil Goring in Antwerp, and his confession thereof in a moment of agony, weakness, and terror, when believing himself to be dying in the Belgian hospital, the rascal Gaskins was very loth to venture within twenty miles of Aldershot camp; but, while believing certainly that the wronged officer of the Rifles would never be at Cadbury Court, he was less sure that he might not fall upon him in the vicinity of Chilcote; thus he was greatly relieved when, in reply to some casual remarks, he elicited from Archie that Captain Goring was in London.
So Gaskins felt his shoulders safe as yet.
'Our fare is no gude enough nae doubt for a gentleman like you, Mr. Gaskins,' said Archie, as he ushered the dandified groom (whose surtout was girt by a waist-belt and garnished with a rosebud button-hole) into the kitchen, his whole face wearing a contemptuous smirk the while; 'but we can aye gi'e a bane o' cauld beef to pyke, wi' a farl o' breid and a cogie o' gude yill, and they are better, ye ken, than sowans, ill-soured, ill-sauted, and sodden.'
'What the dooce is he saying, Mrs. Prune?' asked Mr. Gaskins, in sore perplexity, as he carefully wiped his cockaded hat with a white handkerchief.
'Ye kenna what I am saying?' asked Archie, with contemptuous surprise.
'No, Mr. Hackindore, you must excuse me really.'
'Out of the world and into Kippen?' said Archie, with a toss of his head.
'And how is Sir Ranald, Mrs. Prune?' asked Gaskins.
'The laird is a wee thing dwining again,' said Archie, ere she could reply. 'They say aye ailin' ne'er fills the kirk-yard; but I'm fearsome at times this is the last blaze o' the candle in the socket,' he added, with a little break in his voice.
On the day of this visit Sir Ranald was not visible at all, and Lord Cadbury had Alison all to himself in the little drawing-room, where he was fast resuming his old airs of property and protection, and almost venturing to make what he deemed love in dull and emotionless tones; and Alison, had she not been grieved by her father's condition, and worried by the whole situation, might have laughed at Cadbury's Don Juanesque posing as too absurd.
'I shall never be able to describe to you,' said he, for the tenth time, 'my profound alarm and grief when I lost you so mysteriously at Antwerp.'
'In a place to which I should never have gone.'
'Not even with me?' he asked, softly.
'Not even with you; but I was weary, triste—glad to do anything to forget my own thoughts; but as for your friend Captain Smith——'
'Alison—my dear Miss Cheyne—how often am I to assure you that I know of no such man? If he was a Captain, in presuming to call himself a friend of mine, and acting as he did, he deserved the most severe punishment; and let me assure you that as we were in Belgium I should have lost no time in inviting him to breathe the morning air on the ramparts, or anywhere else,' added Cadbury, in a valiant tone, even while wincing at the recollection of the invitation he had received for a similar 'breather' in the Lunette St. Laurent.
'I thought duels were as much out of fashion as hoops, patches, and hair powder,' said Alison, with a little mockery in her tone.
'So did I, by Jove,' responded Cadbury, with some fervour in his tone. Then he added—'And so Sir Ranald will not appear to-day?'
'No—he is too unwell, and it is only when I think of his condition,' said Alison, with a quiver of her sweet lip and downcast eyelashes, 'I feel such gratitude to the donor of my birthday gift—it has given me so many things for papa that, I am not ashamed to say, I could never have procured.'
'And you have got no certainty of who sent it to you?' asked Cadbury, with a curious and very artful modulation of voice, as he slightly patted her hand.
'No—though I may strongly suspect,' replied Alison, while a painful kind of blush suffused her pale cheek.
'Suspect! can't you guess, rather?'
'Unless—it was you—or the kindest of friends.'
'I do not admit quite that it was; but—'
'Admission or not, itwasyou,' said Alison, with emotions of gratitude and humiliation struggling in her proud heart, while her beautiful eyes looked shrinkingly upward to his; 'but, oh, my heart tells me, with fear, that it may have come too late—too late.'
'Do not say so,' replied Cadbury, in his kindest tone. 'If I have not graces of the person to recommend me,' he added, in a low voice, 'I have—it is admitted—great wealth; if that will make you happy, it is yours—andhis.'
'I cannot love you for what you may have, and you cannot love me for what I have only got—a loveless heart.'
'But I may love you for what you are. There is a writer who tells that "it is finer to be loved for what you are than for what you have got," because the looks and money often run away, butyouremain—unless you die, that is to say.'
'Again this detestable subject!' thought Alison.
'I pity the loneliness of the life you lead here,' said he, 'with your birds, fowls, and flowers only as your companions.'
'And better to me as such, than some people can ever be.'
Cadbury was silent. There was the old dangerous glitter in his ferret-like eyes, and he tugged at his long white moustachios, but ere he could resume, Alison said,
'Excuse me, I must go to papa; I am sure I heard his bell.'
So the peer withdrew, only to come next day in 'his anxiety about the health of his old friend.'
With poor Alison it was too often a case of 'out of Scylla and into Charybdis,' as her father generally resumed precisely where Cadbury left off.
'Is he gone?' asked Sir Ranald, taking her hand in his thin, wasted, diaphanous fingers, and patting it tenderly on the coverlet of his bed.
'Who, papa?'
'Cadbury. I would speak to you about him again.'
She made a little impatient and disdainfulmoueat the name, but her father, heedless of it, resumed—
'In the winter of my days I have been compelled to bury myself, and you too, darling, in this dead-alive, man-forgotten place—Chilcote; but I shall soon be out of it, and you—my poor child—you—you——'
His voice failed him, and Alison's heart failed her too as he spoke in this pitiful strain.
'As for loving Lord Cadbury,' said Alison, with a voice that seemed full of tears, 'do not talk to me of that when you are so ill and feeble, as it wrings my very soul to oppose you. I may—nay, I must—be grateful for the service his money gift——'
'Say gifts, Alison.'
'Well, gifts have done for you; but I can do no more, my dislike of him is so intense and rooted.'
'Dislike! The proverb has it that a woman's dislike is only love turned inside out; and he loves you so! Think of his coronet.'
'A new one—the gilt not even worn by time—a parvenu coronet.'
'Well,' said her father, impatiently, 'it will be old in time; and does not the land teem with parvenu baronets? They are thick as blackberries now!'
And Alison was thankful when he dropped asleep, and she was left to her own aching thoughts, and released from the hateful subject for a time.
When a man of Cadbury's age and proclivities conceives a fancy for a girl, he is usually terribly in earnest about it; but 'of that delicious agony—that glorious fear which makes pallid the face of the lover—the void in life which must be filled up by a beloved woman—what did he know?'
Nothing—or what had he ever known, oldvaurienas he was?
In short, he came now, not to watch or hope for recovery, but to learn howillSir Ranald was becoming—the sooner the latter was gone the better for his schemes. The baronet had altered greatly for the worse in his mysterious and complicated ailment, and the doctors who came—and, thanks to the birthday gift of Alison, she had secured the best medical attendance—shook their heads gravely when they saw him; but not in her presence, as, with professional humanity, they wished to spare the poor girl any unnecessary pain.
Cadbury often reflected with genuine anger on how his plans for separating Alison from her father on the Continent, that he might both compromise and have her at his mercy, had failed; and that he had barely won, by any pretence, even her gratitude. He had spent 'a devil of a lot of money—even thousands one way or other,' and was no nearer his end than before—fair means or foul.
He had, moreover, been dreadfully insulted at the Hôtel St. Antoine, 'by that cad Goring,' and even put in terror of his precious life! And were all these to go for nothing?
Never, perhaps, since Time was born did a coward forgive the man who unmasked, affronted him, or did him dishonour in every way; thus more than ever was Cadbury rancorous at Bevil Goring, and resolved to revenge himself, through the means of Alison Cheyne, if he could.
'As for Goring,' said he, on one occasion to Sir Ranald, 'we know nothing of him save that he bears a commission, which any fellow who can pass the necessary exams, can get now; but as to who he is, or where he comes from, I don't suppose he could very clearly tell himself.'
Sir Ranald, though somewhat rancorous in regard to his friend's rival, was patrician enough to think such remarks unnecessary, and only answered by a kind of sniff. He knew, on one hand, that Goring used the arms of the Sussex Gorings, a chevron between two annulets, dating from the first Edward, while Lord Cadbury was what the Scots call a 'gutter blood,' whose father, the alderman, had, as recorded by Debrett, been the first esquire of his race 'by Act of Parliament.'
As for Alison, while undemonstrative, she was passionate as Juliet, soft and tender as Cordelia, yet none of the bloom had been taken off her young heart by that playing at love which is known as flirtation, 'ere life-time and love-time were one.' Alison, perhaps, never knew what it was, and thus the full harvest of her heart and soul had gone forth to Bevil Goring, and she felt that, if he failed her, life would 'have no more to bring but mockeries of the past.'
She knew—with terror and foreboding of woe—that the great and coming crisis in that life would be her father's death. She had learned now to look that matter in the face, and pondered thereon.
Then the winning ways and sweetly placid features of Sister Lisette Gabion—features that Fra Angelica might have painted with joy—would come back vividly to memory; and with them she recalled the peaceful calm of existence in the Beguinage of Antwerp, where no sound came from the world without but the bells that called to prayer and the sweet carillons of the great cathedral tower; and many times there were when she wondered, if Bevil failed her, could she find a shelter there?
For already somehow he seemed to have passed out of her life, though daily she kissed the engagement ring he had placed upon her mystic finger.
'Papa dead, I shall have no present and no future,' wailed the girl in her heart, 'and what will become of me?'
What if she had to go down into the ranks of that great army which toils for daily bread? And with whom and in what fashion would she earn it? Thoughts like these were corrodingly bitter for a girl so young and beautiful, so delicate and tenderly nurtured, as Alison Cheyne of Essilmont!
'What is he—who is he?' asked the voice of one in authority, of one evidently used to command, and who was on horseback.
'An officer of the Rifle Brigade, sir,' replied another.
'Dead, of course?'
'No, sir, but half dead of famine apparently. He looks pale enough, and his haversack is empty.'
'How comes he to be here, and alone? Poor fellow, he must have fallen out on Sir Garnet's line of march, and been left in the rear.'
Such were the welcome utterances in English which Jerry Wilmot heard with joy and astonishment, as, weakly and voiceless, he struggled up on his hands and arms, and looked around him again, to find a mounted officer stooping from his saddle, regarding him with interest and curiosity, while twenty armed natives of a savage and foreign race jabbered and gesticulated violently as they lifted him from the ground, and the other European who had spoken applied a flask of brandy to his lips—a requisite stimulant, of which Jerry partook gratefully, while joy gushed up in his heart to find that he was, so far as he could see, saved.
And now to account for this mystery.
It is well known that four days after the destruction of Coomassie, that city of wigwams in a woody wilderness, a single British officer, attended by only twenty African soldiers, rode through the still smouldering ruins, and found no inhabitants remaining.
This officer was Captain Reginald Sartorius, of the 6th Bengal Cavalry, who had been sent by Captain Glover, R.N., to report to Sir Garnet Wolseley that he was advancing, and was now within eighteen miles of the city with his subordinate column, the operations of which lie somewhat apart from our story, though we may briefly state that 'the original scheme, and the elaborate attempt of a campaign starting from the Volta river, with from ten thousand to fifteen thousand warriors of several nations, had not indeed been carried out. The native kings had willingly accepted British money, and flint-lock muskets for their men; but their idea of invading Ashantee was to go away in another direction, and make war on people out of the Gold Coast Protectorate, and beyond the range of its policy. Neither at Addah nor at Accra could we get a real hold of the allies, upon whom Captain Glover had reckoned. He had, therefore, been instructed by Sir Garnet to conduct his own reliable force of Houssas and Yorabas by a given route across the Prah, and join our main body at Coomassie.'
In obedience to orders, and to report the approach of this force, at mid-day on the 10th of February Captain Sartorius, starting from a point which he believed to be only seven miles distant from that place, began one of the most daring rides recorded in the annals of war, and for which he won deservedly the Victoria Cross.
Certain of meeting Sir Garnet at Coomassie, he departed without provisions, and, after a rough ride of eleven miles through a wild and terrible country, he found himself when night fell at a village seven miles distant from it. There strange and startling rumours prevailed among the women, for the men had all gone elsewhere. Coomassie, they told him, was no more, and its destroyers had departed.
Captain Sartorius sent messengers to Captain Glover, stating that Sir Garnet would only be a day's march off, and could easily be overtaken; but these messengers were fired on in the bush, and no tidings reached the naval officer.
Moving on with caution, next day Sartorius approached Coomassie, which was still shrouded in clouds of dark smoke, amid which the red flames were smouldering, and was met by a woman, who informed him that 'the king and all his young warriors were in the town raging over its destruction, and vowing vengeance for it.' Three houses alone had escaped the conflagration.
Aware that scant mercy would be shown to him and his twenty brave followers if taken, he quickly left that place of horrors behind him. Believing that he was now equi-distant between Captain Glover and Sir Garnet, he bravely resolved to follow up the latter, a fortunate circumstance for the luckless Jerry Wilmot, who was found in the very track his party was pursuing.
'Come, my good friend,' said he, after he had heard Jerry's story in a few words, 'you must pull yourself together and make an effort, as we must push on without a moment's delay.'
An effort—yes, thought Jerry gleefully, though he was weak, faint, and feverish, for his adventures in the moist and pestiferous bush were telling on him now. But for the advent of Captain Sartorius, what must his fate inevitably have been? He was mounted on the horse of a messenger, who had been shot in the bush, and now rode on with his rescuers. The sheet of water which had barred his way so long they forded, the water rising to their saddle-girths, and then they pushed on, hoping to reach the bridge constructed by our engineers across the Ordah. It had been swept away! But the waters which destroyed it had subsided, and where that waste of water, so troublesome to our troops, once rolled, the ground was dry and even hard, but the odours that loaded the air from the bodies of the slain Ashantees lying in the bush, left Captain Sartorius and his companions in no doubt of their being on the line of march followed by Sir Garnet Wolseley.
Poor Jerry had felt himself like one in an evil dream when he found his limbs so powerless that he was incapable of resistance and sinking on the earth. Now he felt also in a dream, and could scarcely realise that he was mounted, with friends and on the homeward way, for he was half dead with weakness, and, if not rescued when he was, he must have succumbed very soon after. Keenly had he realised the fact that
'Past and to come seem best, things present worst.'
Some one proffered him a cigar—a luxury, to a smoker a necessity—which he had been without for days, and he took it thankfully, gratefully, and never did he forget the pleasure that cigar afforded him; but the toil of the journey, after all the blood he had lost and all the mental and bodily suffering he had undergone, told sorely upon the nerves and system of Jerry, though a hardy and active young Englishman, who had never figured second in the hunting or cricket fields, had been stroke oar of the Oxford boat, and up to everything in the way of sport that was manly and stirring. But he dug his knees into his saddle, and even when his head, through very weakness, was almost bowed on his horse's mane, he thought of Bella Chevenix, and bravely, as he phrased it, 'strove to keep up his pecker.'
So onward the party progressed amid scenery clothed with strange trees, strange flowers, and gigantic plants, with long spiky blade-like leaves, such as we only see in a botanical garden at home.
There was a lurid sunset, and the hills were as those of heaven, as described by Dante, 'like sun-illumined gold,' when the party of Sartorius drew near Amoaful, scaring away all Ashantees who approached him, and then when night fell he came upon a wounded Houssa who had fought against us, but gave him the pleasant intelligence that the British troops were at no great distance—at Fomannah—where Sir Garnet halted four days, and messengers came from the King of Ashantee with 1,000 ounces of gold, and the latter received a treaty of peace in return.
The lonely march was resumed in the morning, and at Fomannah Jerry Wilmot and Sartorius, with his twenty men, after having marched, each with arms and forty rounds of ammunition, for fifty-five miles, overtook the retiring troops of Sir Garnet Wolseley.
Jerry now had 'that ugly knock on his sconce,' as he called it, properly dressed and attended to by the medical staff, in whose hands he found poor Dalton done nigh unto death by wounds, and borne among the sick in a hammock, and ere long Jerry was the occupant of another, prostrated by fever, and unconscious of most that followed.
Oblivious of the struggle of the night march to the village of Akanquassie, through a moonless, starless, and pitchy blackness never equalled; through a swamp, over a precipitous hill, and anon through a forest, where every moment one ran against a tree, had the helmet knocked off by a bough, the face scratched by twigs and spiky shrubs, or the foot stumbled over a great gnarled root; yet the voices of the officers and men rang cheerily out as they encouraged each other.
'Close up—close up. Now then, my lads!'
'This way—this way. Look out!'
'For what?'
'A deep pool of water.'
'Mind that root! mind that branch!'
'Hurrah, lads! Forward!'
And as the dawn stole in the men of the 1st West Indian Regiment, who escorted the party of sick in hammocks, seemed to Jerry's eyes most ghastly in their light grey clothing and white helmets; and it was said that 'the negro so dressed looked like a convict who had been hung until black in the face and cut down.'
And often as he tossed in his hammock, which was slung on a pole dhooley-wise, he would mutter,
'Oh, if Dalton had only let that —— beetle alone!'
Cape Coast Castle was reached by the entire force in pretty good condition; but, as an idea of the extent to which fever had raged among them, we may mention that of the Naval Brigade, which, including marines, landed two hundred and seventy-eight strong, there came back only one hundred and nineteen men.
All the rest had found their last homes in the awful solitude of the untrodden bush.
Apart from sorrow lest he should never more see Laura and his little daughter so lately found and known, Dalton had a great horror of finding such a tomb, and being left so far away; and the funeral of a brother officer, Captain H——, who had died at Essiman of fever, haunted him like a dream.
He remembered how the forest re-echoed to the three death volleys over the lonely grave, which lay in a beautiful spot, certainly so far as tropical flowers and foliage went, and had as a headstone a stately cotton-tree; but ages may elapse ere the foot of a white man treads near it again.
All the fire of the soldier seemed to have gone out of Tony Dalton; and for a time only the ailing and pitiful invalid remained; and he longed intensely for the presence and the ministering tenderness of the brilliant Laura—more perhaps to feel in his the little white hand of Netty—theenfant terribleof the past time at Chilcote Grange.
Genuine hope first expanded the hearts of Dalton and Jerry, and in the hearts of many more, when they heard the pipes of the Black Watch strike up—
'Oh, why left I my hame?Why did I cross the deep?'
announcing that the white walls of Cape Coast Castle were in sight, rising apparently sheer out of the jungle, and that beyond them lay our stately ships of war, and the free rolling waves of the blue highway that led to home and 'Old England.'
'Rescued, safe, spared to see the white cliffs again—home and Bella!' murmured Jerry.
Of his mother, though a warm-hearted fellow, he scarcely thought, or if so, it was in this fashion:
'By nature icy, with all her beauty and pride of place, she is my mother, true; but what has she done for me? As a child, she never caressed me, as other fellows' mothers did—no, by Jove, nor tucked me in my little bed, nor gave me toys or sweets. Did I ever see her read her Bible in church, or teach me to say a prayer at her knee? She only cared to see me prettily dressed, that I might outshine other women's children, but left me otherwise to hang as I grew; and, by Jove, it is a wonder I didn't grow up a worse fellow than I have done!'
With half a world of waters between them, these were hard thoughts for a son to have of his mother; but Lady Wilmot had inspired them herself.
Both Dalton and Jerry were in such a bad plight from their wounds, and the latter especially from exposure in the bush, that the doctors doubted much if they would 'pull through' after the embarkation, as they were ever and anon tossing on the troubled tide of a jungle-fever that threatened to bear them both away to the shores of 'the Promised Land,' with a grave in the tropical sea.
Fondly had Alison Cheyne looked forward to her return to Chilcote, as a chance of reunion with Bevil Goring, as the means to a probable end of taking up the link of their love where it had last been dropped; and now she had to content herself with the scanty intelligence gathered by Archie among the soldiers of his regiment, that he was not in the camp—was in London, but none knew in what part thereof.
In London, thought Alison, and making apparently no effort to write, or to discover her; but she forgot that he must be utterly ignorant of her movements; whether she was at home or abroad; and that she could now receive letters freely and unquestioned, as her father was all but bed-ridden again.
Her bubble seemed to be bursting; and this state of affairs—nothing—was the end of it, after all!
Thus they were both in painful ignorance of each other's movements amid all the ready appliances of post and telegraph, while Laura Dalton, who would have been a certain means of communication between them, was gone from Chilcote Grange, Alison knew not where, but, as it eventually proved, to Portsmouth to await the returning expedition from the Gold Coast.
So Alison's days were passed in nursing and monotony now, and often she and Mrs. Rebecca Prune had their heads together over a cookery-book, studying the decoction or preparation of something 'for papa'—to tempt his appetite; for oftenhehad one dish and Alison another of a more homely kind, or next to none, and though he might have a dainty spring chicken she dared not kill her hens, they were laying so well just then.
Sir Ranald had become, as Lord Cadbury remarked rather unfeelingly to Alison, 'deuced stupid and snoozy now.'
On an evening early in March he sat—as Alison long remembered—for thelasttime in his old arm-chair listening to the rooks cawing in the lofty beeches, the sparrows twittering under the eaves, and the setting sun was throwing a golden glory over the eastern uplands and a ruddy gleam on the square, ivyed tower of Chilcote Church in the distance; and then, without moving his head, which lay back on a pillow, his eyes, clear and keen though sunken, through thepince-nezbalanced on his long thin nose, regarded lovingly and affectionately, the downcast face of Alison, whose pretty hands were adjusting in a vase some fragrant March violets that Archie had brought her—violets which, as Shakespeare says, are 'sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes.'
Once upon a time Sir Ranald had found it a burden—a bore to sign a cheque, to read a letter, or see his lawyer when he had a land steward; now there were no cheques to sign, no letters to read save those of duns, and no lawyer to see, or land steward either; and now, for the last time he began to harp upon the old string, when she kissed him, and asked him of what he was thinking.
'Of what can I think save your future, Alison? who cares what becomes of mine—little as there is left of it, and tired as I am of a life that is too intolerable to be endured for one's-self alone!' was the querulous response.
Alison with difficulty restrained her tears, and in a mechanical way re-adjusted the bouquet of violets.
'Girls—especially poor ones—have only a certain number of chances, Alison, however handsome and attractive they may be,' he resumed. 'You, under great monetary disadvantages, have had one that is every way unexceptionable. What more do you want—what more can you want?' he added, rocking his bald head from side to side, and closing his eyes wearily.
Alison thought she had had two chances, and the most prized of them was now a richer offer than she ever deemed it could be; but this was the one her father chose to ignore as no chance at all.
'I have read, papa,' said she, 'that those "who have neither character nor conscience may drift, or let others shape the course for them; but the great thing is to be true to yourself."'
'Yourself—and some penniless cur, like that at Aldershot! Go—I am disgusted!' exclaimed Sir Ranald, with a sudden gush of querulous anger.
Alison remained silent. She knew not that the fatal end was drawing so near now, otherwise she must have temporised with him more; and she thought—
'But for my love for Bevil, to please papa I might have yielded—so many girls are drawn or thrust into hateful or grotesque marriages by want of money, friends, or a home.'
But when she thought this, Alison was ignorant of what so many knew, and her father should have known—the private character of Lord Cadbury, or rather his want of it, as he was simply an oldvaurien.
'Novels have turned your head, Alison,' said Sir Ranald, in a low voice. 'You expect to be over head and ears—of a necessity—in love with a hero; well,' he added, through his set teeth, 'this fellow Goring is not one—didn't he shirk the Ashanti affair?'
'Oh, papa, how cruel and unjust of you! He won three medals, and was twice wounded in India.'
'Ah! you know all that?'
'He was "detailed" for the depôt, as it is called—so Archie told me—and had to remain at home.'
'Ah! you know all that too!' exclaimed her father, weakly, but in a sneering tone.
Why did not Bevil attempt to seek her out? she thought. Had a change come over his mind and his plans? and was she left in loneliness to dream over the unattainable?
'It is not medals I would have you to set store upon, but money.'
'I care little about it, papa, and shiver at the name of it.'
'Perhaps so; but we ought to care for what money gets us.'
'Should I accept Lord Cadbury with your permission if he were a poor man?'
'Certainly not,' he replied, snappishly; 'even a poor Lord would be no mate for Miss Cheyne of Essilmont—for my daughter!'
'But if she is poor too?'
'Then the greater madness to think of it. But I am weary of this subject.'
'So indeed am I, papa.'
'And I am weary of life too—oh, so weary—but for you, bird Ailie! Ring for Archie—and—and let me to bed—to bed.'
So he went to his bed that night, and never rose from it, for he was dying—dying partly of a general decay of the whole vital system; for he was a man who had lived high, and with whom life, if easy in one way, had been a species of feverish chase in another.
In anxious monotony passed the nights and days. Dr. Kneebone, the Esculapius of Chilcote village, could do nothing for him now; indeed, there seemed nothing to be done but to watch for the end; and as Alison watched, with a heart torn by anxiety, passionate filial regard, and terror of what must inevitably come, again her sweet face, the softness and delicacy of which the pencil of a Greuze alone could have pourtrayed, became sad and pale and livid.
Her eyes grew heavy and inflamed by much sleeplessness, and over all her bearing there spread a soft air of patient suffering with equal evidence of great resolution and fortitude; and yet—yet, withal, with a shudder in her heart, times there were when she began to think of sacrificing herself, if doing so could save her father and prolong his days.
And old Archie Auchindoir moaned to himself as he pottered about his daily work, and often he muttered anxiously:
'It's no for nocht the gleds whustle at nicht!'
Dying—Dr. Kneebone assured Lord Cadbury that the old man was certainly dying, and fully stronger than ever grew the hopes of the peer to possess Alison, the poor and forlorn, beautiful and hunted creature, in the midst of her coming desolation and loneliness. Genuine pity or commiseration he had none.
'Save the puir lassie, he is the last o' the Cheynes o' Essilmont, my lord,' said Archie, in a very broken voice, as he ushered the peer out one day; 'the last leaf o' a lang, lane: ancestral tree!'
'What the devil is the use of a family tree unless one could sell it for timber,' replied the peer, as he took his horse's reins from Gaskins; 'and as for ancestors' (this was rather a sore subject with him), 'if one could raise the wind on them, there is many a fellow who wouldn't even leave himself a father just now!'
And so his lordship cantered off, sitting in his saddle, as Archie said, 'for a' the warld like a pock o' peats.'
Alison was watching her father sleeping, while this would-be lover rode pleasantly home to his luxurious dinner, and, as she watched him, she thought how fearfully wan and gray his face looked; and yet how noble it was in its manly beauty. What a handsome youth he must have been, when he won her mother's heart as a girl.
'How dark it has become!' she murmured in a low voice, as Archie brought noiselessly in a carefully shaded lamp, 'and the sunset was so unnaturally bright,' she added, in a kind of whisper, with a convulsive trembling of her lips and a strange pitifulness and foreboding in heart as she resumed her seat by the bedside, in shadow.
Dr. Kneebone had looked at the sinking patient for the last time, and departed with a very grave face—grave, for his kindly heart was full of pity for the young girl, who now knew that the great change would come before long.
The vicar of Chilcote had read the prayers for the dying, and not without deep emotion, for he was a warm-hearted old man; and after placing the book in Alison's hand, with certain pages marked for her perusal, had departed also; and she—declining all offers of feminine assistance from the vicarage—remained alone, and choked with emotion by the bedside, with one of her father's passive hands clasped in hers, to wait and to watch.
A storm was rising without, but great was the hush of silence in the half-darkened chamber as the hours of the night stole solemnly on; and Archie and Mrs. Rebecca Prune, approaching the door on tip-toe, peeped in from time to time, but were always warned away by a wave of Alison's hand.
On the mantelpiece ticked a handsome little carriage clock, one of the few remaining relics of former wealth and luxury; but the sound it made was soon lost amid the din of the elemental war without.
Once or twice Alison mechanically turned her pale and hopeless face to the window; the bare black branches of the great beeches were tossing on the gale, and dark clouds were hurrying past the white, weird disc of the moon; eerily wailed the blast around the old house, rustling the rain-soaked creepers on its walls, and the great drops swept in gusts upon the rattling window panes.
The patient stirred restlessly; the din of the rising storm—oh, could she but muffle it, shut it out—disturbed him.
Higher it rose, and with each successive gust of the increasing wind the ivy and creepers rattled on the window panes, whilst the great beeches seemed to shiver in anticipation of a fiercer blast.
For many a year to come would a storm be associated with sorrow, gloom, and death in the mind of Alison Cheyne!
The thunder growled, and more than once a gleam of lightning overspread the northern quarter of the sky, showing the tall trees in black outline tossing their branches wildly.
The sound thoroughly roused Sir Ranald, and recalled his dying energies.
'Kiss me, bird Ailie—kiss me,' said he, in a voice like a husky whisper; 'the light has surely gone out, I cannot see you, child.'
Alas, it was the light of life that had left his eyes for ever!
Alison saw how fixed they were in expression as she kissed him softly, most tenderly, again and again, and wiped his forehead with her handkerchief. Then, with hands that were tremulous but firm in intent, he drew down the lids of his eyes—as James VI. of Scotland did, with wonderful presence of mind, when dying, and no other man on record—and they never opened again!
Alison thought he was asleep, and listened to his stertorous breathing, while restraining her own; it grew fainter and fainter, but there was a sound in it that is indescribable, though more significant than any other, that a human soul is on the wing; while his shrivelled hand groped feebly and fatuously about the coverlet as if seeking for another; and, taking it between her own, Alison bent her lips over it.
It trembled in her grasp, and when she looked up he had passed away, and an awful placidity lay upon the livid face. At that moment the thunder was grumbling, and the wind bellowing; so it might be fancy, or it might not, but amid the tumult of sound Alison seemed to hear—what was it?—the wild baying of a hound dying hollowly away in the distance.
'Oh, my God,' she exclaimed, and fell prone, face downward, with arms outspread, upon the floor.
The hound—the hound again! Was it fevered fancy? Could she but think she was warring with shadows—but alas, she could not, then at least.
When she opened her eyes with a sob and a gasp, she found herself in the arms of Archie and Rebecca Prune, and while her little white hand wandered in bewilderment across her brow, she moved her head from side to side, and looked vacantly, wearily, and inquiringly around her.
At last she realised it all, and rushed to the bedside.
'He has left ye, my bairn,' said Archie, in a broken voice, 'but God bides wi' ye yet.'
'Oh, papa, come back to me—I cannot live without you, papa! Do not leave me thus, all alone, all alone!' she wailed out, as she buried her face in the bedclothes, and threw her arms across the stiffening form, till the old man, by an exertion of strength that was great for his years, bore her bodily away to her own room, and left her there with Mrs. Prune.
Fast as the storm drops without, the tears rolled over her pale cheeks, while she sobbed as though her heart would break; nor did the kind old woman who hung over her, and caressed her poor aching head by pressing it against her maternal breast, attempt to check Alison's passionate weeping, which proved alike a safety valve to her brain and heart, till, worn out with all she had undergone for days and nights past, a heavy sleep came upon her.
Old Archie hung over her for a minute ere he left her, and thought what a lovely face hers was to look upon, pale and exhausted though it was in expression. The forehead low and broad, the eyebrows dark, yet delicately marked; the waxen-like eyelid fringed by long lashes that lay lightly on the cheek; the rosebud mouth so full of sweetness and decision.
We must hasten over this gloomy portion of our story, and get, with Alison, into the busy world once more, for her father's death led to many changes.
In connection with that event, the real or fancied sound she had heard preyed deeply on her mind, and the only person to whom she could speak, brokenly and with quivering lips, on the subject—Archie Auchindoir—believed in the existence of the supernatural so thoroughly that he left nothing unsaid to confirm her in the belief.
All people are now incredulous of everything, and to none other but Bevil Goring would she have spoken on the subject—and yet with her it had much of the superstition of the heart in it. Men of science assert that there is no evidence that the ordinary course of nature is ever interrupted. According to their theories, 'there never have been, there are not now, and there never will be, either miracles or opposition. Between the orthodox, who doubt modern supernaturalism, and the men of science, who are sceptics all round, the strange thing is that anyone should arise to express a belief which is so contrary to the spirit of our time, though we have by analysis and investigation laid our hands on many things hitherto sealed'—to wit, gas, electricity, the telephone, and so forth.
Be all this as it may, we tell the tale as it was told to us, and hope the hound of Essilmont, if it bayed at all, did so for the last time.
At Chilcote the first day of death stole quietly on. Prostrate with grief, Alison remained in her own room, leaving all that was to be done with the vicar, the doctor, and Archie, who, plunged in sorrow great as any could feel who shared not the blood of the dead man, hovered about her in a helpless kind of way, as if he would have striven to console—yea, almost to caress her. Was she not the child he had carried often in his arms? but, as he phrased it, 'he wistna what to do.'
And as the girl sat in her room, careless of who came to the house or left it, with the one awful conviction upon her that he had passed away 'to that unutterable mystery and greeting which mortal eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.' Her beautiful face grew all lined and haggard, and her dark-rimmed eyes, in their peculiar glitter, told of many a sleepless night and of much mental anguish.
Lord Cadbury, as we have elsewhere said, hated sick-rooms, 'and all that sort of thing;' still more did he hate death-beds, funerals, and all connected therewith. And when last at Chilcote, seeing that the end was not far off—indeed, the doctors had said so—he went back to town to await the final catastrophe, 'the double event,' that would rid him of a querulous friend, and place that friend's daughter more completely at his mercy—yea, and the mercy of Fate!
In reply to the posted announcements of the death, his card came to Alison in a black-edged envelope, sealed with his coronet in black wax. He did not attempt—even with all his pretences and past protestations—to indite a sham letter of condolence, nor did she miss it.
'Dead—dead at last!' muttered Cadbury, as he sat in the sunny bow-window of the club looking out on busy Pall Mall, his ferret-like eyes glittering cunningly and leeringly as he tugged his white, horseshoe-shaped moustachios. 'Well, he's a loss to no one but the girl herself—not even to his creditors now—the vain old Scotch pump, with his pedigree and his ancestry, his heraldry and his beggarly bosh! But I would like to know who the devil sent that mysterious thousand pounds! It may be a trump-card for me yet.'
Cadbury began to consider his plans anew. He would get Alison up to London and give her a letter of introduction—as companion or something of that kind—to a now somewhatpassé'lady friend' of his, who occupied a tiny villa at St. John's Wood, and drove a brougham, of course, who would 'soon contrive to make it all straight for him;' and he chuckled as he thought of the success that, through her, would eventually be his. Anyway, the proud Alison would find some difficulty in 'cresting up' her haughty little head after her residence at St. John's Wood.
Lord Cadbury could not come to the quiet and hasty funeral at Chilcote; he was 'too indisposed.' Certainly Alison did not want him. She had had quite enough of the peer, and hoped never to see his face again.
'Better awa', Miss Alison, better awa'; his absence is guid companie,' said Archie, who could not endure Cadbury, and loathed his dandified groom Gaskins. ''Od, missie, he's worth nae weal that canna bide wae. May he dee like a trooper's horse, wi' his shoon on!' added Archie, through his set teeth.
So as a hateful dream the details of death passed on. 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' The vicar's voice fell clearly in the calm spring air on the ear of Alison as she leant on the doctor's arm, for very few were present at the funeral, and these few, save Archie, were strangers; but her soul seemed to shrink within her as she heard the shovelfuls of gravel pattering down on the polished coffin-lid and the large metal plate, which bore the name and age of
'SIR RANALD CHEYNE, BART., OF THAT ILKAND ESSILMONT.'
The last of her race, saveherself!
'Surely, surely, if he is in England, Bevil will come to me now when he hears of this calamity!' she whispered in her heart, as she sat in the solitude of her own room when all was over.
But Bevil Goring came not. He had never had explained to him the cause of her abrupt and mysterious flight or departure from Chilcote, and the subsequent trip in Cadbury's yacht, and why, or how, she had neither time nor opportunity to write to him the briefest note of farewell or enlightenment on the subject; but all that had nothing to do with his absence on the present occasion, as we shall relate anon.
But she was brooding sadly over it, while—declining the proffered hospitality of the vicarage—she sat in her loneliness, watching the stars as they came out one by one, thinking of the bitterness and brevity of human life, and marvelling how many millions of the human race these orbs had looked down upon, and would yet look down upon, in the ages to come.
Her father's spendthrift errors in youth, and his petulance and selfishness in old age, were all forgotten by Alison now. She remembered only his love for herself, and even repented that she could not gratify him by sacrificing herself to Cadbury.
Would she have prolonged his life by doing so? That was a problem on which she could not—dared not dwell.
His tenants—or rather those who had been his tenants—far away among the Braes of Aberdeenshire, longer than they might have been, but for the merciful consideration of his creditors—men who, even in this advanced age, deemed themselves born vassals of the house of Cheyne, as their fathers did when the Red Harlaw was fought, or the Brig o' Dee was bravely manned in the days of Montrose—were stirred with much genuine grief when they heard of his death. For, though proud to his equals, he had ever been a friendly and kindly landlord to them, and thinking of them ever, in the good spirit of the olden time, as 'my father's people,' he would shake warmly the hand of old Donald Gordon, the gudeman of a little farm-town, while asking after his wife and daughters by name; though he would barely nod his aristocratic head to some 'earth-hungry' commercial man, who had acquired a fine estate—all won by honest industry.
'Oh, why does not Bevil come to me; if in England, he must have heard of papa's death?' was her ever recurring thought.
And he did hear it; but, by a strange contingency, a little too late. Meanwhile, not much time was given Alison to linger in desolate Chilcote, and she found that, a day or two after the funeral, she would have to face the cold and bitter world—yea, and to face it alone, tender, young, and inexperienced as she was!
Sir Ranald's death brought the last of his creditors swooping down upon the dregs and lees of his possessions, and, with a heart that seemed broken afresh, Alison surrendered to them everything, even to that heirloom which her father deemed the palladium of the Cheynes—the great silver tankard that had been the gift of Elizabeth, Queen Dowager of Scotland, to Sir Ranald Cheyne of Essilmont and Inverugie, the master of her household. And she wept with the knowledge that to have parted with that would well-nigh have broken her father's heart.
The mysterious thousand pounds were spent—all save a little sum; but the last of her father's smaller debts had been paid, and his last days soothed by many a comfort. So Alison preferred to leave Chilcote—for ever, and Archie pressed her sorely to accept, in whole or in part, his carefully treasured 'three hunner pounds,' but pressed her in vain.
Memories of the Beguinage and of sweet Sister Lisette came over her now; but no—no—even if they would take her there for what her hands might do, it would seem like a relinquishment of Bevil Goring and life too.
'I am sure, Archie, I could teach little children—give lessons in music or something in London,' said she.
'And I'll gang to London too, missie.'
'For what purpose?'
'Odd's sake, missie, to tak' care o' ye.'
'Poor, dear Archie!' said the girl, softly, with a sob in her slender white throat.
Accompanied by this retainer, she paid a farewell visit to the churchyard of Chilcote Vicarage, where, amid the bright sunshine of spring, the earth seemed at its fairest, and the quaint, old, picturesque fane of the Norman days, moss-green, ivy-grown, and tree-shaded, was casting its shadows across 'God's Acre.'
She laid a chaplet of flowers, woven by her own loving hands and watered by her tears, on her father's grave—that spot which to her no sunshine could brighten—the spot where he lay, without a stone as yet, the last of an old, old warlike and historic race; and then she prayed for the dead—a prayer, it is said, never offered up in vain; for though the petition may be refused, still the petitioner may be rewarded in some fashion for the generous and unselfish prompting, and we are told it is good to pray for them, that they may be loosed from their sins. So Alison prayed by her father's grave, while her faithful follower, who stood thereby hat in hand, had his mind full of prayerful thoughts that could take no form of utterance, for Archie was a true-blue Presbyterian, and knew not how to pray for those who could no longer do so for themselves; and then the pair crossed the churchyard stile in silence and passed away.
Old, wrinkled, sour-visaged Archie Auchindoir, with keen grey eyes, white hair, and saturnine cast of features, was a strange 'Squire o' the Dames,' orEscudero(as the Spaniards would have it), for a handsome young girl, albeit that she was in the deepest mourning; but no one could be more kind, loving, and reverential, for poor Archie loved the very ground his young mistress trod, and watched over her as a father would have done.
And so, with this peculiar attendant, Alison bade adieu to old Rebecca Prune, quitted Chilcote, and, furnished with a letter of introduction from the vicar, set out by second class for London by an early train on her melancholy pilgrimage; and many a poor girl has thus set forth to earn her bread without the honest consolation and support of a vassal so tender and true.
Piqued as she was now beginning to be by the knowledge that Bevil Goring was in London, when he might have been seeking her, especially amid her sorrow, in the country, she was not without hopes—but oh, how slender they were!—of perhaps hearing something of him in that vast human wilderness towards which she was being hurried.
The whole expedition was now returning from the Gold Coast, save those who had found their graves in the wilderness on the advance to Coomassie, and in the fighting incident thereto. Among those returning were the two hundred and sixty-eight wounded officers and men. The number of deaths in proportion was small as compared with those in recent European conflicts—a fact explainable by the arms and ammunition used by the Ashantees; first, their old-fashioned firelocks and use—not of bullets, but slugs, projectiles which soon lost their velocity after discharge, and were easily stopped after penetrating the body, the stronger bones of which they were incapable of breaking; and lastly, by the total absence of artillery.
The telegraphic wire made people at home aware that many of the Rifle Brigade had died on the voyage homeward between the Gold Coast and Madeira; that the Welsh Fusiliers had only twenty men on their sick-list; and the hardy Highlanders very few, though they had to regret the death by wounds of their major, William Baird, who had served with them for twenty years, and been at the siege and fall of Sebastopol.
It was known in England that many of the sick and wounded were to remain in the hospital ships,Victor EmmanuelandSimoom, or were landed at Ascension and the Cape de Verde Isles for medical treatment; but, as no officer of the Rifles was recorded as among these, Laura with her daughter, escorted by Goring, had betaken herself to the port which is the great headquarters of the British navy, to behold the arrival of the victorious troops from Ashantee, and for whom a great ovation was prepared.
People from London and elsewhere crowded in thousands to witness their landing. In the hotel where Laura and Bevil Goring were, there were more than one old Scottish veteran officer of the Crimea, and even of the Peninsular war, who had come from the land beyond the Tweed to see, as they said, 'their dear old Black Watch again;' and more than one lady in widow's weeds, some young, some elderly, with their little brood, come to look again upon the ranks of the Welsh Fusiliers and the Rifles, though there a beloved face would be seen no more.
How gladly would poor Bella Chevenix have gone too; but she had no valid excuse—no friend or chaperon going save Laura, of whose movements she was ignorant; so she had but to wait, in the secluded village, the tidings given by the newspapers, but with more impatience and certainly less equanimity than Lady Julia at splendid Wilmothurst.
Greater was her love for Jerry than the latter could actually realise; for, with all her past coquetry, Bella was one of those ardent and impulsive girls that a man only comes across once in a lifetime, or, it maybe, thinks so. She knew that Jerry was comparatively safe when the fleet sailed, but she had heard with dismay of deaths among the Rifles ere it reached Madeira; so it may be imagined how eagerly and anxiously she watched the public prints, and learned that on the 19th of March the English people had the joy of welcoming home, first the 23rd Welsh Fusiliers, as they landed from theTamarat Portsmouth, where, among many other graceful gifts, a regimental goat was presented to them in lieu of their famous Indian one, which had died on the coast of Africa; and anon of the more brilliant ovation which was reserved for the heroic Black Watch when the soldiers of the latter came in theSarmatian, and, prior to landing, had gleefully discarded their grey tunics and white helmets to resume their national uniform, the kilt and bonnet, so known to martial glory. And then came the Rifle Brigade and the Royal Engineers on board the mightyHimalaya.
How Laura's heart beat while she clung to Goring's arm and clasped little Netty's tiny hand, when the signals announced that the ship was about to enter that great harbour which is the most spacious and secure in the British Isles, though less than a quarter of a mile in breadth at the narrowest part of the entrance.
'There she is,' exclaimed Goring, 'just rounding South Sea Castle!'
Laura's bright hazel eyes grew dim as she watched the approaching ship. It seemed to her as if it was but yesterday, in one sense, since she had seen the transport depart with the Rifles after her reconciliation and reunion with Dalton; and yet, so strong are the impressions of the human mind, that it also seemed as if it were ages ago; and now—now he was coming home, though but perhaps the wreck of himself, to her and their little Netty—the husband and the father from whom they had been so long and unnaturally separated!
'By Jove, she has her ensign half hoisted!' exclaimed a voice among the thousands of whom she formed a unit.
Goring had remarked this through his double field-glass, yet said nothing of it to his fair companion, lest she might be unnecessarily alarmed.
'What does it mean?' she asked him more than once, ere he replied, unwillingly,
'It means that there has been a death on board.'
'A death!' she said faintly, as she recalled the loving tenor of Dalton's last farewell letter to her, written like Jerry's to Bella on the night before Coomassie was entered, and of the fatal telegram that told of his serious wounds. 'A death, Goring?' she repeated, with a wild expression in her beautiful eyes, while her cheek grew snowy white as she watched the slowly approaching ship, which was under half steam now.
'Yes, marm,' said an officious old sailor, who was regarding the stately vessel through an old, battered telescope tied round with spunyarn; 'some poor fellow has lost the number of his mess, for there is a coffin covered by a Union Jack in one of the quarter boats, as you may see for yourself, marm.'
He proffered his telescope civilly enough, but Laura shrank closer to the side of Goring, who remained silent, for he too had his own thoughts. She could not look; her eyes felt sightless, and her poor heart seemed to die within her with the most fearful forebodings.
The bands of several regiments stationed at Portsmouth were now filling the sunny air with music, and the cheers of the Riflemen, clustering like bees along the sides of the mighty ship, were responding to the united voices of thousands on the shore, giving those hearty and joyous shouts that come from British throats and British lungs alone; and Laura, under all the pressure of the occasion and her own terrible thoughts, was on the point of fainting, as the transport came slowly abreast of the sea-wall, when Goring threw an arm round her, and exclaimed,
'Thank God, there is Dalton—there is dear old Tony at last!'
'Where—oh, where?' asked Laura, in a breathless voice.
'At the back of the poop,' he replied, lifting Netty aloft on his shoulder, as they now saw an officer—Dalton, indeed—with a face white as his tropical helmet, with the pallor that comes of suffering and much loss of blood—waving his handkerchief to them in recognition, for the ship was very close inshore, and Laura was soon to learn that the melancholy freight in the quarter-boat was the body of a poor sergeant who died off the Lizard, and whose widow—believing herself yet a wife—was awaiting him on the pier with a babe at her breast—the babe his eyes would never look upon.
In a few minutes more the steam was blowing off, and Goring with those in his care joined the stream of the privileged few, who poured along the gangways on board.
'God is very merciful,' murmured Laura, as she laid her face on Dalton's breast, heedless of spectators. 'He has given you back to me——'
'From the very gates of death, dearest Laura.'
'Oh, what should I have done if you had perished, my darling?—oh, my darling,' she said, in a low voice of exquisite tenderness as he embraced Netty—Antoinette so named after himself, and grown up to girlhood without his knowledge of her existence.
'Bravo,' cried a hearty voice familiar to them all; 'as Albert Smith used to say, "C'est l'amour, l'amour, l'amour, qui fait le monde go round, O." Thank God I see you and Old England again, Laura,' and Jerry Wilmot kissed her with hearty goodwill.
Like Dalton, Jerry was very pale and wan; but not so feeble as the former—and from the effects of his wounds and fever could scarcely stand, even yet.
The ovation that followed the landing of the Rifles may be fresh in the recollection of many. Balls, banquets, and addresses were amply accorded to all the returned troops, and decorations and crosses for valour were fully bestowed; but of all the joyous entertainments Bevil Goring saw nothing, as a notice which he read by chance in a paper led him to leave Portsmouth on the evening of the very day the regiment landed.
It was simply a paragraph in a Southampton paper, on which his eye fell casually, that rooted him for a few minutes to the spot, and ran thus:
'We understand that the late Sir Ranald Cheyne, Bart., of Essilmont and that ilk, whose demise at Chilcote we recorded some days ago, has died without heirs male, and his baronetcy, one of the oldest in Scotland, has thus become extinct.'
'Who died some days ago at Chilcote,' thought Goring, who felt a species of shock; 'and Alison is thus alone—alone in the world—poor girl! At Cadbury's mercy perhaps—while I—oh, what must she think of me? Why do I only hear of this calamity now?'
So next noon betimes saw him arrive at Chilcote with his horse at a rasping gallop, and his heart beating high with mingled hope, love, and great commiseration, as he knew how Alison idolised the querulous old man she had lost; and again, as before, his spirit sank on finding only silence and desolation—the house abandoned and all its windows shuttered.
'Desolation, as before,' he muttered, as he leaped from his horse; 'desolation, and perhaps mystery too. Where can she have gone, and with whom?'
He passed the gate, and mechanically handled the door-knocker, and the sound thereof echoed hollowly through the silent house. He drew close to the shuttered windows, and peeped in through a fissure in one. He saw the almost entirely darkened dining-room, from the walls of which the portraits of the two cavalier brothers were still looking grimly and stonily down; on the table was a vase, with a few flowers still in it; and near stood a chair and a work-basket, in which some coloured wools were lying.
Very recently must Alison have been there, as the flowers seemed still somewhat fresh; in fact, she had only set out on her pilgrimage the day before, when he had been at Portsmouth.
How full the place seemed of her presence! Yet he had to turn sadly away.
The buds in the giant beeches were bursting already into tender green leaves; the birds were twittering and singing in the hedgerows, and the kine lowed amid the deep spring grass of yonder meadows; 'the deep bell' swung in the distant tower of Chilcote Church; the dogs barked sharply in an adjacent farm-yard; and close and nigh was the hum of the bee, as it thrust its golden head into the cups of the spring flowers in the now neglected garden.
To his senses all seemed unchanged as when he last saw Alison there; and where was she now—his love—his promised wife?
Where again was she gone? Into the hard and chilly world—all the colder and more perilous now that her father was dead, and that she must stand alone in it?
Alone!
Bevil Goring felt his heart wrung by irrepressible anxiety, and he bethought him at once of appealing to the vicar of the parish, who could not fail to possess some information on the subject.
The latter received him with considerable suavity, for he was a kind-hearted old gentleman, but eyed him keenly under his bushy white eyebrows. He had heard—but how, he knew not, for gossip spreads fast in a secluded country parish; yet he had heard that there was a young officer from the camp, who was wont to hover near Chilcote Beeches, and who was eminently distasteful to the late Sir Ranald, for reasons best known to the latter; so the worthy vicar fashioned his answers accordingly.
Bevil, however, learned that Alison had been resident for many weeks at Chilcote after her return from the Continent, and prior to the demise of her father.
Many weeks! thought he, and yet she had never written, as she might have done, to his address at the camp, whence letters were forwarded to his address in London. Poor Alison had not written because she knew he was absent, and, moreover, she was sorely pre-occupied at home.
Was she under the influence of Cadbury? thought Bevil. Oh, that was impossible! Yet Goring began to feel, as Alison often felt, that their engagement—that its many trammels—was a very peculiar one, and would be so while her father lived. Now he was gone, and wealth had accrued to Goring, yet they were as much apart as ever!
'Sir Ranald was dead, yes,' he heard the vicar saying, 'and buried near the ancient yew in the churchyard, where Miss Cheyne meant in time to erect a marble cross.'
'That shall be my duty,' observed Goring.
'Yours?' said the vicar, inquiringly, and again the bushy brows were knitted. 'Poor man! he is sleeping where I know he did not want to lie, in my churchyard; yet he will sleep as soundly there in English earth, let us hope, as if he lay among his ancestors in Ellon Kirk, among mailed knights, mediæval bones, and theHic jacetsof other days,' he added, smiling.
'Where has Miss Cheyne gone to?'
'London,' replied the vicar, curtly.
'Can you give me her address?' asked Goring, eagerly.
'May I ask who inquires?' said the vicar.
'I sent in my card—Captain Goring, of the Rifle Brigade.'
'Just returned from Ashantee?'
'Nay,' replied Bevil, colouring with honest mortification, 'I was detailed for home service.'
'And now stationed at Aldershot?'
'Yes.'
'Ah! a bad place Aldershot—a very centre of dissipation, I fear. May I ask if you are a relation?'
'I am not.'
'A friend?' queried the vicar.
'Of course—one most deeply interested in Miss Cheyne.'
'I thought so,' rejoined the vicar, eyeing him keenly and with a curiously provoking smile while playing with his gold eyeglass; 'may I ask how and why?'
'Certainly—I am engaged to her.'
'Herfiancé? asked the vicar; 'is that what you mean?'
'Yes; and nowwhereis she?'
'I regret—regret to say—that—that I have not yet her present address. She only left this for London yesterday.'
'In other words, by your tone,' said Goring, haughtily, as he rose and took his hat, 'you know it, but decline to give it to me?'
'I do not say so,' replied the vicar, also rising, as if the interview was ended; 'but for the present you will excuse me saying more.'