'Anyway, I was, from a Belgian point of view especially, in a dreadfully false position. 'There could have been no mistake as to the hour of the fatal train, though all public clocks in Belgium strike the hour half an hour beforehand, thus at half-past eleven the clock announced twelve; and luckily for me Lucien was in plain clothes, noten grande tenueas he usually was, with sword and epaulettes on; consequently he would be less remarked, and fortunately the rain fell heavily that night, which might account for my remaining for shelter at the Beguinage.
'When morning came my spirits rose a little, and I was up betimes to meet the early train. How lovely looked the opening summer day. The grass in the fields, the herbs and flowers in the gardens all glittered in the rays of the sun, as if the dew that moistened them had been diamonds, and the tops of the firs seemed edged with silver. A golden and purple glow filled all the eastern sky, and between it and earth the vapours of night were floating. The birds were awake, and the bees hummed and the butterflies flitted about.
'To me the country seemed new and charming, and its continuity of horizontal lines, each rising beyond the other to the level horizon, where in the distance rose the spires of Antwerp, gave a sense of vastness and novelty.
'In different carriages Lucien and I returned to the city. We parted with but a glance at the station, and with a palpitating heart I sought my temporary home in the Avenue du Commerce—my mind a prey to dire misgivings, full of the stolen summer day at Elewyt, the lost train, the cottage amid the pastures, and Madame Hoboken to be confronted!
'My innocent secret made a very coward of me. Never had I told a falsehood, and I felt as if I would rather die than tell one now. I had done nothing to be ashamed of, and yet the inferences were terrible, especially in society constituted as it is in Belgium.
'"You were, of course, at the Beguinage?" said madame, interrogatively, as she came in from early mass.
'"Yes; I went there in the forenoon," I replied, with a sinking heart, though such was precisely the case.
'"And doubtless the rain detained you all night?"
'"The rain," said I, assentingly.
'"Yet it did not begin to fall till after you should have been at home."
'I hurried to my own room to avoid further questioning, happy in the conviction that in six days now I should be the wife of Lucien, and a free woman.
'Let me hasten over all that followed.
'How my brother Victor—cold, proud, and stern—discovered our escapade I never exactly knew, nor ever shall know probably till that day when all things shall be revealed, but he became, fatally for us, aware of it all.
'"You were not at the Beguinage on the night you said you were?" said he, in a low concentrated voice, two days after, while grasping my wrist like a vice, and eyeing me with eyes that sparkled with fury.
'"How do you dare to say so?" I exclaimed, but in a low and agitated voice.
'"Sapristi!" said he. "You shall learn in time."
'My heart died within me, for there was the blackness of a thundercloud in Victor's face as he flung me from him, and matters progressed quickly after that. I was confined to my own room, but Madame Hoboken informed me that several officers came to and fro after Lucien—that there were long and grave conferences—that Lucien seemed terribly disturbed, and she feared there was to be a duel on the subject, and a duel there was, but not with swords or pistols. Oh, mon Dieu! In the agony of my heart I am anticipating.
'I grew nearly mad with terror till my marriage morning came, and I found that no catastrophe had taken place, for Victor came to conduct me to church, and I wept tears of thankfulness, joy, and gratitude, as one who had escaped the shipwreck of a whole life (through no fault of my own), when I was united by Père Leopold to Lucien in the Church of St. André—the church in which we had both been baptised, where we had made our first communion together—that church with its wonderfully carved pulpit, representing Andrew and Peter called from their nets and boats by the Saviour, all as large as life; and the altar of St Anthony, with his little pig; and the black devil, with a long, red tongue, that used to frighten me in childhood.
'The moment the ceremony was over Victor quitted the church without a word, and I never saw him again. He never visited or came near us, but remained sullenly aloof, as the months of the first, and alas, last, year of our married life—my year of joy—rolled swiftly on. His mood would change, I hoped, in time. Meanwhile, Lucien, my husband, was all the world to me; and how proud and pleased I used to be to see our names united, Volcarts-Gabion, as is the custom in Antwerp.
'Looking back to that time I fear that, in our excessive love for each other, Lucien and I were a little selfish. We seemed to have so much to do in our new home—a pleasant house in the Avenue Van Dyck, overlooking the wooded mounds and beautiful lakes of the park—we had ever so much to say to each other, that we seemed to have no leisure for making friends, or even acquaintances, and we forgot to return, or did so grudgingly, the visits of our hospitable neighbours.
'If I am to speak from personal experience no woman was ever more superlatively happy than I, or more blessed in her husband, and every hour that Lucien could spare from his military duties at the Caserne de Predicateurs was devoted me; and so my year of joy stole swiftly away, and the first anniversary of our marriage drew near.
'At last I became painfully conscious of a new and unusual gloom, restlessness, and depression of manner in Lucien, even when he was caressing me, which he began to do more tenderly and frequently than ever. There was something unfathomable in the expression of his eyes, and unaccountable in the sadness of his voice, and in vain I pressed him to tell me what grieved him.
'"Every human heart has some secret which it longs to keep hidden from all," said he one day at last.
'"But you, dearest Lucien, should have none from me," I urged, with my face on his breast, which was heaving painfully under my cheek.
'"That to which I refer you will learn in time—most terribly—my darling Lisette," said he.
'"Oh, why not now?" I urged; "how cruel this is of you, Lucien!"
'"In old tales," said he, kissing away my tears, "you have read of persons who sold themselves to the devil?"
'"Yes," said I, breathless with wonder and apprehension at his manner.
'"And whose time on earth was hence allotted?"
'"Yes."
'"Do you think that after such a bond was signed—perhaps in blood—life would be pleasant?"
'"No, Lucien; but whatdoyou mean?"
'"That I seem to have so sold myself," he replied, wildly, with his eyes closed.
'"Oh, explain—what do you—what can you mean?" I asked him, imploringly, as a dreadful fear came over me that his brain was affected.
'"I have sold myself to an evil spirit, and now come remorse and misery—remorse for what you will suffer, misery for my own future."
'"Oh, Lucien—my husband!" I exclaimed, folding him in my arms, a what do these dreadful words mean?"
'"I have so sold myself in a manner, Lisette," said he, passionately, "and I shall have to pay the bitter, bitter penalty in losing you and life, and even more, perhaps, and all for what is called honour."
'"What awful riddle is this?" I moaned.
'His words seemed to me like some dead language, the import of which I failed to understand.
'"Do not, oh, Lisette, when the fatal time comes, deem me a madman," said he, covering my face with kisses—yea, and tears too.
'"What end—oh, what can all this mean?" I cried, repressing with difficulty a desire to shriek aloud, while holding him in my embrace, for he seemed almost to faint; his lips were a violet tint, and his face was deathly pale.
'"I cannot tell you all that is before me, or what I have to do and to suffer, beyond even what I suffer now, lest you should loathe me, scorn me; but oh, pity me, Lisette, pity me when all is over."
'"Oh, God, he is mad!" I whispered in my heart.
'"I dare not tell you," he resumed; "I have an enemy who is merciless, and I have blighted your life and my own by an act of folly, almost baseness, over which I had no control."
'Unutterable, indescribable was my longing, my anxious and affectionate curiosity to know what this secret was, but next day—on the anniversary of our marriage—I knew all.
'By an arrangement of which all the officers of their corps were cognizant, Lucien and my brother, Victor Gabion, who had challenged him, fought what was called an American duel two days before our marriage. Two little balls, a black and a white one, had been placed in a hat, and each of the two principals drew out one, with the understanding "that he who drew the black one must be numbered with the dead within twelve months."
'The year—my year of joy—had expired, and in the evening Lucien shot himself! Two days before, he had written a touching letter to Victor, praying him for my sake to release him from the penalty he had incurred, but the letter miscarried, it was never delivered, and no answer came.
'Lucien had died on the instant, and he was found with my bracelet clasped upon his arm. It is buried with him, and my heart is buried too,' added the Beguine, sweetly and simply.
Hence it was, doubtless, that Captain Victor Gabion had such a horror of duels, as he told Bevil Goring, and that the memory of one haunted him; and hence it was also that Sister Lisette, after being a Red Cross nurse in the war, finally entered the Beguinage, that she might the better dedicate herself to the service of God and to prayer for the dead.
Alison Cheyne had endured many bitternesses, humiliations, and mortifications during her short experience of life; but, save the loss of her mother and brothers, no such keen and unmerited misery as her poor Belgian namesake, whose strange story gave her some food for reflection, when the world of waters rolled between them.
The sojourn of Alison in the Beguinage of the Rue Rouge was an epoch in the history of that ancient institution, an era in the peacefully monotonous and uneventful lives of the Sisterhood.
Before this sudden illness fell upon her, Alison's health had been at a very low ebb, 'down many pegs too low,' as her father had said. She had lived in a series of excitements, joys, and sorrows of a feverish nature, the joy of meetings with Bevil, the sorrows of their separation; fears for her father's health, his debts and duns; she had to exert herself all day, yet lay all night awake; then came the rough voyage and the catastrophe which formed a part of it. Her delicate frame was being worn out, without the necessary supports of proper rest or proper food, and yet latterly she had been an inmate of one of the largest and most magnificent hotels in Antwerp.
But she had great vitality about her, and now recovered fast.
'We must meet again—we shall meet again!' exclaimed Alison, as she kissed her namesake many times while bidding her adieu.
'How are we ever to meet,' said the Sister, smiling, 'unless you come to the Beguinage, as I never leave it?'
'Time will show,' said Alison.
'Yes,' replied the other, 'time and God will show.'
Alison remembered these apparently prophetic words after she was at home, and Antwerp was far away, and her visit there seemed but as a dream; for three days after saw her and Sir Ranald in England. 'Ours is a nation of travellers,' says a writer, 'and no wonder, when the elements, air, water, fire, attend our bidding to transport us from shore to shore; when the ship rushes into the deep, her track the foam as of some mighty torrent, and in three hours or less we stand gazing or gazed at among a foreign people. None want an excuse. If rich they go to enjoy; if poor to retrench; if sick to recover; if studious to learn; if learned to relax from their studies.'
None of these objects had brought Alison—the creature of circumstances, and of the plans formed by others—to Antwerp, and now that she was home again—or once again on British soil—the reader may imagine how anxiously she longed for some tidings of Bevil Goring (all unwitting that he had been so long near her, in the land of the stranger), whether he had gone to face the perils of war on the Gold Coast, or been detached at home; and the only one who could have speedily enlightened her thereon was the person to whom she dared not utter his name—Sir Ranald.
So poor Alison could but sigh and think with L.E.L. that
'Earth were too like HeavenIf length of life to love were given.'
'I wish Jerry were here to help me,' sighed Lady Julia, as she lounged in a luxurious fauteuil in the beautiful drawing-room of Wilmothurst, with 'Cousin' Emily, on a dull afternoon of February, when the trees in the stately chase were dripping with moisture, and the reedy fens and lonesome marshes, where the bittern boomed and the heron waded, looked dreary, and the edges of the water-flags were stiff and white with frost. 'I would Jerry were here to help me with his advice. Not that his advice would help us much perhaps, Emily,' she added, querulously.
'Advice, Aunt Julia? When poor dear Jerry was here, he did nothing,' replied that young lady.
'And that was all he ever cared to do, Emily; but I have seen so little of Jerry since he joined the Rifles that I seem to be quite alone in the world.'
And she sighed a little conventional sigh, while spreading her feather fan, though a large crystal screen was placed between her and the brilliant fire that burned in a grate of steel polished like silver.
'But matters have come to a crisis with us; through me, I fear,' she added.
'Through you, aunt?'
'Yes, unfortunately.'
'How—in what way?'
'Did you not see how I turned my back upon that minx, Miss Chevenix, at the Charity Bazaar last week; cut her dead indeed, and this is the result!' exclaimed Lady Julia, tossing from her contemptuously a letter she had recently received.
'What result?' asked Emily Wilmot, too languid to open the missive in question.
'Her father will wait for the interest on the mortgages no longer, and we are ruined! Even this house of Wilmothurst may have to pass to him, and we shall have to go—to go—'
'Where, aunt?' asked Emily, becoming roused now, her light blue eyes dilated with wonder, and her nose seeming moreretrousséthan ever.
'God alone knows where; to some obscure watering-place probably. If this insolent fellow, who certainly has not been paid for some years, would only wait till Jerry returns from the Gold Coast, and some arrangements could be made,' continued Lady Julia, in her plaintive and bleating kind of voice. 'House, lands, and all will go to Chevenix, and only a few acres will be left us. We are beggars,' she continued, with angry querulousness, but without altering a line of her smooth, handsome, and passionless face. 'We have nothing of our own—all will become his.'
'But surely, aunt, you have friends. There is Lord Twiseldown—there is Sir Jasper Dehorsey.'
'I cannot stoop to ask, and who would lend me thousands—not even money-lenders now, for there is nothing left in the shape of land to borrow on. Wilmothurst will become the property of this upstart farmer's son out and out. Jerry will have to give up everything but his commission, and go to India no doubt. Fortunately he has that resource left him; but I—I shall no longer be able to maintain even you, Emily.'
Lady Wilmot's emotions of annoyance and anger at Mr. Chevenix and the whole situation took the form of making her niece smart, while in reality she had no very genuine fear of such an awful crisis coming about, thinking that heaven or fate, or something or other, would never permit a person of her position to be so heavily visited.
'Andwhatshall I do, auntie?' asked the young lady, plaintively, but with surprise.
'You may have to go out into the world as a governess or companion.'
'Governess or companion! while Bella Chevenix——'
'Will reign here as heiress of Wilmothurst,' said Lady Julia, with the first approach to expression on her lineless face—a bitter and scornful smile.
'Oh, it is hard—very hard!'
'Very hard forme,' added Lady Julia, who like most of her class thought chiefly of 'number one.'
'She will make some good marriage,' said Emily, after a pause.
'She is decidedly very handsome, and has, my maid Florine tells me, magnificent hair.'
'Handsome,' queried the fair Emily; 'yes, but aunt, this is an age of belladonna, pearl powder, rouge, and heaven knows what more.'
'I hope the Gold Coast will have cured Jerry of his foolish fancy for that artful girl.'
'Her tastes are decidedly rural. I have been told that she often assists the vicar in visiting the poor, and actually teaches in his school at times.'
'Well, she is more in her place there, and acting the village Samaritan, than riding with the buckhounds, dancing at county and garrison balls, and giving herself the airs of thehabituée du monde.'
Lady Julia had in her arms a Maltese spaniel, a wheezy, fat, and petted cur that often reposed in a mother-of-pearl basket lined with blue satin, and she was fondling it as she had never fondled Jerry when an infant—a cur that snapped viciously at every one who approached within ten yards of it or her, but which she always apostrophised and talked to as if it had been a human being; and, sooth to say, it was about as human in feeling as this earl's daughter, so far as tenderness and a capacity for loving went—loving any one at least but herself.
'Come, my sweet one, Floss,' she now exclaimed, oblivious suddenly of her approaching woes, and while it was leaping and yapping on her knee she kissed it repeatedly, and said, in a cooing voice, 'Did it want to go for a drive on this cold cold February afternoon? Then its mamma will order the carriage and take it for one.'
If Jerry had never in his tender boyhood been fondled in this manner, how often had he felt in after-life that much of the attention his motherdidat any time bestow upon him was due less to any maternal instinct or love than to his position and means as Squire of Wilmothurst and to family pride and vanity.
'A letter, my lady,' said a tall footman, presenting one on a salver, and withdrawing noiselessly.
'Another from this man Chevenix already. Again! really, really, what can this person want now!'
She tore it impatiently open, the diamonds on her white fingers sparkling as she did so, and her delicately pencilled eyebrows were elevated as she read with aristocratic surprise and impatience:—
'"With reference to my letter of this morning about the mortgages, dear Lady Julia, take all the delay you may wish. They shall not be foreclosed till time has soothed the awful blow that has fallen upon you."'
'Blow!' exclaimed Lady Julia. 'What blow?—what can the man mean?'
'Read on, auntie—there is something more.'
'"The fall of your son so gallantly in Western Africa is a circumstance to be deplored indeed by all—but more than all by those who knew him."
'Good heavens—good heavens—good heavens!' said Lady Julia thrice, in a low yet fretful voice, as if she scarcely understood the situation; 'it is all some dreadful mistake; Jerry—Jerry—a mistake, Emily. I saw nothing of it in thePostorTimesthis morning.
She was trembling excessively now, and Emily's eyes were full of hot welling tears. Neither of the ladies had seen the fatal intelligence from the seat of war, for, as they all read only the fashionable intelligence, they had heeded transactions on the Gold Coast as much they did those that may be occurring in the mountains of the moon.
However, to do them justice, both were thunderstruck—impressed as much as it was in their frozen nature to be—when Emily, after rushing for the morning paper, found the brief telegram or paragraph to which, no doubt, Mr. Chevenix referred:
'Coomassie in flames. Army falling back on the Gold Coast; but the rivers rising fast. Chief casualties—Captain Dalton, Rifles, severely wounded; Captain J. Wilmot, do., killed and carried off by the enemy.'
The fashionable aunt and niece, at whose pleasant doors grief and sorrow seldom or never came, sat for a time as if stunned. Chevenix and his mortgages were alike forgotten; they could but think of Jerry and strive to realize the—to them—almost impossible situation, while the dull and depressing afternoon stole on.
How could it be, or why was it, that Jerry, so jolly and manly—the son of such a cold and feeble-minded woman of rank and fashion, who had done her best, but failed, to spoil or pamper him—was reserved for such a fate as this!
He had escaped the battle of Amoaful, the passage of the Prah, the fighting prior to the capture of Coomassie, and all the perils of death by fever and toil to perish thus, when the wretched end had been achieved and the troops must have been on their homeward way.
Poor Jerry! The life of the mess and the life of Wilmothurst when at home, where, in consideration of his five feet ten inches and irreproachable moustache, he had been latterly permitted to be termed a 'son,' and not, as his mother would have wished, a 'boy.'
Lady Julia Wilmot had never posed in society save as a beauty, and the great consideration that was ever shown her was due to that beauty and her birth and position as an earl's daughter; but not to any brilliant qualities of head—still less of amiability of heart. Thus in many ways she was a fair average example of 'the upper ten.'
So now it may be said of her and Cousin Emily on this disastrous occasion,
'Some natural tears they shed, but wip'd them soon.'
And their first thoughts were of a suitable and handsome tablet to Jerry's memory in the Vicarage Church, and of fashionable mourning for themselves and the household. It would all cast a gloom over their return to town after Easter in March, when a 'brief season' would commence—if they went to town at all, for 'thank Heaven,' added Lady Julia, 'no one shall accuse me of not doing my duty to my son. I shall order my mourning at Jay's, and certainly will not wear one of those frightful bonnets with long—what is it now, John?'
A tall footman, with a face of woe made up for the occasion, and a manner adapted to it—for the news had spread like wildfire over all the house and vicinity, and when many genuine tears were shed in the servants' hall, where Jerry was a prime favourite with the women folks—brought in a card, announcing
'Miss Chevenix.'
'Chevenix again—this is intolerable! Did you say not at home?'
'I said you were engaged—severially indispoged, my lady,' he replied, shaking his cauliflower-looking head solemnly.
'Yet—she would come in.'
'Yes, my lady.'
'And at a time like this—when we are plunged in unutterable woe! Such confident assurance!'
The door was thrown open, and Bella Chevenix came swiftly forward as the servant withdrew.
But in this we are anticipating a little.
Like the again partially widowed Laura, Bella Chevenix had watched with an aching heart the progressive news of the war among barbarians on the burning Gold Coast, from the landing on New Year's Day to the battle of Amoaful, the passage of the Prah, and the victorious advance on Coomassie; and now came the sudden shock and horror by a tantalisingly brief telegram, in the upper corner of a newspaper, headed by a sensational title in large type, but three lines, announcing that the two officers had fallen—Dalton severely wounded, and Wilmot killed and carried off by the enemy!
Bella sat for a time as one turned to stone, incapable even of tears—oppressed and crushed down by the one appalling and apparently, unrealisable thought.
'Jerry dead—Jerry dead—and I shall never see him more!'
Jerry, so full of life and fun and jollity! It seemed incredible. And yet, why so? He only ran the risks that many others were running. But the mind of Bella went painfully back to their parting, when mutual doubts of the purity and honesty of each other's intentions—doubts born of the existence of those horrible mortgages—had mutually fettered their tongues, especially so far as she was concerned, and, when they separated, little dreaming that it was for ever—separated with a simply repeated 'good-bye' and a lingering pressure of the hand, while no kiss, no embrace, no promise were exchanged, and he was going away to be done to death in that savage land; and she remembered how she wept floods of unavailing tears as the last sound of his footsteps died away. Poor fellow! And now she should see him no more—never again!
To Bella Chevenix sorrow, repentance, and love were alike useless, so far as Jerry Wilmot was concerned. To the girl, just then, it seemed as if the dream of her life was over and done; in it no other could replace Jerry; the light had gone for ever out of her world now. She threw herself upon her knees, in the solitude of her chamber, in a passionate burst of grief—the brilliant, beautiful, and once happy Bella—and strove to say, 'Thy will be done,' but the genuine submission thereto could only come by-and-by.
Under the circumstances of Jerry's profession and career, some peril, some suffering were not altogether unlooked-for or undreaded; but that he should be killed and carried off by the dreadful Ashantees, of whom she had a very vague yet terrible idea indeed, had been beyond her calculations—beyond her worst anticipations! She felt dazed, miserable—intensely, and confused.
'I am now sure that he loved me well—well and dearly—and how coldly I parted with him! Oh, Jerry my darling, can it be that I shall never see you again!' Thus she said to herself over and over in sad reiteration, though no sound but sighs left her lips.
Anon she rose and paced her room, with half uttered exclamations of anguish and sorrow; and then she would throw herself on her bed, burying her face in her hands, in mute and tearless agony. To think that he was gone—in his grave, if he ever found one—gone without the memory of a kind word from her that would make her future life less bitter.
'Oh, Jerry—dead—dead!' she murmured, with ceaseless reiteration.
She had a craving for such sympathy as her father, who was to a great extent ignorant of all that had passed between her and Jerry, could not yield her, and she resolved to visit Laura.
She staggered from the bedside to her toilette-table, and when she looked into the glass she was surprised by the frozen-like despair she saw in her own beautiful face, which was as colourless as Carrara marble now. She bathed her eyes, made a hasty toilette of the most sable things she could select, tied a thick black veil over her face, and, ordering her pony phaeton, set out to visit Laura, to whom the dire tidings had come, of course, betimes, and she too was overwhelmed by affliction that, however, was not without hope.
She was alone now, most terribly alone at Chilcote Grange. Little Netty had been sent to a West End finishing school that she might acquire all sorts of accomplishments and graces with which to delight her father on his return; and now perhaps poor Tony Dalton might die by the banks of the Prah and never see England again, for the heat of the horrible climate there made all wounds more perilous.
'Wounded, severely wounded,' Laura had been repeating to herself: but where wounded, she speculated—how, and with what, and in what part of the poor mortal frame.
The telegram was horribly brief and vague! And now though Laura and Bella Chevenix had few notes to compare, and could say nothing to comfort each other, they gathered some from the communion of tears and thoughts and sorrows.
Laura drew forth—as she had done a score of times before—Dalton's letters to her from Madeira, the Gold Coast, and sent by more than one homeward-bound ship; and the affection they breathed for her and Netty filled her soul with great gratitude now, whatever might happen. She had never received letters from him before—even in their early lover days at St. Leonard's long ago, before their years of separation came: and how strange it was to have received letters from him, conceived in the tenor of these, and signed 'Your affectionate husband, Tony Dalton.'
Now he and Laura were quite old enough to know their own minds, and to deplore the separation a previous less knowledge of each other had brought about between them; neither was likely to make any more false steps, from rashness or impulse, and they had a fair promise of a delicious companionship for the future if they were spared to meet again, and the perils of the Gold Coast ever became a thing of the past, but that fair promise hung by a thread now.
'Had we never met more—met as we did so singularly by the sudden arrival of his regiment in Aldershot,' said Laura, 'and I loved or compelled him, poor darling, to love me again, I might have gone on to the end of my days nursing a sickly sentimental memory on one hand, with a species of revengeful memory on the other; but, if we never meet more on this side of the grave, I shall—till carried to mine—remember with gratitude that he had learned to love me well, and Netty too, before we lost him for ever.'
All her natural gaiety and much of her aplomb had left Laura on the day Dalton sailed from Southampton, and now she was as crushed in spirit as a poor woman well could be. 'We love because we have loved,' says a novelist, 'and it is easier to go on in the old routine, even when all the real life and beauty has died out of it, than to break with the merememoryof that time which made our life holy and beautiful to us.'
In the time of this strange enforced separation—in the time of Dalton's actual desertion of Laura, and when she knew not whether he was dead or living till she met him at Aldershot—this had been something of the sentiment that inspired her; but now that they had both known and loved each other anew under better auspices, and been so briefly re-united, a contemplation of the catastrophe that might yet happen wrung Laura's heart to the core.
On leaving the latter, Bella, though still a prey to choking grief, in the warm and generous impulse of her nature, conceived the idea of, or thought she might find some comfort in, a visit to Lady Wilmot. She washismother, whose grief at least could not be inferior to her own.
She committed to oblivion all that lady's treatment of herself in the past time, and even but lately at the Charity Bazaar; yet it was not without some misgivings, and even pausing in her progress once or twice, that she turned the heads of her pretty ponies in the direction of Wilmothurst, her tears falling hotly under her thick Shetland veil as she passed down the stately avenue and through the Chase, where every foot of the way suggested some memory of Jerry and his happy boyhood, when they were playmates till he went to Eton, and Lady Julia—well, never permittedhername to be on the ordinary visitors' list. There was a tall elm up which he had clambered, at the risk of his limbs, to get her a magpie's nest; here they had gathered the early primroses in April, and the Lent lilies in May, or hunted for butterflies. How often had they played croquet together on the bowling-green, and rowed dreamily for hours on the tree-shaded river; and at every turn the figure of the boy seemed to come before her, mingled with that of the moustached and handsome young officer to whom she so strangely bade farewell.
Full of these thoughts, Bella would not be repelled by the conventional manner or replies of the footman, and begged so earnestly to see Lady Julia that she was ushered into her presence by the former, as we have described in the last chapter.
Poor Bella had but one thought—Lady Julia washismother, and gladly in that hour of woe would she have thrown her arms around her and embraced her tenderly; but Lady Julia was cold and calm in aspect and bearing as a Greek marble statue, and received her visitor without rising, and with a brief conventional pressure with one hand while motioning her to be seated with the other.
Whatever hopes Cousin Emily once had of Jerry for a husband—hopes often crushed by his indifference on the subject, and by a knowledge of the necessity that he must marry 'money'—they were gone now; and, besides, she could receive Bella Chevenix now with more equanimity than hitherto.
But her reception was common-place—chilling also—and poor Bella, feeling herselfde trop, an utter intruder, felt confusion blend with the grief that oppressed her.
'After the awful news of this morning, Lady Julia,' said she, with a great effort, 'as an old friend of the family, whose ancestors have been for years upon the estate, as a neighbour, too, in a lonely part of the county—more than all—all—as—as—I conceived a great craving to see you,' said the girl, brokenly, in a weak, yet exquisitely sweet voice.
'Indeed—thanks.'
This was not an encouraging response, nevertheless Bella spoke again.
'Jerry—Wilmot, I mean—and I were such playmates in our childhood long, long ago, that—that—you know——'
Bella's voice completely failed her under the cold, inquiring eyes of Lady Julia and Emily Wilmot.
'Playmates!' said the former. 'Yes, your memory does you credit. I thought you must have forgotten all that by this time, as I am sure my poor dear boy did.'
'Forgotten!'
'Yes, I think I heard him say something like that to his friend, Captain Goring.'
'If he spoke of those pleasant times, he would scarcely have forgotten them,' was the natural response of Bella, to whom Lady Julia, after a languid stare, said,
'Next mail must bring some distinct details of this calamity that has fallen upon me and Miss Wilmot.'
Bella felt that she was excluded from the co-partnery of grief—she who loved the dead as she loved her own soul, and more, and she was almost, in spite of herself, tempted to daringly enter some little protest when Lady Julia spoke again.
'I wish Captain Goring were at home; I should send for him. By the way, does not rumour say he has succeeded to a fortune?'
'To £20,000 a year,' replied Bella, in a low voice.
'Say £10,000—that will be nearer the mark, perhaps £5,000.'
'Why?'
'I believe very little that I see, and always but the half of what I hear,' she replied, fanning herself.
'How can this woman think of such matters justnow,' thought Bella, an emotion of resentful bitterness growing in her heart. 'Oh, how little did she deserve to have such a son as my darling Jerry!'
The snapping and snarling of Floss, who always resented the advent of visitors, now required all Lady Julia's kisses and blandishments to soothe him into the recess of his mother-of-pearl basket; and to Bella it seemed monstrous, incredible, her bearing. Only this morning these women heard of the dire calamity, and they were to all appearance as 'cool as cucumbers'—a little redness they exhibited about the eyes certainly, and a certain subdued manner alone seemed to show that they had in any way laid to heart the death of the poor fellow whose obsequies might have been performed by the birds of the wilderness.
Doubtless Bella failed to understand the highly born and long descended; yet in many a gallant field, against both Scots and French, long before even the days of the great Civil War, had her ancestors done good and true yeoman service, with bow and bill, for their acres at Langley Park, under the banner of the Wilmots, with its three eagles' heads—sableandargent.
At last she rose.
'It is well for you, Lady Julia,' said she, 'that you are able to take this awful dispensation of Providence so calmly as you do.'
'When a thing is inevitable or irreparable, it is best to bow the head and accept it with a good grace,' replied the bereaved mother, closing her fan, but not rising from the fauteuil on which she was reclining, looking gentle and soft, yet iron-bound and icily conventional.
'The loss of an only son, and such a son?' exclaimed Bella, indignation mingling with her grief, as she burst into a flood of irrepressible tears, on which Lady Julia gave her a stare of well-bred astonishment, and asked,
'What do you mean, Miss Chevenix, by this excessive emotion? Have you lost any relation recently that you come almost in black, and with these jet ornaments?'
'No—but I thought—I thought—' stammered Bella.
'You thought—what?'
'That for poor Jerry——'
'Do you mean Captain Wilmot—my son?' asked Lady Julia, icily.
'Yes,' replied Bella, boldly enough now; 'we were such old and good friends that I thought—a little change of dress was but becoming reverence to his memory; and I shall make it deeper still.'
'As you please,' said Lady Julia, bowing curtly, while Cousin Emily rang the bell, and bowed the visitor out.
The two ladies then stared at each other.
There was adeductionto be drawn from honest Bella's deep, pathetic, and unconcealed interest and grief for the poor dead fellow that proved somewhat offensive to Lady Julia, who, amid her own sorrow—or what she considered such—had been considering the fashion of her own mourning—of mourning for the entire household—and of a handsomely quartered hatchment to 'hang upon the outward wall'; thus she was rather astounded and indignant at the rash or adopted bearing in one of Bella's rank and position; but they savoured, she thought, somewhat of the servants' hall in demonstrativeness.
She was ashamed as yet to consult herDressmakers' Album, even with the aid of Emily and Mademoiselle Florine, anent the most becoming fashion of mourning; but to-morrow she would certainly do so.
'Assurement, oui!' thought Florine.
Anger and no small degree of contempt were in the heart of Bella as she quitted the park gates of Wilmothurst, with a kind of dull and sodden despair mingling therein, as she drove her ponies home in the February twilight to her father's house that overlooked the village green, and she thought how true were the words of Wordsworth of
'Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.'
Jerry lay long when we left him last in a state of semi-unconsciousness, thoughts of his past life rather than of his present most perilous and deplorable predicament hovering in his mind. He sometimes imagined himself at the mess, and heard the voices and saw the faces of Goring, Dalton, Frank Fleming, and others; anon he was in the Long Valley at Aldershot skirmishing with his company, or riding a hurdle-race by Twesildown Hill. Then came dreams of the ball at Wilmothurst and of Bella Chevenix in all her beauty, and his cold, pale, passionless mother. Again he was in the playing-fields at Eton—again chosen stroke of the Oxford boat. All these floated before him with an overwhelming sense of pain in his head, as once again he struggled back to the world and a full sense of the awful horror of his situation came upon him. Thankful we may be that, as Pope has it,
'Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,All but the page prescribed, their present state.'
The prospect of Jerry's future made his heart seem to die within him.
The sun was shining brightly now, and save the loud hum of insect life no sound was in the air or around him. A heavy odour of burnt wood and of moist thatch came upon the passing wind from where the fires of the past night were still smouldering in Coomassie, and once more staggering up Jerry looked around him.
He was alone—left in the bush to perish; and his comrades, where were they?
Miles on the happy homeward march to the coast, with the swollen rivers all unbridged and impassable in their rear!
He saw it all—he felt it all, and knew that he was a lost man. Feeble, defenceless, and single-handed he would fall a victim to the first savage and infuriated Ashantee he met, and his skull would soon be laid as an ornament—a royal trophy—at the foot of the king.
A heavy moan escaped poor Jerry; but the love of life, the instinct of self-preservation is strong in human nature, and his first thought was to endeavour to follow the army.
At a pool he bathed his head and face, washed away the plastered blood that encrusted all the vicinity of the wound on his head, and bound the latter up with his handkerchief. He luckily found his light helmet in the hollow where he had lain unseen by his comrades, and, after giving a glance to the chambers of his loaded revolver, endeavoured to follow as closely as he could the track that led he knew towards the army—the track the latter must have trodden.
But he frequently lost it, vast swamps and sheets of water were formed now where none had been before, and he had to make harassing detours; his powers and his steps were feeble, thus his progress was slow and often doubtful, and ever and anon he had to pause and look around him, fearing that in the dingles of the woody wilderness he might see the dark and agile figure of a hostile savage.
Mid-day came when he was certain that he could have made but a very few miles of progress, and gasping with heat, giddy and weary, he crept under the shadow of a dense leafy bush to rest and conceal himself.
Could he have been certain of the route, he knew that it would have been safer to travel by night, but in the night he must fail to see the traces of it, and now, with weariness and pain, a great horror of the whole situation came upon him, and he could but mutter again and again,
'Alone—alone in the bush—to die! God help me!'
Poor Jerry was a popular, light-hearted, prosperous, and happy young fellow, whom every one liked and to whom pleasant things happened every day. He was wont to own that he found every one kind and every one nice, and in society, of course, he met many people. Wherever Jerry had gone, at school, at college, or with the Rifles, he converted strangers into acquaintances, and acquaintances soon became his friends. Wherever he went invitations to dinners, balls, drums, lawn-tennis, and other parties flowed upon him, for he was decidedly a popular young fellow, with the girls especially.
All that seemed ended!
To Jerry, accustomed as he had been to the sunny side of life, and to float without a thought upon its rippling and glittering current, there was something worse than death in his present predicament. He could understand being shot in action, and then being buried in a hole or left unburied to the fowls of the air, but this struggle against destruction—this living death—was utterly beyond all his calculations!
He partook sparingly of the contents of his haversack, reflecting the while on what must inevitably ensue when the last of that support for exhausted nature was expended, for he could not escape a death by starvation even if he escaped death by other means.
Without food, without comrades, without help or means to cross the swollen rivers! The perspiration burst in beads upon his temples; his pulsation caused the aching of his contused wound to become agony; his muscles grew rigid, he set his teeth, and began to surmise how long he would last—how long he could endure all that must be before him now, while muttering again,
'Alone in the bush to die—God help me!'
He had in his haversack rations for three days; even if he could make them last for seven, his resource would end then; and, even while sheltered by the giant leaves which abounded there, the baleful night dews might induce fever and ague, while the waters that barred his progress were more likely to rise than to fall, as the rainy season, which had made Sir Garnet Wolseley begin his sudden retreat, had now commenced.
Tidings that he had perished would soon be telegraphed to England; many there, he knew, would regret him; with something of a bitter smile he remembered the farewell parting with his cold, aristocratic mother, and then the thought of Bella perhaps becoming—for she was known to be rich—the bride of the horsey Lord Twesildown.
The thought of that nerved him to exertion; the sun was verging westward now, and once more, with feeble steps and slow he took to the track again, half blinded at times by the crimson glare of light that poured between the stems of the trees, for the track he had to pursue was then straight in the wake of the setting sun.
He could form no idea of the distance he had gone, but the odour of burned wood which reached him from time to time warned him that he was still unpleasantly near Coomassie, and more than once sounds that came upon the wind like a savage shout and the distant beating of a war-drum, made him creep into the jungle for concealment, and thus lose time, when, if he would hope to overtake the army, now many miles on their homeward way, every moment was most precious.
At last, when night, with tropical swiftness, had descended he found his progress hopelessly barred by that great sheet of water which we have already referred to—a reach of five hundred yards in breadth that rolled now at a place through which in advancing the army had passed dry-shod.
'Out of the running!' exclaimed poor Jerry, using his home phraseology; 'oh, heavens! how to bridge this sea that lies between me and the troops? Oh, for a horse with wings!' he added, unconsciously quoting the exclamation of Cymbeline.
When night fell no resource was left him but to remain there and gaze with haggard eyes and a desponding heart at the cruel sheet of water that lay between him and probable safety.
Brightly, as on the New Year's night that saw the troops landing on that fatal shore, the moon was shining now—brighter even; never had Jerry seen such brilliancy. In all the vast expanse of the firmament overhead there was not a vestige of cloud. Millions of stars were there, but their splendour was dimmed or obscured by the splendid effulgence of the moon. The vast leaves of plants, whose names were all unknown to the lost Jerry, were shining in dew as if diamonds had rained from heaven; every giant cotton-tree and palm, every rock and fissure were illuminated, and the birds flew to and fro as if a new day had dawned, but a day of silver, icy-like splendour, and clear as in a mirror were the shadows of the trees and graceful palms reflected downward in the sheet of water that glittered in the sheen.
But that he was so weary and faint Jerry would have availed himself of this wonderful moonlight and endeavoured to get round the flank of the vast sheet of water that barred his progress, and which reflected the radiance like a mighty sheet of crystal; but he was compelled to wait till morning, and again sought shelter under some jungly bushes.
Near the place he saw several broken meat tins and empty bottles scattered about, indicating where some of our troops had halted before the final march was made into Coomassie; and he regarded with interest and anxiety these vestiges which proved that he was in the right track could he but cross the intervening flood.
With his very existence trembling in the balance with fate, what a small matter now seemed the mortgages over Wilmothurst and every consideration save the love of Bella Chevenix; and while he strove to court sleep—oblivion in that savage wilderness, where no sound met the ear save the plash of falling dew as some overcharged leaf bent downward; his whole soul was full of her image—the image of her he too probably should never, never see again.
With earliest dawn he was again afoot and seeking to get round the reach of water, but it trended away through hollows far to the north and south, yet with an aching heart he struggled manfully at his task. On every hand towered up to the height of two hundred and fifty feet or more, straight as stone columns, the cotton-trees, like the giants of primeval vegetation, and round their bases flourished the wondrous undergrowth of jungle, under which again grew white lilies, pink flowers, and dog-roses; amid which could be heard sharp trumpetings of enormous mosquitoes, with the monotonous too-too of the wild doves, which alone broke the silence of the bush.
'This silence,' wrote one who served in the campaign, 'this apparently never-ending forest, this monotony of rank vegetation, this absence of a breath of wind to rustle a leaf, becomes oppressive, and the feeling is not lessened by the dampness and heaviness of the air, and by the malarious exhalation and odour of decaying vegetation which rise from the swamps.'
The report of a musket at no great distance, followed by the noise made by some wounded animal crashing through the forest. compelled Jerry, with a heart that beat wildly with agitation and alarm, to conceal himself instantly; and he had hardly done so, when four armed Ashantees, with muscular mahogany-coloured forms, gleaming eyes, and shining teeth, passed near him and continued to hover about, as if scouting or in pursuit of game.
This compelled him to lie for hoursen perdu, and evening began to close again without his having got round the reach of water that lay between him and the way to Prah, and even if he ever did reach the banks of that stream how was he to cross it? for he was not a swimmer.
On this night there was no moon, for the clouds were densely massed in the heavens; the rain fell in torrents, and though sheltered therefrom in the hollow of a rock Jerry listened to the crashing sound of the vast drops falling in a ceaseless shower, with a species of dull despair, for higher than ever would the waters rise now; his food was failing him, and he gave himself up for utterly lost.
With dawn the rain departed, and the sun exhaled a dense steamy mist from the drenched forest; but Jerry dared not leave his lair, for more than once in the distance he heard distinctly cries, strange sounds, and the explosion of firearms, showing evidently that scouting parties of Ashantees were hovering about, if it were not their whole army following up ours, which must be, he knew, at a vast distance then.
He had now come to his last biscuit, and finding all still when night fell he again addressed himself to the task of attempting to ford the water at a place where it seemed shallow. The sky was again cloudy, veiling most of the stars, and the moon had not yet risen.
At that point the forest was open for a great space, and luxuriant grass and reed-like rushes covered all the soil. Weak and weary, stiff and sore, though he had lurked in concealment all day, he staggered like a drunken man as he approached the water, but ere he could enter it some uncertain sounds made him look behind. He saw the gleam of arms, the flash of steel in the starlight; and then, coming upon him at a rush, apparently were some twenty men, emerging swiftly from the forest he had left; and though he drew his sword and grasped his revolver, resolved to sell his life bitterly and dearly, so enfeebled was his frame, and so great was the shock—the horror—he experienced at the prospect of the terrible death which so surely awaited him, after all he had endured and undergone, that he fell prone on his face and scarcely remembered more, as they closed in wild tumult around him.
'Twa heads are better than ane, though they are but sheep's anes,' remarked Archie Auchindoir, with a smirk on his wrinkled face, to old Mrs. Prune, as he gave her a lesson in the art of cooking mutton to imitate venison, with minced onions and ham, parsley and port wine, to please the fastidious palate of his ailing master Sir Ranald, who dearly doted on many things he could not procure now, and of course longed for venison. So these two old servitors were again to their joy installed with the little household once more at Chilcote.
And most welcome again to Alison was old silver-haired Archie, with his genuine ancient Scottish fidelity 'to the auld family'—a species of fidelity as beautiful and unselfish as it is rare now-a-days.
Mr. Solomon Slagg had failed to let Chilcote; the ruse under which Sir Ranald and Cadbury had lured Alison to accompany them in a sudden departure from England in theFireflyhad failed, so there was no reason why they should not return; thus Sir Ranald and his daughter had returned accordingly.
Daisy Prune's mother had soon restocked the hen-house, and her old occupations came pleasantly back to Alison. At present she was full of one thing and another; home was home again; her plants, her greenhouse, her flowers occasioned many a deep consultation with the factotum of the establishment, old Archie, anent slips, bulbs, and seedlings, for her love of flowers amid all her cares and anxieties had never deserted her.
So father and daughter were back again to homelier fare than that of the Hôtel St. Antoine, for their dessert after dinner, if served upon the scanty remains of ancient plate, often consisted of only two bald dishes of oranges and a few little biscuits.
In her singleness and simplicity of heart, Alison rejoiced to be again amid her familiar surroundings, as she was destitute of her father's spirit of futile repining and regrets for the unattainable; thus every bit of furniture looked an old friend, more particularly those relics of Essilmont, the family portraits, some of which—especially those of two handsome cavalier brothers who fell in battle for King Charles—seemed to the girl's fancy to relax their haughty features, and smile a welcome home to her—the last of the Cheynes—as she nestled with one of Mudie's last novels in her favourite window-seat and strove to read, while her thoughts wandered to Bevil Goring, wherever he might be, and she pined for him, but in vain.
Lord Cadbury was in town just then. Her father had not seen fit to enlighten her as to the circumstance of Goring having followed them to Antwerp, a fact which would have enhanced his interest in the eyes of Alison. Of the Cadbury episode, and the meeting which never came off at the Lunette St. Laurent, he knew nothing; but he was old-fashioned enough and high-spirited enough to have revolted at such cowardice, if he had been aware of it.
Alison speculated deeply. If Bevil Goring was in England, how was it that he made no effort to trace her? Could it be that stung by her father's imperious manner, and hopeless of ever being rich enough to please him, he had relinquished her and her love, and perhaps given himself up to the adoration of another? She had heard and read of such things, and these surmises saddened and agitated her.
Laura had left Chilcote Grange, none knew for where, thus Alison could not learn from her any knowledge of Goring's movements, or whether he was at the camp, or in Africa. She was, in her isolation, without the means of knowing if he were in the land of the living.
So she was back again to Chilcote and monotony, but a monotony that was not without an infusion of hope that she might ere long hear something of her lover; for Chilcote and its vicinity were full of associations connected with him, particularly their trysting-place, the old beeches that were leafless still, and looked so lonely when she lingered there, and watched the brown rabbits scudding among the last year's ferns; back again to old Mrs. Prune's frugal repasts, and watching for letters that never came, or those that were not wanted—letters in blue envelopes, at the sight of which Sir Ranald shivered. He hated all letters; of what use were they to anyone—all he wanted was his morning paper.
Severely ailing now, the old man had become more querulous than ever, and more than ever was Alison sweet in temper, gentle and patient with him, for she had more than an intuition that she would not have him long with her, and when he passed away what was to become of herthen?
And she would look up beseechingly at the portraits of the two brothers—the Ranald and Ellon of other times—as if seeking succour or counsel from them.
'I wish I had been born, papa, when these two kinsmen lived, and when the world was younger,' she said one day.
'A strange thought for a young girl,' he replied; 'if you had been born then you would have lived in stormy times, and, instead of living now, be lying in St. Mary's Kirk at Ellon. But why this wish?'
'Because I think people were truer and more single-hearted then than they are now—more simple, honest, and less inclined to make shams of themselves for appearance sake.'
'Hum,' said Sir Ranald, after a pause, during which he had been eyeing her suspiciously through his goldpince-nez; 'have you met anyone during your protracted walk this afternoon?'
'Whom have I to meet in this lonely place, papa?' she asked, with a little pang of annoyance in her breast.
'No one you think worth your attention now, perhaps; but you were most anxious to return here, anyway.'
Alison did not reply, but a sigh escaped her. She had indeed on that afternoon wandered pretty far on the road that led to the distant camp at Aldershot, in the slight hope of meeting him of whom her thoughts were full, and to whom—in ignorance of where he was—she feared to write announcing that she was again at Chilcote.
Winter had come and gone while she was at Antwerp; the snowdrops had faded from white to yellow and passed away. The loose petals of the late crocuses, golden and purple, had also disappeared under the increasing heat of the sunshine; the garden was fragrant with wall-flower and scented jonquils, and as the days began to lengthen the pale primroses came to spot the turf under the old beech-trees, and within the green whorls of leaves. Ere long the hedge-banks were gay with them among the litter of dead foliage, and Alison thought of the days when she was wont to linger and make posies of them as she went to school.
The sum that was to have been settled on Alison in case Bevil fell in the intended duel with Lord Cadbury had not taken any tangible form, as the duel never came off, in the first place, and, in the second, Messrs. Taype, Shawrpe, & Scrawly at that precise time had been unable to discover the actual whereabouts of the young lady; so she was in ignorance of his kind consideration and lover-like generosity, while they waited for fresh instructions.
But, aware that to one so impecunious as Sir Ranald Cheyne money could never come amiss, Bevil Goring contrived, through the Scottish legal agents of the former, to transmit to his bankers for the use of Alison a sum anonymously, or in such a fashion that they could never discover, save from himself, from whom or whence it came.
And the news thereof arrived one morning when the holders of some overdue accounts had been more than usually clamorous for settlement, and Alison had begun to feel once again some of the old emotions of shame and desperation in her heart as in the past, and her eyes were full of unshed tears.
'What a world it is!' groaned Sir Ranald.
'True, papa; yet it is but little we require or wish for.'
'We can neither have what we require or may wish for, unless—unless——'
'What, papa?'
'We have money,' said he, gloomily.
'True. Oh, that weary money!' sighed the girl. 'However, we have still five pounds in the bank, and in my purse are a sovereign and some silver.'
'My poor, obstinate pet! How easily all this might be amended! A dun, of course,' he added, as the postman's rat-tat was heard at the door, and Archie brought in a letter. 'Ah! I thought so,' muttered the poor baronet, as he saw that the envelope was a blue one. 'Throw it in the fire; they are all alike.'
However, with a snort of impatience, he opened the missive, and as he read it Alison, who was watching his thin face with affectionate anxiety, saw an expression of blank wonder, of utter amazement, steal over it. He started, and, as if he could not believe his eyes, wiped hispince-nezwith his handkerchief and read the letter again, while Alison, whose birthday it was, and who sighed a little because there was no one to remember it, stole to his side and peeped over his shoulder. It was from the secretary of Sir Ranald's bank, to announce that, by some friend unknown, £1,000 had been paid in the name of Miss Alison Cheyne for her use and behoof, and as abirthdaygift.
Surprise profound and great joy were the first emotions of father and daughter, and the latter thought of all the little debts it would clear and the comforts it would procure for the former; but neither had the slightest suspicion of the real donor, for Goring was supposed to have little more than his pay, and both were inclined to accredit Lord Cadbury with it; thus for a time a perilous emotion of deep gratitude began really to fill the affectionate heart of Alison—we say perilous, for it enhanced the prospects of the peer, and might eventually blight those of Goring, if aught occurred to make Alison question his truth or loyalty to herself, and yet her heart shrank with shame at taking a money gift from her rejected lover.
A birthday gift, she thought; Lord Cadbury did not know her birthday. Bevil did; but of course this princely and certainly opportune present could never come from poor Bevil, who was thankful to add to his income by slaving as a musketry instructor.
Beyond Cadbury conjecture was endless.
'Can it be from Captain Llanyard?' she suggested.
'Absurd!' said her father, almost angrily.
Tom Llanyard, she knew with all a pretty girl's sharp intuition, had admired her greatly and secretly during the brief voyage in theFirefly, and Tom, we are glad to record, had, singular to say, in one day realised a handsome fortune.
Alison knew of that circumstance, and she knew too that Cadbury was too innately vulgar not to be ostentatious with his wealth and disinclined to hide his candle under a bushel.
Tom Llanyard, with theFirefly, when taking her to Cowes by Lord Cadbury's orders, had been blown by a foul wind, and in a heavy gale thereof, down the Channel till he was off the coast of Devonshire, where he fell in with a large derelict Indiaman, which had been abandoned by her captain and crew during the gale, and of which he took possession.
He brought her into Dartmouth safely, and she proved to be laden with teakwood, rum, and a cargo valued generally at nearly £100,000, consequently the salvage alone proved a handsome fortune to worthy Tom Llanyard, who immediately resigned 'the honour' of commanding Lord Cadbury's yacht.
The proud spirit of Alison revolted, on consideration, at the idea of accepting or using this money; but her father only asked her how they were to 'rub on' without it, now it had come?
But whence came it? Was it sent in charity, or was it the conscience money of some false friend, who in the spendthrift past time had wronged her father on the turf or elsewhere?
To soothe her, he was not disinclined to adopt this view of the matter; but to suit his own views he again fell back upon the conviction that the donor could be no other than Lord Cadbury, to return it to whom would be an insult, and whom it would be but proper to thank in some fashion.
Thus, great was the surprise of the peer to receive one day at his club a rather effusive letter from Alison, dictated by Sir Ranald to thank him for the birthday gift—as they could not doubt—a gift that nothing but her father's failing health, and the many necessities that it involved, compelled her to accept. Her little hands trembled as she closed this—to her—obnoxious epistle; while her eyes were dim with tears, and her heart wrung with shame and pride, all the more so as she painfully recalled the episode of Mr. Slagg and the acceptances.
Cadbury was puzzled sorely; he knew not what to think, and tugged away at his long white moustache, while thinking 'who the devil can have sent this money—a thousand pounds too!'
He was not sorry that they should think the gift came from him.
'Hang it all!' he muttered, 'have I not spent ever so much more on and about her—Slagg's devilish bills too—and all for nothing!'
So he wrote a very artful answer, expressing his surprise that he should be thanked for such a trifle, thus fully permitting her to infer that the gift was a kindness of his own; and more than ever did Alison feel a humiliation, in which her father—selfish with all his pride—had no share, especially when sipping some very choice dry cliquot 'veuve,' a case of which he had ordered on the head of it, and thought that for a little time at least he had bidden good-bye tomouton à la Russe, cold beef, and apple-dumpling—ugh!
At his club and elsewhere in London, Cadbury had a nervous fear of the Antwerp affair, and the cause of his sudden departure from that city, oozing out. It might find its way from theRag, of which he doubted not Goring was a member, but Cadbury forgot that the former was too much of a gentleman to tell any anecdote that would involve the name of a lady—more than all, that of Alison Cheyne.
But no one can tell how stories get about in these days, and thus, when there was any low-voiced talk or laughter in a corner of the club-room, he grew hot and cold with the terrible suspicion that he was the subject of both. His hatred of Goring grew deeper, and he resolved that he would work him some fatal mischief, if he could.
Through Sir Jasper Dehorsey and Mr. Tom Hawksleigh, a rumour certainly was spread abroad that he had been on the Continent 'with such a stunning girl;' and old Cad (as he was often called) was rather inclined to adopt the soft impeachment, and the idea that 'he was a dog—a gay spark yet—and all that sort of thing, don't you know.'
But when Dehorsey spoke of the affair, he little knew the rank, position, or character of the girl he referred to, and the risks she had run through the brutal selfishness and mischievous spirit of himself and Hawksleigh, when by falsehoods, and in her confusion, they had lured her to the Café au Progrès.
At Chilcote, Archie Auchindoir speedily became master of the news concerning the birthday gift.
'A thousand pounds, my certie, is there as much money in a' the warld!' he exclaimed. 'Troth, Sir Ranald, he that hath routh o' butter may put it on baith sides o' his bannock.'
'I don't know,' said Sir Ranald, peevishly, to Alison, 'why I brought that fellow back again. A Caleb Balderstone is an anachronism in nineteenth century society.'
'He is so good and faithful, papa—dear old Archie.'
'Yes; but, like all such faithful old fellows, he is a shocking tyrant—is too muchau faitat all one's private affairs, and deems himself quite a family institution—as much a Cheyne as ourselves.'
But Alison had not the heart to resent Archie's gladness that the gift—whoever it came from—'would keep the wolf from the door,' as she thought it might keep the black hound too!
Archie had a profound dislike of Lord Cadbury, and once he ventured to say to Alison,
'Wi' a' his wealth, I'd as soon see you in your coffin as the Leddy o' Cadbury Court; but anent this,' he asked, abruptly, in a low voice, 'where is Captain Goring?'
Alison coloured, but said, in a low, cooing voice,
'Could YOU find out for me, Archie, like an old dear, as you are?'
'I will—I'll ask at the Camp, if I tramp every yard o' the way and back again.'